Tornado

Tornado is an unreleased Bally pinball prototype designed by John Popadiuk. Conceived in 1982 while Popadiuk was working with the toy-inventing firm Marvin Glass and Associates, it was a Wizard of Oz-themed concept built into a multi-level "environmental cabinet," a precursor of sorts to the later Pinball 2000 format, with a video-game-like feel.

According to Popadiuk, the game centered on a large vacuum-formed cyclone funnel ramp that carried the ball into multiball before dropping it back to the playfield amid storm effects and strobe lighting. Documented features include four flippers, a pop bumper, two slingshots, six standup targets, five progressive kick-out saucers that pass the ball upfield, a 4-bank drop target, a spinning disk, a vertical up-kicker, a star rollover, two-in-line drop targets, a left outlane kickback, and a Magna-Save above the right inlane.

Despite this ambitious feature set, Tornado was never produced or released to the public; it remains a prototype known primarily through Popadiuk's own recollections and sketches, offering a glimpse into experimental, multi-level pinball design concepts being explored at Bally in the early 1980s.