Following up on my last post, video games and pinball
machines have long been kissing cousins and over the years a number of
not-very-successful attempts have been made to combine the two.
Here's a quick look at some of them (remember, this blog is pre-1985 coin-op only, so no Pinball 2000 here).
1)
PINBALL
VIDEO GAMES
The most common way to combine the two was to create a
video version of pinball, an idea that was tried from the earliest years of
coin-op video games.
Clean
Sweep (Ramtek, 1973)
OK, this wasn't exactly a video pinball game but it was
fairly close. It was a ball-and-paddle variant in which the player tried to
knock down a field of dots with the ball (since I haven't actually played it, I
don't know if your ball bounced off the dots or not, though from the name it
kind of sounds like they didn't). Designed by Howell Ivy (who later went to
Exidy), it was a predecessor of sorts to Atari's Breakout
TV
Pinball (Exidy, 1975)
It wasn't Exidy's first game, as some sources have it.
That honor goes to Thumper Bumper
(which, despite the name, was a straight Pong
clone, though it used a color overlay). TV Pinball appears to be a souped-up version of Clean Sweep and unlike the Ramtek game,
this one DID promote itself as a video version of pinball, referring to the
dots as "bumpers". It also had pockets at the side of the screen and
a moving target at the top. Ivy came to Exidy in 1975, probably too late to
design TV Pinball. I suspect that
the game was designed by John Meltzer, who also came from Ramtek (assuming it
wasn't designed by Chicago Coin - see below).
Exidy also released the cocktail-table game Table Pinball, presumably a cocktail version of TV Pinball.
TV Pin
Game (Chicago Coin, 1974?)
This game looks virtually identical to TV Pinball except for minor variations
in the cabinet and possibly different color overlays. Some sources list the game
as coming out in 1973. If it is the same game, it seems a bit odd that Chicago
Coin's version came out first as it seems more likely to me that they would
have licensed it from Exidy rather than vice versa. For instance, they did
license Exidy's Destruction Derby,
which they released as Demolition Derby.
TV Flipper
(Midway,
1975)
Another game very similar to the above two. The flyer billed
it as "A video game with all the excitement of pinball" (somehow, I
doubt it).
Flipper
Ball (Cinematronics, 1976?)
OK, what's the deal with this game. This one is identical
to TV Pin Game (even the screenshot
on the flyer is exactly the same), except that it came in a cocktail cabinet.
Some sources indicate that this game wasn't actually released until 1977 (I
think I actually found a release notice in Vending
Times or Replay but I'd have to
check). Why they would be releasing a
copy of a 2-3 year old game beats me. By the time they released it, Chicago
Coin was on the verge of bankruptcy if not actually bankrupt (their assets were purchased by the newly formed Stern Electornics).
 |
| Screnshots from the flyers of Chi Coin's TV Pin Game and Cinematronics' Flipper Ball. Or is it Flipper Ball and TV Pin Game? |
Video
Pinball (Atari, 1979)
Now HERE was a decent attempt at a video version of pinball.
Designed by Ed Logg, Dave Stubben, and Dan Pliskin, it used mirrored-in
graphics to provide images of an actual pinball playfield (which was designed
over a foam core painted with fluorescent paint). It had flippers, drop targets, rollovers, and
thumper bumpers. It even let you nudge the game by pushing on the control panel.
Atari made 1,505 of them and the Replay operator's
poll ranked it as the 10th best-earning video game of 1979. .
Pin
Dual (Atari, 1980/Unreleased)
A two-player, head-to-head version of Video Pinball. It was scheduled for
field testing but I don't know how far along in development it got.
Solar
War/Superman/Orion XIV (Atari, 1979/Unreleased)
Video
Pinball actually had a sequel of sorts in the unreleased Solar War created by Mike Albaugh in an effort to find a use for
the remaining unsold Video Pinball
PC boards and see if there was still a market for similar games. Solar War’s original name had been Super Man and the game was to be a
video version of the pinball game of the same name released in March 1979. When
DC demanded additional royalty payments, however, Atari had to come up with
another name. Because the game featured a “spell out”, the new name had to
match the same 5 letter-3 letter pattern of the original, hence Solar War (another suggestion was Orion XIV). The game also featured a
unique control arrangement – the entire control panel could be moved up and
down to tilt the playfield. By the time the game was ready, Atari’s production
lines were running full-tilt producing Asteroids
games and only five units were built (though around 300 “conversion kit”
versions were reportedly sold to a Greek operator).
