You just can't compare and ask what's better? There are differences. You have to rate different features, do a weighting system and tally your score.
In general, the system 11 games have a better playfield layout (more fun to play). The system 11 machines have more of a traditional electrical system with components and a cabinet ground (unlike gott. sys 3). OK, most system 3 games are DMD (not all).
Are you asking is a Banzai Run is better than a Cactus Jack, or pick ant Gott system 3? Easy answer here. OR are you comparing Stargate (generally speaking considered the best Sys 3) to I guess Millionaire (My vote for worst system 11). BTW, Millionaire isn't a terrible game.

I think the better question...

What's the best system 11 game and why? What's the worst system 11 game and why? And, same thing for System 3.

My 2 cents, system 11 keep me entertained longer. System 3 require less maintenance.

System 3 games are built like tanks and weigh the equivalent, utilizing mosfets first if I recall.
Gottlieb System 3 games for the most part are fun.

System 11 just has better games overall , except for that dumb interconnect board used.

Depends if you like good games or bad games .

If system 3 were better there would’ve been a system 4

I'm service oriented.

For me, pinballs aren't much fun if they aren't working.

Gottlieb had a reputation for being harder to fix than Williams/Bally.

Two or three years ago I was thinking "Now that Williams/Bally System 11 games are getting towards 30-40 years old, and I'm starting to see many rare issues become common, I need to reconsider whether Gottlieb is NOW about as reliable and easy to service as the Williams/Bally games."

Then I worked on half a dozen Gottlieb System 3 games.

No question.

You want a working machine? Gottlieb is harder to fix.

It's not their engineering. Some of the Gottlieb mechanisms are jaw dropping clever, and insanely reliable. But the overall quality of the machine is not to the standard of Williams/Bally system 11 games.

Gottliebs never made the money that Williams/Bally games made. If the gameplay was compelling, the quarters would have flowed. The quarters never flowed, so the verdict of history is that Gottliebs aren't the quality of FUN that can be had with System 11 games.

That having been said, I like playing Gottliebs occasionally. Their flipper system is always an interesting change of pace. I like the rules of some of their games, I like the toys of some of their games, and I like the shots.

But overall, you are better served with Williams/Bally System 11 games than Gottliebs.

Example:

RIGHT NOW, I'm coming off of a 30-hour Gottlieb repair. The customer brought a Super Mario Mushroom World (Redemption, small pinball, yellow sides) in very poor condition to me. They had multiple technicians attempt to repair this machine... it would get set out and break on location, they'd pick it up (echos of Black Hole...).

Some of the prior work was well done, some was not.

Mechanically, the flipper bats were shattered, the flipper mechanisms in poor quality. Yeah, it had been played. Rubber might have been original, it had been many years sitting in the back of this operators warehouse after every technician that had tried to get it working had given up. Plastics were ok, but the paint was worn down to the wood in several places, the inside of the cabinet sides were deeply scratched due to the hundreds of times the playfield had been lifted during various repairs. We touched up the paint, got flipper kits from Steve Young's Pinball Resource and replaced all the bulbs and rubber, deep cleaned the playfield.

Rebuilt the drop target assemblies with fresh grease, disassembled and repaired all the mechanics.

Coil sleeves were worn, we replaced them all.

Found three coil plunger springs that were broken or had previously been replaced with the wrong springs. Got those things fixed.

Pretty standard stuff.

This is pretty easy work for us. Then we started to address this machine's problems.

Replacing the 500 ohm 1 watt pot used to adjust the +5vdc got the logic working. Battery dead, resoldered a new lithium coin cell onto the board because you have to do board modifications to put in NVRAM. Weird display of text writing over itself on the display was solved with a factory reset. That got the primary computer working.

Driver board was missing a few IRL530's (prior technicians had just pulled the transistors when they couldn't repair the coil and coil wiring problems) so we replaced those with IRL540's, and started dealing with the three coil issues. Two were melted coils, that's easy enough.

