If you ever wanted the excitement of the code-breaking board game Mastermind in a pinball cabinet, and who hasn’t, Spectrum is the game for you.

This classic Bally from August 1982 has striking art from Margaret Hudson, whose work I really don’t much care for overall, but she does a magnificent job here. Besides the art, it’s what the machine lacks that stands out the most–it doesn’t have a shooter lane or outlanes. The ball launches via the right flipper, a modification so confusing that the Squak & Talk voice in the game instructs you how to launch your ball (using valuable speech memory). Failing that, the game just gets tired of waiting and auto launches the ball after a set period of inactivity. Oh, and there are no slingshot kickers either. Designer Claude Fernandez really tried to break the mould with this one.

The game is difficult. Really difficult. Not only do you have to accustom yourself with the drastic changes in the machine, you’re aim has to be dead on–game progression and scoring is determined by hitting saucers followed by knocking down complete banks of targets and completely avoiding the other banks. Kind of like a more confusing Volley EM. The rules are so confusing, in fact, let’s just let Todd Tuckey of TNT Amusements describe them…

I’m really drawn to the way that locking a ball immediately kicks a different ball out of a saucer to the flipper. As Tuckey explains, the inside of the game is packed with boards and extra relays to control nearly 80 playfield insert lamps (!) as well as flashing GI and backbox lamps.

Estimates have less than 1,000 of these games made, and nearly half of them when straight to the junkyard. I think a game like this was too radically different to catch on with casual players. Imagine a cowboy in a shitkicker bar who honed his skills playing the more straight forward and understandably themed Eight Ball Deluxe trying to figure out how to play a Spectrum. I see it as one of those early-80s pinball games that tried too hard to harness the complexity of a video game, which were dominating at the arcades at the time. It would be a great game to have in a large collection…as it would be difficult to master, and it would definitely stand out as a unique oddity. On top of that, it would be pretty to look at. But with a very small number surviving, you’ll need a little luck and great timing to find one.

Further Reading:

Spectrum Rulesheet – Pinball.org
Bally Spectrum – IPDB
Mastermind (board game) – Wikipedia