Zingy Bingy.

Steve Ritchie has implied that it was one (of likely many) factors that killed Capcom Pinball. Apparently the Japanese execs came for a visit, saw the Zingy Bingy prototype, and closed the pinball division 3 weeks later.

I haven't played all dmds for sure, but I did not care for viper night driving. If I interpret this thread like others as in my least favorite game that everyone loves, I would say shadow. I just couldn't stand that game.

Then begins again like 7 weeks later!!

I'd rather play all the rest mentioned in this thread than Bad Cats. At least the rest at some point end.

I think I might actually STILL be playing that game of Bad Cats I started 20 years ago and I've just been halluciating the rest of my life ever since. You people don't even really exist.

I agree the game is a turdfest and way incomplete as it sits now. Just saying Dwight's 0.85 may be different than Lyman's or Keith's 0.85.

That's a one shot pony for sure, but that backglass and animated cat beating is awesome!

Just the music alone is reason enough to spare Raven from this list.

The one that's easiest for me to dislike is Shaq Attack. It's got horrible sounds and gameplay. It looks like it would be better than what it is, but it just plays for crap.

I wouldn't rate JY as the worst ever, but for me it was the most disappointing pin I've played. This was my grail at one time and I wanted it gone after three days.

I'm convinced any game with a toilet mounted on the playfield sucks.

Story checks out.........

What makes a game horrible?
1. poor flow
2. poor artwork
3. poor layout
4. boring play
5. cryptic or incomplete rules
6. poor engineering so that the ball gets stuck and/or stuff breaks all the time
7. poor visibility due to bad lighting of crap covering the playfield (popeye is the prime example)

Many early EMs suffer from a very poor layout. Once the ball reaches to lower part of the field there's no way to shot it back to the upper region of the field. I am also not a fan of split playfields like in Flash Gordon, now you have basically 2 playfields and both are not that much fun to play on. A bunch of toys covering the view of the ball is another problem that greatly distracts from having a fun game. Popeye is the poster child of that no-no. Some designs tried something new that didn't work out too swell, like Orbiter1 or Sindbad with the double flippers. There are many ways to screw up a game, pretty much every company and every designer had some misses over the years.

95% of Gottlieb's games

You're missing out on some really good games. I was born and raised on Bally Williams and the Gottliebs have really grown on me over the years.

I have to agree on this one. I change my vote to Wheel of Fortune followed by Xfiles for worst pin of all time.

There are only four Gottlieb games in the top 100. None of them are in the first 75.
#77 Stargate
#78 Joker Poker (1978)
#83 TX-sector
#100 Spirit

The pinside community has already decided on this one.

<derail>
Not quite...pinside maintains more than one top 100 list. Gottlieb is actually number 1

https://pinside.com/pinball/top-100/em
</derail>

Not even close. I owned a WOF and really enjoyed it.

As of me typing this, 5 posts out of 165 total have mentioned Mustang. That's only 3% overall, but still completely wild IMO. Hate on the theme, fine, but if naming a pin from a single car is unattractive to you, I assume Corvette and VND are on your shit list too?

Mustang doesn't follow Stern's typical "left ramp, right ramp, target banks on the sides" layout, instead has a really unique ramp layout, and even on the Pro has drops, a cool captive ball feature, hard AF skill shot, scoop, and and a spinner. The rules give you many ways to approach the game, with a very similar risk/reward multiball a-la AS Toy Box where you can opt out of MB but the higher # MB's are increasingly harder to get.

I started off playing an LE locally on route and really dug the game. Now that's gone and I have a few Pros kicking around in the area, and they're a blast to play. Wish there were more songs like the LE, but that's not worthy of ranking it WORST MACHINE EVER. Seriously, worst? Come on, there are much worse overall, and this isn't even STERN'S worst!

Still a hater? Watch this video and then ask yourself is it the game that sucks, or did you just not take the time to learn how it shoots?

Rant over.

With all due respect to the minority of EM collectors there is not an enormous amount of people actively pursuing the purchase of EM's, including yourself. Your current "Collection, Wish List and History" do not show one EM. So I think we both know what we're talking about when we are talking about the worst pins of all times... Solid state / modern

I will concede the point that Gottlieb what is a fine pinball company back in the twilight of pinballdom

Worst machine ever?
That would be the last pin I've ever sold. Well at least that's what I keep telling myself because to keep trying a new pin I have to move one out.
So right now it's cftbl. We all know thats definitely not the worst machine ever but that's what the voices in my head are saying right now to get over the loss.

Only one person said Fire!? Man that game gets old after like 10 plays and you realize there is nothing to do after getting a jackpot.

Theme is okay, but everything else is really bad on that game.

My vote for worst game ever is Fire!

I count 62 Gottlieb's in the top 100.

