Play Meter

COINMAN INTERVIEW
'11111111111111111 1 Ill 1 1111111111111111111111111111111 I Ill 1111 I llllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll llllllllllllllllllllllllll
Our Coinman this issue is Bill Cravens of Nintendo
of America. Bill's experience in the coin-op industry
couers operating, distributing, and manufacturing. He
claims that the diversification of his experience has
helped tremendously in understanding each uiewpoint.
Twenty years ago, Bill started his career with
Wurlitzer selling jukeboxes. From there he worked in
the distributing end with We ymouth Distributing and
then Portale (which is now Betson/ Pacific).
Then ueering from manufacturing and dist ributing,
he worked for a large independent operator in Southern
California , G & G Amusement, and eventually opened
his own operation, Inland Empire Vending.
In the mid-seventies, Bill joined Meadows Games,
aduancing to the presidency. After leauing Meadows,
Bill held the position of national sales manager for
Cinematronics and Pacific Nouelt y and then joined
Uniuersal U.S .A. "One reason I joined Un iuersal is
because I saw the potential of kits. I haue always tried to
stay close to operators and their needs, and I definitely
saw a future in kits."
Bill was sales direc tor when Uniuersal surpassed all
expectations on sales of its Mr. Do! series of kits. When
the true system game came out , Bill once again saw the
future potential. He soon left Universal and joined
Nintendo of America where he has been the driving
force behind the sales efforts and achieuing a goal of
100,000 VS. S ystems out by the end of the year. If you
recall, 100,000 was about the numberofPac-Man games
that penetrated the market.
Bill Cravens
How is a sys tem different from a c on vers ion kit?
Basically a system is a hardware mainframe . You
can compare the games to the software you would
change in a regular computer. A normal dedicated kit
has one game and you put it into almost any game by
replacing the board and everything else that's in it. The
only thing you replace in a· system is the software, the
electronics stay the same .
So games are muc h eas ie r to c hange in a sys t em ?
No question about it. As in the Sente system, there's
only a cartridge to be plugged in and in ours, only several
chips are replaced . It's simpler and much , much cheaper
than converting the whole game.
By Valerie Cognevich
When y ou get into a syste m, are you locking
yourself into one manufac turer?
Yes, in a way you are but it's not such a negative
factor . There are three things that operators feared
about systems. The first two questions operators have
Ullllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll II 11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111
16
PLAY METER. October 1. 19lV