"A new kind of pinball they'll fight to play.
'cause this one fights back!"Manufactured by D. Gottlieb & Co. Game # 656, System 80 Series Released: August 1980 Production run: 3'870 Design: Ed Krinski Artwork: Gordon Morison Theme: Space fantasy, fighting alien invaders IPDB Entry: 575
Counterforce was the 125th and last pinball machine created by Ed Krinski and Gordon Morison who'd been the fantastic double-act behind a decade of Gottlieb pinballs. The arrival of solid-state technology and its impact on pinball production, both in terms of the new possibilities and the competition from video-games that it brough along had seen the dawn of a new era in the coin-op business. Krinkis though, the inventor of the drop-target was not done yet and with his years of experience, he could still turn out a fresh and appealing game.
French flyer
Although Counterforce's playfield layout suggest that it is just another simple System 80 game, Counterforce cleverly borrows the concept of video-games like "Space Invaders" to create a game of strategy and skill. Rows of lamps on the playfield represent alien rockets that advance at ever-increasing speed towards the player's bonus multiplier guns. The game objective is therefore to destroy all the alien rockets as quickly as possible to maximise bonus scoring, or to put it another way, to minimise the amount of earned bonus the game steals back from you!
The player's mission then is making the respective features on the game, of which there are 3 tied together: the 7 drop-targets, the 7 lit yellow spot-targets and the 7 lit rollovers. Each spot-target and rollover can automatically cause the associated drop-target to fall as the game uses the "remo-trip" system (as does James Bond 007, Panthera, Force II and Rocky). In this system, a tiny relay coil is activated that causes the drop-target to fall.
German flyer 
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"A new kind of pinball they'll fight to play. |
Counterforce was the 125th and last pinball machine created by Ed Krinski and Gordon Morison who'd been the fantastic double-act behind a decade of Gottlieb pinballs. The arrival of solid-state technology and its impact on pinball production, both in terms of the new possibilities and the competition from video-games that it brough along had seen the dawn of a new era in the coin-op business. Krinkis though, the inventor of the drop-target was not done yet and with his years of experience, he could still turn out a fresh and appealing game. |
 French flyer Although Counterforce's playfield layout suggest that it is just another simple System 80 game, Counterforce cleverly borrows the concept of video-games like "Space Invaders" to create a game of strategy and skill. Rows of lamps on the playfield represent alien rockets that advance at ever-increasing speed towards the player's bonus multiplier guns. The game objective is therefore to destroy all the alien rockets as quickly as possible to maximise bonus scoring, or to put it another way, to minimise the amount of earned bonus the game steals back from you! | ||
The player's mission then is making the respective features on the game, of which there are 3 tied together: the 7 drop-targets, the 7 lit yellow spot-targets and the 7 lit rollovers. Each spot-target and rollover can automatically cause the associated drop-target to fall as the game uses the "remo-trip" system (as does James Bond 007, Panthera, Force II and Rocky). In this system, a tiny relay coil is activated that causes the drop-target to fall. |
 German flyer |
PROMOTIONAL FLYERCOUNTERFORCE PAGES:TECH.INFO.
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