I am restoring a Bingo, Silver Sails. I also got a Fun Cruise by Bally. This game was made using bingo parts, but was a ruse to allow gambling machine parts to be transported across state lines. The game uses bingo parts through out but is not a bingo.

Fun Cruise has no flippers. There are mushroom targets scattered around the center of the game and funny plastic targets on the sides. The targets are all numbered from one to 13. There are 15 flags in the back box, corresponding to all the numbers, plus two. The final two flags can only be lit by a random pattern for a capture hole, located in the bottom center of the playfield.

So, no flippers. You shoot the three balls, watch them bounce around, and finally drain. The game then adds up your flags and gives you replays for flags beyond eight or nine.

But the sling shots are absolutely amazing! They are a huge assembly under the playfield and contain two coils each. I thought they might push harder when the game is percentaging easy and lighter when being more difficult.

The sling shots are angled more horizontally, allowing a ball to be shot farther up the playfield. In fact, these can easily shoot a ball up to the top!

During play you hear this ker chunk, thunk, pop, with the last pop being the familiar sling shot sound we all love to hate. It is almost like a catapult sound!

The sling shots are cocked before play, using the huge main coils and super big solenoids. The small coil is just a trigger, and gets released when the ball comes in contact with the sling shot rubber. Then a strong spring shoves this huge paddle back against the rubber, blasting the ball upwards. The paddle is not this wimpy 1/4 inch wide shover we usually think of, but a inch and a half wide piece of metal.

Once expended, the huge solenoid re-cocks the sling shot and gets ready for the next blast. The game is worth playing, just to hear the sound of this going off!

 

Some Conformation
In the taped interview between Bally designer Don Hooker and Russ Jensen and gang, Don talks about how he wished he would have got a patent on this "sling-shot" device since it was deployed in all the games immediatley following the Bingos, many of which used his circuitry
 

The Above Article Is By

Mr. Michael Sands

Sands Mechanical Museum

"museum quality restoration of coin op toys"

 Mr. Sands has some great Bingo mechanicals to share in his “How do they work area.”

This page was last updated on 12/02/2001