The following is a list of unreleased or prototype games that were worked on at Gottlieb in the early to mid eighties before the doors were shut forever. Several of these games were tested on location in and around Chicago - most notably at Just Games in the NW suburbs. This is not a definitive list, but I suspect it is pretty close! Aside from FHMC Q*Bert, Insector, Screw Loose (and now Tylz!) it is feared all the remaining games have been lost to the ages. The majority of the information below was gathered from the game programmers, Gottlieb employees, friends, etc. If you have any information you would like to add - pictures, ROMs, notes, please feel free to send them to me.

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GV101-PROTECTOR (Videoman/Guardian/Argus/Why Me?/Superman)

Release Date: prototype
Programming: Tom Malinowski and Warren Davis
Sound: David Thiel
Video Graphics: Jeff Lee
Number produced: 4

Notes from Warren Davis:
"GV101 was Protector a superhero game designed and programmed by Tom Malinowski (with programming help from Warren Davis). It tested very badly. The name was also changed at one point to Guardian, and then Argus (why I don't know!). I remember that our joke name for it became "ProVidGuardArgus". I also remember the Waxman version of the hero that Jeff made, which was a total riot."

Various Waxman scans from the original graph paper layouts (1) (2) (3). (courtesy of Jeff Lee)

Ultimately Tom Malinowski's game was called Protector (the official test name was VideoMan). Tom wanted Gottlieb to get the Superman license but they didn't. VideoMan was too close to SuperMan (since the game's hero was a caped superhero) so they went with Protector - which is what you did in the game.

Player control was a trackball where you pushed your superhero around. Bad guys would swoop down and punch you; blocking or pushing the Protector around. Players perceived the results as the trackball performing badly. During a couple of focus group tests of the game, players suggested using a joystick to control the Protector. Tom did that. It was worse. Unfortunately, there are some kinds of action that should not be controlled by a proportional controller (unless it has tactile feedback) - Protector had this kind of game action. Protector did have some fun stuff, like the ability to knock chunks out of buildings (Warren did the rubble stuff) and pick up a city bus.

The game may have been buggy, Tom was not the best designer or programmer, but the game design was primarily responsible for it's failure to test well. You have to remember that this was early days in computer game design and there were lots of elaborate ways to fail for the first time. Tom was a pioneer in his own way. Protector's failure was hard to accept, as Reactor had not done well either.

Chris Krubel recalls, "a better remembrance was one of the many incarnations of Protector/VideoMan being taken into some arcade that we must have used several times, not unlike that place that Williams always used. Anyway, I remember Rick (Beau) Tighe saying that when they set it up, there were a bunch of little kids there that said something quite bad about the game, that sort of ended Tom's feelings about game design. Not unlike me setting the record for the Lowest Collecting game on test."

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Release Date: Unreleased
Programming: Warren Davis
Sound: David Thiel
Video Graphics: Jeff Lee
Number produced: 0

Notes from Warren Davis:
"Gottlieb wanted some sort of sequel, but it was so soon after the original came out, that I thought of it more as an upgrade. I thought the original was made too easy (to pander to some focus group testing), and I thought if we came out with a faster, harder more challenging version a few months after people had time to master the original, we'd extend the life of the game. The changes we made were fairly minor from a programming point of view. As it turned out, we tested FHMC QB too early, and people weren't ready for it - they were still learning and enjoying the original - so Gottlieb shelved it."

Images of a FHMC Q*Bert marquee thanks to James Bright!

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Release Date: Unreleased
Programming: Warren Davis
Sound: David Thiel
Video Graphics: Jeff Lee
Number produced: At least one.

A slightly different version programmed for promotion of the Mello-Yello softdrink. Note from Jeff Lee, "Between certain racks a big Q*Bert on a spinning disk would fly up to a can of soda. Then his nose extended out like a straw into the can and he then presumably slurped it up."

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Release Date: prototype
Programming: Fred Darmstadt
Sound: David Thiel
Video Graphics: Jeff Lee
Number produced: 1

Arena was playable but was not successful in testing. The game was nearly completed, and hand-colored Kodolith marquees still exist.

Line drawings for mockup cabinet art (1). (courtesy of Jeff Lee)

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Release Date: prototype
Programming: Tim Skelly
Sound: David Thiel
Video Graphics: Tim Skelly
Number produced: estimated at 1 or 2

Insector was the second (of three) Tim Skelly games that were commissioned by Gottlieb.

