Bally’s Bobby Orr’s Power Play, released in 1977, drops the puck on a hockey-themed solid-state table fronted by one of the sport’s all-time greats — Boston Bruins legend Bobby Orr, whose name and likeness give the game its star power. Designed by Greg Kmiec with artwork by Dave Christensen, it’s a busy, fast-skating machine that stands out for its four-flipper layout, pairing two standard three-inch flippers with two smaller two-inch ones for a distinctive multi-zone feel.
The strategy rewards control and clever use of that hardware. The safest, most productive approach is to keep shooting the orbits to send the ball back up top, angling for repeated entries into the top saucer — a loop that, much like the era’s beloved Xenon, becomes the key to a big score. A neat mechanical wrinkle drives the risk-reward: the inlanes drop the center post while the center standup raises it, so managing that post can mean the difference between a save and a drain. Veterans warn against using the upper flippers to attack the drop targets — an easy way to lose control — and suggest simply holding them up to keep the ball off the slingshots instead.
Energetic and a little unusual thanks to that four-flipper setup, Bobby Orr’s Power Play is a fun, celebrity-licensed slice of late-70s pinball. For hockey fans and collectors of the early solid-state era alike, it’s a spirited and characterful table worth getting on the ice with.