Texas Ranger

Texas Ranger, designed by Ed Krynski for Gottlieb in January 1972, is the single-player Italian export version of two 1971 Gottlieb titles — the 2-player 'Lawman' and the 4-player 'Sheriff' — all sharing an American West, law-enforcement theme. A separate single-player Spanish version of the same game was released the same year as Maresa's 'Dakota.'

The playfield features two flippers, two pop bumpers, two slingshots, ten drop targets, and three standup targets, along with a return ballgate and parallel lanes of serial rollovers on the right side. An open-elbow inlane allows the ball to pass between the inlane and outlane and back again, adding an extra wrinkle to ball control, and an end-of-ball bonus rewards accumulated progress. Gottlieb continued producing electro-mechanical machines for several more years after Texas Ranger, so rather than marking the end of the format for the company, it sits in the middle of Gottlieb's prolific EM output of the early 1970s.

With 1,950 confirmed units built and artwork by Gordon Morison depicting a sheriff's badge and frontier imagery, Texas Ranger remains most notable today as part of the Lawman/Sheriff/Dakota family of regional export variants.