![]() Such features endowed The Addams Family with unmatched personality and unpredictability. The game also boasted recorded character dialogue from Gomez (Raul Julia) and Morticia (Anjelica Huston), a mechanical “Thing” hand, and a series of magnets under the playfield known as “The Power.” During certain moments in the game, the machine entered the “ Thing Flips” mode, allowing the computer to control the top left flipper to shoot the ball and recalibrate its accuracy after missed shots. The Addams Family also housed the first computer controlled flipper in the history of pinball. A player explored the Addams mansion by lighting windows that unlocked game modes such as “The Mamushka,” which added 250,000 points for every switch he hit. Based on the 1991 film of the same name and its cartoon and television ancestors, The Addams Family owed much of its success to its rich back-story, quirky characters and settings, and Lawlor’s innovative designs. Yet the industry declined during the 1980s as players fed most of their quarters into new video arcade games and manufacturers poured far more of their resources into the next Pac-Man (1980) rather than the next pinball.īy the 1990s, many consumers shifted their attention to home video and computer games, but The Addams Family entered a still strong pinball market primed by such novel machines as Lawlor’s Earthshaker (1989) and Funhouse (1990). By the late 1970s, the industry’s transition from electromechanical to “solid state” or electronic machines breathed new life into pinball. During the 1960s and 1970s pinball makers produced improved machines featuring multiplayer settings, drop targets, and better bumpers. Gottlieb & Co.’s Humpty Dumpty (1947), the first machine to use flippers. Pinball blossomed during the post-World War II years, following the release of D. The Pat Lawlor-designed machine is more than a personal favorite it shook the pinball world during the early 1990s, at once symbolizing the industry’s resurgence, and perhaps, its last gasp of life.Īlthough pinball traces its roots back to the 18th-century parlor game bagatelle, modern coin-operated pinball originated in the United States during the 1930s with such games as David Gottlieb’s Baffle Ball (1931) and Raymond Moloney’s Ballyhoo (1932). As a teenager, I spent so many late nights at a local pizza shop playing The Addams Family that the owner affectionately called me “Pugsley,” after the Addams’ son.
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