Twilight Zone (pinball)

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Twilight Zone
TwillightZone pinball.jpg
Manufacturer Midway
Release dateApril 1993
System Midway WPC (Fliptronics II)
Design Pat Lawlor, Larry DeMar, Ted Estes
ProgrammingLarry DeMar, Ted Estes
ArtworkJohn Youssi
MechanicsJohn Krutsch
Music Chris Granner
SoundChris Granner, Rich Karstens
VoicesTim Kitzrow (Rod Serling)
Production run15,235

Twilight Zone is a widebody pinball machine, designed by Pat Lawlor and based on the TV series of the same name. It was first released in 1993 by Midway (under the Bally label). This game is the first of WMS' SuperPin line of widebody games; Star Trek: The Next Generation and Indiana Jones: The Pinball Adventure released later in 1993. [1]

Contents

Design

Twilight Zone pinball.jpg

Following the huge success of The Addams Family pinball game, Midway gave Lawlor full creative control over the design of his next game, and the result is an unusually complex machine. The game took 16 months to design. The designer said the game has "flippers that aren’t flippers, pinballs that aren’t pinballs, and a clock that’s not a clock". [2]

Among its special features are a working gumball machine that holds three balls and can dispense them or receive others during play.

There is a working, 12-hour analog clock can display the current time and function as a timer during certain rounds.

The Powerball is a white ceramic ball 20% lighter than the other steel balls in the machine and unaffected by magnets. It can enter play by being served to the plunger, ejected from the Lock, or dispensed from the Gumball Machine; while it is on the field, certain scoring rules are changed. During the prototype stages of design different coloured balls were considered, but when it was decided to use ceramic balls these were only available in blue or white, and the blue ball was not particularly visible against the playfield, which was immediately apparent when tested in a White Water prototype. [3]

The Powerfield is a triangular mini-playfield whose underside contains magnets that propel the ball instead of flippers. [4]

In addition to adapting the theme music from the original TV show, the game's main background music is an interpretation of the 1982 song "Twilight Zone", by Golden Earring. Tim Kitzrow provided the voice of Rod Serling. [5]

This game was originally supposed to be the first game to use Williams / Midway's DCS Sound System, but because the DCS board was still in development when the game was released, it instead used the Yamaha YM2151 / Harris CVSD soundboard.

Gameplay

In the center of the Twilight Zone playfield artwork is a door similar to the one shown in one of the TV show's opening sequences. The outside edge consists of 14 panels indicating various awards that are available for the player to collect. Some of the panels start timed modes that can be "stacked" (made to run concurrently), while other panels simply light shots or award points. The ultimate goal of the game is to light all 14 panels and start "Lost in the Zone", the game's "wizard mode", represented by the doorknob. The lights on the central portion of the door indicate the player's progress toward earning locks to start multi-ball play. [6]

The game provides several ways to light door panels: Shoot the Slot Machine when lit, shoot the Player Piano when lit, or defeat the Power in the mini-playfield. Shooting the Slot Machine awards a random unlit panel, while the other two methods award the panel that is currently flashing (rotated by the pop bumpers). The Slot Machine follows two rules in choosing the door panel to be awarded:

  1. The flashing panel will not be given unless it is the only one the player has yet to collect.
  2. "Lite Extra Ball" (see below) will not be given unless it is either the last panel remaining or the one not flashing if the player is two panels away from completing the set.

Shooting the Player Piano when it is unlit awards Odd Change, a random number of points between 10 and 10 million.

Hits to the three pop bumpers add to the Town Square value, which can be collected by shooting through them to the Dead End lane. Shooting the lane when lit scores double points and advances the player toward various awards. Bumper values can be increased by making a Skill Shot or by shooting the Camera when unlit; the latter shot can be accessed by raising the upper left flipper to shoot the ball into a sinkhole behind it.

Door panels in attract mode TZ pinball door panels.jpg
Door panels in attract mode

The door panels are as follows:

Battle the Power

During normal single-ball play, the right ramp can be lit to play "Battle the Power" by the following means:

Shooting the ramp sends the ball onto the Powerfield, a triangular mini-playfield at the left edge of the table with switches set into the walls. Underneath the bottom corners are two medium-power magnets (dubbed "Magna-Flips") that are controlled by the flipper buttons. The goal is to direct the ball into the top hole within a time limit, scoring points for hitting the switches. If the player succeeds, the total for the round is doubled and the currently flashing door panel is awarded. ("Lost in the Zone" can be started in this manner if all door panels have been collected.) If time runs out or if the ball falls through the bottom hole, the player only scores the points accumulated during that round.

