thetylander's ratings

This is the third Stern Solid State pinball Machine and the best remembered of the three due to it’s huge sales numbers.
Their first solid state game, “Pinball” by Stern, was incredibly expensive to make, program, and design. The second, “Stingray”, used the exact same game rom and switch count to cut costs, although they moved everything around on a new playfield design.
Sales numbers were satisfactory, but not great, for numerous obvious reasons.
The third game in development was Stars, and further cost reduction was paramount.
Two spinners, a pair of three bank drop targets, five stand up targets, and only one pop bumper!
Gone were rollovers, dual saucers, triple pop bumpers and so on from Pinball and Stingray.
How could that possibly be fun?
Well, they hired Steve Kirk!
The goal is to please the customer and remove or reduce the frustrations, and expenses, found on other pinball machines of the time.
Gameplay was increased by reducing ball outlane drains and adding the kirkpost between the flippers, and there’s an easy unblocked shot on both sides of the playfield that go straight back up to the top, making for very fast and easy gameplay.
Everyone likes fast and easy!
Yeah. I went there. Make your own joke. It was the 1970s after all.
Cheap and cheerful fun for the customer equals success and profits. Low maintenance means loyal happy vendors. All of this adds up to an amazing 5,127 units sold. Compare that to Pinball (1,654) and Stingray (3,006), which means Stars outsold them both combined, by 467 units.
That also means math is easy with a calculator.

Most of my reviews focus on value for money and gameplay quality. At the price Stars currently sells for and it’s total lack of rarity, combined with the rare need for maintenance and cheap upkeep costs, then throw in the simple, easy, and fun gameplay factor, and you have probably the best first pinball I could possibly recommend.
That was a run on sentence!
The best part is it doesn’t get old, because it already is quite old.
Stale. That’s a better word, even though it’s not edible.
Many people say that if they get near a Stars, they will play for hours. I totally agree!
Admittedly, If I had the space and money, I would have all three of the first solid state Stern machines, but I have neither.
Time to irritate people with my alliteration!
In Summary, Stars is a successful seventies solid state Stern that succeeded the second game, Stingray, in the series. Some say it sold so strongly that it saved Sam Stern several years of strife and struggle when it suddenly started sharply shifting units and surpassing sales expectations.
Now go buy one. It’s a fun game, you aren’t going to lose money on it, and if you love pinball, you certainly won’t regret it!

Honesty is difficult. Especially when dealing with machines that are overly praised and overrated.
Flippers and investors fear less than perfect reviews because it may affect their profits, and fans are prone to getting upset because you don’t agree with them.
Very few people have the understanding and can accept that not everyone likes the same thing.
So it becomes important to back up your argument with a decent explanation.
As can be seen from my overall score, I don’t hate Centaur. Far from it, but it’s not fantastic either.
It’s still better than eating peanuts while chewing gum.
Don’t ever try that by the way.
Let’s start with the main draw, the art.
Wow wow wow wow…..
Wow!
Yeah! This is an awesome looking pinball machine! Bally had mastered how to capture sci-fi/fantasy novel art styles with Xenon and kept on going upwards from there.
Until they stopped and somehow flushed themselves down the toilet. Wanna play Hardbody anyone?
Centaur was probably the pinnacle, and definitely is designed to atttract the 1980s black and white indie comic fans. Granted, it’s not exactly Frank Frazetta art, Heavy Metal magazine, or the Conan black and white magazine, but it’s dang close!
If I were to score it on the artwork alone, I’d give it a ten out of ten.
But that’s the problem that even comic books had. You can’t just have pretty artwork with no substance.
What you end up with is Todd McFarlane filling six issues of a new Spider-Man comic with the only dialouge being the word “Doom!” over and over.

The “Doom” here is those “centaur” drop targets.
Sorry, but I had a pun all lined up for that.
Is it me, or do they send the ball straight for the centaur drain with some mad flipping to prevent it?
Okay, I’m done with the puns.
The center drop targets are a minor issue, as is the sound of some guy telling me over and over to destroy centaur. I don’t mind repeating yourself but I got the message the first time.
Maybe he repeats it because I have, never once in nearly forty years, succeeded in destroying centaur… it he mocking me?
The biggest problem, for me personally, is that I have played multiple copies of Centaur over the years, and always find I’m pretty much done after two or three games. I lose interest.
Compare that to Xenon, where I can still sink hours in, and it has a lot less to do and even less going on. Then there’s the almighty quarter gobbler Pin•Bot, which hates me with a passion, and yet I keep trying.
It might be the imbalanced difficulty, it’s certainly not balanced in the centaur!
Ha!
Seriously, Centaur seems too easy and too willing to let you get somewhere on those things that should be hard and exciting when they happen, but impossible on those things that should be easy and seemingly unimportant. Multiball is easy, and happens frequently without trying, but aimed shots rarely result in what you hoped for. See the aforementioned drop targets.
It’s the long term enjoyment and value for money that matters most, and I just don’t see that with Centaur.
In an arcade, it’s perfect, but it’s not really a pinball machine you would say, “Oh yes! Instead of buying both a Xenon and a Pin•Bot, I’d rather spend the same amount on one Centaur!”
That makes no sense, and the prices for a decent working Centaur is ridiculous nowadays.
Yes, I know I reuse examples, and I could have just as easily said, “Would you pay Star Trek TNG or Stern Mandalorian, or Stern AC/DC money for a overrated Bally game from the 1980’s?”
In the end, it’s up to the buyer, and I understand both nostalgia and the desire to have the coolest toys plays a huge part in that.
I go into this a lot, but these pinball reviews aren’t here to be trashtalk against a game that pissed you off, nor are they hollow echo chambers of eternal and unwavering praise and worship for the almighty top 100.
It’s an opinion, designed to help others decide if they’d want to commit to the investment of owning one.
Not a popularity contest.
With that in mind, I’ll say this:
Unless you really love Centaur, find a place to play it several times before committing. It’s a hefty cash investment and it may let you down when you look at other games in the same price range and wonder if you made the right choice.
On the positive side, it’s a 1980s Bally. Non-game specific parts are cheap and plentiful, and the game specific ones are all heavily reproduced and available from multiple sources.
Furthermore, the MPU, along with all the other boards, are super easy to work on. (Or replace with modern fake emulator boards if you must) and there are few parts on the machine overall that are prone to failure or randomly breaking.
Thats a huge financial and maintenance advantage over modern pinball.
The bottom line is that the looks are incredible and enticing, but long-term gameplay may leave you cold.
It’s a very black and white game, but that somehow balances out somewhere in the Centaur.
Two puns for the price of one.

Writing a a fair review for Raven is incredibly difficult.
It’s taken over a year to do it.
I don’t like saying anything bad about any pinball machine but I have to be honest and admit that this one is not good.
If I happen to own this machine presently, or have owned it in the past, I would never add that information to my Pinside collection or admit to it on my profile. Even if I got Raven for free.
Because it’s that embarrassing.

Let’s get way off track.
On my local Craigslist, someone was trying to sell a copy of Raven for $2,800!
I know what some of you are thinking, I laughed as well.
The ad is proud to repeatedly tell you that everything is “in tact” (as opposed to “out tacked”?) and that the LED bulb upgrade makes it worth much more. (HA!) They insist their Raven is perfect, even though it’s in about average condition and…
…let’s be honest, you can’t even feel sorry for people like this.
It’s awful that I enjoy watching as they repost it with the price slightly reduced every couple weeks because nobody is interested.

What was the reason behind that story? It’s like watching a train wreck, you know you should look away but you can’t.
Unfortunately, that’s also how I feel about Raven in general.
Raven should be the eternal bargain basement machine. Mostly as a warning to others that you get what you pay for.
The current Pinside average price, ($1,500 as of this writing in 2023), is insane, and I can only blame speculators and collectibles investors for that ridiculous amount.
They really enjoyed ruining the pinball hobby didn’t they!
On the bright side, I’ve seen copies of Raven given away in buy one get one free deals, or sold for under $500 in the recent past. That’s a much more accurate fair market value that isn’t reflected here on Pinside.

It would be something if Raven was so bad that it’s good, but it’s so bad that it’s depressing, and even free might be too expensive if it needs serious repair work, like if it has a bad MPU or needs replacement displays.

Gottlieb Premier made a few good playing pinball machines during this time, but all of them have the terrible photo backbox art and theming package that make them look disturbing, and not in a good way.

Watch while I attempt to search for the right way to frame this.
Wait! I got it!
Have you ever seen those direct to video releases of low budget films that are intended to trick people into buying them because they have a similar title and box art to the real blockbuster movie? Or worse, the pornographic knock off version of a real film?

Gottlieb Premier proudly did that to pinball.
And that’s how all their games looked during this period. From Bad Girls to Genesis to Gold Wings to Rock, and everything in between. They look like the box art of a sad low budget 1980s porn knock off film, released on betamax.

That’s the main problem with Raven. She’s a gender swapped Rambo, which is something that…
I did already mention low budget 1980s porn, right?
Should I also point out that there’s a gender swapped Rambo knock off adult film that Raven looks like it’s more closely based on?
I’ll let it go.

Theming and initial visual impressions either draw in a player or push them away.
Raven does both by being so awful that it draws in the curious, to see if it gets worse.
And it does.
Camouflage can look good on anything, if it’s done right, but Raven’s poor excuse of cabinet camouflage, with its large puke colored blobs are…
I just ran out of adjectives and my head hurts.

The first time I saw Raven, I seriously thought someone sabotaged it with their very first amateur custom paint job.
Nope! That’s official factory sabotage!

Then there’s the playfield art.
It seems they hired that one guy that was told repeatedly in high school to give up drawing and consider being a third shift gas station attendant, where he won’t be able to harm himself or others. Believing he was a good artist, he didn’t listen, and Gottlieb hired him because a recently fired third shift gas station attendant is much cheaper than hiring someone who has any artistic talent.

The bottom line is, when new, drawing in paying customers was the most important factor to the profitability and success of a game, and Raven fails at that completely.
In the pinball collector hobby, a terrible artwork package can be overlooked, or even admired for its awfulness, if the gameplay is all there.
Unfortunately that’s Raven’s other major fault.
All the pieces are there, but just not in the right places.

It’s almost as if all the playfield items that could be included in this game were dropped on a board and the designer began screwing them down where they fell until he ran out of room.
Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but there’s no flow. Very few shots are thrilling or make any sense, and the ones that do are lackluster or don’t do anything special, and you come away from your first game thinking, “Wow, that was disappointing.”
In an arcade in its era, that’s where it would end. A single quarter muncher. There are better things to play, so you regret dropping in a quarter and move along.
Today, freeplay is a thing, and so I tried playing it again and again and again, and it never gets any better.
It’s the Star Wars Episode One of pinball. I kept trying to convince myself that it’s good, that it has some redeeming quality , and I was left wondering what I could say that was positive.

I just came up with something! The lighting is good and it didn’t need any major repairs during gameplay. That’s positive!
As I said at the beginning, it’s taken over a year to write this and my opinion hasn’t changed or mellowed in time. Maybe a little, but not significantly, and I’m still trying to find something positive to say.
It’s very difficult to do because pinball is a hefty investment of repair and maintenance time, and requires large sums money, it’s not something you can laugh off like a buying a cheap bad video game or watching a bad movie.
Raven is my lowest score ever and it bothers me that it is, but at the same time, it’s not unplayable or the worst thing ever, just terribly unappealing or inspiring.
I stand by my opinion that there are are no bad (official mass produced) pinball machines, just less exciting or uninteresting ones.
In a hobby as expensive as pinball is now, Raven is the equivalent of paying Starbucks prices for gas station coffee. You just don’t do it unless you’re incredibly stupid or desperate.
But if someone gives you one for free, be sure to say thank you and then cover it in a plain brown paper wrapper as you transport it.

You take “Pinball” by Stern, then move and change a few things on the playfield, slap a fresh, and somewhat watery, coat of paint on it and voila! You have a new game called “Stingray”!
If only it were that easy!
They may use the exact same game roms, along with everything else mechanically, but that doesn’t mean it’s the same game.
I would call it total genius.
Picture it in your head. It’s 1977 and the big push to solid state pinball has begun.
Stern Electronics, formerly Chicago Coin, released the last three EM leftovers from the bankrupt CDI while they focused on going Solid State. They “copied” Bally’s SS board designs and were working on their first machines.
It’s believed the EM version of “Pinball” was made to keep the factory running for an extra month while the Solid State transition was taking place, and also to use up the leftover backstock of EM parts.
Meanwhile, the first two solid state machines were being designed at the same time. So why not keep it cheap and simple and use the same game roms with different playfield designs and themes?”
It was a huge cost and development cutting scheme, but it was a wise choice considering their current status as a company.
It all comes down to gameplay and the differences are definitely obvious. Both are excellent and incredibly different.
The theming would never give it away either. “Pinball” has a giant pinball rolling down the street smashing everything in it’s path, and Stingray features a dude and a chick doing some underwater fishing activities.
In fact most people wouldn’t know they’re mostly the same unless they read this.
Oops!
Some people would argue that the art on the machine seems a bit outdated for 1977 and they’re right. Compare it to the competition of the time and it’s more of a late sixties or early seventies art style. Back then, it might have affected sales, but today it doesn’t matter and Stingray fits in nicely with both EM’s and early Solid States.
Stingray is an incredible game, just like it’s cousin “Pinball” and I wouldn’t mind having both. (I keep missing out on buying one for cheap, but it’s on my want list.)
Stern’s next game, Stars, would reduce costs further by cutting the amount of playfield switches and targets used by a third, but it would be the game that was their first major success and began the art style they would be recognized for to this day.
Going back to Stingray, I feel that it’s rather forgotten by collectors and fans alike. Not nearly as much as “Pinball” is, but it doesn’t draw the attention like the Stern machines that followed.
Or the price, which is a good thing.
There weren’t many made, but they made more Stingray’s than “Pinball” and Stingray has a much higher survival rate than “Pinball” does, so finding one is easy and cheap
Aren’t you glad values aren’t based on rarity in this hobby?
Maybe I shouldn’t say that! Some collector or investor might get bad ideas and ruin the hobby even more than it already is.

