This game belongs to Lucy, a good friend of the family who has owned it for almost 20 years. A gift from her late husband, Lucy's Haunted House is a 1982 Gottlieb System 80 game that was purchased from Chinook Vending in Calgary in 1983. The game is popular for it's haunted theme, design elements and great music track (Bach's eerie Toccata and Fugue). This game features 8 flippers on 3 separate playfields that are connected by trapdoors and ramps.

I volunteered to get this game running again - it had been out of action for over 3 years before I moved it into my basement in May 2002. I had never worked on a System 80 game before, and had been warned about the headaches that were awaiting me. The experience of working on one of these System 80 games was tedious yet very satisfying - knowing that it is possible to save these games from pinball hell and get them running again is almost addictive!

The games backglass is in fantastic condition - most of these backglasses are found in "delaminated" state, or peeling off. I think that having this game in Calgary for all of it's 20 year life kept the glass pristine - the humidity levels in Calgary are less than half of those back east - I believe the temperate zone out here is classified as semi-arid.

First thing I did was check out the circuit boards - the infamous Rockwell electronics that were in System 80 games. As suspected, none of the major modifications had been done (with the exception of the pop bumper boards) that were required to get this game "bulletproof". Thanks to the repair manuals available through www.marvin3m.com (Clay Harrell) I knew they would need to be resoldered and augmented - so I shipped them off to John Robertson in Vancouver, B.C. who runs a business called John's Jukes www.flippers.com . John performed all the required mod's  and shipped them back to me about 6 weeks later.

I found out early enough that an investment in a good Digital Multimeter (DMM) pays off in diagnosing this game's many electronic faults. Two days after getting the game running again, it refused to start up. Reviewing Kirb's great System 80 troubleshooting guide at www.geocities.com/kirbseepe/HHpage.html , I was able to determine the problem was a blown voltage regulator IC chip, so I had it desoldered and a replacement socketed back on.

The amount of information available on fixing these System 80 games is simply incredible - there is no way anyone could do repairs without them. Many thanks to Kirb and Clay for their websites, and to John Robertson for his repairs.

In the meantime, I attended the Toronto Gameroom show (the 2nd annual) and went shopping. Just after walking through the doors, I spotted a whole bunch of used playfield's lined up against the wall - including a Haunted House. The playfield was in better shape than what was in Lucy's game, so after haggling with Jeremy Wilson, I walked away with the playfield (which included an upper playfield) for $35. I have not installed this playfield yet - I wanted to ensure that the game would work first before doing a complete swap out, but depending on time may eventually get around to this swapout. I also attended the Chicago show, PinExpo in October, and got some more parts there (bumper caps, score cards and a NOS green playfield cover for the main playfield).

You can see in the picture to the left that the Secret Passage plastic was missing and replaced with a painted facsimile of the plastic shape. I bought a few replacements off the web. Also noticeable here is that the hole leading to the upper playfield was "roped off" with a rubber band - when this had occurred in the game's lifetime I was not sure, but someone repairing the game had decided to just shut off the upper playfield access through this kicker.

At left you can see the typical wear under the pop bumpers caused by the plastic protectors on these games. On the playfield I purchased, there are no wear marks at all. A lot of time was also spent replacing burnt solenoids and blown fuses.

I removed every item off the top of the playfield, cleaned and waxed them, and replaced where necessary. Some of the plastics are in so-so shape, so I keep a lookout for any spares that pop-up on the net.

More pictures here, and a video of the game here. I finally returned this game to Lucy in August 2003.