Since the Powerball is unaffected by magnets, the game will automatically disable "Battle the Power" whenever it senses that this ball is on the field. If the player either lights "Battle the Power" or already has it lit when the Powerball enters play, that ramp will light or re-light once normal single-ball play resumes. Whenever the mode is not in play, a carriage on the ramp catches balls and drops them in front of the upper left flipper.

Multiball

In addition to the multitude of single-ball modes, Twilight Zone also offers four multiball modes:

The game also has a buy-in button located on the front of the cabinet which can use a credit for an additional ball instead of for a new full game. [9]

Note: In most commercially released machines, the Standard multi-ball mode starts with three balls being released sequentially from either the Lock or the auto plunger, depending on how many balls are physically contained in the Lock at the time. An alternative start to this mode is available in some versions of the ROM software and requires that a third magnet be installed in the Spiral orbit (standard machines only have two magnets). [3] This allows the machine to lock all three balls in the Spiral Magnets and then release them simultaneously.

Home ROM

Ted Estes role on this game was to find and implement bug fixes; he also implemented minor improvements to the features in the ROM without making any rule changes.

In addition to this he made a separate home ROM which could only be used with the machine set to free play which had 3 additional features:

Heritage

In addition to the call-outs noted above there is a plastic on the top right of the playfield with a route between locations referencing all of Pat Lawlor's previous games. Tokyo ( Banzai Run ) ->Los Angeles ( Earthshaker ) ->Kansas ( Whirlwind ) ->Chicago ( FunHouse ) ->TV Land ( The Addams Family ) ->and finally the arrow points to The Twilight Zone. Seven months later Steve Ritchie added a hidden list of his games in his next machine, Star Trek: The Next Generation .

Connections to the TV series

The game includes numerous references to the television series. Many are visually shown on the playfield or in the DMD animations:

Various sound effects are taken from the episodes listed above, and several quotes from Serling's voice-overs are featured, including "You unlock this door with the key of imagination" from one of the show's opening sequences, plus, "Dance with the devil, at your own risk, in the Twilight Zone" if the player tilts.

Additionally, many more Twilight Zone references appear in the backbox artwork, including:

Two of the most prominent features of the game, the Gumball Machine and "The Power", do not appear in the TV series at all.

Reception

An article in The Flipside found it to satisfy the most demanding of pinball players with its depth of gameplay, although could be confusing for beginners. [8]

Digital versions

After a successful kickstarter to raise funding for the third party license Twilight Zone released for The Pinball Arcade for several platforms on February 5, 2013. Roger Sharpe who negotiated the license for the physical table also assisted with this. [12] The table was delisted with the loss of the Williams license on June 30, 2018. [13]

The table was released in Pinball FX on April 13, 2023, and includes optional additional animations. [14]

References

  1. "Internet Pinball Machine Database: Midway 'Twilight Zone'".
  2. "Twilight Zone". Coin Cascade. August 1993. p. 9.
  3. 1 2 Estes, Ted (1998). "Twilight Zone Pinball: Prototype vs. Production". GameRoom Magazine.
  4. US 5375829,Lawlor, Patrick; DeMar, Lawrence& Estes, Ted,"Magnetic ball flipper for a rolling ball game",published 1993-02-23,issued 1994-12-27
  5. IGN.com - Breaking into the Industry: Tim Kitzrow. Retrieved on 12 October 2008.
  6. "Twilight Zone Operation manual" (PDF). www.arcade-museum.com.
  7. McFatter, James (June 12, 2024). "Ready to Battle? Twilight Zone Pinball Tutorial". Kineticist. Retrieved 2025-06-28.
  8. 1 2 Drabik, Paul (1993). "Playing the field - Twilight Zone" (PDF). The Flipside. Vol. 2, no. 3. pp. 13–15.
  9. Schelberg, Jim (July 1993). "You are entering a world of imagination". Play Meter. Vol. 19, no. 8. pp. 101–104.
  10. Estes, Ted (1998). "Pinball Collector Becomes Pinball Developer". GameRoom Magazine.
  11. 1 2 3 4 Twilight Zone Pinball Promo Video (Trailer). Midway Manufacturing Company. 1993.
  12. Corriea, Alexa Ray (2013-02-05). "Pinball Arcade on PS3 and Vita gets Twilight Zone table today". Polygon. Retrieved 2025-06-28.
  13. Lawson, Aurich (2018-05-08). "The Pinball Arcade is losing its classic tables; grab them while you can". Ars Technica. Retrieved 2025-06-28.
  14. Barker, Sammy (2023-04-03). "Pinball FX PS5, PS4 Adding Two Free Tables, Twilight Zone and Crypt of the Necrodancer Coming". Push Square. Retrieved 2025-06-28.