Krull (Gottlieb, 1983): the 10-unit prototype, and System 80A boards

Looking for help with a Gottlieb Krull that will not start, resets or shows missing digits? Read the next section first, because Krull is not an ordinary machine. Roughly ten were ever built, and it never reached production. If you do have one, the electronics are standard Gottlieb System 80A and everything below about faults and replacement boards applies. If you are researching the game, or you have arrived here from the Krull arcade video game or a virtual table, the history is worth your time.

About the Krull (Gottlieb, 1983)

See it: full photo gallery for Krull on IPDB (#1397) · Krull on Pinside

Krull is one of the great might-have-beens of solid-state pinball. Dated February 1983 as Gottlieb model 676, it was designed by John Trudeau — the same designer who had just finished Striker and Rocky, and who would later give Williams and Bally Creature from the Black Lagoon and Judge Dredd. The art is credited to Keith Parkinson, and the music and sound to David Thiel.

The licence was, in effect, in-house. Gottlieb had been owned by Columbia Pictures since 1976, and Krull was a Columbia Pictures fantasy film, directed by Peter Yates and released in 1983. A studio-owned pinball factory building a machine from the studio's own summer fantasy epic made obvious sense on paper.

It did not survive contact with reality. The film flopped, and — more decisively — the machine was extraordinarily expensive to build. Krull never went into production. Sources agree on roughly ten prototypes: Pinside records "10 produced, canceled", and Krull appears in published lists of the rarest pinball machines ever made, alongside Kingpin, King Kong and The Pinball Circus. Collector discussion suggests at least two of the test machines were destroyed when they came back from location testing, which would leave around eight in existence. Michael Gottlieb has recounted that when the company changed hands in 1983, two Goin' Nuts and one Krull prototype were still sitting in the building.

The playfield that killed it

What made Krull too costly is also what makes collectors want it. It is a wide-body, four-player game with a multi-level playfield and around seven flippers and two ramps. The upper area holds a Crystal Spider lair with target banks for extra balls; the middle section is where you defeat the Slayers to unlock transfers between levels; and beneath all of that sits a lower playfield nearly as large as the main one.

You cannot see that lower playfield directly. You view it through a plexiglass reducing lens set into the playfield above — a magnifying window that shrinks the lower field into a visible frame. Clay Harrell's pinrepair.com notes this was a first in pinball, and also that the arrangement was "problematic unless some modifications are made to increase reliability". Without the lens the lower playfield is simply obscured, which tells you how central — and how unrepeatable — that one moulded part is.

A note on the sources: pinrepair.com and collector discussions describe Krull as a three-level game, while TV Tropes describes a two-level design with three distinct playfield areas. They are describing the same machine and differ only on how to count it.

• Manufacturer: D. Gottlieb & Co. (a Columbia Pictures Industries Company)
• Dated: February 1983 — model 676
• Production: never produced; approximately 10 prototypes
• Electronic system: Gottlieb System 80A
• Displays: alphanumeric, 4 players
• Sound: MA-309 sound board — no speech
• Design: John Trudeau · Art: Keith Parkinson · Music and sound: David Thiel
• Cabinet: wide body
• Playfield: multi-level, ~7 flippers, 2 ramps, lower playfield viewed through a reducing lens
• Theme: fantasy / cinema (Krull, Columbia Pictures, 1983)

Why the music sounds familiar

Owners who have played one consistently remark that Krull's music is ominous in the same way Haunted House is. There is a hardware reason for that: both games run the MA-309 sound board, as do Spirit, Goin' Nuts, Super Orbit and Royal Flush Deluxe. Same voice, same era, same composer working within the same limits.

What it is worth, and what you probably have

There is no meaningful market price, because there is effectively no market. Pinside has no sales history at all for Krull and lists the estimated value as unknown; three Pinsiders record owning one and fifty-five have it on a wishlist. The Museum of the Game's census scores it 1 out of 100 for ownership, with no active VAPS member holding an original. A Krull changes hands privately, at whatever the two parties agree, and "rarest pinball" lists are a better guide to its standing than any price.

Which brings up the practical point. If you believe you have found a Krull pinball, it is far more likely to be one of three other things:

• the Krull arcade video game, which Gottlieb did release in 1983 and which sold in normal numbers;
• a virtual pinball recreation — Krull is a popular Visual Pinball X table, which is how most people today have actually "played" it;
• a different machine wearing Krull artwork, or a reproduction backglass.

