Terminator 2: Judgment Day

Terminator 2: Judgment Day, designed by Steve Ritchie for Williams in July 1991, was a flagship release built around the blockbuster film's licensed theme — one of a long line of movie-licensed pinball machines, but among the most successful, with 15,202 units produced. It was also a technical milestone: T2 was the first Williams pinball game designed around a standard dot matrix display, though Midway's 'Gilligan's Island' ended up shipping with a DMD first, since T2's longer design cycle pushed its release later. T2 also introduced the first video mode in pinball history and the first player-fired, swing-out cannon mechanic.

On the playfield, two flippers, three pop bumpers, and two ramps keep the ball moving, while the game's signature feature — a gun-shaped shooter handle that fires a ball cannon — lets players aim at one of five targets as the cannon oscillates across the left side of the playfield. In the video mode, players use the flipper buttons to move a crosshair on the dot matrix display, shooting down attacking Terminators before being shot three times; clearing all of them earns a bonus.

The cabinet artwork notably avoided depicting the T-1000's liquid-metal form during early production, due to pre-release secrecy around the character, only for that concern to become moot by the time the display animations were finalized — allowing the T-1000 to appear in the DMD sequences after all. At roughly 258 pounds with its legs attached, T2 remains one of the more substantial and sought-after Williams titles of its era.