(Topic ID: 320339)

Gottlieb "The Games" Reimagined

By MtnFrost

1 year ago


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  • 17 posts
  • 3 Pinsiders participating
  • Latest reply 1 year ago by MtnFrost
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#1 1 year ago

For a few years now, I've wanted to do a custom pin, with the following parameters:

It had to be a machine that has decent or good gameplay, but severely lacks in art, and possibly in sound. My criteria also included getting a machine that is in rough shape, so I'm not taking apart a nice conditioned example of the game. I wanted to utilize CPRs custom services, so what I do has a professional finish. Finally my target had to be a SS pin, but nothing with alpha-numeric or DMDs, since that adds a level of complexity I don't want. I wanted to limit the scope of my project to be comfortable and reasonable. This is going to take awhile, so it has to be something I'm going to enjoy. Finally, it has to be a pin I can get cheaply, since I'll be investing a bit into the changes I will need to make.

Now, I have a list of about 6 games that fit those parameters. But for this documented effort, it was Gottlieb's "The Games" that fell into my hands. To start, this is how it came to me. I got it dirt cheap, no legs. The MPU was pretty pristine, but the pin had evidence everywhere it had been horribly treated. The story it told was that as things failed, the owner didn't know how to fix it, or used whatever was at hand to patch the issue.

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#2 1 year ago

Now, before I bought it I already had a rough idea of what I wanted to do. However, I wanted to walk through my decisions and steps as we go along. I knew I was going to change the art radically. If you are a fan of the original artwork, read no further. This isn't going to be your cup of tea and I don't want you getting upset. I call it a custom restoration, but in this case, I think the term, "reimagined" is going to be more accurate. The goal is to produce a machine that is still clearly Gottlieb, but also completely unique.

The steps I will take will roughly follow these steps:

Repair the machine, get it fully working.
Create the rough layout and general color schemes for the pin
Develop the style and specific compositions for the new art
Repaint the cab
Finalize the artwork
Produce the artwork
Develop and install any mods
Assemble the pin

And in this case, I believe The Games needs better / augmented sounds. I will be researching how best to approach this, given the limitations of the factory setup and my own very limited knowledge of audio. All of this will take time, so to end this for now, I'll leave you with one of the first inspiration boards I put together. This is a general look at some of the traditional Gottlieb art styles that speak to me, and a few others that suggest elements, themes, or certain storytelling elements.

Mood Board 1sm (resized).pngMood Board 1sm (resized).png
#3 1 year ago

Update 1: I have replaced all the fuses, and a ton of bulbs. The machine had ridden in the back of a pickup truck to my location, head attached and not secured, so the base of the head had a lot of damage as it rocked back and forth. (see below - how it arrived) It required disassembling the lower frame of the head to reinforce the base.

The pop bumpers weren't working, and the flippers needed a new coil and rebuild kit from Pinball Resources. I was able to reflow the cold soldier on the pop bumper driver boards and got 3 of 4 working just fine. One of the boards had been screwed tight to the playfield over a wire, smashing it - that might be the reason the fourth isn't working yet.

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#4 1 year ago

Update 2 - One of the first things that fell into my lap was the opportunity to buy a second playfield. What are the odds one would pop up right after I bought the machine? So I will restore one PF, and create new art for the other. Since CPR offers new plastic and backglass screens for custom projects, I can keep the full original set together, to be included with the pin where ever it goes after me. Those are serviceable, but not perfect. No matter - for my purposes, it's more ideal anyway.

One item to be filed for future solutions - the cab is made of some sort of MDF, which means I'm going to have to find a way to treat it with something that will allow me to sand it. You might be able to see in the pics up top that some parts of the cab paint have allowed more moisture in than others. But that's way further down the line.

IMG_5400 (resized).JPGIMG_5400 (resized).JPGIMG_5397 (resized).JPGIMG_5397 (resized).JPG
#5 1 year ago

Update 3 - Often I have an idea in mind and in this case, I already know I want to keep the pinball theme, the Olympics, central. I want to keep the name the same, but I really like this font, from Gottlieb's "Hot Shot". Searching didn't reveal it, so it might be custom. No problem, I will recreate it. Further, I know I want a light-hearted graphic style, so I'll be looking at the character styles from Gottlieb's 60s-70s pins. I know I want to include women in the competitions, and that I want it to be the ancient Greek Olympics.

