#backglass art

[atomic-chronoscaph]

Roller Disco Pinball Machine - Gottlieb (1980)

[head-vampire]

SPY HUNTER

BALLY-MIDWAY | 1984

[atariforce]

Retro Game Spotlight 096: Middle Earth (1978)

Publisher: Atari Platform: Pinball Designers: Barry Slater, Gary Slater Backglass Art: George Opperman

Trivia: One of only seven Atari pinball machines produced, Middle Earth entered the Guinness Book of World Records when songwriter Mandi Martin played it for 140 hours and 32 minutes, with a final score of 321400 points.

[frogshunnedshadows]

Gottlieb's Haunted House pinball machine, from 1982. A seasonal teaser.

[boxxedset]

Gottlieb's "Psychedelic" (1969)

Source: Pinterest

[pinballforever]

Gottlieb "Genie" Credit: Art by Gordon Morrison

[kirabug-tumbles]

One of the early talking machines. It yells GOR-GARRRRRR in this very dated voice. But without machines like this, we wouldn’t have any of the machines with clips of actors and sound effects straight from Hollywood. On some of those machines, the voice acting or sound clips are carrying more than their share of the value of the game.

No one would buy Twister, whose rule set is pretty shallow, if it didn’t yell “WE GOT COWS”.

Gorgar (1979, Willaims Electronics)

[brotherblaze]

lemon shark —kuroo tetsurō

—summary: When you admit to quitting your high school club, Kuroo pauses, takes the decision in, and recalibrates his stance. He doesn't understand quitting like that but it's okay, you'll figure it out together. He'll always have your back, just as you'll always have his.

—cw: none

—wc: 1,9k

AO3 version

He finds you where always does when you’re not home and there are no other pressing responsibilities: the arcade.

“You’re going to develop carpal tunnel like that,” Kuroo says, peering at the backglass of the pinball machine over your shoulder. Half of it is an incomprehensible mess of a ruined city skyline with a tall figure standing at the forefront, a gun in his hand. It’s very pointedly not the backglass of a pinball machine. Or maybe the nigh-incomprehensible art there and on the sides is a feature, not a bug. The score on the display board on the bottom of the backglass keeps ticking up. He can hear the pinball in the machine dashing up and down, bang against the obstacles littered on the map, and the flippers at the bottom.

“No, I’m only moving my fingers.” You don’t look at him, stare at the pinball in the machine, press the buttons on the sides to make the flippers jump. The pinball bangs against one and is sent catapulting back into the playfield.

Kuroo steps around you and stops next to the machine — he knows better than to lean against it. His hands are buried in his denim jacket pockets. The pinball isn’t overly difficult to follow but he still gets thrown for a loop every now and then when it ricochets off one of the bumpers underneath the glass in an unexpected direction.

It’s really no surprise you’re this good at pinball. With the amount of time you spend in this place, he’d expect you to be able to clean out the shelves of cheaply-made toys and weird little useless gadgets with ease. Regular arcades are fun, he’ll admit it, but this one, American in style with its ticket system some hail as a scam (and claw machines with butterfinger claws that are definitely a scam to boot), he doesn’t see the appeal in this specific arcade.

Somehow, you do.

The pinball in the machine drops. The lights on the machine blink rapidly.

“What are you doing here, anyway? Don’t you have practice today?” You pat down your pants’ pockets for the points card and swipe it through the machine.

Kuroo raises his brows. “It’s 7:30.”

“What? No, it’s not.” The argument is immediately on your tongue because it isn’t 7:30 PM. That’s impossible.

He pulls one hand from his jacket pocket, presses the power button on the side of his phone, and turns the screen to face you. 7:36 PM.

“Oh.”

Kuroo glances at his phone screen, then slides the device back into his pocket. “How long have you been here?”

You shrug. “Like… 11.” You look away from him, opt to stare at the painted side panel of the pinball machine. It depicts one long white hot lightning strike with a blue aura. Yeah, there’s absolutely no way this frame was originally for this specific pinball game.

