109 Fun Facts About Pinball

Which pinball table came bundled with Windows from the mid-1990s until Windows XP?

Space Cadet. It shipped with Windows from the Windows 95 era to XP, and a Microsoft engineer wrote that it was cut after a 64-bit port left the ball passing through objects like a ghost.

Which French table game is the direct ancestor of pinball?

Bagatelle. French soldiers fighting in the American Revolution brought their tables with them, and the game spread so widely that a Civil War cartoon showed Lincoln playing it.

Which Japanese game is pinball's upright cousin, thought to derive from a Western pin table?

Pachinko. It is thought to have started in 1920s Japan as a children's toy copied from an American pin table, before growing into an adult gambling pastime with parlours of its own.

Which pinball part features in Montague Redgrave's 1871 patent?

The spring plunger. Redgrave's table fired the ball with a spring-loaded piston in place of a cue, more than seven decades before the first flippers.

Which 1931 game, selling for $17.50, became pinball's first major coin-operated hit?

Baffle Ball. David Gottlieb couldn't build the penny-a-play countertop game fast enough to fill his orders, so one frustrated distributor went off and made a rival of his own.

What was the 1932 pinball hit Ballyhoo named after?

A magazine. Ray Moloney took the name from a popular title of the day for the game he built when he couldn't get enough of Gottlieb's hit to sell, and the game in turn gave his company its name.

Which city, home to most of the big pinball makers, banned the game itself for decades?

Chicago. About 150 firms were making pin games by the end of 1932, most of them there, and the city lifted its own ban only after New York legalised pinball again in 1976.

What sounded when a ball dropped into the namesake hole of 1933's pinball game Contact?

Bell. A ball dropping into the Contact hole closed a battery-powered circuit that rang it and kicked balls trapped in other pockets out towards higher-scoring holes.

Which 1947 Gottlieb game was the first with electromechanical player-controlled flippers?

Humpty Dumpty. Its six flippers sat in pairs up the playfield and faced outwards, and they were so weak that it took all three pairs to work the ball back to the top.

What do pinball players call losing the ball off the bottom of the playfield?

Draining. Before flippers arrived in 1947 a player had nothing to bat the ball back with, one reason cities treated early pinball as a game of chance.

What is the illuminated artwork panel in a pinball machine's upright head called?

The backglass. It began as the scoreboard: from the mid-1930s, lights behind the painted glass lit up to show a player's score, long before reels or digital displays.

Which New York mayor banned pinball in the early 1940s, smashing machines with a sledgehammer?

Fiorello La Guardia. He argued that pinball took nickels and dimes meant for children's school lunches, and police raids hauled thousands of machines out of shops and bars.

Whose courtroom demonstration that pinball took skill helped end New York's ban in 1976?

Roger Sharpe. A suspicious councilman made him switch to the backup machine, but he still named the lane his next ball would take, hit it, and the council voted to lift the ban.

Which city's pinball ban was struck down by the California Supreme Court in 1974?

Los Angeles. California's top court overturned the city's ban in a case that turned on whether pinball was a game of skill or of chance, two years before New York's council lifted its own.

What did some pinball games award instead of free games, to sidestep anti-gambling laws?

Extra balls. Makers sold these games as Add-A-Ball: a high score bought more play on the same game instead of a free game that an operator might quietly redeem for cash.

What is the name of the solenoid-driven rod that makes a loud bang when a free game is won?

Knocker. It fires against the inside of the cabinet so the whole room hears a win, and on some machines the same crack doubles as an alarm telling the operator something needs attention.

What hangs inside a metal ring to form the classic tilt sensor of a pinball machine?

A plumb bob. Shake the cabinet too hard and the hanging weight swings into the ring and completes a circuit; operators slide the bob up or down its rod to set how touchy it is.

Besides the ball in play, what does a tilt usually cost a pinball player?

The end-of-ball bonus. A tilt kills the lights and flippers so the ball rolls helplessly out of play, though modern machines flash a warning or two before it comes to that.

What do players call shoving a pinball machine to steer the ball without setting off the tilt?

