I played that one. It was pretty neat. Took a little bit to get used to the flippers, but not as much as I expected.

I would imagine they could throw the ball pretty quickly!

How would you add rubbers to flippers like that? wouldn't the rubber stretch tight making the flipper pretty much straight?

Personally I'd love to play it, so next time I'm in France...

They suck, dumb idea IMO...

I think they had them on Time Warp & Disco Fever.

The rubber for a banana flipper is a molded sheath, not a rubber ring.

Rubber is available here, and maybe elsewhere, I only looked quickly.

http://www.actionpinball.com/rings.htm

I can't see this at work, it's blocked.

http://www.zaccaria-pinball.com/misc/banana.txt

Curved Flippers

Here's what I *remember*, and that means there will be certain
approximations in this note about Curved Flippers--and that's what we
called them. "Banana" was a term some outsiders applied, and it
certainly fits. We're talking 23 years ago. Why...it seems just
like yesterday......

Some facts need to be sorted. First, Tony Kraemer, (NOT Barry) was
the "Dad" of curved flippers, and they may actually have been
conceived by Mike Stroll, the Prez. My brother Mark recalls that a
mechanical engineer, Johnny Jung, may have actually drawn and spec'd
the first set. I don't remember much because I was preoccupied with
Stellar Wars and maybe Firepower.

Mike certainly was eager to see them work. Disco Fever was actually
the first playable game with curved flippers. Tony had them made in
the model shop out of Nylon, a nearly frictionless material that went
"click" whenever the ball hit them, or they struck a ball. Stroll
played the Disco Fever with curved flippers more than anyone else. I
don't remember Roger's reaction, but Roger can always find something
to like in every game. He has his favorites, but he always looks for
the most fun feature and plays it as though it might be the last time
he ever gets to play pinball. He is usually able to overlook the bad
things and enjoy the good things. I don't think Roger ended up
liking curved flippers, but you'll have to ask him.

The flippers were shaped like a Jai alai cesta, (that's the curved
wicker basket that players wear, about 2 feet long and curved with a
built-in glove on the end to put your hand into), the ball in the
pinball machine did exactly what cestas do--- accelerate the ball at a
fierce rate and shoot the ball out on a very straight course into the
wall (or targets, on a pinball playfield). "Straight" means that the
Jai alai ball (called a pelota) stays about the same height from the
ground on its trajectory to the court (cancha) wall 176 feet away.
Why? The pelota is slightly smaller than a baseball, very hard, and
is caused to spin with great speed and momentum. Gyroscopic forces
keep trajectory steady. The ball WHIPS out, and people have been
very badly injured, even killed, by the 150 MPH(!!!) ball. But we're
talking pinball here. The engineers made this silly looking thin
rubber "glove" to fit over the hard plastic flipper. The gloves
fell off often and "clogged the drain" rendering the game unplayable.
I think we may have offered glove adhesive to operators, but I'm not
sure.

Since the curved flippers were fixed horizontally, the physics are
applied at 90 degrees to Jai alai, which meant that the targets in
the center 6-8" were battered, and it was very difficult to hit
outside loop shots, or anything else along the outer perimeter of the
playfield. They did nothing to enhance the game, in my opinion. In
fact, most of us simply stated "SUX" to ourselves, and waited to see
what happened next. Stroll was not easily convinced that they
weren't fun. Tony was confused and some Disco Fevers were shipped
with them.

Then Tony (NOT Barry) designed Time Warp and a lot of them were
shipped with curved flippers. Time Warp (and Disco Fever) made more
money with straight flippers than with curved ones, that much I can
ascertain through my stack of old Mother's reports compiled by Bill
Herman. There are notes that state with/without curved flippers.

I remember that we also made retrofit kits so that the operators could
use normal flippers on their games with mini-posts, as Duncan states.
I seem to remember that both Disco Fever and Time Warp were produced
in our factory with and without curved flippers. There is definitely
no "correct" version of either game. Both games were made, played and
sold with and without curved flippers.

