Totally agree with this idea...grouping all EMs together is the problem with trying to make A lists or whatever. Just looking at responses here will show you that people are generally gravitating towards an era or category when listing titles. And it reflects the current trend in collecting, like Tom says - Buckaroo was once considered the cat's ass, and multi players were generally shunned. Nowadays it's alot different....and years from now it'll probably be different yet.

I also feel, and o-din touched on this, that I haven't played enough games on many titles to form an opinion. Until I get a game in my house, shopped out correctly for my tastes, and many games logged, can I get a solid opinion of that particular game.

Lucky strike!

Funny, I don't like add a balls and avoid buying them.

Centigrade 37, Atlantis and Target Alpha are the MM, AFM and TZ of EMs.

I think add a balls are cool, since replays are more or less useless in a home environment, but sometimes I feel like once you start raking in the extra balls, the game just becomes a grind.

Friendship 7

Depends on the game. Some will make you groan when a ball gets added, leaving you with that will this never end feeling. Others you feel like your fighting like heck to earn one so you can keep things going.

I don't see it that way at all. That's like saying having a game that was designed to make money is more or less useless in a home environment.

For me the goal is to score as many specials and pass as many score thresh holds that I can in any given game and is more rewarding than scratching the new high score on the cabinet because obviously the game doesn't keep track of that.

Older games when 5-10 specials at one time are even better as that knocker goes off in machine gun fashion. But to each his own I guess.

This might be a dumb question, but was there any certain preferred pinball machine over others for those who would use them for gambling purposes?

If I recall, William's went through a phase where they had what's called the "star" feature, and the replay counter could literally count up into the hundreds, and you could potentially win a couple hundred replays in a single sitting. Obviously, a player wouldn't ever want to play off all those games, so the establishment owner would pay off the replays and then reset it. William's older woodrails were definitely made for less "savory" environments, what with their dual impulse flippers that were suspiciously easy to play while holding a beer in one hand.

They are all gambling machines.

In my parlor it has been the two player Williams games with short flippers that fit the bill the best, but any game that in most cases will offer close scores between competitors works well.

Back in the old days it was the games you could rack up the most credits on and sell them to the bartender or somebody else, and again this would be Williams which on some games 100s of credits could be won.

Edit- see above post mentioning "star feature"

Don't tell that to Roger Sharpe!

Who?

Just joking. lol.

Back to gambling, on a game like Pit Stop which is a two player game, there are both scores and laps counted, so I suppose you could wager on the outcome of both if you were so inclined.

I had one in here called 21 by Williams which is a Blackjack themed game which keeps track of your blackjack score on two score reels beside the lighted score, so there were all kinds of different wagers that could be made. High score, getting black jack, beat the dealer, beat the next players hand, special, match, etc. So I suppose, as far as a flipper game is concerned, it could be called "the ultimate gambling machine".

It's not easy to state what EM's are the best or most collectible or even if an accurate A-list exist.

Bally, Williams and Gottlieb are most likely are at the top of the EM list of all the manufactures. It might be a good place to start since all three manufactures have so many great games to choose from and most of the time are separated by a fine line in game play etc.

Hopefully you have a serious EM collectors close by in driving distance from your location. There you could learn about EM's from conversation and playing their collection, forming your own opinions and taste on what you like about EM games. Also perhaps there might be some pinball shows close by that have some restored EM's to check out. If your close by to New Jersey you are welcome to play my EM collection.

Vic, you're the worst for picking an A-list!! LOL

They are all on the A-list according to you...I kinda agree. :0)

Sean

Thank you again, Levi! Gawd I am SICK of hearing about Fireball. A giant chunk of playfield devoted to a lame skillshot, and cross yer fingers and hope for the rest... FB2 is better by far, though not an em.

Also... most wedgeheads are all the same... Go looking at the Williams reverse wedgies... go find machines designed by Steve Kordek or Ted Zale or suchlike...

A couple of my personal favorites that I have not seen mentioned so far :
wms Aztec
wms Space Mission or Odyssey
sonic Prospector
wms Travel Time
Bally Aladdins Castle
sonic Faces
gottlieb Jet Spin
wms Pat Hand
wms Dealers Choice

EM's peaked in the 70's.Overall player ratings and market value are all you need.

