"Thou art gazing at the brightest star of all." Star Gazer (Stern 1980) is an addicting game with 3 spinners and concave scoops feeding the flippers. It's fast and lots of points can be achieved with building the values of bonus and spinners. Even though there were only 869 units produced this is very much a "gotta play again" table. One of the "best spinner" games out there.
Thanks to apophis for providing a playfield scan to @redbone. And especially thanks to Redbone for prepping and cleaning the playfield as well as other images, plastics, targets, etc. Also thanks to HauntFreaks for providing the VR backglass images (redraws by Felsi). And again thanks to Apophis for guidance on blender to bake the metal walls to be shiny, as well as some performance enhancements.
This table was done from scratch placing everything, and implementing the latest VPW (2025) standards, physics, alllamps and 3D inserts, backglass for desktop, roth targets, standalone compatibility, sling corrections, optional DIP adjustments, updated flipper physics, VR and fully hybrid, Flupper style bumpers and lighting. I also baked the GI and interior wood and metal walls. I've once again studied hours of videos to ensure accurate placement, gameplay, bounces, physics, etc. Lots of time was spent on getting the spinners timed correctly, and shots matching video play.
I've provided a .nvram file for the ROM menu settings, and I've hard coded the DIP switch settings as usual.
This table is loaded with options in the F12. Various balls, ball brightness, flasher options, flippers, screw caps, plastic edge colors, LUTs, Dip settings, and plenty of other VR stuff, including LED undercab lighting.
Please NOTE there are several items to consider on the ROM settings: The default settings for the ROM options are hard coded into the script and are based on the recommended values from Stern for 3 balls. If you want to change the ROM settings themselves, you need to change the "SetDIPSwitches to 1" in the script, and then use the F6 menu to change. However... I am not able to hard code the ROM menu options. Typically, there are levels of score achievements that award a free play. The default ROM has that set to off. I've included an nvram file you can use that sets that to match the instruction/score cards and Stern's recommendation (720,000 and 1,440,000). I also have instructions in the script on how to change that if you wish to do yourself.
Thanks again to Redbone, Apophis and Hauntfreaks! Also thanks to everyone else from the VPW team that provided testing and feedback!
Required Software (64-bit versions):
VPX 10.8.0 or later: https://github.com/vpinball/vpinball/releases/tag/v10.8.0-2051-28dd6c3
VPinMame 3.7.0.47 or later recommended: https://github.com/vpinball/pinmame/actions/runs/15769888098
B2S Server 2.1.3 or later (if B2S used): https://github.com/vpinball/b2s-backglass/releases/tag/v2.1.3
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