I've been in this hobby for 13 years now. I got hooked on pinball in the 90's and love the classics from those years. But I am starting to love System 80 pins. Always had a thing for rarer pins, and you don't see many early 80's Gottliebs in the Netherlands.

My current collection has 5 Gottliebs, in various stages of repair: Black Hole (US version), Haunted House, Volcano, Rack 'Em Up and TX- Sector. Used to have a Spirit, too. But sold it too early.

I've just recently started a new Youtube channel. 2 videos of my Gottliebs are on there now:
- a Black Hole gameplay video (running on Pascals PI-80 X4):

- The ground mods, done on Rack 'em Up:

More will follow! Including the cleaning of my Rack 'em Up. Which is very necessary, as you can see in the ground mod video. So subscribe and 'like'!

This is what my Rack 'em Up looked like when I bought it a few months ago. Turned out to be one of the dirtiest machines I've ever come across as a collector. This is the original ad on Marktplaats. Marktplaats is the Dutch Craigslist, sort of.
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The machine was inside a warehouse where they stored and sold car tires. It had been sitting there non-working for longer than the current owner knew about. He told me the machine was already there when he moved his company in, about 10 years ago. He never saw it in working condition. Judging by the sheer amount of dirt inside the machine, I wouldn't be surprised if it had been sitting there for 25+ years.
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Still, I had good hopes for the machine when I got it. Underneath the dirt there seemed to be a decent playfield. Nice backglass. Pretty clean boards. And no vital parts missing. No broken plastics even. Just the lock bar and the coin slots on the coin door were missing. Replacement parts for these were easily found.
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I'm not much of a tech myself, so I wanted to make sure the machine was working before I started cleaning it. Luckily, my friend Marco is a technical genius ánd specializes in Gottlieb. He fixed the boards for me. After that, I did the ground mods. Result: Yes!!! The machine worked!

Now it was time to clean the machine. Boy oh boy, the dirt on this one. It was everywhere. Inside and out. Dirt on top of dirt. The pictures actually don't do the amount of dirt on this machine justice.
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Did I mention the game was dirty?
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...but it did clean up nicely!
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...and underneath the dirt was indeed a decent playfield.
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However, it did need some touch-ups.
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To protect the playfield and touch-ups, I protected the playfield with a durable, mylar-like film. I don't like the feel of clearcoat on these older games and never intended to do a high-end restoration.
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In the picture, the touch-ups are visible. When you stand in front of the machine, you really have to look very close to even see them.

This is the result. I'm very happy with it. It really feels like a new game when you play it.
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Rack 'em Up turns out to be a great player, especially in multiplayer games. Its basic playfield does clearly show what state pinball was in in 1983. It's fairly sparse compared to games that came out two years before it. But, at least Gottlieb didn't choose to take the Bally (Mid)way out by using cheaper parts.
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In the Netherlands, Gottlieb games from the Mylstar years rarely show up. And I really like to own good games that most people have never heard of, seen or played.
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I might change the drop targets for originals someday. Let me know if you've got these and want to sell!
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Hope you guys like the pics. Next in line for a restoration: TX Sector.

Thanks, guys.

You're right, It is a cool looking and playing game. I'll make a gameplay video for it when I have the time. It occurred to me that there's hardly any video material on Youtube for this game.

As promised, a video of one of the lesser known (and lesser loved?) System 80's: Rack 'em Up!
Enjoy and please let me know what you think about it!

Thanks for all the compliments on the Rack 'em Up video, guys! Really makes all the work worth the effort! If you like the vid, remember to subscribe to my Youtube channel. More System 80-stuff coming up!

I used a Sony Alpha 3000.

The spinner shot should indeed normally make the rollovers. Most of the times it does, actually! Only in this video, it never happens. Go figure. Still, you're right. I have to fix that. Should go right every time.

Glad to see you here, Marco! You're actually the reason I am allowed into this group. Without your board repair, advise and general knowledge of Gottlieb solid state I wouldn't have dared to dive into the System 80-games. Thanks!

Hey fellow Haunted House owners! I've noticed some differences in the 2 Haunted House backglasses I have. Topic: www.pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/haunted-house-differences-in-backglasses

Anybody know anything about a change in production in these backglasses?

