Grab your board and bomb the hill — Bally’s 1990 Radical! is a totally tubular skateboarding machine that captures the half-pipe energy of its era with four flippers, four pops, a tangle of three ramps, and a “snake” shot begging to be conquered. Dan Langlois conceived and designed it with John Youssi art, and with roughly 1,328 built it’s a comparatively scarce slab of early-’90s attitude. Operators could even set it from one to nine balls per play, a generous knob that made for some memorably long sessions on the route.
The winning line is all about flow and safety. The inlanes spot your RADICAL letters, and the vertical ramp is the unsung hero — shoot it over and over to feed the inlanes and rack up letters instead of risking the more dangerous drop targets. Spelling RADICAL relights your kickback, your lifeline against an outlane drain, and holding the upper-left flipper up while shooting the upper-left ramp makes that shot far more reliable. Push deeper and spelling RADICAL also lights skate-or-die locks on the upper ramps or the left snake shot; repeat it, stash two balls, and you’re into multiball, where the left ramp pays your jackpot. The skill shot is a tidy bit of precision, sending the ball left at the top of the X ramp diverter for a million and the “I” completion.
Radical! is bright, brash, and unmistakably of its moment — a machine that wears its skate-culture heart on its sleeve. It rewards the player who learns the safe feeds and works the letters patiently before going for glory. Ride the vert ramp, spell it out, and drop into multiball. Gnarly.