Close Encounters of the Third Kind

A full-length late-1960s electro-mechanical playfield shot under glass, with a rocket-launch/space-race theme and a marigold-orange, deep blue, magenta and white colour scheme. The top arch carries a curved banner reading WE WERE ALONE in fat yellow block letters with red shadowing. Below it six round drop targets in a row are lettered A B C D E F in yellow discs, flanked by two large circular 1000 POINTS pop-targets decorated with red stars. The centre is a huge black starburst of cream score-value diamonds stepping 9.000, 8.000, 7.000, 6.000, 5.000, 4.000, 3.000, 2.000, 1.000, pierced by two orange star badges reading 3X and 2X. Painted artwork shows a rocket lifting off in a burst of flame, a tall maroon tower, a spotted mushroom cloud, small cartoon spacemen and women in orange space outfits, and an astronaut in a white suit on the right edge. Three yellow starbursts labelled 500 SCORE SPIN ROTY and a VALUE 1000 sit on the flanks. The lower apron reads FLIPPER BUTTONS ON SIDE OF CABINET between two red-and-navy diamond arrows. Two white instruction cards occupy the lower third, and the cabinet front shows the D. Gottlieb & Co. oval logo in red and blue.

Illuminated, wood-framed backglass with a gold metal outer edge and a busy airbrushed sci-fi poster composition. Across the top, in enormous slanted red block capitals with heavy black three-dimensional shadowing, reads CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND; the words OF THE THIRD KIND sit stacked smaller at the right of the title. A red script brand name, Gottlieb, is printed at the upper left over dark brown silhouetted buildings. Four rectangular score windows with rounded gold-and-red surrounds are arranged in a ring and carry blue seven-segment numerals: top-left 108 680 beside a yellow 1, top-right 000 000 beside a yellow 2, lower-left 000 000 beside a yellow 3, lower-right UUUU UUUU beside a yellow 4. A wide translucent beam fans down from the top-centre window in white and pale blue, containing a small central display of blue digits. The centre shows a large terraced flying saucer with a lit multi-window band and red laser beams beneath it, hovering over a black star-strewn sky with white lightning-bolt light rays, and a yellow-black striped radar dish on the left. The bottom third shows a crowd of about a dozen men in cyan and black suits standing on radiating black stripes, with red mechanical lettering reading GAME OVER, a dark multi-bladed rotor, and a cluster of grey-blue male heads at the bottom right.

A painted, airbrushed sci-fi backglass set inside a cream-coloured wooden backbox cabinet. The dominant image is a huge, fat, disc-shaped flying saucer seen from below and slightly to one side, filling the lower two-thirds of the glass: its underside is a hot magenta-pink with radiating panel lines, its upper rim is banded with small yellow and red lights, and its edges are flame-like, dissolving into swirls of red, blue and yellow oil-paint clouds. Three long white shard or beam shapes rise from the saucer. Behind it the sky is a turbulent black field with bright yellow lightning-like bursts and a yellow city skyline silhouette at the left edge. Two stacked pairs of mechanical score reels dominate the upper half, each reel in a chrome-and-blue rounded frame with a red arrow marker; black digit wheels show white numbers. At upper left a light-blue instruction panel carries the word PLAYERS above four orange-and-gold numbered circles, and beneath them two lines of small black text. Lower left the words BALL IN PLAY are stacked in white and red capitals. Colours are red, magenta-pink, yellow, blue and black throughout, in a loose, painterly airbrush style with heavy visible brushwork and saturated, slightly uneven colour fills. The glass is glossy and reflects a window-shaped light; the cabinet wood is chipped and bare around the edges.