Af-Tor

The Af-Tor pinball machine, manufactured by Wico Corporation of Chicago in December 1984, holds a genuine milestone in pinball history: it was the first pinball machine from any manufacturer to be produced with alpha-numeric displays, which were used to spell out words and messages in addition to scores. This four-player widebody features artwork by Constantino Mitchell and Jeanine Mitchell — Jeanine did all the color work for the backglass, playfield, plastics, and cabinet, and also modeled for the artwork — while Wico kept the designer's identity a secret.

Af-Tor boasts an array of complex and engaging gameplay features. The upper playfield has left and right return lanes, each firing the ball through a spinning target back to the top of the playfield, with CPU-controlled wireform gates at the top of these lanes; opening a gate lets the player complete a full ball orbit through both spinners, and completing an orbit with the green light flashing lights the 'Barren X Zone' insert for temporarily doubled playfield scoring. Each pop bumper has a nearby target that lights it to increase its value for a limited time, and a bonus multiplier is advanced by completing four top rollovers with the help of lane change. The game also offers two-ball multiball with double playfield scoring.

A distinctive touch is that each outlane has a drop target that, when earned, blocks the ball from draining — and the unusual shooter lane curve will send a strongly plunged ball directly toward the left outlane and its drop target, which an operator option can raise at the start of every ball. The construction is equally unusual: a two-part backbox with a metal rear housing the control and driver boards, a lower cabinet with metal front, back, and bottom, and two sturdy metal columns elevating the backbox so the playfield extends beneath it. Weighing in at a measured 270 pounds with legs, Af-Tor is a heavyweight oddity and a significant footnote in solid-state pinball history.