I started fixing up a Gottlieb Atlantis last month. It’s a solid example and would make a decent player, but I’m determined to raise its condition to the nines. So it will be getting a whole lot of work. Here’s what I started with. The pictures (from the seller) are a little grainy, I’m afraid.

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It’s hard to tell from the seller’s murky pics, but the playfield is awfully tired. It has some deep, dirty swirling and raised grain. It won’t clean up very well, I fear.

Fortunately, I have one of Wade Krause’s reproductions. Look at those keylines on the inserts! Wade’s registration is tight.

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Nice coin door shined up like a million bucks. The etched Gottlieb logo got filled with acrylic paint. This is one of those little details I like to see.

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The legs that came with the game took a rust-remover bath. The results are good enough that I’ll probably skip the metal polish.

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Chime unit also shined up well.

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Crusty old leg bolts are a snap to rejuvenate with a little buffing wheel action.
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The plywood lip around the bottom was in good condition, but there was some splintering at the front. I decided to chisel it out and glue in a replacement.

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The original cabinet is decent overall—above average, I would say—but it still has some assorted scrapes, scratches, and graffiti. One of the fish has JAWS carved into it. Another has a large rectangular section of paint missing. It’s just bare wood. I can’t let those things slide when the game is getting a shiny new playfield.

So I’m going to feather these blemishes away. This is a technique I’ve come to favor over doing a total repaint because it preserves most of the cabinet’s patina. But feathering is only feasible if you have a really solid base upon which to build. If too much of the base paint is missing or what’s left is fragile and flaky, forget it. This Atlantis, however, is an ideal candidate for this treatment. The original base is solid overall.

Using a Flip-Pal handheld scanner, I capture the stenciled areas of the game. Because of its small size, I needed to make many, many scans. It took over 40 to capture all the detail on the side of the lower cabinet.

All those images go into Photoshop, where I stitch them together. Each image is in a different later. One layer overlaps the other, with “multiply” as the color-mixing mode. That way you can see both images at the same time. To get correct alignment, the speckling serves as registration marks. One dot is chosen, the top layer is moved until both dots overlap, then the image is rotated (on that dot, like it’s a fulcrum) until all the other speckles line up.

Once all the stencils are stitched together, I trace their outlines. The outlines go into Illustrator, where they are converted to paths. The paths are then exported to DXF files, which are imported into Silhouette Studio, the software used by the Silhouette Cameo, which is a $300 plotter for hobbyists. I use it to cut masking stencils on 4mm mylar from StencilEase.

These masks are now faithful replicas of the original stencil shapes. They’re used to respray the damaged colors on this game. I do this with craft acrylic paint from Michaels. Color options are abundant and cheap. It’s easy to mix colors to get the match you need. Mistakes can be cleaned up and fixed because the hard finish on an intact cabinet is like an etch-a-sketch you can keep resetting.

Before spraying the paint, I touch up the bare wood because these inexpensive acrylics don’t have a lot of pigment to them. After watering them down to spray them with an airbrush, it would take 50+ coats (seriously!) to get the bare wood to disappear. So I fill in the bare wood with a brush. It looks terrible at first, but the airbrush will fix that.

The mixed paint goes gets diluted with distilled water until it can be sprayed, which is basically the the consistency of milk. You can use airbrush medium to dilute the paint, but it costs a lot more than water.

I prop up the cabinet at 45 degrees so it’s facing me like an easel. It’s a good angle to do the airbrushing and keep the stencils in place, which I do with pieces of cardboard and my hand. I avoid using any spray adhesives because they risk taking up paint when you remove the mask. Because the stencil material is so thin, you have to be certain you are applying pressure on the mylar edge where you are spraying. The air will easily lift it and too much overspray will be the result. Some overspray is fine, but too much is unwelcome.

I keep a running heat gun nearby, which I used to heat-set the paint after a light coat. You can’t spray heavy coats because the solution is water-based. It will bead and run very easily if you spray too much. With a heat gun, however, you can set a light coat in a handful of seconds. Then it’s ready for the next coat. I usually put down 5-6 coats. After that many layers, the touch-ups will have been effectively blended away.

