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Silver Ball Century ep. 39 - Late 1982 - One Last Job

Tables in this episode, also listed below

Pinball was on top of the arcade industry from 1979-1981, but the rise of video games led to a sharp decline in pinball in 1982. The largest pinball manufacturers were able to ride it out, but the downturn claimed one victim quickly: Stern Electronics.

Stern saw that pinball had stopped being profitable, and they tried to fix it by making a cheaper pinball machine. In doing so, they brought their star designer Harry Williams (yes, that Harry Williams) out of retirement for one last job.

Harry's idea to make pinball cheaper was to go back to the simplistic but unusual designs of the '50s, except solid state this time. So he designed Cue, a pool-themed prototype with unusual but simple mechanisms. Unfortunately, when one of the 6 prototype copies was put on location for testing, it turned out to be possibly the worst-received pinball machine to ever appear in an arcade. "It was the first machine an operator asked us to take back," said Stern employee Cindi Knox.

The playfield of Cue, mostly numbered pop bumpers. The only flippers point backwards where you'd expect outlanes to be.

(Photo by James Swain Jr for IPDB)

For what it's worth, I have been able to find a bit of fun in Cue, trying to defy the barely-controllable gameplay and play a good game of it anyway.

Sadly, this was the last design that Harry Williams worked on before he passed away. His pinball career lasted just short of 50 years - remember that in addition to being the Harry Williams who founded Williams in the 1940s, he's also the one who invented the tilt sensor in 1933. There's a reason his name is on some of the most beloved pinball machines.

Cue was also the last design from Stern Electronics. They held on through 1984, manufacturing more copies of their existing machines, particularly the wonderfully bizarre Orbitor 1 (1982), with its uneven playfield simulating gravity wells, which would have appeared last episode if anyone had ever made an adequate VPX version.

"But wait," you might say, "isn't Stern the biggest pinball company right now?" The current Stern, Stern Pinball, is a different company, named after Sam Stern's son, Gary Stern.

Meanwhile in late 1982, Bally does just one thing and it's an unsatisfying hybrid of video and pinball, Gottlieb releases several kooky and spooky designs, and also the era of "hot '80s Gottlieb jams" begins.

Silver Ball Century will be live an hour early this week, at 7pm Eastern on Thursday, October 9, on twitch.tv/arborelia. Next week's episode will be on Tuesday, October 14, so we can make it happen before Pinball Expo.

Tables in this episode

#pinball #silver ball century