Raven

Meet the Raven, a solid state electronic pinball machine designed by John Trudeau and manufactured by Premier Technology (then trading as Gottlieb) in March 1986. Trudeau described the game as his homage to Williams' 1980 'Firepower', and the name came from the code word used in the film 'Rambo'. Notably, Raven was the first pinball machine from any manufacturer to use an actual photograph for its backglass/translite, shot by artist Don Marshall of a helicopter that was, at the time, in service as a traffic-reporting aircraft; the same helicopter crashed fatally a few weeks after the photo shoot. Larry Day handled the playfield and cabinet art.

One of the standout features of the Raven is its dense array of targets and bumpers: four pop bumpers, ten standup targets, four drop targets, two slingshots, two kick-out holes, and a spinning target, all built around a helicopter toy with spinning blades. This gives players plenty of shots to navigate and a lot of ways to rack up points.

At 248 pounds, the Raven is a substantial machine that demands attention from collectors and enthusiasts alike. With 3,550 units produced, it's a fairly well-represented example of Gottlieb's System 80B era, and its photographic backglass remains its most historically significant claim to fame.