One of the most influential women in pinball is the horror movie hostess Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, with three machines themed around her: one in the 80s, one in the 90s, and one released towards the end of the 2010s. As Elvira, Cassandra Peterson presented horror movies with a campy sense of humor and the looks to match. With the rise in popularity of her character after the 1988 Elvira: Mistress of the Dark movie, Bally found it fitting to use her image as the focus of one of their first successful pinball machines under Williams’ ownership, with a sequel released a few years later.
Both the 1989 and tables have just been released for Pinball FX as of October 16, 2025, and are sold separately for $10 each. While I understand this is due to licensing constraints, this means I will be reviewing the tables with that price point in mind.
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This nostalgic favorite from the late 80s finally found its way to Pinball FX and will appeal to anyone who grew up with this machine at their local arcade. Designed by Dennis Nordman with some support from Steve Ritchie & Jim Patla, Elvira and the Party Monsters was the formative machine for pinball artist Greg Freres, who adopted a cartoonish comic book art style for this machine and Dennis’s following two machines. While the machine is a product of its time in its sound design and art style, its design sensibilities and even its humor are still accessible to newer audiences.
Most of the scoring on Elvira and the Party Monsters comes from two sources: the multiball, which starts after locking 3 balls at the skull locker, and the monster slide left ramp. Repeated shots to the left ramp will eventually light the ramp for 1 million; then, repeated shots will collect ELVIRA letters and eventually qualify the timed 3 million shot at the skull. ELVIRA letters can also be lit on a timer by completing any set of lanes or targets. During multiball, shooting both the left and right ramp will award a jackpot and then award 250k points per ramp for the rest of the multiball. Other targets around the playfield increase end-of-ball bonus, with the left targets eventually lighting the 1 million at the center hole, the BBQ targets lighting a mystery award, the JAM targets lighting boogie bonus, and the gravestone pizza targets increasing the right orbit value. All in all, simple rules that don’t take themselves seriously whatsoever, befitting the machine’s wild party theme.
This Pinball FX recreation is authentic to the original release in many ways, right down to the difficulty of the bumper feed and recovering balls that don’t quite make it all the way into the skull locker. The sound design is especially noticeable in this recreation, with realistic sounds for balls exiting the skull locker or the party punch right ramp, all helping to make the table feel closer to its real-life origin. One unfortunate casualty of this release is how easy it is to “nudge catch” balls that exit the left ramp, making the left ramp very easy to loop compared to the real table, which requires it to be made on the fly; I thought this would’ve been fixed after Taxi from volume 9, when they implemented restrictions against this. However, this is a minor gripe that will affect only the most competitive Pinball FX players.
Is Elvira and the Party Monsters worth the $10 asking price? That’s up to you to decide. This isn’t a machine I’ve had much nostalgia for outside of playing it on Pinball Arcade back when they had the Williams rights, but I know this table has its fans just like any other, and the attention to detail on this release can justify the asking price. I would personally wait on a sale for this one due to its age and simplicity, but if you’re really into this wild machine, give it a purchase.
Scared Stiff
Scared Stiff, I can thankfully say, is well worth the $10 asking price. One of the final standard machines ever produced by Williams / Bally, Scared Stiff has the polish expected of a late-era Bally machine and is one of the most accessible machines they released. I don’t see this one much on location near me, but the few times I’ve played it for long periods of time, I’ve always enjoyed it, and I’m glad this table is finally seeing a release on modern software. In some ways this table feels like a sequel to the previous Elvira machine, but in plenty of others, it's proud to be its own thing and go in a different direction, adjacent to Elvira’s roots as a horror hostess.
The objectives of Scared Stiff are easy to learn but hard to master, in the traditional pinball fashion. There are six Tales of Terror listed above the flippers, including two multiballs and four shots that need to be hit a certain number of times: the left ramp, the top lanes, the bumpers, and the leaper targets. After completing all six Tales, the player can shoot the crate for a chance to become Scared Stiff by alternating ramp & crate shots, with a 5M award and lucrative monster multiball for completing the stressful timed mode. Additional depth to the rules is provided by the spin the spider feature: shoot the right ramp to light the spider hole, then select an award by stopping the spider’s tail with the flippers. Figure out which awards work the best for your play style and current game status, and blow up the score! There might even be a surprise for collecting all the spider awards.
This is an excellent recreation of the 1996 Bally machine, which thankfully retains the difficulty of the original release. The Pinball Arcade release of this table was infamous for being a little too easy to control, but this recreation thankfully includes the random nature of the crate kickout that requires nudging skills to recover from consistently and restricts extra balls to 2 per ball in play. Also, unlike the Pinball Arcade release, all the dialogue is retained here, keeping the original machine's slightly raunchy nature alive. I haven’t been able to find the strength for the skill shot into the top hole quite yet, but I’m sure I will after enough play time on it.
Scared Stiff is a machine that has a diehard fanbase and one that I’m sure this recreation will appeal to; it certainly did for me. Everything about this recreation plays true to the original, and I’ve enjoyed my time with this machine a lot over the years, so I’m very glad that we finally got an even better recreation than the one that came out over 10 years ago. Whether on sale or at full price, Scared Stiff is worth looking into.
The Pinball FX Enhancements
Both machines come with enhancements: one with negligible enhancements, and the other with enhancements that further improve the table. Elvira and the Party Monsters has a variety of figures around the playfield, including one of Elvira in her cauldron, where the left instruction card would be, while Scared Stiff has Elvira sitting atop the entrance to the Bony Beast ramp and fully animated figures above the slingshots rather than the toy figures from the original. Both machines also include original art on the table side blades to help make the machines feel more immersive. The Elvira enhancements, while appreciated, don’t add much value, as they make the table feel even more cluttered than it already is; the Scared Stiff enhancements, by contrast, are comparatively subdued —refreshingly so for a table this colorful and vibrant.
Conclusion
Though these two tables are being sold separately, I’m reviewing them both here as they both released on the same day. Both machines are very good for people brand-new to pinball who want a taste of the Williams/Bally house style, but Scared Stiff offers more for players who have been in the scene for a while and want to improve their play. Regardless, I’ll be playing both machines consistently and giving them the following ratings:
Elvira and the Party Monsters – 7/10
Scared Stiff – 9/10
These are likely to be the final releases of the year for Zen Studios.
2025 was an alright year for them overall, with two pretty good originals (both Tomb Raider machines), three good Williams tables (Elvira, Pin*Bot, WHO dunnit), and two great Williams tables (Taxi, Scared Stiff). With many of the Williams tables that were released in Pinball Arcade having finally been preserved on a newer platform, I’m hoping that 2026 brings more Williams tables we haven’t seen before; I’m still holding out hope for Mousin’ Around and Radical! but understand that they’re rare tables, and that Zen is located in Hungary, making them even more difficult to look for. But as the final release of the year, these were more than fitting, especially given Zen Studios’ 25th birthday that occurred a week ago at the time of this writing.Happy birthday, Zen team, and I hope you continue to maintain the digital pinball scene on consoles & mobile for years to come.
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