Stern Electronics’ Stingray, released in late 1977, carries a bit of pinball legend in its design credits. Among its designers is Roger Sharpe — the journalist and player who, just a year earlier in 1976, famously called his shot before the New York City Council and helped overturn the city’s decades-long ban on pinball, proving once and for all that it was a game of skill. That spirit of skillful, deliberate play runs right through this early solid-state machine and its scuba-diving, underwater-adventure theme.
The layout is lean and target-driven, built around a five-bank of drop targets, a spinning target, and a pair of rewarding kick-out holes. The scoring smarts here are all about saucer control: experienced players manipulate the kick-out values with bumper hits, building one up to a hefty 55,000 before cashing it in, then chaining the top and bottom saucers for a big double-dunk worth well over a hundred thousand. Even the stingray lane hides a trick, paying out on both the trip up and the roll back down with the right light lit.
A handsome relic of the moment pinball went electronic, Stingray is fast, uncluttered, and genuinely fun to learn — the kind of table where mastering one or two key shots transforms your game. For collectors and history buffs, the Roger Sharpe connection only adds to the appeal of a tidy, well-regarded early Stern classic.