Quoted from shacklersrevenge:In a response to your thread title, imho it goes like this:
Gottlieb made the top em's
Early SS Bally games were built with care, fit and finish. Many are incredible pins.
Williams made a splash with BK and later, Space Shuttle, then pulled ahead for the win until they left the business. RFM/SWE1 are incredibly smooth, and solidly built machines. I know a lot of people dog on SWE1, but if you played a new or freshly shopped one, I'm not sure there has been one built as tight and smooth to play from a build stand point.
In the mid 80's Gottlieb became Premier, and they made low cost, cheap machines. Some people love them, many hate them. I have never been able to fall in love with these pins, and I have owned one (my first) for over 20 years.
Bally in the mid 80's fell asleep, later becoming another brand of Williams (which was great)
Data East in the late 80's pounded home the stereo sound and impressive light shows, and made some fun pins, but missed the mark in some way.
Data East acquires impressive licenses (bttf, simps, batman, jurassic) and hits and misses with many. Just when they get their shit together (GNR, TOMMY), sell to Sega. Sega then makes a line of impressive feature pins, but largely forgettable games. Meanwhile, Gottlieb goes under, trying to make weird pins such as ''Brooks and Dun'' At this time, Bally/Williams rules the table, sega gets bought out by Stern in the late 90's, Bally/Williams end their pinball division, and the rest is history. Sort of. Well thats how I see it anyway.