The other was the beacon light on top. Wiring here had rubbed it's insulation off and was shorting to metal. The beacon itself used at one time a rubber tire which had turned into goo. Pulled all that out, probably could have ordered correct stuff from Steve Young, but we just made the beacon not turn, the light would light up fine... except that the flashlamp socket was shorted, causing fuse blowing until we got that figured out. Also the motor that had previous turned the beacon was shorted. Have I mentioned that Gottlieb troubleshooting goes through a LOT of fuses? We disconnected the motor first, but the shorted lamp socket caught us by surprise.

Finally, beacon not blowing fuses, two coils not blowing fuses/driver transistors. Yay!

We lifted the playfield, and then the machine intermittently started blowing fuses. One of the lamps next to the drop targets had a diode leg that was shorting to the metal frame of the drop target assembly. I've had similar problems on System 11, System WPC, it can happen. Inappropriate touching. Sometimes it's easy to spot, sometimes it takes a while. This one took a while.

While troubleshooting this problem we found another spot where the wire had rubbed through it's insulation and was touching metal. Got that potential problem addressed.

Flashlamps on this game are activated through an auxillary driver board MA-1722. Previous technicians had repaired on this board on several occasions, but we are pretty good at board repair... (sad face) after several 'it works for a while' and 'but why isn't it working when we've replaced all the parts' we bought a replacement board.

Flashlamps have 'trickle power' through a .33 ohm 5watt resistor that was completely incinerated. Got that replaced.

We were feeling pretty good about this machine, then it started having switch matrix problems.

Which, because the Strobe lines for the switches (think about Columns on the Williams/Bally systems) are used for both the lamps and the switches, wasn't a switch problem, it was another intermittently shorted lamp socket. Surprising how much time it can take to fix intermittent problems.

Now, this machine was a 'tough dog'. Prior work for decades by technicians of various skill levels. It had sat for years in the back of the warehouse before it was brought to us.

I think about amusement auctions. Sometimes you'll see a game being sold at auction with some problems. Then you'll see that same game at the next auction being sold with problems, and the next, and the next. The same game. Each buyer had taken the machine in, and found out that 'nobody can fix it', and sold it back at the next auction. Usually we are the guys who fix the 'nobody can fix it' issues.

So, MANY issues here were just on the order of 'nobody can fix it'. Lots of prior work to clean up.

But SOME of these issues were Gottlieb specific (it's occasional to find shorted lamp sockets on Gottliebs, it's rare to find shorted lamp sockets on Williams/Bally), or complicated by the overall difficulty of bring Gottlieb machines up to fully repaired and good operation status.

Gottliebs are in general tougher to keep repaired. They don't stay working as long as Williams/Bally machines, and when they break, there is a statistically higher chance (in my experience) that the problems will be harder to find and fix.

A lot of those Sys3 sat on location forever compared to sys11. I’ve STILL seen Gottlieb’s, especially Mushroom World being held on by ops because they out-earn sys11 games handily.

It’s a pleasure having System 3’s on location, they are reliable and built very solid. With any game, the longer it’s been on location the more compounding issues it has.

Get the Gottlieb! They’re awesome and fun. Sometimes troubleshooting can be tough, just be thorough.

Comparing apples to oranges is a challenge.

When deciding upon which pinball to invite into your home, you should PLAY a lot of pinballs. Then play THE MACHINE you are planning upon buying. Cash on the glass.

I can't tell you what is the best pinball FOR YOU.

Personally, in my top ten list is 'Countdown', a Gottlieb. I know the service issues, I know the somewhat limited gameplay, I know that when I finally buy my dream list of games it'll be extremely hard to find a Countdown in good cosmetic quality. I still like the game.

Pinballs run on magic. Some combination of sounds, graphics, theme, shots, mechanics provide some indefinable quality that is greater than the sum of the parts.

Your personal reaction to a machine. It's important.

What is better for you, might not be as good for someone else.

So if you love Gottliebs, or a particular Gottlieb, you need to get that machine.

