Gridiron (Gottlieb 1977) NFL Mod

Here is my NFL Mod of Loserman76’s Gridiron from Gottlieb 1977.  Like my NHL mod of Ice Fever, you can change teams on both sides by holding down left (home) or right (away) magnasave to change teams with the flippers.  This table does not use the launch button.  The right flipper launches the ball.  In the original spirit of Jeff’s recreation, I modeled the uniforms loosely by what was worn in the 1977 season.  Also, I organized them by the 1977 divisions going West/Central/East in both conferences. I thought about adding options for modern teams and logos, but it just didn’t make sense to use modern team logos on such an old game. This puts Seattle in the AFC again and Tampa in the good old NFC Central!

In the script, you can activate an option in the single player game to auto generate points for the away team every time a home ball is launched.  It adds scores based loosely on your play history, so as you get better, so will your AI opponent.

I added three uniform options in the script as well.

WASHINGTON – my beloved home team with the controversial name.  The original is the default value, but you can switch to the 2020 retro mascot free uniforms if you prefer your pinball with less controversy.

CINCINNATI – The look of NFL teams was practically unchanged from the early seventies to the early nineties when the patriots used their radical redesign.  The lone exception was the Bengals who had horrible helmets in 1977. I added an option for the 1981 tiger striped helmet.

PITTSBURGH – There is a large head in the middle of the playfield who nicely shows off the team logo.  Unfortunately for Pittsburgh, this is the plain black side without the steel logo on it. I created a variant that turns the player’s head to the right showing the logo.

Thanks to Wildman for the original backglass. I had to shrink it, twist it and bend it to my will to allow the team changes, so if anything is broken or ugly, that is entirely my doing.

I included a wheel image, but do not know the original author to credit them.  The only thing I altered was adding a 1971 NFL logo over it.

Xenonph’s NFL tables were the main inspiration for this and my Ice Fever Mod project, and I still believe they’re the best argument for the superiority of Virtual pinball over real life. I learned and borrowed much from the script to make the playfield changes possible.

From Loserman76’s post: Original conversion of Pinuck's VP9 table by Scottacus which was used as guidance for his complete rebuild.

The backglass mechanics I had to figure out the hard way with much trial and error.  The DOF commands were playing havoc with my backglass. I made many adjustments and hope I didn’t break anything. Just keep in mind, if you have to adjust, any new DOF targets between 100-181 will most likely mess up the backglass.