Williams, 1997: The name alone—No Good Gofers!—should have set off alarms in the heads of pinball purists and literal-minded golfers alike. But let me take you back to the dying days of the silverball era, that waning, nicotine-streaked dusk when Williams Bally still had enough juice in the tank to throw one last, madcap fastball. It’s 1997. North America is hooked on PlayStations, but Williams hasn’t quite accepted its invitation to obsolescence. Instead, they hand designer Pat Lawlor a license to get insane—and he returns with lawn rodents, flying golf balls, and a cabinet that mocks your golf handicap while simultaneously draining your allowance.
Now, to call No Good Gofers a “golf-themed” pinball is like saying Caddyshack is a golf instructional video. Here’s the elevator pitch: What if golf, but instead of peaceful, dew-kissed mornings and awkward polo shirts, you get vengeful, wisecracking gofers, a never-ending sand trap, and a continual existential crisis about the futility of chasing a white ball? The titular gofers—Buzz and Bud, a sort of Beavis and Butt-Head for the talkie pinball set—heckle you constantly from a trapdoor mechanism, because Williams wanted to make sure a machine could verbally abuse you as effectively as a surly caddie from Chicago.
The cabinet is a fever dream. You walk up to this thing and it looks like the golf bag of a man who’s been mixing Nyquil with Red Bull. The playfield blooms with plastic green, fake turf, and enough ramps to qualify as a miniature Space Mountain. And then, slap in the middle, is the pièce de résistance: a spring-loaded golf ball that ricochets out of the playfield bunker, promising (but not really delivering) a chance at pinball immortality if you execute the mythical “Hole-in-One” shot. I’ll go ahead and say it: Nobody with human reflexes pulls it off by skill. If you claim otherwise, you’re either lying or your name is Tommy and you haven’t blinked since Reagan left office.
There’s a kind of culinary gluttony to how the game shovels modes and multiballs at you. Modes layered upon madness layered upon frantic “Go for the Green!” shouts. Pat Lawlor’s fingerprints are everywhere: pop-up targets emerge like gopher heads, taunting you to whack them—a Whac-A-Mole fever dream for pinball masochists. Ramps curl back on themselves in Lawlor’s trademark “roller coaster” style, promising smooth rides and cruel, gravity-fed punishments. Controls? Tight. Ballsaving? Aggressively, almost sarcastically generous at first, like the machine’s luring you deeper before it really starts eating your quarters.
The soundscape—good lord, the soundscape. These gofers never shut up. They heckle your every shot, riff on every missed putt, and deliver punchlines with the timing of a Vegas standup who’s three drinks in and about to lose his comped suite. Meanwhile, the music swirls somewhere between slapstick cartoon capers and the kind of polka they piping in at a Bavarian theme park for children with attention-deficit issues.
No Good Gofers arrived at a time when pinball was starting to realize it had become the analog prescription for nostalgia. It never took itself seriously for a second—because by ‘97, serious was dead, replaced by frantic showmanship. As for cultural impact, No Good Gofers was the pinball equivalent of the underdog sports movie: massively fun, occasionally frustrating, and disregarded by the establishment in its heyday. Later, collectors would scramble to scoop up copies after Williams shut down pinball production, realizing too late that lawless creativity doesn’t come around often.
In the end, playing No Good Gofers is less about mastering golf and more like a spiritual journey through miniature chaos—a Caddyshack reboot as interpreted by someone who’s spent 48 hours locked in a Dave & Buster’s. It’s loud, fast, unhinged, and it insists on making you laugh through your failures. If pinball is really about the joy of battling the machine and the ghosts of your own high-score hubris, then No Good Gofers is one of the last, great reminders that glory belongs to the weirdos—and sometimes, to the gofers.
