Originally published as an Advisory Hour Substack post on 2026-10-28. This first-party site copy preserves the text, localizes public supporting media, and connects the record to its project trail.
Original post
The next machine in TiltLab is Black Budget Bird, continuing the SR-71 fan service I’ve been putting on the site for a while now.
This one sits in the control tower of an air base. Launch a ball and a Blackbird takes off down the runway outside. You hear the engines roar, radar pings come through, and the whole setting has this Cold War, Spy vs. Spy kind of vibe.
There’s even a radar sweeping across the pinball table. When its beam crosses your ball, it starts building a lock. Let that happen long enough and a missile battery fires. The radar scopes around the control room show what’s happening on the table, too, which is a pretty fun detail.
As you play, you work through reconnaissance sorties: climb, refuel, photograph a target, and bring the film home. The photographs you collect get pinned to an evidence board on the wall.
It pulls together ideas and assets from the SR-71 games, the artwork, and the Black Budget Bird music video. I’ve enjoyed finding another way to put all of that to use.
Naturally, I encourage you to try the pinball machine. But I’ve also included the music video below, because despite its flaws, I still can’t get enough of it.
Maybe it’s time to take another crack at the video and fix some of the more obvious defects. There are definitely things I’d like to improve.
At the same time, it’s become a little time capsule of where AI-generated video was when I made it. Watching it now, that feels like a decade ago.
It was only a few months.
Here’s Black Budget Bird.
Play now: Black Budget Bird — TiltLab pinball | Eric Rhea
Connected work
- Play Black Budget Bird: Launch the Blackbird and bring the film home.
- About the machine: Read about the sorties, radar, and control room.
- Black Budget Bird in GameLab: Meet the SR-71 game behind the machine.