Review: Williams Pinball Volume 7 on Pinball FX

Zen’s seventh volume of Williams tables were released slightly differently than usual. Due to the shift to releasing the game via Epic’s store the company had to release one table per month, and the three tables included in this volume were originally released standalone. However, these three alphanumeric tables are now included in a single pack. I prefer this new approach over what was done before, especially as I enjoy one of the tables in this pack way more than the other two. Which one? Well, you’ll just have to find out by reading on, won’t you?

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Volume 7 of Williams Pinball is currently available on all platforms and is also available on the iOS Zen Pinball World app (it released when it launched). The three tables in this pack include a table with an incredible theme and visuals, a lesser known gem of a table, and a Pat Lawlor classic that has more than withstood the test of time – all released from the late 80s to early 90s by Williams.

The Machine: Bride of Pin*Bot

Python Anghelo is a man who needs no introduction if you’re into pinball, and Bride of Pin*Bot is arguably his magnum opus of self-indulgence. Anghelo had written poems comparing pinball machines to the female human and wanted to create a machine that enforced that viewpoint onto its players. While the provocative theme won’t be for everyone, I admire the effort Anghelo put into this machine – it truly feels like no other machine out there thanks to Dan Forden’s audio and the incredibly unique theme. Unfortunately, this machine falters in a lot of places outside of its theme and artwork.

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The original Pin*Bot from 1986 featured artwork of a feminine robot on the pachinko-styled exit from the ramp. In Bride of Pin*Bot, the two swap places – the Bride is the star of the show and Pin*Bot is watching from the sidelines. The player is part of a team of technicians that venture to space to repair the Bride and help her undergo metamorphosis to become a human, at least temporarily. The game’s biggest gimmick is the billion-point shot, the highest value shot in pinball up to that point: when the player locks two balls when the Bride has become a human, the big wheel will spin and grant the player a random award that can include lighting the center ramp for 1 billion points.

Zen gave this table good treatment overall for its conversion, though there was a glitch in this table’s competitive modes that has since been fixed. Unfortunately, this is a table that I don’t find myself playing that much, despite the on-point theme. Bride of Pin*Bot is a two-shot game despite the layout featuring much more than those two shots: the left ramp loads the balls into the Bride and progresses her evolution, and the center ramp feeds the right flipper to set up for shots to that ramp. The left loop and right loop are fun to hit repeatedly, but only lead to an extra ball and a jackpot that pales in comparison to even some of the worst awards on the big wheel. Even outside of the billion-point shot, the scoring is heavily weighted towards the unlimited millions that can be earned by shooting the center ramp repeatedly.

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Bride of Pin*Bot is the kind of machine that could only have come out at the time it did in 1991, both in the attitude it takes towards the male / female relationship dynamic and in its rules. However, it’s theme can be interpreted in different ways, and I personally interpret it as being about the Bride getting tired of being ignored and wanting to be freed of the robotic life Pin*Bot has succumbed to, becoming her own woman in the progress. Overly analytical views on a 1991 pinball machine aside, I don’t particularly enjoy this machine but understand why it receives the love that it gets. There was no other machine like it in the early 90s, and there likely never will be again.

Swords of Fury

Swords of Fury has gotten a bit of a second lease on life ever since “Lionman!” became a running gag on machines designed by Scott Danesi. Though the machine was originally perceived as a failure by designers and higher-ups at Williams, the table is overall quite solid and not as bad as they thought it was. It also marked the return of Steve Kirk to the world of pinball design, even if only for a year. His designs for Stern like Stars and Meteor are some of my absolute favorite solid-states, and while Swords of Fury isn’t quite up to par with those, it’s still a fine machine and one I enjoy playing despite its simplicity.

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As expected for its era, Swords of Fury is a table all about getting to multiball and scoring the jackpot, which is easier said than done as it requires the player to feed the upper playfield and hit a quickly moving drop target using the mini-flipper there. The game was one of the earliest machines to accommodate for long ball times & high scores by increasing the difficulty of the game rules once the score reaches 2 million. It also features a fantasy theme that vaguely resembles the works of J.R.R. Tolkien as Lionman summons the power to fight the Balrog.

This table can be a bit of a grind to play for score but there thankfully aren’t any easily exploitable shots, and hitting the spinner to lock balls for multiball isn’t necessarily the easiest shot in the world, requiring a late right flipper shot. Unfortunately, I feel some shots are underutilized on this layout and could’ve been implemented better, namely the horseshoe loop that contains two spinners but solely exists to increase end-of-ball bonus. There are some fun tricks to pull off on this table; I love hitting the center ramp from the multiball release to score the Lionman bonus, and shatzing / alley passing the inlanes to light the tunnel to collect the next AVENGER bonus without having to complete the standup targets. Zen’s physics are accurate to the real table with no real flaws in sight, making this a great recreation of a table I otherwise just find alright.

