Description: Sea Raider, Midway #543, 7/69, electronic sound, a submarine game with the player looking through a periscope to shoot ships. Inspired by 1968 Sega Periscope, 1968 Crown Periscope, 1970 Midway Sea Devil, and 1976 Midway Sea Wolf. Midway Sea Raider is a more advanced version of the 1946 Bally Undersea Raider game (which is far more primitive, where the player just times the shot and really can not aim.) Though the Sega Periscope was the first of these aimable periscope games, it did not use mirrors for illusion of depth. Where Midway/Crown did use mirrors, so the cabinet size was significantly smaller than the Sega version. Midway Sea Raider is 24" wide, 23" deep, 71" high (smaller than Sea Devil).

If you have a Midway Sea Raider for sale please contact me at cfh@provide.net

Inside the Midway Sea Raider is lit up with a single blacklight tube. As the game starts a boat start cruising by across the back of the scenery, and the front glass lights up "torpedoes ready to fire". Look through the periscope and aim in front of the ship, then press the fire button on the right handle. The motorized torpedo trajectory arm moves to the position aimed, locks in place, and a score motor does a 360 degree rotation. The score motor's rotations lights the path of the moving torpedo. An electronic "whoosh" sound (aka static) is made as the torpedo heads towards the boat. There are a series of twenty torpedo shaped lights (12v #1895 bulbs) on the aimable motorized torpedo arm that make the torpedo look like it's moving towards the ship (light animation). If the aim is accurate and the boat is hit, the scenery flashes a 120 volt red light from each side and an explosion is heard.

There is an electronic sound board that makes the sonor "beep" and the torpedo "woosh" sounds, and an amplifer circuit for these sounds. The explosion sound however is a mechanical sounds. It's made by pulling in a relay attached to a long loose spring, with a magnet (to make the sound more robust) near a transducer. The spring vibrates and is read thru this phonograph needle/transducer device, like an old guitar reverb unit. A 500 mfd cap is added to the explosion relay to hold the relay in for about 2 seconds giving a longer explosion sound (if the explosion sound is too short, this cap is probably dead). This mechanical set up gives a nice explosion. Schematics of the sonar/amplifier/woosh sound board are here. The power supply for the sonar/woosh sound boards is unregulated 18 volt DC and comes from 12 volt AC to a single diode and capacitor. Adding capacitance can reduced sound hum, but will not eliminate it. It's just 1/2 wave DC regulation (not full wave like a bridge rectifier would provide), so there will always be a bit of hum.

The machine tracks how many torpedoes have been fired and how much tonnage has been sunk. The goal is to sink as many boats as you can using your torpedoes. The game gives the player 6 or 8 or 10 torpedoes per play (operator selectable), with bonus torpedoes awarded for a perfect score. The boats also changes direction at any time for more challenge. There are two windows in the front top glass that allow other people to watch the action as you play through the parascope. Scoring is done with light box scoring (no score reels).

The player aims the torpedo through the periscope (player has to use the periscope for best accuracy.) The two upper windows are for viewing by non-players. Once the periscope is aimed, the player presses a trigger button. This pulls in a small relay coil that pulls in a torpedo position switch assembly on the selector unit. This in turns moves the motorized torpedo aiming mech arm to the desired position, and a motorized torpedo is fired (with twenty light bulbs showing torpedo progress moving towards the ship.) If both aim *and* timing is correct, a hit is registered. A hit gets the player a "boom" sound and two 120v red light bulb flashes, and the hit stepper unit advances the player's score. After a torpedo is fired, the two coils on the selector unit resets all the torpedo positon switch assemblies, and the game is ready for another torpedo shot.

Sea Devil, which came out about ten months later, is basically the same game but more refined. On Sea Devil the ship types are varied, where Sea Raider uses two WW2 style gun boats. Also the cabinet on Sea Devil is more refined (and wider so the playing field is wider), but Sea Devil is essentially the same game.

Sea Raider interior background cardboard scenery (available for download thanks to T.Iskander)

If you have a Midway Sea Raider game for sale please contact me at cfh@provide.net