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You’re exactly right: it’s the bang for the buck. For ten dollars you can get 4-5 shades of the same color and experiment at home.

But the good stuff is nice. I used Liquitex on my last project and was startled by the pigment density.

You raise an interesting subject. Wade Krause’s repro doesn’t have a pilot hole for this deflector pin by the flippers. If I want to install it, I’ll have to drill the hole myself. Eek.

But I think I do want it, especially with all the thought that went into its inclusion. Atlantis is a hard game, and I think most of them that I’ve played were missing this pin.

Thanks for the insight, Mark. It really is a high-speed location for a deflector pin. I can imagine how the force from a back-flipped ball would really knock it silly.

I’m rethinking that pin now, which is also making me consider shaving off that extruded edge on the plastic. The sample games with the half-moon credit unit have a normal wedge-shaped plastic without that elongation. I dislike how it looks.

The coin door and chime unit parts get an Evaporust bath to remove the rust.

Then they get polished with this stuff:

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You can find it at a lot of big box places like Walmart and Menards.

I recommend picking up a pack of terry-cloth shop rags to do the polishing. Paper towels fall apart too easily.

Be sure to buff away all remaining residue from the polishing compound on any zinc-plated parts. I actually give everything a hot-water bath after polishing then towel dry. If you don’t ensure all the residue is gone, this cloudy oxidation effect will develop. It shows your fingerprints all over the place. It looks terrible.

The top edge of this side of the lightbox had a bad chip, so I filled it with some wood putty, sanded it down, then feathered in some white with an airbrush. The top inch or so was resprayed. The speckles are just dots made with a sharpie. The last thing was some Varathane I airbrushed for protection and impart a matching sheen to the touchups.

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I’ve finished respraying the aquamarine color on this side of things. I also feathered in some “white” above the flipper button where hands had worn the paint off. You can see the color blooming above the line where the rails go.

That’s one thing I wish I could remedy: the uneven yellowing across the cabinet. It would be too much work, masking off all the stencils and spraying down copious amounts of white. Not to mention dotting all those speckles with a sharpie. At that point it would effectively be a total cabinet repaint. I just need to learn to love the look and consider it patina.

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Here’s a couple of in-progress pictures of the lightbox when I re-sprayed the aquamarine color.

Earlier I cautioned against spraying overly wet coats. Still, this happened: too much paint beaded up and ran under the mask, leaving splotches. This is where having a solid base is important. All it took was a little detailing/manicuring with some toothpicks, magic eraser, a q-tip, and very minute quantities of isopropyl alcohol. Those splotches comes right off that hard, intact surface with very little effort.

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Thanks!

Post #8 has details on how the stencils are cut and the material used.

I clearcoated a couple of the re-sprayed stencil shapes tonight with some Varathane. This flattens the color appearance (by focusing the light in one direction) and makes the sheen blend with the original finish.

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My rationale for clearcoating the touchups is because I see so many repainted cabinets with inconsistent sheens. The conventional wisdom is these games were not clearcoated in the factory, but I doubt a mass-produced commercial product would ship without this protection.

For example, here is factory paint job on a Jumping Jack that I polished with Novus 2. Look at the consistent sheen that is yielded across the stencil color and the base paint. You can also see hot spots of reflected light on the contours of the webbing. If this game didn’t have clearcoating, some red paint would be evident on this polishing rag.

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I’m spraying semi-gloss Varathane with an airbrush. It needs a little distilled water before it can spray, but even when diluted it provides good coverage with only a handful of light coats. I use a heat gun to cure each layer. It sets quickly, depending on how large of a surface area you’re trying to cover. Small areas cure in 5-6 seconds. Larger areas take 20-30 seconds.

I’m going to use cans ($10 at Menards) when I protect the cabinet sides. That’s some major coverage that would take forever with an airbrush.

I use a small paintbrush and smear acrylic paint into the etching, then squeegee the top with a flat edge. Leftover paint gets detailed away with a variety of things: paper towel, toothpick, q-tip.

