Pinball Guide: Makers, Classic Tables, Virtual Pinball, Where to Play

Pinball guide: makers, classic tables and how it all fits together

Pinball is a coin-operated game in which a player launches a steel ball onto a sloped playfield and keeps it in play with flippers. For TV and game fans, the hobby has an easy way in: many current tables are built around franchises, from Jaws, Stranger Things and The Mandalorian to Harry Potter and Rick and Morty. This pinball guide explains who builds machines, which older tables are the reference points, how a table gets rated, and where to play one without buying it.

A short history helps. Coin-operated machines arrived in 1931, and Gottlieb's Baffle Ball was the first major hit. Bally grew out of Raymond Moloney's Ballyhoo, from 1932, which sold 50,000 units in seven months, according to Wikipedia. Gottlieb's Humpty Dumpty, in 1947, introduced player-controlled flippers, and Bally's Freedom, in December 1976, was the first mainstream solid-state game. For a longer look at the machine's early decades, see a brief history of the silver ball.

The modern industry has a clear dividing line. Williams, whose Bally and Midway labels produced the 1990s machines, left the pinball business on October 25, 1999. Stern Pinball then became the only maker of original machines, and it remained the only one until Jersey Jack Pinball shipped The Wizard of Oz in 2013. Since then a second wave of independent makers has appeared, and the older Williams and Bally games live on in remakes, in digital form and in the collector market.

The commercial record for the older era is The Addams Family from 1992, which set a modern sales record of 20,270 machines. It is the benchmark for how large the market once was. Today's production runs are far smaller. Spooky Pinball's titles run from 100 to 1,250 units, according to its Wikipedia page, and Chicago Gaming's 1,000-unit limited edition of Medieval Madness sold out in about four hours.

There are four practical ways into the hobby, and none of them requires buying a machine. A reader can find a public table on a location map, visit a show, play a licensed digital table on a console or PC, or watch tournament play. The sections below take each one in turn. The reference table that follows pulls the five makers into one view, and the list near the end of the page marks the best first steps.

The pinball guide to makers: who builds tables now

This section covers the five American makers in the table above, one at a time. Titles, years and counts come from the makers' own sites and from Wikipedia.

Classic Williams and Bally tables: the reference points

Williams, with its Bally and Midway pinball labels, built the machines that collectors still name most often. Wikipedia lists The Addams Family, The Twilight Zone and Attack from Mars as Midway games released under the Bally label, so older sources may name any of the three companies. Rough Cut Review lists the five below because they come up constantly in discussions of the era and each has a documented production record.

The Addams Family (Midway, released under the Bally label, March 1992) was designed by Pat Lawlor and Larry DeMar. The standard run was 20,270 machines, with a 1,000-unit Special Collectors Edition in October 1994, and Wikipedia calls it the best-selling solid-state pinball machine of all time. It won the AMOA award for most played pinball machine of 1992 and again for 1993, and it debuted at number one on Play Meter's monthly poll in April 1992.

The Twilight Zone (Midway, released under the Bally label, April 1993) was designed by Pat Lawlor, Larry DeMar and Ted Estes, and it was the first of the SuperPin widebody line. The production run was 15,235. Wikipedia quotes Lawlor's claim that it had more features and patents than any earlier pinball game, and The Flipside's review said its depth would satisfy experienced players while beginners might find it confusing.

Attack from Mars (Midway, released under the Bally label, December 1995) was designed by Brian Eddy, and 3,450 machines were produced. Chicago Gaming remade it in 2017. Medieval Madness (Williams, June 1997) was also designed by Eddy, with Lyman Sheats programming it, and 4,016 units were built. Play Meter's October 1997 equipment poll ranked it first among pinball machines, ahead of Attack from Mars. Monster Bash (Williams, July 1998) was designed by George Gomez, with a run of 3,361, and Chicago Gaming's remake appeared in October 2018.

The numbers show how the market narrowed. After The Addams Family and The Twilight Zone, the other three were built in runs of 3,361 to 4,016. Original machines in those quantities are scarce, and that scarcity is the reason the remakes and the digital versions exist.

Virtual pinball: Pinball FX, Visual Pinball and the Williams licence

Virtual pinball is the cheapest way to play the classics. Zen Studios' Pinball FX began on Xbox 360 in 2007, followed by Pinball FX 2 in 2010 and Pinball FX 3 in 2017. The current game, simply called Pinball FX, reached full release on February 16, 2023, after early access on the Epic Games Store from March 31, 2022. It later arrived on Steam (April 13, 2023) and Nintendo Switch (July 6, 2023). The base game is free, with three playable tables and time-limited trials, and further tables are sold as downloadable content. The Pinball Pass subscription ended in 2024.