I hate to say anything bad about Diner. I suppose the worst thing I could say is when this first came out, I misread the title. I thought it said dinner and I shouted “Dinner?! What kind of stupid game is that?” Mind you I was a teenager. Very young, naïve, and quite a loudmouth. You’ll also note that my older sister wasn’t the only one laughing at my stupidity.
The guy who owned the arcade was called Whitey, for reasons unknown to me except maybe because of his white hair.
“Really?”
He was really cool. After he had a good laugh of course, he opened the coin door, hit the credit switch about thirty times, and let me play it for free for a while.
I played games for free a lot in that place while he taught my seventeen year old sister how to be a pool hustler.
Not long afterwards, Whitey suddenly disappeared and was later featured on the hit tv show Americas Most Wanted.
True story.
I know that has nothing to do with Diner, or dinner for that matter, especially since we usually ate at Butch and Carol’s bar and grill across the street from Whitey’s arcade and pool hall, but regardless, that’s where I first got familiar with the game.
In the years that followed, I suppose that those “fond” memories stuck with me. It was an interesting time to be alive, and that’s what comes up first whenever I see Diner.
The game, not a diner in general.
The shots and flow are good, the lighting and playfield design is nice, and the toys and gimmicks are all about right, but what lets it down for me is the art, which feels a bit depressing. Furthermore, the sounds and music are somewhat forgettable as compared to othe Williams games at the time.
These negative points don’t in anyway ruin the game or take away from the fun factor. In fact, I think it’s the other “lesser Ritchie’s” best game.
I remember what I first saw and played as a stupid teenager, and regardless of if it was Dinner or Diner, the art and sounds don’t really attract new players in like so many other games.
I’m definitely wrong about this and I know it. I’ve seen what Diner sells for today and lots of people want one, so I’d rather not be too critical or negative about it.
I actually like playing Diner a lot, but it isn’t one I would own. It sits on my list of Williams system 11 games above Big Guns and Fire, but far below weirdo favorites like Bad Cats or Jokerz!, or the ever popular ones like Whirlwind, or The Machine: Bride of Pin•Bot.
It sits nicely next to Taxi, somewhere in the middle of an ever changing top ten Williams System 11 games.
With Williams pumping out so many great machines at the time, it’s hard to rank them. They’re all good and I would play every single one, but for a home collection you have limited space and funds, so you have to choose your favorites.
I have limited space and funds anyway. Some of you are rich and have an extra indoor swimming pool you can drain and fill with pinball machines if it comes to it.
Lucky $&*@!!!
I think the main selling factor for Diner is nostalgia, coupled with some really good gameplay.
I love the gameplay but my nostalgia is sadly tainted by America’s Most Wanted.

Middle Earth was released in February 1978 and, although it was only Atari’s fourth pinball machine, they had come a very long way in the year and three months since their first game was released.
This was the point that Atari had proved they knew what they were doing. The teething troubles were over, and they had figured out what worked and what didn’t.
Unfortunately, Warner Communications decided to close down the pinball division instead of allowing it to to grow and mature, and so there would only be three more games produced before the end.
Middle Earth was the first pinball to have a large amount of early prototypes released in which they play tested and changed several things before regular production began.
Most important of these changes was the flipper locations, which they shifted around until they found the perfect balance. The offset flipper layout may seem gimmicky and off putting to some, but it works incredibly well. There’s no learning curve and it adds a whole new variety of shots to the gameplay.
The playfield on Middle Earth is designed like it has a separate upper and lower section. This makes gameplay very fast, and since there’s a lot to do, you’ll need to read and study the playfield if you want to get the most out of all the bonus features.
Speaking of which, most of the lights are off at the start of a game and it’s your task to try to light up the entire playfield. This is probably the most difficult and fun challenge, especially since progress doesn’t carry over from one ball to the next.
Nothing is perfect, and there are some minor complaints that could be made about gameplay and so on, but those come down to personal tastes, not because they’re inherent fatal flaws in the design or execution.
The main drawback to owning any Atari Pinball is a total lack of any modern reproduction parts or support. Furthermore, used game specific parts are hard to come by, which leaves you dependent on parts machines and at the mercy of Fleabay scrappers, who know how to fully exploit this weakness for maximum profits.
Overall, Middle Earth is incredibly fun and addictive, and always leaves you wishing you had one more ball to play after each game ends.
Although I had played other Atari pinball machines before, I had never seen or played Middle Earth until I bought mine and got it working.
Seriously! I bought it totally blind.
I was surprised to find that it’s a terribly fun game to play, really easy to work on, shockingly reliable, and totally different as compared to other pinball machines of the time. Most importantly, it fits perfectly in my confusing, eccentric, and weird pinball collection and has become a permanent resident.

Black Knight. Not the sequel, not the sequels sequel or the sequels sequel sequel. Just Black Knight.
Oh no! This one doesn’t sing the Black Knight song!
Thank goodness!
If your original idea spawns this many spin-offs, it has to be good, right?
There are negatives. Like accidentally hitting the lane save buttons instead of the flippers the first time I played it as a kid. That may have just been me.
I LOVE GAMES THAT SHOUT AT YOU IN MONOTONE!
I think that was the only real downfall, Bally had Xenon talking dirty to us and Black Knight sounded like an old Tom and Jerry cartoon when Tom gets blown up and says “Don’t you believe it!”
At least that’s how I heard it. It made me laugh back then but I’m sure that others would say the voice was good and spooky.
Is that it’s only fault? I’d be hard pressed to find another. From a modern point of view I’d say the wear on the Bonus ladder sword area is a sad situation, and most have fair to poor repairs in this area. I’ve seen some excellent touch ups to the art but most times someone slaps a reproduction art sticker over it and they never look quite right do they?
If there’s a Steve Ritchie game that screams “Perfect! You nailed it!” This is it. You can argue that he had better game designs, but Black Knight comes together like no other. They even reused the playfield for sequels, that’s got to be perfection… or laziness? (Jackbot anyone?)
Still, if you are going to look into buying one, and you have only played DMD machines, you are going to whine like a baby. There’s no hand holding easy gameplay like modern machines, no baby settings, and it was made to gobble quarters. I hear the term drain monster about a lot of old pinball machines. Here’s a hint people: learn how to play or get out of the hobby, you aren’t wanted or needed, nobody loves you, go home.
That felt good! Now I’m off to insult my mother.
Seriously though, I do understand how a game handing you your ass a few times and saying “Is this yours?” In a condescending manner can make you frustrated. That makes most of us aggressive. You will show it who the boss is. It’s not Springsteen, it’s your supple wrists you pinball wizard you!
Lastly, I’d like to point out that the ruleset learning curve on older games is a lot easier. You know what you did right away and want to do it again, like Black Knight’s multiball. As time went on pinball got more complicated rules and multi stage rewards for doing certain things. I appreciate those games a lot, but once in a while it’s nice to go back to something like this where two or three perfectly placed shots make the main feature happen, and you can do it multiple times in one game if you are really good.
I am (toots own horn, pats self on back) and love the fact that I can get three ball multiball numerous times on ball one.
You can too! That’s the beauty of it! The rewards may not be a wizard mode, but they are very satisfying!
“Why don’t I own one?” you may ask. Good question.
Every time one comes up for sale, I think about it too long, and then it sells to someone else. I have my want list and it falls below some “pretty bad games” in most peoples opinion. I have played Black Knight a lot in my life and still enjoy it immensely, but fear that I would grow tired of it if it was in my home.
I know I wouldn’t. Pinbot proved that theory wrong, so it must be the awful playfield reproduction stickers on every one I’ve looked at that was for sale.
That’s my excuse. I’m sticking to it!
Ha!
Seriously, try one and buy one. If you like a challenge, it won’t disappoint you.

I had a hard time giving scores to White Water. It’s a personal love hate relationship, but let’s look at it from an ancient perspective. It was a new game once you know.
Look at that playfield! There’s a huge chunk of plastic shaped like a mountain! It’s got noises, it’s flashy, it screams “Hey fool! Come look at me! I can hear you got lots of pocket change, stick it in here! Yeah, that’s the stuff. So, ya ever heard of Bigfoot?”

From there it’s downhill…
Then uphill…
Then downhill via a ramp…
Then uphill again…
So what’s the goal?
The first time I played it, back in the good old 1990s, I smashed the ball around and hoped for the best.
Unlike The Addams Family or most other BallyWilly games, I wasn’t exactly sure what I was supposed to do. This can be a great experience, like the first time I played Attack from Mars, or it could be disappointing, like Terminator 2.
Regardless, the rules didn’t slap me in the face and say “Hey stupid, shoot that thingy!” They sort of said “If you leave now, help them you could, but you will destroy all for which they had fought and suffered.”
Or was that the other green Muppet that isn’t Kermit?
It seemed fun, but felt very… Data East.
Ooooh??? Did I go there?”
Yes. I would even go so far as to say that I felt like Street Fighter sitting on the left of it was a better pinball. (It was the one next to the White Water in the arcade II went to back then.) On the other side of the White Water was an F14 Tomcat, so my quarters were going in there anyway. The big plastic mountain was not going to pull me away from a fun game that I knew how to play for very long.
Remember, these are first impressions, played with a limited budget upon release. This was back when pinball was new and found in arcades and stuff. Not on freeplay in a friend’s basement.

That’s where the game shines though. In an arcade, it was a draw for a few plays, then most people would move on to something more user friendly, like the aforementioned Addams Family or something you’re really good at from years of practice, like the older Williams System 11 games.
At home or in a freeplay (admission fee) based setting, White Water is quite a lot of fun. It takes a lot of plays to figure it out, then stop it from doing what it does best, draining the ball in unlimited unique ways.
I don’t have personal nostalgia for this machine. In fact, it replaced an old and worn out Xenon in that arcade which, even though it was in poor condition and always out of order, is the opposite of a good thing.
That was the way it was back then, old machines left, profitable ones stayed, and the newest ones had to make money to justify their existence or they got moved down the road.
White Water did not have a long stay, probably 6 months at the very most? A second Addams Family replaced it because the first one was still making bank months, years, and even decades after its release.
In the short term, for what they were made for, I don’t believe White Water was a success, but as the machines made their way to the homes of fans and collectors, it became a classic.
For that, White Water is a good game, and is treasured by those who own them.
If you’re looking to buy one, play it, more than once by a bunch. It may be your goat or it may leave you cold, but regardless you’ll be appreciative that it exists.

Wow. I did not expect to be rating Seawitch!
Arr! Matey I be hungry!
Yo Ho Cap’n what bet yer pleasure?

I be lookin fer somfin that I can eat with me hook fer a hand and somfin I be able to carry about with me on the deck while me peg leg be making pleasurable knocks on the wooden poop deck.
Aye Cap’n! That be too much information to go on! Have ye tried hanging grapes from yer hook?”
Too fruity Arr! It makes me tooty out me booty!
Yer pirate jokes be wearin thin Cap’n!
“I’d like me two slices of bread with some meat between them!
Yo Ho Cap’n! Ye be wantin a sandwich!
Arr make it with tuna and mayonnaise and call it a Seawitch!
Aye Cap’n! You want Fritos with that?

I love Seawitch. Then again, I’m a connoisseur of all things Stern Electronics and Chicago Coin.
Chicago Coin had a good 42 year run. When Stern took over, they tried everything to climb out of obscurity and become something great. In essence, Stern Electronics had to try harder than the rest, which is evidenced in their string of great games in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Seawitch is one of them.
Stern used a more fantasy horror art theme on this game. If you line up the stern games in order of release, you’ll see that the theme and art styles change radically from one game to the next. If you covered up the Stern logos, most people wouldn’t believe they came from a single manufacturer over a short period of time.
I don’t think I need to go too deep into gameplay, the four flippers, the sound, the impressively fun layout really speak for themselves. Just watch a video of one being played. You’ll simply want to play it yourself.
With more and more people discovering the Stern Electronics games, the prices are creeping upwards. A few years ago, Stern electronics games were barely a foootnote in books like the pinball compendium. The second volume of that book series reads basically like this: “I asked Barry Oursler and Steve Ritchie what their favorite bathtime songs are, I filled three pages with their answers! Oh by way, Stern made a game it’s called Sea.. something… now let me tell you about my two page dedication to Ralph Pooboy, the guy who worked on the Gottlieb assembly line when David Gottlieb farted and said “there ya be” at him.”
That’s how Stern was treated, and it’s nice to see that people are beginning to recognize that Stern wasn’t just an also-ran footnote behind the Ralph Pooboy’s of the pinball industry.
Yes. I know I should talk more about the game, but sometimes great games speak for themselves.
Seawitch is one of those. Find one. Play it yourself, and Seawitch pinball machine from that era you like best.
Very sorry about the pun.

I wrote this review ages ago but wasn’t sure if I wanted to post it. I wanted to play the real thing one more time before passing judgement.

Duhhh da da duhhh da da duhhhh! The music says. The amazing theme from Star Trek the slow motion picture and reused as the theme of Star Trek: TNG. I watched that show for seven years, videotaping and rewatching every episode. By 1993 I had a bit of burn out syndrome from the series.
It was seven years of Picard and his crew sitting in front of a big screen television in their onesie pajamas, standing up occasionally to adjust their jammies and yell at someone on the big tv.
The show was amazing, but in the end, my memories of it filter down to this frequently common scene.
I also enjoy sitting in front of a big tv shouting at the people on the screen, but nobody wanted to give me an hour long tv show.
Maybe it’s my lack of a British accent or a cool catch phrase like “Make it so!”
I’m just glad that I am not Westley.
Then again, aren’t we all?
I should describe my first experience playing the pinball when it first came out.
Addams Family was making me poor by forcing me to play over and over. No matter where I went, it was there… grinning and waiting. It’s a relentless monster.
The arcade I frequently went to also had the Doctor Who pinball (I am a huge classic Doctor Who fan since early childhood) and I knew I had to have it one day. (It only took half a lifetime!)
There were the classics too, the Pinbot games, both the High Speeds and several other recent releases alongside great older games.
And then there was the new Star Trek: The Next Generation that had pretty much just came out.
This could be the love of a lifetime!
Well…
It’s widebody, that’s great. It sounds like the tv show, that’s great. There’s a lot of playfield toys, that’s great. It has presence and demands your attention, that’s great.
I played it a few times and went back to Doctor Who and the Addams Family. They were calling my name.
I never enjoyed ST:TNG the pinball very much. Sorry.
It’s a really pretty game, but there’s not really a lot of game in between all that flash and DMD video.

Oh, are those Klingons and Romulans coming up my driveway carrying a rope, pitchforks and torches?

I wanted to blame my dislike for it on Star Trek The Next Generation burn out, but nobody is ever burned out on something for 30 years.I’ve even watched the good episodes with my kids.
Yes! All six good episodes!!
That was a joke, I know there are more than six good episodes.
(Maybe ten, hee hee!)

Great, now they’re heating up a barrel of tar in my yard and cutting open feather pillows. I have to finish this fast.

It’s Steve Ritchie! That means it should be an instant Holy Grail machine. Good old Steve made great games but this one wasn’t his best work.
I blame the Superpin Widebody. He was utter magic with normal machines.
Maybe it was too many gimmicks and toys? He always tried to pack everything he could into a game and then shove in a little more.
Do you know how bad I feel saying all this? I’m making excuses and blaming myself!
I love pinball, and there is no such thing as a bad game. ST: TNG (dang that is an annoyingly long name! Even when it’s abbreviated!) didn’t really thrill me like it should have.
I expected it to renew my love for the series it was based on, like many other licensed games did and still do, but it didn’t and hasn’t to this day.

Upon recent plays, I do see the appeal of it. There are some fun shots, multiball is exciting and there is a lot to look at. Star Trek fans far superior to me and pinball fans far more skilled than me enjoy it immensely.
Yes, my opinion is wrong. That’s what an opinion is though. I would never say, “avoid this pinball like the plague!” About any machine. Everyone likes different things and that is perfectly fine.
Hi Chicago Coin, I love you!
CDI was sitting over there looking hopeful and sad, so I had to say something.

