On the heels of Stern announcing their Vault Edition of Iron Man, Jersey Jack Pinball ponied up with the playfield art for their forthcoming Hobbit machine. Reviews within the community were mixed, as they tend to be. If you are okay with photographic collages, you’ll probably be okay with the look of this playfield. It attempts to follow the lead of grander and “epic-ness” set by Stern’s Lord of the Rings. In that respect, it’ll look good next to its predecessor. But, there is something off…maybe it’s the lack of originality. I’m looking at this in terms of art alone, not actual playfield mechanics, because frankly, there isn’t much there yet in terms of mechanics to dissect.
I’m kind of sad that Jersey Jack Pinball didn’t go outside the box on this one. I get it, it’s a licence. They were probably handcuffed by the studio to employ a certain style or a specific set of images. Yet, whatever happened to a time when a pinball company could put out a game like Demolition Man or Jurassic Park and uphold their end of the licence while having appropriated hand-drawn art? Maybe it’s just far easier now to get a graphic artist to cut and paste from production stills. Also, these photo paste-up playfields better serve the studio’s unified vision of the original film. Without sounding like an old man–“In the good ol’ days, sonny, we used to have hand-drawn art on our playfields…!”–-I really DO lament those bygone days. Sure, most of the art on the 1990s Data East games looked whispy and weak, but Williams/Bally/Midway had it down to a science with their robust black outlines and bold colour choices. Games used to stand alone as their own work, with a fresh take. Now, they are just pieces of merchandise that carry pre-approved production images–-the same ones that are sent out to toy companies, food manufacturers and the Bradford Exchange.
What the community wouldn’t give to have this Hobbit playfield carry “Tolkien-style” artwork, or at least one artist’s rendering of the film’s characters in that style. The literary roots of the franchise begs for a more refined, delicate approach. I’ve never read the Hobbit books, nor am I a fan of this brand of fantasy, but don’t hand drawn maps play a huge role in these kinds of books? There are maps on Jack’s playfield, but they are tucked away in the upper right and left orbits. I believe there are a whole host of artists who make their salt by drawing elves, dragons and wizards. However, time is not on Jersey Jack’s side, it never has been, and one can assume art approval would have ate up valuable manpower in an already tight production schedule, even if that was an approach the company wanted to take. Maybe cut-and-paste art was the way to go here, given time and budget: the path of least resistance. This game has to get out by the end of the year in time for the release of the third film in the series.
What makes this artwork choice for the Hobbit playfield even more curious, is that Stern, who perfected the cut-and-paste technique, has made a marked effort to move away from the approach with its recent releases. They tried to make up for past indiscretions by releasing a new version of AC/DC, removing all photographic art on the cabinet and translite and replacing it with images bearing the artist’s touch. Metallica was lauded for signalling a return to the “playfield artist”, thanks to the participation of Dirty Donny. Even Mustang tried to bestow artistic credibility upon itself by boasting the inclusion of artist/designer Camilo Pardo to the creative team. Stern is listening: we wanted original art, and we got it. It’ll be interesting to see if they are strong-armed back to their old ways with future releases, especially those with high profile film or television licences attached to them.
It boils down to this: the community wants something value added and something unique that doesn’t look like DVD packaging or a plastic collector’s cup from Burger King. The easiest way to inject value, yet probably the costliest, is through drawn art. Everything about a pinball machine is considered “art” these days–the mechanics, the toys, the electronics, the way the ball moves–but the actual art package of the machine is what injects heart and soul into an otherwise cold and commercial unit. This Hobbit playfield art doesn’t scream hear and soul, unfortunately. Its computer generated images are just one step away from the static electronics contained inside the backbox.
