Stern’s James Cameron’s Avatar, released in 2010 and designed by John Borg with Lonnie Ropp, brings the lush world of Pandora to the playfield with a 3D backglass and a layout built around stacking multiballs. A captive ball, a Newton ball, a stop magnet, and a motorized three-bank of “AMP” targets that drops in a single hit give the table real mechanical character, all in service of the film’s clash between humans and the Na’vi.
The depth here is all about combination. There are three distinct multiballs — Link, started by repeatedly shooting the Link shot; Na’vi, qualified by collecting six characters and spelling NAVI; and the Amp Suit, reached by spelling AMP and battering the revealed standups. The crucial insight is that everything stacks: Link and the Amp Suit can be stacked in either order, and folding a Bomber Battle into Link or Amp boosts your points, since Bomber shots are almost always lit. The smart sequence is to get Na’vi ready, start the Seeds first, then layer the modes and multiballs together for a cascade of jackpots.
Smart play rewards knowledge of the table’s timing — hitting the ball back into Link within seconds of starting Link multiball adds a ball, the top lanes light shot doublers you’ll want to apply to the high-value super jackpots, and the Eywa mystery (switch-based) prioritizes adding time during multiball. The biggest games come from getting every mode and multiball ready, then unleashing them together so the shot doublers from the top lanes apply across a screen full of jackpots. With its glowing Pandoran theme, its drop-and-stack ruleset, and that eye-catching 3D translite, Avatar is an underrated Borg machine — a visually striking table that rewards the player who masters the art of stacking everything at once.