When printing up a set of instruction cards (sourced from @INKOCHNITO, thanks!) for my Gottlieb Dimension, I noticed one of the cards was different than the others. The top area did not specify a minimum number of balls. I’m accustomed to them saying something like “MINIMUM 5 BALLS PER PLAY” but this card did not. Also, WOWs were not worth an additional ball. Instead, they “continue play.”

I know some Gottlieb AAB exports to Italy have a rebound lane in the outhole. The ball spits back into play when WOW is lit. Pinsider illawarra92 was kind enough to share photos of their Tivoli as proof of this. However, none of my Gottlieb AAB titles from this era have this feature. I have a Pop-A-Card, Mini Pool, and Dimension. None of them can be adjusted to play as described in the instruction cards below.

WOW Continues Play

Best I can figure is Gottlieb made a handful of domestic AAB games with special engineering for municipalities that prohibited winning extra balls. Does anybody know anything more about these instruction cards, or has anybody seen these domestic titles functioning in this manner?

Good questions for Peter. Also, I will compare some of the numbers to the cards I have in my possession and check for integrity.

These earlier domestic AAB titles do not have novelty mode like their later counterparts (Bank Shot and beyond) did. Those games had an additional stepper (the Lightbox Advance Unit) and two jones plugs that drastically altered game operation.

I took another look at Peter’s card sets for these games. He has verified the part numbers on the “WOWs Continue Play” cards so they must exist.

Then there is this other Mini Pool card, which is an inversion of the “Continues Play” cards because it makes no mention of the value of WOWs but does specify there are (exactly) “8 Balls Per Play”. The part number on this card was also verified by Peter.

My Mini Pool did not come with these mystery cards, but it definitely has no setting to make WOWs not win a ball. The only setting is whether you start with three, five, or eight balls. That’s it.

So the hunch that these cards are simply “evasive” is the likeliest explanation for their existence. Gottlieb probably had a handful of influential customers in certain jurisdictions that asked for these cards because local inspectors were balking at some niggling matter in the written game rules.

8 BALLS PER PLAY