Ep. 5 — Space Shuttle (Williams, 1984)

In 1984, Williams Electronics was one failed pinball machine away from shutting down its pinball division for good — management set a 1,900-order survival target and meant it. In this episode of The Skill Shot, we step up to the machine that cleared that bar more than three times over: Space Shuttle, the first solid-state production pin with a playfield toy, and the game that quietly rewrote what a pinball machine could be.

The verdict: On paper, a 73 is a B — but like Sinbad, Space Shuttle’s real worth isn’t in its FlipScore columns. The shooting is solid-if-simple and the code is thin by modern standards, yet this is the machine that introduced the playfield toy, pulled Williams back from the edge, and proved pinball had a future after the 1983 video game crash. At around $2,500 for a clean example, it’s one of the cheapest ways to own a genuinely historic pin — and for the NASA nerds, a little piece of the space program for the game room. Easy recommendation.

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