astrp3
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Posts posted by astrp3
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Thanks for posting the detailed info Keith. It tracks with what I recall from my years there. The Moppet games Leprechaun and Pirates Treasure were not developed by us in Tempe. Beezer was a full-sized arcade game that was quite fun to play but also not developed by us.
In Tempe, Tom Opfer was my boss, he hired me and he managed the development team. There were three programmers, Me (Paul Walters), George Hefner, and Rick Harris. Barbara Ultis was our graphic designer.
There's no mention though of the poker games -- amusement as well as Nevada gaming approved version that we made. It was originally licensed from a California company. Before I started there, Tuni was apparently making 'pirate' i.e. blatant copies and of the poker and selling them. There was a lawsuit (probably independently verifiable) where the settlement entailed Tuni paying the other company to license the software and board. The main reason I was hired was to do this re-write/re-branding of the licensed software. We flew out to San Diego and met with their engineers for a day then came back and went to work.
The last game I was working on at the end in '84 was the Popeye game. George and I were programming that one. Rick was doing the Berenstain bears game, with intermittent help from both George and I. Popeye was a 'side-scrolling' game where Popeye had to negotiate obstacles and such while trying to get to Bluto (who had taken Olive Oil in the first scene). Like I said it was 75 to 80 percent done when I left in April 1984, and then it was never finished.
<Apologies to all as to how far off topic I got with these posts>
Thanks for the info. Did all of you (you, George, Rick, and Barbara) work on Desert Race and Noah's Ark as well?
I am writing a book on the history of arcade video games up to 1985 and am including an appendix with all of the design credits I know of.
Keith
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Oh, and some others who worked on Leprechaun were Bruce Kaphan (who did the sound) and Sam Harris. Shel Kaphan and Ken Clements may have worked on the game but I'm not sure (I think their initials may be on the high score table but companies sometimes put the initials of executives in there even if they didn't work on games).
Also, Moppet Video was a trademark of Tong Electronics of San Francisco, who actually licensed Leprechaun (actually, Leprechaun was the same game as Pot Of Gold for Game Plan and I think Tong may have initially licensed it to Game Plan).
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A little more info about the Moppet Games and Tuni/Enter-Tech etc.
Leprechaun and Pirate's Treasure were actually designed by a separate group called Pacific Polytechnical Corp in Santa Cruz. The main programmer of the games was Todd A Blume (who also designed Beezer). Blume programmed in a language called FILTH (a variant of FORTH) developed by Shel Kaphan. Pacific Polytechnical Corp was founded by a group of friends from UC Santa Cruz, including Shel Kaphan (who later became Amazon's first employee and wrote its initial software). Others at PPC included Ken Clements (President), Frank Frazier, and David Dougherty. PPC also designed Kaos for Game Plan and later established a division called FrobCo that developed the Frob 26 and Frob 52 (Atari 2600/5200 development systems for the Apple II).
From what was reported in the trade press, E.T. Marketing of Temp manufactured games for Tuni Electo Services. E.T. had been founded by Tuni's marketing director Patrick Reed. The Moppet games were marketed by Enter-Tech Ltd of Tempe and Intrepid Marketing of Los Altos (I think E.T. marketed them as well).