When you look up, he’s narrowed his eyes at you, lips tilted into a frown. It’s that look he gives a particularly difficult English homework task. Analyzing. Solution-oriented. “So, what, you skipped swim practice?” Because he knows how long those run. He knows when and where and how and who. It’s embedded into and around his own club schedule.

“I quit, actually. Yesterday.”

You raise your gaze to meet his, hold it, wait for his reaction.

Kuroo’s face spasms, fleeting expressions cycling so goddamned clearly until he pulls himself together, and puts up a nonchalant facade. His brow twitches and his expression morphs just slightly, finally settling on neutral. It’s almost eerie. He pulls his gaze from you, lets it drop to the pinball machine side panel as if he’s processing or looking for the right words to continue, then looks up at you again.

“Why?”

It’s a measured response. His voice is carefully neutral.

You tilt your head to the side, look over his shoulder at the distance, then tilt it to the other side, stare at the claw machine behind him. Your mind races, thoughts colliding and avoiding collision by near-misses, traveling parallel to each other, splitting at intersections. Possible outcomes on top of outcomes race with them, anything and everything from a prolonged lecture on the importance of perseverance, to disappointed resignation, to quiet acceptance. All of them horrible in their own way.

You settle on a half-truth with a shrug of your shoulders. “Got boring.” You don’t want to see his expression morph into the outcome of his choosing and turn away from him, scan the room for one more victim to acquire enough tickets for the top-shelf prize at the prize counter. “Quit while you’re ahead, or whatever they say.” A victim appears; a lone Street Fighter copycat game tucked right by said prize counter.

Kuroo falls into step with you. “That’s for risky stuff.”

“Like?”

“I don’t know, the stock market.”

“What do you know about the stock market, Romeo?”

You dare a glance at him from the corner of your eye but his expression remains carefully blank. It would be infuriating with anyone else. But Kuroo knows how to read people, how to play to their strengths, what to say and what not to say. You think you can read him well enough; he’s keeping his composure neutral to probe your thoughts and/or feelings on the subject so he's able to give the most effective response. It's almost clinical. The thought leaves a sour taste in your mouth.

He positions himself next to you but he doesn’t take up the player 2 slot on the arcade game. You don’t comment on it and hit play.

Your character dashes, jumps, kicks.

The opponent A.I. dodges, jumps, dies.

The game screen flashes GAME OVER in large blocky letters. You swipe the points card, cross your fingers, and saunter up to the prize counter.

You have an abundance of points, it turns out. The woman behind the desk grabs a hook on a stick and with the help of a step stool, pulls a yellow shark plush down from the high shelf. You point to a small raccoon plushie keychain to drain the rest of your acquired points.

Kuroo stares at the bright yellow shark plushie. Its eyes are embroidered hearts filled in with glittering thread. Its felt teeth are bent. “That’s the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen,” he lies. “It’s a horrifying monstrosity; you could get a better one from IKEA.”

“As per usual you have no taste.” You turn the large plush in your hands and tap the pad of your finger against the glittering eye. No residual glitter catches to your skin. “Well, since you hate this, you wouldn’t happen to want the raccoon, either, huh?”

“Never said that.” He holds his hand out, palm up and you place the small gray and brown raccoon into his waiting hand. He lifts it to eye level, stares back at its large vacant acrylic eyes.

“C’mon,” you jerk your head towards the exit, “you can continue gazing into each other’s eyes soulfully on the way home.”

The summer evening air is slowly cooling as the sun sets. Its orange rays glint off the skyscraper windows.

Rush hour draws to a close and the crowds on the train ease up. You manage to snag two seats near the front of the train as an old couple disembarks.

Your newest companion is sandwiched between your neck and the window, its face pressed flat against the glass. You angle your body slightly so its first dorsal fin is pressed against your throat, your knees pressed against Kuroo’s.

