What the hell – Mattel made pinball machines? Well, A pinball machine! Yeah, that’s right, Mattel dipped their toe in the pinball market with their one (and only), Las Vegas Pinball!
We only ever associated Mattel with the Intellivision and our fave childhood action figures, Masters Of The Universe, so when we stumbled upon this anomaly, we thought we’d let the rest of you know (Ed: unless you all already knew!).
Before you get excited, Mattel Electronics’ Las Vegas Pinball was never intended for commercial use, hence why you may not have seen it at your local pinball parlour. The playfield is standard fare for a pinball machine of this vintage (the late 70s) – couple of pop bumpers, slingshots and four stand-up targets to keep you flipping.
The interesting part about this Mattel pinball machine is the ability to select one of three game versions (similar to modes on modern machines), Beginner’s Luck, Cool Hand or High Roller. Coupled with selecting the game version, Mattel also included a handicap switching system, allowing players to select a choice of 3, 4, or 5 balls for their turn at play. This feature allowed competing players to give any player a handicap advantage of one or two extra balls, if desired.
Mattel had another cool feature called Double Or Nothing, which could only be used once during a game – prior to shooting a ball into play, the player presses a button on the front of the cabinet to activate this option for that ball only. Then, lighting all four targets doubles the player’s score. Failure to light all four targets penalises the player of all the points earned on that ball. Sounds pretty cool to us!
Which ever way you look at it, this Mattel Electronics Las Vegas Pinball machine was quite nifty for its time – we just hope we find one in our travels so we can have a go!
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source: IPDB