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Pinball Circus

The Golden Age of Pinball

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There was a time when original themes ruled pinball. When any idea would never be considered too wacky or too far out of the box. But that day isn’t today, that day was back in the 80s when pinball faced a new threat to its existence – video games.

Does anyone feel the pinball industry is getting stale again? Redo after redo of tired themes that we’ve seen over and over again. Star Wars, Batman, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. All done and then done again. Many of these redos even take their playfield clues from the original layouts. It’s almost like the new pinball manufacturers are trying to compete with the used pinball market.

Some Recent Pinball Redos

  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1991 by Data East — Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2020 by Stern
  • Jurassic Park 1993 by Data East — Jurassic Park 2019 by Stern
  • Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean 2006 by Stern Pinball — Pirates of the Carribean 2018 by Jersey Jack Pinball
  • Guns N’ Roses 1994 by Data East — Guns N’ Roses 2020 by Jersey Jack Pinball
  • Star Wars 2017 by Stern. Star Wars Comic Art 2019 by Stern, Star Wars Home Edition 2019 by Stern, Star Wars Episode 1 1999 by Williams, Star Wars Trilogy 1997 by Sega, Star Wars 1992 by Data East, Star Wars 1987, manufactured by Segasa d.b.a. Sonic.
  • Star Trek 2013 by Stern. Star Trek: The Next Generation 1993 by Williams, Star Trek 1991 by Data East, Star Trek 1979 by Bally, Star Trek 1971 by Gottlieb.

Black Knight Sword of Rage 2019 by Stern is a redo of the original Black Knight 1980 by Willians and Black Knight 2000 release in 1989 by Williams.

Elvira has been the theme of three pinball machines over the years – Elvira and the Party Monsters is a 1989 pinball game designed by Dennis Nordman and Jim Patla and released by Midway (under the Bally label), featuring horrorshow-hostess Elvira. It was followed 1996 by Scared Stiff, also designed by Nordman. Stern recently released Elvira’s House of Horrors in 2019.

Besides these “redos” there are the remakes from Chicago Gaming of Medieval Madness, Attack From Mars, and Monster Bash.

Back in the days of the arcade, games were made to attract people from the general public with something unique. Now I have to wonder if the machines are made for a smaller less diversified audience that expects a narrowly defined set of elements.

In the EM or electro-mechanical decades of pinball the machines were basically designed by engineers with artwork slapped on top. The themes were simple like “Airport”, “Volley” or “Dominos”. Card playing and pool themes were popular.

But underneath the hood the machines were basically the same element just arranged in slightly different configurations. Jet bumpers, slings, drop targets, holes, flippers, rollovers, score reels, spinners — that was about it.

Gameplay was basically the same on every machine. Hit things to score points and to advance the bonus to be collected when the ball drained. Pinball machines from different manufacturers could only be differentiated by the artwork and the artists hired.

But something happened in the early 1980s. Technology advanced and video games exploded on the arcade scene. Solid-state circuit boards replaced electro-mechanical switches and relays. New technology made music, sound and even speech possible. Memory chips allowed scores to be kept. Alphanumeric displays added the possibility of scrolling words on the backbox.

Competition from the video games sensation and the public abandonment of the old school EM pinball machines required a new breed of pinball designers to save pinball. Enter a group of artists, musicians and designers who saw the pinball machine as a fresh new canvas to bring about real change in the industry.

One of these new creatives was Python Anghelo. Python turned out to be just what the industry need, a fresh perspective and he worked with others to produce some of the most memorable pinball machines of all time –

Video Games

He had a background as an artist. Had worked as an animator for Disney. Came into pinball to explore the possibilities with the mindset of a storyteller.

If you think about this time in the coin-op industry, every was new and had to be invented. It was a time when you could get the green light to work on a game that had knights jousting on the back of ostriches (Joust), round mouths eating dots and escaping ghosts (Pac-Man), pinball machine where the goal was to pick up Santa Claus with your taxi (Taxi).

Everything was new and there were no boundaries about what could be tried.

Python and the others at the time were creating world’s under glass. His first pinball machine, Comet, was an amusement park world. In Pinbot the player becomes one with the machine. With High Speed designed with Steve Richie, the player was the silver ball racing around the playfield. In Taxi, your ball was the taxi cab picking up all kinds of fantasy and real characters from Santa Claus to Dracula to Marilyn Monroe. Just try to pitch this concept to today’s pinball company. It would never happen.

Unfortunately, Python’s career in the pinball world kind of hit a low note when Capcom decided to jump into the pinball market, throw millions at it and hire Python as the creative director with little oversight from management. Unrestrained, heavy drinking, freethinker with a huge budget to do whatever he wanted with management over in Japan is probably not the best idea. The result was some rather extreme ideas and a very short time for Capcom’s venture in the pinball space.

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