Firepower pinball tournament strategy: light the spinner and leave the multiball alone

Firepower is a Steve Ritchie design from 1980 with two flippers, four bumpers, a spinner and three saucers that lock balls for a three-ball multiball. All 413 of our tracked games on it were played at Blainbrook, where it joined the tournament lineup in November 2023.

The multiball is what people remember, and it is where new players go wrong. It has no jackpot and no scoring multiplier. A switch pays the same with three balls in play as it does with one. In a tournament the game is won with the spinner and the bonus.

The short version

1. Plunge, and use the right flipper button to move the lit lamps away from the lane the ball is about to enter.
2. Hit all six numbered targets in the middle of the playfield. That lights the spinner.
3. Get the ball to the right flipper and shoot the spinner, every time.
4. Finish the FIRE lanes whenever the ball comes over the top. Each completion raises the bonus multiplier.
5. Keep the kickback lit, and take a lock only when it is an easy shot.

The spinner

The spinner is in the upper left and is shot from the right flipper. It pays 100 a spin until you complete targets 1 through 6, and 1,000 a spin after that. A good rip is among the most valuable shots on the game, and it can be repeated.

It stays lit only for the ball you lit it on. So the six targets are a job for every ball, and the sooner it is done, the more spinner shots the ball will hold.

The six targets are two banks of three in the center, below the bumpers. They are standup targets and the ball comes back off them fast. Shoot each bank from the flipper on the opposite side, which keeps the rebound away from the outlanes. A hit on the edge of a target is often safer than one square on the face.

The spinner lane ends at the saucer in the upper right corner, which is the hardest of the three to reach any other way.

FIRE, POWER and the bonus

The four lanes at the top spell FIRE. Completing them raises the bonus multiplier one step, to a maximum of 5x. The right flipper button rotates the lit lamps, so steer an unlit lane under the ball.

The bonus itself goes up to 29,000, in steps of 1,000 from unlit FIRE lanes, flashing numbered targets, inlanes and outlanes. At 5x that is 145,000.

The three blue targets on the lower right spell POWER. Completing them pays 10,000 and raises the inlanes from 1,000 to 3,000.

With FIRE and POWER both lit, the game pays the Firepower bonus: 10,000 the first time, then 30,000, then 50,000.

One thing on the playfield is misleading. The lamps that show the 10, 30 and 50 thousand values sit below the bullseye target at the top center, and players shoot the target thinking it pays them. It always scores 1,000. Leave it alone.

What carries over and what does not

So progress toward FIRE and POWER is never wasted, and the things that pay the most have to be earned again each ball.

The Shield

The kickback is in the left outlane and the game calls it the Shield. It fires once and then has to be lit again. On factory settings, completing one bank of three numbered targets lights it. Operators can change that to all six targets, to the POWER targets, or to either.

The right outlane has no kickback.

Multiball

Completing the six targets lights the saucers. A ball in a flashing saucer is locked, for 10,000, and the third lock releases all three. Your locks are remembered from ball to ball.

That is all there is to it. Nothing pays more during multiball. Its only value is that three balls hit more switches than one, so FIRE, POWER and the bonus move along faster. The owner of one long-running Firepower site puts it this way in his play tips: ball time, bonus and the multiplier outscore chasing the multiball.

Take a lock when the ball is heading there anyway. Light the Shield before the third one.

Where the ball drains

• A soft or glancing shot at the left side, which is what a missed spinner shot usually becomes, angles the ball down the middle.
• Rebounds off the numbered targets.
• Balls that fall softly out from between the bumpers.
• The right outlane, which has no kickback.

On factory settings the third closure of the tilt bob ends the ball.

Ask about the settings

Firepower plays very differently depending on a handful of switches, and competition setups often move them. Before you play, find out:

• What lights the kickback, and whether it starts the ball lit.
• Whether completing the targets lights two saucers at once or one at a time.
• Whether extra balls are on. When they are, the extra ball is collected at the center POWER target.

What the tracked games say

Numbers are from late September 2026. The Firepower machine page has the live ones.

The upset rate is how often the lower-rated player in a pairing finishes ahead. Firepower's 41.0% is the second highest of the 25 machines in this series, behind only Nugent, and well above the average of 35.5%. Games are short, there is one kickback and no ball save, and a single ripped spinner can decide the result. If you are the underdog in your group, this is one of the best picks in the building. The full ranking is in upset rates by machine.

The records at the top bear that out. Trevor Klungseth has the best one among players with at least 20 games, and he finishes ahead of 61% of his opponents. Chris Frame and Phil Frazier are next. On a modern Stern the leaders are often above 75%. The Blainbrook arena report has the full list for every machine in the room.

Where to play it

• Blainbrook in Blaine. See the Blainbrook guide.
• Julie's Pinball in Farmington lists one on its floor.

Before your next game

The Firepower playbook has player tips and rulesheet links, and the scores tab shows the best games on record. For the full rules we leaned on the Pinball Primer guide, Bob's Guides and the Williams instruction booklet.

Steve Ritchie went on to design The Getaway and Game of Thrones. How to play classic games in a tournament covers what the older games share, and the whole series is in the machine strategy guides.