What I can say about ST: TNG is, if you have never played it, go in with little expectation. Forget the hype of it being one of the bestest games ever in the whole universe, and you will have a good time. My expectations in 1993 were to be blown away because it’s Star Trek, and I love Star Trek in general, and my expectations were set way too high.
Even though it’s not for me I still highly recommend this one for so many reasons. It’s good pinball.

“Firepower!!!” The voice says! Is it me or does he sound like he had diarrhea and is holding back a pants explosion to finish recording his lines?
It’s nothing to be ashamed of, we’ve all been there.
My wife, aka Wifebot, loves this game and Gorgar. It might be just the silly voices or maybe because I like to make fun of the speech while she plays. Gorgar is obviously more fun because you can add additional thoughts to his caveman speech. Me Gorgar… me went with Firepower to Mexican restaurant in Laredo Texas… was big mistake. Me hurt.”
My first memories of Firepower come from a roller skating rink when I was a kid. While Mata Hari was teaching me everything I know about pinball; It was beautiful, seductive, addictive! It would smack your balls around for a little bit, then take your money and make you come back for more.
Wait, it taught me everything I know about women… anyway, three or four games down from Mata Hari, some teenagers were swearing at a new Firepower. The only real goal is to get multiball which is nearly impossible in an arcade setting. You will be broke long before then, especially if you were a kid at the time.
By the time that roller skating rink closed, the firepower machine was the most beat up and dented game in the entire arcade. Intense frustration does that to people.
I only played it once. It lasted only a few seconds and I walked away disappointed. Which is exactly how the Wifebot describes our first date.
I didn’t really get the opportunity to play one again until I was in my late teens. I still didn’t understand the appeal.
Once I played one on freeplay years later, I finally got it.
I never did get multiball, but I had a good time trying.
There is no argument from me that the Ritchie brothers were the kings of ‘80’s pinball. Although I have, (and always will), prefer Barry Oursler and Python Anghelo games, both of the Ritchie’s had a way of making their games fun, attractive, and painful.
If there was one thing I’d change it would be to make the multiball a less rare occurrence, or at least add a ball saver timer so it lasts longer. I have watched the Wifebot play for over an hour to get multiball, only to lose it a few seconds afterwards. She swears for a good long while, yells, shakes her little fist, waves at it with one finger, sometimes two, and finally says “oh well.. start over!”
Even though getting multiball is basically the wizard mode for this game, the reward for doing it (a longer playtime) should be better. It’s one of the rules of good pinball, “Don’t take away something the player has earned.”
That’s my only complaint. I’ve never done it, but I’m sure I wouldn’t enjoy it. Which is ironically something I frequently hear from the Wifebot late at night.
Firepower is a classic! Plain and simple. It punishes you as much as it rewards you and leaves you wishing you had just done that last shot differently after every ball.
That’s the sign of a good game.

Stern Electronics (not current Stern) usually receive meh reviews across the board from the average modern pinball fan.
Stargazer is the exception.
Why?
$$$$rarity$$$$
Instead of heaping big (fake) praise on it because of its low production run, which makes it worth a lot of money, pretend like it had a run of 7,000 to 10,000 copies.
Would anyone care then?
Nope.
So let’s do an honest review.
I am one of “those” Chicago Coin - Stern Electronics fans, and we are considered to be a bit weird.
Just looking at the solid state machines by Stern, they had a string of great games one after the next. Starting with the amazing “Pinball” and ending with the unbelievable “Orbitor 1”, every machine they made is a hidden gem.
Star Gazer came off the heels of the best seller hit “Flight 2000”, which may have contributed to its low production. Start with the obvious draw: you have a hot chick and a zodiac theme. You are instantly drawn to it. If you love spinners, this is one of the best. Count the drop targets… really?! What’s going on with that outlane? Now you have no choice, you must put in a quarter.
As soon as the pop bumper plays it’s sucker shot on you a few times, that’s when you realize you just spent your entire allowance playing this game, and you have no money left for comics and candy.
That’s the Star Gazer experience.
Personally, I love this game, but I love all Stern machines pretty much equally. It’s far from being the bestest game of the era, but look at the era and just try to choose the best game! It was the solid state golden age.
There’s not an alternative to Star Gazer, most Stern machines were very unique, but it’s worth a gander if you have a pocket full of quarters and a free afternoon.

1975, Chicago Coin Company:
Designers Jerry Koci, Albin Peters, Wendell McAdams are having a meeting.
Jerry: I can’t believe we’re doing this!
Alvin: Well, CDI is almost bankrupt..
(Wendell enters with large paper bags in each arm that read “Hardware Hank”.)
Jerry: Did you get the wood and metal to create a cheap chime box?
Wendell: Better! They had a clearance sale on doorbell units!!! Only $1.50 each! Let’s finish the prototype!
Alvin: You Ding Dong!!!

This, of course, never happened…
What did happen was that CDI did make the decision to abandon producing certain expensive parts for their games and used off the shelf and third party items.
A plastic residential doorbell unit for the chime box, for example. The upshot of this is that the exact same unit is still available new today at your local hardware store for around $20, if yours is broken or missing. No outrageous pinball specialty store pricing and shipping needed.
Red Baron, and it’s four player twin “Blue Max”, were obviously built on a tight budget. As Chicago Dynamic Industries neared insolvency, cost cutting measures were implemented. This isn’t to say that it was poorly designed or badly made, just that expenses were reduced where it seemed to matter the least.
With a mostly symmetrical layout, a captive saucer lane to the left, an upper playfield return lane to the right, it was designed almost with an aerial dogfight in mind. Add to that the pop bumpers, rollovers, and what (technically) is a playfield toy in the form of a Fokker airplane in the center with twin spinners on the lower wings, and the game had incredible potential.
Top it all off with the theme: Red Baron! One of the most popular figures in history. I enjoy the Pizza and love when Snoopy gets shot down by him!
The artwork by Lloyd Rognan is of special note.
During the 1960s and 70s, DC comics had produced a popular series of war comics called Enemy Ace by the legendary Joe Kubert. It was a fictionalization loosely based on Baron Von Richthofen’s WWI exploits, with names changed to avoid copyright infringement issues.
The artwork, especially the backglass, is very reminiscent of the Enemy Ace comics, making one wonder if there is a connection.
Enemy Ace comics themselves were influenced by the 1966 film “The Blue Max”, which is, of course, the name used for the four player version. All of this takes us in a fun circle to the origin of the theme, the Red Baron himself! (Good pepperoni!)
This was an excellent theme, well executed, and shoulda, woulda, coulda, been a hit….
If it had been made by Bally, Williams, or Gottlieb.
Chicago Coin was the budget pinball company in many operator’s eyes. Imagine if it had been solid state and released alongside Mata Hari or, better yet, in conjunction with the Atari vector arcade hit by the same name a few years later.
But that’s a lot of “what if’s”… The biggest “what if” would be, what if Stern pinball produced a new Red Baron today using a few nostalgic bits from the original EM? I probably shouldn’t give them any ideas, right? At least not for free!
Regardless, a lot of people over the years have thrown hate at this machine unfairly. As a piece of art it it is a must have for Red Baron fans, it is an important milestone in the history and the sad demise of Chicago Coin, but most importantly it’s really very fun to play.
If you see it in the wild, push that credit button and enjoy it. If you put one in your home, just try to resist the urge to go answer the door every time it goes “Ding Dong!”
(If you reverse the chimes, it goes “Dong Ding!”)
Sorry about the length, but this game deserves much more than a couple words. Only Chicago coin fans will read it anyway. That’s like four people now!!!
It took seven edits to do this, my iPhone wanted to rewrite about every third word into nonsense! If you see an error, blame it on Apple! Thanks!

Chicago Coin Company (CDI) takes a lot of flack for being “that other pinball company”. This was the 1970s, when Williams briefly dethroned Gottlieb as king of pinball and Bally came from behind and stole the title for the entire second half of the decade. Pinball was hot, and soon everyone would want a piece of the action.
Chicago Dynamic Industries, however, was nearing bankruptcy after over 40 years in the business of making arcade games.
By 1977, long time Willams boss Sam Stern, would buy the Chicago Coin pinball division and EM machines in general would be replaced by solid state.
In 1974 however, things continued normally in the pinball industry, as they had for the previous decade.
“A hot air balloon! Why the heck not?” If nobody said that at Chicago Coin back in 1974, they should have.
Real life recreation, sporting, and exploration themes had been a common concept. It’s surprising then that there weren’t more hot air balloon themed games.
Christian Marche, arguably the most diverse artist in all of pinball at that time, did the artwork, and veterans Wendell McAdams and Jerry Kochi designed it. A four player version, Sky Riders, was made as well, and the rest is history.
To say the artwork is incredibly attractive is an understatement. You have the obligatory pretty girl and handsome guy in the front right, and hot air balloons every where else. A nice, happy theme. You may not ever want to go up in a hot air ballon, but when you see them go by in real life, you can’t help but enjoy seeing them.
The playfield is simple, but satisfying, like it’s theme. A large spinner sits smack dab in the center below the pop bumpers and it’s a thrill to hit it and watch the score reels spin along at high speed.
Rewards are somewhat easy to collect, and the game has incredible speed, especially when using the hotter coil setting.
Is it challenging? Well, yes and no, it’s no skill shot monster and play time can vary wildly, more depending upon luck over skill, but if you love spinners, this is one of the best.
It’s different, it’s entertaining, and it’s cheap, and kids enjoy it. If you like EM machines, this is a no brainer. Incredibly easy to work on, and a nice break from the stress and frustration of other games.
Think of it as bringing the speedboat to the lake to go water skiing, and instead you decide to do some fishing.
Okay, that analogy sucked, but you get my meaning I hope.

Pinball by Stern. There’s no reason for confusion! If you want to avoid all the pinball pinball puns, just call it Pinball by Stern. That’s what it says on the backglass after all.
So… Nobody has rated or reviewed this game in five years, and then not that many in total have ever rated or reviewed it. Kind of sad it’s forgotten.
By way of comparison, there are only two copies of “The Pinball Circus”, with only one in the world available to play, and yet it’s got numerous great reviews! Just goes to show you, how an unproduced machine with many huge news stories can make a game famous and how everyone seems to have gone to play it. Then again, people are liars.
Back to Pinball by Stern.
I bought one recently, in Charlie Brown Christmas tree condition and Linus was right, all it needed was a little love, and $60 in parts. I’d like to go into more detail but that’s a pinball story and not a review.
Gameplay:
Deceptively easy looking, incredibly difficult if going for all the scoring opportunities, and can be a high scoring or low scoring game, all depending on your plunge of the ball and your skill with aiming the shots.
There are leaf switches hidden behind every rubber ring, except the five separate drop targets. These switches change all the scoring and bonus values with every touch, and they get touched a lot! Two, just above the slingshots on opposite sides of the playfield change the values multiple times with each hit, which is insane. All these switches also cause the playfield target and pop bumper lighting to go into strobe effect! NICE!
The pop bumpers kick the ball like mad and the slingshots can hit the ball all the way up the playfield on occasion! Slow the game down by catching the ball and you can get some skill shots in, but once any coil touches the ball, it’s rocketing everywhere again.
Yes, this is Stern Electronics first solid state machine, with Pinball (EM) being their first all original game.
Stern’s first games, Rawhide and Stampede, were initially released by Chicago Coin (CDI) before the bankruptcy buyout by Sam and Gary Stern. The third game, Disco, was designed under CDI ownership but not yet released.
Pinball (EM) was released, and then Pinball (SS), and finally Stingray. The next game would be their first big seller, “Stars”.
Pinball by Stern is rarely seen in the wild or otherwise. With a little over 1600 units made, it was probably even a rare sight to see in 1977.
History lesson over, it’s time for the sound and artwork:
Four chimes attached to a hollow wood box! If clean, adjusted, and tuned just right, they are awesome. They make Williams’ dings seem blah and Bally’s four piece chimes are really close, but a bit weaker with their plastic box. A good set of Stern chimes can almost put 1970’s Gottlieb with its amazing three chimes to shame… almost!
Artwork:
Ever imagine a giant pinball rolling down the street at you, taking out buildings and crushing everything in its path?
Someone at Advertising Posters Inc. did. And they made it disturbing and funny. CDI (Chicago Dynamic Industries) thought it was good too and circa 1974 or 75 commissioned this concept to appear on their Chicago Coin promotional posters. After the buyout, someone at Stern (possibly Sam) saw this old poster and said, “That would be a great theme for a Pinball machine!”
And it was!!!
Funny enough the playfield expands further on it, in top down view.
There were few made, and fewer that have survived. My Pinball was a rescue of a game nobody else wanted which is a shame. Then again, if I hadn’t been walking around saying “Good Grief” all the time and talking to my beagle, I would have missed out as well.
And now it’s one of my favorite games ever.
A true hidden gem.

If I hear one more person saying how great this game is I will scream.
Theatre of magic is a great game!
Who said that? What? I did… what’s wrong with me?
I recently stupidly played one on location and I have to admit it’s not bad.
You see, back in the day, I hated this machine.
It wasn’t one in particular, poorly set up or worn out in one location, it was every one of them I came across.
I didn’t enjoy it.
It didn’t help that this is one of the Williams Games where they had a saggy Naggy, a disembodied female voice that tells you where to shoot the ball and what to hit and where to go and how to play. That is a good reason not to like it, but there was something else, it just didn’t play very well.
It was years later that I figured out that it wasn’t the game that didn’t play very well, it was me.
This is a skill shot game and I was trying to play it like attack from mars or medieval madness where you whack at the ball and hope to God Something Happens.
The drains are vicious though, and I never seemed to get anywhere or get to play very long before my money was spent and the game was over.
It looked pretty cool but it wasn’t very exciting. After a couple dollars I would walk off and play something I knew that I can get some fun out of.
Because it looked interesting I always gave it another try, only to fail of course. I could’ve probably “fallen in like” with it if I had tried it on a pinball emulator of some sort but none of those are accurate or realistic and any way or form. I only play emulators of pinball machines that I know intimately, then I sit there and bitch and moan and complain about how totally inaccurate virtual Pinball is. Especially when somebody or the company is always telling you how accurate and perfect and great and totally realistic it is.
Anyone ever play Pinbot on farsight’s Pinball Arcade? It make the Nintendo cartridge from the 1980s look amazingly accurate in comparison!
That might be a slight exaggeration but come on now the real machine isn’t silver and grey colored!!!
The Wifebot knows they are unrealistic but still enjoys the virtual pinball games on home videogame consoles, especially when she doesn’t want to go down to the game room or play something we don’t own. This is fine because there is no way I am ever buying her a real medieval madness machine!!! Enjoy the fake one on the tv honey!!
But I am way off topic. Back to where we left off, in the 1990s, theater of Magic did not work for me on a quarter by quarter basis. At $.50 per game, I would’ve gone broke trying to get good at it, and Addams family already tried to bankrupt me just a few years earlier.
On FreePlay though you can whack at it over and over and over again until you figure out what the heck is going on and get good at it. I love modern admission fee only arcades!!!
Well whack at it I did, for a good couple hours and guess what? I was having fun and getting somewhere too!!!
Don’t read too much into that last sentence.
In the end, theatre of magic won me over, 25 years too late. Give this one a try or twenty, preferably without quarters!