The Williams connection is the main reason the game matters for a classic-table fan. On September 4, 2018, Zen Studios announced that it had acquired the Williams and Bally licences, giving it "complete global access to their entire libraries", and named The Addams Family, The Twilight Zone and Terminator 2: Judgment Day among the tables. Volume 1 shipped with Fish Tales, Junk Yard, Medieval Madness and The Getaway: High Speed II. Wikipedia's list now shows 40 Williams and Bally tables across ten volumes, a Universal Monsters pack with Monster Bash and Creature from the Black Lagoon, and single releases including The Addams Family, Twilight Zone, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Indiana Jones and Elvira and the Party Monsters. Volume 10, with Diner, Comet and Fire!, was released on April 30, 2026.

The licence is not unlimited. Wikipedia notes that World Cup Soccer was removed on April 30, 2026 for licensing reasons, which leaves 39 available. Attack from Mars sits in Volume 2 and Medieval Madness in Volume 1. Zen's catalogue passed 140 tables on Steam by April 2026 and 145 on PlayStation, Xbox and Epic, and its mature-content branch, Pinball M, was renamed Pinball FX Midnight that month. The Switch library is smaller.

Visual Pinball takes a different route. It is a pinball game engine with a table editor and simulator for Windows, released by programmer Randy Davis on December 19, 2000. Wikipedia describes it as freeware for non-commercial use with source code available, hosted on GitHub. Visual Pinball X arrived on December 24, 2015 with better graphics and physics, and version 10.8.0 in 2025 added VR headset support and OpenGL. It works with Visual PinMAME, which uses ROM images from real machines. Many user-made tables exist online, including recreations of real machines, and anyone downloading one should check the rights holder's terms. It also supports virtual pinball cabinets, where screens show the playfield and backbox.

How a pinball table is rated

There is no single score for a table, and the best approach is to read three or four sources together. The first is the Internet Pinball Database, usually called IPDB, which Wikipedia describes as the world's largest online searchable database of pinball machines. It lists manufacturer, year, designer, production numbers and manuals for each game, and it is the place to confirm a table's identity before buying or searching for rules.

The second is community rating. Pinside, a community site for owners and players, publishes a Top 100 list compiled from member ratings. Its positions change often, so this guide gives no ranks, and the live list should be checked for current numbers. A rating is a taste measure, and it favors the games that owners have played the most.

The third source is the operator's view. Play Meter magazine publishes equipment polls for coin-operated games, and The Addams Family held the top spot in its monthly poll for at least sixteen non-consecutive months. The AMOA awards recognised the most played machine of a year. Magazine reviews add the player's side: Nudge Magazine gave Medieval Madness 8.4 out of 10 in a 2020 retro review, and Pinball Mag gave Attack from Mars 7.4 out of 10 in 2023.

Competitive play has its own ratings. The International Flipper Pinball Association (IFPA) created the World Pinball Player Rankings, which award points at nearly 200 endorsed events and has held a World Championship since 2008. In 2018, it created the Stern Pro Circuit with Stern Pinball. The Professional and Amateur Pinball Association (PAPA) runs the PAPA Advanced Rating System, based on the Glicko system and more than 100,000 matches. Neither measures a table. They rate players, and they are the best way into the tournament scene.

Where to play pinball

The easiest first step is a public machine. Pinball Map is a free, open-source, crowdsourced map founded in 2008 that currently lists 12,945 locations and 56,028 machines, with free apps for Android and iOS. Its data is maintained by users and more than 100 administrators. Stern's Insider Connected app also finds nearby machines. Each entry lists the machines installed at a location.

Shows are the second route. Pinball Expo ran October 14 to 17, 2026 at the Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center Hotel in Schaumburg, Illinois, and the 2027 dates are October 13 to 16. Its organisers describe more than 400 pinball and coin-operated games, plus tournaments, vendors, seminars and a factory tour. California Extreme, a classic arcade and pinball show, took place August 8 and 9, 2026 at the Hyatt Regency Santa Clara. All games are on free play, and collectors bring machines that are not for sale. The 2025 edition was the 29th, and no 2027 dates were published on the site as of this update.

Tournaments are the third. The IFPA endorses events worldwide, as described above, and PAPA crowns a World Pinball Champion at its annual championships. Reading a venue's Pinball Map entry first shows which games are installed.

The fourth route is digital, covered above. Pinball FX is free to start on PC and major consoles, and it is the one option available at home on a rainy afternoon. A reader who wants to compare a real Medieval Madness with its digital version can do both: play the Pinball FX Volume 1 table, then find a Chicago Gaming remake on the map.