-
- description
- A shaker motor is an electric motor with off-center weights mounted inside the pinball cabinet, spun on cue by the game program to rattle the whole machine under the player's hands. It scores nothing and touches no ball; it exists to make an event on the playfield land in the body — modern makers pitch the effect as haptic feedback, felt rather than seen.[1]
## Origins
The device arrived with *[[model:earthshaker]]* (1989, [[manufacturer:williams]]), [[person:pat-lawlor]]'s earthquake game, which shook the machine at set moments to simulate the tremors of its theme.[2][3] Williams sold the novelty as hard as the game — "It's a Moving Experience!" ran one of its slogans[4] — and [[manufacturer:data-east]] took the device up as a regular fitting in the years that followed, from *[[title:checkpoint]]* (1991) through *[[title:jurassic-park]]* (1993).
## Later use as a trim differentiator
On machines of the 2010s and after, the shaker settled into a different role: the mark of the upper trim. [[manufacturer:jersey-jack]] fits it to the Collector's and Special editions of *[[title:sonic-the-hedgehog]]* (2026) and leaves it off the model below them,[1] and [[manufacturer:stern-pinball]] sells the motor as a bolt-in accessory kit, so an owner can add the shake to a game that shipped without one.[5]
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- name
- Shaker Motors
- slug
- shaker-motors
- status
- active