Do Ritchie games really need a cheerleading squad? Personally, I have avoided rating both the High Speed games simply because I felt they speak for themselves.
My take on this is: how do the high speed games stack up against all the other games Steve Ritchie was involved with.
I believe they are superior to many of his licensed IP designs.
Why?
Themes!
High Speed and The getaway: High Speed 2 have a non licensed theme, based on most every kids favorite thing, car chases with fast cars. This open theme doesn’t limit itself to a particular IP, (Dukes of Hazzard, Smokey and the Bandit, Blues Brother, etc.) instead it sets up a basic car chase plot and it can be anything the player wants. Nobody walks up to it and says “I wish this was JUST a Fast and Furious machine.”
It can be though, if you want it to be, through the power of IMAGINATION!!! …and maybe a few toy cars, stickers, and a mug shot of vin Diesel taped to the backglass.
Don’t do that, people…
Because it’s Steve Ritchie, it’s expensive, but because it’s not The Addams Family, it’s not stupidly expensive. That is the other reason the High Speed games are superior, value for money.
Why do people pay twice the price for one particular pinball machine over another? Many reasons we all probably know and don’t need to go into.
If you buy this instead of the grail machine, you won’t have the adoration and worship of the community but you’re going to have lots of money left over and a really dang fun game.
Convinced you yet? No? Good! I am not here to sell you a machine, just encourage people to look at pinball for is gameplay and funfactor instead of its cash value.
I’d throw around words like flow and feel, but every machine is different. If you play one that’s been beat to snot, chances are it has no flow anymore and feels like dried crusty finger grease.
Instead, I recommend you try The getaway: High Speed 2, preferably well maintained, and see for yourself. Back in the day it munched your quarters and left you wanting another go. Even on freeplay High Speed 2 hasn’t lost its charm or frustration level. The ZZ Top(ish) music, the sirens, those ramps!!! Wow!!! When you get a good game going, it’s too satisfying to describe!
I could say “that’s what Steve Ritchie games are all about”, but it would be more accurate to say that’s what Williams pinball was all about in the 1980s and 1990s. Ritchie simply nailed it more often.
A quick word about the original High Speed.
Many people treat it like the lesser of the two games because it came out much earlier and lacks some of the bells and whistles being introduced in the later system 11 and WPC games. Don’t believe them! High speed is not an inferior version, it’s a completely different game and is just as good. Some collectors and fans have both of them placed side by side in their game room and wouldn’t part with either one.

The Machine: Bride of Pinbot is how to make an Empire Strikes Back after the success of Star Wars.
Even though most of the original team was working on other projects, the new team creating Bride of Pinbot looked to making the game innovative and unique rather than just a sequel.
Fortunately it turned out to be just as great. It’s not a replacement or upgrade, but rather a companion piece to the original.
Python again! Need I say more?
People have tried to upgrade Bride of Pinbot, make it more ‘90’s with a DMD and rom mods.
Why?
It’s like taking The Doors Riders on the a storm and turning it into a rap song…
Oh yeah they did that too.
The Bride of Pinbot is sexy, needy, temperamental, wants money spent on it, goes psycho on you, may be possessed, has breakdowns, cheats on you, am I describing my first girlfriend?
It can be a lot of work getting one of these back up to snuff after being on location or not maintained for a few years.
If you truly love the thing it’s definitely worth it, but remember that it has a lot of unique parts and none are cheap or easy to find.
I know someone who sunk nearly $3000 into one that he initially was buying for parts. He said it was too complete to part out and sold his good one to make up for the other one’s costs.
If you are new to pinball, I would have to say avoid this one… for now anyway, and look at games people refer to as starter machines or the latest Stern stuff which might have some sort of breakage warranty.
I love this game and have had it on my wishlist for years, but they always seem to be too far away, too broken or too overpriced for their condition. I won’t overspend on a machine just because I want it, you just have to have patience.
One day I am sure that the right girl will come along and be everything I am looking for, just don’t tell my wife.

Rockstar status designer Steve Ritchie. I could just leave it at that.
There’s much more to High Speed than just the creator name on the box.
The mid 1980’s, pinball was dying, videuh games were getting better and better the Nintendo Entertainment System was taking the world by storm and pinball was barely keeping up with the times.
Williams releases a Renaissance of all new games! Flashy, hip, exciting, cool, gnarly, totally tubular, radical, jammin, and so on.
Pinball is saved!!!
It’s Friday! I got five bucks!!! grab your friends, put on your Oakleys, pile into your older sister’s 71 Dodge Dart, crank up the Judas Priest and hit the arcade at the roller rink.
My 80’s memories are a bit weird.
High speed was like riding in the car with my sister, if the cops ever bothered to chase her.
Not a lie, everything is going everywhere, it’s all a blur, and you are holding on for dear life. Soon it’s over and you stagger away.
Now days she drives like a grandma.
But high speed never slowed down.
Some say the sequel (High Speed 2 the getaway) is better. It is an improvement on the original, but it doesn’t take away from the fun of the original. If anything, seen side by side, they compliment each other. If you find one out there in good condition, buy it. Say Hi to my sister, she’s out there somewhere on the fast loop shot!

How hard is Super Spin to find for sale? Incredibly so!!!
That is if you are actively looking for one.
With only a little over 1300 made, you’re better off looking for the four player version, Jet Spin, which is also relatively hard to find.
This all seems unlikely to happen, unless you aren’t looking for one and a Jet Sipn or Super Spin falls in your lap.
We bought a Super Spin recently in what’s best described as a buy one get one free deal which included the Bally classic Mata Hari.
It is bordering on like new condition and literally just needs a tune up. Just like one of our cats when she falls asleep on you and starts purr-snoring.
There is something very special about Gottlieb EM machines that the others of that era just didn’t have.
The odd sweet perfume like smell mixed with the wood, the eerie yet warm lighting from the playfield in a dark room, the sharp clear chimes that ring so much better than they should or ever needed to, and the sound of the ball on the playfield has a distinct deep rumble you won’t hear anywhere else.
It’s all sort of a sad and lonely feeling but also inviting at the same time.
Each machine has its own distinct feel, but Gottlieb EM’s all feel that way to me to some extent.
It’s like when you are missing someone or a time or a place that is long gone while reminiscing over those good memories.
Perhaps that’s weird, I don’t know.
Let’s move on to gameplay.
Looking at the playfield you would think that there’s not a lot going on. The large empty space in the middle is deceiving.
No, trolls don’t pop up and say dumb things. That empty space is for shooting at those targets up top and on the sides. Skill can push back the vari-target or pop your ball back at you for a fast drain. The roto-target on any Gottlieb is a sight to behold!!! The ultimate EM toy! Maybe this machine could have used a bank of drop targets, but on this playfield less is really more.
Worse still, scoring can be incredible, or you could walk away with less than 10,000 points. It may be a “Gottlieb Skill Game” but there is no skill when it decides to drain balls!
I always had a huge love and respect for EM machines but never owned one because, like old wind up watches, I understood how they worked but figured I could never fix them. Believe me, they are easier to work on than SS machines and are a thing of beauty both inside and out. This also means it probably won’t be our last EM machine!
While others are chasing and fighting to be the first one to show up to buy their $10K+ grail machines, the wife and I may keep our eyes open for more of these less than $1,000 works of art.
Electro-Mechanical truly is Pinball’s best kept secret!

My incredibly high rating may mess up the pop 100 list.
Oh well, pop lists are destined to constantly change. A baby yoda machine comes out and everyone loves baby yoda, so it ends up in top 10. Then people get sick of baby yoda and the baby yoda machine drops down the list.
Certain games have staying power, mainly because they are expensive and have priced themselves out of the hands of the average collector, some are as rare as a Vikings fan in Green Bay Wisconsin, others have top 100 staying power simply because it’s an awesome game.
12,001 units made should speak volumes on why Pinbot is a great game.
It was everywhere back in the day and was always eating quarters.
I won’t go into my fandom of creators Barry Oursler and Python Anghelo, but let’s be honest, these two were a dream team if there ever was one! Artwork? Awesome! Playfield design? Perfect!
These two put out some of the greatest hidden gem machines, along with Joe Joos and Bill Pfutzenreuter, whom they both frequently worked with.
So why buy one?
It’s still cheap.
It’s a great game.
There are plenty to go around.
One might say I have a biased view of Pinbot because I own one. Not at all! I would never score Pinbot any lower regardless of ownership. It is truly a key game that entered pop culture, became a part of 1980’s nostalgia, and is eternally cool to boot!
The investors and scammers are too busy flipping medieval madness, Addams Family, Attack from Mars, and Twilight Zone to care about most Williams System 11 games. They left this machine for us real pinball collectors… so far… but they are coming. They already took Whirlwind and a couple others.

Q: Why isn’t Black Hole (or name any other classic game) in the top 50?
A: because (name popular product placement item that will soon be forgotten to the annals of time) pinball just came out.

Sadly, lists of top whatever’s always favor the newest thing. Some are a flash in the pan and others have staying power, but because so many people gave perfect scores to said pop item, most of the time without having ever used or seen said item, their position on the charts are nailed in place. The Mandalorian is a great example.
We are lucky there wasn’t a crazy frog, Baby Shark, or Angry Birds pinball in their prime, they would have been stuck forever in the top ten simply due to their Ip being popular for a short time.

Black Hole… not linked to the Disney movie (at least officially) was, and is unbelievable.
All those flippers, the lower playfield, multiball, and the artwork all came together in a lightning in a bottle scenario.
Nothing like it before or since.
If you haven’t played Black Hole I sincerely urge you to. There may not be a baby Yoda toy, but really, are you interested in pinball because it’s fun or because it has popular brand name marketing printed all over it and owning such brand name products somehow makes you super cool and awesome?
Oh yeah, most people only buy what sales and marketing departments or pop charts tell them they are supposed to like.

I can’t judge this game on Pamela Anderson or Barb Wire. Don’t care for her and never saw Barb Wire. I remember it was a thing, but I never watched Baywatch or anything else she was involved in… not my cup of tea.
The theme is half the game and ones based on a movie/TV license deal have more (or less) going for them depending on the quality of the licensed product.
BUT… even a bad licensed IP can produce a good pinball, just as easily as a good IP can be a terrible game. Sadly, the license can make up for a terrible machine and there are quite a few mediocre pinball machines that are in the top 200 on pinside and elsewhere simply because it has a great product to sell you.

This isn’t either of them.
The game is disappointing. It appears it was made with the idea that the blonde celebrity on the backglass was enough investment in the game creation process.
It probably was in its time.
Looking at it in current day 2021, that’s a blonde woman dressed in a sexy outfit, who is in her mid fifties.
Ick!!!
Imagine if you got one with a overheated wrinkled saggy translight!!! It would be accurate at least!
I played this game recently simply because I never had. I gave it a good long test, hours, and in the end really wished I had tried something else.
I obviously didn’t understand the theme or references. One could say I should have done research beforehand, but I wanted to see what it was like for a normal human coming across one, not a fanboy who studied the subject material (Heh Heh Heh) in preparation. Most people would say meh. It plays, it’s got lights, it’s fun to some extent, but this is not great.
I am sure there are fans out there who will swear it the greatest game ever and someone should love it. You know, besides Tommy Lee of course. Unless you have an unconditional love of Pamela Anderson, best to not bother.

Honesty is the best policy and sometimes it has to be brutal.
One of these came up for sale recently for $1,000 on Craigslist. I looked at the ad and said, “Well that’s about $999 too much.” It was snapped up by a “get rich quick hoarder” by the end of the first day and I was happy that it wasn’t being bought by a real person just getting into pinball for the first time.
Yeah, I contacted the seller a couple days afterwards to find out who bought it, just because I couldn’t believe it sold.
Turns out there are more beanie baby collectors getting pinball machines. They don’t care what it is, they are never going to play it, they just heard that pinballs are worth a lot of money according to fake news. So they buy a few and stick them in their wet basement or in a rotting shed and wait for them to become super valuable so they can become filthy rich.
They hope to get rich off an Elektra!!!
Bwah Ha Ha Ha!!!!
This is not a great game. In fact it CAN be fun, but it simply doesn’t want to be.
Where Black Hole nailed the wide body multi playfield concept is exactly where Electra does everything wrong.
Angles - wrong. Targets - wrong. Mini playfields - wrong. Sound - wrong. Scoring ability -wrong.
…and so on.
It could have been great but it tries to do too much and doesn’t do any of it or even get the basics right.
I really hate being this harsh, but I have tried to play many different Elektras over the years thinking that one wasn’t set up right or that I wasn’t in the right mood. I wanted to like it, but it’s not very likable.
I am sure there are people that love the machine and that’s good because someone has to. I can’t recommend it as even a filler machine. Like a Lotus Seven with a twisted chassis, it still looks great but it’s impossible to drive.
The funnies part of this review is that I typically like the “meh” games. I can have the same amount of fun with Mata Hari, for example, as I could playing Indiana Jones. The playfield is everything and toys and DMD mini games mean very little.
Elektra has a bad playfield… perhaps that’s too harsh… Elektra has an uninspiring playfield. Again, there are people who love this game and I am glad that you found what makes it great, I always say that I love all pinball and in this case, this machine doesn’t want my love.

Remember when these sold for about $2500 to $4000? Ah the good old days, and not so long ago!!!
This is more of a long term review rather than your typical “Oh boy I just bought my very first pinball machine and it’s the greatest game ever!!! I’m giving it a perfect 10!!!” type of thing you usually see on Pinside.
It’s not that I don’t love seeing the enthusiasm and joy, but give me some reasons why it’s perfect besides the fact that you snagged one.
I am guilty of giving Doctor Who a higher than average rating but I explained why… in far too many words!
This is Tales of the Arabian Nights and the reason why it will never grace my collection again.
Your mileage may vary.
Saggy naggy:
This is one of the games that features a saggy naggy. A female voice telling you constantly what to do. Great for an arcade setting, terrible for at home where your own saggy naggy is upstairs telling you to quit wasting time playing pinball and go finish changing the oil on the car.
The rest of the sound is awesome.
Caution! Fragile!!!:
This machine breaks, and nothing that breaks is cheap or easy to find in stock. Be prepared to make proper repairs as superglue and tape can still probably be found on many machines out in the wild. If you buy it from a location rather than one in a collection, buy a good set of tools and the service manual, just in case.
Price:
I started with a reference to the prices in the good old days, about 10 to 15 years ago I suppose? It has gone up almost 4X Bonus (when Lit) over the past decade and a half or so. The $10,000+ prices are crazy in my opinion, but demand and popularity makes the stupid people pay stupid amounts. Personally, I believe it should be around $6500 to $7500 for a good players condition machine, but that’s obviously just me!
Fun Factor:
Probably one of the most fun games I have ever played. The ramp shots are just amazingly smooth and when you get a rhythm going… yeah!!! Something to be experienced once in your lifetime!
If you start with any pinball machine that’s close to parts and rebuild it, you take a lot more pride in owning that machine. As time passes, you keep upgrading your mistakes and amateur attempts until everything meets your expectations of it looking and running like a good original or a professionally refurbished one.
But sometimes, once it’s done, you want to move on. At least with me there have been no regrets, and probably never will be. There probably aren’t any Arabian Nights in that condition anymore, which is good, but I think I liked the idea of taking a broken machine and returning it to its former glory more than actually owning the game. The $$$$ & more $$$$ values, they don’t really matter. A good game is a good game, regardless of the hype and desirability or lack thereof.
Tales of the Arabian Nights… if you have the means today, then I highly recommend it. Otherwise you can find a lot more fun (or even a couple “lesser” games) for much less. If you’re an investor, this one may have topped out for a while. Go buy some graded, slabbed and sealed video games instead. That market bubble hasn’t burst… yet!