So I continue to pull images and create another art board, this one just random images from the Olympics. I know that I'm going to swap out the "Hammer" category for "Archery". This will give me four events that allow for women to be more prominent in the graphic competitions. At this point I'm creating more inspiration, still just thinking about how it should all work together.

Athlete Board 1sm (resized).pngAthlete Board 1sm (resized).pngHotShot Font (resized).pngHotShot Font (resized).png
1 week later
#6 1 year ago

Update 4 - Another inspiration board, this time I cull images of ancient Greeks - clothing, buildings, statues....just looking for reference at this point for what elements to incorporate in the new artwork. Meanwhile, I have some flipper issues and one pop bumper to still troubleshoot. And suddenly the last display is working perfectly - which means I will begin repining the connectors.

Greek Board (resized).pngGreek Board (resized).png
#7 1 year ago

Update 5 - I recreated the font from Gottlieb's Hot Shot, I think I'll use this. Colors may change, depending. I like the vibe, and it'll fit with the direction I'd like to go.

HighRes Title (resized).pngHighRes Title (resized).png

#9 1 year ago

Interesting- no, I hadn’t seen that - funny to see The Games having been a conversion candidate before. They seem to be all over in different styles. Thanks for the link!

#10 1 year ago

Update 6 - so on the game repair, I now have everything except sound working. I have replaced the burned diodes and the nearby cap, nothing else on the board looks suspect. I'll have to find good test points on the board to check voltages. I also confirmed that the wires from the board to the speaker are correct and measured, and have a brand new speaker. I don't even get a hum, so more work. Repinning the connector will be the next step. Anyone know of a good troubleshooting guide for this board? I have the pinwiki and the manual, but not sure where else to go after repin.

Funny that to get the last pop bumper to work, I switched two fuses, as a test. Then everything worked. The fuse tests fine, so must have been a bad connection to the fuse holder. Easy fix anyway.

On the design front, I've started roughing out the backglass. I feel this will make the statement I need to carry everywhere else, so it's key that I get something that really pops. The process starts by roughing out compositions, thumbnails, temp photo material, and then I'll begin drawing out the layers, first in Photoshop, then brought into Illustrator and converted to curves and proper line art. And since this goes to CPR, multiple color and blocking layers. But first things first.
Soundcard (resized).pngSoundcard (resized).png

#11 1 year ago

Update 7 - so replaced a few bad transistors that looked good to fix some lights. Lesson there, even if they LOOK perfect, test.

On the artwork side, I'm roughing out the BG, which will set the tone for the rest. Here's a low res Notan I did of one composition. What is a Notan? Well, technically it's a black and white thumbnail, used by artists to explore composition at it's lowest level of detail. I actually do a little cleaner than this, but I wanted to post something about the process. By keeping it simple, you can judge placement and importance.

Notan Rough (resized).pngNotan Rough (resized).png
1 week later
#12 1 year ago

Update 8 - just a quick note here, this month I am moving across states, so posting will be slow. But I will continue after getting settled.

2 months later
#13 1 year ago

Sorry for the slowness, we had a death in the family to deal with. Once things are back to normal, I will continue on this.

2 months later
#16 1 year ago

One of the things I needed to do, in order to replicate the style of the Gottlieb characters, is to review how they are drawn. To that end I created another board of faces from various Gottlieb machines, in this case, from backglasses. It revealed some interesting patterns in the way the artists created Gottlieb art. I focused on the era I liked, from the 70s-80s, primarily.
Gottlieb Faces (resized).pngGottlieb Faces (resized).png

You'll note a couple of near constants - blue and green eye shadow for so many women, and the men are drawn with more detail, facial lines, than the women. Among many other things.

#17 1 year ago

And I've done a lot of work on the backglass. For now, here is the rough for the main figure. I am purposely reducing the resolution from it's actual size, and when the whole work is done I will be taking it over to illustrator from photoshop to convert the work into proper format. The border is temp.

Javelin (resized).pngJavelin (resized).png
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