Love this post! My opinion is like you said, Bally have that solid feel. They made so many games in the series built roughly off the same board set and parts that I feel it is easier to acquire parts for them, and they are overall easier to troubleshoot. Once properly overhauled, they will run for decades again. The Bally games of this era are mostly simple rules and features, rich with pure pinball that is still challenging to master.

Bally made better games quality wise. Bally used the same basic board set for 6 years. In that time frame William had 7 versions. Replacement Bally boards are made by several different companies. Williams currently none except the power supply.

Needless to say I prefer Bally SS games although Williams made some great titles during that era.

Bally owned the era of the early SS machines. They are the CLEAR winner.

Paragon, eight ball deluxe, centaur, fathom, flash Gordon, Viking, and Medusa are all great...but there are a lot more that are definitely worth discovering as well.

Start with some 1981 Bally games (listed in post above) and throw in a Wms Firepower and you'll be off to the solid state game races!

There are replacement boards available for Williams games:

http://pinballpcb.com/

http://www.rottendog.us/?product=mpu327

I wouldn't agree that Bally had better quality. Both Williams and Bally were doing good things. I think Bally had better boot-up diagnostics with the LED flashes on the MPU, but Williams boards were better quality with large traces. Bally's MPU were susceptible to battery acid damage due to the soldered battery whereas it was easier to replace AA batteries on the MPU for Williams. I like the lamp matrix that Williams used rather than discrete SCRs that Bally used for each lamp. The 40 pin interconnect for Williams wasn't the best, but it isn't too hard to replace.

In reference to the OPs post, I like both manufacturers games from this era and have owned a bunch of them. I currently dig the Bally widebody games. Stern also put out some awesome games in this era and essentially have the same boardset as Bally.

I had a lot of SS games but only kept one game from each manufacturer - Black Hole, EBD, BK and Lightning - and they are all '80 or '81. But the dates had zero bearing on why I kept them, I just liked them the most. So I guess I am an early 80s guy too. I had a half dozen DMD games too but only kept Jackbot, it's a higher-tech version of the old 80s game Pinbot. I figured out I'm just not into a lot of ramps and below-playfield subways and tons of modes and 15 minute long games.

WMS and Bally both had their issues but I think Bally is the winner on the hardware in my opinion. There is a good reason Stern decided to bootleg Bally's hardware and not WMS or GTB. If you setup 100 Ballys 1979 games and 100 WMS 1979 games and did zero backbox maintenance, I'd wager more Bally games are alive after so many years than WMS.

Bally games do everything with two PIAs, WMS needed four, and on top of that Bally games can have more complex rules. How Bally multiplexes the U10 PIA is genius, it does switches, lamps, and displays bouncing between different PIA modes. Far less chip count. Far less connector count. WMS just has more things to go wrong. Plus the way they manufactured the WMS circuit boards in the late 70s and early 80s is trash. They shaved the solder side of hte board almost flat to the back of the board. This was a terrible idea as it leads to more cracked solder joints and dead games not taking quarters. Then once the game dies the Bally hardware is a lot easier to repair.

Bally released an entire guide on how to fix their hardware that reads so easy a board repair novice can use it.
https://arcarc.xmission.com/Pinball/PDF%20Pinball%20Misc/Pin%20Repair.pdf

WMS says, "ugh send it back to the distributor for repair".

Don't forget about Stern games too. They run on the awesome Bally hardware and a lot of the games are quite good.

David Nutting deserves more respect like the PF designers get.
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I find this falls under the "depends" category and your tastes. I'm 75% a Bally guy in this area but a few William's titles have made the cut.

Love Centaur, Flash Gordon and Xenon, have no interest in Medusa or Fathom.

Love Blackout and Sorcerer, Firepower and Grand Lizard not so much.

I think this is because Bally invested in, and managed to hire, programmers that knew what they were doing. AFAIK williams' first programmer (system 3) was an electronic organ programmer, and quit when he got a job back in that industry. Until Williams hired Eugene Jarvis and Larry Demar, they didn't have a clear vision/person able to drive the development to what it became. Eugene Jarvis because he made stuff 'cool', and Larry Demar because he made stuff structured.

Bally's software sophistication was dominant until Stern mpu200's pigs interpreter, which blows away Bally's straight 6800 assembly in terms of what you can do with the game without writing a bunch of stuff to compensate. The Centaur/Flash Gordon era bally tried to graft things in to do lamp effects, etc. but it wasn't as easy to program as pigs.

As soon as Williams went system 7 with Larry Demar's version of a virtual machine, forget about the sophistication of the other systems. Far superior in every way (software wise). Much more flexible and designed with extensibility in mind. Of course, required way more resources than the earlier stuff.... the framework Larry set up though carries through to the end of williams pinball wpc95, there are elements of system 7 in every system since then (although they abandoned the interpreter at the end of system 11). The multitasking switching is the same system though. (extended in wpc). (all this not counting the 2 pinball 2000 released games, no idea what they did in terms of any of this...)

