Museum of the Game ®

International Arcade Museum® — Killer List of Videogames®

Exterminator

Description

Use your hands and bug spray to kill digitized bugs that come towards you. Set in a street of houses, you have to go from room to room in each house in order to complete the entire street.

Exterminator was produced by Premier / Gottlieb in 1989.

Premier / Gottlieb released 66 machines in our database under this trade name, starting in 1946. Premier / Gottlieb was based in United States.

Other machines made by Premier / Gottlieb during the time period Exterminator was produced include: TX-Sector, Robo-War, Excalibur, Bad Girls, Diamond Lady, Big House, Lights...Camera...Action!, Hot Shots, Deadly Weapon, and Vegas

Specs

Name	Exterminator
Developer	Premier / Gottlieb (United States)
Year	1989
Type	Videogame
KLOV/MOG #	7737
Class	Wide Release
Genre	Shooter
Monitor	Orientation: Horizontal Type: Raster: Standard Resolution Color: Color
Conversion Class	JAMMA
# Simultaneous Players	2
# Maximum Players	2
Game Play	Joint
Control Panel Layout	Multiple Player Ambidextrous
Controls	Joystick: 8-way Rotary with button - Grab/Shoot Buttons: 1 - Pound
Sound	Amplified Stereo (two channel)
Cabinet Styles	Upright/Standard
Control Panel	Exterminator Control Panel Image

Game Introduction

This game is unlike any other game produced before or after. The aim is to clear the rooms of enemies ranging from frogs, spiders, roaches, moths and wasps to toy tanks and rats!

Game Play

Elmininate pests by any means possible. Grab the flying beasts, pound your fist onto ground enemies or move to the side of the screen and use your 'laser' by rotating the joystick to aim left/right. When an enemy dies, the tiles on the floor move along one block coloured in. Below the floor tile 'columns' are room names. Once a floor tile column is completely filled in, you are moved on to that room. At the end of each house a bonus basement will sometimes be awarded where you must shoot a load of rats.

Exterminator KLOV/IAM 5 Point User Score: 3.44 (2 votes)

Fun Factor: 3.00

Overall Like	3.00
Fun (Social)	3.00
Fun (Solo)	2.50
Collector Desire	3.50

Technical Rating: 3.88

Gameplay	4.00
Graphics	4.00
Originality	3.50
Sound/Music	4.00

Personal Impressions and Technical Impressions each account for half of the total score. Within the Personal Impressions category, Like carries a little more weight than the other factors.

Cheats, Tricks, Bugs, and Easter Eggs

On the first level inside the kitchens of houses one and three, the freezer door swings open only once, releasing some floorbased enemies. If you get the hand in laser mode and shoot while the door is open, you will warp to the other house.

Images

Trivia

This was the first game to use digitized graphics for every element of the game. It was also the first and only videogame produced by Premier and the last to carry the Gottlieb badge. Production numbers are estimated at about 250 units worldwide. They were very unreliable in the field and not too popular with players. The dedicated game and its weird cabinet made it less appealing to operators since most other games that were being released during that time were conversion kits. It does remain one of the boldest moves in the industry to make such a machine at that time.

Cabinet Information

This video game was, perhaps, the last of the dedicated machines produced by PremierGottlieb. The extremely weird cabinet design contains full artwork from top to bottom. The game is shaped to look like a house, complete with a roof and chimney.

Miscellaneous

There appears to be two ROM sets for this game. The first which I call original follows the game playing methods described in the literature and the control panelcabinet instructions. The other set allows the player to fire the laser while in mid air, instead of moving to the edge of the screen. While this eliminates the need for rotary joysticks, it ruins the game play making it far too easy. Instead of having to pound the ground enemies, grab the flying enemies or swatting the wasp away, the player may use the laser on everything, thus making the game yet another bland shooter. I have only seen one or two machines play like this one still had the rotary sticks, but, obviously, these were not used the other had bog standard joysticks with fire buttons on top.

VAPS Arcade/Coin-Op Exterminator Census

There are 15,264 members of the Video Arcade Preservation Society / Vintage Arcade Preservation Society, 9,669 whom participate in our arcade census project of games owned, wanted, or for sale. Census data currently includes 166,973 machines (7,000 unique titles).

Uncommon - There are 17 known instances of this machine owned by Exterminator collectors who are active members. Of these, 15 of them are original dedicated machines. One is a conversion in which game circuit boards (and possibly cabinet graphics) have been placed in (and on) another game cabinet. One is a set of circuit boards which a collector could put into a generic case if desired.

For Sale - There is one active VAPS member with a Exterminator machine for sale.

Wanted - There are 2 active VAPS members currently looking for Exterminator. There is one active VAPS member looking for a Exterminator circuit board set.

This game ranks a 4 on a scale out of 100 (100 = most often seen, 1=least common) in popularity based on census ownership records.

This game ranks a 5 on a scale out of 100 (100 = most often seen, 1=least common) in popularity based on census want list records.

Rarity and Popularity independently are not necessarily indications of value. [More Information]

Flyers

Technical

The game uses batterybacked RAM to save EMallEM 40 high scores, just like the old Williams games. The boardset is rather complicated, consiting of five boards in total, with many connectors between each board.

Manuals

Instruction Manual - Exterminator Manual — **Instruction Manual**
(47 pages, 5.5 MB File)

Foto-Finder® (Books)

The Encyclopedia of Arcade Video Games Kurtz (ISBN 0764319256) Page: 205; Color photo Price guide: No
Encyclopedia of Arcade Video Games Kurtz (ISBN 0764319256) Page: 205; Color photo

eBay Listings

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