None of that is a disappointment, but it changes what you need. If you have a genuine Krull, its serial number and its lens are the two things to document before anything else.

Common faults across System 80A

Krull's boards are ordinary System 80A, so the family fault list applies exactly as it does to any Gottlieb of 1981–83. This section is also the reason most readers arrive here, because the same boards sit in tens of thousands of machines.

The NiCd battery on the CPU board is the first thing to check, every time, on any System 80 or 80A machine. It was soldered straight to the board, it leaks with age, and the electrolyte travels along the traces and into the nearby IC sockets. Left in place it eats the copper, and the job turns from "remove a battery" into "rebuild a board". Take it off before you power anything up, whether or not the machine currently works.

The 6532 RIOT chips — the combined I/O and RAM devices the CPU uses to read switches and drive lamps — fail with age. A dead RIOT usually shows as a machine that boots but ignores part of the switch matrix, or will not boot at all.

Then the display edge connectors, the fault collectors call the "Gottlieb curse": missing segments within a digit, or whole digits gone. In the large majority of cases the connector is at fault, not the display and not the CPU. Cleaning and reseating usually restores it; re-pinning fixes it for good. Related to this, random resets almost always come from poor grounding between boards and oxidised Molex pins rather than from a bad CPU — the System 80 "ground mods", proper ground straps between the CPU, Driver, power supply and sound boards, cure more resets than any chip swap.

Finally, the power supply voltages drift as the capacitors dry out, and spurious slam tilts are usually a dirty slam switch or a floating ground, not a logic fault.

Krull-specific issues

Here we have to be straight with you. With about ten machines built and three owners recorded on Pinside, there is no body of owner fault reports for Krull — no long repair threads, no accumulated wisdom about which chip goes first on this particular game. Anyone telling you otherwise is describing a different machine. What can be said comes from the design itself and from the two documented observations about it.

The reducing lens is irreplaceable. It is a custom moulded part from a game that never reached production. There are no spares, no reproductions and no donor machines. If the lens on a Krull is cracked, hazed or missing, the lower playfield is unusable and the part cannot simply be bought. Treat it as the single most valuable component on the machine.

The multi-level mechanism was known to be unreliable. pinrepair.com's note that the design is "problematic unless some modifications are made to increase reliability" is the only technical judgement on record, and it is consistent with what a prototype three-level playfield implies: ball transfers between levels, ramp diverters and a lower field that is hard to reach and hard to see when something jams.

There are more solenoids and switches than a normal System 80A. Around seven flippers, two ramps and three playfield areas mean a heavily loaded Driver board and a large switch matrix. On a machine of this age that shifts the odds toward driver transistor failures and matrix faults, and it makes the ground mods more important, not less.

Documentation is thin. A game cancelled before production does not get a proper distributed service manual, wiring diagrams in general circulation or an operator's parts list. Anyone restoring one is working from System 80A generic documentation plus the machine in front of them.

If you own one and you have found something specific, we would genuinely like to hear it — there is almost nothing on record, and a note from you would be the best source on this page.

Replacement boards compatible with the Krull

On the electronics side Krull is a standard System 80A, so the usual System 80/80A replacements fit. The one detail specific to this game: Krull runs the MA-309 sound board and has no speech. If you are replacing the sound board, you want the non-speech configuration — do not order the speech version on the assumption that a 1983 Gottlieb must talk. Its stablemates Striker, Rocky and Q*Bert's Quest do have speech; Krull does not.

• GottFA80_Plus (Light) — all-in-one CPU + Driver + power supply board, without sound.
• GottFA80_Plus (Full) — the same board with integrated sound.
• Gosof — replacement sound board. For Krull, the MA-309 non-speech configuration.
• Godri80 — replacement Driver board. Worth considering on a machine with this many solenoids.
• Lisy80 — CPU board with web-based diagnostics, which is useful precisely because Krull has no repair literature.
• GoPOP80 — pop bumper driver board, replacing the original MA-922 / A-19741.

One honest caveat for a prototype. Pre-production machines can carry board revisions, ROM revisions and wiring that never made it into the production documentation, because there was no production. We would not want to promise a drop-in fit on a Krull sight unseen. Send us photographs of your boards and the numbers on them and we will tell you what fits, and say so plainly if we are not sure.

The Lisy80 and Gosof designs come from LISY, an independent developer's free DIY project — credit where it is due. We test the boards we ship and we support them afterwards; installation is Plug & Play, battery-free, with tutorials and free help if you get stuck.

