The announcement that Zen was planning to release a volume’s worth of alphanumeric tables came as a bit of a surprise to the pinball community when it was first announced. Their tables had always been done in the DMD style and it was thought that the company wouldn’t be able to create tables using the displays Williams & Bally used in the 80s & early 90s. However, the company was able to release these tables and while they weren’t perfect initially, they have now gotten to a point where I can review them properly using their Pinball FX counterparts.
Volume 6 of Williams Pinball is available on all Pinball FX platforms and was one of the final packs released for Pinball FX3 before support moved to the new game. The pack features three alphanumeric tables: a Pat Lawlor table that left many different impressions on those who played it, a time capsule of early 90s pop culture, and the sequel to a top-selling 80s pinball machine.
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FunHouse
1990 was a turning point for pinball in both playfield designs and rules. Layouts like Bally’s Radical!and Williams’ Whirlwindhad layouts that can be favorably compared to recent Stern and JJP releases and began experimenting with rules that either required use of every shot on the playfield or included a “mode” structure to encourage players to shoot around the playfield. But no other table that year had a talking, robotic head that interacted with the player as the game progressed. Coming off Whirlwind’s success, Pat Lawlor saw fit to fulfill this oddly specific niche with FunHouse and made a solid table along the way.
FunHouse has the trappings of a carnival-themed machine, but the main goal of the machine involves the funhouse’s clock and Rudy, the funhouse’s “mechanical man”. As the player hits shots, time passes by on the clock, and when the clock strikes 11:30 Rudy becomes grumpy with the player. Locking the balls at the hidden hallway advances the clock to 12:00 midnight, sending Rudy to sleep, and allows the player to start multiball with a shot to Rudy’s gaping jaw and attempt to collect million plus awards by shooting the trap door to Rudy’s dismay. The table also contains gimmicks like a second plunger used to collect “crazy steps” awards from an elevated ramp, and six mystery mirror awards with a super frenzy mode for scoring all six.
I like FunHouse quite a bit in real life, but this digital recreation doesn’t quite hit the same for me. Don’t get me wrong, this is still an 8/10 table and my favorite table of the pack, but I found myself struggling to hit the trap door from the upper flipper when I needed it, a very important shot given the million plus award during multiball. The layout is thankfully varied and designed to prevent you from exploiting shots too much as multiball gets tougher and tougher each time it is played, though the ramp can still be hit repeatedly. It also encourages rebounds in a way not many other Lawlor-designed tables do; you can bank off the superdog targets into the mystery mirror, and the hole that lights the ramp for crazy steps can only be entered via a bumper rebound. Rebounds are one of my favorite aspects of pinball playfield design and I’m glad to see it was actively considered while designing FunHouse, and that the digital recreation accounts for these.
FunHouse is a machine that has a divisive reputation in the community in part because of how the Rudy toy was often prone to breaking on location – there are some horrifying pictures of broken Rudy eyes out there. Thankfully, the copies of it I’ve played have all been mechanically sound, so I’ve never had this issue and always found FunHouse to be a charmingly quirky machine. Pat Lawlor’s next effort, two years later, would iterate on the successes of this machine and then some!
Dr. Dude
For a time in the late 80s, you could very clearly identify the tables that Dennis Nordman designed by their art package and themes. Compared to their contemporaries, they were incredibly colorful, often combining two themes into one package and alluding to the pop culture landscape of the time. No table better evokes Nordman’s original intents as a designer than Dr. Dude, a table that takes clear inspiration from media like the “Bill & Ted” series and has attitude to spare. While this table might have released in 1990, it has the makings of a late 80s table through and through.
The vibrant backglass art by Greg Freres is some of my absolute favorite artwork on a pinball machine and chronicles its backstory. Dr. Dude started off as a geek who created a lab to turn himself into a “super dude” beyond compare. The player undergoes the same process that Dr. Dude created; after collecting the three elements of coolness with shots to three colored targets around the playfield, the player “mixes them up” by shooting the mixmaster ramp. Finally, the player must activate the ray at the left eject to level up on the “Dude-O-Meter” and start multiball with a chance at jackpots by shooting the ramp. Once the player becomes “Super Dude”, the next ramp shot will score a gazillion (read: 500k for every ramp target hit on the next shot)!
