High Speed (pinball)

High Speed
Manufacturer Williams
Release date January 1986
System Williams System 11
Design Steve Ritchie
Programming Larry DeMar
Artwork Mark Sprenger, Python Anghelo
Music Bill Parod, Steve Ritchie
Sound Bill Parod, Eugene Jarvis
Voices Steve Ritchie, Larry DeMar
Production run 17,080

High Speed is a pinball game designed by Steve Ritchie and released by Williams Electronics in 1986. It is based on Ritchie's real-life police chase inside a 1979 Porsche 928.[1] He was finally caught in Lodi, California on Interstate 5 and accused of speeding at 146 mph.[2]

A sequel was released 1992 called The Getaway: High Speed II.

Production

During its design, High Speed was jokingly called "High Cost" by some rival Williams designers due to its then-high production cost. The advances in the mechanical design that went into High Speed, coupled with the machine's popularity, led to many machines being kept in service much longer than was previously the norm. The play surfaces of the machine were not initially given as much attention, leading to many High Speed machines seeing service to this day in extremely worn condition. Williams rapidly addressed this issue by making mylar playfield covers available and later adding hard clear paint coats to their playfields. Canadian specialist Classic Playfield Reproductions produced an officially licensed High Speed 13-color Reproduction Playfield, which shipped as limited edition in 2014.


Reception

High Speed was one of the games (along with 1986's Pin*Bot and 1984's Space Shuttle) that helped revitalize the pinball industry, which had become stagnant due in part to the North American video game crash of 1983. High Speed sold 17,080 units.

Pinball designer Pat Lawlor[3] and pinball programmer Dwight Sullivan[4] stated that High Speed is one of their favorite games.

Digital versions

A licensed version of this table was released on The Pinball Arcade for multiple platforms. Its successor (The getaway: High Speed II) was also released as an additional table for this collection. After June 30, 2018, neither of these tables are available for any platform due to WMS license expiration.

Rare adapted High Speed into a video game of the same name for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It was published by Tradewest in 1991.

See also

  • Checkpoint, another pinball machine with racing theme

References

  1. ↑ IRC Chat with Steve Ritchie Archived 2005-11-19 at the Wayback Machine.
  2. ↑ http://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=1176
  3. ↑ "My favourite machine besides my games is High Speed by the great Steve Ritchie." -- Pat Lawlor. PinballNews.com: Lawlor Talks. Retrieved on 23 October 2011.
  4. ↑ My Pinball Blog: T2, Getaway, and Star Trek: TNG, by Dwight Sullivan. Retrieved on 23 October 2011.
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