''Flight 2000'' is a 1980

Stern The stern is the back or aft-most part of a ship or boat, technically defined as the area built up over the sternpost, extending upwards from the counter rail to the taffrail. The stern lies opposite the bow, the foremost part of a ship. Ori ...

widebody pinball machine. It was the first table by this company with

speech Speech is a human vocal communication using language. Each language uses phonetic combinations of vowel and consonant sounds that form the sound of its words (that is, all English words sound different from all French words, even if they are th ...

. The theme of the game revolves around futuristic

space flight Spaceflight (or space flight) is an application of astronautics to fly spacecraft into or through outer space, either with or without humans on board. Most spaceflight is uncrewed and conducted mainly with spacecraft such as satellites in or ...

Description

The game has 3-ball multiball where each ball is launched through three separate 'Lift-Off' stages. This is placed at the upper left of the playfield inside a maze-like ball lock mechanism. The playfield contains a ball capture feature in the upper left and a spinner and drop targets in the middle. Space ships heading to the

star A star is an astronomical object comprising a luminous spheroid of plasma held together by its gravity. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked eye at night, but their immense distances from Earth make ...

s are depicted on the backbox. ''Flight 2000'' has a

robot A robot is a machine—especially one programmable by a computer—capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically. A robot can be guided by an external control device, or the control may be embedded within. Robots may be ...

ic synthesised speech sound that fits well to its space travel theme; the voice is the same one that was used in Stern's own Berzerk. Pinball machines with speech were still uncommon in 1980. ''

Xenon Xenon is a chemical element with the symbol Xe and atomic number 54. It is a dense, colorless, odorless noble gas found in Earth's atmosphere in trace amounts. Although generally unreactive, it can undergo a few chemical reactions such as the ...

'' was not released by Bally until a couple of months later. The pinball machine was well received for its combination of attractive

art Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas. There is no generally agreed definition of wha ...

and Harry Williams' innovative design therefore ''Flight 2000'' sold well and is still widely recognized as one of Stern's finest and most memorable games. In Japan, ''Game Machine'' listed ''Flight 2000'' on their June 1, 1983 issue as being the third most-successful flipper unit of the month.

Digital versions

''Flight 2000'' was the winner of a fan poll as the classic Stern table and therefore officially released as a licensed table on ''

The Pinball Arcade ''The Pinball Arcade'' is a pinball video game developed by FarSight Studios. The game is a simulated collection of real pinball tables licensed by Gottlieb, Alvin G. and Company, and Stern Pinball, a company which also owns the rights of machi ...

'' for several platforms.

References

External links

* 1980 pinball machines Stern Electronics pinball machines {{pinball-stub