From Joystik Magazine September 1983 "Game Design Gamble" pp18-19:
The ability to recognize a loser early is important, but imagination is what really makes a game and a designer. The idea for Insector, a man against bug game set for release in November by Gottlieb, came to designer Tim Skelly with a blitzkrieg of ants. Skelly also created Gottlieb's Reactor.

Skelly's realistic ants, spiders, scorpions and worms started as rough drawings, then came to life on the video art screen. Insector's first arcade foray brought only a lukewarm reaction from players. Despite speeding up the action and altering the graphics to help focus player attention, Skelly panicked as final testing approached.

"I was so nervous, I prepared an alternate set of graphics that would have been almost cartoonlike. But it tested phenomenally better, so the cartoons were scrapped. We tested it in an arcade for two months and it stayed in the top five games there."

Some notes from Tim Skelly:
"The cool thing about INSECTOR is how I make you enter a three-letter code in at the start. I use this value as a seed for each player's pseudo random number generator. That way, if you want exactly the same game every time, you enter the same three letters. If you wanted to handicap yourself, you would enter different letters and let the other player enter their usual letters, etc. The funny thing was that everyone at Gottlieb thought that I had put in a 'secret' code that made the game easier. Eventually, they decided that it was David's initials, DDT! It would have been a good choice if I had done anything like that. ;>)

Regarding game play, here are the basics: Top-down view. Your token/character is a spray can with a limited range arc of spray. The playfield begins as a tiled surface. You have mines that you can use to blow away the tiles and expose the dirt underneath. Insects, programmed to behave in various ways, are revealed with the dirt. They kill you if you touch them, and you score by either blowing them up or spraying them. Power-ups and points also appear when the dirt becomes visible. There is only one way to end the round, and that is by blowing up the Queen. Obviously, the first rule is to try to find the Queen as soon as possible, or immediately after you have collect all the goodies you can. Three lives."

A link to more Insector information.

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Release Date: prototype (Screw Loose was made a little later than M.A.C.H. 3)
Programming: Tim Skelly
Sound: Craig Beierwaltes
Video Graphics: Tim Skelly
Number produced: 3

Tim Skelly's response as to why Gottlieb turn down these games [Insector & Screw Loose]:
"Greedy operators. At that time the market was saturated. Thanks to Dragon's Lair, operators were expecting returns of between $500-$1000(!) a week on their games. Forget long-term earnings, they just wanted the games to pay for themselves as quickly as possible so they could make pure profit. These guys figured all games would have about the same long-term earnings. (HA!) That's why everyone was working on those (mostly) stupid laser-disc games when the business went bust That's the short version."

A link to more Screw Loose information.

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QUIZIMODO

Release Date: prototype
Programming: Sam Russo
Sound: David Thiel
Number produced: 2

QUIZIMOTO was a quiz game for arcades or bars and was tested, but never produced. The concept was good (as later trivia games by other companies would prove), but the implementation was horrible. The Apple II hardware the game ran on was not quite up to the task either.

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TYLZ

Release Date: prototype
Programming: Chris Krubel
Sound: ??
Video Graphics: Jeff Lee
Number produced: 5

I think some of these [unreleased] games were fairly developed, like Chris Krubel's surrealistic TYLZ game.

Notes from Chris Krubel:
"So what became of the TYLZ code, etc.? I think that there were only about 5 made. I asked and asked, but nobody had one after company folded. I had heard rumors that some of our higher ups took some of the machines with them, although nobody fessed up to having one. Too bad, I think that that game really was fun and it was a good workout. As I remember though, only Rick Tighe and I were the only ones to play, ie who knew the rules, or at least all of the hidden things, like Macho Points in KRULL!." "I did the graphics on the [KRULL] Hexagon. My main claim to fame here is that the underlying math of the parts of the hexagon went on to allow some cool graphics of crumbling playfields in TYLZ (which nobody saw!)."

Sprite scans from the original graph paper layouts (1) (2). (courtesy of Jeff Lee)

Frans van Egmond found a Tylz PCB! A link to more Tylz information.

