Last weekend the annual California Extreme (CAX) "Classic Arcade Games Show" took place in Santa Clara, California. The show featured 100s of classic arcade games and pinball machines. David Davila went to the show and generously sent over a bunch of pictures from the event for all of us. The ones that I am going to focus on today are the amazing section of Atari pinball machines.
Due to reliability issues and low production numbers, you don't see Atari pinball machines in the wild aka at public arcades very often. Sure, occasionally you'll see a Superman because of the awesome theme, but for the most part Atari pins are pretty rare. I'm always happy to play these widebody behemoths whenever I come across one.
From 1976 through 1979, the iconic video game company Atari produced seven production pinball machines. I have pictures of six of the seven production games from CAX. In addition to those production games, three never produced prototype Atari pinball machines were at the event, the 1983 prototype "4x4" (only 2 produced), 1980 "Alien Space" (only 1 produced) and the 1978 prototype "Pipeline."
The only game that I don't have a picture of from the show is the even more massive 1979 Atari Hercules. Since I just saw one last week at Lyon's Classic Pinball, I included it at the end of this article.
The first pinball machine that made it into production at Atari was the 1978 title "The Atarians." I don't know how many of them were produced, but I came across an interview with the pinball designer Mark Ritchie who said half of the games had to be returned to the Atari factory because they used faulty plywood.
The second Atari production pin was 1977's "Time 2000." As you all know, I've been to a ton of arcades over the years and I have only seen this game a handful of times. This was the first game, pin or vid, that was programmed by the legendary industry veteran Eugene Jarvis.
Atari pin number three was "Airborne Avenger." Interestingly, this was the first game ever designed by the pinball legend Steve Ritchie. Again it was programmed by Eugene Jarvis. According to IPDB, Ritchie said that Atari sold 3,420 Airborne Avengers.
The fourth production pinball machine by Atari was "Middle Earth." This one is my personal favorite because I absolutely love the art on it. Pinside claims that only 210 Middle Earths were produced, but that number seems a little low to me. I definitely see this game around more than a lot of other Atari pins. 104 Pinside members claim to have Middle Earths in their collections.
Next up was the surf-themed game Pipeline. The first several Atari pinball machines had significant reliability issues. Chief among those was probably the fact that the boards for the pins were located under the playfield rather than in the head of the game. Parts would fall off of the playfield onto the boards and short them. Early Atari pins also had issues with their rotary solenoids, lamp drivers and edge connectors. So Atari went to work and redesigned its pinball platform for Pipeline.
After the development team had nearly finished Pipeline, Atari's marketing department informed them that they didn't want a surf-themed game. Star Wars was the hot movie at the time and they wanted a space-themed game. So Pipeline was scrapped and its layout became production game #5, 1978's "Space Riders." Space Riders still used the old hardware. I can't find any production numbers for this one, but only 65 Pinsiders list it in their collections so it's pretty rare. It's another Eugene Jarvis programmed game.
The first pinball machine released with Atari's second generation hardware came in 1979 when Game #6, Atari's big hit, "Superman" was released. Superman was another Steve Ritchie / Eugene Jarvis game. On this pin, the score readouts were moved from the bottom corner of the playfield to the backglass. It was the last game that Steve designed at Atari before Steve left there for Williams Pinball. It actually went into production after he left. Supposedly 5,124 Supermen were made.
The final production pinball machine made by Atari was the aforementioned Hercules. According to the Pinball Compendium, Atari manufactured 500 units of this monster machine. Hercules was 7 feet tall and 8 feet long! The game used a pinball the size of a cue ball.
The only other Atari pinball machine that I've ever seen that I haven't mentioned yet is the 1980 prototype Road Runner. Only two prototype Road Runner units were produced, one of which currently resides at the Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas.
Again, thanks to David for the cool pictures from CAX that form the backbone of this article.
The Atari pinball machines from California Extreme:
Pictures of Hercules as seen at Lyons Classic Pinball:
It was a great to see all these Atari machines. Plus they were even working! Pipeline had very impressive art and an amazing restoration. 4x4 was very unusual in its operation and shots.