Play Meter

SIX GAMES in one, a new Atari
concept, is shown at one of its
Multi-game
prototype
seen at Ima
Atari Europe exhibited a proto-
type of a new shopping mall
multi-game unit at the mid-March
Ima trade show in Berlin, a concept
that has been talked about by U.S .
Atrai officials before, buy which has
yet to be seen in America .
The Atari Theater, a versatile unit
incorporating several video games
that can be built into many different
kinds of sites, was displayed by
Lowen Automaten, Atari's German
distributors. The company showed
a three-side version containing three
games , though the product is
available in any combination of
sides .
PlAt' ItIEJER
European test locations, the Ve/izy
shopping mall in Paris.
" The most popular version is the
six -sided model for shopping
malls," Jean Francois Gaillard,
Atari's overseas manager, com -
mented . He said prototypes are
currently operating successfully in
the transit lounge at Orly Airport,
Paris, and in a Parisian shopping
mall, where it was decorated with
the center's logo.
" We can tailor-make it for the
individual site," he said. "It repre-
sents a small business by itself,
althdtJgh it needs no one on hand to
run it. We have found from site
testing that people tend to leave
their children there with some
money to play the games while they
go around the shops. It also acts as
a meeting place and people play the
games while they are waiting for
one another."
The idea was developed in Atari
Europe's French factory, Gaillard
said, and a sample had already been
shipped to the U.S. He hoped it
would be made for the U. S. market
as well.
Other American companies repre-
sented at the primarily gambling-
oriented show were U.S. Billiards,
Seeburg, W illiams, A llied, Segasa,
Kee, Rock - a la, Ro w e- AM I and
Mirco.
Ima is considered themost impor-
tant European coin machine exhibi-
tion outside of London's A muse-
ment Trades Exhibition and both
shows reflect the fact that Great
Britain and Germany are the only
two countries in Europe with hard-
and - fast laws favoring machine
gambling.
This year's Ima, held in the
enormous Messedamm exhibition
center in Berlin, contained about 50
booths covering every type of
equipment used in W est Germany,
but it was felt by some that the
show would have attracted more
visitors if it had been held in W est
Germany proper instead of Com-
munist-surrounded West Berlin.
Recent changes in German gam-
bling laws may also have affected
the gaming machine orientation of
the 1976 Ima . The changes permit
three gambling machines in an
arcade instead of two and increased
the maximum game price from 20 to
30 pfennig and the maximum cash
awards in each game from two to
three marks. Another legal break-
through was the allowance of
gaming machines in snack bars.
But the German love for sophisti-
cated machinery was also well -
catered to . Aside from the intriguing
new Atari unit, there was also
Mirco's solid -state, microprocessor-
controlled Spirit of '76 flipper pin-
game, exhibited by Mirco Games
GmBH, the firm's German subsidi-
ary .
" It is very interesting to watch the
reaction of the German operators to
electronic pinball," Klaus Strauss,
general manager of the German
firm, commented. "They are quick
to recognize that it gives the player
all the traditional features he likes,
such as flippers and bumpers, yet
the game gives the operator the
benefits of computerized efficiency.
"The switch to electronic games
is not going to be an overnight
thing, " he went on. "The process
will take years, but Mirco has a big
breakthrough with this pinball ma-
chine, for people are taking to it very
quickly. "
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