Visual History: A Story of Pinball Innovation in the Early Solid State Days

Editors note: this piece was originally created by author John Smout on 12/02/2004. It's been edited for publishing and shared with us following John Smout's recent passing. John was a pinball aficionado from the UK and we're happy to give this piece some new visibility. ‍

Atari pinball machines were always an oddity. Certain pinball collectors find them desirable. They were prone to problems as a result of the circuitry being directly underneath the playfield. If pieces of metal from the underside of the playfield worked loose and fell off they shorted out the game boards. Not many people in the field knew how to fix them, so many games got junked quite early on. Relatively few Atari pinballs now survive in working condition.

The game Atarians, was only the third micro-processor pinball game ever mass-produced and was actually made by Mirco games. Mirco games had made the first ever solid state pinball game, Spirit of 76, an ugly and boring game made in a very small quantity.

Atarians was the first ever wide-bodied pinball machine and the first ever pinball machine with electronic sound. So a milestone game.

These games were unusual in that the score displays were not in the backglass, but in the metal apron at the front left of the playfield, hence them all being on the one board like that.