Chicago Coin WIP EM Texas Ranger Gatling Gun (Chicago Coin, 1963) [asset package] 2022-01-19

[Isaac Sauvage]

While searching for something else the other day, I randomly discovered the flyer below. Needles to say, I was instantly intrigued. What was this game, exactly? Or was it mostly just an art piece?

Texas Ranger Gatling Gun (Chicago Coin, 1963) Flyer

pinballnirvana.com

Googling for pics and videos, the first thing I found were pics of the exterior:

Wow, it's real!

There's even a refurbished version at Tim Arnold's PHoF!​

Then I came across this gameplay video, in which you can see inside and watch how it plays. It's obviously very primitive, almost like a hundred-year-old, second-gen Caille Bros game. Screenie below:

Dangit Tonto, where's my glasses?​

But I was able to rework assets from a helpful PinRepair page to put together a mockup of what gameplay might look like, emulated:

Thanks old friend, I owe you some fire-water.​

So I put together the best assets I could find and uploaded them to Image Collections. That includes two videos, a quick sketch I made to indicate the unique targets & their sequence, and the reworked gameplay layers (which do still need some retouching, as seen above). Dunno if anything more comes of all this, but I figured I'd throw it out there. Further details below, and the download:

Chicago Coin - EM - Texas Ranger Gatling Gun (Chicago Coin, 1963) [asset package]

Texas Ranger "Gatling Gun" / IPDB No. 6638 / December, 1965 IPDB HIGHLIGHTS: Manufacturer: Chicago Coin Machine Manufacturing Company (1932-1977) Date Of Manufacture: December, 1965 Type: Electro-mechanical (EM) Theme: Cowboys -...

pinballnirvana.com

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

@Gimli,
Hi Bob, any idea of how difficult the cab would be to make in FP-BAM?

@pinballdaveh,
Are you familiar with games like this? I'm thinking the aiming reticule arcs a small current on to the copper portion of the targets, thus registering successful hits. (see attached pic)

There's a second video showing more clearly how this works;

 

[AnonTet]

There was some really weird/different stuff in the early days huh? Not to mention the theme alone would never get approval to production nowadays!

That said, seems really fun and more difficult that I though it would be.

 

[pinballdaveh]

There was some really weird/different stuff in the early days huh? Not to mention the theme alone would never get approval to production nowadays!

That said, seems really fun and more difficult that I though it would be.

I never got to work on this machine. When I started working for vending companies this machine might have been 15 years old. The vendors that did have them had an arcade location for them. After they served their usefulness the vendors would sell them off usually to collectors. The Chicago coin company for its time made some of the most innovative arcade machines, and usually very reliable machines when they came out.

 

[AnonTet]

I just assume companies needed they machines to be robust parts wise. they had to support prolonged abuse at the arcades. At that time, electrical components were probably the most fragile part I would think.