Instead of my usual review rants and ramblings, I’d like to tell you why Taxi is a good starter game and a keeper.
1. Pinbot. This makes it two games in one! Seriously though, the callouts from this game are funny and weird. Having Pinbot as a fare to pick up is probably the best of the celebrity fares.
2. This playfield!!! Oh this f****** playfield! When it flows the shots are just beautiful making you look like a highly skilled pro player! Then there are times when every shot makes you look like a super noob. My best game lasted about an hour, my worst lasted less than two minutes. Same day, same machine!
3. Easy to operate, maintain and repair. Taxi almost earns the “Gottlieb Bulletproof seal of Invincibility”. Pretty good considering it was a Williams system 11!!! There are few fragile areas, everything works right and, with the exception of the always mentioned battery leakage issue, everything just works. The NVRAM upgrade and a bridge rectifier fuse mod are both highly recommended. Testimony time, a location owner told me this was his most reliable machine. “I haven’t spent hardly anything on it except rubber and bulbs.” He said, “Like my damn Edsel it just goes.”
4. I am not a big fan of LED conversions but this game benefits greatly from it. Adding colors and patterns can turn this somewhat gloomy blandly lit game into something that just shouts awesome!
5. Python Anghelo and Mark Ritchie! To use baseball as a bad analogy, Ritchie is a pitcher. He knows the shots, where to place the ball and how to make you swing miss and swear his name. Every pitch was a perfect one, you just swung at it wrong.
Python was someone who lives out in left field somewhere. He just put a tent out there to live in and would stand next to it waiting for the occasional easy out catch while drawing pictures of Bad cats and Popeye. Geniuses both of them and together they made this machine! The best of both worlds in my opinion.
6. Still relatively cheap and easy to find. Not much to be said there. Value for money is still really good and Taxi comes up for sale frequently enough for you to pick and choose from.
7. Easy and hard. Great for a beginner, also great for a pinvet. I have played a LOT of pinball and I still enjoy coming back to Taxi. I am no pro player (not by a long shot) but I know fun and this is one of those machines. It can be relaxing after playing a much more intense machine, it can also frustrate you into playing again and again… “Come on!! I made that shot a million times!!! Why can’t I hit it!!!” …and so on.

With all that said why don’t I own Taxi and why isn’t it on my wish list?
Limited space. My only current system 11 machine is Jokerz! and I love it’s simplicity and it’s difficulty and it’s not going anywhere anytime soon. I am trying to limit my collection to 6 machines, picking and choosing came down to patience. I never had a problem with waiting for a special machine to appear for sale in the right condition at the right price, and I don’t buy machines just to fill an empty hole in the game room. If I could have Twenty pinball machines, Taxi would definitely be on my list. Also, there is a place nearby that I can play Taxi anytime, within reason of course, for free.
As a first pin or to round out your collection, Taxi would be an excellent choice.

I personally was shocked to see Fathom climb out of the depths of obscurity over the last few years and land a place on many top 100 lists.
I used to think Fathom would always be floating around somewhere in the top 200, because most of the machines that used to be in public locations sailed off to private owners or got broken up for parts. It’s hard to get a good score from new people if they can’t play it. (Emulation players please stay out of these rating systems!!!)
The first time I played Fathom was as a little kid and I was hooked. It floated around the arcades, the roller rink and bowling alleys where I lived for years. You knew it was the same machine because some couples had carved hearts with their initials in them on the right side. In the early 1990’s that machine was cast off to a private owner, and I didn’t see another until about 2008 at a bar on Pensacola beach… Irony!
As a kid I couldn’t imagine the scale and depth of the gameplay, I was looking at the (heh heh!) mermaids and shooting the ball randomly. I got better as time went on and really realized how much I loved Fathom. Years later at the bar on the beach, I played it as much as I could fathom. I even asked if it was for sale but it was still making good money for the owner at the time. Probably mostly my money!
Again, I never thought it would be a top 100 game, There’s even a nostalgia trip modern remake, for all those people who are too young and have no nostalgia for it but just right for investors and flippers!
It’s a good game, but not $6000+ good! Maybe $2000 in good condition.
You would think the people remaking Fathom would try to make new games instead of riding on the coattails of the past, but that’s what happens when people want to make some of that fast and easy lucrative nostalgia $$$ and have absolutely no creativity, skill, or ability to make or do anything original. Stay attached to your shark remoras, and feeding on the scraps left over of the stupid people who went out in the water.
I am at a loss to think of any time a copy or reprint of anything by a knock off company sold for two to three times the value of the original… except in the pinball hobby.
Unfortunately, I believe Fathom did not make it into the top 100 because of its own merits. It’s probably a bunch of hype and fake reviewing by those involved in flipping originals and those involved with or invested in the remake. Which is too bad, but money talks and scammers are everywhere.
I suppose if anyone wants to stop pinball from going through the same hobby destruction that coins, cars, comic books and videogames have gone through, I suggest we all refuse to play along. Pay only fair market value…
That value is determined by how much YOU and other HOBBYISTS are willing to pay not flippers and blue chip investors. Check out ebay for stupid people pinball prices! $4,000 to $6,000 for a Kings of steel that’s worth at best $1200!!!
Also, don’t buy the remakes. Make them realize that pinball is not their free ride to fortune. In other words, treat them as the crappy overpriced off brand knockoffs they are.
Ask yourself, would you buy a brand new copy of The Amazing Spider-Man #1 printed by WhetFaartz publishing under “official license” from Marvel comics? Would you pay twice the price of the current value of the original comic for the tear resistant gloss coated paper, minor bonus story material, limited reprinting run, and special gold colored foil cover they slapped on it? I didn’t think so, but pinball people do.
Anyone wanna buy a fake medieval madness? Oh yes please!!!
How about an 1878 Morgan silver dollar made from all new space age materials (plastic) for only $399.99?
Would you buy a brand new 1968 Mustang fastback assembled with the cheapest aftermarket reproduction body panels China has to offer for $200,000? It will have the Mustang logo (licensed product) but it won’t say Ford, instead it will say Nanjing Automtive Group limited edition and be numbered for your personal bragging rights.
No? Then I ask again, WHY pinball???
Unfortunately this won’t stop anyone from being dumb and soon the top 100 to 200 pinball machines will all be owned and controlled by shady big name auction houses and shareholder investors gambling on the prices increasing and frequently selling those machines back and forth in huge fake news articles to create money. Oh wait, it’s already started with the Museum of pinball auction!
My review: Fathom - a good $2000 game, but it isn’t anymore.

Funhouse?!
Okay, I don’t like this game. The playfield is excellent, shots are great, lots of scoring chances and multiball is crazy fun. I hate the disembodied head.
I am probably the only person who doesn’t call this one of the greatest games of all time, and I will give you a proper reason why.
I was not into the ugly trend, Garbage Pail Kids and that kind of stuff never appealed to me. Here’s a pinball machine with a Howdy Doody looking distorted head stuck in the playfield that talks. Hmmm, no thanks.
Theming is equally important as gameplay. You can have a great TV or movie license but if the playfield is a cookie cutter version of another game or less fun than the no name machine next to it, then the overall package suffers. The same goes if you have a great game but it’s theme is absolutely terrible. Several Gottlieb Premier games for example.
The exception to the rule is when you have collectors snapping up games because it has a certain designers name is attached to it. It instantly makes them the ones with that name superior to many much better games. Also $$$$$$, which is what that kind of thing is really all about. I know, I’ve seen it all before, I used to collect comics back in the day and there are some really bad comics worth tons on money because (insert name here) created it.
The difference though is that this is a really good pinball machine with a less than crowd pleasing theme. Now remember, these are just my opinions, there are plenty of Chuckie movie fans who would love this machine.
There’s nothing wrong with taking chances, trying something different, or appealing to a niche audience. It’s just surprising that Williams approved so many oddball games in the late 1980’s considering their main goal was to make profits for themselves and their buyers via mass audience appeal.
We are also lucky that they did allow those outside of the box games to be made.
That’s why Funhouse exists, and although I may not like it, I understand why it is so popular and why it is so desirable. If this is your type of thing you need to own this machine. I always play it whenever I see it on location somewhere, but I really have no desire to own it.

Lion Man!!!
Okay, that’s annoying.
I first started writing a review of Swords of Fury a couple days ago. It seemed pretty negative even though I like the machine, so I decided not to submit my rating and go take another look. There’s one in a public location just down the road… about 90 miles.
Art:
The playfield is really nice, love the blue theme. Blue pinball machines always get a thumbs up from me.
The backglass and cabinet, well, hmm… I wish they had an artist who could rip off Frank Frazetta instead of one who looks like their sword and sorcery art would be published by Charlton comics in the early 1970’s. It’s not bad, just not WOW!!!!
Design:
This is a playfield!!! There is a lot going on here and a lot of fun shots. The difficulty level is fairly high if you are using the ruleset, but you can just blast the ball wherever just to have a good time. Some games have no multiball and play great without it, others have multiball but it’s just a nice bonus that’s not necessary but adds an extra level of fun. Then there are games that don’t have multiball and need it desperately and others where multiball is utterly completely and totally nessesary. You can probably figure out which one of these Swords of Fury is!
Sound and music:
Hmm, being terribly honest I’d say the sound is lacking. I don’t expect a full orchestra and a score that loosely resembles the Lord of the rings soundtrack with subtle hints of Conan the Barbarian. It’s far better than the cheesy synth rock music on the Dungeons and Dragons pinball, and I won’t say it’s a “volume off” game either. Just not to my taste, sorry. The sound… I am trying not to be negative but I keep thinking Thundercats every time it says Lion Man!!! “That’s Lion-O you silly pinball!!!”
Gameplay and funfactor:
This game is fun as fun gets! Everything negative I pick on gets overridden by the gameplay and fun factor. It is a steaming bag of frustration one time, the next it lets you get a good score. Each ball goes wherever the heck it wants when you try to be precise but then you synchronize with the ball and the shots come perfect and naturally, until the ball changes it’s mind and goes wherever it wants to again. It can’t be played once then walk away, no, it demands one more game over and over. If you are thinking about owning this game, it’s definitely worth your money. I don’t own it or have it on my wishlist because I have limited space in my game room and a few other games have priority on my one remaining free space, but if I had room for ten more machines, this would probably be one of them.

You aren’t allowed to say anything bad about Pat Lawlor, apparently that’s an unwritten pinball law. There isn’t anything bad to say about the man anyway, but honestly, what was he thinking?
If I take this thing, put it out in the sun and water it occasionally, will it eventually grow to full size?
The rarity and the Lawlor name keep this in the top 100. The machine, if mass produced, would put in the mid 200’s at best.
That’s how popularity contests work.
So let’s kneel on the floor and play this thing.
Pro’s:
It’s actually pretty fun. I wouldn’t call it just a pinball machine. It’s more of a hybrid between a gum ball pinball, a slot machine, a skee ball, and a prize machine.
What it’s got going for it is a good playfield, rewards, and addictive gameplay.
Con’s:
The size. Great for little kids but us big kids would lift it and cheat.
Seriously though, tiny is cute and this is cute and tiny, but it feels like it’s aimed at turning children into casino players, not pinball players. That may be reading too much into it, but WMS Industries was all about their casinos and slot machine business, and didn’t give two $h!t$ about Pinball. It probably got approved because it was a bit of a gateway gambling machine. Every time I played it, it was in a casino “family videogame room”, so there you go.
The art is passable at best. It doesn’t scream out “Hey, stupid! Play this new game from Pat Lawlor! Yowza! It’s awesome!!!” It sort of says “Um, bling.. bling? Yeah, I go bling!” Same with the sounds. It’s a step down from what pinball had been doing and not really exciting.
Ball timers???? I don’t even want to talk about it! It works, sort of, but why???
The irritating mini flippers. Somewhat accurate, somewhat frustrating, actually may be a positive thing now that I think about it.

Taking things in new directions is always good. Doing things nobody has done before is good. If Safe Cracker had come out about four years earlier, been tweaked and improved a little, then given to every arcade with prize redemption booths and Chuck E. Cheese restaurants, I think it would have become a huge hit and a string of these machines would have followed from every manufacturer. The concept and idea are fun, as is the gameplay. The problem is it’s just a novelty now, like the joust pinball Baby Pac-man and those wacky hexagon pinball sit down tables. Rarity and name recognition does not make one great, but it helps a lot.

