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One of my favorite games, Joker Poker is also one of the oldest of my solid state electronic games. An electro-mechanical (EM) version of the game was built by Gottlieb as well as this being their first foray in to electronic games. My game was shopped by Jim Swenson who did an absolutely beautiful job on the game making it look the best of any Joker Poker I have seen to date. The interesting thing is that I bought this game as a parts box for 50 bucks since nothing worked and most all of the pins were either missing or corroded. Jim took painstaking care to replace each and every edge connector and pins as well as replacing all the targets, pop bumpers, new coil tubes, and even the motherboard with a Ni-Wumpf board. I play this game virtually every week and never get tired of it. I have actually gone months without playing Medieval Madness (huh?) but never Joker Poker. I just keep coming back since I can never master the game. Clay and I play whichever game I've recently bought since it will be new to the lineup. Funny that we rarely ever play my newer games that are actually more popular than these old guys. Even still, we love these old guys probably better than the new ones so they get played the most. Nothing like whacking a target to make you feel good and Joker Poker is loaded with good target shots. The game is virtually unbeatable since you can play good one night and then not approach your old score for 6 months or more. Gottlieb made 9,280 solid state games in August of 1978 and they released 9,280 units. There's also an electro-mechanical (EM) version of Joker Poker that looks the same but doesn't have the solid state electronics in it. Only 820 EM games were made so they are pretty rare. The game features 3 flippers (two lower, one upper), 2 pop bumpers, 1 slingshot, one 5-bank drop targets, one 4-bank drop targets, one 3-bank drop targets, one 2-bank drop targets, and a single drop target. It also has a single target that is associated with the extra ball when all the Aces plus the Joker are made, or the upper three lanes are completed. The game uses chimes instead of electronic sounds. Ed Krynski designed the game with artwork by Gordon Morison. You can also view a Joker Poker shop job I did here. I have restored six Joker Pokers as of 2011. (click any picture to enlarge)
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