Bally’s Mystic, released in 1979 and designed by George Christian, is one of the cleverest solid-state machines of its era thanks to a genuinely original scoring idea: a tic-tac-toe board built right into the rules. Wrapped in a fortune-teller fantasy theme, with a captive “messenger” ball and twin spinners, it asks players to think a little differently than the usual drop-and-collect fare.
The brilliant hook is that completing any line on the tic-tac-toe board — by hitting the corresponding drop targets — awards a permanent bonus that holds over for the entire game, not just the ball. So the smart first-ball strategy is to learn which drop target maps to each of the nine board spaces and methodically complete rows, while the slingshots toggle the board’s symbols. Once you’ve built a big bonus, you shoot the captive ball — the “Mystical Power Shot” — to multiply it, up to a maximum of 4X. The spinners are worthless at a mere 10 points until you light them via the “Bally hole” at the top center, after which they’re worth a juicy 1,000.
Smart, strategic, and unlike anything else from the period, Mystic rewards a thinking player who plans their board and protects their bonus. For collectors who love an inventive ruleset hiding inside a vintage cabinet, it’s a fascinating and genuinely distinctive late-70s gem.