Western

Western is a 1969 electro-mechanical (EM) add-a-ball pinball machine designed by Ed Krynski with artwork by Art Stenholm, produced by D. Gottlieb & Company. Only a very small number of units were made - for years it was believed the game was never produced at all, until an Italian collector was found to own a unit with a 'Sample only' schematic inside. That schematic listed coinage in Italian lire, suggesting Western may have been the last two-player Gottlieb game made for export to Italy, likely serving as the export counterpart to the U.S. add-a-ball version, Lariat, released the same year.

Gameplay features two flippers, three pop bumpers, two kick-out holes, and two vari-targets on a Western-themed playfield, giving players a mix of bumper scoring and target shooting typical of Gottlieb's add-a-ball games of the period. Its backglass displays the game's name diagonally, distinguishing it from Gottlieb's replay version of the same theme, Wild Wild West, released the same year.

Because so few units were made and documentation is scarce - the game isn't even listed in Gottlieb's own surviving records - Western remains one of the rarer and more mysterious entries in Gottlieb's catalog, of particular interest to collectors focused on export-market pinball history.