Dum dum dum dum dum dum dum dum
FLASH!!
(KABOOM)
Ahh ahhhh!!!
Okay, nostalgia for a cheesy 80’s movie with Queen music makes people take notice of the pinball machine.
Would you believe there was a time when Flash Gordon was a big failure?
Thanks to repeated showings on cable (blame Ted Turner) the film became a cult classic.
The pinball had a slightly more favorable reception. I remember the teenagers at the roller rink talking this machine up. “The movie was bad but the pinball is cool!”
8 year old me immediately tried it and it took my quarter in less than a minute.
That’s not fun!!!
Although it was a permanent machine in the roller rink until the day it closed, I never tried it again.
It became more interesting in my mid twenties. A local arcade had one, staring me down and laughing at me. I fed it money many times until I got mediocre at it.
Besides, we were halfway through the 1990’s by then and new games were demanding that I play them.
I recently played it again and it beat me up and took my lunch money, as usual.
Enough about me, Let’s talk the finer points.
Art:
FLASH!!! Ahh ahhhh! Sorry. This is how a film based pinball should look. It is the movie poster and imagery you expect. The only downside is Flash himself on the backglass. Does he need to poop? Does he have a toothache? Is he worried about the state of affairs in the Falkland Islands? Who can say. Should have used the “Yeah!” Jump from the end of the movie.
Playfield design:
Pop. Bumpers. In. The. Middle. Of. The. Playfield.
What genius thought “Amazing! They will never cause the ball to always instantly constantly fly at Mach 3 downwards towards the drain.” Yeah it’s a love hate playfield, and probably one of the hardest and accuracy demanding ones ever designed. The best way to play is to shove two crushed pop cans under the front legs. (Kidding! Nobody ever did that back in the day, wink wink.)
Sound:
Great for 1980 standards. Repetitive, even then though. I like to use what I call the Sinistar scale. Sinistar said like five things but it was done in such a way that it was taunting and even a bit scary. Anyway Gorgar speaks, The-Black-Knight-Challenges-Thee and Flash… shut up Ming! It tries and in many ways succeeds but it feels like maybe they should have a cheap squeak style board instead. Maybe I’m being too picky but I never liked the sound.
Gameplay and fun factor:
It will chew you up and spit you out and you will like it and beg for more. I can’t say this is a game for everyone. More like a game to train someone to be a better player. The fun factor suffers because of this, until you get your first successful score out of it. I would give it a better score, but there are many people who want to play a game for fun, even if they generally suck at pinball. That’s the fun factor this game lacks to those not interested in precision or discipline. An eight year old will have a blast shooting the ball around on Attack from Mars, Gold Wings, Comet, or Night Rider (just to name a few). Put them in front of Flash Gordon and they will probably instantly hate pinball. People that want that extra challenge will seek it out when the feel they are in top form and ready for a good fight. There’s the fun factor but it doesn’t have a balance between both casual and serious play.
But it is in the top 100 on here, and on other top pinball lists. The reason is because you want to like it, you want to be challenged you want to master it, learn from it and, most importantly, you want to beat it.
That’s what a good game is all about.

I don’t like being negative about a game, but the letdown on Jurassic park is the sound.
You have a John Williams (hee hee shoulda been made by that company) classic soundtrack that’s been digitized and has a bunch of staticky noises and vocal callouts over it, drowning out the music. Overall it’s a really noisy game and, hate to say it, repetitive.
The playfield is good, as is the movie themed artwork. Jurassic Park was Speilberg’s Star Wars, a merchandising cash cow. The market was flooded with licensed merchandise well before the film was even out in theaters. By the time I got around to playing the pinball I was Jurassic Parked out, mostly thanks to the Sega Genesis game. The theme works with the licensed product but probably not as well as I anticipated. What did I expect, a velociraptor with a magnet in his mouth that bends over as the ball goes by and randomly snatches it and flings it down an out hole??? Yeah, kinda.
Regardless, this is a pretty good movie themed game, but not great. At the time I thought Sega (Data East) were struggling for ideas and were relying on huge licensing deals alone to sell their mediocre games.
Playing it in later years, I mellowed towards the licensed product and enjoyed it for its pinballiness.
Many shots are smooth as butter, the challenges and difficulty levels are tough but not impossible, the playfield is well laid out once you study it.
I could come up with a million ways to improve it, which is something that rarely happens. When I play a pinball, I may say that the spinner doesn’t spin enough or the upper playfield flippers are too short. This one has a lot of things I would change or add if I worked on it back in the day… and I don’t mean more shirtless Jeff Goldbloom on the DMD!!!
Just an example, famous scene from the movie - the puddle shaking as the t-Rex approaches. How about a magnet capture, the GI turns off then light pulses on and off and the magnet shakes the ball as the T-rex foot thumps come closer. Lights go out, roar is heard with t-rex on DMD, and multiball starts with GI lights flashing! Yeah!
Okay probably not practical but you get the idea.
A fun game but, you know, it coulda been great!

Black Rose, a game we all want to love…
But…
Anything with pirates is instantly cool. Even bad films, books, or video games get a slightly higher rating if pirates are involved, unless we’re talking about pirating said item, that’s not cool.
Black Rose has potential. Not just because of pirates but because it all almost comes together.
Keep in mind that I have a very difficult time talking about the negatives of the machines from the 1990’s WPC golden era. There is no doubt that pinball had reached a crescendo never seen before or since. It actually gets to the point where you feel you are comparing Michelangelo’s to Raphael’s. Not the turtles…
Black Rose isn’t as strong of a game as most others from this era.
There! I said it.
Doesn’t mean I wouldn’t love to own one, but I love all pinball.
Sound and music:
The music is really good, as is the sound quality. One of the problems lies in the callouts. “Shoot this! Do that! Nag nag nag!” First of all don’t tell me, I know! I get it! Secondly, either the voices and I have been married too long or they hired my mother back when ai was a teenager. Sure this isn’t as heavy handed as Cirqus Voltaire or Tales of the Arabian Nights, but it’s there just the same.
If your ruleset and shots are so confusing that you have to have an announcer tell the player where to shoot the ball, then your playfield is the problem, not the player.
Design:
There are problems with this playfield as well, the design is torn between instant reward no brainer shots and difficult hidden or obscured targets. The flow is interrupted by trick shots and stupid luck shots. It’s missing the middle type shots. A very unbalanced game that is challenging but loses its fun Good, but not great.
Artwork:
Here’s a shining example of a good art package. Although the toys are a bit cluttered, the game art is incredibly attractive. The side of the cabinet Black Rose logo stands out, sadly most pinballs have this area obscured by other nearby machines. Some of the art looks a bit cluttered but it all does what it’s supposed to do, attract attention.
Fun factor and lastabiliy:
Subjective opinion is up to the individual. I found the game to be a bit too shallow and repetitive. If the repetition is fun, this isn’t a problem, but many shots on this machine are somewhat a chore to build up to the next minor award. On the other hand, if you aren’t playing it frequently I’d assume this wouldn’t be a problem, but three games on this machine seems to be the limit until next time.
The big question would probably be is it a keeper. I can’t say. If I bought one, would I keep it forever or blast a few hundred games on it and then sell it on to the next person. Pirates of the Caribbean may be a better choice for some, others may prefer a non pirate containing licensed product like Terminator 2 or Whatever. The right theme helps drive the lastability factor quite a lot with many owners, This game is for someone who really loves pirates but really hates Disney pirates.
That’s me to be honest!
You won’t see people lining up to play Black Rose. This is a benefit because you don’t have to wait at a small show like you would to play the Indiana Jones. I once heard someone say “If it were a System 11 game, Black Rose would probably be forgotten.” Sad, but probably true. I still love the machine, but let’s be honest, it’s not one of the Holy Grail games everyone in general loves. Just a really good game that just happened to be a part of the golden era of pinball.

Pac-Man fever. It was really a thing and as a kid I had a lot of Pac-Man collectibles.
Bally-Midway attempted to milk this cash cow to its fullest and good for them that they did! If Namco had their way, there would be no Ms. Pac-Man, Super Pac-Man, Pac-Man plus, junior, or Baby. And no pinball. Namco didn’t like sequels or spin-offs, at least not ones they hadn’t created. It was, after all, their IP.
In 1982 the Mr. & Mrs. Pac-Man pinball machine arrived. (I didn’t actually see one until the Summer of 1983) and it was very popular.. When the crowds died down, I was finally able to play it. It was incredibly hard for a 10 year old me! I loved Pac-Man, but for pinball I would rather play that cool Black Knight machine, at least on that I had mastered getting multiball. So it went in the local Arcade and Roller skating rink in 1983.
Several times over the years I have nearly bought one of these machines. I have played it many times and, although simple with lots of targets, it has a challenging set of objectives.
Art:
Looks like Pac-Man, that’s all that really needs to be said. It looks like everything else Pac-Man from the 1980’s.
Design:
This falls somewhere in between basic SS machines of the era and cutting edge. The playfield appears rather standard, but they attempted to make a maze game in the middle. There is good flow and shots are fun, the only downside is the light maze breaking up the gameplay. A neat idea way ahead of its time or the technology to execute it properly.Imagine this redone on a WPS system though.
Sound:
Sounds like Pac-Man. Need I say more? Okay, impressive quality. Probably the best and most varied sounds from a Bally machine at the time.
Fun factor:
This is where the problems are. It’s fun in small doses. It doesn’t make you want to play it every time you see it, mostly because the frustration levels are pretty low. For comparison sake, I play Jokerz! both in the wild or in our game room. Wherever I am, if I see a Jokerz!, I will play it. The game ticks you off, drains the ball, laughs at you, and you know you can get the high score if the machine would just cooperate!!! Furthermore, it has so many feel good shots. Mr. & Mrs. Pac-Man doesn’t really evoke that desire or urge.
When I go into our game room, I play every machine at least once. I know that if I owned a Mr. & Mrs. Pac-Man, I would probably only play it a couple times a month at most. I would love to have it, but it just wouldn’t get used enough.
It’s a good game, don’t get me wrong, but I’d much rather play the upright Ms. Pac-Man machine downstairs.

One of the greatest light shows in pinball, and that’s just the attract mode! If the light toppers are operating, the game becomes almost blinding in its dazzle.
That said, F14 Tomcat is a Steve Ritchie hit and miss.
Game design:
There are a lot of good feeling shots on F14, ramps, ball locks, loops, etc. This draws you in. Sadly, once you have these under control, there is very little else to shoot for. There are areas that are a little too easy and objectives that are challenging. When I saw a 12 year old girl shooting the same loop over and over and getting the high score because of it, I realized the flaw in this game. On the other hand, if you play by the rules and attempt to complete the objectives, it will chew you up and spit you out.
There are a lot of repetitive loop exploits on pinball machines, but this one, as that little girl showed me, took very little concentration.
Artwork:
“Welcome to Top Gu…. Oh wait, we didn’t pay for the licensing rights!” I thing just about everyone was making a Top Gun ripoff in that time. Look at Gottlieb/Premier for the most blatant one. (Hoo boy!) when I first saw this machine it was sitting right next to an AfterBurner II sit down arcade. What an awesome combination the arcade manager came up with!!! Because of that, when I play F14, I feel like I am playing the pinball version of AfterBurner. It’s like drinking a Mountain Dew when you expected Coke. The cabinet art is nice and the Translite is really awesome. Again, there’s that attract mode light show and those stupid gimmick lights up top to blind anyone who looks at it at the wrong time. I love it!
Sounds:
How do I mod it to play the AfterBurner II theme? Seriously though, The sound and music are good, very Top Gun and maybe Cold War era James Bond bad guy mixed in. Too loud sometimes too staticky sometimes, but you really can’t turn the volume down to a quiet level because it ruins the overall effect. This game would really have benefited from the later WPC DCS system sound. There’s just too much going on for a System 11.
Gameplay and Funfactor:
This is where F14 Tomcat is a real winner. All those ramps and loops, the noise, the lights, it all comes together to make a fun experience. Admittedly, this game is not a keeper for most people, and it’s not a low cost hidden gem by any means. Just a good solid machine to add to a collection until something else comes along. Some say it’s a good “starter machine”, but I disagree. It’s too complex for a noob to repair their first time out and potentially flammable because of the bridge rectifier issue (they haven’t all been fixed yet)! Fully shopped and battery modded F14’s would probably be good starter machines, but I would still warn against it if you have ceiling height limitations (it’s tall with the lights) or feel you can’t repair or maintain the thing.
F14 Tomcat is still cheap as chips and needs to remain so. These machines need to circulate in and out of both home collections and public locations. As I said before, it may not be a keeper for most people, but it is a good game to own for a time.

I want to go line by line on this game.
Phoenix 1980,Williams.
“Oh… it’s not Firepower… sigh…”
Haters gonna hate, right?
Admittedly, Firepower is a classic but I feel Phoenix is a bit of a hidden gem.
“What? You crazy?”
(I am airquoting typical responses I’d expect during this review.)
Let’s go through the list:
Game Design:
Okay I admit I like Barry Oursler’s designs. Just like the more popular talent everyone always sings the praises of, he also knew how to make a game work, most of the time without a movie license, playfield toys, or anything elaborate. He kept his games simple yet fun and challenging. He was also the master of making coin munching machines, which Williams and the vendors loved very much.
Artwork:
Both stunning and disappointing. The flames everywhere and the Backglass are fantastic, the cabinet is lacking. It may be a bit misogynistic to say, but this game would have been huge in the day with a few hot half nekkid ladies on it. Better yet, if they had ripped off Phoenix from the x-men comics of the era (green clad Phoenix and red clad Dark Phoenix) you know how companies did it without paying licensing fees, something like a very well endowed red headed woman in a green bikini or something.
Sound:
Yeah it’s digital bleeps and bloops, but it has the fake chime option!!! With the flick of a switch your machine goes from the futuristic sounds of the 1980’s to the pleasant and reassuring old familiar bells of ‘the good old days’. Yeah, the sound is okay, but it’s early solid state days. That’s the excuse and it’s fine.
Subjective opinions:
Game play and Fun factor. This is not a game that will make you so excited that you will run to your basement every free moment you have to play it. It’s one that sits in the corner while you play your new Stern or that Lawlor game from 1993. It’s the middle child between your Op Pop Pop and the F14 Tomcat lined up in your garage.
I just realized that’s where this machine belongs. Your game room has all the impressive high dollar games for your friends and family to ooh and ahh over. Out in the garage where you change your wife’s oil and tinker with that rusty old Plymouth you’ve been restoring for the last six years, you need a pinball machine. One that is cheap, runs forever without needing anything, and one you can play when the car work isn’t going very well. Take a break and play off the stress and frustrations with a game or two.
There are a number of machines that suit this type of usage and most of them are from the late 1970’s to the early 1980’s

Finally, I’d like to add that all games are not top 20 and popularity and quality can be two very different things. We all like very different things, and ratings vary from person to person. I don’t believe there are any bad pinball machines, and even ones I didn’t enjoy at all will still get a fair score. I don’t do 1’s people, and neither should you if you are a pinball fan. You’re basically saying the world would be a better place if nothing was made instead of the pinball machine you think is a one. So ask yourself if you were on a desert island, had everything you needed to survive, and the only entertainment was that pinball machine you scored a 1 to, would you rather it not be there?
Other people will say a perfect 10 is impossible (IPDB says so), but if a game hits all the right marks for you, why not give it a 10, but explain in detail your reasons.. unless it’s the place your first born was conceived… eew. If that’s the case, skip the details and just say “romantic evening” or something.
Opinions matter and it’s just as nice to see things like “I met my wife or husband playing Phoenix” as it is to hear someone rage over the sound effects giving them a migraine.

You gotta like the theme!
Or should that be a question…
When it comes to buying machines, two things really need to be taken into consideration:
1. How good (or bad) does it play? Is it fun enough where you won’t get bored of it or is it repetitive and lackluster.
2. Does the theme appeal to you? Are you a fan of the licensed product or the art style (if it’s not a IP based machine)? Do you only drink coffee but bought a Pepsi-Man Pinball even though Pepsi tastes like malted battery acid to you?
I wish they had made a Pepsi-Man pinball!!!

