Lazer Lord

Lazer Lord is a fascinating what-if from the final days of Stern Electronics: a widebody, multiball solid-state game designed by Joe Joos Jr. that never went into production. The surviving evidence is a whitewood prototype, apparently fully functional at one time, running on the Stern M-200 MPU with ROMs labeled June 8, 1982. Stern Electronics' last production pinball was 1982's 'Orbitor 1', and Lazer Lord appears to have been a casualty of the company winding down its pinball manufacturing.

The fantasy-themed design was ambitious for its day: four flippers, two pop bumpers, three slingshots, twelve standup targets, three kick-out holes, a four-bank of drop targets, a spinning target, two star rollovers, a rollunder, and dual inlanes, supporting multiball play with two, three, or four balls. The whitewood itself is a patchwork of Stern parts: its simple cabinet art and colors match Stern's 1981 'Viper' (also a widebody multiball game), and the coin door and backbox insert are actually tagged 'Viper', though the playfield design is entirely different. Even the name is inconsistent, rendered as one word on the backglass and two words in its copyright notice, with the two-word form (and the designer's name) handwritten under the apron.

The story has a coda: in 1984 Stern Electronics attempted to re-enter pinball manufacturing and built a narrowbody prototype also called 'Lazer Lord', with a different playfield design from the 1982 whitewood. That game likewise never reached production, leaving Lazer Lord as a name attached to two intriguing dead ends rather than any machine that ever shipped.