Atari pins

[Matt McIrvin]

Never heard of or seen an Atari pin table before... interesting.

That "Superman" table looks and sounds weird as hell. It almost reminds me of those cheap kid's pin tables that were sold at places like "Sears" or "Toys R Us"...

The unusual look, with the bright colors and orange stripes going everywhere, is basically Atari's house art style from that era. (Think of Atari 2600 cartridge box art.)

The sound is just what pinball machines were like from about 1977 to '79, when they'd gone from electromechanical chimes to electronic sound, but could only produce really simple chip noises, and were using them to do the same things you'd do with a bell on an EM machine. (Compare it with Genie.) It's like the kiddie tables in that there's no ambient music, no speech or sampled sound.

The layout has always struck me as a precursor of Firepower (from the same designer), but wider and without multiball.

 

[night]

That "Superman" table looks and sounds weird as hell. It almost reminds me of those cheap kid's pin tables that were sold at places like "Sears" or "Toys R Us"...

Blasphemy! This is state-of-the-art.

 

[Fungi]

Back in those days, I only played Atari pins just because of the sounds. Although, I don't remember being able to just reach in and grab the ball like that. Hmm.

 

[Matt McIrvin]

On IPDB there's an interesting anecdote from Steve Ritchie about how he and Eugene Jarvis tried to get ambient sound effects into this machine:

I brought my Echoplex (a guitar player's tape loop mechanical echo chamber on the cheap) to work, and connected it to our Superman Prototype. The continuous background sound that emanated intrigued us.

Atari management refused to let us apply this fun discovery, which made the player feel more a part of the pinball game, and added progressive adrenaline to any pinball as the game progressed. Why didn't management feel what we felt?


http://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=2454

It wasn't long before such things would become the norm.

 

[Matt McIrvin]

...and Eugene Jarvis eventually went on to produce classic Williams videogames like Defender, Stargate and Robotron: 2084, whose sound is a huge part of their appeal.

 

[Matt McIrvin]

It wasn't long before such things would become the norm.

...not using a mechanical tape loop like the Echoplex, of course; I can actually see why Atari management would object to something like that, which would probably wear out before long. But as Ritchie says, machines with continuous background sound appeared pretty soon after that.

 

[Lucipher28]

The unusual look, with the bright colors and orange stripes going everywhere, is basically Atari's house art style from that era. (Think of Atari 2600 cartridge box art.)

The sound is just what pinball machines were like from about 1977 to '79, when they'd gone from electromechanical chimes to electronic sound, but could only produce really simple chip noises, and were using them to do the same things you'd do with a bell on an EM machine. (Compare it with Genie.) It's like the kiddie tables in that there's no ambient music, no speech or sampled sound.

The layout has always struck me as a precursor of Firepower (from the same designer), but wider and without multiball.

Growing up on and still owning a 2600, the colors instantly reminded of that, so I agree 100% It just isn't something I've seen on any other table, hence my "weird" remarks.

As for sounds, yeah, I wasn't around for the 70's. Hahahaha I'll take your word for it.

 

[Lucipher28]

Blasphemy! This is state-of-the-art.

State of the art?

Ooooooooooooooooooooooook! Hahahahaha

 

[Matt McIrvin]

Superman was actually slightly unusual for an Atari pin in that the score displays were in conventional positions up on the backglass. Many of them had score displays oddly positioned down at the bottom of the playfield. I'm not sure why they did it that way; maybe it allowed them to use smaller, cheaper display components.