Don’t make him angry — Gottlieb’s 1979 The Incredible Hulk smashes the Marvel gamma-powered giant onto the playfield, designed by Ed Krynski with art by the great Gordon Morison, and notable as one of the era’s prominent superhero licenses. With a strong confirmed run of 6,150, this two-flipper four-player has a couple of distinctive quirks: passive slingshots that produce unexpected bounces, no traditional active slings, and a big seven-bank of drop targets dominating the playfield.
The strategy is a classic bonus-and-multiplier climb with a few wrinkles. Concentrate on the drop targets and getting the ball up to the top lanes, where the lanes set your bonus multiplier, cycling between two and five times — collecting a higher-value lane advances your multiplier to that value. Hitting the 1-2-3 standup targets lights an extra ball at the far-right rollover lane and also lights the spinner for a thousand per spin, a doubly rewarding objective worth prioritizing. At twenty thousand bonus, Collect Bonus becomes available, so park the ball in a kicker lane to cash it in and reset. And keep your wits about those passive slingshots — they don’t fire actively, so the ball can carom off them in surprising directions, demanding an alert, reactive player.
The Incredible Hulk is a handsome, historically significant Gottlieb, pairing a marquee superhero license with the company’s reliably elegant bonus-driven design. Morison’s art gives it real period charm, and the spinner-and-extra-ball reward from the 1-2-3 targets gives a focused player a clear goal. Work the drops, climb the multiplier lanes, light that spinner, and watch for the passive-sling bounces. Even a green-skinned rage monster bows to a player with steady aim and a good bonus build.