Here is a brief section from my book on E.T. and Tuni:
"Beezer, Leprechaun, and Pirates Treasure were introduced at the 1982 AMOA show in November, along with Tugboat and Desert Race. By then, one of the companies involved in the venture, Tuni Electro Services, was already in trouble. In September 1982, E.T. Marketing announced that it had acquired all of Tuni's assets pending approval by the company’s creditors and board of directors. The creditors included the principals of Enter-Tech and in December, Enter-Tech entered into negotiations with Tuni to block the E.T. takeover (RePlay 3/83; Play Meter 3/15/84). But Tuni was not out of the woods yet. A month later Tuni was pushed into bankruptcy by Dracott Ltd of Switzerland and its assets were frozen. Dracott, the parent company of Enter-Tech, had invested $2 million in Tuni and did not want Enter-tech to have to assume its liabilities. In March, Enter-Tech acquired the company's assets and reorganized it¸ successfully bringing it out of Chapter 11 in December 1983 (RePlay 1/84; Play Meter 3/15/84). Under the Enter-Tech name, the company continued to produce Moppet games. Late in 1983, it struck a licensing deal with King Features Syndicate, which was best known for the many comic strips it distributed to newspapers worldwide. The deal resulted in two games base on King Features properties. The first was The Berenstain Bears in Big Paw's Cave. The game was based on the line of children’s book created by Stan and Jan Berenstain that had become a hot property after a series of NBC specials earlier in the year, including one called "Big Paw’s Cave." The game involved guiding a baby bear down a winding path through Big Paw’s Cave trying to retrieve stolen honey without waking the sleeping Big Paw. In early 1984, EnterTech licensed King Features’ most famous property – Popeye – for use in a seventh Moppet video. By then, however, the concept had all but died. Big Paw’s cave seems to have been produced only in small numbers[1] while Popeye does not appear to have been produced at all
[1] This is somewhat uncertain. The claim is based largely on collectors’ claims that only a single copy (at the Harborview Hospital in Seattle) is known to have existed. Trade magazines, however, announced the game’s release and included it in their catalogs and it was shown at the 1983 AMOA.
Keith Smith
allincolorforaquarter.BlogSpot.com
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I did a blog post on this same subject a while back where I tried to track down the source of the story:
http://allincolorforaquarter.blogspot.com/2013/11/video-game-myth-busters-space-invaders.html
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I still have 2 kickstarter books pending...Wrestling With Pixels which covers every wrestling game ever released.
Will you be covering Rampage Wrestling by Lance Haffner Games?
Everybody always forgets about Lance Haffner.
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Those dates are probably as good as any you'll find.
"Release" dates often vary depending on the source and unfortunately, many who list the dates don't say where they got them.
If you're looking for exact months, I haven't found a definitive source.
Another problem is that people often just list dates for a game without saying what they are.
Release date? Trademark date?
Plus, different sources seem to define "release" date differently and even the same source often seems to use the term inconsistently.
Some consider the date it was shown at a trade show the "release" date. Others use the month it appeared in a trade mag. Others try to use that month it went on sale to distributors, but a) this isn't always easy to determine and b) it isn't always clear (i.e. does sample shipping count?)
Most of the time the various sources are within a month or two of one another, but not always.
A couple of examples:
Gravitar: MAME lists it as 8/82 - DRA Price Guide says 9/82 - Play Meter Catalog says 10/82, Replay Catalog says 9/82, It was shown at a trade show on 8/27/82, the Trademark office lists a first use anywhere of 8/9/82
Mario Bros: MAME and DRA price guide say 3/83, Replay Catalog says 5/83, Play Meter Catalog says 8/83, it was announced in the 7/83 issue of Replay and the 8/15/83 issue of Play Meter, it was shown at the AOE show on 3/24/83
If and when I publish my book, I plan to include a list of for all games through 1985, along with the release date (with the source identified), first known trade show date etc.
Keith Smith
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Interesting article.
I thought Centuri was owned by/a label of Konami, much like Ultra was in the 80's? Or were there two companies with the same name?
Centuri did have a profitable relationship with Konami and licensed a lot of games from them but I've never heard that Konami ever owned them (unless it was much later).
Allied Leisure was bought by a company owned by Milton and Burton Koffman (I may do a series on Allied/Centuri next. If so, I'll give a lot more details there).
Centuri shut down their video game division in 1984 to focus on their other holdings: Outdoor Sports Headquarters, Inc. (hunting and fishing equipment), Virginia Capes Seafood (frozen seafood), and Poloron Outdoor Homes (modular homes - may have gotten the name wrong).
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Man, this thread never seems to die.
I mentioned earlier that someone claimed that at least one of these ripoff outfits (Leisure Time Electronics) said their games were made by Centuri.