You have to detail it when the paint is wet. If you try to fix it after the paint has set, it breaks off in chunks, taking some of the paint out of the shallow channels. There’s a reason why this paint doesn’t survive well over the years. It’s fragile.

My Spin-A-Card appears to have original paint in the etched logo. It looks quite old and some is missing.

I looked at some flyers on IPDB. Most product photos have too much reflection on the coin door to make it out, but Jumping Jack has a shadow that makes it apparent.

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Here is the coin door on my Spin-a-Card. The paint in the etching has been there for a long, long time.

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The ragged ply on the edge of the lightbox veneer is a trap for dust and dirt over the years. A little acrylic paint makes it look a lot nicer.

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It is a little disorienting! That’s because the lightbox is upside-down on my bench. The paintbrush is leaning against the lever that is used to secure the lightbox board insert.

Lightbox seaweed resprayed today.

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Thanks, Ken!

I gave the pedestal a neck job, so the head is now done. Time to stow these things away until reassembly.

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Not so fast. The “neck job” on the pedestal was in fact a total repaint, and the white section in the middle was an unsatisfactory match. It was just too dang white. Because it’s such an in-your-face thing, it had to be fixed for me to be happy.

So I tinted some Varathane with Mixol and sprayed 4-5 light coats over the stripe. Much better now.

Interesting thing I learned when redoing this pedestal: unlike everything else on the cabinet, the factory base coat is not white. It’s aquamarine. The white (and speckling) go on top. That’s different.
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I took a break from cabinet work (ugh!) and started tearing things off the playfield.

The bottom of the apron has a streak of missing paint where the ball was hitting it. Sure enough, the ball kicker’s fulcrum has considerable metal fatigue. DirtFlipper posted something about this several years ago. Interestingly, his worn kicker was from an Atlantis, too.

Does PBR still have parts for these twin-tip ball return assemblies?

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Oops, I misspoke. TransTint is the brand, not Mixol. The colors used were Lemon Yellow and Golden Brown. One drop from each. Lots of testing, watering down, testing, watering down, testing, &cetera.

It was hard to gauge the effect when I was spraying it. My eyes kept adjusting to the new white point, so it looked like nothing was happening. Glad I stopped when I did.

I’m more or less done with detailing the cosmetics on this cabinet. Now, onto the mechanical rehabilitation.

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Sure, I’ll take some pictures of my tools and recommend what to get.

Fair warning: it can be excruciatingly tedious! Like, the green seaweed shape on the side of the Atlantis lightbox took around four hours to respray. That is, however, an extreme case. That stencil was soooo floppy. It was a constant struggle to keep it in place. And it took around 8-9 coats to get good coverage. Next time I am using something with a heavier pigment load.

One last thing about the cabinet restoration that I should have posted earlier.

I hate when side rails have loose or crooked twist nails. This happens because the hole has become too wide or the nails were hammered at an angle from the factory. These nails will snag your clothes and towels when you clean the rail. And they just look plain sloppy. You can fill loose holes with toothpicks, but that does nothing for the crooked ones.

I drilled out the holes, glued in some 3/8" dowels, marked the drill spots through the rail, and made pilot holes with a jig so they are perpendicular. Result: flush nail heads that are nice and tight.
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I gave the drop target bank an Evapo-Rust bath last night for about an hour. It was a mistake. The plating rashed badly, so now I have a lot of polishing to do.

The top photo is post-polishing. You can still see the pitting. But now it’s shiny!

The bottom photo shows the parts that still need polishing. Ugh.

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There’s a factor here I’d like to understand better. Gold Strike’s drop target assembly came out shiny and new from an Evapo-Rust bath. Atlantis has the same plating, but much different results.

Oh well. I buffed out the worst of it.

Progress on the hardware front.

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Sure, anytime you’re in town!

The only unusual thing is a score motor testing station that I cobbled together from a parts game. It’s a handy source of juice when a game is torn apart. I use it to test bulbs, score reels, steppers, chime units, relays, etc. I wired it up to operate somewhat like it does inside a game. There’s a home switch at 1C that keeps the motor turning for 120 degrees. There are switches on 4A for doing pulses. There’s a score motor service jack with three run settings. There’s an insulated switch you can operate with your finger to start the motor or pulse something manually. The alligator clips go to an array of bulbs for making sure an AS relay is in tip-top shape.

