"For five years, this game defined pinball," he adds. There wouldn't be another pinball machine this sophisticated until games like "Addams Family" arrived in arcades. It was crammed with fun-to-play features: two ramps, a toy traffic light on the playfield that changed colors as you hit targets, and a novel multiball that could be carried over from one game to another. "No one had ever done that before," says Kuntz. One of the most distinctive is "High Speed," a police-chase-themed pinball game with a red emergency light on the top of the backglass that spins during play. In response, manufacturers like Williams began adding new features to the playfields and props on the cabinets to make them stand out in a sea of blinking, beeping machines. It's clear a talented artist created it."īy the mid-1980s, pinball machines were losing the arcade popularity contest with video games. "The stencil art of the side of the head of the first version of 'Eight Ball Deluxe is just beautiful. "Bally had a lot of really good artists in the early '80s," Kuntz says.
But the true attraction is the machine's artwork.
And like other machines of the era, "Eight Ball Deluxe" talked back to you as you played, reminding you to play stripes or solids, and churning out pool-hall sound effects to set the mood. Sharpshooters need a supple wrist to clear the row of seven drop targets and plenty of English on the bank shot to drop the four in-line targets at the top of the playfield. Today, enthusiasts and collectors say "Eight Ball Deluxe" represents the best the industry had to offer at the time. Pinball's days of dominance were numbered as video games like "Pac Man" and "Defender" began competing for arcade floor space. When it debuted four years later, "Eight Ball Deluxe" also made players flip, but fewer than 9,000 machines were built. Poolhall-themed "Eight Ball Deluxe" is a follow-up to Bally's "Eight Ball," which was one of the best-selling machines of 1977 (just over 20,200 units were made). Related: 50 Toy Fads That Drove Us Crazy! Just bring extra quarters most vintage games now cost anywhere from 50 cents to $1 or more to play. Odds are, you can find some or all of these classics at an arcade near you. Not sure what to play first? We talked to a couple pinball experts for their take on the best games from pinball's golden era, the early 1970s to the late '90s. Today, you can find pinball-themed bars, arcades, museums - and even laundromats - from coast to coast, where games old and new are just waiting to be rediscovered - or discovered for the first time. Amazingly, the game held on and has even flourished, thanks in part to fans who spread their pinball passion online and new manufacturers that have entered the business. After a resurgence in the early 1990s, pinball nearly died out by 2000 as the Big Three manufacturers (Williams, Bally, and Gottleib) exited the business or went bankrupt. Pinball machines have been around for almost 90 years, evolving from shady barroom amusement in the 1930s to pop-culture phenomenon by the '70s.
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