Step-by-step diagnosis (System 80A)

1. Powered off, visual inspection: look for the NiCd battery and any corrosion on the CPU board. Remove the battery if it is still fitted, before testing anything.
2. Power supply: measure the 5 V and confirm it reaches the CPU board; check the bridge rectifier and resolder the regulator if the voltage sags under load.
3. Grounds: apply the System 80 ground mods between the CPU, Driver, power supply and sound boards. Do this before chasing resets.
4. Connectors: re-pin oxidised Molex connectors, especially the CPU↔Driver link.
5. Displays: clean and reseat the edge connectors. Never plug or unplug a display with the machine powered on, and test with a known-good display.
6. Solenoids: with a multi-level playfield, test every coil individually and note which ones share a driver, before assuming a board fault.
7. Final test: start-up, credits, coils, ramp diverters, level transfers and displays. If anything remains, contact our free support.

FAQ — Gottlieb Krull (1983)

How many Krull pinball machines were made?
About ten. Krull never entered production: Pinside records "10 produced, canceled", and it appears in published lists of the rarest pinball machines ever built. Collector accounts suggest at least two prototypes were destroyed after location testing, leaving perhaps eight.

Why was the Krull pinball cancelled?
Two reasons together. The multi-level playfield with its lower field and reducing lens was very expensive to manufacture, and the 1983 Columbia Pictures film it was licensed from flopped. The business case disappeared from both ends at once.

What is a Krull pinball worth?
There is no reliable figure. Pinside holds no sales history for it and lists the value as unknown, and the Museum of the Game census records no active VAPS member owning one. Sales happen privately at negotiated prices.

Is this the pinball machine or the Krull arcade video game?
Gottlieb made both in 1983. The video game shipped in normal numbers and is the one you are much more likely to encounter; the pinball never shipped at all. There are also popular Visual Pinball X recreations of the pinball table.

Which boards does a Krull use?
Gottlieb System 80A: CPU board, Driver board, power supply, and an MA-309 sound board with no speech. Because it is a prototype, confirm the numbers on your own boards before ordering anything.

My System 80A machine has missing digits on the displays.
Clean and reseat the display edge connectors first — this is the "Gottlieb curse" and the connector is usually the culprit rather than the display or the CPU. If the fault persists, a replacement CPU board such as GottFA80_Plus or Lisy80 makes the display reliable.

Can I still get parts for a Krull?
Electronics, yes — the boards are standard System 80A. Anything specific to the game, no: the reducing lens above all, and the playfield, plastics and backglass, were never produced in quantity and have no reproductions.

Does a battery-free board keep the settings and high scores?
Yes. Modern replacement boards use non-volatile memory: no battery, no corrosion, and settings and scores survive being switched off.

See also

• Goin' Nuts (Gottlieb, 1983) — the other Gottlieb prototype of the same moment, and on the same MA-309 sound board.
• Striker (Gottlieb, 1982) — John Trudeau's previous design, and a machine you can actually buy.
• Q*Bert's Quest (Gottlieb, 1983)
• Super Orbit (Gottlieb, 1983) — also MA-309.
• Royal Flush Deluxe (Gottlieb, 1983) — also MA-309.
• Rocky (Gottlieb, 1982)

Sources & further reading

• IPDB — Krull (#1397)
• Pinside — Krull: credits, "10 produced, canceled", owner and wishlist counts
• Pinside forum — Krull
• pinrepair.com — Clay Harrell on Krull's three-level playfield and its reducing lens
• Digital Pinball Fans — "Gottlieb's Krull Pinball - 1983" (surviving prototypes, the music, Michael Gottlieb's account)
• Pinball Castle — rarest pinball machines, including Krull
• TV Tropes — Krull pinball: playfield layout and cancellation
• Museum of the Game — Krull pinball census
• Museum of the Game — Krull, the 1983 Gottlieb arcade video game (not the pinball)
• LISY — GOSOF80 user manual (MA-309 game list; Krull is not a speech title)
• Pinside — John Trudeau's design credits
• Wikipedia — Keith Parkinson
• Wikipedia — Krull (1983 film)
• Wikipedia — Gottlieb (Columbia Pictures, Mylstar, Premier Technology timeline)
• OPDB — Open Pinball Database

Own a Krull? Send us a photo and we'll add it here with credit — get in touch.