ence about Tommy at a trade show there-with six
pinball machines. And I did show up, really without
any sort of consummated deal. I went out and had
lunch with four guys from Columbia and we worked
out the details then.
They actually had a lot of printed material to
hand out at the meeting, and all it said was that
they would be ~ied in with the world's largest
manufacturer of pinballs. It didn't mention us by
name becau e they didn't know if the deal was on or
off. So at the meeting, they had to announce it,
"Yes, Bally Manufacturing is going to make the
game. But I still hadn't really checked it out with
anybody at Bally yet.
PLAY METER: Certainly nobody at Bally really
disapproved of the idea?
NIEMAN: No. They just said: "Well, if you really
think it will do something, go ahead."
PLAlr METER: So they gave you the green light
and the result was the game, Wizard, right?
NIEMAN: Yes. And I didn't realize at the time the
can of worms I'd opened up. Putting the thing
together was unbelievable. For example, we
wanted to do the brochure with Ann-Margret, and
we had to chase her all around the country before
we managed to get her in the same room with a
machine at the same time. It was wild. And it really
started something. We were inundated with phone
calls. Newspapers, magazines wanted to know
about it. We just didn't know what we'd gotten
involved with.
At the same time I was still selling; so this was
only a part-time deal for me; that really made
things interesting around here. And of course, it
took off, and as soon as that happened, people
started turning around and saying: "Gee that was
great. What's next?" And I had given absolutely no
thought to having to do this again. That's when I
looked back at the same property, Tommy, and said
to myself: This is a tremendous vehicle. A chance
like this is not going to come along very often." And
I said, "There's got to be something else in the
movie that we can use." I had met Elton John in
New York and I knew what a pinball fanatic he was.
I went back to him and I said, "Hey, what about it?"
And he loved the idea, from the very beginning.
And his management John Reed Enterprises-
fortunately they were for it as much as he was. So it
was just a matter of having to do it all over again.
PLAY METER: What kind of compensation did you
have to work out with him?
NIEMAN: I've been asked that by many people and
rather than detail exactly what we did work out, let
me jusi say that it was mutually beneficial.
Whatever it was, it was well worth it for us.
PLAY METER: And for him as well?
NIEMAN: Well, yes. but here's a guy who was
obviously not in something like that on a profit and
loss basis. He makes enough from his primary
source of income. But he enjoyed it immensely. We
got tremendous co-operation from him.
PLAY METER: How did this affect you overall
sales?
NIEMAN: The largest run on a game previous to
Wizard was on Fireball. Wizard exactly doubled the
run of Fireball. Capt. Fantastic was a run of one and
a half times Wizard.
PLAY METER: So, you had the tie-in with
Tommy, the tie-in with Elton John and you're
working now on a tie-in with Evel Knievel.
Obviously these things are very successful for you.
Why haven't other manufacturers jumped in?
We've only had a couple try-Sega with The Fonz
and Allied with their Roy Clark Super Picker,
neither of which has gotten a great deal of publicity.
Why aren't other manufacturers trying it?
NIEMAN: That's a damn good question. I really
thought that we would see a lot of it. I think there
are manufacturers other than the ones you named
that have the resources to do this type of
promoting. To date I'm surprised that we haven't
seen it. But you've got to understand that a
promotion, what I call "promotional theming,"
doesn't hide a bad game. We couldn't stick a dog of
a playfield in a fancy package and sell it off. It just
doesn't work. What you aim to do with the them or
promotion is to get the first quarter play. The
playfield has to take over after that. I can get
players to walk up and play Capt. Fantastic, for
example, against thirty other pinballs. But if the
game isn't a good game, if the playfield's not there,
they'll walk away from it. You can't take a mediocre
game, get a name, tie it in and sell it. The players
just won't go for it.
PLAY METER: Some people say that Wizard was a
mediocre game, that it made it just on the
promotion. How do you answer those people?
NIEMAN: I enjoyed Wizard. I liked the animation
of the flip -flop unit, for example. I thought it was a
good game.
PLAY METER: Why haven't you brought that
feature back?
NIEMAN: Well, it's there. And if it applies, we'll
probably use it. But for one thing, you want to
protect the resale value on your games; you don't
want to repeat certain good features too close to
one another. I'd like to see that feature re-worked
maybe, the same concept but in a different package.
It is an expensive unit though, in cost to the
manufacturer.
PLAY METER: But you think the game overall was
better than average?
NIEMAN: Definitely.
PLAY METER: It would have sold well without the
promotion?
NIEMAN: It would have sold well, but probably not
tremendously, which is what it ended up doing. The
long-range effect for us of games like Wizard and
Capt. Fantastic was that they gave us tremendous
market penetration. We had calls from distributors
saying, "You know, I've got people who have never
used a Bally game, refused to use a Bally because
they don't like Bally. And they have been pressured
to buy the game. Then after these people made
money on it, they said, "When your next game
comes out, call me, and let us at least take a look at
it." By that time, we had Bow and Arrow, which I
think is a really good game, but which had
absolutely no promotional tie-in, and we sold a
great number of Bow and Arrows. If that game had
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