Winter never came and my workshop was moved back outside. In the autumnal fog of January, I sawed out the pieces for an enormous game machine, which was supposed to have a playfield depicting all the misdeeds of the notorious robber Hotzenplotz. I will certainly be using some of the mechanisms I developed for this game on some future models. The machine has a grand total of four flippers and two of them are operated by a never-before-seen shaft connector. Besides the two control pegs, there are two extra levers for moving the upper flippers. When the robber Hotzenplotz gets caught by Kasperl and Seppel as the marble falls between the flippers, he will land in Sergeant Dimpfelmoser’s lockup that is the barred-wall box in the front part of the machine’s housing. I had planned to include electronic sound and light effects in the game, but I haven’t had a chance to make that happen. When I do, I’ll let you know and show them to you.

This was the pinball machine that landed us on the children’s programme “Lastetuba” on Estonian Public Broadcasting. You can watch the video here (and hear some Estonian language in the process): https://arhiiv.err.ee/vaata/lastetuba-kuidas-meil-mangud-kaivad