Rocket

Just 2 months before Williams released Rocket, the Soviet Union crash landed Luna 2 onto the surface of the moon, a monumental first in human history. The space race had been underway since 1955, fueling both fantasy and fear for millions of people as the United States and Soviet Union jockeyed for position in space.

George Molentin’s artwork seems to directly address this race to the moon, portraying a sky crowded with rockets blasting toward the cratered lunar surface while Sputnik-style satellites hang in orbit nearby. Though rotating score drums were becoming more common by this time, many Williams games of this era still used illuminated backglass scoring instead.