io9
Long before the current obsession with console processing power and how many billions of polygons can be display onscreen at the same time, the only way to get your game on was via pinball machines. There have been tons of scifi pinball machines, with some amazingly garish artwork. Besides all of the Star Trek, Star Wars, and other licensed games, take a look at some of the forgotten scifi pinball machines of yesteryear. We'd give our eyeteeth for one of those The Machine: Bride of Pin-Bot games.
- Rocket Ship (Gottlieb, 1958): One of the first true science fiction themed pinball machines was this beauty where you had to spell out R-O-C-K-E-T-S-H-I-P during gameplay and blast off into outer space.
- Egg Head (Gottlieb, 1961): A wacky mad scientist and his robotic pal use their wiles to play tic-tac-toe with a bevy of buxom beauties. The actual playfield had a tic-tac-toe setup made up of bumpers, and you had to try and light them up in a row based on the random bouncings of your ball.
- Pinball Pool (Gottlieb, 1978): Dark-haired pool sharks with ample bosoms spar against a gleaming chrome robot. Just check out the closeup of the lower half of the playfield that shows them glaring at each other.
- Apollo, Blast Off, and Lunar Shot (Williams, 1967): Hoping to cash in on the race for the moon, Williams released not one but three pinball machines, all with identical artwork and slightly modified playfields, that played on America's race for the moon.
- Star-Jet (Bally, 1963): Bally's outer space fantasy game was one of the first to feature extra balls in play, which was called the "Blast Off Extra Balls" feature. The term multiball hadn't come into play yet. Pretty amazing back art showed a group of attractive young men and women heading for space.
- Time Tunnel (Bally, 1971): Time Tunnel was a simple pinball game featuring mod-style artwork of teenagers who were probably supposed to be traveling through time. However, CBS sued Bally over the copyright to the name due to their Time Tunnel television show and Bally stopped producing this game.
- Space Mission (Williams, 1976): Inspired by the space exploration of 1970s-era NASA, Space Mission featured artwork that looked like Spacelab above a playfield filled with outer-space docking targets. They also released a two-player version that was virtually identical called Space Odyssey.
- Tri Zone (Williams, 1979): Tri Zone looked a bit like Logan's Run meets THX-1138, with vapid people standing around in some sort of a utopian future where they're forced to compete in the Tri Zone competition. Don't ask me to explain it.
- Alien Poker (Williams, 1980): Yes, you've seen dogs playing poker on countless oil paintings, now it's aliens playing poker. You know, when interstellar travel and exploration get boring, it's time to bust out a deck and play a little five card stud. Check out the playfield, where it looks like ROM the Space Knight also plays poker.
- Fireball (Bally, 1971): A giant space vampire hurling fireballs at you? Sign us up. The actual game was about releasing Odin and Wotan (the German version of Odin), and having them square off against each other, but we're holding onto our fantasy of a space vampire who wants to kick some ass. He even came back for vengeance in Fireball II in 1980.
- Laser Ball (Williams, 1979): This game featured a buxom redhead (who looks a lot like Jean Grey) firing... er, laser balls at you. She sure was hell-bent on keeping you beat down for some reason.
- Vector (Bally, 1982): This was a science fiction sports fantasy game, where it looked like players were combining jai alai with some sort of bizarre Discs of Tron hockey mashup. Still, they got to don cool Mighty Morphin Power Rangers-esque costumes and hurl things around, sounds like fun.
- Embryon (Bally, 1981): This game featured some of the most graphic pinball art we've ever seen, featuring a half-naked bald alien woman writhing around in some sort of a birth-chamber-sac. There's a human figure who looks a lot like Adam Strange watching over everything... did he somehow impregnate her? Maybe that was the goal of the game.
- World Defender (Nuova Bell Games, 1985): Boy, does the guy on the backart for this game look familiar or what? Plus, we can't recall a time when the Terminator went toe-to-toe with fighter jets. Holy ripoff, Batman.
- Pin-Bot (Williams, 1986): The first in a series of three robot pinball-themed games from Williams featured a Pinball robot in outer space, forcing you to do his interstellar bidding and attempting to score points.
- Strange Science (Bally, 1986): A truly bizarre pinball game that featured a mad scientist trying to swap a monkey's brain with that of a hot girl's. You had to facilitate the transfer by lighting up bonuses and making things happen. Much like Igor.
