Mars
About This Machine
The Mars pinball machine, manufactured by Chicago Coin Machine Manufacturing Company in December 1937, is a striking example of early electro-mechanical (EM) pinball design, notable for its elaborate mechanical backbox animation in which spaceships appear to fly in and out of view.
Gameplay on Mars is centered around the hypnotic rotating spaceship motor, which creates a sense of anticipation as players watch for the brief window of opportunity to hit one of the two illuminated red "Repeater" bumpers. These bumpers award 100 points repeatedly until the spaceship disappears from view, with a maximum of 700 points possible per spaceship depending on operator settings. The machine's scoring system, which lets operators adjust point values and dead-time intervals via screws on the backbox's rotating disk, adds real strategic depth for the era.
Mars's design and art are notable for their era, featuring two separate backglass artworks spaced apart to create a 3D effect when viewed together, revealing a distant city and mountains inside the backbox door. With ten high score levels and a maximum score of 5200 points, and only 407 units confirmed produced, Mars is a rare and inventive piece of 1930s pinball history, offering a glimpse into the elaborate mechanical showmanship of the era before electronics took over.
Images (31)
Technical Details
- Theme:
- Outer Space - Science Fiction - Space Fantasy
- Model Number:
- 42
- Notable Features:
- Spring bumpers (13). Mechanical backbox animation (spaceships fly in and out of view). Two backglasses, spaced 3.1 cm apart, each have artwork on them, and the player can look through both of them to see a distant city and mountains on the inside of the backbox door. This provides a 3-D effect to the player. The player places a coin in the coin slide and pushes it in, which starts the game, sets the game timer (approximately 4 minutes), and starts the rotating spaceship motor in the backbox. This motor turns at a constant rate of speed and a full revolution takes 12 seconds, always making one of two moving spaceships viewable by the player for approximately 6 seconds, having a short gap of time when no spaceship is in view. A light bulb illuminates the backbox scene whenever a spaceship is in view. The only light bulbs on the playfield are inside two of the thirteen bumpers, both having red caps, and both labeled "Repeater". When a spaceship comes into view, the two red Repeater bumpers illuminate simultaneously and if a ball in play hits either of them when lit, the rotating spaceship mechanism awards 100 points repeatedly until the spaceship disappears from view. Therefore, hitting a lit Repeater just as it lights up would cat ch the spaceship at the beginning of its viewable arc of travel and would maximize the number of 100-point awards before the spaceship disappears from view (and the red bumpers turn off). The maximum points possible for timely hitting a lit Repeater bumper is 700 but only because the operator can option each spaceship to award from 100 to 700 points in 100-point increments. The operator does this by installing one to seven screws on the outer ring of two rings of holes in the rotating disk of the backbox motor, for each spaceship. If desired, one spaceship can be made liberal and one can be conservative. Each screw he ad generates a pulse to the score stepping unit as the disk rotates, but only when the "repeater relay" is activated by hitting a lit Repeater bumper. In the small gap of time after a spaceship leaves the view and before the other one comes into view, the entire playfield is disabled and cannot score points, the red bumper lights are turned off, and the repeater relay is deactivated. The operator can increase the amount of dead playfield time by setting a portion of a spaceship’s 6-second travel time to disable the playfield. The operator does this by installing either one, two, or three screws on the inner ring of the two rings of holes in the rotating disk of the backbox motor, for each spaceship. If desired, the two gaps can be of different lengths of time by setting one spaceship to be liberal and one to be conservative. The three options per spaceship provide these approximate time intervals: 1 screw = 1.5 seconds of playfield disable time and 4.5 seconds enable time = 6.0 seconds. 2 screws = 1.0 second of playfield disable time and 5.0 seconds enable time = 6.0 seconds. 3 screws = 0.5 second of playfield disable time and 5.5 seconds enable time = 6.0 seconds. This game has ten high score levels for the player to beat. The first high score is an operator choice of only one of these five score levels: 2800, 2900, 3000, 3100, or 3200. After that, nine hardwired score levels are always active: 3600, 3900, 4200, 4500, 4600, 4700, 4800, 4900 and 5000. Maximum score stops at 5200 points. As no replays are given by the machine, these score levels are "active" in that they are wired to a counter inside the game that increments each time a score level is reached. It does not count the number of games played. If the location chose to pay out cash to patrons who reach any of these high score levels, the backglass score had to be witnessed before the timer shut the game off. The operator would later reimburse the location based on the counter's new total since the last visit. The rotating disk does not stop when the game is tilted. It stops only when the main voltage is turned off once the game timer runs out.