Other than that, standard shop stuff.

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I used a 50-50 mixture of these two, then a splash of white from the same brand (not pictured) to lighten it up.

Water was used to spray these with an airbrush. Doing an entire cabinet this way is very slow. Just FYI.

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Mothers Mag and Aluminum.

Use shop rags, not paper towels, which shred too easily. You can get bundles of rags at Home Depot, Menards, or Lowes.

When all your parts are taken apart, you can lay a rag on a flat surface and polish the flat sides of small parts with a back-and-forth motion. Use the edge of a workbench to get into parts with right angles. Cut the rags into thin strips to buff inside areas. For larger parts, I’ll wrap the rag in a rebounding rubber and use it for buffing. Think creatively.

Be sure to buff parts until no black residue remains, and handle with care afterwards. Any fingerprints left on zinc will oxidize. It’s infuriating. I need to find something to prevent this. Some kind of sealant.

Do you use anything, @stashyboy?

Tonight’s task: this pair of relays and their bracket got rehabilitated. These playfield-mounted relays are always the cleanest parts in a game. On some low-miles games, I don’t even bother with taking them apart. This Atlantis has 100k clicks, so they needed a good look-see. No problems, but now they’re clean and adjusted right.

The worst part about this chore is getting those damn rubber grommets in and out of the bracket feet. I learned something tonight: slippery when wet! A little moisture and they slide easily. I need to remember that next time.

One of the relays is for the pop bumpers. I’ve been meaning to try replacing the high-current contacts on one of these just to see if it gives any additional oomph, but every time I decide against it. I just haven’t seen any with pitting bad enough to make me do it.

These things aren’t very photogenic, but this angle is kinda fun. Surf’s up!

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My friend, the legendary DirtFlipper, set the bar high. The first time he showed me one of his games, I had no idea you could rejuvenate these old parts to this degree. He inspired me, and I’m glad to hear you’re getting the spirit, too.

This game was kept reasonably well over the years, so the harnesses are clean.

I don’t have a good solution for dirty wires. I’ll hit them with compressed air, a vacuum attachment, maybe a little scrub with a toothbrush, but it doesn’t do much. Then there are the faded colors. Nothing you can do about that.

Games like that I don’t expend as much effort into fussing over the appearance of internal parts. Just get rid of the grease and grime. Get them working well. Only the things visible top-side will I try to shine up.

Tonight’s before-bedtime chore: one of the two slings.

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Polished up the flipper assemblies a couple days ago.

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Did the pop bumper assemblies yesterday.

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Cleaned up all the playfield lamps this afternoon. None of them had any shrinking, so the bases are snug and conduct well.
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Playfield hardware is all done.

Next to do is the lightbox insert or the score motor board. Which to do, which to do...

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The score motor board has been stripped, sanded, and relabeled.

I had to split the relay strip in two because it was longer than my printer can handle. Also, there’s no label for the main fuse rating. It feels like there should be one, but it was missing on my board, so it’s not here.

EDIT: I decided I’m going to add the fuse rating label, cadging it from a different game. You can see a slight shadow below the fuse holder in the before pic. I’ll put it there.

I’m attaching a PDF of the labels if anybody else has a use for them. @inkochnito, you’re welcome to put these on your site.

EDIT: I rotated the longer strip by 30° so it now fits on a letter-sized printer. PDF is updated.

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Atlantis Score Motor Board Labels.pdf

The long label strip for the relays was in good condition and cleaned up well because it is coated, but the uncoated labels (coin settings) were filthy and irreparable. So they all got replaced.

You can find a nice cream-colored card stock at Michaels. It still looks “new” when printed, but it doesn’t stand out like a sore thumb. Also, laminating protects the labels and gives it a shine that looks original-ish.

You upgrading your Atlantis?

Started on the relays in alphabetical order. I’ve never worked on this kind of interlock before, so it puzzled me a little. I’m glad I took pictures before disassembly.

