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Pinball games are a family of games in which a ball is propelled into a specially designed table where it bounces off various obstacles, scoring points either en route or when it comes to rest. Historically the board was studded with nails called 'pins' and had hollows or pockets which scored points if the ball came to rest in them. Today, pinball is most commonly an arcade game in which the ball is fired into a specially designed cabinet known as a pinball machine, hitting various lights, bumpers, ramps, and other targets depending on its design. The game's object is generally to score as many points as possible by hitting these targets and making various shots with flippers before the ball is lost. Most pinball machines use one ball per turn (except during special multi-ball phases), and the game ends when the ball(s) from the last turn are lost. The biggest pinball machine manufacturers historically include Bally Manufacturing, Gottlieb, Williams Electronics and Stern Pinball.

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Currently active pinball machine manufacturers include Stern Pinball, Jersey Jack Pinball, American Pinball, Chicago Gaming Company, Pinball Brothers, Haggis Pinball, Dutch Pinball, Spooky Pinball and Multimorphic, Inc., as well as several smaller boutique manufacturers.[1]

The history of pinball machines varies by the source. These machines definitely arrived in recognizable form prior to World War II. The opinions on the relevance of the earlier prototypes varies depending on the definition of the pinball machine, for example:[2]

The origins of pinball are intertwined with the history of many other games. Games played outdoors by rolling balls or stones on a grass course, such as bocce or bowls, eventually evolved into various local ground billiards games played by hitting the balls with sticks and propelling them at targets, often around obstacles. Croquet, golf and pall-mall eventually derived from ground billiards variants.[citation needed]

The evolution of outdoor games finally led to indoor versions that could be played on a table, such as billiards, or on the floor of a pub, like bowling and shuffleboard. The tabletop versions of these games became the ancestors of modern pinball.

Somewhere between the 1750s and 1770s, the bagatelle variant Billard japonais, or Japanese billiards in English, was invented in Western Europe, despite its name. Also called Stosspudel, it used thin metal pins and replaced the cue at the player's end of the table with a coiled spring and a plunger. The player shot balls up the inclined playfield toward the scoring targets using this plunger, a device that remains in use in pinball to this day, and the game was also directly ancestral to pachinko.[citation needed]

In 1869, British inventor Montague Redgrave settled in the United States and manufactured bagatelle tables in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1871 Redgrave was granted U.S. Patent #115,357 for his "Improvements in Bagatelle",[3] another name for the spring launcher that was first introduced in Billard japonais. The game also shrank in size to fit atop a bar or counter. The balls became marbles and the wickets became small metal pins. Redgrave's popularization of the spring launcher and innovations in game design (playfield bells[4]) are acknowledged as the birth of pinball in its modern form.

By the 1930s, manufacturers were producing coin-operated versions of bagatelles, now known as "marble games" or "pin games". The table was under glass and used Montague Redgrave's plunger device to propel the ball into the upper playfield.[5] In 1931 David Gottlieb's Baffle Ball became the first hit of the coin-operated era. Selling for $17.50, the game dispensed five to seven balls for a penny.[citation needed] The game resonated with people wanting cheap entertainment in the Great Depression-era economy. Most drugstores and taverns in the U.S. operated pinball machines,[citation needed] with many locations quickly recovering the cost of the game. Baffle Ball sold over 50,000 units[citation needed] and established Gottlieb as the first major manufacturer of pinball machines.

The 1930s saw major advances in pinball design with the introduction of electrification. Pacific Amusements in Los Angeles, California produced Contact in 1933, which had an electrically powered solenoid to propel the ball out of a bonus hole in the middle of the playfield. Another solenoid rang a bell to reward the player.[7] Contact's designer, Harry Williams, eventually formed his own company, Williams Manufacturing, in 1944. Other manufacturers quickly followed suit with similar features. Electric lights soon became standard on all pinball games, to attract players.

By the end of 1932, approximately 150 companies manufactured pinball machines, most of them in Chicago, Illinois.[8] Chicago has been the center of pinball manufacturing ever since. Competition was strong, and by 1934, only 14 companies remained.[9]

During World War II, all major manufacturers of coin-operated games turned to manufacturing for the war effort. Some, like Williams, bought old games from operators and refurbished them, adding new artwork with a patriotic theme. At the end of the war, a generation of Americans looked for amusement in bars and malt shops, and pinball saw another golden age. Improvements such as the tilt-sensing mechanism and the awarding of free games (replays) appeared.

