Evel Knievel

This Evel Knievel is a solid-state home pinball machine released by Bally in January 1978 - a non-commercial version of the company's Evel Knievel arcade game, sharing its art theme but not its playfield. Designed by Gary Gayton with artwork by Paul Faris, the four-player home model (model number 614-1000) traded on the fame of the legendary motorcycle daredevil at the height of his celebrity.

The game offers three flippers, two pop bumpers, a slingshot, three standup targets, and two spinning targets. Scoring all four top rollovers to spell E-V-E-L lights the outlanes for an Extra Ball, hitting two of the three standup targets lights Double Bonus, and hitting all three lights Triple Bonus. In a quirk of the home format, the flippers remain active even in Game Over mode. The cabinet back houses the on/off switch, a circuit breaker button, and a volume control, and the game advertised built-in "Game Brain" diagnostics.

As was common with Bally's home line, the playfield layout is identical to the home versions of Fireball, Captain Fantastic & The Brown Dirt Cowboy, and Galaxy Ranger - only the artwork differs. That makes this Evel Knievel an interesting example of how manufacturers stretched a single engineering package across multiple licensed themes for the late-1970s home market.