Sometimes you gotta break a couple eggs when you polish these, so I’ll probably be replacing all the yellow alphanumeric labels. I printed up a handful of sheets for this purpose and have enough for dozens more projects.

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Superglue. I should be using a glue stick, but I’m out of that.

Thanks, Mark. Your work is stellar, so I appreciate all the compliments.

I go back and forth from project to project. Sometimes my guiding principle is, “these gray hunks of metal just need to hold their stuff and work right. There’s no point in making them look nice if they’re rarely seen.” Other times, I gotta get my shine on.

Score motor was dismantled and cleaned today. Fun thing I learned from DirtFlipper: the motor has a handwritten date on it. The one for this Atlantis says “12-74”.

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Score motor board reassembled.

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This meter is at 99,975. It’s heading back to zero for the new playfield!

How does your ball return kicker assembly look? Mine is worn out. Same pattern of wear that DirtFlipper wrote a forum post here about his Atlantis. His was worse, but he also had 150k plays on the meter—which is interesting that they mixed 5 and 6-digit meters on this game.

I’m replacing mine with a different assembly. I think Gottlieb learned that the long-term viability of that kicker design wasn’t great.

Hey Mike! Haven’t seen you on Facebook in a while. Hope you’re doing well.

The formed switch actuators come apart easily, so I polished those. They really shine up. Switches on the outside edge of the stack I polished a little, too.

Shined up the bolts and installed the score motor board. Feels good to have this done.

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Replay unit.

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One down. Three to go.

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No kidding! The next generation of Gottlieb’s score reel assembly is so much better. It’s interesting they engineered a new design at the same time the industry was going solid state.

Finished all the reels today. The hundreds reel was the dirtiest and exhibited the most wear. There was a groove in the channel for the “solenoid sled”, a broken EOS switch for the lock-in circuit, and black powder everywhere. I can thank the 500-point relays for this mess. These worn parts I relocated to the 10k reel where they can enjoy semi-retirement.

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Ball count unit. Thanks to pinhead52 for the replacement disc.

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Tonight I decided to try my hand at reproducing relay labels, the ones with the rounded corners. I never bothered trying to do these in the past. No way I could hand-cut rounded corners with a perfect radius. But a plotter could do this. The trick is getting the registration right for the two different steps—printing and cutting—so the text is aligned well inside the label. I figured out a way to do it, and the results turned out pretty good.
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I can hook you up.

Finished the last of the relays. Lightbox is done.

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Tonight was spent doing boring, tedious work cleaning and polishing all the little bits of hardware that go top of the playfield: screws, washers, faceted posts, mini-posts. Not my idea of a good time.

One fun thing I did do, however, was install the ball snubbers.

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It’s a reproduction playfield that was produced by Wade Krause a few years ago.

Good luck with your Domino, Alberto!

Some of the hardware went onto the playfield tonight. I made sure to grind off the cleats at the bottom of the metal rails so they don’t leave bite marks. Those damn things are trouble.

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Unfortunately the holes in the middle rail will need to be modified because their current alignment leaves some ink exposed in the shooter lane, which is unacceptable.

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Also, I should have widened the pilot holes for the runway shield because I wrenched one of the washer-head screws trying to turn it. I should have stopped when I encountered resistance. If anybody reading this has a replacement suggestion, I’m all ears.

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A quick survey of my other Gottlieb games revealed just two other games that used this style of screw on the runway shield. Seems like it was a mid-70s thing only.

I’d switch to a regular screw, but I want to cover the marks left by the old washer heads. Plus I already widened the pilot holes so it will accept these thicker washer-head screws, so I’m stuck. Fortunately Ken Head is sending me some replacements.

Glad to know I’m not alone! That’s the frustrating part of transplanting old hardware to a new playfield: finding these misfit things and having to deal with them, or not.

In my case, I decided to do something. It took a bunch of drilling, dowels, egging, and toothpicks to make a difference. In the end, however, there’s still a sliver of artwork showing.

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Moving day.

This is the fourth swap I’ve done. I always go right to left. Why I cannot fathom.

Still need to screw it all down and solder the braid for the light circuit, but my old bones are pooped from stooping low. I’ll do the rest tomorrow. Someday I need to fabricate a higher swapping jig.