I lean more towards Bally, especially that '79-'81 window. Lots of great games in that span, but a Williams game that stood out for me is Barracora. Great game from that era. I also enjoy Blackout and Sorcerer for their fun layouts/spinners. Nine Ball and Meteor are two of my favorite Sterns.

Currently have 3 classic Ballys in my line up as they get the most play but there are plenty of great choices out there.

get what you like, and you can get. lots of great choices from all manufactures of the era. my top 4 currently in my collection are Fathom, Alien Star, Stars and Star Light. I lean toward older and would love to get a globetrotters and have a project seawitch to build, in addition to all my gottlieb system1 machines which I love as well.

Nothing wrong with that. It looks like I’m about eight years older than you (I turned 19 in ‘81) and I like being “stuck” in late EMs. Just do you. From the looks of this thread, you’ve got a lot of company in early SS.

Classic Stern is the ultimate winner to me. Their best games are far better than the best Bally's from the era.

Stern also took more chances than Bally did - some worked, some didn't. I find Bally's SS to be very repetitive. I used to collect them, but once I was on the Classic Stern path, the Bally's soon left. I have a few left, but games like Medusa bore me to death. Great art, but gameplay lacks.

Born in 86, but looking back at these (and having owned a few).

Williams had the best designer (Steve Ritchie)

Bally had the best artist (Paul Faris)

Best games of the era (78-81) by my pick would be:

1. Williams Black Knight
2. Bally Eight Ball Deluxe
3. Williams Firepower
4. Bally Paragon

Like the OP, I am also not into crazy deep rule sets and packed playfields. I was hoping to like the newer games but just not as into them. I played Godzilla at GSPF and it did nothing for me. The newest games I think I enjoyed the most were Dialed in and Tron. The newest game I own is BK2K. Love the music and wanted a multiball pin. I never played BK2K in the wild but fell in love with it at CAX. I now own the one that was at CAX year after year. Bought from my pinball repair guy who did a ton of work to it as he never planned on selling it. I've only ever had the glass off of it for a stuck ball.

Have you played Beatles? That's a great new/old school game.

Bally > Williams in that era, IMO.

Better art by far, better layouts in general.

Also, Bally uses the fatter flippers which is more like an EM vs Williams more narrow flippers which are closer to modern. Different playing experience.

The art on the Bally's makes them my favorite '80's era games

Breakshot is a DMD game with an EM/early SS feel. It's basically the cheapest DMD you can buy, but it's an absolute sleeper.

I prefer Bally personally, Bally had a TON of hits, almost every Bally SS game from the beginning of their solid state run to 1983 is a good game, if not an amazing one. There are some Williams games I like (Gorgar, Blackout, Solar Fire), but the list of Ballys I like goes on and on (Mata Hari, Eight Ball, Strikes and Spares, Playboy, KISS, Paragon, Harlem Globtrotters, Dolly Parton, Silverball Mania, Viking, Skateball, Flash Gorgon, Fireball II, Centaur, Elektra, and probably others Im forgetting). I also enjoy working on Ballys a lot more than Williams from that era.

I miss having some of my 80'ish Ballys. Some more than others. I agree, Medusa is a looker, but the gameplay just didn't hold my attention.

I had a lovely Fathom that I don't list in my collection because it wasn't actually mine, just on kind loan from snaroff and I enjoyed that game a lot. Never had a Centaur because I couldn't stomach the prices but I would have liked to.

I think the two I miss most though are Mystic and Flash Gordon.

Medusa was here and moved along, great art but the gameplay and sound were not to my taste.

I didn't touch on any Stern as the OP did not mention them. Have a fondness and own a few Stern titles but Bally is largely superior in my book.

How about game mechanics? Gottlieb then was still the 'Cadillac' with heavy-duty drop target units and precise but over-engineered flipper units that used the two nylon bushings and crank... but Bally and Williams flippers still performed better and more reliably. On the other end was Stern, they always seemed to do the minimum to get the job done. A simple curved wire flipper return rail vs. a fancy shaped steel plate like Williams. The drop targets units are pretty reliable and easy to replace a target, but clunky, floppy. A carryover from when they were Chicago Coin, their EMs were clunkier than everybody else's. Williams should have dumped the EM-style horseshoe contact drop target boards when they first went to SS.

Stern and Bally drop target mechs are virtually identical, I have Bally mechs in my Seawitch with Stern drop targets.

No, and that's a good point. To be fair I haven't played a lot of the newer games. Wanted to play Beatles at CAX right after it came out but didn't wait in line to do it.

