KISS

One of Jim Patla’s final designs for Bally, and one of their most popular pinball machines of the 1970s, KISS was an early example of using licensing power to supplement a well-designed pinball machine. Completing the top lanes, left drop targets, or standup targets complete rows of KISS letters and increase the end-of-ball bonus; while completing the 4-bank of right standup targets doubles the bonus and can award extra balls. With 17,000 units produced, KISS had quite the development history; multiple prototype versions of the game exist, including an experiment to add speech to the game that was done as an emergency response to Williams’ Gorgar, and a fiberglass cabinet version that was quickly scrapped due to the costs of producing it.