Differences in the purples
Differences in the reds, purples and image clarity
The word 'Old' and 'New' in the pictures references to the time I've had the backglasses. The 'old' one was originally in my machine. The 'new' one is just as old, but I've bought it recently.

Wow, cool! I would have really loved to be there.

Just out of curiosity: which System 80 games were missing?

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Wow, cool buy! Playfield looks pretty alright.. How's the backglass?

I'm interested to follow the progress you make restoring this game. Good luck!

I think Arena is a nice game. My brother owns a very nice one that I like to play it when I'm there. Great sounds and an original layout. I do think though that games like TX-Sector and Genesis are of quite a higher class. Also, for me, the luck factor is too high on Arena (the 1 million-shot from the Pit).

Haven't played Excalibur and Robowar enough to form a good opinion about those.

It does! And the playfield looks like a perfect candidate for a clearcoat. The playfield shouldn't be too hard to touch up, because most of the wear is in the black area.

On the other hand, I'm not sure if I'd dare to remove the mylar from a Spirit. I've seen horriffic results on one example. The playfield quality on that Spirit was very bad, which made a lot of paint come loose from the playfield when the mylar was removed.

When I bought my TX-Sector about 2 years ago, it had some typical Gottlieb wear by the flippers and some wear at the dropdown from the shooter ramp.
flipper damagedrop damage

So, when I started working on the project about 6 months ago, I decided to take off the mylar, repaint the wear and clearcoat the machine. But a little more than just the mylar came off... OOPS...
after mylar removal 1after mylar removal 2

I decided to repaint the damaged areas and proceed with clearcoating the machine. Yesterday I finished the project. I'm very happy with the results! A bit proud even. The machine really was in sorry shape after the mylar removal. But not anymore!
result 1
result 2

I love it when a project works out as well as this one. TX-Sector is a lovely machine to play, too!

Not to mess up your trifecta, but that fighter collection kinda screams for an Operarion: Thunder. Which is an awesome pin as well.

Just sayin'.

Not really loving my TX-Sector right now. It's giving me kind of intermittent switch problems. Some of the switches just don't work lots of times. It's mostly the drop targets. Stupid thing is, when I close them manually, they work fine. Adjusting them doesn't seem to help. And when it does, it's only a temporary solution. After a few games that switch becomes flaky again. Even replacing the whole switch doesn't always work: switch works, but stays flaky.

Diodes test fine.

Anyone who knows the reason and maybe even a solution for this? Thanks!

Woops... I now have 2 Haunted Houses... this second one fell into my lap as the icing on the cake in a great package deal. This one has a very nice playfield and a fixable backglass.
my second!
Both my HH's are projects. I will probably fix and clearcoat them side by side. I'm thinking about keeping one original and customizing the other to speech and multiball, using Pascal's PI-80 X1.

All in good times though. Got other projects that will come first. I'm a lucky man.

Congrats, Rack 'em Up is a great game! I'd keep it, if I were you. This one will probably be a pleasant surprise once you've cleaned it up. Nice oldschool gameplay with some nifty rules. Also, it works very well as a multiplayer game. You don't see them often.

I've made a video of its gameplay a while ago, which I posted a few pages earlier in this thread. If you do a Youtube search for something like "Rack 'em Up pinball how the hell do you play it?", you should definately find it. It should give you a good idea of how the game plays. Oh, and good news: the 'music' can be turned off.

Welcome to the club, and congrats on your machine! Night Moves is a nice little game, literally. Mine is standing in a corner of the living room right now. It surprises people, too. At first glance, you don't even notice that it's a pinball machine.

Was Night Moves actually the last System 80B ever made?

So today I picked up this new game: a 1985 Hot Fire Birds by (West-)German manufacturer NSM. I had never before seen one in my life. Technically, not a System 80. Still, I'm posting about it here. Why?

Well, the interesting part about this machine is that the playfield seems to have been made by Premier/Gottlieb. Judging by the parts on and underneath the playfield, I'm 99% sure that the entire populated playfield came from that company. Pinball Resource still has NOS playfields and plastic sets for this game, too. The board set and cabinet are definately not Gottlieb, though. There is an interconnect board inside the head that receives the Gottlieb edge connectors from the playfield, and puts out different connectors that run to the NSM mpu/solenoid driver board. Makes me wonder if it would somehow be able to run on a system 80 boardset.