I was skeptical when I read it, but I've recently been going through Allied Leisure/Centuri's annual/10k reports and confirmed that it's actually true.
You can read about it here:
http://allincolorforaquarter.blogspot.com/2013/09/centuriallied-leisure-annual-report.html
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My god, it sounds a bit like the Mob doesn't it? Actually, I had heard that the Mafia was involved in arcade games back in the day, any truth to that?
There were rumors of mob involvement with various coin-op companies. I don't think it was common but I'm sure it happened.
I had 3 or 4 people I talked tell me they saw things they "can't talk about" or that "scared the hell out of me" but details weren't forthcoming.
The mob was involved with slots at various times (Capone controlled a number of them in Chicago, as did Frank Costello in New York under the guise of his "True Mint" vending company).
The mob also had some involvement with video poker, but I don't know the extent. The New Jersey mob tried to take over SMS (video poker and trivia game manufacturer). They even beat one guy's (an executive at a handful of early video game companies) uncle to death with golf clubs.
Al Alcorn tells a story of the early days at Atari when they had their game route. During a meeting in a restaurant, some wise guy pulled out a gun and told him that this was HIS territory (though it sounds like it was mostly bluster).
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Geez, just when I think I've reached the bottom of the barrel, I find out something new.
It appears that there was at least one of these companies that made Potomac and Leisure time look like the Salvation Army by comparison.
In this case, I'm just going to quote the story in its entirety (it's short so I hope the orignal author won't mind).
Note that the term "biz op salesman" was used to refer to companies that ran scams like Leisure Time.
Biz Op Salesman Bludgeoned
Mike Shaw
Play Meter, September 1, 1982, p16
A business opportunity salesman who quit one firm to work on his own said he was threatened by the principals of that firm and then beaten with a lead pipe the evening those threats were made. Fred Ammond, a Minnesota video game business opportunity salesman. said he received three threatening calls. one each from the president, chief attorney, and owner of a firm he had just quit. The call warned him not to continue selling video business opportunities on his own. (The name of the firm and individuals who allegedly threatened Ammond are withheld pending further police investigation.) The last of the three calls was the most viciously threatening, Ammond said. The firm's owner allegedly called him at approximately 6 p.m. one day in mid-February and told him he better not continue to compete with the firm he had just left. Ammond said his former boss told him he had wiped out other competitors and would do the same to Ammond. ''I'll get you, you son of a ****." Ammond said he was told. "I'm going to take you out. After I break your arms and legs, I'm going to take you out." Ammond said he ignored the warning and left his room at the Ramada Inn located by the Minneapolis airport to conduct interviews that evening within the motel with potential buyers for his videos. "After the session, I went downstairs to eat dinner and have a couple of drinks in the motel lounge," Ammond told Play Meter. "I left the lounge a little after midnight and stopped to buy a newspaper. then stepped into the elevator to head for my room." When the elevator reached the seventh floor and the door opened, Ammond. alone on the elevator, was greeted by a young man with a lead pipe, he said. Ammond said he struggled with the man but was no match for the lead pipe. When he regained consciousness later in the hospital. he had already been through surgery that required more than 100 stitches three layers deep to close the gaping wound above his left eye. Bloomington, Minn., police said their investigation of the incident has become inactive because of the lack of evidence and its limited resources. "It was a setup," said Bloomington police detective Laurila, "but proving it is difficult . There is no corroborating evidence. I doubt if Fred (Ammond) could even identify hi attacker." So. currently. Ammond's attorney, Steven Yasgur of Hoff & Allen in Eden Prairie. Minn., is pressing suit against the Ramada Inn for damages at the highest level Minnesota law allows, "in excess of $50.000." Yasgur said the principals of the firm Ammond accused of being responsible will be joined into the suit "if a link is established by police investigation." Because the firm Ammond accused is located outside Minnesota, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has become involved in the investigation. That fact was confirmed by Laurila, who said that although the FBI does not share the findings of any investigation with the Bloomington police, it continues to request information on the case. The Minneapolis office of the FBI refused to comment on the case.
