New Pinball: Embryon, Bally - 1980

Pinballs from the late 1970's and early 1980's seem to be my favorite and after many hours on my BSD, I determined that I:
A) Like short ball times
B) Like late '70's/early '80's sound effects
C) Like simple rule sets

And so the BSD went up on the block. I contacted John Dayhuff about a possible trade and we worked one out with a friend of his plus cash for a fantastic Bally widebody, 1980's Embryon.

It's the last of the Bally widebodies and one of the best. The speech is amazing, and adds so much to the feel of the game. In getting multiball, the machine begins by saying - "life begins" - in reference to you actually birthing a baby by hitting the capta balls in the center shot, spelling Embryon. It's very cool.

The rule set is pretty diverse, but the tasks are simple, so you are constantly plugging away at getting multiball or building bonus or knocking down the drop targets or roll over lanes for an extra ball.

It's a very fast game for a widebody and after spending sometime this weekend tuning it up, its playing very nicely. The artwork usually gets criticised for being too "PG-13" but I think people just wanted more boobs and less sci-fi guy on the backglass. Personally, I like it.

Now, I have three widebody games (Paragon, Iron Maiden and Embryon), which seems weird - its not like I searched them out just for the sake of them being widebodies - but there is something about that era that just hits me right and Embryon has some of the best qualtites of that age - tremendous sci-fi sound effects, art and playstyle.