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Road Show

Williams, 1994 — shot-by-shot rules and strategy guide.

Open Road Show in the Pinball Genie app →

Road Show is a four-flipper widebody with two talking heads, eighteen modes, a shaker motor and a second plunger halfway up the left side. It is Pat Lawlor recycling his own best ideas, and there is almost always something lit somewhere. Scoring well is not about learning eighteen modes. It is about the four systems underneath them: miles, Blasts, the Wheel and souvenirs.

Miles move you west

Eighteen cities run east to west across the map, and each is a mode you start at the Start City Scene scoop or the Blast Hole. After finishing one you have to travel 400 miles to relight the scoop. The Left Loop pays 150 miles, both ramps 100, the Center Loop and both holes 75, the Lock 50, inlanes 25 and the spinner 5 a spin. The best mileage shot in the game is the Right Ramp with Bridge Out lit, because the diverter sends the ball round into the Left Loop and pays for both — 275 miles from one shot. The flashing city is always one of the next two on the map, and you change which one by hitting a bumper or standup of that city's colour.

Blasts and the multiplier combos

The Blast Value starts at 1M and every bumper hit adds 208,430 to it, up to 10M. Hitting the Blast Hole or the Magic Standup lights the Blast Targets for a plain collect, but how you light them decides the multiplier.

The Wheel and Bridge Out

Bridge Out is cross-lit by the inlanes — left inlane lights the Right Ramp, inside right inlane lights the Left Ramp. Each collect advances your bonus multiplier from 2X to 6X, then lights an extra ball, then pays 10M. Advancing the multiplier also lights the twelve-award Wheel, collected at the Lock or the Blast Hole. Bumper hits and spinner rotations step the flashing award along, so you can steer it. Worth shopping for: Jets At Max, Spinner At Max, Big Blast, a free souvenir and Light Extra Ball. One warning — if the Wheel is already lit when you push the multiplier to its maximum, the Wheel goes out.

Souvenirs are real points

Every Skill Shot and every Bob's Freebie hands you a free souvenir, and you can buy more with your own score at Bob's Souvenir Bunker — light it with the Center Loop or the outside right inlane, then hit the Lock with nothing else lit and no mode running. At the end of the ball, each souvenir whose matching city you have visited is worth 10M, and two of the same souvenir pays twice. Three items in Bob's stock are not souvenirs at all: the lead pinball at 75M lights an extra ball, the zinc at 100M awards one outright, and the gold at 250M gives you an extra ball plus a lit Special. And if the sign in the shop window advertises uranium ore, hit both flipper buttons quickly to start Construction Mania — twenty seconds with every target on the machine worth 3M.

Payday Multiball

Bulldozer blade hits advance the day of the week. Reach Friday and the Lock lights; lock two balls and Ted falls asleep, the blade lifts, and his open mouth starts multiball. The jackpot opens at 40M and every blade hit adds 5M to a 75M ceiling, and jackpots then alternate between Ted and Red. Ted's blade rises and falls when he is next, which makes his half the harder one. Two things are worth knowing. Between lighting the lock and actually locking, every blade hit pays Overtime — 1.1M climbing to 3M. And if you drain two balls without a single jackpot, the Lock lights for twelve seconds to restart the whole thing with two balls.

The Magic Standup and Super Payday

One standup on this machine faces the wrong way, sitting just beneath the upper left flipper's tip, and the way to hit it is to do nothing — let a ball on its way back from the Lock roll into it. It does something useful in nearly every mode in the game, once each: 16M added to the Atlanta hurry-up, two people thawed in Minneapolis, a tunnel spotted in Butte, a free Wheel award in Las Vegas, a flat 60M in Salt Lake City. Learn to leave the flipper alone. The wizard bonus, Super Payday, is reached during any of the three West Coast city modes: lock one ball in Bob's Bunker, then lock a second in the Bunker, the scoop or the Blast Hole. Everything turns on at once, and ramps and loops start paying back the points you scored in each city on the way west.

How Road Show plays

You are the road crew Red and Ted, blasting a highway coast to coast. Drive the map from one city scene to the next, pile up and cash Blasts, and push toward Payday Multiball and the Super Payday wizard.

The loop

  1. Plunge clean into the Blast Hole for the Skill Shot and a free souvenir, then get a city scene running from the sinkhole or the scoop that kicks to your right flipper.
  2. Pump the Blast Value up in the jet bumpers, double or triple it on the Left Loop or a lit Bridge Out ramp, then cash it on the Blast Targets.
  3. Roll an inlane to cross-light the far ramp for Bridge Out, which walks your bonus multiplier up and keeps the Wheel lit.
  4. Pound the Bulldozer blade forward through the week to Friday, stack two locks, and fire Ted's open mouth to launch Payday Multiball.
  5. Bank enough miles to relight each city, reach the West Coast, and lock two balls to open Super Payday.