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You’re right, it only makes sense if you change out the lamps. Here all of them were rehabilitated (see https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/gottlieb-atlantis-3/page/2#post-5663750) and now they look too nice for shabby old braid with its solder/flux stains and staple bruises. It’s also kinda fun to install because you get to play factory electrician.

Long, long, LONG day in the shop today.

One of the star rollovers was occasionally sticking, even with the switch blade pushing against it and gravity helping because the playfield was upside-down. I popped out the star (which was kinda tricky) and found that there was excess plastic on it introducing friction. It got a shave with a razor, and now it works as it should.

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I installed the replacement ball return assembly I bought from Ken Head. It’s different than the one that came with Atlantis, which had a design Gottlieb used on only a few games then abandoned due to its propensity for wearing out. This game ought to be kicking balls into the shooter lane until the heat death of the universe.

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While fastening things, I discovered that one sling and one pop bumper were out of tolerance, which caused things to bind. Can’t have any friction impeding high-speed action, so new holes were drilled. The pop bumper was off by a fraction of an inch, so I had to put in some dowels first. I’m not happy about the extra holes, but I’m happier that these parts are now moving freely.

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Lastly, I installed the drop target bank and the new braid for the light circuit.

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Sure, I’ll take a picture of it when I get a chance. It’s a primitive thing, just some 2x4s screwed and glued together to mimic how the cabinet cradles the playfield. It mounts on a sawhorse or can sit on the floor. I grafted some shelves on both sides for placing tools. It’s a crude but effective operating table I’ve used for all my projects.

Here it is, @peruman.

When I originally made it nine years ago, it was much shallower and could not accommodate playfields with low-hanging components when it was placed on the floor, which I needed for spraying clearcoat. Around five years ago I made it taller, hence all the weird joints. Then I added some shelves on the side. There are also some hooks you can barely see for tools and cords and such.

It ain’t pretty, but it works.

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Last night I hooked up the playfield to test a few things. It’s 100% operational, but there are a couple of bugs:

The outhole switch needs adjustment. Even after catapulting the ball, the switch remains closed for a micro-second as the ball leaves the forked cradle, causing the O relay to engage again for another 120° turn. It’s incredibly marginal and happens only intermittently.

The two inserts near the uppermost advance/special standup target aren’t lighting. I traced the problem to the P relay. One of the switches must be misaligned. I didn’t dare fix it because I don’t want to prop up the playfield without the aprons, which I won’t install until I get the new rails I bought from @steveintexas.

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Tonight I started fastening some posts, which is very stressful because you really need to bear down on the slotted screws to get them into the virgin pilot holes. I might loosen up the rest of them.

A reproduction plastic set produced by PBR eons ago is going into this game. Unfortunately, the adhesive used to affix the protective backing has deteriorated and is sticking to the plastic. The worst part is the residue is on the artwork side, so you can’t clean too aggressively. I spent 45 minutes removing this stubborn gunk using a combination of hot water, Goo Gone, Novus 2, and my fingernails. And that was for just two pieces! I still have most of them to do, including the giant one that goes over the drop target bank.

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Here’s another way to thread/loosen the holes for those precarious slotted screws: use a socket to drive a hex-head screw into them first. You get maximum leverage with no risk of your tool slipping off the head and damaging the playfield. Also, these hex-head screws are only threaded as deep as the holes, so they’re stronger—and the shallow threads serve as a perfect indicator when to stop drilling.

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Atlantis is a hard game, so I’m setting it to liberal. Unfortunately, one of the liberal post holes is missing on Wade’s repro. The old playfield told me where to put it.

Interestingly, the old playfield used a mixture of liberal/conservative settings right from the factory. There’s virgin dimpling for the lower conservative post and the upper liberal post.

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Here’s something that will get me pelted with tomatoes: I try to make slotted screws face the same way. Just the ones that are conspicuous.

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Hey! If you had simply traded me your Atlantis for my Jacks Open in 2013 I wouldn’t be putting micro-burrs in these slots right now, did you ever think of that?! This is your fault, Mike.

