Rally, sometimes known as Rally Play, was a French pinball manufacturing company founded in 1961. It introduced a series of fliptronic pinball machines from 1966 incorporating innovations such as display and sound technology not used by competing manufacturers. Production ceased by 1969.
History The company was founded in 1961 as Rally Play. Alben, a company which had been manufacturing pinball machine using Gottlieb parts and designs, and Victor Salmon who had sold Alben games in the 1950s agreed to found a new company. They partnered with an existing company in Nice, Radio Laboratoie Jaubert, who produced communication equipment for the French military and NATO and could manufacture components for pinball machines; with a pinball production line created in their factory.
The first game called Bowling Flipper was produced in 1961 using parts "borrowing heavily" from Gottlieb parts. The first 15 models produced all had low production numbers.
Fliptronic Starting in 1966 a series of "fliptronic" games was produced, with the first called Rally Girl; revealed to the trade on a river cruise in Paris.
The cabinets are designed with the backglass and playfield glass able to be lifted on hinges to aid servicing. The top of the sides of the cabinet remain horizontal, with the playfield at a downward angle. Unlike most manufacturers the legs are permanently attached, but can be folded for transportation. The 2.65" flippers are shorter than on typical pinball machines.
This series of games are the first to use star rollovers which were later used by other manufacturers, including Bally and Gottlieb in the 1970s. Some components, such as relays in the backbox continued to be copies of Gottlieb parts. Playfield lights are housed in color Lucite posts.
The display uses Nixie tubes, each of which shows a single digit, with a group of four used for each player. The sound board used a simple oscillator making sounds to signal one, ten, or hundred points. Until solid state pinball machines were produced, American manufacturers continued to use score reels to display the score, and chimes for sounds.
Rally was the first manufacturer to use DC current to control the bumpers; this made them both more responsive, and had more energy to propel the ball. These bumpers use a different design to conventional bumpers.
The impact of Rally Girl was to increase orders from tens to hundreds a month. By June 1967 Rally was using a new factory at Embrun entirely for production of Fliptronic machines, while also retaining production in Nice.
Distribution of Fliptronic games reached England, Germany, Italy, and Denmark. Play boy was one of the more successful Rally games in the United Kingdom.
Most of the Fliptronic games have a simple gameplay using a single ball, advancing bumper values and gathering bonus score, with no specific goals on each game. Some models included roll down lanes at the top of the playfield, jet bumpers, or a spinning disc.
Games +YearTitleCommentsCitation1961Bowling FlipperFirst production game1961Sunday on Ice1962Beach Games1962Karting1962Twist1963Happy Papeete1963Toro1964Hockey Girl1964The Three Musketeers1965Landing on Venus1965Curling1965Joly Captain1965Saloon1966Messalina1966Hairy Singers1966 (October 20)Rally GirlFirst Fliptronic game1967West Club1967Play boySecond generation of Fliptronics1968Comics1968Schussadd-a-ball version also produced for the Italian market1968Flower's ChildPrototype only
Closure and legacy Pinball Collectors Quarterly stated that Rally closed due to "the wariness of buyers to invest in machines labelled solid-state". Competition from larger American manufacturers, an inability to withstand heavy commercial use, and lack of standardization of some game parts were given as contributing factors.
After Rally ceased production, no French pinball machines were manufactured until Ben-Hur in 1977. References
External links
Rally games at the Internet Pinball Database