Wizard Pinball Mods
This is a licensed conversion of Gottlieb’s 1977 ‘Team One’, an add-a-ball game. Its lower cabinet was made in either of two depths (heights):
Standard style – This cabinet has a single-slot coin door first used on Gottlieb games between 1975-1980 where the coin entrance housing was mounted on the door. The coin doors were reused with new decal applied. The playfield did not require slots cut out to accommodate the coin chutes as the deeper cabinet allowed the coin chutes to be mounted below the playfield, allowing coin operation. All legs are 27 inches long.
Shallow style – This cabinet has a double-slot coin door first used on Gottlieb games between 1963-1975 and, mounted above it, the coin entrance housing first used between 1967-1975. As ‘Team One’ (the source game) had the Standard style of cabinet, all of the shallow style lower cabinets were newly made. The coin door “skin” and coin entrance housing were new stock from a licensed Gottlieb parts seller. At customer request, coin chutes would be added and the playfield would have slots cut out to accommodate them. Without this requested option, the shallow cabinet games cannot operate on coins. All legs are 31 inches long.
The backglass art is a licensed reuse from Gottlieb’s 1971 ‘Wizard’, an add-a-ball game made for Italy. The playfield and cabinet art are a licensed reuse from Gottlieb’s 1975 ‘Abra Ca Dabra’, a replay game. All internal mechanisms and cabling were reused from the source games. The motor boards were stripped, sanded, coated with polyurethane, and new labels applied. The backbox inserts were modified to account for the different light bulb arrangement.
The sole Sample game (shown here) has no serial number and used an ‘Abra Ca Dabra’ playfield with its column of five inserts in center playfield relabeled (and rewired) to indicate WOW. Its backglass did not track added balls. The insert positions numbered 1-6 were carried over from ‘Team One’. On production games, the converted ‘Team One’ playfields do not have the center column of inserts. Instead, the added balls are counted discreetly on the backglass using five red orbs, as was done on the 1971 Italian ‘Wizard’ game. The numbered playfield inserts were replaced with letters for W-I-Z-A-R-D. The two dip targets were labeled W and D.
This game was also produced as a conversion kit, see Headsup Pinball’s 2022 ‘Wizard’.
The manufacturer plans to limit the production to a quantity of 16. As of March 2023, 14 have been made. Their serial numbers are interspersed with that of the kits, as follows: 08001, 08003, 08004, 08008, 08011, 08012, 08017, 08019, 08020, 08021, 08022, 08024, 08025, 08026, 08027, and 08028. A certificate was placed on every game. The certificate shows the old Gottlieb address of 165 W. Lake St., Northlake, Illinois, but of course their manufacturing plant ceased operations there. The company name, Headsup Pinball, does not appear anywhere on the outside of the game but on later-made games a sticker showing the company name was placed inside the cabinet on the front cross-brace.
Michael Ostradick was a key concept collaborator and consultant for art finalization and logistics for this conversion game and for the kits. Terry Phillips was also a key collaborator for art/concept design.
Prices when new:
$4,000 for Standard cabinet
$5,000 for Shallow cabinet (coining option at extra charge)
