Phantom of the Opera. Shameless cash-grab that tried to ride the coattails of the Andrew Lloyd Weber muscial. Has none of the music or anything else. Total bait and switch. Awful game with shallow rules and a PG-13 art package.

Of course. And yes, Data East’s POTO was a shameless cash grab and ripoff of the name recognition of the musical. 100% without the success of the musical, Data East wouldn’t have touched this title.

The Phantom’s mask from the ALW production was unique and iconic; the pinball ripped this off verbatim in the art package. They also ripped off a Sarah Brightman lookalike for Christine in the art package, down to the long curly hair. What they didn’t rip off was the music. They didn’t have the rights. POTO was in the public domain, hence the cash grab. ALW’s music was copyrighted, hence no pinball use. I lived this era of Broadway. POTO was THE major broadway draw in 1990 (in which it was the top-grossing show), shortly followed by Miss Saigon (in NY) in 1991. Unlike movies, must-see Broadway productions remain top draws and sold out for years (Rent, Book of Mormon, Hamilton).

POTO was a truly awful pinball. I owned it. Worst playing game ever in my collection.

None of those titles implied they had assets from the underlying IP. POTO did. When I had this stinker in my collection, every single person who played it asked, “Where’s the music?”. It had the exact same title, and used art clearly referencing the musical. IMHO, that was misleading, beyond the level of the faux-titles mentioned above.

BTW, I would *love* a true ALW POTO Pin. Lot’s to work with here, most especially the music. Just enough to fill a great, modern-day mode-based game.

My biggest complaint with Gottlieb were the flipper mechs. Way too much travel. They created an enormous valley when held; you could trap anything at almost any speed. And they were basically on or off. Very hard to get subtle post passes, etc.

That said, Stargate was a true sleeper. The best Gottlieb game of the 90s and a great treatment of the theme. It deserves a better rating than the ~120 it has here. Top 100 for sure.