Welcome to the Big Bang Bar, the rowdiest late-night alien dive in the cosmos! Check your carapice at the door, slither up to a table, and the waitress will be with you shortly. Get your groove on with the techno-thumpin' tunes and strobing neon lights, and feast your eyes on the gorgeous gyrations of the Tube Dancer at center stage. Or you can Tour the Bar, play some Cosmic Dartz, then try to score a drink award with Ray's Ball Busters. For more excitement, stuff the Loopy Martians until they get Looped In Space, fire up the Babescanner and the Lunapalooza, or just wait for a Multibrawl Multiball to break out. Complete all fourteen tasks for a shot at the Big Bang, and see how much you can really score.
Big Bang Bar was originally created at Capcom Pinball by Rob Morrison and illustrated by Stan Fukuoka. Despite positive reactions from early field tests and the 1996 Pinball Expo, Capcom closed their pinball division shortly afterwards, leaving only fourteen prototypes produced and relegating the game to the footnotes of history...
...until 2004, when Gene Cunningham of Illinois Pinball Inc. announced that he was buying the rights from Capcom to produce a "remake". Despite substantial setbacks and cost overruns, the game was eventually delivered by "Pinball Manufacturing Inc." in 2006, with a total production run of 191 tables. While Big Bang Bar is still hard to find, it shows up regularly at expos and tournaments, attracting new fans with each appearance.
The Big Bang Bar pinball demonstrates the following tropes:
- Adjustable Censorship: The game software supports "Family Mode", where the more suggestive sound clips are deactivated.
- Aerith and Bob: The various patron dropdown targets are labeled with the names of planets in the Solar System — except for Earth, which is "Pythos" instead.
- Alliterative Title: Big Bang Bar.
- Amazing Technicolor Population: The bar patrons tend toward green, blue, and orange skin tones.
- Barbie Doll Anatomy/The Faceless: The green-skinned Tube Dancer toy on the playfield has no anatomical features save a lock of wild purple hair.
- Bar Brawl: "Multibrawl" is set during a fight in the bar.Customer: "Are you looking for a fight?!"
- Call a Hit Point a "Smeerp": The kickback is called the "Free Shot".
- Chick Magnet: The video display for "Get Lucky" shows a four-eyed alien who's suddenly peppered with kisses by various females.
- Company Cross References: Executing a Capcombo shows an animation of Ryu throwing a Hadouken.
- The Faceless: The green-skinned Tube Dancer toy on the playfield has no face.
- Horned Humanoid: Ray of "Ray's Ball Busters" sports a large pair of ram's horns.
- The Immodest Orgasm: The Tube Dancer has some very suggestive moans.
- Match Sequence: A drunken alien barfs up the match number.
- Mobile Fishbowl: One of the patrons is a slug-like alien in a glass bottle of green liquid.
- Roswell That Ends Well: The attract mode narration makes mention of the incident, jokingly theorising it to be the result of an intergalactic DUI.
- Scenery Censor: Bubbles from their green liquid are used to cover up the scantily-clad Tube Dancers on the sides of the backbox and the backglass.
- Shout-Out: The animation for lighting an extra ball includes the stylized "X" from The X-Files.
- Skill Shot: Shoot the ball into the lit rollover lane. Alternately, soft plunge the ball so it rolls back down to the upper flipper, then shoot the left inner orbit for a Secret Skill Shot.
- Snake People: One of the aliens is a giant serpent with a cartoonish humanoid head.
- Spelling Bonus: B-A-R increases the bonus multiplier, while B-R-A-W-L lights the locks for Multibrawl.
- Take That, Audience!: The Waitress dejectedly notes "Wow, that didn't last long" upon the ball saver being used.
- Title Drop: The Attract Mode narration ends by name-dropping the titular Big Bang Bar.
- Volumetric Mouth: The Loopy Martians, who use their mouths to hold locked pinballs.
- Vomit Indiscretion Shot: The multiball mode "Looped In Space" begins by showing two aliens barfing out pinballs locked in their mouths.
- Wizard Mode: "Big Bang," which is available after completing all of the game modes and features. This is a timed four-ball multiball mode, where you need to score as much points possible while constantly plunging drained balls back into play due to no autolauncher. But to give you incentive to plunge the balls yourself, the playfield multiplier goes up during Big Bang based on how many balls you keep on the playfield at a time, up to 4x.
- Tube Dancer: "C'mon, let's get it on!"
