Space Station

One of the first System 11B games, also works with a System 11A board. Steve Ritchie provided the male voice heard during the game. Pictured in this listing is a mini-playfield made of opaque black plastic instead of the standard translucent blue plastic. Its stickers have openings to show the light bulbs and their yellow bulb covers, and its flash lamp cover is orange instead of blue. Its underside has different wiring, with leaf switches instead of micro switches. The owner had obtained it from someone who was parting out a playfield. We labeled the pictures of this black ramp as "prototype" based upon designer Barry Oursler's comments when we asked him about it:I believe they were only black on the prototype games. The blue ones were more transparent and lit up better. The color also looked better with the artwork. Pictured in this listing is a prototype drop target placed at the very top of the playfield, hidden under the mini-playfield. Barry Oursler believes it was removed from production games as a cost reduction item, leaving the production playfield showing a rectangular blank (unpainted) area where the drop target used to be. The translite art shows three space shuttles. Artist Tim Elliott related to us this story: The real space shuttle Challenger blew up right in front of me (January 1986) when I was illustrating the shuttle for this game. I was the only one in the art room at the time and had the TV on. It was terrible and ironic at the same time. I was actually painting the small shuttle on the right of the backglass when it happened. Pictured in this listing are three versions of translite: � Small cutout windows are punched in front of the space station lamps, making these lamps visible. � The cutout windows are evident but not punched, showing blank white areas of translite over the lamps. � No cutouts windows at all. We do not know why there were three versions or when this was changed during production. Barry Oursler told us he could not recall any story behind this. Not pictured here are either of two versions of backbox insert where the major difference is that one has four lamps that the other does not have. Barry Oursler could not recall this difference to comment about which came first and why the change. Pictures of these inserts and other interesting details about Space Station can be seen here. Production Run Records for Space Station: Production Start Date: Dec-7-1987 Production End Date: Mar-10-1988 Production Run Quantity: 3804 First ship date: Dec-7-1987 Last ship date: Mar-31-1988