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The main reason I keep coming back to Swords of Fury is easily its mystical theme and audio that evolves as the player locks balls for multiballs, another Brian Schmidt masterpiece. While the layout is neat on paper, it doesn’t quite come together to make a cohesive final product, though I like way more about it than I don’t. Maybe if Steve Kirk had kept making designs, he would be able to iterate on what this table did well while scrapping what didn’t, but he unfortunately left Williams / Bally very early. At least we got a fun table out of his tenure there.

Whirlwind

I’ll be upfront: Whirlwind is easily in my top 3 tables ever designed by Pat Lawlor, which is saying a lot given that he’s returned to the concepts introduced by this table many times as a designer. While the concepts in this table would be expanded on in Lawlor’s later projects, Whirlwind is the “perfect storm” of a table for him. The game actively avoids becoming too complicated, relying heavily on its theme to make a connection with its players, and backs that theme up with an excellent layout that remains one of my favorite pinball layouts to this day.

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Whirlwind is a pinball machine themed after storm chasing. The player follows the flashing directions to head towards the eye of the storm, which allows them to lock balls (and on the real table, activates a fan topper on the machine). Once multiball starts, the player can aim for the side ramp to collect 2M + 1M every time they hit the ramp, which is easier said than done because this side ramp is an incredibly tough shot to set up! All the while, players also earn skyway tolls by making ramp shots, and collect cellar awards by shooting the right sinkhole, with a mega cellar award for collecting all seven.

Getting what I dislike out of the way first, I don’t think Whirlwind needed 6 pop bumpers, especially given that the upper (red) bumpers are barely used; and the right orbit lacks much of a motive to shoot it outside of changing the lit cellar award via the spinner. I also find multiball to be way tougher on this digital release than in real life because I heavily utilize stage flipping during multiball on Whirlwind and can’t seem to find a consistent way to hit the saucer that feeds the upper flipper. These nitpicks are way smaller than I make them sound, as the rest of the table is amazing and holds up remarkably well for a table released in the early 90s! I can’t think of any shot, even today, that gives me the same thrill of shooting it as the side ramp on Whirlwind, and the audio by Chris Granner never fails to disappoint. The fact that Lawlor was able to iterate on what made Earthshaker! so great less than a year after that table released proves his worth as a designer.

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Do I enjoy this version of Whirlwind more than the real life table? Nah, the lack of stage flipping and the topper unfortunately harmed this digital version’s ranking. But if you’ve never played this table in real life, there’s no reason not to check it out digitally! This is one of the few Pinball FX tables where I find myself returning to it on a regular basis trying to get that 10M million plus award during multiball, and I never feel like I’m having a bad time going for it. Whirlwind deserves the love it gets and then some!

The Enhancements

The enhancements on volume 7 of Williams Pinball are tasteful and don’t distract from the tables too heavily. Bride of Pin*Bot has an animated Pin*Bot model and shuttles that launch to mark the end of each ball; Swords of Fury has an animated model of the Balrog and side panel art; and Whirlwind has a model of the storm chaser van above the ramp that gets blown away by the tornado when multiball starts.

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None of these enhancements have any basis in real life, so they’re just fun additions to the Zen releases that take advantage of them being digital tables. I personally like the additions to Bride of Pin*Bot the most as they help make the table’s theme feel even more well-integrated than before, but also like the Whirlwind tornado van and side panel art even if the former can get distracting during multiball.

The Final Ratings

Whirlwind is doing a lot of heavy lifting for the other two tables in this pack, which I like fine, but aren’t tables I find myself returning too often. I think newcomers to pinball will enjoy all three tables a lot and might find more enjoyment out of the other two tables, especially Swords of Fury, more than I do. But all three absolutely have their place in Pinball FX and feel incredibly distinct from each other. My ratings for the three tables in this pack are:

• The Machine: Bride of Pin*Bot – 6/10
• Swords of Fury – 7/10
• Whirlwind – 9/10

Out of the three tables included here, the only one I’ve had a lot of experience playing in real life was Whirlwind, so I’m admittedly a little biased towards that table, but I attempted to ignore that bias while reviewing it. Key word “attempted”, because I could gush about that table all day if I could. I know a lot of people have had similar stories with Bride of Pin*Bot and I think part of the fun of pinball is hearing about those formative experiences and how they led players towards preferring different kinds of machines. Zen is helping players much younger than me experience these machines for the first time, and I’m incredibly grateful for them.