- The Machine: Bride of Pinbot (Williams, 1991): Probably one of the coolest and most bizarre pinball machines was this early 90s model Pin-Bot sequel from Williams, which featured a robotic woman with light-up nipples, and an extreme bonus field right where her vagina would be. Overt sexuality in games? Shocking.
- Jack-Bot (Williams, 1995): Jack-Bot was the third in a series of games featuring "bots" in pinball, and of course used the Pin-Bot babe yet again. The game features a jackpot robot (the Jack-Bot), and a jackpot-style playfield.
If you're heading to Vegas anytime soon, check out the Pinball Hall of Fame, where you'll be able to actually see and play some of these games. Also, for a real trip down the halls of nostalgia, take a spin through the Internet Pinball Machine Database, without whom this triviagasm would have been nigh impossible to complete.
Comments
The `90s "Twilight Zone" pin was a lot of fun. I beat it, so it is now my bitch...
No love for "Mars Attacks?" Aww man. It was my first video/pinball machine.
What, no 3d Mars Attacks, the one with the inverted monitor?!
The Pinball Hall of Fame is the coolest place in Vegas. Pumping quarters into pinball machines beats pumping them into slot machines any day.
I spent much of my college budget on the "Dr Who" pinball game. Multiball with the Golden Daleks!!!. And I've always been able to find it - Denver, DC, Boston....
@cde: I was trying to stay away from licensed games, maybe I'll do a whole post on licensed scifi game one day, because there's a lot of 'em.
Is that Bernie Wrightson's signature I see in the lower right corner of the Pinball Pool artwork?
@lightninglouie: Actually the art on that game was done by Gordon Morison, although he had a Wrightson-esque style.
How could you miss "Xenon" Nothing beats the sounds it would make when you really started racking up the points! ;^)
I spent hours on end on the Superman (1979) version. It was set wrong for a couple of months so it got played in relays on the same quarter.
Till the maintainence guy showed up.
I can't imagine how many quarters I must have pumped into Pinbot during my four years of high school.
I used to ditch class to go smoke cigarettes and rack up the free games.
When I found the Bride Of Pinbot spinning head thingie on Ebay, I knew it was for me. It is an awesome decoration. I've been meaning to make it into a lamp!
@Tits McGee: My mom bowled at a place that had pinbot and I remember playing it till they dragged me out of the alley. I loved opening the face and shooting the balls into the eyes. IIRC, that's what started the multi-ball mode.
The only thing better was when she started working in a bar, and they had FunHouse. I still hear Rudy laughing at me sometimes.
Not exactly scifi, but the pinball game that got me hooked for life on pinball was the Dark Knight. It was back in 81 or 82 and seeing the (first) two level game with it's ramps and magna-save, and black knight's voice mocking you when you drained, it sure felt like scifi.
Best score I ever got though was on a Star Trek game. Got many times the next highest score and something stupid like 11 credits out of it.
I haven't played much pinball lately. Wow. I need to remedy that. Thanks for the reminder.
Where's Xenon?
I find the lack of Twilight Zone pinball disturbing. Seriously, where the hell is the greatest pinball machine, Twilight Zone, ever???
Bride of Pinbot is a seriously awesome table. I found it in a pizza joint a few years ago and my friends had to literally drag me away from it.
And obviously licensed-theme games were not included, but it bears mentioning that the Mars Attacks game is really, truly a classic. And yes, Twilight Zone. Man, just thinking about those games, I can smell the cheap-pizza/sweaty-teenager odor that permeates all arcades. Or did, when they still existed.
Stern's Viper had the best lady robot of all time (probably NSFW) [www.xmission.com]
i've got to get some love for Tales from the Crypt, best multi-ball ever
Comment on The the dr who pin was great, I worked in a bar that had 1 machine, I would spend hours, playing that when it was slow. First we had Lethal Weapon 3, Meh, but soon we had Dr Who, and Twilight Zone. The daleks would get stuck 1/2 the time in the dr who machine, and the twilight zone machine would misidentify they special lighter ball from time to time, but man, I loved those games. I'm also of the mind that you should turn the tilt control to as high as it can go. A good player should be able to give a good nudge without fearing of tiilting the machine. It's just part of the skill of the game. Man I miss pinball.
