Ballista

Despite being advertised as "The Ultimate Pinball Machine," the Ballista is not actually a pinball machine - it is a motion-simulator video game from Tsunami Visual Technologies, Inc. of Fremont, California. Players sit inside a large motorized sphere meant to represent a pinball itself; the sphere turns, rolls, bumps, and bounces in sync with on-screen action as the player operates virtual flippers to keep a video-projected ball in play. Tsunami called this motion-platform technology 'Tsu-Mo' (Tsunami Motion) and used it in several of their other motion-platform arcade devices.

Little is confirmed about Ballista's actual production history. All known promotional images are computer-generated renders rather than photographs of a physical unit, raising the possibility that the game was never built beyond the concept and marketing stage. Other Tsunami video games are known to have been made between 2000 and 2006, giving a rough window for when Ballista may have been conceived, though no exact date is documented.

As an unusual motion-simulator take on the pinball concept rather than a true pinball machine, Ballista remains an obscure footnote in arcade history - intriguing for its ambition, but lacking documentation to confirm whether it ever reached players.