However, Gottliebs don't stay working as well as System 11 games. They were never regarded by people in the amusement industry as being as good overall at what a pinball is supposed to do as the System 11 games. They didn't make money relative to the money made by System 11 games, which means that the population as a whole voted with their quarters to play System 11 games more.

And of course pinside's ratings... (shudders)

Better not to go there.

I do think your question has an answer.

The question is simple are pricewise gottlieb dmd machines better than system11 or not and why??

No.

Gottliebs deficits in quality, repairability, and FUN (measured by opinion polls as well as quarters through the cash slot) make them not as good as System 11 games.

Individual circumstances with individual machines and individual preference may tilt the balance toward the correct machine to purchase being a Gottlieb. But overall, System 11 is preferred.

Each platform has good games and bad. System 11 had about 12 good games, and system 3 had 5 good games. System 3's are more reliable and trouble free, primarily due to their coin cell battery design vs williams 3 AA batteries that always leaked. Playfield durability was about the same. Gottliebs cabinets always seemed to weigh more. Williams had better flippers.

Not my experience, but I respect your years of experience, and your viewpoint.

Always good to hear that there are techs that find Gottliebs to be comparable to Williams.

The Rescue 911 helicopter, the rope lighting on Stargate, the shorted lamp sockets that Wipe Out came out with when the machine was released, the cpu problems... (there was a bad batch of 65C02 processors, caused intermittent problems, and three different boards on System 3 games used these. Ultimately we had to replace all the boards with the bad batches of chips... we had ten machines that came to us with this issue, so we had 10 brand new pinballs with three board replacements each...)

All that stuff is history, but I remember it. It colors my view of the overall quality of Gottliebs.

I want to know what kind of experience you had twenty years ago when people were just straight up pulling half the boards from these Williams sys11 to get them working again? I think it's important to note that many sys3 games simply avoided things like damaged boards (since many of these did not come with alkaline battery-backups in the first place). And sure there is no cabinet ground and there should have been but at least twenty years ago you were less likely to need to completely replace the sound controller board in a sys3. Also it's very bias'ed to say that these machines are having problems "now" - because sure williams sys11 already had this work done twenty years ago, and do not use all their original boards.

Fair criticism.

I apparently missed the System 11 board debacle twenty years ago you are talking about. It sounds awful.

As for battery acid (alkaline), yup, terrible problem for System 11's. Not a problem for Gottliebs. And ridiculously common. Arguably the number one reason pinballs are ending up in landfills.

Sound board problems... I haven't had much problem with sound boards on Gottliebs, and I have had a few sound board issues through the years on Williams/Bally, but not enough to make an issue out of it.

Ground issues with early Gottliebs, I don't hold that against them, they just didn't know. I'm certainly glad that we've got such good advice on how to get these games reliable today.

Not quite sure what your argument is about saying Gottliebs have problems now when other pinballs had their problems looked at in the past... all pinballs have problems. Now. It's just a matter of how frequently, and how easily the repairs progress.

My personal experience is that a lot of otherwise great System 3 Gottliebs are more troublesome than Williams System 11 or WPC games. My personal experience is that intermittent problems take quite a bit of effort to resolve in Gottlieb games, and less effort on the System 11 games. And dramatically less fuses. (Grins).

But it's fair to say that I'm biased, and that my bias might be particular to me.

We can only offer advice based upon our personal experience of the situation. It is VERY helpful to have a contrasting point of view.

I was hoping that this thread would provide an opportunity for Gottlieb supporters to speak out!

I mean you make all great points in your response- and I do not disagree about the general level of "troubleness", just saying that these sys11 were getting parted out far fewer as a percentage than those sys3's, many of which likely have some of the highest partout % of games produced in that era. And that led to games being generally well cared for and the sys11 was accessible to home users to a degree. So we do also have a situation where maybe only the best of the sys3's ended up staying around and a great deal of well cared for sys11's are available and overall much more desirable and in users opinions more worthy of dedicated repairs etc over the long haul.

