Backbox Animations

Backbox animations are moving displays built into a pinball machine’s backbox that act out the game in progress — with physical figures driven by motors and relays, or with lamps flashed in sequence so the artwork itself appears to move. Playfield Animations is the same idea but on the playfield.

The animation is wired to the game’s scoring, so the head performs what the playfield only tallies. The device is as old as the payout era: a tank on Battle (1935, Bally) shoots shells to score,^[1] and Mars (1937, Chicago Coin) flew its spaceships between two Backglasses layered a few centimetres apart, so the player watched the scene in real depth.^[2][3]

The flipper-era makers kept it up for decades. On Gottlieb’s Mermaid (1951) a fisherman lands a boot while a fish surfaces behind him,^[4][5] and on the firm’s Flipper Cowboy (1962) a cowboy shoots at a target.^[6] Machines carried animated backboxes to the end of the 1990s, and 2000s remakes such as King of Diamonds (2010, Retro Pinball) rebuilt the animation units along with the games.