The post-war era was dominated by Gottlieb. Game designers Wayne Neyens and Ed Krynski, with artist Leroy Parker, produced games that collectors consider some of the best classic pinball machines.[citation needed]

The introduction of microprocessors brought pinball into the realm of electronic gaming. The electromechanical relays and scoring reels that drove games in the 1950s and 1960s were replaced in the 1970s with circuit boards and digital displays. The first pinball machine using a microprocessor was Flicker, a prototype made by Bally in 1974. Bally soon followed that up with a solid-state version of Bow and Arrow in the same year with a microprocessor board that would be used in eight other machines until 1978, which included Eight Ball, the machine that held the sales record from 1977 to 1993.[11] The first solid-state pinball is believed by some to be Mirco Games' The Spirit of '76 (1976),[12] though the first mainstream solid-state game was Williams' Hot Tip (1977). This new technology led to a boom for Williams and Bally, who attracted more players with games featuring more complex rules, digital sound effects, and speech.

The video game boom of the 1980s signaled the end of the boom for pinball. Arcades replaced rows of pinball machines with video games like 1978's Space Invaders, 1979's Asteroids, 1980's Pac-Man, and 1981's Galaga. These earned significantly greater profits than the pinball machines of the day while simultaneously requiring less maintenance. Bally, Williams, and Gottlieb continued to make pinball machines while also manufacturing video games in much higher numbers. Many of the larger companies were acquired by, or merged with, other companies. Chicago Coin was purchased by the Stern family, who brought the company into the digital era as Stern Enterprises, which closed its doors in the mid-1980s. Bally exited the pinball business in 1988 and sold their assets to Williams, who subsequently used the Bally trademark from then on for about half of their pinball releases.

While the video game craze of the late 1970s and early 1980s dealt a severe blow to pinball revenue, it sparked the industry's creative talents. All companies involved tried to take advantage of the new solid-state technology to improve player appeal of pinball and win back former players from video games. Some of this creativity resulted in landmark designs and features still present today. Some of these include speech, such as Williams' Gorgar; ramps for the ball to travel around, such as Williams' Space Shuttle; "multiball", used on Williams' Firepower; multi-level games like Gottlieb's Black Hole and Williams' Black Knight; and blinking chase lights, as used on Bally's Xenon. Although these novel features did not win back players as the manufacturers had hoped, they changed players' perception of pinball for decades.

During the 1980s, pinball manufacturers navigated technology changes while going through changes of ownership and mergers: Gottlieb was sold to Premier Technologies, and Bally merged with Williams. The Video game crash of 1983 made the manufacturers refocus on their pinball sales. A trend started of pinball becoming increasingly elaborate to use more computing resources, following video games. Games in the latter half of the decade such as High Speed started incorporating full soundtracks, elaborate light shows and backbox animations - a radical change from the previous decade's electromechanical games. Although pinball continued to compete with video games in arcades, pinball held a premium niche, since the video games of the time could not reproduce an accurate pinball experience.

By the first years of the 1990s, pinball had made a strong comeback and saw new sales highs. Some new manufacturers entered the field, such as Capcom Pinball and Alvin G. and Company, founded by Alvin Gottlieb, son of David Gottlieb. Gary Stern, the son of Williams co-founder Sam Stern, founded Data East Pinball with funding from Data East Japan.

The games from Williams now dominated the industry, with complicated mechanical devices and more elaborate display and sound systems attracting new players to the game. Licensing popular movies and icons of the day became a staple for pinball, with Bally/Williams' The Addams Family from 1992 hitting a modern sales record of 20,270 machines. Two years later, Williams commemorated this benchmark with a limited edition of 1,000 Addams Family Gold pinball machines, featuring gold-colored trim and updated software with new game features. Other notable popular licenses included Indiana Jones: The Pinball Adventure and Star Trek: The Next Generation. Expanding markets in Europe and Asia helped fuel the revival of interest. Pat Lawlor was a designer, working for Williams until their exit from the industry in 1999. About a year later, Lawlor returned to the industry, starting his own company,[13] working in conjunction with Stern Pinball to produce new games. ff782bc1db