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If so, what a great job. I like it. Very cool info.
Yes, that is my blog.
I continue to unearth info about Leisure Time.
They were actually investigated by the Justice Department and the FTC.
It also seems that they were a bit more subtle than I thought.
Another issue of Play Meter had an interview with one of their customers and he went into more detail about their sales pitch.
While they showed articles of machines earning upwards of $1000 a week, they said they liked to "work with" the $75/week figure because they didn't want to overstate their case and even asked him if he was comfortable with that figure.
He said that during his "interview" the salesman asked most of the questions and made it sound like THEY were evalutaing HIM to see if he was worth having as a customer.
They even showed him a picture of another customer with a corvette in front of his house and gave him contact information (he actually did call the guy who, of course, said his games made money).
They also showed him a picture of their manufacturing plant in Florida (lending some credence to the idea that Centuri manufactured the machines, though I'm still skeptical).
They offered a free service seminar, which he said was pretty good (though they also hit him up to pay the rest of his bill).
When his games made only $15-16 a week, he tried to get Leisure Time to take them back or help him get rid of them, they told him they might resell them for him, but only if he signed a statement saying that the games made $40-50 a week.
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Everyone is probably tired of this topic by now, but I did come across some more info - including a possible (and surprsing) source for the Leisure Time games.
The November 15, 1981 issue of Play Meter had more info about these companies.
After the California ruling, Potomac took steps to clean up its act (or claimed to). They hired a PR director and president David Cook issued a directive to the games division that they should comply with all state laws. They also lowered the price of their games from $3490 to $2990.
More info about Leisure Time: they also failed to deliver games on time. Coast to Coast Locators (the company they recommended to customers) also failed to show up when promised (one customer had to pay for a hotel room for the rep and his girlfriend). Their games were cheap with particle board cabinets. One Moon Lander unit allowed players to get free games by jiggling the joystick.
The most interesting tidbit was the article's claim that the Leisure Time Electronics games were made by none other than Centuri. They even quote Allied/Centuri exec Ivan Rothstein as saying that Leisure Time was "...a reputable company" and that the games should have "no problem" earning $80-100 a week. He also said that Allied/Centuri had been doing business with Leisure Time for 8 years.
I have never heard this before and it seems a bit hard to believe.
One possiblity is that this occured just before Allied Leisure was renamed Centuri.
Allied supposedly showed 3 games at the 1979 AMOA show: Lunar Invasion, Space Bug, and Star Shooter. Could these be the ones they sold to Leisure Time?
Little is known about them. Play Meter descibed Space Bug as a game where you pushed boxes into storage bins.
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Geez. I stumbled across yet more information about these companies in Replay magazine.
Turns out Leisure Time was investigated by NBC.
In the November, 1981 issue Hal Watner (executive with a number of manufacturers over the years) reported on one ofthe shows he attended put on by Leisure Time Electronics (he calls them Leisure Time Industries but I imagine it's the same company) in Santa Clara on October 4. HE says that they advertised it as a coin-op amusement show on television (something real industry shows never did).
Upon arrival, he was directed to a meeting room where he was greeted by a "young well-dressed man with a very sexy girl by his side". They showed him games that were obviously knockoffs. Potential customers could play the games, but had to pay (another red flag - though one salesman told him See, even here at the show people pour money in.")
He says that the games were actually manufactured by a company in the "Great Lakes region' on an OEM basis and Leisure Time bought a minimum of 100 games a week.
Attendees were shown a 20/20 segment on the profit potential of video games.
The show ran for 3 days and about 500 a day attended. According to Leisure Time, about 10% of attendees took the bait.
Games cost a minium of $3,500 and were sold in packages of 2-10 games. Unlike some companies, Leisure Time did not provide location services or insurance. Instead they referred customers to a group called Coast To Coast Locators or International Locators who charged $175 per game per location to place games and train customers.
