Hoops

Hoops, designed by Ray Tanzer and manufactured by Premier Technology under the Gottlieb trade name in February 1991, brings basketball action to the pinball world on the company's System 3 hardware. Its artwork was handled by David Moore, Constantino Mitchell, and Jeanine Mitchell, and it uses two distinctive 20-digit alpha-numeric blue Futaba displays, complete with commas, to show scores.

Hoops holds a particular place in Gottlieb history as the last of the company's 'street level' games. These were an experiment in designing simpler, single-level machines with no ramps, slightly smaller and cheaper to produce. Only six models were made, beginning with 1990's Silver Slugger and ending with Hoops, and the line did not sell well, with Hoops itself seeing a confirmed production run of just 879 units.

That modest run makes Hoops a relatively uncommon find today, and an interesting artifact of an era when Gottlieb was experimenting with ways to make pinball more affordable for operators. For fans of basketball themes or of the System 3 era, it is a distinctive footnote in the company's long history.