arborelia

Silver Ball Century ep. 16 - 1974

Table list: Sky Kings, Amigo, Skylab, Strato-Flite, Wheel, Far Out, Free Fall, Royal Pair, Boomerang, Granada, Cine Star

We're halfway through the century! That is, we've covered 50 years of pinball history since fifteen episodes ago, when I streamed a simulation of a bagatelle board that was documented to exist in 1924. But the majority of pinball is still to come: there's a lot of pinball to experience in the boom years of the late 70s, early 80s, and most of the 90s. We're on episode 16 out of 80 or so.

Last episode we wished a happy retirement to Bally designer Ted Zale, but a sad consequence of this is seven years of no multiball. Ted Zale was the only designer of the era who would take a risk on such a weird, complex, and fun feature. IPDB lists no machines with multiball between Nip-It (Bally, 1973) and Firepower (Williams, 1980).

Don't worry. Some of the greatest classic designs are in this no-multiball era, and we're going to see some of them from Greg Kmiec, a new lead designer at Bally.

The oversaturated theme of "playing cards" is on the way out, and pinball is now about getting high. That is to say, 1974 includes Sky Kings, Skylab, Strato-Flite, and Free Fall. It also includes Gottlieb's psychedelic Far Out.

Also: pinball legalization begins! Los Angeles's ban on pinball was overturned by the California Supreme Court in 1974.

Silver Ball Century is tonight (Tuesday, February 18) at 8:30pm Eastern, on https://twitch.tv/arborelia.

Tables in this episode

As usual, we're playing most of these pinball tables using VPX, downloading the recreated tables from VPUniverse and VPForums. You'll need free accounts on both sites to download tables.

The two Zaccaria tables are instead recreated in the Zaccaria Pinball game by Magic Pixel, which is a very accessible way to play classic pinball. I recommend only buying authentic Zaccaria tables in the game; the extra tables designed by Magic Pixel are AI garbage now.

All the American tables have strategy guides in Pinball Primer. The ones that don't have entries are Wheel, Granada, and Cine Star.

#pinball #silver ball century