Interestingly, Watner said Leisure Time was located in Texas - apparently a mistake (NBC said they were from Indianapolis). It makes me wonder if Leisure Time and Potomac were related somehow or maybe even the same company or if they all worked the same shows.
Even better - another article reports that on March 12, 1982 NBC aired an expose of Leisure Time on their NBC Magazine program. They mentioned that Leisure Time showed customers several newspaper accounts of video games earning $300-1000 a week and "conservatively" used a figure of $150 a week in their pitch (even cutting it in half to reflect the standard 50/50 operator/location owner split).
One buyer bought two games for $7,000 and made $15 in a week on one and couldn't place the other.
Another bought six games for $21,000. One in an auto shop made $6 (and half of that went to the owner), two in a pizzeria made $12 each, and one in a Laundramat made $8.25.
NBC even had a reporter pose as a customer and tape president Joe Cassiopi with a hidden mike (RePlay printed a transcript of the segment).
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Interesting stuff. I think there's some confusion with one of your images, though. In talking about the lawsuit by Irem against Star Invaders, you have a sentence that says, "Here's side 2 of the flyer (comapre to the Uniwars flyer on TAFA)," but there's no point comparing that flyer to the UniWar S flyer. That side 2 is an ad for Star Fighter, one of the titles trademarked by Potomac that never saw actual release. As you point out with a subsequent image, Star Fighter rips off Moon Cresta. Based on the KLOV picture of a Star Invaders cab, showing the game's score table screen, it does indeed look like a hack of UniWar S.
By the way, in your article about 1973, you have a sentence that says, "Ralph Baer estimated that about 50,00 coin-op video games had been produced." Was that supposed to be 50,000 or 5,000?
Thanks. I corrected the first part earlier this morning.
The Baer estimate was 50,000, not 5,000 - almost all of them Pong clones.
He estimated that 50,000 coin-op video games were sold in 1973; 25,000 in 1974; 32,500 in 1975; and 6-7,000 in the first quarter of 1976.
The big 1973 sellers he lists (note that he is rounding and gives no source, but I've confirmed some of these from other sources):
Pong: 8,000; Midway Winner: 7,000 (Replay/Play Meter gave the same figure); Williams Pro Tennis: 7,000? (hard to read); Allied Supper Soccer: 5,000; Allied Tennis Tourney: 5,000 (a source at Allied gave me the same number); Chicago Coin TV Tennis: 5,000; Atari Gotcha: 3,000; Chicago Coin TV Hockey: 1,000; Kee Formula K: 1,000; Midway Asteroid 2,000, Ramtek Clean Sweep 3,000, Ramtek Hockey 2,000; Ramtek Volley 1,000, Atari Space Race 1,500
The rest of the games he lists sold a total of about 3,000 units. Add them all up and you actually get around 54,500 so maybe he was rounding the total to 50,000 or maybe the individual numbers were total sales, not just 1973 sales (though I think he listed the yearly totals for each game separately). Note howevere that production runs were usually only a few months and most of the big 1973 sellers came out early in the year on the heels of Pong.
His numbers, if anything, are probably too low since he omitted a number of big sellers (most notably Allied Leisure's Paddle Battle, which probably sold 17-20,000).
He also left off Williams' Paddle Ball (don't know how many it sold, but as their first product it might have sold more than Pro Tennis - unless Baer got the two confused).
Throw in those two and others he omitted and the number climbs to around 75-80,000.
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OK. Looking further I've uncovered yet more info about Potomac.
Looks like maybe I may have spoken too soon when I said they weren't in the same class as the blue sky operators.
From some newspaper ads I found, it looks like they may have been in the same category after all.
Oh, they were also sued by Irem for ripping off Uniwars.
I posted some details here:
http://allincolorfor...y-blue-sky.html
along with some info about how the blue sky boys worked in general.
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Coincidentally, I just came across some more info on Potomac Mortgage. They may not exactly have been on the up-and-up.
