Lights out — Williams’ 1980 Blackout is a space-fantasy four-player designed by Claude Fernandez with the Mitchells’ art, and it was a popular route machine, with a robust confirmed run of 7,050. Three spinning targets, two banks of drops, green standups, and lane change give this early Williams solid-state a fast, lively feel and a satisfying target-group scoring engine at its heart.
The strategy is a clean climb built on multipliers and spinners. The 1-2-3 rollovers give you two-times, three-times, and beyond, and crucially those multipliers carry over, so building them early pays dividends all game long — though the veterans note to keep them at four-times for balls one and two, since five-times apparently won’t carry. Completing the target groups — the red and yellow drops and the green standups — lights points at the saucer, and finishing all the colors lights Blackout itself, which doubles the saucer’s value but resets your target progress, a tempting risk-reward decision. The targets are dangerous but advance the spinners, and those spinners are excellent points, so the bold player accepts a little risk to keep them spinning. Lane change lets you line up the rollovers you need.
Blackout is a terrific example of early-’80s Williams design — fast, target-rich, and built around a satisfying loop of completing groups, lighting the saucer, and feeding those valuable spinners. The carryover multipliers reward a player who thinks across the whole game rather than just the ball in front of them. Build your multipliers, work the target groups, ride the spinners, and decide when to gamble on lighting Blackout. It’s a bright, energetic classic that plays as good as it looks under the arcade lights.