Kuroo spends the ride scrolling through social media. Every now and then he swaps apps, texts someone. You catch Kenma’s picture at the top of the messages. Another time you catch sight of the picture for the volleyball team’s group chat.

It’s hard to lean your head back against the cool window, the best you can do with the shark propped behind your head is turn your face towards Kuroo. It gives you the perfect angle to stare at his profile. He’s slightly slouched, shoulders lax. His posture straightens ever so slightly, jaw tensing, brow creasing. His fingers fly across the screen to type out a response in the group chat with you, him, Yaku, and Kai.

You let your eyes wander his face, the curve of his nose and his lips to —

To the thin scar running along the slope of his cheekbone.

“What?” he asks then, looking up from his phone. He locks and pockets it. You tap on your cheek where his scar is. “Does it bother you?” he asks.

“Sometimes.” Because it does. Sometimes.

“As far as first meetings go, it’s probably on the more interesting end of the scale.”

“You’re the one who yanked me from behind.” Because he did.

“Would you have preferred death by way of a moving vehicle?”

You roll your eyes playfully and look away as you always do when he brings that up. Sure, it’s the logical conclusion to you literally trying to run into oncoming traffic way back then; but that doesn’t mean he needs to say it out loud. He doesn’t. It’s the logical conclusion.

“Yeah, well, what a story to tell your grandkids in 60 years.”

You peel yourselves from the seats once your stop arrives and you tuck the shark under your arm. Kuroo keeps to the road side on the sidewalk. The crowds grow even more scarce as your street comes into view.

You pass Kenma’s house; the blinds aren’t drawn and you can faintly see the glow of the TV from Kenma’s room. The lights in Kuroo’s house are on. Some houses on the street are completely dark, others completely alight. There’s a window cracked open somewhere, broadcasting a football match.

You pause in front of your gate, almost at the end of the street, and make no move to cross the threshold.

“I got half the family sicced on me because they’re not fans of me quitting, y’know? Word travels fast.” You stare at the lit living room window obscured by a cream-colored blind. “Somehow they’d gotten it into their heads that I was going to go to the Olympics and now they’re…”

“Pissed?”

“That’s putting it lightly. Pissed and everything else under the Sun.” You purse your lips. “Probably gonna hear how I wasted my Olympic potential for the rest of eternity. I think they’re delusional for thinking I could ever make it that far.”

There’s a lull in the conversation. Birds swoop down from the sky, land on the power lines draped above your heads.

“You wanna stay over tonight?” Kuroo asks, jerking his head in the direction of his house. “Dad’s making pancakes first thing in the morning.”

You shake your head with a small smile. “Thanks, but I might as well get lecture number three million about how I can ‘still save my Olympic career’ over with. Good night.”

“Night.”

Kuroo lingers by the gate as you step through and take the short cobblestone path up to the house. He watches you pause at the door before you slot your keys in and throw it open. Still, he stands there as the door closes and stares at your bedroom window. It doesn’t take long before there’s movement, the blinds being rolled down and the lights turning on.

Only then does he take off towards his own house, clutching the raccoon keychain in his pocket.

part 2

divider by @/kafekitsune

[arcadefan]

Creature From the Black Lagoon pinball backglass art by Kevin O'Connor.

[thehubby]

It is both highly flattering and a little irritating to follow an online discourse thread to a website about virtual pinball tables, look one up completely at random because you're intrigued by the possibility of a virtual table based on a cool old arcade game, and discover that they've stolen your wallpaper art to create backglass images.

Like, I can't even be that angry, they're not selling it for money or anything, I spent years retooling the graphics from games that had been put together by companies, and I'm thrilled that one of the most overlooked games of the 80s gets a homemade virtual table... (You know, a little credit would have been nice though.)

[haveyouplayedthispinball]

Have you played this pinball?