The June 1, 1981 issue of Play Meter reported that the California Attorney General's office took action against them and two other companies for misrepresenting the amount of revenue buyers of their games could expect to earn. Potomac told potential customers that a $6,500 investment for 10 machines would produce a $300,000 annual profit within 18 months and they could conservatively expect a 70-170% ROI (not sure if these figures add up, just reporting what the article said).
California law required that companies making such claims file a statement of discolsure with the Secretary of State's office outlining the facts supporting such claims and that the same info be presented to potential customers - something none of the companies apparently did.
The court also noted that the 3 companies' games were "of very low quality".
Such schemes were actually pretty common back in the 1980s. Some called these companies "blue sky" companies or "blue suede shoes" men. Some would promise to sell you games, help find a location, sell you a service contract etc. then take your money and disappear. I don't think Potomac was quite that bad, however.
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the remaining trademark is for "AYATOLLAH ASSASSINATION"--how topical for the time, I guess.
onmode-ky
It looks like there was at least one other coin-op with a similar theme - Stop the Iatola by Computer Kinetics. Computer Kinetics primarily made non-video countertop games but it seems they did try a few videos, though I don't know if they were released:
http://allincolorforaquarter.blogspot.com/2013/03/rare-games-more-1975-atari-photos-and.html
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And, as far as the accuracy of the article, it did say right in the title that it was for amusement only.
To be fair, the article was generally well written and wide-ranging and I'm always glad to see classic video games get media attention.
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Well, yeah. But the page layout is awesome!!!!!
True. That background effect was very cool.
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An OK article but there wasn't much new in there and there were a number of inaccuracies
"…It is also undeniable, however, that the video game arcade would not have happened without him"
I suppose this one is a matter of opinion but I don't think it's at all "undeniable" that the video game arcade wouldn't have happened without Bushnell. My feeling is that if he and Dabney didn't create the arcade video game, someone else would have..
"By definition, an "amusement arcade" is a place that houses coin-operated machines, and for the first half of the 20th century, that meant pinball"
Not exactly. I don't think pinball really came to the fore until the depression, and that was over half way through "the first half of the 20th century"
Before that I think gun games, fortune tellers, jukeboxes/coin-op phonographs, Mutoscope/kinetoscope/peep shows, strength testers etc. predominated. If you'd gone into a penny arcade in the first two decades of the century, I think you'd have been hard pressed to find a lot of pinball/bagatelle machines.
"The first successful coin-operated game was called Baffle Ball"
Again, not exactly. It may not have even been the first popular pinball machine. I think Whiffle came out a bit before Baffle Ball. And there were a number of other successful coin-op games before Baffle Ball (such as ABT's pistol games) going back to the 1880s.
Of course, "successful" is a pretty ambiguous term.
"Bally and others originally made much of their money manufactuing slot machines"
Arguably, depending on what you mean by "originally". Bally actually started out making pinball games (not counting their years as Lion Manufacturing) and didn't enter the slot field until 1936, about five years after Ballyhoo (the first game under the Bally banner).
"The coin-operated amusements industry had…its roots in gambling"
Again, it depends on what you mean by "roots". While slots began appearing in the 1890s, coin-op amusements in the US appeared at least a decade before and during the first decade "athletic testers" and other machines predominated. Gambling games did appear early on, however.
"Computer Space was the first commercial arcade game released by Palo Alto-based Nutting Associates in 1971"
Computer Space was not Nutting's first arcade game. They were also located in Mountain View, not Palo Alto at the time.
"The release of Taito’s 1975 Gun Fight in Japan became significant when its licensed American version Western Gun…"
Western Gun was the Taito version. Gun Fight was the American version.
"The success of Pong signaled the decline of pinball as companies rushed to produce video games. Arcade operators and games distributors quickly realized that video games had…"
Not exactly wrong, since video games arguably "signaled" the EVENTUAL decline of pinball but the article (and others) give the impression that Pong led to the immediate decline of pinball.
