I have the brief pleasure of housing a super rare game for a friend this week.
This excellent Gottlieb Neptune showed up on Saturday morning and will be leaving on Thursday
Not nearly enough time to fully enjoy it, but I am going to try my hardest.
It was pieced together and lovingly brought back to life by one of our resident EM gurus, AC70. Maybe he'll chime in and share some of his process on this pin.
This was the 2nd last single player wedgehead that Gottlieb made and it has some unique features such as DC coils, which make the game play very peppy, and EM score reels with "digital" looking red numbers printed on black. It's clear that Gottlieb was falling behind in the solid state race and orders were down as a result. Only 270 of these machines were ever produced.
To make it even more heart-breaking, Neptune is an add-a-ball and I've been wanting an AAB for a while.
Gameplay is simple. You start at 3 balls and work your way down to none. Getting over a certain amoint of points awards you an extra ball and brings your remaining ball count up again. This goes back to the days where pins were lumped in with gambling devices in certain states and awarding free games was forbidden. But adding extra balls to extend the current game was the decided workaround to this law.
Gottlieb was big on playing card themes, and NEPTUNE is no different. The object is to make matching pairs via the rollovers. Two saucers also award the next lit red or black card. If you get the black sequence completed, the holes alternate for the WOW (free ball) and if you complete both sequences (making all the pairs), both holes are lit for WOW!
I'm sure I missed a few finer details, but that's the gist of it. It's an intersting layout with 3 sets of rollovers and assymterical slingshots. The right one is almst touching the right flipper, so no chance for an easy controlled shot from that side without a drop/live catch.
Anyway, just thought I would share. This is easily the rarest game I've had in my gameroom.
Maybe, if I'm lucky, it'll come back to visit again one day
This excellent Gottlieb Neptune showed up on Saturday morning and will be leaving on Thursday
Not nearly enough time to fully enjoy it, but I am going to try my hardest.
It was pieced together and lovingly brought back to life by one of our resident EM gurus, AC70. Maybe he'll chime in and share some of his process on this pin.
This was the 2nd last single player wedgehead that Gottlieb made and it has some unique features such as DC coils, which make the game play very peppy, and EM score reels with "digital" looking red numbers printed on black. It's clear that Gottlieb was falling behind in the solid state race and orders were down as a result. Only 270 of these machines were ever produced.
To make it even more heart-breaking, Neptune is an add-a-ball and I've been wanting an AAB for a while.
Gameplay is simple. You start at 3 balls and work your way down to none. Getting over a certain amoint of points awards you an extra ball and brings your remaining ball count up again. This goes back to the days where pins were lumped in with gambling devices in certain states and awarding free games was forbidden. But adding extra balls to extend the current game was the decided workaround to this law.
Gottlieb was big on playing card themes, and NEPTUNE is no different. The object is to make matching pairs via the rollovers. Two saucers also award the next lit red or black card. If you get the black sequence completed, the holes alternate for the WOW (free ball) and if you complete both sequences (making all the pairs), both holes are lit for WOW!
I'm sure I missed a few finer details, but that's the gist of it. It's an intersting layout with 3 sets of rollovers and assymterical slingshots. The right one is almst touching the right flipper, so no chance for an easy controlled shot from that side without a drop/live catch.
Anyway, just thought I would share. This is easily the rarest game I've had in my gameroom.
Maybe, if I'm lucky, it'll come back to visit again one day
