Gorgar

Gorgar is a 1979 pinball machine designed by Barry Oursler and released by Williams Electronics. Gorgar was the first talking pinball machine commercially released and had a vocabulary of seven words.

The game uses its vocabulary of seven words ("Gorgar", "speaks", "beat", "you", "me", "hurt", "got") to combine to form varying broken-English phrases, such as "Gorgar speaks" and "Me got you". The words were played back about 30% slower than they were recorded for a robot-like sound.

According to the game's programmer, Paul Dussault, "the voice was John Doremus, an announcer in Chicago that we recorded and then digitized his voice. He was the voice of the in flight audio for various airlines. We had tried in house voices but weren’t getting the bass effect we wanted to make Gorgar sound menacing."

According to an article in Amusement Review (Jan/Feb 1980, page 6), the talking feature was optional at an additional cost of $70 to the operator and was ordered on the great majority of the machines.

The pinball machine also has a heartbeat sound effect that increases in speed during longer gameplay.

At the top of the machine are A-B-C lanes above three thumper bumpers; this area can be reached when the ball is launched from the plunger, or by hitting a lane on the right which contains a spinner. The top left side includes a "snake pit" which can hold the ball with a magnet; just below this are three G-O-R drop targets. In the middle of the playfield are three more drop targets, labelled G-A-R. Towards the lower part of the playfield are four bullseye targets, 1-2-3-4. A single kick-out hole is recessed on the left side.[11]

The player can advance the bonus multiplier by completing the upper rollover lanes. Completing the 1-4 bullseye targets advances the "snake pit" score and its magnet. Completing G-O-R-G-A-R lights the kick-out hole, which can then award an extra ball. A maximum of one extra ball per ordinal ball can be earned.

In a review for Play Meter Roger Sharpe awarded the game 3/4, praising the artwork both on the playfield and on the backglass, but criticized some aspects of the layout leading to unfair ball drains. He said it had "phenomenal earning potential" due to the novelty of the voice and short games

The game is ranked 15th among the most successful flippered pinball games of all time, with 14,000 units produced.