What is present isn’t that impressive. The cut-and-paste dragon on the middle of the playfield looks oddly out of place, as do the disembodied heads by the drop targets and inserts. There also seem to be too many shadowy images of scenes from the film scattered mid-playfield. The artist in charge is trying to tell too much of the epic story on the playfield. You guys have an LCD SCREEN IN THE BACKBOX for crying out loud! Let your most powerful mode of communication in the entire machine tell the story. A lit insert with a bit of text would suffice on the playfield as a place holder. Steve Ritchie, the king of in-your-face, over-the-top style, took a step back with the most recent Star Trek and allowed the art to be more subdued, leaving the playfield uncluttered and allowing the game’s yarn to unravel through physics, animations and programming. Once the toys and wire forms are included I’m sure the playfield will seem less offensive to the senses. I am, however, glad the playfield isn’t scattered with hundreds of inserts, like Jersey Jack’s Wizard of Oz. Different themes call for different approaches, and less inserts on the Hobbit was the right approach to take. I hope the inserts that are added work to fill out some of the colours in the game. Stern’s Lord of the Rings playfield is extremely colourful in artistic flourishes, whereas the Hobbit doesn’t stray far from muddy earth tones and hints of gold.
I suppose it is a difficult task to capture the events of nine cinematic hours of film in a single machine with the licensor’s gun to your head. But Stern somehow did it with Lord of the Rings, with less disembodied heads and way more colour. It still boggles my mind how Stern can change their artistic ways after all these years to the universal applause of the pinball community, while Jersey Jack Pinball chooses to rely upon the same old drag n’ drop principles of playfield art. Someone please call John Youssi or Mark Sprenger, their services are desperately needed.
Further Reading:
Pinside – Hobbit Artwork Revealed!
Fun With Bonus – Jersey Jack’s The Hobbit Playfield
Credit Dot: This past May, you hosted the third yearly incarnation of the Pinsanity tournament. Can you give us some info about the tournament and its history?
CD: T-shirts with the same design as the poster are also available. Is this the first year for them?
The impact seems minute at first glance: a company is remaking a product that was a dud when first released, but has since increased in popularity and a demand now exists for more. Anyone who has ever wanted an Iron Man, or even thought about owning an Iron Man, can now have a Vault Edition for a MSRP of $5495USD. This premise was first attempted, successfully, by Stern with multiple runs of Tron. However, the catchy “Vault” tag wasn’t used, rather, different translites indicated the different runs of the game. Stern and the pinball community at large are traversing a very different landscape now than we were back in 2012. In two short years, the market has become crowded with some excellent Stern releases with multiple models for each title, Jersey Jack’s games finally entering the market place, the actual realization of a few boutique titles like Predator and America’s Most Haunted, announcements of even more boutique titles like Wrath of Olympus and Full Throttle, and, of course, the Planetary Pinball remake of Medieval Madness. That final example is probably the catalyst for all of Stern’s recent re-envisionings like AC/DC’s Luci edition and this Iron Man redux.
The goods arrived from the Netherlands, packaged superbly in reinforced cardboard. The mail carriers would’ve had to work extra hard to inflict damage upon it. The cover price of €30.95 (plus shipping from Europe) is admittedly quite rich, but you are getting a professionally printed, tightly bound hardcover coffee table book in return. Typically, photography books such as this tend to skew on the expensive side, so perspective is everything here. If you have ordered an issue of Pinball Magazine from their site, you are already familiar with the costly cover price, but also the suburb product Jonathan Joosten and the Pinball Magazine staff have to offer. My hat is off to Mr. Joosten, for without his dedication to the project and securing the international rights to publish this book, it probably would not have seen the light of day outside its native Argentina. Packaged with Ciuffo’s book is a supplement under the Pinball Magazine banner that 
features an interview with the photographer (in 12 languages) and contains photos that are exclusive to the supplement and not found in the bound publication. As a bonus to early adopters, the first five hundred books ordered also include a set of ten postcards featuring exquisite photos from Ciuffo’s image bank. This postcard set is absolutely suitable for framing, as the quality is akin to something you’d find in a museum gift shop. My book came with a set of these postcards, so as of writing, we are still within the “first five hundred” quota.
In 1973, Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King captured the interest of a nation by participating in a tennis match labelled “The Battle of the Sexes”. The media frenzy leading up to the match brought tennis, momentarily, to the forefront of American sport. Riggs was outspoken and sexist (it may have been an act) claiming that the women’s tennis game was inferior to the men’s. King went on to beat the 55-year-old handedly–Riggs was clearly past his prime. Over 30,000 people were in attendance at the Houston Astrodome to watch the match, a tennis attendance record that stands to this day. Sports historians will likely find flaws in the following statement, however, I see this match as the point that marked the end of the laurel-wearing, upper-crust era of tennis and ushered in a new era that featured increased showmanship and spectacle. With tennis being a revitalized sport across the nation, Gottlieb capitalized, and released Volley, their tennis-themed wedgehead, and did so to coincide with the 1976 US Open, America’s largest and most popular tournament.