Xenon looked and sounded cool, but not much to the actual game.
Twilight Zone, on the other hand...
And Meteor ('based' on the movie), I used to kick the crap out of that one.
Does Space Invaders pinball count?
[www.ipdb.org]
Pinball art pushes buttons for me like nothing else. No matter how tasteless or lame, I love it all.
I've bid on Pinbot tables before, all went too high. Someday though! My Dad and I played the Nintendo version for hours on end, it had great music for the day.
I guess I'll have to settle for the VC version of Pinbot when/if it comes out on Wii.
There's still Alien Crush though!
I'm a bit saddened to not see 'The Black Hole' pinball game listed here, with its reversed sub-table within the playfield. Also, firepower, but I guess that one isnt terribly sci-fi.
I wonder if they'll ever play pinball in space.
@rbb:
I loved that one!
That's the one that mady the synth "ooo, ahh, and oww" sounds with points?
Cool table art too.
I really liked the "Playboy" machine.
It was kind of Sci-fi because it depicted new worlds that I will never visit.
I know someone that restores old pinball machines. Since most of them are from the early '60s to the mid '70s there aren't a lot of SF ones, but he does have an already mentioned one called Xenon which is almost unplayable due to the amazing amount of noise and flashing lights that it produces. He also has a Fireball machine, which is very sought-after amongst vintage pinball collectors.
My friend has Fireball in his basement, and after countless hours of playing, I still couldn't tell you that it's about Odin or a flaming space vampire. Fun as shit, though!
You guys are close but no cigar on "Mars Attacks" - the games were Attack From Mars and Revenge From Mars, and were actually not licensed from the Mars Attacks movie at all. Matter of fact, Attack from Mars was completed *before* the Mars Attacks movie came out. The only similarity to the movie was the big brain on the aliens, really.
I miss my Twilight Zone, but sometimes it was so frustrating I nearly shattered the glass out of spite. =0)
Pin-Bot is my favorite. If I ever had the cash I'd love to have my own Pin-Bot machine.
The Bride of Pinbot machine is actually on sale on ebay for 950$ ;)
Happened to stumble on the auction the other day
Bally's Transporter the Rescue
[www.ipdb.org]
Rescue the crash survivors before they get eaten. Pass one of these up a few months back. Kicking myself.
Was bride of pinbot the one where part of the playfield raised up as the game progressed? I thought so, but not so sure anymore.
For anyone who cares, there's an awesome pinball arcade here in Vegas with machines dating all the way back to the 30's on up. It has both Pinbot and The Machine, along with other equally cool machines.
"The Machine" is not on a fantastically bizzare piece of sci-fi/gaming wierdness, but it's actually the best pinball game I've ever played. An arcade on Pardall street in Isla Vista, California had one, and despite the simplicity of the setup, it was still tons of fun to play.
I was sad when the arcade closed, because I knew that pinball machine would probably get scrapped.
Comment on The Greatest Science Fiction Pinball Machines Of All Time Just thought i let you folks here know that you can play all of these games on your PC in case youre interested. All you need to do is install Visual Pinball+VisualPinMAME, (plus some misc. files), then download the Table and ROM files, and there you go with original sounds and rules and everything, just like on the real machines, since VPinMAME emulates the real machines software. Sounds good? Then head right over to www.vpforums.com or www.pinballnirvana.com and sign up,...its free! VPForums alone has about 700 Tables and ROMs available for free download and another 150 are available at PinballNirvana. Many of them are real beauties, and all of them play exactly like the real machines that were on location. If you like pinball, youre going to love them! We also have a great and helpful community in case you have any questions. Just check it out. P.S.: [shameless self-advertising] To absolute beginners i recommend my Visual Install Pack, (link on frontpages of VPForums and PinballNirvana), which includes and automatically installs everything you need to play the tables. Only Tables and ROMs must be downloaded seperately. More info in the forums. See you there, Phoenixx1771
@jammadave: No, Mars Attacks was a licensed property, based on the Topps trading cards. Hence the skippage.
Comment on The Greatest Science Fiction Pinball Machines Of All Time @Kevin Kelly - Not according to the Designers who created the game... see http://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=3781
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