Dr. Dude is a very difficult table, almost too difficult considering its theme and artwork were intended to evoke the younger crowd of the late 80s & early 90s, but if you know me, I find difficult tables to be important to master as they help me improve as a player and work on skills I’ve been struggling with. Getting high scores on this machine requires knowledge of the timing for shooting all three elements of coolness, and a few are in difficult places, like the magnetic personality shot that requires a very late right flipper shot. The mixmaster ramp is also one of the tightest shots in pinball, and more than once, I’ve gotten straight down the middle drains just by plunging the ball and watching it exit the bumpers. However, I don’t view these as “design flaws” of the machine, but rather intentional challenge that the player can avoid. For instance, they can backhand the gift of gab shot from the right flipper, or short plunge the ball to avoid entering the bumper area. The design accounts for a lot of “alternate options” even if they don’t present themselves immediately, and Zen’s recreation of this table accounts for all of them.
I don’t find myself playing Dr. Dude that often for the very reason that it’s difficult, and sometimes I’m just not in the mood to play a table that prides itself on its difficulty. But other times, when I want to practice more advanced techniques instead of playing casually, I’m very happy that Dr. Dude exists. Even for the players who don’t play that seriously, this table has unforgettable early 90s vibes and atmosphere that will either inspire nostalgia for the era, laughter at how silly its theme is, or – in my case – both.
Space Station
Barry Oursler’s 1984 pinball machine, Space Shuttle, released at a perfect time for the hobby. Along with being the first machine with a toy on the playfield, it included an easy-to-access multiball. Three years later, the creator would return to the idea with a direct sequel to the machine that takes more after machines from the late 80s, including unique flipper placement with no inlanes that require the player to quickly react to where the ball might bounce next. Space Stationtends to go underappreciated, but I’ve always had a soft spot for this table, even more so after seeing it used in tournaments.
Like the original table, the goal of Space Station is to lock balls in two different areas and then start multiball, this time with the help of a ramp that diverts to allow balls to enter the two different locks. As soon as multiball starts, condition green will activate, and the player must re-lock the balls at the same places that were used to start it for the rescue jackpot. Stop ‘n score makes its return from the original machine and behaves similarly but can now be multiplied by completing the top lanes, and the SHUTTLE targets from the original return with the addition of a second set of targets spelling STATION, with each target bank scoring an award that changes every time they are completed.
The layout on Space Station is awesome, and Zen’s recreation mostly does it justice, though the hidden drop target bank for bonus X is nowhere near as satisfying here as it is on the real machine. Despite the plunge always entering the bumpers with no changes to where it enters the playfield, the rest of the layout feels wide open thanks to the unique flipper & slingshot layout and encourages interesting ways to tackle these shots. On any other table you wouldn’t be able to backhand a drop target far off to the side of the table, but on Space Station, the lack of a slingshot getting in the way allows this backhand to be hit consistently. Though the table only has one ramp, it’s an immensely satisfying ramp, especially if you can time the stop ‘n score to land on a big value as you shoot it.
Space Station is way simpler than the two other tables in this pack and if you’re a fan of how newer tables are designed, there might not be much for you here. However, I’m a fan of all eras of pinball and I find this table to get overlooked a lot for the unique concepts it brought to the table and the simple rules that it handles incredibly well. I strongly suggest checking this table out if you’ve never played it!
The Enhancements
This pack’s enhancements are mostly of the “animated character” type and in my opinion, not all of them work. FunHouse has some elements from the art integrated across the playfield and a full model of Rudy as seen on the backglass, Dr. Dude has side art and a figure of the good doctor located above the plunger lane, and Space Station has an animated astronaut and a more detailed space station toy than the one that was included on the original.
I find a few of these redundant, admittedly: FunHouse and Dr. Dude both include their main characters as either a toy or heavily throughout the artwork so having them in more than one place is a bit contentious to me. Out of the three tables, Space Station has my favorite additions, the astronaut figure is something you could never do on a real table, and I personally really like the adjustments to the space station.
Conclusion
I think Zen was expecting FunHouse to be the selling point for volume 6, and while I agree with their sentiment, I feel that Space Station deserves recognition as well. Dr. Dude I think will be more enticing to people who grew up playing it at their local arcade, but the other two tables strongly appeal to me as a player and are ones I find myself coming back to again and again. All three are great fits for the Williams collection, and I would give them the following ratings:
FunHouse – 8/10
Dr. Dude – 7/10
Space Station – 8/10
As an addendum, I want to give some props to Zen for how accurately they were able to replicate the mechanics of these tables. FunHouse can accurately keep track of balls locked in the hidden hallway, a tough feat considering how nudging works on Pinball FX; and the mixmaster on Dr. Dude is incredibly accurate to the real table, down to those few instances where you get one target hit and then the ball exits. These wouldn’t be possible to emulate in digital pinball 20 years, so we’re absolutely living in a golden age for pinball emulation between Pinball FX and the more recent Visual Pinball X efforts.
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