Pin*Pot Williams 1986
An oldy but a goody. Pin*Bot first saw life at home with the NES version, a surprising task if you didn't know that the company RARE made the translation from arcade to home. Still, impressive. In Hall of Fame, it's perfect. The ambient thumping and synth music that plays underneath the table sounds, the robotic Pin*Bot voice, the annoying-even-when-you-rig-it skill shot. The main goal is to hit the colored targets in the top-center and right-center areas, completing the 25 color board that opens Pin*Bots visor. Each ball has to be shot in to complete his eyes, which starts the multiball. Re-locking a ball in his eye allows you to shoot for the jackpot on the Solar ramp (to the left of Pin*Bot). There's not much to the game, other than travelling the galaxy for points, stopping at each planet to get more points, all while trying not to drain the ball. It sounds easy and simple, but it's not. Man, is it not easy. It's not overly frustrating, but it can really piss you off if your not careful or if you've been playing too long.
The Machine: Bride of Pin*Bot 1991
The case of the sequel being better than the original. The Machine debuted in 1991, and the playfield is more crowded and smaller than Pin*Bot. The main goal is to turn the female robot into a real woman- this machine has an "adult sound bank" so the machine could be put in a bar for guys to put together a woman who flirts with them and gets aroused, while in a family arcade, this is simply a machine making game. The table had a left ramp that becomes heavily travelled in-game to build the woman. First you put your ball in her mouth to help her speak, then your balls in her eyes to see, then the balls bring her to life. Hey, that sounded a bit perverted right there, but it's true! This also was an early game that shot games into the billions of points, with the Billionaires Club, the Super Jackpot. The far left lane leads to the "little wheel", while the center lane leads to the "big wheel". This is one of the more popular machines out there, and if you see it, you should check it out!
Jack*Bot 1995
Jack*Bot is more or less a Pin*Bot update, with The Bride voice thrown in and "games of chance" with a casino theme instead of travelling the universe you see in Pin*Bot, or building a woman like Bride of Pin*Bot. The layout is identical to Pin*Bot, and if you don't look closely before you start, you might think you are playing the original. The music is more modern, and the display is now a dot matrix display with lots of prompts and graphics. The point scoring goes beyong The Bride's hundreds of millions and sometimes even the billions. A first ball in Jack*Bot could reach 500 million points- or more. Hell, the replay scoring on the last machine I tried is 5,700,000,000! Sounds impossible? It's not. Jack*Bot is an OK machine, but it seems a bit unnecessary to keep milking the Pin*Bot franchise. It's not a bad table, it just seems a bit redundant.