Play Meter

ANALYSIS:
The attack
•
on co1n-op games goes on
By Roger C. Sharpe
Pinball game
controls asked
by councilman
Amusement centers, which young-
sters 13 and up are allowed to fre-
quent, must have City Council permis-
sion to open and must operate during
certain hours and with adult supervi-
sion.
Baroni said the council has been
reluctant to approve applications for
amusement centers because of opposi-
tion from the public.
But he said that as a parent, he
By SUSAN FINCH
might
find such places preferable to
East Jeffenoa bureau
what he called the "satellite amll!Je-
Seldom do Kenner city fathers do ment centers" that have cropped up all
anything that would rivet the attention over Kenner.
of adolescents.
But last week, at the urging of one
"IF WE'D EVER put all these
councilman, the City Council made an
machines in one place, we could proba-
exception.
bly fill up the Superdome," Baroni
The subject was something dear to said.
the hearts of many teen-agers - pin-
Baroni said he is not against elec-
ball machines and other games of tronic games. In fact. he likes to play
chance.
them, be said.
"I have no objections at all to the
Councilman Nick Baroni said tighter
- 'lrtrols on ... _ '~ Oerati ... - -f the I'Jl~~"i nes, but I d~' ._ _.,, an objert;,..., to
Kenner
Report
New Orleans newspaper couered the attack on pinballs- which this report
See related story,
called 'games of chance'- but didn'tte/1 operators' s ide.
this issue.
What has always seemed
incn .ble to me is that people in the
outside world con tinually search for
a wh ipping boy in the coin machine
industry. Something to attack in the
hopes of god o nly knows what, but
probably in an attempt to ban games.
Back in the Thirties, pay-out
games received t he self-serving
righteous scorn of a public looking
for some cause to support in the
hopes of protecting Mom and Apple
Pie. Pinball games soon , too, fell
victim more so out of guilt by
association rather than for anything
more substan tial.
The outbreak of the War tended
to put the brunt of the crusade on
hold, but when it ended, the one
thing that remained constant was the
fact that old values and beliefs were
still held as firmly as before.
T his onslaught continued when
the industry started up again in the
late Forties and added one-ball
uprights to their repertoire and soon
followed this with the addition of
b ingo machines. N eedless to say,
there wasn't much improvement in
the image of t he coin -machine
industry, nor did the people involved
with the equipment, or any level, try
to do anything more than just survive
and hope that things would b low
over .
The same attitude prevailed until
the business went through a sort of
revolution and public awareness,
helped along by the easing of
restrictions in L os Angeles in 1972
and then N ew York and Chicago
only a few yea rs later. Pinball, in fac t,
attained a status and popu larity that
made it almost chic and at the same
lime video began to capture its own
audience and following.
T hen things changed as pinball
adapted more s l o w ly to the
technological changes and video
continued to expand its research
[continued on page 11)
PLAY METER, Novembe r 1, 1981
9