While working at Williams, pinball designer and programmer Dwight Sullivan had a dream: The clock strikes midnight and every machine at the arcade stops dead as if the power went out. Then the game starts Midnight Madness, a one-minute all-out multiball game. It was integrated into several games he worked on, including some of his later work at Stern.

Since Pinball Arcade runs actual copies of the tables' ROMs, we can enjoy a virtual Midnight Madness any time of day! It's free instant 4-ball multiball and as such perfect for beginners to have some easy fun! Just set your computer's time to 11:59pm, launch Pinball Arcade and start a game on one of these three tables:

• Who Dunnit (Bally 1995) (Season 3)
  
  
  
  
• Junk Yard (Williams 1996) (Season 3)
  
  
  
  
• Ghostbusters (Stern 2016) (Season 7)
  

The tables keep seperate Midnight Madness Champion high score entries.

Other real-world machines with Midnight Madness to check out at an arcade or pinball museum are Congo, Dirty Harry, Johnny Mnemonic, NBA Fastbreak and Game of Thrones.

Bally's 1993 table Judge Dredd (Season 5) has a unique table feature called "Supergame". It's a 2-ball multiball game launched with a separate button that would have cost you two quarters at a real arcade. Good thing this is a simulation!


As soon as the Supergame starts, you have 15 seconds to complete the JUDGE drop targets. This starts the real fun, a 6 ball multiball extravaganza!


For detailed rules, check the IPDB rule sheet: http://www.ipdb.org/rulesheets/1322/judgedre.htm

Bally's 1996 Safe Cracker (Season 4) is one of the most unique pinball tables ever made. You get an infinite amount of balls for a limited time after which the first drain results in a game over ("sudden death"). The goal is to break into the bank and play the Pachisi-like boardgame on the backglass to get into the vault. When you succeed, a Magic Token coin shoots out of the backbox.

You can use the Magic Tokens in a separate coin slot to start "Assault on the Vault", a 90 second 3-ball multiball with unlimited balls. The game keeps an Assault on the Vault Champion highscore.



Each token has a different design and Pinball Arcade allows you to collect all 26 different ones. You can check out your coin collection in the options menu.

I'm guessing on real machines most people kept the coins as souvenirs. Apparently the designers also floated the idea that the Magic Tokens would get you a free drink at the bar but the whole token concept was met with little success and Safe Cracker remains the only pinball machine to dispense tokens.

Other real-world pinball tables with a timer-based game end condition are Williams' "Travel Time" (1973), Gottlieb's 1980 "James Bond 007" (which can optionally be set to regular 3 ball play), Bally's 1985 "Beat The Clock" and Capcom's 1996 prototype "Kingpin" (optional setting).

While we don't have the legendary 1995 Sega table Apollo 13 - with, you guessed it, a 13 ball multiball - here's a list of tables with Multiball modes with more than 4 balls.

Difficulty to get into the multiball mode varies.

• Judge Dredd (6 balls) (easy with Supergame)
  
• Frankenstein (6 balls) (easy)
  
• Last Action Hero (6 balls)
  
• Star Trek: The Next Generation (6 balls)
  
• Twilight Zone (6 balls, one of them a ceramic "powerball")
  
• No Good Gofers (6 balls)
  
• Centaur (5 balls) (easy)

Multiball on Frankenstein with Glo-Balls and room brightness turned to zero