It was in the Farsight Gottlieb collection so there was less work required bringing it over to The Pinball Arcade. Check a look at the games in the Gottlieb collection, most of them came to TPA because a lot of the work was already done. If we got another EM, it would probably be Ace High or Jive Time since Farsight already recreated them.

I also wish TPA had way more EMs (and that they played a bit more realistically).

I follow the pinballarcadefans forum and FarSight has said it plans on doing an EM this season. One of the most likely candidates is Fireball. With releasing just one table a month FarSight can't afford to release a table that won't sell very well.

As far as Big Shot goes, it's a good Gottlieb from the 70's.

I realize it's not your concern, but this game does carry another reason for its popularity.

In the business at the time, Hot Shot and Big Shot were the first games available, (1/74), since 5/73, (Jumping Jack, Jack in the Box), as America suffered new gas prices and the '73 trucker's strike. Sources have the game produced anywhere between 8/73 and 12/73, but it didn't get to most distributorships until 1/74. The game was average at best, but starving for new product, most operators probably had at least a few of them ordered.

Personally, I thought the game was pretty bad. Very little action with 14 drop targets, 1 partially concealed pop bumper, and not much else. The only meaningful scoring is the bonus collection available only at the end of each ball, and if 4th and 5th balls didn't go well, (2X, 3X Bonus), forget about high-score replay land. Non-the-less, it was the first new Gtb. game in a while, so the cashbox did pretty well.

Great write up, thanks for that.