Gridiron

Gridiron, released by Williams Electronics on October 6, 1969, is a 2-player electro-mechanical bat game — a pitch-and-bat style machine, here dressed in a football theme rather than the category's usual baseball clothes. It was designed by Norm Clark with artwork by Christian Marche, one of the era's most distinctive pinball artists.

The backbox is where Gridiron really performs: it features light animation depicting a football moving down the playing field, plus a mechanical animated clock, bringing the drama of a game-winning drive to the arcade. As a bat game, play revolves around batting the ball into scoring targets rather than the flipper action of conventional pinball.

Bat games were a Williams specialty, and Gridiron's football twist on the formula, combined with Marche's late-1960s artwork, makes it an appealing period piece for collectors of electro-mechanical novelty games.