Following our initial report about the availability of the Whoa Nellie! Big Juicy Melons game from Stern Pinball distributors, we have had the opportunity to play one of the prototypes and get some more pictures of the game.

The full playfield

The four rollovers at the top left

The single rollover at the top right

The game's four pop bumpers

There is a fifth bumper at the top of the playfield, but this is a dead bumper meaning it has a switch to register hits but no solenoid to deflect the ball.

One of the melon targets

Melony, with her melons

The original Continental Cafe game featured a gobble hole which drained the ball. Big Juicy Melons changes this for a kickout saucer with a short lane behind to make it more reliable at capturing the ball. The 'gobble' nature of the hole is referenced in the artwork on the plastic above the saucer.

The kickout saucer

As you can see, the rubber rings either side of the lane are almost completely perished. This is the most extreme example, but other rubber rings (such as the Melon target above) also showed signs of excessive wear after two days of being played almost constantly.

The shooter lane carries an epilepsy warning

The game features two small flippers

Interestingly, the black text on these games seemed to be much thicker than any other artwork, giving it a raised feel and look.

One area not given much prominence in the press release is the small LCD display on the bottom left of the apron which shows the replay score. But it actually does far more than that, and is in reality Stern's first use of an LCD screen to directly replace the LED dot matrix display.

The game's LCD screen (showing the old Stern logo)

The regular in-game diagnostics are all available in just the same way as they are in a conventional Stern model, although they do appear in very small text and can't be seen if the playfield is raised.

The usual 'high voltage disabled' warning message

The game's lock bar is a single routed wooden piece, with Stern's latches as used in their Pro models.

The lock bar

Since the game uses Stern's now Spike system and the mechanical design is relatively simple anyway, underneath the playfield everything is neat and tidy.

The underside of the playfield

What is different is the need to latch the playfield down. There are latch mechanisms on either side of the cabinet.

One of the two playfield latches

The right side playfield and lock bar latches

Incidentally, the game can be mounted on either regular legs or the fruit crate base. Two pairs of wooden trim pieces are supplied to fit on the front corners of the cabinet - one pre-drilled with holes for the legs bolts, and another plain piece for use with the fruit crate base. You can see the pieces for use with the metal legs in the picture above.

The cabling for the LCD display

The inter-board cable chart for the game

That's all for this look at Whoa Nellie! Big Juicy Melons. Our thanks to Marco Specialties for their help with this report.

© Pinball News 2015