Episode 106 - Ballsaves: Pinball's Biggest Mistake!

Ball saves have made modern pinball too forgiving, eliminating challenge and turning games into safety-net exploitation.

Synopsis

Alan and Alex from Wedgehead A A A Pinball Podcast examine the history and criticism of ball saves in pinball, tracing their evolution from 1980's Firepower through modern games and arguing they represent pinball's biggest design mistake by coddling players, eliminating consequences, and turning strategy into exploiting safety nets rather than skill.

Highlights

• Playfield validation originated in the EM era as a safety mechanism to ensure proper ball serving, not as a modern ball save feature
• Firepower (1980) was the first game with a physical ball-save kicker in the left outlane
• F-14 Tomcat (1987) by Steve Ritchie introduced the first modern ball save design as 'F-14 Tomcat,' available on ball three if the first two balls were bad
• Terminator 2 (1991) was the first game to guarantee a ball save at the start of every ball
• The The The Addams Family (1992), the best-selling flipper game ever, shipped without a factory ball save
• Whitewater (1993) may be the last factory-released game without a ball save, though it has playfield activation validation
• Ball saves have evolved from functional safety features into exploitable strategic elements that skilled players use to gain unfair advantages
• Modern games like Ghostbusters have excessive ball saves with multiple outlane saves and scoop ejection saves that extend the safety window far beyond reasonable limits
• Gottlieb in the 1990s as the third-place competitor regularly sold 2-3x the units that modern manufacturers like Spooky and Barrels of Fun sell today (400-900 units)
• Williams sold 5,000-20,000+ units of games 30 years ago, demonstrating a much larger market when games had fewer ball saves

Entities

• Barrels of Fun· company
• Gottlieb· company
• Spooky Pinball· company
• Williams· company
• Black Knight Sword of Rage· game
• F-14 Tomcat· game
• Firepower· game
• Ghostbusters· game
• Iron Maiden· game
• Metallica Remastered (Premium/LE)· game
• Terminator 2: Judgment Day· game
• The Addams Family· game
• The Getaway: High Speed II· game
• The Sopranos®· game
• White Water· game
• Wedgehead Pinball Podcast· organization
• Alan· person
• Alex· person
• Colin MacAlpine· person
• Harry Williams· person
• Steve Ritchie· person