There are many people who buy machines because it’s “popular” or “valuable” and have no interest in the theme of it. Take for example that the 1990’s Addams Family movies weren’t actually very good, many people never even saw them but they want the pinball machine because it’s $$$$$!!!! and because it is incredibly fun.
Some properties can sell the machine without the game being all that great. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, for example.
South Park is Okay.
It’s better if you like South Park!
I do, but it’s certainly no top 100 game… maybe not even top 250.
But that’s not saying it’s a turd sandwich made by giant douches.
It’s fun, it entertains, but a casual fan would have a hard time adding this to their collection. The one major selling point is the Vchip option, or rather deactivating it so the swearing can begin in earnest!
Is it a $3000 machine? No, but some people will pay that much or more. Value is only based on how stupid you are willing to be in order to own something.
I’m not that stupid, I passed on one at $2400 because it was too much, even if I am a South Park fan.
In perfect operating condition, that would be a decent price, but the one I looked at worked, but needed a lot of little fixes… and flipper rebuilds.
Most people get rid of machines they are tired of. Most of the time to make room for something new. This one ends up being traded out a lot, and can frequently be found in operation out in the wild, which probably says something positive and negative about South Park.

Mata Hari! The pinball that makes you want to learn about history… or at least watch the Peabody and Sherman short on the old Rocky end Bullwinkle cartoons.
A very popular machine in its day with multiple variations to the game; pre production units, versions with plastic playfields, EM versions, Solid State versions… oh, that’s about it.
Christiansen art!!! Yowza!
They made a lot of them, which should say a lot about it’s quality.
Sadly, the older a machine, the less exciting it is to most pinball fans. There’s no DMD, no licensed soundtrack, no movie or TV tie in, no toys, no shaker motors, LED light shows, multiball madness, or wizard mode.
It has chimes ding ding ping ping donk!
Mata Hari is one of the early games I played as a little kid. Think 1982, roller skating rink, PAC-Man had a line as always.
Also the bowling alley and the local arcade each had one.
One machine wasn’t following me around town… at least I hope not!
Nostalgia established. That’s part of what makes a game great.
What really made Mata Hari great for me was that a quarter got you five balls, (they set five ball on older machines a lot back then), and I could play forever on one quarter.
Bottom line, it was fun. The roller skating rink had the chimes disabled, they don’t want to hear that noise during Open Arms by Journey… but the one at the bowling alley dinged like mad!
Some machines are meant to be eternally cheap in the market. Bad games, games that were made obsolete by the invention of the sound board and plastic ramps, and games that everyone should play once in their life. Mata Hari should be played once in your life.
The shots are fun, the difficulty is well balanced and the theme is dark red, a mustachioed fellow of distinction and a hot chick… What’s not to like?
Okay so the hot chick doesn’t top Future Spa, but Dave had help on that one, and I am sure many yung-uns learned all about the birds and the bees from the Future Spa back glass alone.
It’s funny how a game without gimmicks, toys, ramps, or anything like that can be so fun. It’s not going to attract modern players unless you draw a baby Yoda rocking out with The Avengers somewhere on it, but if you force a kid to try it, they may find out that it’s not so bad, and maybe even admit that it’s kind of fun, even without a touch screen and online multiplayer.

UPDATE: From the Wifebot 10/25/2021 - “We saw one on our local Craigslist the other day and bought it. Such a fantastic looking machine! I highly recommend buying one! There are a lot of them out there, parts are cheap, it’s incredibly easy to maintain, and you won’t be out thousands of dollars by the time you’re done.”

I usually don’t rate games I’ve played on only one occasion and never ones I have only played on digital pinball simulators.
Furthermore, if you rate a “Holy Grail game” too low, certain butthurt users will flag your comments because you dared to be honest.
Everyone has a theory why WMS (no longer called Williams, even then) stopped making pinball. The bottom line is that the powers that be wanted out of the pinball business for years before Pin2000, the pinball division was losing money. Slot machines were the cash cow.
The 1990’s pinball explosion left locations owners and vendors with a mountain of great money making games to choose from that never needed replacing with anything new.
Those are just a few contributing factors (certainly not the whole story!!!) to the pinball implosion of the late 1990’s.
My personal opinion as a player back then was that I was happy playing Addams Family and a handful of other classic pinball machines that I loved. The newer machines appeared to be trying too hard to stick out like a sore thumb and weren’t nearly as addictive.
Also they were slapping any movie or TV license they could on most of them, without regard to if the product was any good. Non licensed product games were still being made, but no longer as attractive to operators or the general public. This eventually led to all your modern pinball releases. It’s all rare machine/nostalgia remakes or popular licensed products.
I think it’s important to point out that pinball manufacturers never learned what videogames figured out, sequels and upgrades sell! You can sell a Street Fighter alpha 3 machine because SFA2 is obsolete in the players eyes. Same with the Mortal Kombat series and so many others. Sequels sell and everyone wants to play the newest familiar installment.
When the rare pinball sequels were made, they usually didn’t take the original concept to the next level of entertainment and gameplay. Good games like Firepower, Black Knight, and High speed, for example, received sequels but those sequels didn’t always a big hit. Stern does sequels today, sort of, with a new Marvel or Star Wars game just about every year or two it seems.
While many video game machines of the 1990’s had swappable software to upgrade existing cabinets, Pinball had nothing of the sort. Pinball2000 was an attempt at making modular interchangeable playfields and artwork, with it’s easy upgrade system. But by then it was too little, too late with nothing to swap except for the two games that came out in their own cabinets. The concept was good, but it was never practical.
Finally, pinball machines that weren’t designed well, incomplete, or buggy left the factory floor “as-is” with little or no post sale support or upgrades.

I know, I need to review Cactus Canyon, so why “the history of pinball” lecture? Because it’s place in the best pinball lists is entirely based on that history, and it’s value in the marketplace solely on the number produced.
Cactus Canyon checked a lot of negative boxes.
It was buggy and incomplete.
It didn’t have a movie or TV license, but somewhat pretended to. (Not a bad thing, but in a time when everything was getting a licensed character, it would be overlooked by the general public.)
Although it brings nostalgic feelings for old western classic pinballs, like Gun Smoke among others, nobody (TV movies etc.) was doing anything successful in the western genre at that time.
It’s rare, didn’t sell well, and was largely ignored and forgotten in its time.
It was “the end of pinball”. (Present day renaissance excluded)
It eventually received an unofficially official upgrade to fix the problems and make it good, which brings up the argument of preservation versus playability, which I won’t touch with a ten foot pole!
And finally, It’s getting the remake treatment like Medieval madness, Fathom, and Attack from Mars.
This is one of those few times where the remake may be better than the original, only time will tell.
In all honesty I wanted to love Cactus Canyon, and wondered why I never saw another one. It wasn’t until the internet became better organized that most of us found out why the game simply didn’t exist anywhere. Thanks to the IPDB we learned that there were less than 1,000 units made… Ugh!
Until recently, the only place to play this game was at shows, museums, or digitally on the now defunct pinball arcade season 2 pack. How shortsighted was Farsight studios not to lock down those licensing rights?
I am not a big fan of digital pinball emulation, but it helps draw in new and old fans to the hobby, so I can’t complain.
In the end, Cactus Canyon was a good game that needed time to be finished. In both the concept and artistic sense it is a great machine. As a player… it needs the unofficially official upgrade.
As it was released, not looking at the rarity or it’s place in history, it was okay at best. Not the worst game of the era, but it certainly wouldn’t earn its place in the top 100 without the rarity or the history.
That’s fine though. These lists aren’t about the bestest great playing addictive games, they are simply popularity contests and about driving the prices up.
That’s not a complaint either, all of pinball gets a boost in popularity and value. You’ll never hear me say ranking lists and competition is not good! It’s for fun and entertainment. Also, thank you Casey Kasem and the American top 40 for making popularity lists important back in the day!
If these lists were just about quality and gameplay and not the licensing deal or the rarity, the top 20 wouldn’t be packed with all the newest remakes, Rock bands, and Mandalorians.
So Cactus Canyon… I want to love it, it makes me smile and the potential for best game ever is there. As it was, it was a sad, incomplete, broken end to a great era.
Flag me if you like, but thankfully we all don’t have to love the same thing, and that’s what makes the diversity of pinball over nearly a whole century so great, so many games, so many different styles, all of them are good, most are great, and few are true Holy Grails. I really can’t wait to try the Cactus Canyon remake so I can (hopefully) love it!

I don’t have to try to convince anyone that they should buy the best selling pinball machine.
Instead, let me tell you why it became the best selling pinball machine and why it’s still loved and praised many decades later.
Lightning in a bottle.
Perfectly aligned stars.
Chocolate colliding with peanut butter.
Addams Family wasn’t perfect, but it did something few other machines ever could.
The correct movie license at just the right time, great sound, and fair yet challenging gameplay.
It’s all been said before with much better wording but I couldn’t agree more. Instead, I will briefly recount my first experience.
When this came out, I was in the USAF at Sheppard AFB. There were some pinball machines and arcade games on base, nothing really interesting. Then, one fateful day The Addams Family replaced some old Gottlieb machine.
I didn’t care much for the movie (too flashy and celebrity driven, I was a big fan of the original TV series) but it was magnetic and I had to play it.
I spent a weeks worth of pay shoving quarters in that machine! Not a joke, my girlfriend at the time was furious!
Over the years, every time I saw an Addams Family I had to play it… I must have spent more than its MSRP by now.
I never bought one, although I passed on a few chances to without major regret. I feel it’s one of the few machines that shouldn’t be hidden away in the basement of someone’s private collection. They need to be out there, in public locations attracting new people into the magic of pinball.
It has the power to do it, and it does it so very well.

I didn’t want to rate Bad Cats because it’s on my wishlist.
Why?
Because if everyone finds out about it they will all want one!
Not exactly true, but demand already outweighs the availability by quite a lot, considering it’s very low pinscore rating.
Barry Oursler and Python Anghelo … spelling autocorrection is fighting me and I lost… Try again!
Barry and Python, the two great tastes that go great together!
I am one of the rare Barry - Python fans. Many people say Barry was either brilliant or dog meat when making games. Not all his ideas were hits and he made a couple stinkers, but when everything clicked, he was a genius.
Python was just plain weird. His designs were like mad magazine, heavy metal and looney toons mixed into a bucket and thrown on a pinball machine.
That said, when they worked together, as they often did, you usually got something special that causes very polarizing opinions.
Jokerz!, Bad Cats, and Popeye Saves the Earth for example.
The animated lady with the broom swatting a cat in the back glass is exactly what I mean.
Bad Cats isn’t over complicated, doesn’t feature a non conventional playfield, and isn’t full of ramps and toys.
But the art makes it feel like it does.
If it doesn’t make you laugh every time you lose a ball with the meow song then this game is not for you.
You can’t even get mad because it’s funny! And it never gets old.
I kind of wish they had made this game during the infamous 1992 to 1995 era, with all the toys and everything available during that time. It would have either been a top 10 Addams Family style game or been a total catastrophic failure. (See what I did there?)
I thing the only negative I can come up with is that it doesn’t appeal to most people. The gameplay is more in line with games from the early 1980’s: plunk in a quarter, shoot the ball three times, get frustrated and plunk in another quarter. Most people would be turned off by its coin munching abilities.
It dumps the ball through the outholes faster than you can say Jokerz! and doesn’t have the nostalgia, name recognition, or gimmicks of other great System 11 games like Whirlwind, F14 Tomcat, Elvira and the Party Monsters, Black Knight 2000, Pinbot, Dr. Dude, Cyclone, Earthshaker, Diner, and of course High Speed…. Just to name a few off my personal want list.
Also, it doesn’t match anyone’s decor, unless you are a cat lady and have a love of blah colors!
Put Bad Cats between an F14 Tomcat and a whirlwind and nobody would believe that it’s a system 11 like the other two, it looks very late 1960’s to mid 1970’s.
Part of the appeal I guess!
So please don’t drive the price up, I haven’t found one yet and I have a limited budget! If anyone has one in good shape for a decent, non-flipper price, I needs me some Bad Cats!!!

My wife and kids love this machine…
We have real gophers in our field, real gophers are neither cute or funny, but they are quite annoying and destructive.
I don’t play golf.
All I think of is Caddyshack, without actually licensing the property to use the name or characters.
Those are some of my negative points.
Like all pinballs this plays completely different in real life. I am sure that there are people who have played virtual pinball versions for consoles and PC by Pinball arcade or one of those virtual pinball tables. If you have only played virtual pinball, then
don’t give ratings or reviews for real pinball games.
Or at least post a disclaimer saying that you have never played the real thing.
I may be forced by my family to buy no good gofers, I am not thrilled.
The theme is good.
The artwork is lively and charming.
The sounds are satisfactory and the music/noise are entertaining.
But…
The playfield is cluttered and confusing, even after staring it down for several minutes every time I play, I still find it reminds me of a playland for little kids while mom and dad shop at the mall for Christmas.
Or Teletubbies…
Maybe it was because I first played it at a Chuck E Cheese when my daughter was little. She’s 25 now.
It always seemed like it was made for small children. I was I n my 20’s at the time and I was obviously not the target audience.
This may seem like a LOT of negativity but the game, for all its issues, is a lot of fun.
It’s loud, annoying, I still have no idea how to shoot the ball to get it to do what I want it to do, and just celebrate like I meant to do it when something good happens randomly.
Everyone is drawn to it, like moths to a flame.
It’s frustrating enough to make you play again and again.
It makes people smile, even me.
But:
I don’t know if it’s a keeper.
With the price people are asking today, is it worth the money for No Good Gofers when that same amount of money, or less, will get you a much better game?
Compared to most machines in the $4,000 average price range, it pales by comparison, and some people are asking $6500 or more!!!
Investment wise, this game is a pretty good bet, but I am not a flipper or investor.
Still, values will rise so long as the demand remains steady, and that at least it keeps restorable machines from being broken up for parts.
I like this game but I don’t love it. Our game room only contains games we all love.
These are really the two things you have to weigh for yourself if you are thinking of buying any game.
Do you love it enough to pay the current market asking price, then continue to maintain it and use it after you get it?
Is there another machine you would rather have and are willing to wait with an empty spot in your game room until that one perfect game shows up?
It’s up to you.

Ah, pinball 2000… what can you say that’s not already been said?
Well, I won’t recount the sad Pinball 2000 story, watch the documentary about it if you don’t know. I don’t even want to talk about the merger of pinball and video. It was both brilliant and stupid. Enough said.
I have almost bought several different copies of Revenge from Mars over the years. Almost as in “I came to my senses.” Many of the cheap ones had monitor issues or display board problems. There are modern ways of fixing those problems, but then they are no longer original. I suppose that’s a word of warning to potential buyers, not that it can’t be fixed or modded with modern stuff, rather you are maintaining a pinball machine and a videogame in one box. Double the work and the original monitor is quite heavy.
The game itself is a delight. Being a sequel to Attack from Mars, it doesn’t live up to the spectacular original, but it’s not disappointing like Firepower II. Trying new things it not always bad.
When I first played this machine back in 2002 (late to the party again!) I didn’t like it. The playfield is very short, many of the targets are sensors on the playfield that the monitor makes an animation for, via reflection, through the playfield glass, and so on. I must have sounded like those people in the late 1970’s who rejected solid state because pinball must have gears and bells and chimes.
It grew on me as I played it more but, even today, I feel it’s not a great idea, and certainly not a good pinball videogame hybrid.
But I rate the game very highly, and almost bought one several times… why? Because it’s weird and unconventional? No, because it’s really fun.
It’s not Baby Pac-Man!!!
The animations are good, voices are annoyingly loud, music is solid, and the gameplay is entertaining.
I don’t think that I will ever own one, but I do enjoy it when I am out in the wild, like last week in fact.