Hello and welcome to Have You Played this Pinball?, a blog to poll Tumblr users to see which Pinball machine has been the most played + heard of on this site.

This blog is also an appreciation to classic and modern pinball machines. In making these polls, I hope to post as many machines as possible. For this reason, anyone can send in their own submissions of pinball they've either played + heard of!

Feel free to use the inbox to inquire about any of the games you see, share your own pinball experiences, love for your favorite game(s), and any questions you may have!

Additional info:

The 'fun facts' I pull are sourced from pinside.com , as well as some backglass/cover art.

My header and icon pictures are from the Williams Pinbot and Comet games, art done by Python Anghelo.

Submission Guidelines:

Submit as many machines as you like, only when submissions are open!

You may send in multiple submissions, just not all at once, please.

You may submit both physical and virtual/online 'pinball' games.

You MUST provide the name, manufacturer, and date of the game(s).

Obscure/older games are welcome!

You may submit via either the form below, or in the inbox!

SUBMISSION FORM:

[head-vampire]

Pinball Backglass Art

Source

[frogshunnedshadows]

Retro Arcade Afternoon: The Write-up!

Almost the first thing you see when you enter is the giant, double-size Hercules pinball by Atari, twice as big as a regular pinball game, which I also think uses a pool cue ball instead of a regular pinball ball. It's not up & running, and I don't think it has been for years.

The first thing I did was try my hand at my favorite, Galaga. Managed to brute-force my way to 134,580 at level 21, but that was not my best playing. I think that particular machine has a flaky joystick : /

Moved over to Butterfly, IIRC, which is a Spanish-made game, apparently. Old electro-mechcanical pinball. – The first one I played that day. Love to hear the little dings and bells of the score increasing.

Gave Attack from Mars a whirl, then tried the original Frogger in an original cabinet for the first time ever. Noticed the little Gremlin logo on the marquee (above).

Tried a little Super Mario Brothers on an original cab, and then Contra (for the first time) on a Play Choice cabinet.

Had a quick go at the Back to the Future trilogy machine by Data East. Nice art, appreciate them including all 3 films.

I liked Black Knight 2000. Lotta nice flashing lights on this, and some cool art. High fives for the entire Black Knight 2000 team.

Have to call out the wild and weird playfield on the Gottlieb Haunted House – three separate levels, with their own flippers = 8 flippers on this machine. And two sets of buttons for them, which I originally could not figure out. Great backglass art.

- - - To Be Continued! - - -

[boxxedset]

Pinball backglass for Gottlieb's Gemini (1978)

[kirabug-tumbles]

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Jersey Jack, 2019. Like Dialed In, this machine doesn’t have backglass so much as it has a 26 inch monitor in the backbox that shows art, scores, etc. It’s based on the Gene Wilder Willy Wonka, which I will always consider the definitive one and not just because Gene …

Continue reading "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory"

[bug-crimes]

okay okay I'm adding onto this post actually because this machine is cool as HELL and the artist deserves credit!!

this is not actually a machine you can get anywhere, because it's from an art exhibit! it's a modded pinball; essentially, it's the guts of another machine entirely rethemed art-wise! in this case, the machine that was modded is pinball pool, which, as you can see, was a pretty big overhaul!

[ID: A photo of the playing field of the pinball pool machine.]

This mod was actually done by the artist Howie Tsui for a 2012 art exhibition known as Friendly Fire, which "...undermines dominant narratives used to historicize the war of 1812".

The actual name of this machine is Musketball!, and is meant to be a crude simulation of a bullet bouncing around the anatomy of a soldier. The idea, according to the artist, is that over time, the player would become accustomed to the violent imagery, despite the initial visceral reaction it causes.

Also, as a bonus, here's the backglass!

[ID: The backglass of a pinball machine, with the title "Musketball!" and the imagery of a British soldier being pierced by a bullet with an exaggerated amount of viscera.]

Mangled Viscera pinball machine