ARTICLES:

"It's TIME for a thrilling new pinball concept, and Gottlieb introduces it now! Pinball players are always looking for a new challenge...and James Bond is Gottlieb's dramatic new breakthrough in pinball design. Each player is given 50 time units at the start of the game, with no limit to the number of balls available. The player competes against the clock to score big before time runs out. Extra time can be gained through skillful play while building high scores on James Bond's fantastic playfield. The countdown is recorded by the pulsing beat of Bond's dual-speaker sound system...building and building to a crashing climax as the digital timer reaches zero. The result is a fast paced, high-powered pinball game as exciting and entertaining as the world's most popular spy, James Bond."

James Bond Pinball. While I haven't played the game or even seen it in the flesh, from what I have heard the best thing about it its its cool artwork. The machine was made in 1979, so naturally Roger Moore is the featured 007, though a few of us thought that from a distance the picture on the front looked more like Timothy Dalton. Though on the board theres no mistaking the eyebrow raising one, in his pose for the duel with Scaramanga (minus he with the Golden Gun sadly) and on that famous gunbarrel.

There is one unusuall feature about the game, which those who made it called "innovatie" and those who play it call "annoying". Instead of the number of balls (say three or five) being the maximum, there is instead a time limit. So novices and pinball experts will survive for the same amount of time, hey, if you were good you could still be on your first ball when the time runs out. As far as I know this "feature" hasn't been seen or heard of again, leaving James Bond with the dubious honor of being the subject of the only pinball game in the history of many that doesn't follow the basic pinball rules, but like I said before, the artwork looks nice.