Black Hole

Black Hole, designed by John Buras and Shing Lam for Gottlieb in 1981, is a landmark solid-state widebody pinball machine and one of the most ambitious games of its era. Its claim to fame is genuine and singular: it was the first machine to offer a lower playfield sloped away from the player, with its flippers at the backbox end - an inverted mini-game beneath the main playfield that players view through a window. With artwork by Terry Doerzaph, a confirmed production run of 8,774 units, and mechanical backbox animation in the form of a rotating disc (non-export models), Black Hole made a spectacular impression in arcades.

The machine boasts an impressive array of interactive elements: six flippers, six pop bumpers, three slingshots, four banks of drop targets, kick-out holes, a horseshoe lane, a spinning target, a rollunder, a cellar hole, and a right outlane ball detour gate, with the score display built into the playfield itself. Its multiball is famously one of the hardest to achieve - but rewarding when you do, since it is possible to have three balls in play across two different levels. Non-export models also featured speech, generated by a Votrax SC-01 chip.

Black Hole's Outer Space theme arrived two years after the 1979 Hollywood film "The Black Hole" brought the phenomenon into popular culture. The game was considered high-maintenance when released and consequently wasn't popular with operators, but its sheer engineering ambition has made it a favorite among collectors. Weighing in at a measured 297 pounds with legs, Black Hole is a true heavyweight of pinball design in every sense.