Grandson had a pinball party/gameroom sleepover. The most played game was Earthshaker. Lights, Camera, Action second.
All the machines go play, Shaker and LCA they kept coming back to.

Let's compare.

Gottlieb system 3 games (1989-1996):

Lights camera action, silver slugger, Vegas, deadly weapon, title fight, nudge it, bell ringer, car hop, hoops, cactus Jack's,
Class of 1812, surf 'n safari, Caribbean cruise, operation thunder, bullseye, super Mario bros, super Mario bros: mushroom world, cue ball wizard, street fighter II, tee'd off, wipeout, gladiators, world challenge soccer, rescue 911, Freddy: a nightmare on elm street, Shaq attaq, Stargate, Frank Thomas Big hurt, water world, strikes n spares, Mario andretti, barb wire, Brooks and Dunn (none of us will likely ever see this game, however)

Stargate is CLEARLY the king of this group. Several quirky games here, and many stinkers. There are a few sleepers as well. People are starting to catch on to class of 1812 and tee'd off, but car hop is still VERY underrated.

Williams System 11 games (1986-1991):

High Speed - Jan 1986. System 11
Grand Lizard - April 1986. System 11
Road Kings - July 1986. System 11
Pin*Bot - Oct. 1986. 11A
Millionaire - Jan. 1987. 11A
F -14 tomcat - March 1987. 11A
Fire! - August 1987. 11A
Big guns - Oct. 1987. 11A
Space Station - Dec. 1987. 11B
Cyclone - Feb. 1988. 11B
Banzai Run - May 1988. 11B
Swords of fury - June 1988. 11B
Taxi - August 1988. 11B
Jokerz - Dec. 1988. 11B
Earthshaker - Feb. 1989. 11B
Black Knight 2000 - April 1989. 11B
Transporter - April 1989. 11B
Police Force - August 1989. 11B
Elvira and the Party Monsters - Oct. 1989. 11B
Bad cats - Nov. 1989. 11B
Mousin around - Dec. 1989. 11B
Whirlwind - Jan. 1990. 11B
Gameshow - April 1990. 11C
Pool sharks - June 1990. 11C
Rollergames - June 1990. 11C
Diner - Sept. 1990. 11C
Radical! - Sept. 1990. 11C
Dr. Dude - Nov. 1990. 11C
Riverboat Gambler - Nov. 1990.11C
Bugs Bunny Birthday Ball - Jan. 1991. 11C

LOTS of good games here with no clear forerunner: Whirlwind, Pinbot, EATPM, BK2000, Diner, High Speed, SoF, Taxi, Earthshaker...the list goes on. Also many quirky games, but very few bad ones. There are almost no "sleepers," since most everyone has caught on that these are good solid games with lots of replayability. Due to high production numbers, the best values are Pinbot and high speed. I'm really digging for an underappreciated game here, but riverboat gambler and pool sharks are as close as it gets.

Results:

- Williams has 7 system 11 games in the pinside top 100, gottlieb system 3 has zero (the first appearance of a GS3 is Stargate at #140...which is CRIMINALLY LOW)
- WS11 has tons of hits, and few flops...GS3 is the exact opposite
- WS11 games have consistently gone up dramatically, while GS3 pins have remained largely stagnant

It is clear that WS11 games are preferred and considered the better games. Gottliebs are cheaper, however, so when it comes to bank for buck...they may have something yet to give.

Thanks for posting that list @Daditude, As I read this thread I was thinking...what games are in these system lineups? So now I'm wondering...is there a list out there for all machines and what system they run on?

The easy way is to lookup one of those games on the list and then there will be a hotlink under the "generation" that will list the games that also used that system.

(nods)

And I use IPDB a lot for quick 'generation check'. Do a google search for 'IPDB Whirlwind'.

Just a quick note of gratitude, Daditude.

Your post is VERY helpful.

Thank you for taking your time to compile this.

I definitely nominate you for 'best post on Pinside'... if that were a thing.

Thanks!