Originally published as an Advisory Hour Substack post on 2026-11-02. This first-party site copy preserves the text, localizes public supporting media, and connects the record to its project trail.
Original post
Why not put a pinball machine in a street fight? The next machine in TiltLab is FIREHAWK. It’s a pinball machine, but it’s standing right in the middle of a street fight between two transforming robots.
The idea I was running with is that the world around you reacts to how you’re playing. Make good shots and the fight goes your way. Play badly and the city pays for it.
It comes from the Transformers-inspired robot brawler in GameLab. Two cars that are also robots, Firehawk in black and gold and Redline in red, racing and fighting under the elevated train in New York, 1986.
The table starts as a street. Redline crosses the middle as a car, and you ram it while you build speed. Hit 52 and the jump lights up. Make that shot and the ball rides up under the glass, and while it’s in the air the playfield flips over, strip by strip, into a fight ring.
Which is not something I expected to type about a pinball machine.
In the ring, every shot is one of Firehawk’s moves. The left orbit is a jab, the middle is a smash, and shots back to back are combos. Redline telegraphs its punches with a red line on the table, and you block with the action button. Out in the street, Firehawk throws whatever move you just made, and armor comes off Redline as it takes damage.
There’s also a property bill-same idea as from the Firehawk game, only applied to pinball. Every bumper, ram and landing costs the city, and enough police heat puts a roadblock up on the overpass. Three knockouts wins the night. Otherwise the city sends you the bill.
This was an early version of an idea I keep coming back to, where pinball works as a kind of unlock for the bigger system around it. Here it decides a fight. In The Khufu Key I took it a lot further, and the pinball machine quite literally becomes the key you use to navigate the entire pyramid. That’s a pretty crazy thought. But it started here, with robots punching each other and a pinball machine in between.
The video has some of the game footage and the anime-style explainer. Rin Calder takes a taxi to El Avenue and Crosstown, and Seven is driving, which seems about right. She stands next to the machine while the robots go at it behind her and explains the whole thing, until a car door comes flying past. Like the Mud Truck one, it’s made with the new local video pipeline, and you can catch a few hands doing things hands shouldn’t.
Firehawk is a pretty neat little project. Who knows, maybe one day there will be something… more than meets the eye on my website.
For now, the table is in the street. Get it up to 52.
Play now: FIREHAWK · TiltLab pinball | Eric Rhea
Read more: Firehawk in GameLab
Connected work
- Play FIREHAWK: Make good shots and the fight goes your way.
- About the machine: Read the rules of FIREHAWK.
- FIREHAWK in GameLab: Visit the game behind the pinball machine.
- FIREHAWK in VideoLab: Watch the film from the source post.