Meteor
Background
Remember the Sean Connery movie from 1979 where they nuked an asteroid? That’s right, Meteor is actually a licensed game!
The transition from electromechanical to solid state was underway when this machine was created, but only barely. It has a very similar computer as Fireball II (which is two years newer) but lacks any speech capabilities. You might also notice this machine was created by Stern, however it’s a completely different company from the Stern that created the other modern machines at Tiltshift. Stern Electronics eventually was sold to Sega, then to Data East, before finally going back to the Stern name and becoming today’s Stern Pinball.
Classic Stern machines have recently become very popular in tournament crowds due to their simple, but very fun game play. When playing, notice how you can feel the ball rolling across the wood playfield in a way that’s not possible on the modern machines. The slingshots and flippers have a solid “ka-chunk” when firing, and every action feels very deliberate.
Links
Blog Posts
These blog posts mention Meteor.