Star Trek (1979 pinball)

Star Trek is a 1979 pinball game developed by Bally and licensed from Paramount Pictures Corporation. It was the first pinball machine based on the franchise of the same name. A second pinball machine of the same name was released in 1991 by Data East. A third pinball machine of the same name was released by Stern Pinball in 2013. There was also a 1971 Gottlieb pinball machine called Star Trek,^[1] but with no connection to or licensing for the television series.

Star Trek

Manufacturer	Bally
Release date	April 1979
System	Bally MPU AS-2518-35
Design	Gary Gayton
Artwork	Kevin O'Connor
Production run	16,842

Production of the game was announced in a press release on April 15, 1979.^[2]

Design

Early versions of the backglass showed the crew of the Enterprise dressed in the uniforms from the original Star Trek television series.^[3] This was changed early in the production to show them dressed in single-color clothing to fit with the film Star Trek: The Motion Picture that was to be released at the same time as the game. The backglass features Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Uhura. Four Klingon D7-class ships were also added. There is some inconsistency in design on the finished game, for example using a font based on Star Trek instead of Star Trek: The Motion Picture.^[4]

The table is controlled with two flippers, and includes three pop bumpers, one kick-out hole, a bank of four drop targets, and three round stand-up targets.^[5] Part of the game is to spell B-A-L-L-Y by hitting various targets.^[6]

This is one of the earliest games to include an attract mode, where the five insert letters of B-A-L-L-Y and the row of four lights above them move from left to right in a 20-step sequence.^[7]

Star Ship

Star Ship was designed by a different designer at Bally and included an image resembling the Enterprise on the backglass.^[8] This designer, Greg Kmiec, had just designed two of the earliest Bally licensed games, Wizard, and Capt. Fantastic both inspired by Tommy. When the Star Trek license went to Gary Gayton's design, Star Ship never went into production and was rethemed as Supersonic, with artwork based on Concorde.^[9]

Reception

Roger Sharpe reviewed the machine in Play Meter, rating it at 3.5/4 praising the artwork and noting that its a tough game to beat.^[10]

Starlog briefly covered the game in their July 1979 issue,^[11] and in the following Star Trek special issue ran a competition to design a backglass and win a Bally Star Trek pinball machine.^[12]

Legacy

Three further pinball tables were released based on Star Trek licenses, including Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1993.

The table was used in Rammstein's "Amerika" 2004 music video with the band playing it on the "moon".^[13]

See also

• Star Trek: The Next Generation