The story goes that they built this game just to use up the remaining System 1 boards, don't know how true that would be though
From Clay's pinrepair.com Gottlieb Sys 1 guide -
Asteroid Annie differs from others, being a single player game (Annie was made well after Gottlieb had changed to their new System80 boardset in early 1980). The reason for this was Ed Krynski (game designer) wanted to design one more classic single player card games before he retired. A call was made to the Gottlieb service department inquiring about the number of leftover System1 CPU board, and they made 211 games based on the 300 board available in the service department's stock.
Found this the other day too, very different version than to what Clay says (which I quoted earlier) and given the source, likely closer to the truth (and Tony). Starts quite early (a page down or so) -
http://www.papinball.com/John_Buras_Interview.html
Sorry, but the link doesn't work for me - I think their server could be down at the moment or something? Can anyone else get to the site?