Classic pinball backglasses: a photo essay

Some of the old games I saw at PAPA were truly hilarious. It's pretty clear which target demographic the designers are shooting for -- socially maladjusted adolescent boys -- once you see the overriding of theme of most of these games, which tends to be: hot women in bikinis show up in the strangest places.

Lesson 1: Historically speaking, women could be pirate captains. Here's the backglass art to prove it:

Not only that, but women pirate captains could apparently even wear poofy hairdos, wide collared pink blouses and flared boots, and still manage to command the respect of a grizzled all-male pirate crew. Even those guys in the corner loading the cannon, despite being forced to wear pink vests and pink do-rags, don't seem to mind too much.

And, of course, the crowning touch of historical accuracy is the ship's pink skull-and-crossbones flag.

Lesson 2: Science fictiony human-hybrid characters should always be women, because that's totally hot.

I don't know what's going on here. There are some butterfly women with lots of eyeshadow, beehive hairdos, and, crucially, of course, enourmous breasts, flying over some canyon in a desert. They don't have arms or feet, but they do have huge eyebrow-antennae thingies. So, whatever the artist was smoking: I want some of it.

Another good example of this theme could be seen in the backglass for Embryon, which features a space explorer happening upon a cadre of cocooned alien-hybrid women, who are, of course, totally hot.

Lesson 3: When using women as symbolic representations of abstract concepts, it is essential to make them, and I can't stress this enough, totally hot.

Check out the backglass for 1976's Lady Luck:

Again, not sure what's going on here. OK, obviously, the three hot, skimpily dressed women represent fortune, good luck, and bad luck. Then, there's a Magician Guy on the stairs, and a group of people sitting at the bar watching the show.

But then there's... stairs that go up to a building in the clouds? And all this is happening outside, in the middle of a cityscape?

I don't know about that. I do know that I love how Bad Luck Girl is dressed in a black catsuit like Catwoman, but with a giant "13" on her forehead, just to make it perfectly clear to you that she's Bad Luck. And also, Good Luck Girl is wearing an enormous horseshoe on her head. Hilarious.

Lesson 4: If you are half-man and half-motorcycle, you will have no problem attracting smoking hot chicks wearing skin-tight leather.

I mean, duh.

I think that was my problem in high school... I just wasn't motorcycley enough to get the chicks.

Lesson 5: If you're going to go through the trouble of rescuing prisoners from a gloomy medieval dungeon, they'd better be smoking hot chicks wearing bikinis, my friend.

This really is the ultimate "chicks in bikinis show up in strange places" scenario. I guess you could call it Princess Leia Syndrome. Notice that the guy doing the rescuing, having already rescued one bikini-clad lass, is focused on the hot nearly-naked chick on the right wearing the metal bikini. However, he is conveniently ignoring the hands reaching out to him from behind the bars of a cell containing a decidedly non-bikini-clad (male) prisoner on the left.

Another great thing about this game is the inappropriate use of a computery voice. This was all the rage in early '80s pinball: no matter what the theme, no matter whether it made sense, all games had to have a computery robot voice.

[During playtesting:]
"This game is great, Hopkins, but... where's the computery robot voice!"
"But boss, this game's about a medieval prison!"
"Install the computery robot voice, Hopkins! STAT!"

My good friend Sgt. Chris Newsom recently bought an early '80s game called Volcano. Despite the fact that the game is set in that totally historically accurate time period when cavemen lived among the dinosaurs (and also, of course, hot fur-bikini-wearing cavewomen)... it features a computery robot voice.

"Vol-can-o! E-rup-tion!" Comedy gold.

Lesson 6: Even mundane things are cool... IN THE FUTURE!

We're counting down now to my favorite backglass in the whole practice bank. I'm speaking, of course, of 1979's classic... Future Spa.

It's a spa.

It's in the future.

It's Future Spa.

That is AWESOME.

It is, quite simply, the ultimate combination of science fiction and fitness. You're never going to see a better representation of those two themes combined, until somebody finally options my screenplay for Slim Goodbody vs. Predator.

First, front and center, you've got a very '70s looking couple running on the space track, in their space high-tops. She's got Bo Derek in 10 hair, appropriate for the time; he looks a bit like a too-well-abbed Chuck Barris. How they've managed to jog in the vacuum of space without their faces exploding is not made explicitly clear.

On the left, you've got a almost completely naked chick doing... what is she doing? Holding up the Player 1 score display? I guess it's heavy or something. Oh wait, she's doing some kind of exercise with her leg. But just her left leg. Hmmm. Underneath her, you've got yet another nearly naked chick enjoying the space whirlpool, with another too-well-abbed guy whose body doesn't match his head.

Then, on the right, it's my favorite guy: space weightlifting guy. Like the other two guys, he's got a bushy mustache, because that was popular in the '70s and, thus, must also be popular in the Future. He's lifting what looks like a bar of plutonium on the hydraulic space Nautilus machine, while wearing the required space weightlifing equipment: cool shades and a big metallic backpack thing. Judging by his biceps, he's also been hitting the Soylent Creatine pretty hard.

That's all well and good, but you know what I'm really thinking:

"Future Spa?!"

Seriously, I want a tape of the meeting where Bally decides to create a game called Future Spa.

"Boss, dig this crazy idea I just had for our next game! It's a spa... but in the future!"
"Well done, Hopkins! Print the flyers. Now, about getting a robot voice in there..."

As a bonus, here's a shot of the playfied, featuring, you guessed it, scantily-clad women.

Conclusion

In conclusion, breasts.

Oh, here's one more photo of a game that I played, for Andrew:

This game is hard. As I lost my fourth consecutive game without a replay, I felt just like Peter Parker: a hard-luck Charlie.

James - 12:21 PM