Display Types

A display type is the technology a game machine uses to show the player's score and — in later eras — animations, artwork, and video. Early electromechanical (EM) machines totaled points with banks of backglass lights, then moved to the clattering mechanical score reels that defined the EM golden age. The solid-state era replaced reels with glowing alphanumeric LED segments, which in 1991 gave way to the iconic orange dot-matrix display that Williams introduced on Funhouse and The Addams Family. A handful of hybrids — Bally's Baby Pac-Man and Williams' Pinball 2000 — used CGA monitors instead. Today's machines, starting with Jersey Jack's The Wizard of Oz in 2013, ship with full-color LCD screens.