Reading the lights

  • Blast Targets (multiplier) — lit: The Blast Value grows with each jet bumper hit up to its cap, and the Blast Targets turn on for a collect once the sinkhole or the Magic Standup lights them. · flashing: That big flasher out front is your signal that Big Blast is on, turning a maxed value into a five-times payout. · then: Load the value in the bumpers, set your multiplier first -- the Left Loop lights the bank for double, a Bridge Out Right Ramp for triple -- and cash on a target. Send it to the sinkhole instead for a Super Blast that sweeps up anything else waiting there.
  • Bridge Out Ramps (multiplier) — lit: Rolling an inlane cross-lights the opposite ramp for a few seconds -- the left inlane arms the Right Ramp, the inside right inlane arms the Left Ramp -- with no grace once the light dies. · then: Hit the armed ramp to raise the bonus multiplier a rung at a time to 6X, after which it hands an extra ball and then a flat ten-million each. Every rung also relights the Wheel, though topping out while the Wheel already burns snuffs it instead.
  • The Wheel (status) — lit: Each bonus-multiplier rung relights the Wheel, a twelve-award ring below the Bulldozer showing one flashing choice at a time. · flashing: Pounding a bumper or ripping the spinner nudges the flashing choice around the ring, so you can drive it to the award you actually want. · then: Set the award, then take it at the sinkhole or Bob's. Nothing stacks, so every collect needs another multiplier rung to relight -- the menu spans Big Blast, Flying Rocks, Special and an extra ball, among others.
  • Flying Rocks (mode) — lit: Blast counts and Wheel picks arm the Left Ramp for Flying Rocks, sending the ball to a second plunger up the left, and it locks out everything else on the ramp while it burns. · then: Feed the plunger and take the exits from the bottom up, since a lit exit pays better than a dark one. Blow past all three and the ball smacks Ted for twenty-five million before dropping back out. · control: Plunger: the strength of your plunge decides the prize -- feather it and the ball simply rolls back for another attempt, while the three stacked wireform exits pay 5X Blast low, Radio Riot in the middle and an extra ball up top (once the Left Ramp has handed the ball to the second plunger)
  • Payday Multiball (mode) — lit: Every Bulldozer hit rolls the day forward and pushes the multiball jackpot higher, and hitting Friday lights the Lock. · then: Squeeze Overtime out of the blade first -- each hit past Friday climbs from a hair over a million toward three -- then stack two locks and feed Ted to begin. The jackpot bounces between the two heads from forty million up toward seventy-five.
  • Big Millions on Red (status) — lit: Each ball spat back out of the Lock arms a brief Big Millions shot on Red, whose mouth never gets blocked. · then: Take her off the upper left flipper for the steadiest big score in ordinary play -- a figure that carries all game from five million toward twenty-five -- and stacking hits on her quietly triggers a twenty-million Cheeseburger. Leave the flipper down instead and the Lock return will find the Magic Standup on its own.
  • Start City Scene (mode) — lit: The globe over the city-scene scoop lights when a mode is ready, and it is always one of the next couple of stops on the westward map. · flashing: Bump a jet or a standup in a city's colour to swap which of the pair is showing before you commit to it. · then: Start it at that scoop or the sinkhole, run the mode, then log another four hundred miles to relight the scoop for the following city -- the Left Loop banks the most at a hundred and fifty a trip. Reach any West Coast city to unlock Super Payday.
  • The Magic Standup (status) — lit: The Magic Standup sits backward under the tip of the upper left flipper, so the way to hit it is to hold still and let a ball coming out of the Lock roll onto it. · then: It gifts a free award in almost every mode -- flattening a cab in New York, padding the Atlanta hurry-up, spotting a Butte tunnel -- and outside of modes a hit simply lights the Blast Targets. · control: No button: keep off the upper left flipper so the ball drifting back down the Spinner Lane from the Lock settles onto the rear-facing target by itself (while a ball is on its way back from the Lock)

Lane change: not verified for this machine yet.

Start scoring

  • Ball one — Send the plunge straight down into the Blast Hole for the Skill Shot and a free souvenir, and keep an eye on the Skill Shot lane -- every ball back down it arms a cheap Shooter Bypass on the Left Ramp. Stack up Blast Value in the bumpers and take even small Blasts while you find the flow. — Skill Shot, Shooter Bypass, Build And Collect Blasts
  • Building — Climb the bonus multiplier with Bridge Out to keep the Wheel burning, run the city modes westward, and drive the Bulldozer to Friday for Payday Multiball. Every souvenir you buy at Bob's pays ten million at bonus for each matching city you have already driven through. — Bridge Out, Drive The Map, Payday Multiball, Buy Souvenirs
  • The big one — Super Payday tops the game: with a West Coast scene running, sink one ball in Bob's Bunker and a second in the Bunker, sinkhole or scoop to fire up every feature at once. It refunds the points you banked in each city you crossed on the way out west. — Super Payday, Drive The Map

Does Road Show have an action button?

No action button here, but the left flipper button is cleverer than it looks: press it partway and only the small lower-left flipper fires, press it all the way and all three flippers on that side go. There is also a second plunger up the left side, fed by the left ramp when Flying Rocks is lit, which you can feather softly to get the ball rolling back for another go.

Goals in Road Show

Every goal below is tracked step-by-step, with shot paths drawn on the playfield map, inside the app.

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