Nudging. It ranks with flipper timing and shot choice among the game's core skills, and the tilt sensor was added to punish players who overdo it.

Which rubber-padded features to the upper left and right of the flippers propel the ball away on impact?

Slingshots. Switches behind the rubber fire a solenoid arm that kicks the ball away, usually toward the opposite slingshot or a side lane where it can be lost.

Which Guns N' Roses member helped design the band's 1994 pinball machine?

Slash. Hooked on pinball in the early 1990s, he took the idea to maker Data East himself and is credited among the designers of a table that fires balls with a gun trigger and a rose-shaped handle.

Which end-of-game pinball feature awards a free game when the last digits of a score equal a random number?

Match. It looks like a one-in-ten shot, but operators can dial the odds down, and newer machines leave the factory set at about 7 per cent.

What are the lanes at the far sides of a playfield, which lead the ball past the flippers, called?

Outlanes. Some machines guard them with an earned kickback that fires the ball straight back into play, or a button-fired magnet that can catch it on the way past.

Which 1977 game was the best-selling flipper pinball machine until The Addams Family overtook it?

Eight Ball. The pool-hall hit proved so durable that Bally brought it back in 1981 as Eight Ball Deluxe, itself a favourite that operators kept on location for years.

What did Data East's 1991 game Checkpoint introduce, letting pinball machines show animations as well as scores?

The dot-matrix display. Its grid of glowing orange dots could run animations and even mini video games, and the storytelling it allowed fed pinball's early-1990s sales boom.

Which Williams game introduced speech to pinball?

Gorgar. Its demon had a vocabulary of just seven words, and a heartbeat thumping from the cabinet sped up the longer the game went on.

Which 1980 Williams game by Steve Ritchie was the first solid-state machine with a multilevel playfield?

Black Knight. It also introduced Magna-Save, magnets that a player fires with a button to snatch back a ball heading out of play down the side.

Which 1930s Bally game replaced pins and scoring holes with the electrified part that still shares its name?

Bumper. Its coil-sprung posts racked up points each time the ball struck them, doing away with the nail pins that had given pinball its name.

Which star of The Addams Family film recorded new dialogue for its 1992 pinball machine?

Raul Julia. His Gomez talks players through the game with lines written for it, and in 1994 the factory put the machine back into production for a gold-trimmed collectors' run.

Which Addams Family character picks up the ball and carries it off on the 1992 pinball machine?

Thing. A mechanical hand comes out of its box to carry the ball away, and in 'Thing Flips' the machine takes over a flipper and plays the shot by itself.

Which designer created Twilight Zone, FunHouse, Whirlwind and The Addams Family?

Pat Lawlor. After The Addams Family became a runaway hit he was given free rein over his next game, and the result was the feature-packed Twilight Zone.

The white Powerball in the pinball machine Twilight Zone, immune to its magnets, is made of what?

Ceramic. About a fifth lighter than a steel ball, the Powerball moves much faster, and the magnets the game uses to catch and fling ordinary balls cannot touch it.

Besides its clock, which working novelty is built into pinball's Twilight Zone?

A gumball machine. Shoot a ball into it and the machine swallows that one, then deals the next in line back into play.

What is the name of the talking dummy head that heckles players in the pinball machine FunHouse?

Rudy. When the game's clock reaches midnight his mouth drops open and the player must shoot the ball into it; his voice came from Ed Boon, who later co-created Mortal Kombat.

What does Whirlwind, a 1990 tornado-themed pinball machine, turn on the player during its storms?

A fan. Mounted on top of the backbox, it blows air in the player's face, a year after the same designer's quake-themed Earthshaker became the first machine to shake its cabinet with a motor.

Which future Saturday Night Live star voiced two of the princesses in the 1997 pinball machine Medieval Madness?

Tina Fey. She voiced the opera-singing princess and the Cockney one, calling for rescue from a castle that players batter with the ball until it explodes.

Which 1999 Williams line merged a video display into the playfield in a last attempt to revive sales?

Pinball 2000. Players aimed the ball at ghostly video targets reflected over the playfield, but only two games were released before Williams shut the line down.

