word mining central
Excalibur, another goddamned Gottleib, 1988. It’s no wonder I’m playing like shit tonight.
A giant man emerges from the ground (the waist up, anyway) wearing armor and swinging a big sword around while his cape
Other warriors smaller than the palm of his hand battle around him. A castle stands on a hill in the background.
Embryon, Bally, 1980.
There is some wild shit going on here.
First, the background: we are in a hallway of metal walls and grates like something off the set of Alien.
Dead center is a big circular metal tunnel with two human brains in semicircular containers clamped to the outside.
On the left, organic spheres about the size of basketballs are pouring out of something conveyor-like.
On the right, a sphere that comes to about waist height has a decidedly humanoid shape growing in it.
In the center, a man in a tight metallic blue shirt, red suspenders, with pilot goggles perched on his forehead stands behind a sphere that comes to his waist. His right hand rests on it.
A semi-feminine (or possibly starving) humanoid with red skin, a green drape, sits some kind of yellow goo inside the sphere. This, we presume, is the embryon.
This is some kind of fucked up, y’all.
Eight Ball Deluxe, Bally, standard edition, 1980.
A tough looking cowboy shoots a cue ball at the eight ball in the center of the backglass. To the left, a cowgirl rides a mechanical bull. To the right, a cowgirl and two cowboys stand leaning their backs on the bar. Rope is used as the border of the various designs.
Bad Girls, by Gottlieb, 1988.
This backglass is a giant photo of a bar or possibly pool hall.Front and center is a small pool table with chrome stripes around its table walls. Women are playing pool – one in black stockings and a pink strapless dress, one in a black strapless leather shirt and pink shirt (and again with the stockings) and one in a black bikini top and pink skirt. Some random men stand around in the background watching the girls. “Bad Girls” is written in a handwriting script up in the top right corner.
All I can say is between the stilettos and the tight clothes, that’s a hell of an uncomfortable way to play pool.
Dragon, Interflip 1977.
First of all, the color scheme is red, lime green, hot pink, and a saturated blue.
A pink woman with green hair and exposed breasts lay on the floor, presumably unconscious.
A pink man with a green ponytail, wearing a green scaled thong / banana hammock / whatever you would like to call it stands over the woman.
A five-headed dragon with the body of a snake is… attacking the people? Being forced to attack the woman by the man? Has a really frantic case of the zoomies? Its tail coils down the hall behind them. Its heads look like my dogs when they’re total baffled by a squirrel. The man is holding one of the coils in one hand and preparing to throw a fireball with the other.
Did I mention the walkway they’re on looks like it falls off a cliff on both jagged sides?
I love this era of just wacky-ass art.
Bonus: when you knock down a dragon target on the table (and there’s a bunch of them) the machine tries to roar like a dragon but it really sounds like it’s yelling BAAAOOOOOWWWW