Are there other games out there like Magic Girl that simply don't work (have shots that can't be made, missing mechs, woefully deficient code that isn't just buggy and missing say a wizard mode)? Most people haven't played magic girl, but if there were something more widely-produced that suffered in similar ways I'd have to think it would be the worst.

Yes, Grandpa would agree... Gottlieb was a real dime eater back in the good old EM days. This topic is Clearly directed toward modern machines... read the replies.

One of my least favorites. I turned decent player condition one away for $600.

there are several games that are notroriously unfinished code-wise ... Cactus Canyon (although there is the aftermarket CCC) and Wheel of Fortune come to mind, but even in their "unfinished code" state, they are still playable pinball machines with working modes and multiballs and so on, and very far ahead of Magic Girl,or whatever the worst pinball machine of all time is.

On the flip side of that coin, I really don't care for Ghostbusters.

Fire! is on my wish list

Please forgive me. And the other guys who listed EM games. We must have missed that in the topic heading.

I'm seeing a lot of games being mentioned that various individuals simply don't like. However, a lot of them aren't actually that bad.

There's a big difference between "I don't like this game and it's not for me" and "this game is the worst ever made in the entire history of pinball".

A lot of them aren't "the worst game ever made". Just because it's not an A-list WPC game or doesn't have the staying power of one doesn't mean it's terrible.

WoZ? Stargate? WoF? Maverick? Tee'd Off? Genesis? Black Rose? Safecracker? Fire? R911? I know plenty of people who enjoy all those games.

This is off topic, but I am curious about pinball version numbers. With most software, the decimal number is generally just an incremental number based on the number of check-ins or changes to the code. And the whole number is generally treated as a major release. Certain decimal numbers aren't indicative of any percentage, someone could in theory finish all the code in five check-ins (.05) and then create a release candidate from there. But pinball doesn't seem to follow this structure, at least not as far as major releases go. I would think any machine that ships would be on at least version 1.0 of the code, because 1.0 should be a release version. Does anyone know how Stern and Jersey Jack handle there release numbering?

I think you're overthinking it. There is a loose idea of what version numbers mean for major, minor, and bug release versions, but each developer/organization tends represent them differently.

Definitely not one of the worst ever (it's much better than WWE for example), but it IS one of the turds of the modern era (right there with Kiss).

Well, I said bottom 10...not worst. Yes, I hate the theme. And for all that people are complaining about star wars having an empty playfield, this game truly does...if you don't count The Car That Does Nothing, which looks like one of the most ill-advised mods ever placed in a game.

I have come back to the game since the time I walked away on ball 2, but it still did nothing for me. If I was given one NIB, I'd sell it for what I could and put the money into a game that doesn't suck.

Well Excuuuuuuuse us, the mighty force flow knows people that like them so they must be kick ass!

I kid, but honestly there's a a thread for people that love SF2 for god sakes...I mean this is the internet there's always people that will like some garbage pile. But agreed with basically what you're saying, although I'd rather play X-files than Stargate, X-files is worse.

But you do list R911 which is circling the drain.

I don't think it's a particularly great game, but it's not the worst ever made. The layout isn't bad, but the code is meh. A lot of people seemed to have fun playing the one I brought to the last show I went to, and it got constant play the entire time. Judging from that, I would expect it to do well on location (as long as that darn helicopter doesn't malfunction )

You probably got into pinball after these games came out. I was into pinball as each of these hit the arcades and played and loved the crap out of them.

No, the layout is bad too.

I would never add value to what games do well on location; I;m not an OP and we all know shitty games do great.

But yeah like jwilson said that layout is garbage

I don't either. I just thought the reaction at the show was interesting.

I played three games of R911 at NWPAS out of curiosity, because I'd never seen one before, and it was horrible.

I wouldn't consider Tee'd Off to be literally the worst pin ever (saved by an interesting layout) but it's definitely in the top ten for worst callouts. Whoever voices the gopher sounds like someone's embarrassed dad helping their kid on a school project.

TZ was a piece of shit on location, so theres that little tidbit. CV was crappy on location as well.

Had the opportunity to play a lot of batman66 premium lately. As much as I'm a batsman fan, the game is pretty bad, could also be due to the code still being quite error prone

Maybe I haven't played it deeply enough, but I've loved what I've played of Batman 66. The screen is awesome, the playfield is colorful and well designed. I don't feel like the game is trying to rob me, or that it has a huge gap between the flippers. Maybe I'm not good enough to fully see all the issues.

As for worst, I really can't pick one. Most frustrating for me might be Ghostbusters, that ball just careens down the middle all the time haha!

What is most unreliable pinball machine?

bwhahaaha....again from this Data East guy

BSD

After strong consideration, this takes the cake for me ...