Gottlieb’s Haunted House, released in 1982 and designed by John Osborne, is one of the most ambitious and beloved machines ever built — the first pinball game to feature three separate playfields the ball can travel between, an upper attic, the main playfield, and a lower basement. With a remarkable eight flippers spread across those levels, a secret passage, a trap door, and lightning animation in the backglass, it’s a genuine engineering marvel of the early-80s System 80 era.

The whole game revolves around moving the ball through the haunted house. Sending it up to the attic or down to the basement advances your bonus multiplier to a maximum of 5X, so a player who keeps the ball journeying between levels is richly rewarded. There are four different routes down to the basement — the upper-left hole, the secret passage, the trap door under the right ramp, and simply draining from the left half of the upper playfield — giving the table a wonderful sense of exploration. Completing the drop-target banks lights extra balls and, with enough work, the Special.

It does demand care: with eight flippers there’s a notorious gap between the two right flippers where an unwary ball can drain, so holding them up is risky. Mastering the transitions between floors is the whole art of the game — a player who can smoothly shuttle the ball up to the attic and down to the cellar, racking up that bonus multiplier, will leave a casual flailer far behind. It’s a machine that rewards exploration and ball control in equal measure, which is exactly why it has stayed a collector favorite for over forty years. Inventive, atmospheric, and historically groundbreaking, Haunted House is a true original — a multi-level masterpiece that still delights players four decades on. For collectors, it’s a grail of early-80s design and one of the most distinctive machines Gottlieb ever produced. Dare to explore every floor.