I was looking around for an early 80‘s solid state machine to go along with my 2 system 11‘s and one wpc95 machine. At one point a Devil Riders was for sale on our forum, and being relatively new to the pinball scene i haven't even heard of Zaccaria before, let alone know Devil Riders.
I did a little research and pretty much blindly bought the machine. The person selling it was well known so i trusted him when he said the machine played very well and was in very good condition. Boy, was i in for a treat. I really like this pin, a lot!
First of all there's the exceptional build quality, you can easily tell this machine was produced in an era where quality was very important. A few examples. The playfield, it lacks mylar. But still, this cabinet has the nicest playfield in my collection. The colors are very vivid, and i don't what they used to protect it, but it has some sort of very thin coating (no clearcoat though) on it that makes it very resistant against wear. You can also see the build quality inside of the cabinet. The woofer is protected by a box, and so is the tranfo. Never seen that before. And the coilsleeves are made of some kind of metal (brass?) instead of plastic. Don't know if that is standard, but i assume so.
The only flaw i seemed to notice is on the flippers itself. They come in two pieces, a bottom piece and a top piece. So they are very easy to detach but the upper part of the flipper fails to stay clicked in after you reinstall them. Sure you can use a few drops of glue. But chances are that they will break the next time you need to unmount them. So for now i just use a little clear tape to hold the cap on the flipper.
The game itself. I was stunned by the deep rules for a game this age. At first sight there is not much to do. However, once you get to know the pin, there's tons of stuff to do! The main goal is getting the ramps down by hitting those targets underneath. That alone is a cool concept. Once on the upper playfield you can score extra points (20,000 points) , advance the red special (spelling d.e.v.i.l.r.i.d.e.r.s.) or hit the orange special when lit. You can lit the orange special by clearing 3 drop target banks in one play. Both the red special and orange special awards can be adjusted and vary from extra points to an extra ball or a free game.
Than there's the bonus multiplier. 5x, 10x and 20x. You can increase these by hitting the outer lanes. There are 3 switches in each lane that you need to hit to light the “advance multiplier†hit them again to advance. This is a good way for scoring big points. It's a relatively safe shot and the ball ends up in the popbumpers where it can lower droptargets without the need for actually hitting them.
Another cool extra feature is the react flipper. Each of the outlanes is equipped with a vertically positioned flipper. When the ball enters the lane it activates a switch giving you one shot at flipping (actually scooping is a better word here) the ball back into play. You can relight the react flippers by knocking down a drop target bank.
One more thing i would like to mention is the backglass. This pin has by far the nicest looking backglass i ever had in my modest collection. The neon in the backglass is near impossible to replace i think, but mine still works and it really makes the backglass and the plastic mouldings inside stand out.
All in all, a very nice addition to any collection really. Especially for those who are looking for an older pin to go with their wpc's.