Apollo

The Apollo pinball machine, designed by Norm Clark with artwork by Art Stenholm, was released by Williams Electronics in June 1967, right in the middle of America's fascination with the space race. Its Space Exploration theme captured the excitement of the era, and Williams produced a confirmed 3,100 units, with roughly 1,800 sold in the USA and Canada and the rest exported.

Apollo boasts a solid array of features for its time, including two flippers, four pop bumpers, a passive bumper, two slingshots, eleven rollover buttons, and seven standup targets, plus a right outlane ball return gate. The layout encourages players to navigate the ball through challenging paths, working the combination of mechanisms toward the maximum displayed score of 9,999 points. A distinctive touch is the machine's mechanical backbox animation: a bagatelle built into the backglass.

An interesting piece of trivia: the add-a-ball version of this game is Williams' 1967 'Blast Off'. Promotional photos for both games show yellow playfield posts, yet surviving examples have red posts, suggesting a color change occurred at some point during production. For fans of 1960s electro-mechanical games, Apollo is a handsome snapshot of the space-age enthusiasm of its day.