Noteworthy features

• Middle Earth featured a unique flipper set up. The two left flippers are placed higher than the right and are set at a different angle. Although it appears like the gap between the lower flippers is wider than normal because of it, it’s an optical illusion. The gap at their closest point is exactly the same as on other pinball machines.
• Middle Earth was the first pinball machine to use Microswitches instead of blade switches throughout the entire playfield, this included the pop bumpers and the kickers.
• Warner Communications inc. completed its takeover of Atari inc. on October 4 1976 for a sum of $28 million. Founder Nolan Bushnell remained with Atari until the end of 1978 and left due to irreconcilable differences between him and the corporate media giant. His many reasons for leaving included Warner’s decision to not support, and eventually end pinball production.
• Some Atari serial number tags only say “Atari Inc.” while others contain the byline “A Warner Communications Company”. This was probably done simply to use up old stock.
• Atari’s desirable “Owl Face” coin door was used on all their pinball machines including Middle Earth. Atari quit using these coin doors on arcade machines, midway through production of Asteroids, when it was found that the “quarter on a string” trick could easily be used to steal credits.
• Middle Earth received multiple playfield and MPU revisions during production. This includes the offset higher flippers being switched from the left to the right side and the upper flippers being set at various different (or zero) offset.
• See trivia for other noteworthy features.

Trivia

• MIDDLE EARTH was one of only seven Atari pinball machines ever produced, this being the fourth, and ironically “middle” one.
• For completeness sake, and because it appears nowhere else on Pinside, here is a list of Atari’s production pinball machines: The Atarians, Time 2000, Airborne Avenger, Middle Earth, Space Riders Superman and Hercules.
• Although other pinball machines were planned, and a couple of production ready prototypes were made, most were abandoned in the design stage or in partially assembled mock ups.
• Atari was one of the first pinball manufactures to make solid state pinball machines and never produced an EM. This was before Bally, Williams, Stern, and Gottlieb made the switch to solid state. They also featured electronics sounds while all other early Solid State machines still used chimes.
• Atari only produced Widebody Machines, and this was long before it became popular with Bally, Williams, Stern, and Gottlieb.
• Although all Atari MPU’s before Superman are called “System One”, each board is unique to the game it’s in. Middle Earth had no less than three radically different board revisions and uses mods and factory bodge wires on each different revision in order to make the game function.
• With the exception of driver board failure, no soldering should ever be required to repair an Atari machine. Everything under the playfield uses individual wiring, without a common attached ground plane, and are all wiring uses blade connectors. This was done so operators could quickly and easily remove and repair damaged or worn out parts, including light sockets and solenoids. This is an incredibly innovative and brilliant idea that isn’t done by any other manufacturer to this day.
• The previous game, Airborne Avenger, was the last game to use the controversial rotary motors in place of linear solenoids under the playfield. Middle Earth has normal linear solenoids throughout, but retains a single rotary motor for the ball return kickout.
• Atari also introduced the use of microswitches on pinball playfields, and used them in place of easily bent, damaged, maladjusted and broken blade switches. Middle Earth was the first machine to only use microswitches for all playfield action. Again, something no other manufacturer does to this day.
• All system one Atari pinballs, including Middle Earth, have all the circuitry underneath the playfield which makes them the only pinball machines that can be played with the head removed.
• The score displays are on the left side apron of the machine, with the match/credit and ball in play display in the center of the apron in front of the player. Some prefer the clean and uninterrupted backbox artwork while others complain that their high score bragging rights are being denied with the scores placed on the apron.
• As with the MPU, Middle Earth also received several different playfield revisions. See the IPDB for further details on the currently known variations as new discoveries are always being made.

Backbox ornament(s)

It is unknown wether any backbox ornaments were available for this machine.

Video mode

This machine has no dot matrix or video display, so it has no videmode.