Some Interesting Notes:

Tony Kraemer was nicknamed "Colonel Nutzy" after his wristwatch had
stopped working intermittently for the last time. He screamed some
profanity and threw the watch as hard as he could at a plaster wall
in engineering. The watch flew apart in a hundred pieces and we all
laughed so hard, Tony included. He WAS nuts. He could create
pinball designs faster than anyone else at Williams. Tony was a great
guy who made the best of life through a tough childhood and a love
for Steve Kordek who mentored him as a game designer and treated him
like a son. I miss Tony and think of him often. He was hit by a car
in front of Oinkers, a bar where we hung out in 92-93??.

Free lunch and as many soft drinks/day as you could drink were
available in the cafeteria for engineers and managers when I first
arrived at Williams. Two very nice ladies cooked for us and the meals
were very good very often. It was a smart move, because we would only
stop working long enough to eat and play a few games of pinball.
Before my time, there was an open bar in the cafeteria with alcohol
and a barber shop right in the factory at 3401 N. California Ave. I
wonder how much work got done when the bar existed?

It was fun to eat with everyone in the same room, and Mike Stroll
would work the room like a proud host at a dinner party or a standup
comedian. It made us all feel wanted and powerful. Everyone who
reads this knows that in that era, we WERE powerful. We kicked ass
and took names because we were a TEAM held together by bonds bigger
than our own projects. It was a heady time, and Mike Stroll was the
charismatic leader that steered us carefully and respectfully.
Several teams were making hit games simultaneously, and we ruled the
pinball world until it died, under many leaders. The main group of
contributors stayed and worked together (even from different
departments) for many years.

Mike Stroll may have pressed for curved flippers, but I doubt it; it
was not like him to force a feature, especially if it was
controversial. He gave us max freedom to do what we thought would
get the most play. Mike could actually play pretty well and was
deeply involved in the engineering aspect at Williams back in the
day.

I adopted a philosophy about flipper placement after first observing
pinball play in the early 70's at Atari. Games that had odd flipper
placements GENERALLY did not make as much money as games that had more
normal arrangements. There are Great Exceptions, including Capt.
Fantastic, but even there, the basic 2 lowest flippers are in a very
normal position.

"Standard" placement gives the player comfort in that recognizable and
predictable play can be had on a given playfield, and flipper
placement always has a huge impact on drain schedules and feeds to the
flippers. Designers can never leave well enough alone, and when they
don't, they end up with something like ST:TNG which I will always wish
was not so brutal with side drains. Oh well.

In reference to "Dad" above, all games have a Dad. The Game Dad is
the guy with the vision of a given game, and is not always the
designer. The Game Dad can be an artist, a programmer, a mechanical
engineer, or a game designer. Games with no Dad (and they happened)
were doomed to failure. Someone must always carry the torch for every
game as it's developed. The Game Dad reference was probably first
coined by George Gomez. It seems real chauvinist. But I only knew
one Game Mom. Pinball Mary at Atari. Her game wasn't fun and it
died. I think it was because there was no Game Dad!

This is all the time I have at the moment. It's interesting to note
that thoughts about Curved Flippers brought about the memories of so
much more, just like it was yesterday.....

Regards,

Steve Ritchie

Long story short, they are a novelty, and if I owned it, I'd convert them back to standard flippers

short story long, anything from charles dickens.

So it looks like the flippers aren't that great, but the story is excellent! I love reading about stuff like this.

Ya me too, I've read it before, but it's worth a read again

How is the gameplay with the curved flippers?

Totally awsome thread. Loved the story. I knew about curved flippers through my research into pins and replacement parts. Now I know more about them.

I own that machine, it was my favorite when I was a kid. I always liked the curved flippers which I think is why I played it. I could also score free games and that's important when you're broke. The most interesting thing for me was the ability to use the right flipper to launch the ball up the right channel to get the Bulls Eye scores. I guess some of you guys can do that with straight flippers. lb45 if you need any pictures of the pin, inside or out, let me know.

The gameplay for Disco Fever and Time Warp is specifically designed for the banana flippers. The flippers aren't that great, but the games are worse with normal flippers. The novelty makes both of those games (plus the cool artwork on Time Warp).