Super Sport

Super Sport is a 1987 release from Bally Wulff of Germany, and it's a fascinating case study in pinball censorship rather than a wholly original design: it's the same game as Bally Wulff's 1987 'Hardbody', but with a different backglass showing its bodybuilder characters wearing more clothing. Bally Wulff's own advertising for the game, titled "Less Sex in the Game" ("Weniger Sex im Spiel"), explained that after operators complained about the depiction of bodybuilding world champion Rachel McLish on the Hardbody backglass, the company offered operators a choice between the original Hardbody artwork or the tamer Super Sport version, at the same price. The Super Sport backglass was painted by Berlin-based artist Mychael Gerstenberger.

Designed by Ward Pemberton, the shared game underneath is built around an exercise and bodybuilding theme, unusual territory for pinball. It plays with four flippers, two slingshots, sixteen standup targets, six star rollovers, a pair of flex-save lanes, drop-target banks, and two mechanically raised and lowered ramps, a fairly loaded layout for a late-1980s Bally Wulff table, though it has no pop bumpers. Its flex-save lanes came after Bally Midway's 1987 'Dungeons & Dragons', which IPDB credits as the first game to use that feature.

Between the backglass swap and its distinctive theme, Super Sport stands out today as a curiosity of 1980s pinball manufacturing, and it offers a window into how sensitive backglass content could shape a release.