I guess you're right... but they both brick too much when they're really whacked hard. So I'd still rank Gtb's and Williams on the high end as far as mechanical operation.

TNA. Same. Doubly so if you are a pinball masochist.

I fell for the art and romance of the Bally games..had minty Fathom, Centaur, Space Invaders, Xenon, Embryon etc.
But game play I really don't like them.
Only had Stern Meteor and Orbitor 1. Meteor was the most fun. Other friends have and love the Sterns.

But, have had Firepower, Starlight, Stellar wars and lots of Sys 11s ...something about the themes and game play always bring me back to Williams, particularly System 6 to 11.
And love the sounds....Deadpool weirds me out everytime I play it!

Done full circles on alot of titles but won't ever own old Ballys again unless I own an art gallery.

Parts wise you are pretty safe with any of them these days.

A lot of the bricking is due to the replacement drops and the plastic used, it's far to flexible.

There is 3d printed ones from Swinks? That don't brick.

Gottlieb drops are pretty much the gold standard, William's are not bad till you have to deal with the horseshoe contact setup failing.

Fixes for that too.

Bally's always bricked even when new.
Williams actually can as well if someone bends the copper spring back too much.

you hit it good but it does not drop

Bricking is hitting the target hard enough that it relatches onto the ledge, so it fails to drop.

There are brand new horseshoe contact boards available, as well as ones you can replace them with where you cement a magnet to the target and the board has a simple reed switch on it, so you ditch the horseshoe blades and the board contacts altogether.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/system3-6-drop-target-replacement-bords-nmp-sensors-vids-review

STERN

I thought at first those Swinks ones had eliminated the bricking on my center Stern Lightning bank, but nope, found that they still brick but not as often. It's just a real bitch of a case. Factory flipper coils that needed to be strong enough for the ramps and a totally horizontal bank closer than they should be to the flippers. Still experimenting with things though, maybe I'll lick it before I die. All of the usual things recommended didn't cut it.

You have to get games like Meteor, stars, and Big Game if you like fast games with drops and spinners. They crush anything Williams and Bally has to offer.

I do like Meteor if you want a fast game where the ball is always coming at you.

That’s the weakest of the three I mentioned too.

Cheetah is awesome too. Very fast, and tons of drops and spinners. Good luck finding one though.

Quicksilver, Dragonfist, NineBall, Stargazer,...and a few others. They are the best of the best.

Yeah. Start with sterns, then try the other stuff.

Seawitch.

You would be hard pressed to get those four games for any reasonable money, Seawitch is still somewhat reasonable.

I find that SS projects from all 4 companies will break for a while but once you work through this and get them reliable they all will stay that way for a while

A few things I didn’t see so will mention though I love games from all 4

Bally and Stern have the same electronics basically so if you learn one you know the
other. This gets a huge vote from me

Bally Stern had 50 volt flippers always while Williams was 28V through early system 7. I think the early Williams flip weak because of this but later System 7 flip fine

Bally CPU board traces are made of shit and are easy to damage. Williams are much better made. I find the Bally/Stern easier to troubleshoot than Williams only once you get the first flash. Before that they are the
same. Both have crap sockets

I don’t enjoy Gottlieb projects at all but would pick up one from the other 3 all day

Past performance is not indicative of future results

Flash Gordon, Paragon, Stars, Eightball Deluxe, Warlok (good luck), Quicksilver, Big Game, Catacomb, Firepower. Any or all of these!

Can you bend the shelf like I did with the bally mystic center bank? I had a devil of a time with Lightning's center bank when I had it as well and I tried some pretty radical things with that one and Free fall's. Have not had the occasion yet to do it on any other sterns, they all seem to work fine at this point, but I only use vintage drops. If I need new ones I'd go swinks but I have a large stock of vintage drops to choose from. Maybe tweaking the angle just SLIGHTLY will help. I used to shoot to the 'side' of the lightning drops to try and get them down, but clearly that's not intended. I know I show bally drop in the pic, but bending the equivalent part on the stern bank is worth trying.

Blackout and Skateball are on par with those titles. Had a nice Skateball and miss it sometimes. That game had great action.

I am like you, I like games from when I was a teenager, (late 70's, early 80's), Bally, Stern, Williams, maybe a Gottlieb, and don't forget Zaccaria

The best about these games, most problems are fixable, once you have fixed them properly, they will stay fixed
And there is a wealth of knowledge out there on how to fix
The only downside is, they are expensive

But you are doing the right thing, you have a list of games you are interested in, just sit back and wait for something to come up in your area and be ready to drive and inspect and buy
I would suggest not buying a 'project' to fix for your first game, get a game that is working

Depending on title and condition, anywhere from $1000-4000 for original, unrestored. Pinside recently sold listings are your friend

1000% go with Alltek MPU, the original lamp driver board and solenoid driver board are easy to work on