Here’s a question: what is the most culturally, historically or aesthetically significant pinball machine of all time?

Humpty Dumpty? Nip It? Gorgar? The Addams Family, perhaps?

In the world of film, the most culturally, historically or aesthetically significant movies are added to the US Library of Congress’s National Film Registry

A team of researchers at Northwestern University recently decided to try to figure out what criterion best predicted a film’s inclusion in the Registry.

These guys headed over to the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) (which apparently is a film version of our own very wonderful Internet Pinball Database (IPDb)) and carried out some hard-core Big Data analysis on the fifteen thousand odd films there, taking into account subjective metrics like critical review and awards as well as objective ones like box office sales.

What these boffins discovered is that none of this was good at predicting if a movie made it to the National Film Registry. The thing they found that was correlated most closely with making it onto the Registry was how many times a film was referenced in later movies.

That’s not so surprising. After all, Google uses the number of links to a site as an indication of its importance, and in academia the number of citations a paper receives is used as a guide to its importance.

Now we haven’t (yet) got a National Pinball Registry in the pinball world, but here’s the thing: What if we take a look at which pinball machines have been referenced most frequently by later machines?

References could be sound clips, phrases or graphics from previous machines, artwork that echoes an earlier title’s art – anything, in fact, that gives a nod to a title from the past.

By doing that we can come up with an objective measure of the most culturally, historically or aesthetically significant pinball machine of all time.

OK, so there’s a few limitations to this. Pinball machines aren’t movies, so maybe this exercise is bogus and shouldn’t be taken too seriously

And since older games lack DMD graphics or sophisticated sounds, it is harder to reference them than newer games. So the result may be skewed towards DMD-era machines

But anyway, here goes. Following some research by Pavlov Pinball, with plenty of help from Pinsiders and Jonathan Joosten at Pinball Magazine, here it is:

The Most Culturally, Historically or Aesthetically Significant Pinball Machines Of All Time (using a methodology designed for movies.)

In Fourth place with three references:

Earthshaker – referenced by Whirlwind, Twilight Zone, No Good Gofers

– referenced by Whirlwind, Twilight Zone, No Good Gofers Pin·bot – referenced by Taxi, The Machine – Bride of Pin·bot, Jack·bot

– referenced by Taxi, The Machine – Bride of Pin·bot, Jack·bot The Addams Family referenced by Twilight Zone, Junkyard, Ripley’s Believe It Or Not

referenced by Twilight Zone, Junkyard, Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Twilight Zone referenced by Red and Ted’s Roadshow, Jack·bot, RBION

In Third place, with four references:

Whirlwind referenced by Funhouse, Twilight Zone, Red and Ted’s Roadshow, No Good Gofers

referenced by Funhouse, Twilight Zone, Red and Ted’s Roadshow, No Good Gofers Mousin’ Around referenced by Red and Ted’s Roadshow, Johnny Mnemonic, NBA Fastbreak, Junkyard (via Crazy Bob)

In Second place, with five references:

Attack From Mars referenced by Scared Stiff, Junkyard, Medieval Madness, Revenge From Mars, Mustang

Funhouse referenced by Twilight Zone, Red and Ted’s Roadshow, Johnny Mnemonic, Jack·bot, Safe Cracker

Pat Lawlor‘s games seem to have done particularly well. But then he does seem fond of self-referentialism, if that’s a thing. And with the quality of his games, why not?

But in First place, with at least ten machines referencing it and therefore according to our methodology the most culturally, historically or aesthetically significant pinball machine of all time (kinda, anyway,) is none other than…

the John Trudeau’s 1992 Bally masterpiece :

Creature From The Black Lagoon

referenced by Congo, Judge Dredd, Word Cup Soccer ’94, Theatre of Magic, and Bride of Pinbot 2.0, Junkyard, Scared Stiff, Revenge From Mars, Monster Bash and Flintstones. Maybe even TOTAN too.

That’s good news for Creech owners – until we find some more references to other machines. And unexpected perhaps, considering that the movie of the same name has never made it to the National Film Registry.

If you think we have missed any obvious references, particularly to the titles mentioned, do please get in contact and let us know.

And which movie was calculated by the boffins at Northwestern to be the most culturally, historically or aesthetically significant movie of all time (despite the pinball machine of the same name having no references to it yet)?

The answer is The Wizard of Oz.

Someone better go and tell Jack…

Special thanks to Jonathan Joosten and Pinside members ALY, jackofdiamonds, DugFreez, Rum-Z, supermatt, loneacer, Taygeta, beaglePuss, HOOKED, Newsom, rai, rollitover, Axl, EchoicStriker, mwong168, EchoVictor, MonkeyGrass, Starscream, calvin12, Kineticross, supercombo, GoodToBeDad, jathomp22, 27dnast, Jojo1111, Miguel351, balzofsteel, mjenison, Robotoes, Hi-Fi, mmr61184, Jgaltr56, kosmo, Thor-NL and any others we have missed out.

