A comparison between the Guns N' Roses prototype playfield and the sample playfield
Subject: Fwd: Re: Guns N' Roses Prototype?!?
From: "Dave Nelson"
Date: Sat, December 16, 2006 11:34 pm
To:
jay@ipdb.org
Jay, I am sorry I did not receive your first email. I am to believe that this playfield is a true
"prototype" playfield. It was made before the "sample" games. Please read the attached email
that was sent to me from Orin Day who as you know was on the design team for this game. I
believe on the sample games the text was messed up hence the reason for reverting back to
some of the original text. There are other differences that this field has that the sample and
production ones don't. Here is a list of most of it:
There is a hole for a stand up target as well as an extra insert labeled "Time To Rock" to the left
of the Axl hole. This was removed in the sample and production games.
There is a slot for a roll over switch in front of the captive ball. This was also removed on both
sample and production games.
There is also an extra slot for a roll over switch in the mini loop. Again removed on sample and
production games
The cross in the middle of the playfield is black on mine and on the sample and production games
it is a lighter blue.
There are quite a few inserts with different words on them. Here are the ones located on the
guitar handle:
My playfield: Axl 6 Ball
sample/production playfield: Axl 3 Ball
My playfield: Lite Riot Ball
sample/production playfield: Riot
My playfield: Duff Mode
sample/production playfield: Duff Rocks
My playfield: Night Train
sample/production playfield: Super Snake
My playfield: Find Matt
sample/production playfield: Matt Scoring
My playfield: Gilby Mode
sample/production playfield: Gilby Rolls
The 2 inserts right below the lower pop bumper:
My playfield: Riot
Sample/ production playfield: Riot Jackpot
My playfield: Jackpot (over a green insert)
Sample/production playfield: Super Jackpot (over a red insert)
As you mentioned my playfield does say "Lite Roses" on the left in-lane just as the production
game does, however, mine is over a red insert where as the production and even sample games
use an orange insert in that location.
There may be a few other little things I am forgetting, but that is the bulk of it. As you can see it is
very different from the production and sample playfields. I hope this helps clear things up! Now
get my pics up there for the whole world to see! :o)
If you have any other questions pleas let me know.
Thanks,
David Nelson
Note: forwarded message attached.
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Subject: Re: Guns N' Roses Prototype?!?
From: "Orin A. Day"
Date: Wed, September 20, 2006 6:55 am
To: "The Man"
Hi,
Yes, that's sure an early one! In fact, it's earlier than the game I used to
own - which was the first to be "built" and was used like a 2nd whitewood
game. I don't remember if that one had the "time to rock" hole filled with
bondo or if it was truly rescreened. There were four revs of screened
playfield that I recall. Yours was the first, I think mine was the second,
the sample games (with messed up inlane text) were third, and fourth was
production. Though there may have been other minor interim versions that i
don't recall.
Before I go into the details of what I remember, let me strongly encourage
you to submit those photos to ipdb.org for the Guns N' Roses listing. It
would be great for more to be able to see the differences.
IMO The Time to Rock target would be the biggest difference, by the AxlHole,
that was like a "more time" feature.
Lots of the text is of course very early, as the game rules were still
evolving. At first creation, there was a lock/passthrough mechanism at the
top of the game as part of the shooter ramp wireform. It was called "The
Stage" - hence "lock band member" on the insert, and the whole idea of
"getting the band on stage" which survived in the dots (and speech?) even
after the mechanism was removed. I don't think the mechanism was ever truly
built, though we did have art for it. (It would have been a ball dump
similar to what we eventually used in Apollo 13 - remembering that GnR Stage
feature inspired me to suggest that we go with a 13 ball multiball on A13, a
suggestion I made over dinner at the spring trade show in Reno.)
On the guitar we changed the text as the rules came together. Riot was lit
by shooting the guitar hole, then the mini-loop. I think in the final
version we just started it outright. On that rev of playfield the orbits
were narrow enough for a spinner, that got changed. Originally "Slash Solo"
was a spinner rule. We replaced the word "mode" with better text on a number
of inserts once we figured out what the rules really were. Lyman wrote the
video mode that became Gilby Rolls, which was reused a bunch of times in
other games.
We had the switch on the captive ball rest position so that we could detect
hits other than through the DUFF targets. I think its removal was due to
several factors, chiefly mechanical issues with the switch adjustment, and
general cost reduction. I don't recall if we ended up having four outer
orbit switches or two in the final version, I think we kept all four, that
kind of cost reduction didn't happen until the Sega days.
On this PF in addition to the spinner you wouldn't have had the one way gate
at the top of the playfield that fed the top lanes. That was added by Gary
Stern, who wanted more pop bumper visits - that was a selling point to
Europe, a large part of our market at the time. Making that change disrupted
a lot of game rules, since you could no longer loop both orbits.
We also added color in the bottom 1/3 of the playfield, to brighten it up and
make it look more polished, IIRC.
Hope this helps,
Orin
On Thu, 7 Sep 2006, The Man wrote:
> Orin,
>
> Can you go over some of the differences pictured in this prototype
> playfield and tell me why they were changed? It looks like there was a
> rollover switch in front of the captive ball, what was that for? Here
> are the pics, sorry for the poor quality:
[redacted]