1950 Gottlieb knockout
or any of the Harry Mabs machines

I'm looking for one right now

I felt this way about Team One. Terrible game and way too easy to play forever.

But others, like Dimension or Pop-A-Card, just seem to thrive at home in add a ball.

Mabs. I have to agree he is one of the all time great innovative designers.. I have his very last game and it is certainly one of the best.

But how does such a rare game like Magic Clock become an A title?

It just grows roots and never leaves, that's how.
MC (resized).jpg

Good call on Dimension. I'd love to own one someday. Resetting the drops goes a long way in that game, plus the playfield art kicks ass.

I saw the typo and fixed it

But yes, we lost a great one when Harry passed...

When Williams hired him was when the company really started to take off.

Between the two Harrys, the late 50s saw a huge boom in development and machines that were of the highest quality. Mabs might have retired in 1960, but at the same time Kordek joined the team keeping with the theme of hiring great people that had already left other companies for one reason or another. And that was their way of doing things until the very end. Get all the best people they could when they were available.

Sounds like Deeproot is following that exact method.

Perhaps. Except that Williams was already a company founded by the man that first brought electricity to pinball and had made many other innovations.

Yep.

There are many cool and fun games. I personally like playing any i can. But I only buy Gottlieb Wedgheads as they are my favorite all around EM. Eldorado, Buckaroo, Top Card, Abra ca dabra, C37, Atlanist are some of my top games.

Another good set of EM lists can be found here:

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/rank-your-ems

I'm sure some advanced statistical analysis of all these lists could be used to generate a single distilled list that is of no use to anybody.

These lists can be useful to see trends across collectors but, ultimately, you generate your own personal A-list based on research, playing (arcades, museums, shows, collectors, memories from youth,...), buying, and sometimes selling.

Any EM that you thought enough to buy (for price, novelty, looks, or just closeness or youth in your career in pin) is the best EM. Work on it, restore it, sell it, learn from the process, and do it again. Factors like art, tides of like (as some say), production #, playability, condition usually in (some lasted better than others for various reasons) makes it all very subjective. Again, the one I have my head in, humping away at it to make it play the best I can, and learning from it, that makes the EM special and particularly interesting at a given time. Like children, you will have a fav or two, the posse will not pull all equally all the time.

Here's something I've found with EM games.
Williams games aren't as popular as Gottlieb games, but Williams games have more unique rules.
Bally games are almost always the best with regards to layout, features and rules.

Argue if you want.

I won't argue with the first of what you said, but as far as the second part, most of the more popular short flipper Bally games are multiplayers and going up against most of the 60s Williams multiplayers, the rules and features lead to very unbalanced scoring, where rarely will games with more than one player be close in score. Which is why Capersville is no longer here.

As TA of PHoF has said, and is correct, single player games are pure and simple. You and machine, you get in a zone, a zen and playing them makes for a special relationship between a game and how it plays with the player. The player owns it for that moment in time, no matter if in a friends house, on location or in the spirit of thinking about beating it next time for a high score. Hold over features make multi player EMs from the WMS factory are unique and add strategy. However, 95% of all games played on a multiplayer machine are single. So, stick with the single players for the best bang for the buck, and maintainability. The multiplayer games came into fashion but it was never a realized benefit in the market, or at home for the enthusiast and true player/game owner. However, and there is always a caveat to all things, small percentage benefit at best, is in home game play at parties, and in tourneys the multiple player brings to the floor some interaction and participation which is needed. All charity events I host have 1/2 or more multiplayer EMs. They do serve a purpose, but they are not pure.

This is what makes Pit Stop such a great, fun machine. It is as good whether there is one player or two. I'll play it just like I'll play one of my single players and it is more fun than many single player games that have come thru here, and is probably the best of the multiplayers that have.

Kings & Queens
Card Whiz
Fire Queen

At one point Williams made a two player game that was actually two complete single player games in one, but probably decided that was a bit much if they could make multiplayer games with a variety of features like drop targets and swinging targets and carryover features that were interesting enough to keep it close during competition and also make it worthy of being played by one player, which they went on to do.

https://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=1782

I'm guessing the drop targets reset on Joker Poker after each ball. Played the SS version at a show loved it. Didn't notice the reset.

Yes, that was one of the downsides to having this game in the home. You knock them all down, get the extra ball and special, and that's pretty much it until the next ball where you do it again. In the arcade that never bothered me though as I liked chalking up free games.