Williams, pinball's biggest maker, quit the business in 1999 to concentrate on which machines?

Slot machines. Parent company WMS earned far more from casino games than from complex, low-volume pinball tables, so it closed the division that had led the industry.

Who bought Sega's pinball division in 1999 and named the company after himself?

Gary Stern. He had run the division for Sega, and when Williams quit months later his renamed firm was left as the world's only maker of new pinball machines for over a decade.

Which new pinball maker shipped its first game, The Wizard of Oz, in 2013?

Jersey Jack Pinball. Its arrival ended a stretch of more than a decade in which Stern had been the only company in the world making new pinball machines.

Which arcade franchise spawned a 1982 Bally hybrid that was half video game and half pinball machine?

Pac-Man. Baby Pac-Man put a joystick-driven maze on a video screen above a scaled-down pinball table, and play switched back and forth between the two.

Which manufacturer's platform tracks the ball as it rolls across a video-screen playfield?

Multimorphic. Its P3 follows the ball across a screen that fills the lower playfield, while the upper section lifts out so a different game can be dropped in.

Which Hollywood studio, later owned by Coca-Cola, bought pinball maker Gottlieb in 1976?

Columbia Pictures. Renamed Mylstar Electronics under Coca-Cola's ownership, the firm was closed in 1984, but a management group bought its pinball assets and kept the Gottlieb name on new machines until 1996.

Which sci-fi franchise inspired the 1993 pinball machine whose enemy spacecraft fires the ball back?

Star Trek. On the Next Generation machine a Borg ship fires a locked ball back at the flippers, and players shoot back with two cannons that launch a ball at the pull of a trigger.

Which band's 1969 song 'Pinball Wizard' appears on the rock opera Tommy?

The Who. Pete Townshend wrote it late on to win over critic Nik Cohn, a pinball fanatic who had been lukewarm about the album.

Which musician performed 'Pinball Wizard' in Ken Russell's 1975 film of Tommy?

Elton John. He faced Tommy across a pair of Gottlieb machines in the film, and Bally followed up by putting him, in full wizard costume, on its 1976 game Captain Fantastic.

The Pinball Hall of Fame, a hands-on museum opened in 2006, is in which city?

Las Vegas. Collector Tim Arnold hauled more than a thousand machines there from Michigan in the 1990s, and the nonprofit arcade he opened gives its spare takings to charity.

What did the International Flipper Pinball Association create?

Player rankings. The International Flipper Pinball Association awards points at every tournament it sanctions, and the bigger and stronger the field, the more a high finish is worth.

What did players call the hole on older pinball machines that swallowed the ball for good?

A gobble hole. Losing the ball there was no disaster: it usually paid a large score or a free game, which made it a target worth aiming for on 1950s machines.

What is a carefully judged launch at a lit target at the very start of a ball called?

A skill shot. Pulling the plunger back just the right distance sends the ball to the target, for an award that is on offer only at the start of a ball.

Which designer's many innovations included the DC-powered two-flipper layout of Genco's Triple Action?

Steve Kordek. He joined Genco in 1937, moved the flippers to the bottom of the table, where they have stayed ever since, and was still heading pinball design at Williams almost sixty years later.

In which 1995 pinball machine do players fight off flying saucers and little green men?

Attack from Mars. Designer Brian Eddy built it as a humorous throwback to 1950s sci-fi films, with a big saucer that shakes and flashes as it takes hits, and a sequel followed in 1999.

Which video game pioneer built Hercules, a giant 1979 pinball machine often called the largest ever made?

Atari. Hercules stretched nearly eight feet from end to end, but the video game giant stayed a minor player in pinball and soon left the business.

Which cult film became the first pinball machine from Dutch Pinball?

The Big Lebowski. True to the film, players bowl a ball at ten pins in a miniature alley sunk into the table, and get to batter the Dude's rug and car.

A pinball playfield is traditionally made of what material?

Plywood. Holes are cut through it for translucent plastic inserts, so that lamps underneath can light up parts of the painted artwork as the game unfolds.

Which actress played a teenage pinball hustler in the 1979 film Tilt?