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GRIDLEE

Release Date: prototype
Programming: Ed Rotberg
Video Graphics: Roger Hector
Sound: Howard Delman
Number produced: 1

Notes from Howard Delman:
"Videa was started in November of 1981 as a video game development company. Our first video game deal was with Gottlieb. As a guess, I'd say we probably signed the deal in the spring of 1982. The contract we signed with them stipulated that we would create three game concepts, and they would select one for development. The one they picked was GRIDLEE (originally named "Pogoz"). The GRIDLEE that Dale [Luck] has was the only one ever built. It was hand built by Paul Brandt (technician), Roger Hector (mechanical, graphical & industrial design), and me (electrical design). The sound on Gridlee was not created from programmable chips. There were no decent sound chips commercially available at that time, and I couldn't afford to design and fabricate my own. I designed discrete sound circuits using analog components. There was some programmability, since the CPU could store values to affect the characteristics of the circuitry. The game was put out on field test, and did poorly, so Gottlieb decided not to build it. Around that time, the assets of Videa (but not the corporate entity) were acquired by Pizza Time Theater. The new corporation, formed from the combination of the existing Pizza Time engineering department and the employees of and assets of Videa, was named Sente Technology. I re-worked the GRIDLEE hardware, and it became SAC-I. The rest, as they say, is history."

A Gridlee screen shot.
Download Gridlee. (359KB)

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Release Date: unreleased
Programming: Chris Brewer
Sound: ??
Number produced: ??

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Release Date: unreleased
Programming: Steve Pacheco
Sound: ??
Number produced: ??

By a programmer who had tattoo on his arm (ex nuclear submarine crew, I can’t remember his name). The game was finished and ready to go into production when Mylstar closed down. (Steve Pacheco was his name. Another guy hired around the same time was Jon Coyle.)

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Release Date: unreleased
Programming: Warren Davis
Sound: ??
Number produced: ??

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Release Date: unreleased
Programming: Jon Coyle
Sound: ??
Number produced: ??

The player controlled a cute R2D2 robot explorer on an unknown world.

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"UNKNOWN" volcanic Mayan game

Release Date: unreleased
Programming: Joe Ulowicz (the spelling on his last name is certainly incorrect! :)
Sound: ??
Number produced: ??

a volcanic Mayan game.

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"UNKNOWN" (Neil Burnstein)

Release Date: unreleased
Programming: Neil Burnstein
Sound: ??
Number produced: ??

Notes from Neil Burnstein:
"One game that I worked on that I seem to recall was in test maybe when the company shut down. The background resembled the side of a hill, with a guy on a horse going across the top and a cart moving along the bottom. The hill consisted of ramps that crossed and intersected, with a gate at each crossing to control the flow. A dragon(?) would fly across the top, dropping eggs, they rolled down the ramps to the bottom. If you didn't catch them in the cart in the bottom they would hatch into dragons which crawled back up to the top."

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"UNKNOWN" (Lyn Oswald)

Release Date: unreleased
Programming: Lyn Oswald
Sound: ??
Number produced: ??

Notes from Noah Falstein (Williams Sinistar team leader among other things):
"The designer/programmer, Lyn Oswald, was one of the few women in the field, and she was sure she could break the sex barrier in games. Her game involved leading cute little ducks through a screen of dangers. It sounded just like the kind of thing that would appeal to women, and some arcade games like Pac Man/Ms. Pac Man and Centipede had fairly high female player ratios, so developers knew it was possible. But the nearly complete prototype never made it past the testing phase, failing to even come close to the competition in player interest."

An additional note from a Gottlieb employee:
"There does need to be an addendum to the notes on Lyn Oswald (aka Bently Bear, from Atari's Crystal Castle) though. I remember one day having to be in her cubicle with Steve Pacheco and on the wall, written on the equivalent of Post-its for the time, was the one of the most brilliant and enlightening things I had ever seen which really went on to explain Lyn. The Saying went as follows:

A = 10
B = 11
C = 12
D = 13
E = 14
F = 15

Remembering that all of our games were programmed in assembler at the time, this sort of thing really sort of said to me that her future may lay in some sort of different direction!"

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Release Date: unreleased
Programming: ??
Sound: ??
Number produced: ??

Color Vector sit-down game that was tested by Bob Ogdon, but never made it out of tests.

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last updated: June 1, 2003

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