Just like they’re doing to every great sci fi franchise like Star Trek and Star Wars, Modern Doctor Who was destroyed from within by Doctor Nasty and Chibs the idiot. This isn’t about that.
Classic Doctor Who will always be great, and you can always pretend that it ended and never came back after 1989.
The game was made during the wilderness years of Doctor Who, a strange time to pick up the rights, considering the series had been off the air since 1989…
But it was the upcoming 30th anniversary of Doctor who, (made during the 29th anniversary, but that’s okay) and there were great plans at the BBC for that anniversary… that never came to be.
But we got Doctor Who pinball!!!
This game will make a classic Doctor who fan cry with joy, just as much as it made us cry with sadness back when Doctor Who was cancelled.
The difficulty level is way up there, especially considering the wide flipper spacing and the open playfield that causes balls to drain often.
Targets and rules are pretty straightforward but even those are of a higher difficulty level, you won’t beat it in a few days.
We all have played a lot of pinball, some licensed games appeal only to the fans of the product. The previous owner of this machine loved it a lot, owned it for five years but was making room for a Mandalorian machine. He admitted that he never watched one episode of Doctor Who.
That’s got to be a pretty good machine!
Edit:
I thought I would make it clear why this machine gets such an incredibly biased high score from me. Summary:Lifetime Doctor who fan, have wanted this machine since it was released. This is not only pinball, but good pinball and represents the ultimate in fan memorabilia, like Star Trek TNG would be to a Trekkie pinball fan. My score stands, when considering the complete package, few games would make me happier!

I keep missing out.
I have wanted this machine since I first played it at a greyhound bus stop in Indianapolis when I was a teenager. A year later, I encountered another one at another Greyhound bus stop in Colorado Springs.
Did Greyhound buy all of them??
Yes there was one in Minneapolis too, and in Kentucky, and some place in the middle of nowheresville Kansas.
Since then I have seen numerous ones for sale, either I didn’t have the cash or wasn’t quick enough to contact the seller.
I suck at playing whirlwind.
Seriously! I am good at playing many pinball machines, but Whirlwind isn’t one of them.
A game lasts less than 10 minutes for me, although I have had a few great scores over the years.
But I love it! It’s frustrating, fun, and challenging.
In the end, it’s not really a very special machine. The gimmicks are neat, the spinning play field, a fan on the top that blows at different speeds, “uh oh, it looks like rain!”
This machine has special, private, memories for me as well, traveling across America as a teenager.
My official rating score on here is biased because of that. For those without the nostalgia I would say it realistically deserves a 7.5 rating.
I never end up getting to buy this machine, it’s always eluding me. Just like those many things that I was searching for when I was a teenager playing pinball at Greyhound bus stations along the way to somewhere.

Spent way too much money plunking quarters in this machine. Then it came out on Pinball Arcade for multiple consoles, computers, and phones. It’s not the same on a screen but it was acceptable and just made me want to play it for real again.
I almost bought one a couple years ago. The two things holding me back were the price and the female voice in the game, she sounds like a skank!
This is one of those machines that was overlooked in its day but became very popular for really no good reason other than rarity. Not that it isn’t a good game, it’s just not as good as many that are rated far below it on the Top 100.
Of course nowadays a game can be a top 10 so long as it’s selling the right popular licensed product. Gameplay has been supplanted by product placement, film clips, and vibrating motor gimmicks.
This game being rated so highly with no licensing, special edition remakes, or even enough popularity in its time to give most people any nostalgia whatsoever, puts a smile on my face. Perhaps it’s rated highly because it’s rare and collectible, but at least it isn’t at the bottom of the list because the latest ten versions of the Stranger Things-Rick and Morty-Avengers crossover ultra limited gold edition SE LE RX knocked it down the list.
I have played many of the new games in the top 100 and, although impressive and attractive, the gameplay isn’t quite good enough. Some blew my mind (Wizard of Oz), others look like a reskinned Stern Mustang Or AC/DC with different licensed music and art.
It was daring, even back when circus Voltaire came out, to create a unique game that didn’t feature a licensing deal. It’s unheard of today. For that, it deserves its rank on the top 100, even with it being a fun but repetitive and overpriced game.
I hate the amazing Rooney.
But if one came along at a reasonable price, I would buy it in a heartbeat.

After I sold my Bally Kings of Steel, I continued to look for another one, or a similar replacement. I was looking for a true game of skill, rather than a game using a Dot Matrix Display, toys, and bent on selling me licensed characters or products.
There’s nothing wrong with playfield toys or licensed products, but sometimes those games spend more time trying to work the licensed product or gimmick into the game rather than making a good game.
There were many choices, but Jokerz! was the one I chose.
It is like a spiritual successor to Kings of Steel. In fact, the colors and themes are quite similar, just with more modern gameplay... and multiball. Then again Kings of Steel was, as Greg Kmiec stated, a spiritual successor to classic EM card game pinballs.
This is one of those few games that really benefits from being gently converted to LED lighting. Just the general illumination done up in frosted blue and warm white, and a handful of strategically placed ones selected by color and warmth for behind the backglass. If done properly, it looks amazing on this machine!
But it also looks good with normal bulbs!
The rules are easy to understand… and it’s a playing card theme, (that was for a certain person online who couldn’t figure that out).
What?
A game where anyone can step up and play and know what they are doing and why?
Whooaaahhhh! They don’t make those anymore!
The difficulty and challenge lies in making perfect shots and the randomness of the ball as it bounces around, and bouncing is what the ball does best!
There are some people who only come to Pinside to complain and give this game, and others, poor ratings and reviews. “Duh, there’s nothing special here, it’s repetitive boring and and too easy.”
If you can’t find anything positive to say, please get out of the hobby. I can understand if you simply don’t like the game, but maybe the games don’t like you either.
Wouldn’t it be neat if pinball machines could write reviews on their players? We’d all be in trouble!
Constructive criticism is welcome but complaining because it beat the stuffing out of you and proved that you suck at pinball doesn’t mean it’s a completely bad game. It just means you aren’t very good at pinball, so get better and prove it wrong!
Because this is a review, let’s talk about those features this machine allegedly doesn’t have.
Three sets of drop targets in three locations. Knock them down enough and that starts the “Million”mode.
A spinner lane with a capture hole. This starts the backbox “Draw Poker” feature, and also collects a special, if you can earn one.
The small multi lane upper playfield, which is accessed by the shooter lane and two ramps on either side. The lanes are changed using the flippers. Light one to collect a card, collect all the cards here or using the spot the card lane on the upper left of the regular playfield. I swear that the ball somehow knows which lanes are lit on the upper playfield and tries to go down the one you don’t want! I have seen the ball following the already lit lanes all the way across, then going in before you can change lanes again. Up at the top below the mini playfield are the BET lanes, spell BET to increase your bonus multiplier and earn bells which lead to an extra ball light on the outlanes. All these feature lights can be changed with the flippers.
Then there’s the all important center target and raiseable ramp. Hit the center target to raise the ramp. Lock a ball up the ramp. The ramp drops. Raise the ramp again and lock the second ball for “Woooaaaahhh! Jokerz Wild!” Multiball mode. Easy setting: hit the center ramp four times to collect the progressive jackpot. Hard mode: raise the ramp each time to be able to shoot the ramp again.
The last feature I want to mention is “Double your Score!” On the last ball you have the opportunity to shoot the left and right ramps to double your entire score. Not as easy as it sounds as you can shoot those ramps all day long but knowing you have to do it in the time limit can Psych you out!
Sounds pretty boring and dull doesn’t it?
The theme is also confusing to those negative reviewers, gotta have a working brain cell to figure it out I guess. Mischievous Jokerz! are messing with the game of cards, played by the King, Queen, Jack… oh why am I explaining this??? It really isn’t that obvious? What do you think Bad Cats is about? Pigeons???
Okay, It’s not like the popular top ten machines on the list that do all the work and only require you to slap the buttons like mad once in a while and yell “SHINY BALL GO BOING!” to get a decent score. Every shot matters in Jokerz! and nudging or bumping the machine to the point of almost getting a tilt may be necessary for the less than average player. This is where I say in a stuck up voice “Hmmm, I NEVER feel the need to nudge! How positively Neanderthal of you!”
But I do lose the ball a lot.
Jokerz! is still a cheap machine to own, as it’s relatively common and overlooked by most resellers, toy collectors, and investors.
I can’t recommend it enough. It’s a perfect combination of classic EM pinball themes with the best of the 1980’s pinball in one machine.
Did I mention Barry Oursler, Python Anghelo, Joe Joos Jr., and the incredible and somewhat unpronounceable Bill Pfutzenreuter?
Stick this between your Medieval madness and Addams Family and it will be ignored. But while the castle is being knocked down for the umpteenth time and Thing is taking another ball, the person on Jokerz! will be playing their eleventh game just hoping to break four million points this time.
I hope it’s on freeplay!

Popeye has flown under the radar. With all the big name licensed games over the years, Popeye doesn’t capture the attention and excitement of buyers who are looking for the latest game based on the current popular TV show or movie. Even in the 1990’s a cartoon character from the early to mid 20th century would have a difficult time competing with the current movie and tv theme games coming out.
Environmental protection was a popular theme in the 1990’s, thus the title Popeye Saves the Earth. They rammed environmentally conscious down our throats in the name of “edutainment” but they rarely made the education entertaining, and usually came off as preachy and annoying. See Awesome Possum for the Sega Genesis for a typical example.
So you have Popeye saving the earth from Bluto, in a pinball machine that eats power and natural resources like a dog eats peanut butter. And it’s about 0% recyclable. Welcome to the 1990’s double standard!
Fortunately, the pinball machine does not preach at you or attempt to be a Captain Planet episode. The focus is really on the history of one of the great classic cartoon characters and feels like the classic Fleicher- Paramount cartoons from the 1940’s.
Regardless of the themes, pinball designers know pinball, and it’s really about the gameplay. The Popeye art is simply amazing! From the boat shaped play field to the dot matrix cartoon bits, they even included Popeye mumbling incoherently in the sound! The play field is filled with what you expect in a mid 1990’s game with loops, rails, numerous targets, dozens of missions, and up to six ball multiball.
I’d like to see Popeye rank up there with the other top 90’s games but it remains a hidden gem. This is excellent for those of us who own them and radical for those who want to buy one! (1990’s lingo!)
Pinball prices in general are increasing so buy the ones you want now before the price goes too far past their realistic values, like medieval madness and Addams family did years ago.

I figured I should start in on this one, who doesn't want a copy of this game? It’s nearly perfect in every way, or so we are constantly told. It has its good and bad points but, there really is no perfect 10/10 game.
My only complaint is the empty lower center playfield and the fact that it really likes to put out trolls, which are terrible targets. They are also the only big negative in an otherwise fantastic audio and sound set.
Everything’s great, preaching to the choir!!!
I missed my opportunity to buy one of the original versions supercheap years ago, but in a way I'm glad I did because the high maintenance costs and the value of it has become so outrageous. It would be like owning a Hemi Cuda, polish it, polish it, drive it slowly and carefully up the driveway and back at 10 miles an hour. Wash it, polish it. Never enjoy it.
Would I really want to own one of these? No, I would have to sell it and buy a half dozen good and cheap machines. The game really isn’t worth it’s current value. Yeah, this game should be expensive but not stupidly expensive.
The remakes didn’t level out the price either. In fact, they were made with stupid money pricing and limited runs. It’s funny, they could have made more money… a LOT more money… if they had mass produced the remakes.
They could have made 100,000 machines and sold them at the going rate of current Stern machines. They easily would have sold every one of them (because we all would buy one at current new stern prices!) and made a huge profit. Instead they did the “limited production” tactic. Oh well.
Not much additional insight here, there are limited edition remakes-a-plenty, everyone knows this machine, everyone loves it, it’s just too bad that they are becoming so expensive that just about the only way to play one now is to own it, know someone who owns it, or go to a pinball show.

This is the first machine that I actually owned. It was in good (but well used) barely working order but I had to do a full refurbishment on it. That’s a lot more than just shopping it out.
Sadly I had to sell it when we moved across country and have regretted it ever since. When I first got it I was a bit skeptical about it. How fun can it be to someone who only likes modern stuff? I knew I’d like it, but what about my family?
Everyone was actually surprised at how much fun Kings of Steel really is, considering it's “obsolete” by modern standards. And I do mean everyone, our friends, family, neighbors, random friends of my kids, they all put hours in on that machine, leaving me waiting fo my turn. The modern videogame consoles at the time started gathering dust.
Machines like Kings of Steel place all of the good and bad shots on the players ability,, even most outlane drains. Much like Space Shuttle, Gorgar or any other late 70’s to early 80’s pinball machine.
Kings of steel is no nonsense classic pinball with a complex rule set that constantly challenges you to beat the high score and get all the cards you need for the best bonuses. There are no ramps, no toys, and no multi-ball. Bland and boring to some, but to each their own.
I believe pinball machines need to be rated in tiers, against the competition of their era. There was a complete change in solid state game types about every 5 years until the decade long domination of the DMD machines of the 1990’s. As compared to other machines from 1980 to 1984. This stands up pretty well, although somewhat forgotten because of what was about to come out.
This was also one of the cheaper machines available at the time (budget title may be the correct term but it just sounds like it came from the shovelware videogame bin at Walmart). The high end machines of this time were starting to yell at you, while KOS received the awesome “cheap squeak” soundboard.
Art:
Beautiful! It has a blue theme with cards and pinballs all over it. The mirrored backglass has to be one of the best ever made in that time. Really no negatives here.
Design:
This is the start of the memory drop targets. Shots are smooth and flow is good. The only thing it could use is one more good gimmick, two ball multiball, a pressure target, a moving target, or a capture magnet. It’s fine as it is, but it would be remembered better if it had another stand out item. There are some famous pinball people who love it exactly how it is. Simple and incredibly hard.
Sound:
Cheap Squeak!!! This is the sound of early 1980’s pinball. Like all good machines the sound speeds up as play continues messing with your shots through psychological means. It has an alien, almost evil tone, and man is it awesome.
Funfactor and replayability:
One gameplay will score awesome, the next game is a dud. You know you can do better and you will play again and again until you do, or quit in frustration. It’s hard, it tries to cheat (sometimes), but it’s always good fun. You can shoot randomly at stuff and have a good time too. Depending on luck and skill, one game could last thirty minutes or only three. Regardless, if you like older solid state machines, you will play again and again.

Not many people have played or rated this machine making Kings of Steel a bit of a forgotten game and a hidden gem. Let’s keep it that way until I get another one!!!