Pinball Might Have Peaked in the Late ’80s with Cyclone and Williams’ System 11 Games

The real beauty of Cyclone, though, is how seamlessly it blends theme, art and play. Everything in this game supports the amusement park concept. That’s obvious with Anghelo’s art, and also with Chris Granner’s audio, which is largely driven by the cries of a carnival baker (“hey you, with the face!”). Barry Oursler’s game design also reinforces it. The Ferris wheel is simultaneously a toy and a ramp, both an eye-catching little gimmick that probably sucked the quarters right out of people’s pockets back in the day, but also serves an in-game purpose beyond simply looking cool. The two ramps represent two different roller coasters, and just as in real amusement parks, the older of the two (the center ramp is basically in the exact same spot as the ramp in Comet, the 1985 pin that Cyclone is essentially a sequel to) is a little less complex and easier to handle. (You’ll also want to ride it over and over again, as hitting the Comet ramp several times in succession is key to getting the game’s biggest jackpot.) The targets on the left are the shooting gallery, complete with duck sounds. And although most haunted houses don’t lead directly to a mystery wheel giveaway, Cyclone’s spook house completes the game’s list of attractions, and the wheel evokes a second midway game alongside the shooting gallery. All that’s missing is a sideshow and a boat ride. 

Cyclone was released in 1988, but the 1990s might be the true peak for pinball. Games like Medieval Madness, Monster Bash, Attack from Mars, and Tales of the Arabian Nights are technological marvels that are a thrill to play. Their complexity might threaten to overwhelm you, but their game design is strong and clear enough to keep you grounded and coming back for more. As amazing as pinball has become in the 21st century—and I’m not soft-playing it, pinball has been legitimately amazing over the last decade and a half, with groundbreaking games seemingly arriving every other year—those ‘90s machines had a consistency and a marriage of tradition and innovation that haven’t been seen regularly since.

But again, Cyclone isn’t a ‘90s machine. It came out in 1988, when Ronnie was still in office. As fantastic as pinball was in the ‘90s, my personal favorite era came a few years earlier, with those System 11 machines released in the late ‘80s and through the end of 1990. Yes, that happens to overlap with my prime arcade-going era, when I was finally old enough to go to arcades without my parents watching over me, and that no doubt has a lot to do with why those games still mean so much to me. Nostalgia is powerful when it comes to stuff like this.

There’s more to it than that, though. The late ‘80s are also the last days of a certain kind of innocence for pinball, before they became as convoluted as those ‘90s games, and a time when a pinball machine’s theme could be as unique and innovative as its design. Shortly after Cyclone, and other System 11 classics like Bad Cats, Taxi and Whirlwind, licenses really came to the forefront. Licensed properties existed in pinball well before the 1980s, but they became increasingly common throughout that decade before almost fully taking over in the ‘90s. That decade was full of machines based on movies, with seemingly any sci-fi or action flick getting a pinball tie-in. And the themes that were original, like Medieval Madness or Tales of the Arabian Nights, relied on extreme amounts of technology to stand out. The ‘90s were more amenable to original ideas than any era since—the worst thing about pinball in the 21st century is how hostile the market place is to anything that isn’t a recognizable property—but the seeds of today’s IP dependence were taking root.

Cyclone isn’t based on a movie. It might have a couple of actors’ faces on the backglass, but the Reagans hadn’t been actors in over 20 years at that point—or at least their acting was now confined to political press conferences instead of movies. Its rules are straight-forward, its shots easy to understand, and yet it’s still a very challenging game to play. The late ‘80s can be seen as the last gasp of classic pinball, with System 11 machines representing a kind of midpoint between the mechanical and thematic simplicity of the past and the increasing complexity the game has seen ever since, and of all those games, Cyclone remains… not the best (that’s Bad Cats), but at least my favorite—and definitely the only one of the era that I own, which, yes, tips the scales in its favor more than a little bit. But hey, even if there wasn’t one in my dining room (why it’s there and not the basement is a long story), Cyclone would still have a special place in my heart. If you want to see why, track one down and, as Cyclone barks out at you, pays your money and takes your chances.

Editor-in-chief Garrett Martin writes about videogames, theme parks, pinball, travel, and more. You can also find him on Blue Sky.