It's a fascinating beast. Hope I'll be able to get it running. If anyone has any thoughts or knowledge about this game, I'm anxious to hear it. Was this a (rejected System 80-)design that Gottlieb sold to the Germans? Or a German design that Gottlieb just did the manufacturing for? I'd love to hear the story.
backglass
playfield
under playfield
manufacturer plaque
interconnect board

I know! And I must say... it's my favorite Owl People from Outer Space-themed pin yet.

The entrance is in the upper middle of the playfield. It's quite hard to miss, actually.

JOKING of course. Congratulations on your Excalibur! A lovely and pretty rare 80b game!

The roms on the aforementioned website essentially give all sys80B's a Free Play option, without needing any hardware mods. I've got them installed in my TX-Sector and Night Moves, and cannot recommend them more. Works perfectly.

That's a lovely collection of 80b's!

There's a Diamond Lady for sale just across the North Sea. According to the owner, it's supposed to be collector quality. http://www.marktplaats.nl/a/verzamelen/automaten-flipperkasten/m1075420254-diamond-lady-in-verzamelstaat.html

Should you go on a trip to buy it, you're more than welcome for a coffee or beer and some pinball at my mini gameroom in Amsterdam.

The following questions are about the awesome System 80B game TX-Sector. I've posted them on the TX-Sector club topic as well, but traffic is a little higher here. I hope someone can help me.

Question 1: Is there a way to make the ball roll on the right ramp smoothly?
A clean, full-powered shot from the upper left flipper often gets rejected on my machine because the ball seems to create some weird bounce on the far right part of the ramp. I suspected the ramp entrance at first, but can't find a part that would stop the path of the ball from being smooth. Anybody who had this problem and solved it?

Question 2: Am I losing it?
The voice sounds that the pop bumpers make are just awesome, as anybody that has played this title can confirm. But I swear that sometimes that pop bumper voice whispers "I'm Here!" after a bumper hit. Creepy as hell! I wasn't able to capture it on video as it doesn't happen often, about once in a hundred games or so. Can anybody confirm? Either that I'm losing it OR that the "I'm here!"-quote is actually in the game?

Many thanks!

Thanks for your reply, Gerry!

I am talking perfectly timed and aimed shots. They enter the ramp lightning fast, don't hit a post or anything, create the bounce on the far-right, almost make it to the sweet spot of the ramp, and roll back just before it. It happens too often for it to be a coincidence.

It sure does. Man, the sound of this game. It's perfect.

I've made a gameplay movie for the last original System 80B-design: Night Moves.

Hope you guys like it. Enjoy!

Bad Girls confiscated the house!
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I second that. Great product. Great customer support too.

Here's my BH running on one.

Finally finished my Bad Girls and I'm pretty psyched about it. Awesome game!

It got the full led treatment. With some tasteless details, like cold white GI and hot pink flashers. This game just begs for stuff like that.

Gotta love the 80's badness in this part of the game room!
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Made a gameplay video for all you lovers of Bad Girls out there. Be proud!

Picked up a rare one today! A Striker that has previously been used as a parts machine. I'm excited to get it up and running. Looks like it should play like no other pin.

However, getting it to work will be tricky. Anybody got a System 80/80A transformer panel for sale? Mine is missing completely...

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Ok, so I have started looking for a transformer panel for my Striker. Now I have been offered a panel from a System 80 machine which looks similar, but slightly different.

Question for the technicians: could the panel that I have been offered be used for the Striker? If yes: Are modifications needed? And if yes, How hard would these be for somebody that knows how to handle a soldering iron, measure voltages and replace connectors but is by no means a professional pinball technician by heart?

Picture 1 shows the transformer panel that should be in my Striker, but is missing:
Picture 1

Picture 2 shows the transformer panel that I have been offered:
Picture 2

Agreed, 100%. I think the original fluorescent tubes are the main reason for the original translights of the system 80s to fade.

