First of all, sorry that it took me so long to write my next article. I didn´t have much time lately... But now I had some sparetime and here is the next one: West Club.
West Club was made after Rally Girl, which makes it the second Fliptronic.
This time, it is not a sports theme but rather city night life (Sex & Crime in the West Club). The style is very similair to Rally girl, with drawings of people on colored background.
The street is very stylish and 3D, but everything else, cars, people, traffic lights etc. is 2D.
This time, the backglass and the playfield are much more a unity than on Rally Girl. The playfield shows also the street and actually the whole playfield is one big picture instead of a “collage” like with Rally Girl. Also, the colors are exactly the same.
The lighting is simply exceptional again. When you turn the lights off, you have all the colored lights everywher due to the lit posts with the small lamps inside.
Now to the gameplay: The upper part consits of a skill shot lane, which is quite difficult to hit. The amount of given points varies between 100 and 400.
The constellation of Rallys special bumpers and slingshots is very thought-through and provides an ultra-fast gameplay again, which no american pinball of this time offers. When you hit the skillshot, the yellow bumper scores 100 points (when lit).
The main goal of West Club is to hit the 6 targets in the right order, from 1 to 6. The targets show the Sex and Crime in the West Club
Even murder seems to be part of it like the bloody knife above shows. But luckily, the Police is not far away
Hopefully they don´t see the gambling everywhere.
Of course, in a night club, girls aren´t missing. The Club girls are everywhere on the backglass and playfield, like with Rally Girl. Very stylish is the girl, which is nearly a big as the whole playfield!!!
Maybe her name is Cora, like mentioned on the backlglass?
And good looking guys are everywhere too, some of them very dressed up, like the pinball-soccer playing one below.
The lower playfield shows the street with a yellow cab. Here, the main traffic light is placed, which makes the bonus-ladder. It is very interesting that the traffic light in West-Club-City go from down to up and from red to pink!
Here, the goal is again to hit the targets or the side lanes, which give up to 500 points depending on your progress with the traffic light!
Once you have hit all targets, you advance the traffic light in the middle with the red target. Here, you can get a special too once the traffic light is complete up to pink.
Traffic light: Playfield (up) and backglass (below)
And again, in dark rooms the light is exceptional.
Technically, West Club and Rally Girl are very similair. They both still use the conventional relais, and not the small phone-relais like Playboy, Comics & Schuss.
There ist a bit more electronic soldered to the relais though, some constructions look a bit experimental (but original!)
Of course the electronic sound board is there again.
The cabinet painting is exactly the same compared to Rally Girl, even the colors.
Next to each other you see the brotherhood very well
West Club is together with Schuss my personal favorit Fliptronic. It offers a varied gameplay, which is very fair and needs skill rather than luck. You need to aim well to hit all the targets. The modern flat flipper arms show much power and allow a better control than the small flipper arms of american pinballs of that time.
Especially great is the design with the sky-scrapers, streets and people. The whole pinball has one continuous story to tell, every detail is a part of it.
West Club is followed by Playboy, of which Fred already gave a great report. So I might skip this one and will write an article about Comics soon. Many people think Comics has the same gameplay as Playboy, but this is not right. It is more like an “advanced edition” with some really nice add-ons.
So I hope you liked the West Club and will see one in reality in the near future. Rally pinball has a total different game-feeling than anything else...
Best regards,
Ekkehart
