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Wipeout Pinball Gottlieb

Wipeout Pinball | Repair Log

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Back in 1999, I purchased my first pinball machine – Gottlieb’s 1993 skiing themed pinball machine called “Wipeout”.

Snowboarding was taking off at the time and some at Gottlieb decided that surfing and snow sports would go together so this game has classic surf music from the Surfaris along with some surfer dude callouts and even some Arnold Schwarzenegger sounding Austrian dude callouts.

Some of the crazy call-outs in Wipeout:

  • “Woe! This is the Psycho Path.” – surfer dude
  • “See that ski pole-I’ll shove it up your “beep”. – tough guy
  • “Nice job” – announcer
  • “Race you to the bottom” – surfer dude
  • “Ok you hot dog it’s time to do it”
  • “Please remain calm, the PANIC BUTTON round is about to begin!” – announcer guy
  • “Dude, nice run” – surfer dude
  • “The Ski Lift is now open” – announcer
  • “Rip the Crud for super jackpot” – announcer
  • “Whoa, narly” – surfer dude
  • “Go for it” – surfer dude
  • “Attention please, this is the moguls event.” – announcer
  • “I’m out of control” – surfer dude
  • “Look at the moguls on that snow bunny”
  • “That’s some mucho bonus” – surfer dude
  • “Avalanche!” – announcer
  • “Your snowplowing” – Arnold
  • “Way to go dude” – surfer dude
  • “Maybe you should play with a yo-yo!”- Arnold
  • “Whoa! My legs broken!” – surfer dude
  • “Maybe I should call your mother, have her help you ski.” – Arnold
  • “Henh Henh Henh henh henh WIPEOUT!” – surfer dude

Game Design: Ray Tanzer

Artwork: Constantino Mitchell, David Moore

Generation: Gottlieb System 3 

Release: 2,150 produced

Gottlieb’s Wipeout is a fun approachable game with a nice theme, some fun toys, particularly the ski lift and flipper controlled salom course.

It’s not a deep rules game and the shots are limited but its a big hit among novice players. You can reach the three-ball multiball rather easily. Nail the center short orbit into the ski lift right away and then put another one up there and enter the mystery hole to start the multiball.

Not much depth to the ruleset but it’s a great machine to have around for introducing people to pinball as its fun and the post between the flippers keeps the ball in play for a nice amount of time.

Wipeout was my first pinball machine. I was looking for a pinball machine for a weekend ski house we bought. The theme and price were perfect so I purchased one sight unseen from Jersey Jack for $650 plus $65 shipping via common carrier freight.

My pinball machine collecting friend, John and I took the back seats of my original Toyota RAV4 out and we drove over to the freight house to pick it up.

The game had some wear and chipping on the playfield and the glass top was in rough shape. It was a reimported machine from Sweden and still have the Swedish coin boxes on the front.

It was common in this time frame to import containers of old pinball machines from Europe to feed the US home market as the used machines supply began to dry up.

Repair Log

I didn’t do much to it for years except change burnt-out lightbulbs, clean and wax the playing field from time to time and replace worn rubbers.

The machine had a few issues. The leds on the skirt didn’t work and every once in awhile the switches around the ski lift would not detect the ball which kept the ball from locking.

With the help of my friend John, I tried new Smart Switches and even new Opt-switches but the problem persisted. It would come and go, seemingly with the change of seasons.

I was recently at a pinball event, Pintastic 2019, and heard that one of the Wipeouts brought to the show was having similar problems, but even more severe.

I also read recently that these Gottlieb System 3s have an unusual matrix that combines the lamps and the switches. So I’m thinking that maybe these phantom problems are related to a bad lamp socket? That would explain perhaps why the problem seems to go way – maybe due to vibration or changes in temperature if a socket expands or something? Anyway, if the problem comes back on my Wipeout, I’m going to search for a bad lamp socket.

So recently I purchased a Stern 2003 Lord of the Rings pinball which cost 10x what my Wipeout cost and it got me in the mood to see how I could jazz up my older machine.

Here is what I did lately:

Pro Tips

My WipeOut machine suffers from a weird issue at the bottom of the ski lift where it doesn’t recognize the ball waiting at the bottom. Switch problem you’d think right?

That’s what we thought the first time it happened and ordered a new “Smart Switch” which is what Gottlieb/Premier used in the 90s. Smart Switches used membranes and could not be adjusted. You just have to buy a new (and expensive switch).

Well, that didn’t change the problem at all.

But wait a minute, over the years we’ve moved a few times and WipeOut came along. And lo and behold, the problem went away.

Only to come back again. The next “investment” fix I tried was to change out the Opto sensor at the top of the ski slope.

That didn’t do anything. But then we moved again and the problem went away for a while. But then I redid the floor in the pinball room which required moving everything out of the room and the problem came back.

I looked online for a solution. Found out that the switches and lights share the same matrix on Gottlieb System 3 pinball machines. Could it be a bad light socket?

“I have had this problem once, it was a faulty socket on a Freddy, otherwise I have never had an issue, but I usually use quality leds. The socket had a small plate of solder splash at the bottom of it, the led and the incandescent both caused this until I found it. Maybe the better title should be, “lamp socket issues on a GTB sys3 can cause some weird stuff”, and indeed it does and has. My recently acquired Gladiators (sister machine to Wipeout) with all incandescents had a multiple switch issue, replaced three bulbs and all is good, a bit tricky to find the culprit I admit..”

Or could it be some memory problem related to the software? Someone suggested resetting the factory settings.

How to restore factory settings

  • Open coin door
  • Press test button
  • Press left flipper until Game Adjustments is highlighted
  • Press right flipper button
  • Press credit button to install factory settings

That didn’t work. Then I saw a mention about the ribbon cables on the boards. Ribbon cables also came upon the Marco site as something that might need updating, after all on a 1993 game, the ribbon cables are 25 years old at this point!

So I ordered a couple of replacement cables at $7 each and then on a lark when to the backbox of the machine and pushed in the connectors.

Behind the translight on a Gottlieb System 3 pinball

Did I just fix my Gottlieb System 3 Wipeout Pinball machine with a finger?

I swear I could feel a little give as I pushed on them! Maybe they came loose from all the moving around? I started up a game and wouldn’t you know – the problem was gone! Fingers crossed that this the actual solution! Or maybe not…

Wait a minute what’s this?

Looking closer at the wires around the switch that was causing the intermittent problem and tracing it back to the source I found something. Something looked loose. Maybe this is the actual problem? Makes sense, perhaps the problem was a loose wire all along, moving the machine would make it come or go.

I re-soldered the wire voila! The problem has been solved! Good grief, sometimes the problem really is as simple as a bad solder joint.

Stripped Leg Bolts

One issue I’ve been neglecting is some really bad leg bolts on the back corner. At this point the leg bolts are barely holding the leg in place. So I ordered some Williams style leg brackets for inside the cabinet, metal leg protectors and extended bolts from Pinball Life.

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