Granny and the Gators

Granny and the Gators, released by Bally Midway in January 1984, is one of pinball's most unusual experiments: a combination of a scaled-down pinball machine and a video game. Designed by Claude Fernandez as his follow-up to Bally's 1982 'Baby Pac-Man', with artwork by Pat McMahon and Margaret Hudson, this 2-player hybrid uses a video display for scoring and merges arcade video action with physical pinball play. (IPDB notes that Jim Patla was once incorrectly credited; Fernandez confirmed the design was his alone.)

The compact pinball portion still packs plenty in: two flippers, two slingshots, a 5-bank of drop targets, eight standup targets, a kick-out hole, a horseshoe lane, and a kickback lane. Like Baby Pac-Man, the game runs on a Bally solid-state system (MPU AS-2518-133) paired with a dedicated 'vidiot' video board — a different board than Baby Pac-Man's, distinguishable by its different LED flashes at boot-up.

As one of the short-lived wave of pinball/video hybrids of the early 1980s, Granny and the Gators occupies a genuinely distinctive niche in pinball history, and its cartoonish premise of Granny paddling past hungry gators gives it a charm all its own among collectors of oddball Bally Midway titles.