Williams’ Pinbot, released in 1986 and designed by Barry Oursler with the visionary artist Python Anghelo, is one of the defining machines of the 1980s — a sci-fi classic built around a giant robot whose face dominates the playfield. The “eyes” are kick-out holes you lock balls into, and as you light the playfield’s colorful grid of planet lights, the robot’s visor descends until you can complete a fully lit row or column to open it in a single shot, locking balls for a two-ball multiball. An opening skill-shot up a conical spiral ramp sets the futuristic tone.

The scoring engine is the Vortex Multiplier and the Solar Value. Each ball you lock awards a skill shot and bumps the Vortex Multiplier by one, and those multiplied 100Ks add up to serious points for a player who learns the skill shot. The left ramp builds the Solar Value, collected when you trigger multiball — and crucially, that Solar Value jackpot carries over ball to ball and player to player until someone collects it, so the savvy competitor grabs it rather than fattening it for an opponent.

There’s real skill in the shot-making, too — to hit the right eye socket, you flip early off the right flipper so the ball travels straight up the playfield, and a careful plunge avoids overshooting the 100K spiral hole. The deepest scoring comes from stacking the Vortex Multiplier high before cashing in a fat Solar Value, so disciplined players lock methodically and learn the tricky eye-socket shots cold. Iconic, deep, and endlessly influential (it spawned a whole series), Pinbot is Oursler and Anghelo at the peak of their powers — a machine whose glowing robot face and brilliant lock-and-multiply ruleset have kept players hooked for nearly four decades. “I am Pinbot.”