Tag: 80s aesthetic

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Transporter: The Rescue

Pinball

The backglass to Transporter: The Rescue as described in the rest of the post

Transporter: The Rescue, Bally, 1989.

If you were thinking Jason Statham, no. Very no.

This is another pin based on a science fiction theme, but what exactly that theme is I’m not sure. From left to right, we have:

  • A woman in a space suit trapped in a reddish-yellow cone (possibly a pyramid). There’s a tentacle from a monster wrapped around the cone possessively.
  • A  monster. Quinti-laterally symmetrical? Five eyes, five mouths, a big scary opening at the top of its head that could be some other kind of mouth, tentacles, some kind of crab claws or maybe the end of one of the tentacles menacing the camera. The monster is the same orange-red as the cone with the woman in it.
  • A man in a space suit coming in from offstage right, carrying a gun. The patch on his shoulder says UN Orion and has a bunch of patches on it indicating lots of service.  The gun looks suspiciously like a Colt revolver, which, my dude, won’t fire if there’s no oxygen and you are wearing a space suit.
  • The presumed-backpack the man is wearing has the Jackpot lights built into it.

The background has what is either a green dome or a very large green moon rising on what is otherwise a barren plane. Something ominous is glowing in the leftmost corner.

Yeah, absolutely no Jason Statham.

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Genesis

Pinball

Genesis backglass as described in the post

Genesis, Gottleib, 1986.

One would think looking at this backglass that it was based on a science fiction movie, and it sort-of is, but nothing you’ve probably heard of.  According to the Internet Pinball Database (IPD) entry for Genesis, designer John Gottleib based the concept on a 1927 German film called Metropolis.

Anyway, the backglass is eye-catching in how different it is from most designs of its era. It’s a photo of three people, an old man dressed like a mad scientist, a younger woman with big 80s hair and lots of fishnets, and a younger man possibly with dwarfism dressed in a black leather vest but no shirt.

Behind them one can see a wall of devices, all painted the same matte grey, a weird looking machine to the left and a screen of some sort to the right. Definitely hearkens back to the age of b-movie science fiction, even if the exact plot is known only to the designer.

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Chicago Cubs Triple Play

Pinball

Photo of the backglass for Chicago Cubs Triple Play as described in the post

Chicago Cubs Triple Play by Premier, 1985.

The bottom third of the backglass is an illustration of Wrigley Field’s outside gates, with their famous red sign, and lots of people heading toward the box offices.

The top two thirds of the backglass are two drawings of pictures. Illustrations of photos are always cool, right? On the left, the view from up in the nosebleed seats of the grounds, with home plate closest to the camera. On the right, a zoomed in view of the famous and old scoreboard in Wrigley field.

Across the top is the name Chicago Cubs (where the word “Cubs” is embedded in the o of Chicago, like their logo at the time) and the words “triple play” in scare quotes. As a baseball fan, I do fear the triple play when my team is up, but I don’t think I fear it enough to put it in scare quote.

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Xenon

Pinball

Photo of Xenon backglass as described in the post

Xenon, Bally, 1980.

For as boring as the 2010s backglasses are, I live for the 80s whackadoo shit.

Dead center we see the torso and head of a giant female robot. Her eyeballs are hearts. Her neck collar has a very large X shining in the center of her throat. Metal bars appear to be running from the camera location to the collar.

The woman standing in front of the giant robot, almost at the position of the camera, faces away from us. She’s wearing a green sci-fi outfit. Based on how perspective works she’s about 1/10 the height of the giant robot.

Pipes encircle the robot as if she’s at the end of a Jeffries tube. One would be excused for missing the two women that appear to be flying/floating toward the robot since they blend in with the pipes.

In each corner a skeleton with a robot head (or conversely a robot with a skeleton body) is slumped against the corner or staring at the events.