Brooke Shields. Her character takes to the road with a would-be musician, hustling bar-room players for cash, and ends up facing Charles Durning's character in a grudge game.

Which parlour game gave its name to the grid-scoring pinball machines that lawmakers condemned as gambling devices?

Bingo. Players tried to drop balls into numbered holes to light a winning line on the grid, and some machines let them pile up hundreds of free games that operators paid out in cash.

Which 1980 game was the first electronic pinball machine with multiball?

Firepower. Older machines had let players shoot several balls by hand, but this one released three at once under computer control, and it also let a flipper button shift the lit lanes.

Which 1999 blockbuster was the theme of the last pinball machine Williams ever released?

The Phantom Menace. The Star Wars Episode I table sold too few to change its maker's mind, and within months Williams had closed the pinball division for good.

Pinball designer Steve Ritchie voiced the villain Shao Kahn in which fighting game series, whose name he also suggested?

Mortal Kombat was named at the suggestion of Steve Ritchie, who was sitting in co-creator Ed Boon's office at the time. He voiced Shao Kahn and the announcer from the second game onward.

Which vocal group sang the counting song in Sesame Street's animated Pinball Number Count segments, first shown in 1977?

The Pointer Sisters sang a count from one to twelve, yet no segment was ever made for the number 1. The cartoons stayed on the show until 2002.

Which film sequel inspired the Williams pinball machine that introduced the video mode and a gun-grip launcher?

Terminator 2 came with new lines from Arnold Schwarzenegger, who agreed to record them in exchange for the original painting of the machine's art. He had asked for his sunglasses to be added to it.

Which stage illusionist was meant to headline the 1995 pinball machine that was released instead as Theatre of Magic?

David Copperfield and Midway could not agree terms for his name and likeness, so the game lost its headliner. Its cabinet is styled to look like an old magician's trunk.

Which world leader is a passenger to collect, with Dracula and Santa Claus, in the 1988 Williams pinball machine Taxi?

Mikhail Gorbachev, called Gorbie in the game, was the first passenger its designers chose. A Marilyn Monroe lookalike was replaced with another character to avoid licensing issues.

Which farm animal did Williams designers hide in the animations of their 1990s pinball machines as a recurring in-joke?

Cows were among the secrets, known as easter eggs, that players uncovered by pressing the flipper buttons in a certain order or at a certain moment.

Which Australian TV wildlife host was the theme of a pinball machine announced in 2005 and left in doubt by his death?

Steve Irwin's Crocodile Hunter machine was announced by The Pinball Factory in Melbourne, which planned to sell it under the old Bally label.

Which 1993 blockbuster's pinball machine, released the same month as the film, has a head that swallows the ball?

Jurassic Park's T. rex head can pick up the ball and swallow it, a patented mechanism. The machine's animations show the dinosaur eating a goat unless a family mode is switched on.

Which sport's real scoring is copied by a 1997 Bally pinball machine, making it one of the lowest-scoring ever built?

Basketball scoring rules NBA Fastbreak, where each basket is worth one to three points and 100 by the final buzzer counts as a respectable game.

Which video game mascot is the ball in a 1993 pinball spin-off, rushed out because his third main game was running late?

Sonic bounces through the villain Robotnik's volcano fortress in Sonic Spinball, which was built in a hasty nine months to reach shops for the 1993 holiday season.

Which film hero's 1993 pinball machine has new dialogue recorded by John Rhys-Davies as Sallah?

Indiana Jones got fresh lines from Sallah, recorded in a session of about two hours, while most of Harrison Ford's speech was simply lifted from the film soundtracks.

Which British sci-fi series inspired a 1992 Bally pinball machine featuring seven versions of its hero?

Doctor Who's machine gives each of the seven Doctors a zone of the playfield. Its first 100 units carried a Dalek on top that turned from side to side as it spoke.

Which 1995 film inspired the Sega pinball machine whose multiball puts a record number of balls in play at once?

Apollo 13 releases 13 balls together, the most of any pinball machine. Beginners can instead choose a timed novice game that lasts two minutes.

