I recently started playing a lot of Attack From Mars (on Pinball Arcade), and after finishing I switched to the Lighting Simulator to check it out some more - and I never noticed before how similar the playfield art is to Attack From Mars (done by Doug Watson):
http://i.imgur.com/kFcjl8Y.jpg
-Same color palette (dominant yellow, red and green with a bit of blue on top of two shades of solid warm grey)
-Bold outlines around the inserts and rollovers
-The slingshot art: The screaming dinosaur looks a lot like the screaming martian
-Unpainted green plastic figurines
-Inserts stacked in strong lines to visually guide the player where to shoot
-Generally very bold, geometical forms
However, the playfield design is obviously very different. While the graphical design is strongly inspired by AFM, I´d say that they recreated his design language very well - and I actually think TS is more beautiful to look at than the (already very gorgeous) AFM. Is looks even sharper and more agressive than AFM - the White House drawing looks a bit out of place, while the Earth progress lights work very well with the other bold elements.
I also love the way the time pod flies towards the viewer, leaving a trail twirling around the planets behind it, giving it both a feeling of perspective while keeping the general bold, graphical look. The, uh, "gem thing" (what is it called again?) with its green glass also fits brilliantly with the rest of the design.
I find it hard to fault Cunning Development for being so strongly inspired by a particular design, given how great the end product turned out to be, with a very coherent design that even trumps its inspiration. Most other original pinball designs made for video games tend to look rather tacky and confusing, with pieces of art randomly thrown across the playfield, so I personally think it was a wise decision to learn from a grandmaster of pinball art instead