Classic of the Month - Black Hole

Manufacturer:	Gottlieb
Genre:	Pinball
Board:	Gottlieb System 80
Year:	1981

Following last month's release of The Pinball Arcade for home consoles and smart phones, I thought it was about time I did another pinball Classic of the Month. This month's pin game of choice is the game I played the most in the video port, Gottlieb's 1981 classic Black Hole.

Black Hole's inverted lower playfield

Almost everything about this table is non-standard, from the asymmetrical layout at the bottom of the table to the lack of specific goals and of course the lane on the top-left that takes the ball (and the player) into the "Black Hole" itself.

Instead of the usual two flippers, with inlanes and outlanes surrounding triangular bumpers, on the right-hand side there are two flippers, one directly above the first, with no outlane; on the left-hand side there is mushroom bumper (or "pop bumper", as Gottlieb refer to them), with not so much an outlane, but a gap that leads to the drain. The middle of the playfield is one of the most barren you'll see for a relatively modern table. This is because in there middle there is the Black Hole — an inverted, lower playfield which has its own separate scoring system, that adds on to your main score from one ball to the next. And because this playfield is inverted the flippers are at the top  and the the ball falls "up" (see right). The first time you end up in the black hole you are guaranteed to lose the ball, even if you know about the inverted playfield, because it's a mind-bending feature. In fact, Black Hole was the first table to have an inverted lower playfield, which along with its 50¢ price point, which helped make it one of the most popular tables in the States in its day.

Playing Black Hole is a constant cycle of hitting the BLACK HOLE drop targets in sequence, then getting the ball into the Black Hole for the bonus. Getting a good score is almost like an endurance challenge, because there are not really any short cuts and the multi-ball is pretty tough to unlock. Don't expect Black Hole to keep chucking high scores your way though; even a score of a few million is a feat.

For me, Black Hole evokes as strong a sense of nostalgia as any arcade game and for one simple reason: the sound. There's no music to speak of, instead there's a rhythmic and near-hypnotic electronic beeping that loops constantly while you play, which sounds like some kind of sci-fi sonar. I can remember hearing it in arcades in my childhood, even though I didn't play it until much later.

Getting to play any pinball table is neigh-on impossible, so I urge people check out Pinball Arcade, especially as it's available on every gaming platform that matters.

It's always tricky to get decent videos of pinball machines, but nonetheless, here's the original Black Hole in action. This video includes a brief look at the spinning black hole motif on the top of the table, which is curiously inanimate in Far Sight Studio's conversion.

Finally, this table was not affiliated to the 1979 Disney movie, which you might guess from the lack of V.I.N.CENT, B.O.B or Maximilian (boy, that thing was scary as a kid) robots in the art work. Just in case you were confused.

MTW