Pinball has been around for over seventy years and has its ups and downs at the end of the 1990s it was on death’s door.
After a brief resurgence in the 90s with some stellar titles like Addams Family, Attack from Mars and Medival Madness, the executives at Williams had their greedy eyes looking at gambling devices and gave the pinball division one last shot to get the marketplace excited about pinball again.
Back in 1999-2000 I wasn’t paying attention to pinball as my son was born. A few years later I would end up buying a Gottlieb Wipe Out pinball machine from Jersey Jack – via mail order if you can believe it.
Arcades were closing and selling off inventory in the mid-80s through the 90s. By the end of the decade, resellers like Jersey Jack were running out of machines to sell to homeowners and started bringing pinball and arcade machines by the container full from Europe.
Later Jersey Jack would run out of old machines to sell and decided to start his own pinball company to meet the growing demand of the hobbyist market – mainly created by this wholesale sell-off of the old machines and the parts suppliers that grew up to meet the demand of this growing hobby.
Back in 1998-99, Williams was basically the only major pinball manufacturer left with 80% of the market. Kind of like the position Stern finds itself in now. In fact, the modern Stern company started up a few months after Willams left the pinball market for good.
The pinball team at Willams was given a hail Mary ultimatum, make pinball exciting again or die. The effort was documented in the film “Tilt: The Battle to Save Pinball”
One of the biggest takeaways from the film is that it counters the notion that Pinball 2000, the hybrid video game/pinball machine with upgradable gameplay – swappable playfield, art and software was somehow responsible for pinball’s decline.
Pinball 2000 was actually a rather good product that created a lot of buzz, how sustainable it was is another matter but at the time it was not the cause of pinballs death.
Management at Williams Electronics made that decision.
Pinball 2000 was the last pinball hardware and software platform developed by major pinball manufacturer Williams, and was used in the machines Revenge From Mars (under the brand name Bally) and Star Wars Episode I (under the brand name Williams) before Williams exited the pinball business on October 25, 1999.
Wikipedia
I’ve played Revenge from Mars (production run 6,878) at Pastime Pinball in Manchester, Vermont and can confirm it is a fun game. The follow-up was Star Wars Episode 1 (production 3,525 units) which didn’t get much of a chance before Willams pulled the plug on pinball.
Star Wars Episode I is a 1999 pinball game designed by John Popadiuk and released by Williams and the second (and last) machine to use the Pinball 2000 hardware platform. It is based in the Star Wars film The Phantom Menace.
Released in June 1999, Star Wars Episode I was the last game manufactured by WMS industries (Williams and Bally labels) before the company announced the closure of their pinball division on October 25 of the same year
