Random Thoughts & Pictures
Star Trek may not have been the first pin I ever played, but it is the one I remember. There is no other pinball title of which I have specific childhood memories.
I spent my winters growing up at a long-extinct ski area called Hahn Mountain in the northern tip of Berks County, Pennsylvania. Both my parents were ski instructors so I spent a lot of time there. It was at Hahn Mountain that I discovered Star Trek. I liked pinball when I was a kid. But I wasn't very good at it. My typical game would last about 20 seconds. And I often was not willing to part with 25 cents. At my young age, back in the early 1980s, a quarter still seemed like a lot of money. But I must not have had anything better to do with my allowance during the winter because I played Star Trek regularly. I know my allowance at the time was $2/week because I remember being able to play Star Trek eight times (plus, hopefully, a few replays and matches). I remember the game was three balls for a quarter. Most of all I remember the "Time Warp" shot back to the shooter lane. That shot was as rewarding and exciting as earning an extra ball. I don't remember having any particular grasp of the game rules. Maybe I wasn't even aware that pinball machines had rules. But after some practice I was able to keep my balls in play long enough to earn replays with some regularity. All this happened during the new craze of arcade video games. I remember that Star Trek shared space with two video games. One was Asteroids. The other was probably Pac-Man. But I always found video games were about as much fun as tossing quarters in the trashcan.
I skied Hahn Mountain from when I was about four years old in 1973 until around 1984 when the ski area closed for good. Obviously Star Trek was not there before 1979, but in my memory, it always was.
Star Trek had a high production run for its day. There should be a lot of them left out there. But it took a few years for me to track down a nice one. The first time I revisited Star Trek was at the 2005 Pinball Wizards Convention in Allentown. The game I saw looked nice and was for sale at a reasonable price. But it was several months prior to my decision to actually start collecting pinball machines. And I left Friday night before the machine was fully set up so I didn't even get to play. I kept my eyes open for the next two and a half years. But every machine I looked at was junk or the deal fell through. With this particular title the buyer can be competing against Trekkies as well as other Pinheads.
Finally in September, 2007 I answered a Mr. Pinball ad for a Star Trek located up in north-central Pennsylvania. I went to test it out and decided to buy it. That test was my first game of Star Trek in about 25 years.
History of My Star Trek
Interestingly, this particular Star Trek has some traceable history. I learned that this game was previously owned by Mark Clayton, owner of the company Pinball Pal. This was the guinea pig game used to develop the company's Star Trek stencil kit. Star Trek was the first project to implement the company's computer-cut stencil system. The re-stenciling process can be seen on Mark's website and on the Pinball Pal website.
Mark also did some minor playfield touch ups, replaced drop targets, replaced thumper bumper parts and cleaned and polished everything else. At the 2002 Pinball Wizards Convention, Mark sold the game to the collector who in turn sold the game to me in 2007.
Obviously the game was in nice shape when it came to me. The yellow on the cabinet body is a bit blotchy where some underlying wood filler shadows show through. It could have benefited from some primer or a few more base coats of yellow. There are a few very minor scuffs. Fortunately the paint codes are on Mark's website so I may do some touch up. But surly the cabinet is far nicer than any other Start Trek I've seen with an original finish.
The playfield has a lot of ball swirl and the old Mylar shadows are pretty obvious. But the art is nearly all intact and original with only some very minor touchups around some of the inserts. The plastics and backglass are nearly perfect. The game is still running strong on the original electronics. The MPU board batteries have been remotely located and there is no apparent acid damage. I am pleased to have acquired such a fine example of the game.
Shown above is the two page promotional flyer for Star Trek. Click for larger picture.
TV or Movie?
There were two different versions of this game. Initially there was the TV version. Then there was the movie version. Pictures of both versions are shown on the Star Trek IPBD page. There are only minor differences between the two. The uniforms and starship on the backglass are different. And a few of the playfield plastics are different. It's clear that the original intent was to have this game correspond to the Star Trek TV series. But then some minor cosmetic changes were made to reflect the new movie, "Star Trek: The Motion Picture". The TV versions are quite rare. I have read that a few hundred of the TV versions were produced during an initial production run. But most pinball references refer to the TV version as the "prototype" indicating that only a handful may have been made. More than 16,000 Star Treks were produced. The vast majority of them were the movie version.
The original Star Trek TV series was years before my time. I can better relate to the movies. But I have to say that I prefer the look of the TV version pinball machine (not that I expect to ever get my hands on one). I'm thinking that the conversion must have been a last minute decision because the execution is pretty half-assed. First off, the playfield and cabinet art were not updated. They show the old starship and uniforms and don't relate to anything that happened in the movie. A few of the playfield plastics were updated. Hot-looking crew women were replaced with creepy-looking Lt. Ilia. But the remaining plastics have nothing to do with the movie. As mentioned above, the uniforms and starship shown on the backglass were updated. But here again, the backglass depicts a scene that has no relation to the movie. And finally, the title of the game is simply "Star Trek" with a font that matches the TV show, not the movie. So my vote goes to the TV version because:
1) The overall package has a more uniformed, consistent look.
2) The old uniforms add a bit more color.
3) Hot-looking crew women instead of a creepy bald woman.
The Supersonic Connection
The playfield layout that eventually became Bally's Supersonic initially had a Star Trek theme. This initial game was a one-off, two-player EM prototype called "Star Ship". But the Star Trek licensing process apparently got bogged down. Star Ship was abandoned and a Supersonic theme was adopted instead. By the time the licensing arrangements were worked out it was too late to return to the Star Ship concept. So a revised Star Trek theme was applied to a completely different whitewood. Supersonic was released around 1979. Therefore, all Supersonic production units were 4-player solid state games. The package we now know as Star Trek went into production soon after Supersonic.
Here is the IPDB link to the prototype Star Ship.
And here is the IPDB link for Supersonic.
Note the identical playfield layouts. Note how the "SS" arrangement of bonus ladder lights is a carry over from Star Ship (i.e. "Star Ship" became "SST"). In fact, the Supersonic theme was selected at least in part because a title was needed where the bonus ladder arrangement could be reused.