Energize the transporter and lock in for liftoff — Bally’s 1989 Transporter the Rescue is an outer-space rescue mission designed by Greg Kmiec and Tony Kraemer, and its signature feature is the transporter spinner bowl, a swirling dish reached from the third-flipper shot that sends the ball spinning before it returns to play. With a Tim Elliott concept and art, speech, and a scarce run of around 859 machines, it’s an underappreciated late-’80s Bally that hides a clean, rewarding multiball game inside its sci-fi shell.
The mission logic is satisfying and direct. Knock down all the drop targets to light the locks, stash balls up the left ramp into the space ship, and then start multiball by hitting the transporter shot tucked under the upper-right flipper — a memorable sequence that ties the toy directly to the payoff. Once you’re in multiball, the jackpot tracked on the right side of the backglass is collected by dropping the R-E-S-C-U-E targets in order, giving the frenzy a clear objective rather than aimless flailing. Meanwhile, the X-cellerator value on the backglass’s left side climbs toward a million via that bowl shot from the upper-right flipper, collected by hitting the X target in front of the pops, and the inlane keeps your spinner lit for extra points.
Transporter the Rescue is the kind of solid, scarce machine that rewards a collector willing to dig past the famous titles. The spinner bowl is a genuinely fun mechanism, and the lock-and-rescue structure gives the game real shape. Drop the targets, stash your balls, hit that transporter shot, and beam your way to a rescue. The galaxy’s counting on your aim.