This is the tenth installment of a 20 part series of tiny tips to help improve your fortunes in pinball. I hope you find it useful, and share with friends if inspired!
PINTASTIC !!
April 9-11 in Marlboro, MA
Join me at Pintastic, New England! Saturday, April 11 at 3pm I’ll be hosting a seminar on the relationship between having fun and boosting pinball skills. Advancing skills and having fun are inseparable from one another, and tapping into the fun will improve your fortunes and enjoyment. Let’s get into it!
LOVE OF THE GAME
This newsletter briefly departs from skill development to reflect on hidden treasures designed into games for the fun and whimsy of pinball enthusiasts.
Easter Eggs
EASTER EGGS
The term “Easter egg” was coined by Steve Right at Atari in the late 1970s in reference to a hidden message in the Atari video game Adventure—though earlier examples of this phenomenon date back to the 1960s. Easter eggs are game details designed to be difficult to find, but when they are discovered, they reveal messages, images, or other features created for the amusement of both the design teams and players.
At the time Adventure was released, Atari did not acknowledge programmers in game design credits. The Easter egg in Adventure was an act of rebellion on the part of employee Warren Robinett to protest this injustice. He secretly hid the message “Created by Warren Robinett” in the game; it was revealed only when a player moved their player over a specific pixel in an area of the map formerly characterized as “forbidden.” This act was celebrated by designers and players alike, and it paved the way for game designers to insert more humor and signature styling into their creations.
Cows
COWS
Cows, oddly enough, have been a subject of interest for pinball designers for decades. The origins of the first cow-to-pinball connection is a subject of some debate. One story points to the pinball game Fire! (Bally/Williams, 1987). The theme of the game was based on the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, a fire said to have been started by a cow that knocked over a kerosene lantern. Chicago played such an important role in the history, manufacture, and evolution of pinball that it’s fitting that the creature deemed responsible for the city’s greatest disaster become an ironic mascot to honor the city in pinball games.
After the first cow, many designers followed suit—leading to the propagation of cows as a theme within the pinball design community. Some notable examples include:
Attack from Mars (Midway, 1995): After hitting the right ramp and hearing a cow call and animation, press the launch button to hear a “moo.” Additionally, entering video mode after activating both of these features will launch a special cow-themed video mode.
Revenge from Mars (Midway, 1999): The sequel to Attack from Mars, this game continues the cow-related humor with animations that feature cows being abducted by aliens.
Wizard of Oz (Jersey Jack Pinball, 2013): When the shot “horse of a different color” is lit white, an audible “moo” can be heard while a white cow appears on the LCD.
MIDNIGHT MADNESS
Midnight madness is a special mode designed into a collection of pinball machines with a custom rule set designed to surprise and delight night owls. The mode is triggered by the internal clock on each of these titles. Active games are shut down at the stroke of midnight, and the machines launch into a mode with custom objectives and rewards. Here are a few titles to check out:
Congo (Williams, 1995)
Dirty Harry (Williams, 1995)
Game of Thrones (Stern, 2015)
Ghostbusters (Stern, 2016)
Junkyard (Williams, 1996)
Munsters (Stern, 2019)
Johnny Mnemonic (Williams, 1995)
NBA Fastbreak (Bally, 1997)
Who Dunnit (Bally, 1995)
Midnight Madness
FLIPPER CODES
Flipper codes are patterns of flipper button presses that reveal secret messages programmed into the software by design teams. Flipper codes reveal surprises such as animations, images, or videos. To initiate a flipper code, press and hold both flippers for several seconds to start the mode. After the mode has started, a coded sequence of flipper button presses will reveal the Easter egg.
To simplify the description of codes, the following system works well:
xL = Press the left flipper button x times.
xR = Press the right flipper button x times.
xS = Press the start button x times.
B = Press both flipper buttons.
Try one of these famous games:
The Addams Family: With the game in attract mode: press B 7L 1S 14R 1S 20L 1S
Monster Bash: With the game started, press B 11L 1R 5L 1R 6L 1R
Pulp Fiction: With the game in attract mode, press L2 R1 L5 R1 L7 R1
Here are a few other flipper codes to try on recent Stern machines.
B L1 R1 L2 R1 L3 R2 = Credits
B L4 R1 L5 R1 L1 R2 = Dead Flip
B L3 R1 L3 R1 L3 R2 = Hello World
For a deeper dive into an expansive list of machine titles known to have Easter eggs visit XMission. The archive is provided as a service to the arcade community, and users are encouraged to support XMission if they find the data useful.
We’ll return to tips related to skill development next week. Until then, find some fun chasing cows and pinball machines with flipper codes!
Stay tuned for more tips to help you improve your game, and for deeper dives check out my forthcoming project published with Schiffer Books: Pinball: A Quest For Mastery, hitting book stores June 28, 2026.
Stay curious, practice with intention, and keep it fun: your fortunes in pinball (and in life) are sure to improve.
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