Video Game

In the late 1970s the video game nearly buried pinball - and then, with a certain irony, set about imitating it. The machines in this list are video games that wandered into the pinball catalog: some because they simulate a playfield on a screen, some because they wear a pinball theme, some simply because a cataloguer wasn’t sure where else to file them.

The standout is Atari’s Video Pinball (1978), which rendered flippers, bumpers and a bouncing ball entirely in light - no glass, no steel, no tilt. Williams and Midway, both pillars of real pinball, also turn up here with screen-based games, a reminder that the same companies often had a foot in each world. These machines have no physical ball to nudge, but their presence marks the moment the silver ball met the cathode ray.