NBA Fastbreak Manufactured in March 1997 by Bally IPD link: https://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=4023
What initially attracted me to play this machine was Jeremy’s recommendation. He said he thought it was an incredible integration of theme and mechanics within a pinball machine. I was intrigued by that but what really caught my eye was the backboard. The multi-layered art was interesting. When in idling, the machine will use it’s flipper in the backboard to launch the ball into the basket there. This is referred to as Mechanical Animation and it really caught my eye and had me fascinated to how the game worked.
The game felt very responsive. The flippers were quick to move on a press of the button. The flippers were parallel to the slope that led the ball into them on the sides (as opposed to the more downward angle some machines there used) which gave the ball a nice sense of movement when rolled down to them.
I played this machine 3 times and I noticed I did better each time. By my last play I managed to score over 40 points giving me an extra ball. I ended with a score of 62. At one point, I had also spelled out “SHOOT” and started multi-ball. Finally, I got the ball in the “Pizza Power Shots” hole, which let me actually control the backboard flipper and gave me a limited amount of time to shoot the ball into the basket as many times as I could. Usually I’m not very good at pinball, so that was probably the top game of my life-time pinball career thus far.
I really enjoyed NBA Fastbreak. I’m not a huge basketball fan truthfully, but the way the theme is used in the machine is incredibly enjoyable. Between the tiny basket and flipper, the play-by-play announcer (performed by Tim Kitzrow), and the basketball animations done on the small LCD display give the game a lot of charm. It makes the machine really stand out in a room full of pinball machines. I absolutely loved this machine and I am itching to play it again. I like that the scores for the game are much lower than other games. In my opinion, it makes it feel like every point matters a little bit more. I’m really motivated to return to the strong and try to best my high score.