New Era Pinball is a simple, cheap desktop pinball game manufactured by a company called Golden Bright. Apparently it's been sold in different revisions for a while. The latest seems to be powered by simple AA batteries, though older versions seemed to require C cells. It does, however, seem like it might be eminently hackable.
Much of the game is purely mechanical, including the flippers and ball reload/launch mechanisms.
Backbox to playfield connector (PLAYFIELD END)
PIN COLOUR PURPOSE
1 WHITE +5V
2 BLACK GND
3 BLACK ??? SIGNAL FROM PLAYFIELD (INCREASE SCORE?)
4 BLACK GND (LIGHTS)
When a mushroom is hit on the playfield, it briefly completes a circuit that sends 5v to the microcontroller/ASIC, telling it to play a sound and increase the score?
Pin 4 on the connector controls the lights on the playfield. When the circuit is completed the lights are on. During the game these flash, so the signal is presumably ASIC driven. Many interesting gameplay mods would seem to require access to the playfield which unfortunately seems to be glued down, though access might be obtained by cutting two tabs on the clear acrylic playfield cover, though this would make re-assembly difficult.
The stock ASIC gameplay could probably be quite easily replicated with an Arduino allowing for more interesting backbox possibilities, such as game modes, including a game over state, sound replacements, an actual screen in the backbox rather than a three number LCD, as well as a high score table that might survive power off.
The simplest mod would probably be to allow 5v from USB rather than 4.5v battery power.
