First Class Visit to the Strong Museum

Terminator 2 Judgement Day
Manufactured in July 1991
by Williams Electronics Games

Today we visited the Strong Museum for the first time in class. We learned more about the history of pinball and I got the chance to play some of the pinball machines there, focusing on one in particular: 

I chose to play Terminator 2 Judgement Day because growing up, it was one of my favorite movies. I liked the way the play field itself incorporated characters from the movie, as well as plot that involved them. For example, the T-1000 trying to kill John Connor during the movie was on the field and getting your ball to an escape route was a way to score more points. I also really liked the ball launcher, which was unique in that it used a gun trigger instead of a plunger.

The game itself was pretty responsive. When I pulled the trigger, the ball was immediately launched and put in play. Once in play, the ball was always bouncing off a bumper or moving towards an objective, so I never felt like the gameplay was slow. Although I only played the game for a short period of time, since I had to leave early, I did feel as though I started to get the hang of it. I didn’t really understand the scoring tips and rules very much, since this was one of the first times I’ve played pinball since I was little. However, after a few playthroughs, I accumulated more points by completing some of the game goals. For example, I got a direct hit on the T-1000 and I used the escape route to collect the lit value by hitting the top eject.

Overall, I had a lot of fun playing this game. It gave me insight into how complicated pinball machines were, even back in the day. Although I wasn’t very good, I was still addicted to it, wanting to play the game over and over. If I were to go back, I would definitely play it again so that I could learn more of the game goals and get a higher score.

Terminator 2 Judgement Day Pinball Machine Info: https://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=2524

Gun Handle Image:

https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/williams-pinball-terminator-gun-1825729437

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