What kind of building do players batter with the ball until it explodes in the 1997 pinball machine Medieval Madness?

A castle with a motorised drawbridge and a rising portcullis sits at the centre of the playfield, and the main goal of the game is to destroy a whole series of them.

Which animated sitcom became a hit Data East pinball machine in 1990 and returned with a second machine in 2003?

The Simpsons machine used the show's own voices and music, and it is credited with helping to lift the popularity of the game at the start of the 1990s.

Williams's curved 1970s pinball flippers, modelled on jai alai baskets, were nicknamed after which food?

Banana flippers were made of nylon and reached only two production games, Disco Fever and Time Warp, before the straight bat won out.

Which musical parody act lends its name to the 2022 pinball game Museum of Natural Hilarity?

"Weird Al" Yankovic was the first licensed theme for a modular cabinet in which owners can swap one game out for another.

Which rock group got a Bally pinball machine in 1979 and a second, from another maker, in 2015?

Kiss sold so well for Bally that 17,000 machines are confirmed to have been built, and the game stayed in arcades well into the 1980s.

Which TV horror host has fronted three pinball machines, including Scared Stiff in 1996?

Elvira made her debut on a 1989 Bally machine and came back for a third game in 2019, all three of them designed by Dennis Nordman.

Which sport is the setting of the 1997 pinball machine No Good Gofers, in which two gophers try to thwart the player?

Golf is the aim: players try to finish a round on the course while the gophers Bud and Buzz pop up from the ramps to stop them.

Which amusement district is the setting of Cyclone, a 1988 Williams pinball machine with a Ferris wheel?

Coney Island is the backdrop, and Ronald and Nancy Reagan are painted among the roller coaster riders in the machine's artwork.

Which 1982 arcade hit was the most successful video game ever made by the pinball maker Gottlieb?

Q*bert hops down a pyramid of 28 cubes, changing their colours, and remains one of the best-known names of the arcade's golden age.

A 1989 Williams pinball machine introduced a motor that makes its cabinet rumble, to suit which disaster theme?

An earthquake rocks Earthshaker!, whose playfield has a fault line that splits apart. On the first 200 machines a model building also sank into the table.

Zaccaria, once the world's third-largest pinball maker behind Bally and Williams, was based in which country?

Italy's Zaccaria was founded in Bologna by three brothers, whose initials form the company logo, and it built machines from 1974 until 1990.

Which 1986 Williams pinball machine was based on designer Steve Ritchie's own real-life police chase in a Porsche?

High Speed was such a hit that Disneyland's arcade added pinball for the first time in the park's history.

Which 1986 Williams pinball machine features a robot whose visor lifts so that balls can be locked in its eye sockets?

Pin-Bot sends players across the Solar System from Pluto to the Sun, and the sound of its visor opening is a recording of a freight elevator.

Which Japanese novelist's second book, published in 1980, is titled Pinball, 1973?

Haruki Murakami's narrator becomes obsessed with finding the old machine he used to play. The book falls between Hear the Wind Sing and A Wild Sheep Chase.

Which legendary beast lurks in the top corner of White Water, a 1993 Williams pinball machine about rafting?

Bigfoot watches from the top right while players steer a raft downriver towards Wet Willy's and the Vacation Jackpot.

Which city do players tour in Tales of the Arabian Nights, a 1996 Williams pinball machine with a ball-snatching genie?

Baghdad is the scene of seven tales, in which players ride a flying carpet and fight the evil genie who has trapped a princess in a bottle.

Which Williams pinball machine has Dracula, the Wolf Man and the Mummy collecting instruments to form a band?

Monster Bash recruits Universal's horror icons for its Monsters of Rock band, and the Bride of Frankenstein's instrument is a microphone.

Which 1982 Gottlieb pinball machine was the first with three playfields, one of them hidden below the main surface?

Haunted House styles its three levels as a cellar, a main floor and an attic, and the ball can travel between all of them.

Which theme park chain did pinball maker Bally own from 1982 until 1987, during a spree of buying other businesses?

