Recently, Katie traveled to Asbury Park, New Jersey and found herself at the Silver Ball Retro Arcade & Museum, right on the boardwalk. I’ve been to Silver Ball too, and I can tell you – the place is an amazing bit of fun, especially for all of us who remember actual arcades in the 80s and enjoy old school nachos.
From Silver Ball Museum, photography by Joseph Murphy
In between rolling skee-balls and attempting Donkey Kong, Katie spotted a Hobbit pinball machine. Later, that got us wondering. Exactly how many pinball machines HAVE derived from literature? As it turns out, quite a few!
From Elite Home Gamerooms
Logistically, if there is a Hobbit pinball game, there has to be a Lord of the Rings game as well. In fact, there are many books-to-famous-shows pinball machines. Harry Potter, Dracula, Jurassic Park, Frankenstein, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Jaws, Starship Troopers, Game of Thrones, an abundance of James Bond, and even a graphic novel (i.e. The Walking Dead). The Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory pinball game features graphics from the 1971 film version (you were the greatest Gene Wilder), an Oompa-Loompa figurine, and an interactive Wonkavator!
From Lermods
Digging a little deeper, Katie and I turned up some more unexpected literary-themed machines. Like The Three Musketeers from 1949…
From Pinrepair
And this super saucy Peter Pan from 1955…
From Finside
Though technically not a book, this 1987 Dungeons & Dragons pinball game included graphics gleaned directly from the incredible cover of the 1983 Player’s Manual.
From Reddit
The Close Encounters of the Third Kind pinball game was based on the 1977 film. But technically, there was a Close Encounters book! It was a novelization of the film published in tandem with the theatrical release. So technically, this makes it eligible for the pinball literacy list.
While this may not represent a specific book or character, it gets 100+ bonus points for being an amalgamation of several novels. May we present Verne’s World pinball from 1996 (with a depiction of the author, quill in hand!):
We found only one picture book turned pinball (unless you count this or this):
From Joystix Games
But the grand finale, voted hands-down winner of “Least Expected Literature to Pinball” is this 2003 Godfather 50 year anniversary collectors edition, complete with a sculpted bust of Don Vito Corleone in his signature tux:
From Reddit
Which pinball game would YOU want to play?
It’s a simple craft, but oh-so-dynamic when this owl family reveals itself to be a set of charming nesting dolls!
As you can see, we did different combinations of construction paper, textures, and feathers to make each owl unique, but also to keep them visually cohesive as a family. If you can, we highly recommend brown AND white cups, just to give the nesting doll reveal a fun color-change.