But then you’re staring straight up into alleys of micro-burrs! Mike doesn’t approve.

Stick a fork in it.
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Here’s another pic for @stashyboy, who restored the Blast Off you can see in the background.

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Thanks for all the nice compliments, y’all!

It’s not my favorite game, but I do like Spin-a-Card. DirtFlipper restored it, so it plays nice and fast. Strong pops. It’s hard to light the aces because they’re both in the return lanes, which the ball rarely rolls into. You can try to flick them off the tip of the flipper and up the opposite lane, but that’s hard as hell to do.

Again, not my favorite, but I do love the backglass, especially the card-belching joker. Todd Newman wrote a nice appreciation of Pop-a-Card, how soothing the single-chime sounds are as the ball rolls around collecting 10 points here and 100 points there from predominantly low-scoring targets, then suddenly FIVE THOUSAND POINTS when you go through a lane. It’s also fun to be 1,000 points shy of winning an extra ball, then make a plunger shot that lands in the top entry lane that’s lit for that amount. The ball slides down it slowly and you get a big fat knock, and that’s satisfying.

I have each and think there is room for both in one collection. The bagatelle experience is very different between the two games.

Only one of the numbered rollover targets is lit on Atlantis, and often you enter the bagatelle at a level where there is no chance of hitting it, so it’s 500 points allllll the way down, no matter which lane you go into.

But when you do have a chance, there is some good suspense waiting to see if you’ll roll through it. And sometimes (although very, very rarely) you can luck into hitting 1+2+3+4 or 6+7+8+9 sequentially. It’s very rewarding when that happens.

C37, on the other hand, you have a 50-50 chance of scoring big in the bagatelle. Every time. The lights alternating with the 500-point relay is fun, too.

Atlantis is a stingy game. It’s hard to advance more than halfway through the sequence, let alone all the way past 9. Some games you’ll finish still stuck on number 1. Brutal!

C37 is much more generous. You have a lot more advancement ability with the ABCD rollovers, double advance relay, drop targets, and kick-out hole. You also have total control over the drop target bank resetting. The corner kick-out hole is really in a sweet spot on the playfield. The same spot on Atlantis has a commonly broken plastic because of the beating it takes.

The 5000-point bonus for dropping two targets on Atlantis is killer. It’s a singularly distinctive feature no other Gottlieb EM has.

C37’s thermometer—though it’s just a straight line—is still a dandy bit of backglass animation. Get to the top, and light it up! It’s simple but brilliant. I use a 455 flasher on mine.

Both very fun games, in my opinion.

Results will vary depending on the severity of the oxidation. Anything with scabrous rashes or pitting cannot be helped.

This Atlantis had fairly clean zinc-plated parts. They were clouded somewhat, but not too heavily.

Sometimes I used a buffing wheel, but most of the results you see were from hand-polishing with a rag. The trick to polishing by hand effectively is to think of creative ways to leverage your effort. If you are holding the part in one hand and polishing with the other, you will not get the best results.

Examples 1: if the part has flat surface areas, lay the rag onto your countertop and bear down on it with the part. Rub the latter against the former. This gets effective results the fastest.

Example 2: if the part is irregular in shape, find a way to make it stationary. You can fasten many parts by screwing them into a 2x4 scrap held in a vise. Once it’s secure, you can “floss” it with the rag. Don’t be afraid to cut the rag into narrow strips so you can reach recessed areas.

Lastly, you cannot handle zinc-plated parts after getting them shined up to this degree. Any oils from your skin will oxidize and cloud up the zinc coating within a matter of days. I carefully reassemble things by cradling them with clean rags and gently reinstall them the same way. This is an unsolved problem for which I am still seeking a solution.

It’s frustrating because this problem will rear its head down the road. Months later you’ll open up an immaculate game to adjust some malfunctioning thing, and the next day that part will looks like somebody dusted it for fingerprints.

I honestly question if the effort is worth it. Why make these dumb hunks of metal look pretty if their beauty is so fragile?

A local collector fella had a spare door with an Atlantis schematic still taped to it, and it now lives in my game. Thanks, @beatnik-filmstar!

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