In fact, in terms of machine earnings, pinball was slightly ahead of video games in the late 1970s, especially after solid state pins began to appear. It wasn't until Space Invaders that video games clearly pulled ahead.
[Death Race] "…was widely banned."
A lot of sources have repeated this claim but the never seem to provide examples of locations that banned Death Race in particular (rather than all video games) or that banned video games specifically because of Death Race. I've found plenty of stories from 1976-77 talking about the controversy the game engendered (though I don't think there ever would have been a controversy had it not been for one Seattle reporter) but none that report that the game was "widely" banned.
Some stories even reported that entire countries banned the game but I've found no incidence of this happening and Exidy's marketing director at the time said he'd never heard of a country banning the game.
On another note, both the game's designer and Exidy's founder told me that the game was not based on Deathrace 2000 (I suppose this could have been to avoid legal ramifications - even though I talked to them 25 years after the game came out)
"By 1985, Steve Epstein’s Times Square institution, the Broadway Arcade…was forced to close"
The Broadway Arcade didn't close until 1997. It was forced to move in 1985 but it moved to a location next door to the old one and the old location closed when the Novotel hotel opened on top of it.
"Millions of E.T. cartridges were produced, sold, and then returned, ultimately ending up in a landfill in New Mexico."
Not really but I'll let you read Curt and Marty's book if you want the straight skinny.
Keith Smith
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This article says
Since the legends claim that Jeffrey Dailey died before Peter Bukowski, this article implies that the legends about Jeffrey Dailey are just stories with no truth to them. It does seem interesting that Peter Bukowski's death seems to be fairly well substantiated, yet no such reports can be found about Jeffrey Dailey's death.
While I suspect that the Daley story may indeed be bogus, I wouldn't set much store by that article. At least half of the "firsts" claimed in it are false (and that's only the ones I know about).
The standards for video game journalism back in the day were often rather low, to put it charitably.
Even if the Dailey story were true, it wasn't the first video-game-caused death.
I've found reference to at least two others - one in December of 1974 and another around 1979 or 1980.
Was it the first case of someone dieing WHILE playing a video game? The two earlier incidents arguably occured while playing a game (plus it seems that Bukowski may have died AFTER playing the game, not while).
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The contemporary newspaper articles I found about the 1982 incident all spell the name "Bukowski" not "Burkowski" (all are from April, 1982).
I haven't found any contemporary accounts of the Jeff Dailey death yet.
The Jeffrey Alan Dailey from the SSDI apparently died in Virginia. He is buried at Holly Lawn Cemetery in Suffolk City, VA and his obituary was printed in the Newport News Daily Press on May 30 and June 1, 1981.
I may send for a copy of the obituary to see if it mentions the cause of death.
Keith Smith
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Thanks.
I think Al Alcorn must have been getting his facts confused when I talked to him.
He thought there were three games in the contract, including an electromechanical driving game that involved rolling rubber balls into holes.
(a "roll up"/"roll down" game where you move mechanical cars around a track - kind of like Pokerino or those horse racing games etc.)
I don't have the book with me but I'm guessing that the Gran Trak 10 trailer was not electromechanical and did not involve rubber balls.
Was it just a trailer full of Gran Trak 10s or were they networked (I remember plans for a 20-player version of Gran Trak)? BTW - Elcon industries copied the whole "game trailer" concept, like they did with many Atari cabinet variants (the game booth and the theater kiosk, for example). I don't know if they licensed them or not.
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Anyway, I plan to spend more time looking through your blog. If there's is any other particular stuff in there (or elsewhere) that explains the design concepts of any classic games, I'd appreciate it if you (or anyone else) could direct me to that.
This came up on another forum here:
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2 worthy video game podcasts
in Gaming Publications and Websites
Posted
You all might want to check out another video game podcast that started recently called They Create Worlds:
http://tcwpodcast.podbean.com/
It's a bit different from most in that it is a bit more scholarly and takes a wider view of the video game industries (home, computer, console) as while, but it's currently my favorite video game podcast by far.