Bally’s Dr. Dude and His Excellent Ray, released in 1990 and designed by Dennis Nordman, is a gloriously goofy comedy machine about transforming a hopeless geek into the coolest dude alive. With nineteen standup targets, a spinning disc, a magnet, and Nordman’s irreverent humor pouring out of the speakers (operators could even choose a family-friendly speech setting), it’s a lighthearted, accessible table with a surprisingly clever scoring engine.
The whole game is a quest for coolness. The Molecular Mixmaster is the heart of it — racking up ten hits on each target bank awards a corresponding “Element of Coolness,” and collecting three each of Magnetic Personality, Heart of Rock and Roll, and Gift of Gab lights the Excellent Ray for multiball. Once in multiball, the savvy play is to double the jackpot via the right drop-target bank and then shoot the ramp over and over for repeated jackpots. There’s even a hidden million-point Reflex combo (left saucer, right saucer, right magnet) waiting after you complete the white targets.
A fun skill-shot wrinkle has you full-plunging and releasing as the “Excitement Exam” chart cycles from Geek (25K) to OK (50K) to Way Cool (100K), rewarding good timing. Bright, silly, and bursting with personality, Dr. Dude is one of pinball’s great comedic machines — an underrated Nordman creation that’s impossible to play without grinning. Mr. Excitement would be proud.