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- description
- A detour gate is a gate that takes the ball off the path it is running down and puts it on another one. Where a plain [[gameplay-feature:ball-return-gates]] only enforces the direction of travel, a detour gate changes the destination, and the change is usually one the player has earned.
Its commonest use is at the bottom of the playfield, where a gate in an [[gameplay-feature:outlanes]] catches a ball on its way out and hands it back to a flipper. *[[title:big-guns]]* (1987, [[manufacturer:williams]]) opens its right-hand one for the length of a jackpot mode, so that for those seconds the outlane returns the ball instead of losing it.[1]
The device does not have to be a rescue. On *[[title:dogies]]* (1968, [[manufacturer:bally]]) the gates are the game: five of them govern a canyon in the upper left, three deciding whether the ball crosses the rollovers and leaves or stays trapped inside, a fourth closing the entrance behind it, and a fifth — armed only if the player has hit the right bumpers first — the one that saves the ball from draining at the end of it all.[2][3] The fitting belongs to the [[technology-generation:electromechanical]] years and the solid-state machines that grew out of them, running from Bally and [[manufacturer:allied-leisure]] tables of the 1960s and 1970s to *[[title:mario-andretti]]* (1995, [[manufacturer:gottlieb]]).
3. Internet Pinball Database (IPDB) — Internet Pinball Database (IPDB) #696 it is essential to first hit either of the two mushroom bumpers at top of playfield before entering the Canyon in order to activate a fifth detour gate in the drop lane to rescue the ball from draining
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- gameplay_feature_parent
- Parent
- Ball Return Gates
- name
- Detour Gates
- slug
- detour-gates
- status
- active