2)
Pinball
Video Games in a Pinball Cabinet
A mutant creation if there ever was one,. Mounting a
video game monitor in a pinball cabinet doesn't seem right.
Super
Flipper (Chicago Coin, 1975)
Chicago Coin made just about every
type of coin-op game under the sun but they were rarely the top producer in any
genre. During the 60s they ranked well behind Gottlieb, Williams, and Bally in
pinball (though they might have been a distant fourth). Looking at this thing
from a distance, you wouldn't know that it wasn't a pinball machine. It had an
honest -to-gosh pinball cabinet complete with backglass, flipper buttons, and plunger. When you got closer, however, you
knew there was something amiss when you saw the playfield.
I hate to admit it, but this thing actually looks pretty darned interesting to
me. The ball started off moving left and right across the playfield. Pulling
the plunger caused it to shoot downwards into play (OK, that part doesn't sound
so interesting). The flipper buttons
consisted of a sliding mechanism with a hole in it , that separated a light and
a photocell. The further you pressed the buttons, the more the flippers moved.
Star
Shooter (Meadows Games, 1975/Unreleased)
This was the same
basic idea as Super Flipper. Meadows
took it to the 1975 MOA show where it flopped and they never released it.
Designer David Main ha this to say about it:
[David Main] When we went to the MOA show,
the game was a total dud. We thought it was cool because we were in love with
the technology but it was a dud because the people who like pinball play it
because of the mechanical aesthetics of it. They like the sound of the ball,
and you can’t just pretend to have a ball – it has to be a real ball.
So
we went from having a video game version to a mechanical version. In fact I had
a patent for a way of sensing the position of the ball on the playfield by
having the ball roll over coils. I would send out energy pulses to these
different coils that were located in different places on the playfield. When a
ball rolled over it, depending on how close it was, the ball would absorb some
of the energy that was sent out through this coil. There was one capacitor that
switched from coil to coil so that when you hit it with a pulse it would cause
a circuit to ring and by counting how many rings there were before the level
fell below a threshold I could determine how much energy had been absorbed.
I actually saw a photo of this game (I think in Vending Times) but don't have a copy
handy (I'll have to see if I can find one).
3)
Video/Pinball
Combinations
These games combined an actual (usually poor) pinball
game with an actual (usually poorer) video game. The result was not pretty. At
certain points, the pinball action would stop, then you'd have to take your
eyes off the pinball table and look up at the video monitor mounted above it to
play a simplified video game.
Baby
Pac-Man (1982, Bally/Midway)
Designed by Dave Nutting
Associates and Bally (much to Namco's chagrin, since they hadn't authorized the
game), this is probably the most well-known
video/pinball combination. The
pinball portion was designed by Claude Fernandez with art by Margaret Hudson.
Bally sold 7,000 units and the game reached #5 on Replay's Player's Choice charts.
Granny
and the Gators (1983, Ballly/Midway)
Bally's second
attempt at the genre. The pinball portion was designed by Jim Patla with art by
Margaret Hudson and Pat McMahon. This game was not without its charms. Some
claim that the video game portion led to Toobin'
but I don't know if that's true or not.
Caveman (1982,
Gottlieb)
With only 1,800 produced this one wasn't much of a success. The
pinball portion was designed by John Buras with art by Terry Doerzaph, David
Moore, and Rich Tracy. The video portion was a simple maze game in which a
caveman is pursued by dinosaurs. It was designed by Joel Krieger with hardware
by Jim Weisz and art by Jeff Lee (it was actually Lee's first work at Gottlieb
and he designed the graphics on an Apple II computer).
New
York Defense/Defence (1981, E.G.S./Telemach 3)
This one was shown at the Forainexpo show at Le Bourget
in Paris in December, 1981. It was made by the Italian company E.G.S. and
Telemach 3 (a company about which I know next to nothing, other
than that they had a booth at the show). It made its debut earlier at the Emada
show in Rome. I have seen almost nothing on this game anywhere. The Internet Pinball Database lists it as New York and gives only the name, company, and year of release. The other databases (pinside, arcade museum, arcade history) seem to take their info from IPD. I'm not even sure it IS a video/pin
combo.
All of the information comes from the January, 1982 issue of Replay, from which the following photo
was taken (please excuse the very poor quality - I scanned it in black and
white several years ago because, at the time, I was only interested in the
text. I threw the actual issue away since I didn't have the space for it).
The
Cube/Paparazzi? (unreleased?, Gottlieb)
Designed by Harry Williams. See the previous post for
details.
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