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Silver Ball Century ep. 65 - Late 1992 - Star Fish

This episode: Star Wars, Fish Tales, Metal Man, Al's Garage Band Goes on a World Tour, and Creature from the Black Lagoon. Next episode: White Water, Rocky & Bullwinkle, Street Fighter II, Jurassic Park, and Twilight Zone.

I think 1992 is one of the peaks of pinball, alongside 1980 and 1933. You can tell how much people appreciate the games from 1992 from how many of them have high-quality recreations by VPin Workshop.

Data East has landed one of the biggest licenses possible, Star Wars, and had a lot of fun with it. It's got all the right Data East vibes, where you're having too much fun to notice the rules are shallow. We'll be playing the revised ROM, so that looping the center ramp forever isn't the clear strategy.

Fish Tales is often the machine you love to hate. It's tough but fair, and it's an original theme that resonates with a lot of people, and that flapping fish topper is taunting you as your ball goes down the middle.

Bally/Williams has their own aquatic creature, the Creature from the Black Lagoon. It's licensed from Universal and based on the 1954 film. But would you recognize the scenes or characters from that film? Probably not. So they took it in a fun and different direction: the theme is about going to a drive-in theater to watch Creature from the Black Lagoon, complete with '50s music, a snack bar, and kissing. The film itself is only involved in multiball.

Who's this newcomer Alvin G? He's not a newcomer at all: the G is for Gottlieb. Alvin Gottlieb, son of the pinball industry's founder David Gottlieb, sold the Gottlieb company to Columbia Pictures in 1976 when the selling was good. But now he and his son Michael want to get back into the pinball industry, so they start a new company. They just can't call it "Gottlieb" because that name is taken. So Alvin G. appears, and the first thing we get to see from them is the fictional rock band theme of Al's Garage Band Goes on a World Tour.

Meanwhile in Spain, Inder is still making games, and Metal Man is their thematic answer to the Black Knight.

Silver Ball Century starts at 8:30pm Eastern on Thursday, July 30, on twitch.tv/arborelia.

Tables in this episode

#pinball #silver ball century