If we observe tennis as a fad conjured up by the media in the mid-70s, Morison’s art captures it completely–the pink and orange pastels, umbrella’d spectators, and one-piece tennis mini-skirts. It shouldn’t be overlooked that the main backglass image features a man playing a woman in a competitive game of tennis a la Riggs vs. King. The side art, even with its minimalist two-colour-on-white composition, depicts a male versus female tennis exchange, with the muscular female’s hair in a short bob reminiscent of King’s. A more buxom blonde, showing off her, ahem, “forehand”, is placed front and centre on the playfield, which is pretty typical for Morison at Gottlieb. He loved featuring attractive blondes in a variety of social situations. The symmetrical playfield is balanced with the sexes–if a male appears on a right hand side plastic, a female will be 
featured on the matching left. Sample Volleys had a different playfield art package than that of the regular run. Gone are the unpainted wood tones near the apron and top arch, and are replaced with a pastel blue leaving no bare wood anywhere. A different rendering of a female, with a shorter skirt and a “bigger” forehand swing, replaces buxom blonde. Bloated, “70s style” lettering and numbering appears around the inserts indicating scoring and point values, whereas the main run was changed back to the black block caps used in nearly every game of the era, regardless of manufacturer. The production version of Volley towed the Gottlieb line by displaying all their usual characteristics-the sample game, in contrast, looked as if it was trying to deviate. David Gottlieb’s company became the gold standard of pinball in this era by sticking to the script, so much so that they allowed the same two guys to spearhead the design and art on the majority of their games. Perhaps this is the reason why the art on the sample games was abandoned for a more traditional art package?
Gameplay doesn’t get much simpler. Three lanes lie under the top arch of the machine, each lane with a different coloured insert–red, blue and green. These correspond with the three pop bumpers and the three sets of five-bank drop targets below. If you are able to light one of these colour-coded lanes, the associated pop bumper scores 1,000 points, and associated drop targets score 5,000 instead of the normal 500. Once the lane has been lit, it stays lit for the entire game or until all fifteen targets are knocked down. A bit of strategy comes into play here. To maximize score, you will want to avoid the drops altogether until you are able to light all three lanes, then proceed to go on a target bashing spree at 5,000 points a piece. More difficult would be to attack one colour at a time–you are bound to knock down a bunch of unlit colours, losing a ton of points in the process. You can, however, just focus on the targets and go after the special. The special is lit when all targets have been dropped-it alternates between the left and right upper lanes. The centre yellow lane is worth 5,000 when lit and will light with the special. And that’s about it really. Gameplay is mostly flows up and down–there is not much side-to-side action as the slingshots have no kickers beneath them. Mostly, you find yourself trying the fling the ball to the upper lanes in order to start the drop target frenzy. The yellow bank that sits dead centre is brutal, a dead on hit often sends the ball straight down the middle. Much like El Dorado before it, the fun factor in this game lies in the drop targets. If you don’t like drops, you probably won’t like Volley.
There is also something a bit “Canadian” to Volley, which is weird, because we, as a nation, are not known as the biggest tennis enthusiasts on the planet. I know of three Volleys that are in private collections within a fifty kilometre radius of my home, and I’ve played two of them. One owner had four pass through his hands, all upgrades, before settling on the near collector quality example that sits in his collection now. That seems like an oddly high amount of games to be residing in one part of North America considering its 2,900 unit production run. The final tip-off for me was in Allentown this year. One of the aforementioned Canadian Volleys made its way down to Pinfest, and one American collector remarked, “You guys sure do have a lot of Volleys up there”. So it must be true if an American collector said it, right? I had a chance to run this by Robert Baraké, former employee of Laniel Automatic, who worked for the company at a time when they were Canada’s largest arcade and amusement distributor. Laniel’s legacy can still be observed in the Canadian secondary market to this day–three of the games in my personal collection bear Laniel markings and a large number of sample and prototype games call Canada home because of Laniel’s buying power and influence. Mr. Baraké had this to say about the number of Canadian Volleys:
CREDIT DOT 