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Silver Ball Century ep. 57 - Early 1990 - Feel the Power

A new, brightly colored layout that looks like a 1990s gaming magazine. In this episode: Phantom of the Opera, Whirlwind, Silver Slugger, Pool Sharks, The Bally Game Show

It is the nineties, and there is time for pinball. Not that much time, though, because this episode I want to make sure to raid into the UFO 50 Bingo playoff match between my wife FlannelKat and my good friend SaberaMesia. We're hitting five games tonight, set up with the nudgeable pinball controller like we have been for the last few streams.

Whirlwind is the standout classic of this episode, a defining example of early-90s gameplay, and it is . The gimmick on a physical Williams machine is that there is a fan on the topper of the machine which blows air on you, particularly intensely when you're in multiball. We'll make something work when playing it virtually. "Feel the Power" was Williams' slogan at the time, and they announce it when the fan comes on for multiball.

Phantom of the Opera is a game that's grown on me. It's clearly riding on the success of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, while not being licensed from it at all. Data East based the theme on the public-domain book, providing their own character art, voices, and music, so it's not going to satisfy devoted fans of the musical. But they did kind of get the vibes, and it establishes the buildup of "light lock -> 2-ball -> relock -> 3-ball multiball" that we'll see in multiple other Data East games.

Silver Slugger is one of Gottlieb's "street level" games, an initiative to make cheaper, simpler, easier-to-operate pinball games, without ramps that the ball can get stuck on. Most of what I remember about it is the sound that I call the "extremely Gottlieb incorrect buzzer".

Silver Ball Century starts tonight (Tuesday, May 5) at 8:30pm Eastern, on twitch.tv/arborelia.

Tables in this episode

#pinball #silver ball century