Six Flags joined a Bally empire that also took in casinos and the health clubs later known as Bally Total Fitness, before mounting costs forced a sell-off.

In which language is a pinball machine sometimes called a 'million machine', after the game's inflated scores?

Spanish speakers know the game as the máquina del millón, a nod to scores that climbed into the millions and, on some 1990s machines, the billions.

What do pinball makers call the lights and animations a machine runs between games, while nobody is playing?

Attract mode can use sound as well as lights: Bally's 1980 game Xenon had its female voice invite passers-by to try it.

Pinball's wire ball paths are called habitrails, a name shared with a brand of tube-filled cage for which pet?

Hamsters scurry through the translucent plastic tubes of a Habitrail cage, much as the ball runs along the wire rails above a playfield.

Which electronic music pioneer composed the score for Bally's 1980 pinball machine Xenon and supplied its female voice?

Suzanne Ciani made Xenon the first talking table from Bally and the first pinball machine to speak with a woman's voice.

What do pinball designers call the bare prototype playfield they test before any artwork is applied?

Whitewood stages can reshape a game: the taunting head that defines Cirqus Voltaire only arrived on that machine's second one.

What does Bally's 1996 pinball machine Safe Cracker pay out to winners, which some venues would swap for a beer?

Tokens made Safe Cracker the only Token-Pin ever built. Once a player breaks into the bank, the action moves to a board game in the machine's upright head.

Which taunting character's head rises from the playfield of Cirqus Voltaire, Bally's 1997 circus-themed pinball machine?

The Ringmaster must be defeated again and again to start the game's multiball rounds. A neon tube also runs along one of the ramps.

Which actor played the lawman on screen two years after Bally released its 1993 pinball machine Judge Dredd?

Sylvester Stallone took the role in a 1995 film that was shot at Shepperton Studios in England, with some location filming in Iceland.

Which singer's very bad impersonator is pelted with food in one mode of the 1993 pinball machine Judge Dredd?

Elvis Presley's lookalike turns up in the Bad Impersonator mode, where hitting targets hurls food and weapons at him on the screen.

Which future metropolis is policed by the hero of Bally's 1993 pinball machine Judge Dredd?

Mega-City One sprawls over most of the east coast of North America and is ringed by a radioactive desert known as the Cursed Earth.

What is the name of the rotating planet that was designed to lock balls on the 1993 pinball machine Judge Dredd?

Deadworld was meant to hold three balls for a magnetic crane to pluck off, but the physical lock was removed late in development after operators raised concerns.

Which foes named Mortis, Fear, Fire and Death must be beaten in multiball on the 1993 pinball machine Judge Dredd?

The Dark Judges offer a shortcut: defeating all four opens the game's last multiball without completing its nine modes first.

Which two-credit option, unique to the 1993 pinball machine Judge Dredd, starts every ball with a two-ball multiball?

Super Game also added a bigger multiball introduced by a fictional host named Anita Mann, but mixed results on test meant the idea was never reused.

Which co-creator of Judge Dredd wrote the pinball-themed short story reprinted on a flyer for the 1993 machine?

John Wagner wrote Pinboing Wizard for the 1981 Judge Dredd Annual under the pen name John Howard, with art by Mike McMahon.

Which final multiball opens once all nine modes are completed on the 1993 pinball machine Judge Dredd?

Ultimate Challenge follows a list of modes that runs from Pursuit, Blackout and Sniper to Manhunt Millions and Stakeout.

Which earlier machine by Judge Dredd's pinball designers was themed on a 1954 horror film?

Creature from the Black Lagoon is set at a 1959 drive-in and includes a green hologram of its title character. Judge Dredd's Safecracker mode echoes one of its modes.

Which sci-fi horror film was the theme of the second machine from the British pinball maker Heighway?

Alien also drew on the sequel Aliens. Heighway closed in 2018, and a Scandinavian firm, Pinball Brothers, later announced a remake of the game.

During which French king's long reign were billiard tables narrowed and fitted with pins, an early step towards pinball?

Louis XIV ruled from 1643 to 1715. The pins took too long to reset when knocked over, so they were fixed in place and players bounced balls off them instead.