Williams’ Firepower is one of the most important machines in pinball history, full stop. Released in 1980 and designed by the great Steve Ritchie — the man fans would come to call the Master of Flow — it was the first solid-state pinball to feature multiball, and it introduced the now-ubiquitous Lane Change feature that lets players shift lit lanes with the flipper buttons. Wrapped in a futuristic sci-fi war theme and equipped with crisp speech, it set a template the entire industry would follow.
The ruleset is a clinic in elegant, interlocking goals. The heart of it is the two banks of center standup targets, numbered 1-2-3 and 4-5-6: complete one bank to light the left-outlane kickback, complete both to light the spinner, the pop bumpers, and your multiball locks. Do it all a second time and the third lock lights for a full three-ball multiball. Meanwhile, the FIRE rollovers build your bonus and bonus multiplier up to 5X, and lighting both the FIRE and Power features advances the all-important firepower bonus. Once the spinner and ball save are lit, the pros simply rip the spinner and spell FIRE all day.
Fast, deep, and endlessly influential, Firepower remains a tournament-friendly favorite and a cornerstone of any serious collection. It’s the machine that proved solid-state pinball could deliver the chaos and excitement of multiple balls at once — and decades later, it still plays like the genre-defining classic it is.