come out in front of Wizard, it would probably have
sold substantially less. But it rode the crest of the
Wizard wave and it benefitted by it.
And all our games have benefitted. Our average
run has jumped tremendously . And when that
happens, you give yourself more time to design
playfields. We no look at four or five different
whitewoods, a whitewood being the actual playfield
without graphics, and pick one before we advance
to what we call the "prototype stage," whereas
before we might have looked at two or even just one
and gone with that, because we had nothing better.
We have games on the shelf now, that may or may
not get built, that are really good games, because
·
we have the time now to develop that many .
PLAY METER: In the past, Bally has on occasion
come out with a prototype, sent it to the distributor
for testing, then realizing it wasn't a winner,
shelved it. Does that still happen?
NIEMAN: That's the concept of prototyping, of
course, but hopefully you don't produce a game so
bad that you've got to kill it. You hope you can
make the proper adjustments and still manufacture
it. A prototype is horribly expensive. If a game gets
killed in prototype, somebody has made a mistake,
and it shouldn't have gotten that far. At worst, we
should have to make some adjustments, to make it
more liberal, to open it up, whatever. But you're
right: we have pulled games, Fore, the golf game,
for example, and Slapstick, the single-player.
That's the last one I can remember. It's a good thing
when a manufacturer can do that. But there were
times when we would kill a game that we reallv out
~~
· ~ the
pool table with
the Velvet Touch
in novators of
the industry
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Zenith, Crest, Adjust-a-price
Pool Tables
Sportacard
Sportaball
TV Cocktail Table
Bimbo
United-Sardi Soccer Tables
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ourselves in a jam-by doing it-because we didttt
have the games to back it up. Totlay we could do it
very easily, but fortunately we haven't had to, not
since Slapstick, two or three years ago.
PLAY METER: Well, you've obviously learned
some things about pinball in the past two or three
years.
NIEMAN: We have. We've come a long way. The
design staff across the street, for example: we now
feel that it's the best in the industry. Our art
department has the distinction of being the only
in-house art department in the business. And there
is a great amount of creative talent back there.
witness Capt. Fantastic, which is a classic as far
as graphics go.
PLAY METER: What about the Evel Knievel
game? How is that shaping up?
NIEMAN: The game is in prototype. Graphically-
and this is very hard to believe but- I think
it goes beyond Capt. Fantastic. We used mirrors
again. And it's a beautiful game. Also, I like the
playfield, again as much as I do Capt. Fantastic's. In
other words, the game is loaded- loaded with
playfield and loaded with graphics.
PLAY METER: Is there any kind of special
promotion planned?
NIEMAN: Yes. We're trying to sort out things
now.
PLAY METER: What's he going to do, jump 50
pinballs lined up side-by-side?
NIEMAN: Don't laugh. We've considered it. I just
didn't want him missing his shift and landing in the
middle of it, wheels spinning, glass all over the