Dr. Dude And His Excellent Ray

Dr. Dude And His Excellent Ray is a comedic science-fiction pinball machine released under the Bally trade name by Midway Manufacturing on August 29, 1990. Designed by Dennis Nordman with artwork by Greg Freres, music by Chris Granner, sound by Jon Hey, and software by Bill Pfutzenreuter, it ran on the Williams System 11C platform, with approximately 3,983 units produced. Interestingly, about 100 examples were built on WPC Alpha-numeric hardware instead.

The playfield is packed with personality-driven toys: the eXcellent Ray, the Big Shot, and the Mix Master, backed by two flippers, three pop bumpers, two slingshots, an impressive nineteen standup targets, two vertical up-kickers (which the manufacturer called 'ball poppers'), a 4-bank of drop targets, a spinning disk, and a magnet. Multiball rounds out the feature set, giving players plenty of ways to soak up 'dudeness'.

A thoughtful operator touch: the game's speech can be set to either a Normal or a Family setting, letting operators tailor the game's wisecracking tone to their location. With its goofball charm and dense feature set, Dr. Dude is a memorable entry from the Nordman-Freres design team at the close of the System 11 era.