By the mid 70s all manufacturers were using pretty much the same formula on their multiplayers. Build up a bonus and collect that bonus. The differences were whether you could collect it during a ball and run it up again or just after the ball leaves play. Some had drop targets that would reset when completed, others did not. But basically every ball played was pretty much the same.

Didn't think I'd like 2001 since the drop targets don't reset. Game seems faster when all the targets are down. Really fun game.

2001 and Dimension are neat games with all those drop targets and the short flippers, which is a combination I like. I think those might have been the only Gottlieb single players with that combination? On all the older Williams with short flippers and drops they can all be reset during the ball I believe and have some pretty slick rules to go along with them

If you prefer the longer flippers on single player games then you gotta go with Gottlieb for the most part as that is what they were specializing in at the time and made way more of them than anybody else. Although Bally and Williams made a few neat ones, they were on a multiplayer kick and still sold a lot of them.

Williams: Heat Wave, Teacher's Pet, Space Mission/Odyssey (multiplayer), Big Daddy, Oh Boy (2player)
Gottlieb: World Fair, Fun Fair, Whirl-Wind
Bally: Expressway, Balls a' Poppin/Circus (2player version of BaP)

I think you can get a pretty good list of desireable games by selecting the Custom feature in the Top 100. Set the year to top out at 1977, set average calculation to crop the outliers, and set minimum number of reviews to 15 or 25. The first 20 or so games are pretty solid.

Caucasian2Step has the most accurate written reviews here IMHO. His opinions match up with mine about 80-90% of the time.

https://tinyurl.com/SimpleEMSort

Yep, thanks! That does a quick top quality game search. About 75% of those are in hoard, and no surprise about 50% are GTB games. All those titles I've played and bought, or wish I had or am looking. However, and important, there are hard to find titles that don't get reviews that also are well worth hunting, and restoring. Mars Trek and Cherry Bell come to mind. None of those in the result are obviously woodies, and they are cheap now and some are worth buying and having for completeness/roundness of your collection. Most are super easy to maintain as well.

I'd love to discuss the 10% - 20% discrepancies AND WHY!

Being wrong is the bestest. That is when you learn.

You still have there high score on my Pop-A-Card

Easy to answer... my A list EM game is the last EM I bought. So right now that would be Astro.

As others have noted, the difficulty in ranking and recommending EMs is that their commonality is outweighed by their differences. For example, the sensibility of a fantastic woodrail is quite different than that of a wedgehead.

Asking which EMs are the best is akin to asking which alcoholic beverage or which snack is best. The question is simply too generic. Categories are necessary so that games from different eras with divergent appeal are not deemed to compete with one another. I would go so far as to subcategorize by manufacturer (and perhaps by single vs. multi-player and/or flipper size) since each manufacturer bestows a unique "feel" to the fun factor.

With that predicate, I consider the following titles (listed alphabetically) to be especially successful designs in both gameplay and art [* denotes 3 inch flipper game; # denotes multiplayer game; all others are 2 inch flipper games]:

BALLY:

Capersville#
Cosmos#
Dixieland
Dogies#
Expressway
Fireball '72#
Rocket III
Skyrocket#
Surfers

GOTTLIEB

Atlantis*
Big Hit*
Blue Note/Rock Star*
Hit the Deck/Neptune*
Joker Poker*#
King of Diamonds
Strange World*
Surf Champ*#
2001/Dimension
Volley*

MIDWAY

Flying Turns#
Race Way#

WOODRAILS

Chicago Coin Thing

Gottlieb 1950 Bank-A-Ball
Gottlieb Daisy May
Gottlieb Grand Slam
Gottlieb Harbor Lites
Gottlieb Niagara
Gottlieb Queen of Hearts
Gottlieb Spot Bowler

Williams Sea Wolf
Williams 21

There are so many great EM titles, especially among the wedgehead and woodrail categories. These are just a few that come to mind. I hate omitting so many wonderful titles from my list. However, I see those games on the lists of others who have posted.

THING by Chicago Coin

It features a guy who finds an object and then is shunned by everybody for the rest of his life

When he dies, St Peter sends him to Hell because of it, and at the gates of Hell, Satan won't let him in cause he's afraid of it.

Great game that's not a CCC theme (Cards, Clowns and Cowboys)
image-14 (resized).jpg