Silverball guide · Harley-Davidson
Cities are the game, and a weak shot still counts
Every jackpot after the first is multiplied, and jackpots come from spotting cities. The useful part is that a ball which dribbles up a lit orbit and rolls back down spots two of them.
The jackpot multiplies, so the first one is the cheap one
Spotting every city lights the jackpot. It has a floor of 5 million and the jet bumpers push it higher before you collect it. What makes it the scoring rather than a scoring feature is that each subsequent jackpot is multiplied: the second is a double, the third a triple, and so on.
So the game is a loop. Spot cities, collect a jackpot, spot them again for a jackpot worth twice as much. Everything else on this machine is worth doing in the gaps.
How cities are actually spotted
Two ways, and they stack. Completing B-I-K-E in the lanes spots a city and pays the 50K BIKE bonus, and the lane change works, so the ball chooses its own letter. Note the layout is inverted, with the inlanes where the outlanes usually sit.
The letters also arm the orbits: B and I light the right orbit, K or E lights the left. A shot up a lit orbit goes all the way round and pays a city plus 50K, exactly as spelling BIKE does, and it lights that same orbit for one million. An unlit orbit feeds the jets and lights itself instead, so a miss is still progress. Lit orbits and their millions time out in ten or fifteen seconds.
Here is the part worth knowing. A ball sent up a lit orbit that does not quite make it round and trickles back down usually spots two cities, one for each direction, where an unlit orbit spots one. A weak flipper is not the handicap it looks like on this machine. And a clean shot with both orbits lit spots two cities and lights both orbits for millions.
The letters, the drops and the standups
Three sets of targets, doing three different jobs. The U-S-A lanes advance the bonus multiplier to a maximum of 6x, which on factory settings never resets; clearing them at 6x lights an outlane extra ball, and every completion after that pays a USA bonus starting at 100K and climbing 100K each time without any limit the source could find. With busy bumpers that alone can reach a replay.
The two drop target banks spell H-A-R on the far left and L-E-Y in the centre. Completing HAR lights the left spinner at 3K a spin and LEY the right, and completing both scores and advances the HARLEY bonus through 50K, 100K, 200K, 300K and 500K.
The DAVIDSON standups are spread around the playfield. Completing them lights the speed bonus at the right eject, a hurry-up starting at a million and rising a million each time you collect it. Completing DAVIDSON twice on one ball lights the extra ball there.
Two ejects and a third you cannot aim at
The left eject starts the game lit for 25K and steps up through 25K, 50K, 100K and 150K, with the lock arriving at the top of that ladder. Once a ball is locked, the right eject lights for lock, and hitting it then starts multiball. In multiball, completing HARLEY and DAVIDSON together scores 5 million and lights the orbits for a million each for the rest of it. The jackpot is not part of multiball at all. After your first multiball the eject value resets to 10K with no lights.
The third eject sits below the IDSON standups and cannot be shot directly; balls only bounce in. It awards a random value, most often the speed bonus, a traffic ticket that costs you 10K, or the removal of a tilt warning. It will always award instant multiball if you have a ball locked. Locked balls can be stolen in this game.
Worth knowing even if you never reach multiball: cities keep spotting during it, but the Harley and speed bonuses cannot be collected there. And the right eject is unavoidable whatever you play for, because the jackpot, the speed bonus and an extra ball are all collected at it.
A note on this source
This guide is short because its source is. Our copy of the Harley-Davidson rule sheet runs to under a thousand words, is not attributed to anyone in the document, and is candid about what it does not know, including how the speed trap is relit. Those gaps are left as gaps here rather than filled with guesses.
It also describes the machine as a deliberately plain one, a ramp-free bar game on WPC hardware, which is worth knowing before you go looking for a wizard mode. There isn't one.
Where this came from
Silverball wrote this, but not from scratch: it was compiled against the published rules below and checked against them, rather than written up from one person’s games. None of the wording is theirs. Machines get code updates that move the right shot, so a guide has a date on it for a reason.
- Harley-Davidson rule sheet (author not recorded in our copy)
