Silver Ball Century ep. 47 - Pinball Hits You in the Crotch
The movie The Karate Kid came out in 1984, so suddenly karate was an exciting theme. Both Bally and Zaccaria had the idea to release a karate-themed pinball machine, and they gave them similar names, and released them a month apart. Bally had to rename the table "Karate Fight" for European distribution so they didn't infringe on the trademark that Zaccaria got first.
Bally's Black Belt is the only pinball machine I can think of where there's a relevant shot where you hit someone in the crotch with the pinball, though that's only because Zingy Bingy was mercifully never produced. That doesn't seem legal in karate, incidentally.
Other tables of note are 301 Bullseye, a conversion kit with unique darts-themed scoring that leads to the lowest high scores in pinball (I challenge you to get a score of 3); Hollywood Heat, with a rad soundtrack and a new captive ball mechanism; and Bally's unique but unloved Motordome.
Silver Ball Century is live on Thursday, January 22 at 8:30pm Eastern, on twitch.tv/arborelia.
Tables in this episode
As usual, you need free accounts on VPUniverse and VPForums to download these tables.
- 301 Bullseye (Grand Products) - VPX by JPSalas
- Blackbelt (Zaccaria) - played via the Zaccaria Pinball app, by Magic Pixel
- Black Belt (Bally Midway) - VPX by JPSalas
- Hollywood Heat (Gottlieb) - VPX by Mecha Enron
- V.1 (IDSA) - VPX by Goldchicco
- Motordome (Bally Midway) - VPX by JPSalas
- Road Kings (Williams) - VPX by Sliderpoint