Black Hole

Black Hole is a widebody pinball machine by Gottlieb. It was originally conceived by Joe Cicak, designed by John Buras and Adolf Seitz Jr., and released in October 1981.

It had a number of features going for it, the most striking of which were the dual playfields: a normal playfield, and the “Black Hole”, a reversed playfield embedded underneath, visible through a transparent hole in the table. It also featured speech, something of a novelty at the time, with the game memorably taunting prospective players by saying “Do you dare to enter the Black Hole?” during Attract Mode. Finally, it featured an eye-catching mirrored backglass with a rotating black hole. Both features were taken out of the export version. The game cost 50 cents to play, which was fairly extravagant at the time, but played up in marketing to promote the game’s earning potential.