Pro-tip: if you install one of those led tubes that can rotate to face any direction, turn it to face the opposite direction (so towards the boards). This way, the translite only gets indirect light. The light is spread over the translite more evenly and makes it less bright, giving the image much better contrast. Also works great in Stern games from the zeroes.

Received this in the mail from PBR last week.

It'll probably be quite a while before I have the time to restore the machine. But: it's reassuring to have the most important part I need to do so. Especially since I might not be able to find this part ever again.

It cost me as much as the machine itself did. And it will definitely be clearcoated before a ball ever rolls over it.

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I just moved into a new appartment and decided to fill the hallway with framed backglasses. 6 of them in total, 3 of which are Gottlieb System 80s.

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Nice, definitely one of the better efforts as far as alternate translites go. How's the image quality when printed on a large surface?

My Striker is finally on its way back! A big project: it is a former parts machine and came without boards and without a transformer panel. I built one from donor parts from a Volcano. Which are the same parts, but in a completely different setup. (80 vs 80A)

Next step: make sure everything is technically ok. After that: playfield swap with a NOS one.

By the way, you gotta love the way Striker and Centaur II look next to each other. Their color scheme and art style are almost complete opposites.

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Cool and interesting for sure! Striker is one of the last of the larger no expenses spared Gottliebs. Just before they went back to making standard sized games with simpler layouts and without expensive things like speech.

Definitely one of their lesser known titles, too. It's super rare even here in The Netherlands, where football (you know, real football ) is the #1 sport.

It's one of only a few titles I'd spend as much time and effort on as I am, without having ever played it. I'm just very curious about the gameplay experience it offers. It certainly is unique. I've read good things about it.

I'll definitely post a video once it's done, but that could take a while. In the mean time, check out @klyguy533's very informative videos on the game:

DawnP
Hey how cool, another Striker owner! Any pictures?

Mine is the other way around: it doesn't play yet, but the displays do work. I have a Pascal board installed. It indicates a coil error that I'll have to look into.

The plastic you refer to is broken on mine. I have a NOS set waiting to be installed though. There should be a good one in there. Let me know if you need a scan.

Does anybody know who the main software guy was for Gottlieb around 1982? I really dig the code on my Striker and would like to know who's responsible for it.

Ipdb used to credit Allen Edwall for it, but when I reached out to him on Facebook, he said he didn't do that game.

Just got some pictures in from the clearcoater.

The paint on this nos Striker playfield was -really- brittle, so there really wasn't any other option than a clearcoat. It came out amazing!

Before:
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After:
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You're looking at Gottlieb's way to incorporate the Lane Change feature to the upper 'GOAL' lanes on my '82 Striker: a 5v switch attached to the high voltage eos flipper switch. The eos is on the left of the red tab, Lane Change is on the right.

To me, this solution looks quite unsafe. The paper divider with the red tab on it is the only thing that seperates 50v flipper power from 5v switch power. Both wear and human error can cause big problems to the boards here.

I'm about to restore this machine and would like your opinions.

2 questions:
1. What's your opinion on Gottlieb's approach to this? Safe or unsafe?
2. If unsafe, any ideas on how to create a durable safer situation?

Many thanks for your replies!

Off topic: yay, my 1000th Pinside post!

Hey, that's catchy.

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I like the idea of the plastic lifter and I really like the idea of putting heat shrink on the terminals. I'll try to make it so that only the contacts themselves are exposed.

Thanks @Slochar!

Interesting! Is something like this needed on Pascal's PI-80 board too? That's what my game runs on.

I've just finished a playfield swap on my Striker. It looks and works beautifully, except for the two yellow pop bumpers. And... I can't wrap my head around why that's the case.

I've exchanged the pop bumper driver boards with those of the two working pops to check if they work: all four pbdb's work fine. There's voltage on the coils and they have 3,8 ohms resistance.

Any ideas on where I should look next?

Picture for attention.

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Sorry for the confusion. I meant all four pdbd's work fine when I test them in the white pop bumpers.

Will check for the ground connection and 5v at the pbdb's tomorrow. Many thanks for the suggestions!

Solved! Thanks @sparky672. It did turn out to be a missing 5v. One of these terminals was not connected.

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I'm looking for the German sound rom files for my Striker. Got the USA and French ones already. Anyone?

Picture for attention.

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