The Addams Family Gold

The original version of this game, Midway's 1992 'The Addams Family', broke previous sales records for any flipper pinball game. This Special Edition commemorates that event. Like the original, this edition has a flipper that not only is controlled by the player's flipper button but also is caused by the game programming to flip at certain points in game play. One earlier form of "auto-flipping" appears on Williams' 1953 'Palisades'. This edition has Gold accents, such as the metal ramps, gold legs and bolts, gold lettering, the vault plastic, the bumper caps and Thing's box. Each of the (only) 1000 "Gold" machines includes a certificate signed by the members of the design team and a gold plate, containing the machine number, on the lower right front of the machine. Machine #1 is property of Pat Lawlor himself. (see more information on Pat Lawlor and The Addams Family at http://www.patlawlordesign.com/playmeter.htm) We asked Pat if any playfields from the original 1992 run were used for this Special Edition. He replies:It's POSSIBLE that there were a few old playfields used for GOLD. But unlikely. Here's why. What many people will find unbelievable is that, at the end of the regular run of Addams Family, the remaining playfields that were not designated for parts sales were destroyed. Crushed in a large compactor. I personally saw racks of playfields go to the crusher. That's because Williams never ran second releases later. And that inventory would have had to have been stored somewhere in the building. It was more cost effective to write down the inventory than keep it. When the decision was made to do the Gold Run of 1000 games, new playfields were ordered and used. My game has a playfield made by Lenc-Smith [Manufacturing Company] in March of the build year. Impossible for the regular run! Now maybe a game was repaired with an old playfield from parts sales, but I do not believe that you could make a case that the entire run of Golds was old playfields. (My game proves that is incorrect). Larry DeMar points out that the Gold playfield is indeed different:The PMS values for several of the colors were changed to make them "hotter". Side by side, it is easy to tell apart playfields from the original run from the new run which used the same screens with different colors.