Mechanical Backbox Animations

Mechanical backbox animations are Backbox Animations performed by real machinery — figures, wheels and discs mounted inside the head, driven by motors and score relays, and watched through the glass.

Williams’ sports games

Williams built a run of animated sports games in the years after the flipper arrived: baserunners circle the bases in the heads of All Stars (1947) and Star Series (1949),^[1][2] horses race across Hayburners (1951)^[3] and cars race to the finish line on its companion piece Jalopy (1951).^[4]

Gottlieb’s animation units

Gottlieb fitted animation units to a long line of games: a spinner changes the card selections on World Beauties (1959),^[5] silhouettes dance on Dancing Dolls (1960)^[6] and a horse kicks a cowboy on Buckaroo (1965).^[7]

Bingo machinery

The same machinery carried a different trade: on Bally’s Bingo Pinball machines the moving numbers of Magic Lines and Magic Squares and the moving Magic Screen are backbox mechanisms in the same family, rearranging the card the player is betting on.^[8]

Late mechanical animation

The device survived into the solid-state era: a large disc spins in the head of Hurricane (1991),^[9] and on Scared Stiff (1996) a spider wheel spins when the ball falls into a trap, stopping on a press of the flipper button to award the feature it points to.^[10] The 2000s remake Bank-A-Ball (2008, Retro Pinball) brought a unit back once more.