The Avengers is a Physical Pinball Table designed by George Gomez and released by Stern Pinball in 2012. Based on the blockbuster movie, the game requires the player to recruit the six members of the team, test their mettle against each other, then lead them to victory against the Asgardian trickster Loki in a Battle for the Earth. Use the Tesseract to build up cosmic power and raise your score, but watch out for the Hulk, as his short temper and flailing fists make things rather unpredictable.
The pinball table was released in four different variations, including a Premium Edition with expanded rules and an all-green "Hulk" edition.
In 2013, Stern Pinball produced a home version of the game, the second in their line of "The Pin" consumer tables. As a redecorated version of Transformers: The Pin, The Avengers: The Pin is an In Name Only version of The Avengers that shares only the original's theme and artwork.
Not to be confused with The Avengers (Zen Studios), a Digital Pinball Table by Zen Studios that's part of Zen Pinball, or Stern's later game Avengers: Infinity Quest.
This game demonstrates the following tropes:
- All Your Base Are Belong to Us: "Assault on the Helicarrier"
- Cosmic Keystone: The Tesseract. Spinning it spells COSMIC and enables the Super Jackpot.
- Gotta Catch Them All: The player must recruit all six Avengers to reach the first Wizard Mode.
- In Name Only: The Avengers: The Pin, which has only a superficial resemblance to the original. It supports only one or two players, removes the dot-matrix display and sound effects, and has a completely different playfield layout
from the arcade game. - Level Grinding: Required to recruit some of the Avengers. The Black Widow is arguably the worst, as you need to spell out B-L-A-C-K-W-I-D-O-W repeatedly to progress through the game.
- Let's You and Him Fight: Recruiting the Avengers isn't enough; you have to pit them against each other in a two-ball multiball mode before the final Wizard Mode is available.
- Match Sequence: The Hulk (offscreen) smashes the number onto a surface.
- Obvious Rule Patch: Loki Multiball was made harder to obtain in the v1.70 update. Before this update, a common strategy would be to just shoot the left ramp to collect L-O-K-I letters on the bottom lanes and lock balls, with the flippers cycling the lit letters through all lanes. This was changed so that the left flipper only cycles L-O and the right flipper cycles K-I.
- One-Man Army: Captain America, as seen in his animation.
- Secondary Adaptation: The game is based on The Avengers (2012), a film adaptation of The Avengers (with some inspiration from Ultimate Marvel blended in).
- Skill Shot
- Spelling Bonus: Several, mostly for character names — THOR, LOKI, HULK, HAWKEYE, IRONMAN, and BLACKWIDOW.
- Spotlight-Stealing Squad: Whoever was designing this game must've really liked Hulk, as almost all the focus goes toward him, making the other Avengers seem like mere cameos at best.
- Unstoppable Rage: The Hulk, who flails his fists and grabs pinballs during the game.
- Premium editions of the game even include a "Ramp Throwing" action where the Hulk throws the Black Widow ramp before starting multiball.
- Wizard Mode: The game features two of these.
- "Assault on the Helicarrier" is the sub-Wizard Mode, enabled when all six Avengers have been recruited into the team. Make each heroes' shot twice, in order, then shoot the Loki lock to collect.
- "Battle for Earth" is the main Wizard Mode, and is only available after all the Avengers have been pitted against each other. It's a four-ball multiball mode, requiring four shots for each hero before the balls drain.
