The Best Card King

The Best Card King is R.M.G.'s take on Gottlieb’s 1971 Card King — itself an export edition of Gottlieb’s Pop-A-Card for the Italian market — a Cards-themed single-player table built on banks of Drop Targets that took 100 lire a play.^[1] On the copies R.M.G. sold under its own name, the firm’s mark is printed on the lower playfield.^[2] The game also went out under a “The Best” badge — a label with a curious origin in the Italian trade, where print shops that supplied backglasses to game makers began selling them straight to arcade operators, lettering “The Best” where the manufacturer’s name would otherwise sit.^[3] Under that badge it belonged to R.M.G.'s Skill Game line, alongside The Best Wizard, a rebuild of Gottlieb’s Wizard.^[4]