Gorgar

 ( 1979 Pinball Machines ) 

Gorgar is a 1979 pinball machine designed by Barry Oursler and released by WMS Industries. It was the first speech synthesis ("talking") pinball machine, containing a vocabulary of seven words ("Gorgar", "speaks", "beat", "you", "me", "hurt", "got") that were combined to form varying broken-English phrases, such as "Gorgar speaks" and "Me got you". The pinball machine also has a heartbeat sound effect that increases in speed during longer gameplay.

According to the game's programmer, Paul Dussault, "the voice was John Doremus, an announcer in Chicago that we recorded and then digitized his voice. He was the voice of the in flight audio for various airlines. We had tried in house voices but weren’t getting the bass effect we wanted to make Gorgar sound menacing."

A promotional record for the machine titled Gorgar Speaks was produced by Bud Solk & Associates and recorded at Zenith Cinema Service Studios. John Doremus was the announcer, Tom Erhart portrayed Gorgar, Phyllis L. Fineberg wrote the script, and Ron Crouse directed.

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Digital versions Gorgar was available on FarSight Studios' 2012 release The Pinball Arcade for multiple platforms until June 29, 2018, when the license for inclusion of Williams and Bally tables in the game expired. The table is included in the . Unauthorized reproductions of this table are available for Visual Pinball.

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In popular culture The machine appears in the 5th episode of the 2nd season of Highway to Heaven, appropriately an episode in which the Devil himself appears. German power metal band Helloween's 1985 album Walls of Jericho includes a track titled "Gorgar" that symbolizes the machine as a form of problem gambling.

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