I have never got my head around this.
Prima donna head designer culture - what they say goes or they walk out ?
All manner of financial pressures to inflate short term profits, head off takeovers, generate cashflow ?
Desire to target different marketplaces - kids v first timers v seasoned pros ?
Deliberate mix of expensive (ie Mercedes S Class) and cheaper (ie Mercedes A Class) games to keep costs down ?
Take Jungle Lord - look at the simplicity of the art and compare it to a Gorgar from the same era
Or Future Spa or Grand Lizard, with different artists and styles for the respective playfield and backglass
How did Bad Cats ever get made, cute art but - for its year a game with no multiball, only 2 flippers ? At the same time games like Funhouse and Whirlwind were coming out of the same company
Hurricane and Gilligan's Island somehow came out of the same company around the same time as Twilight Zone and Addams Family ?
Now if I was in a place with only one pinball, I would very happily play any of these. Williams/ Bally was well resourced, it had an extensive pedigree in Pinball. It had large teams of people working on games for many months yet it was capable of producing some games that sold 10x the volumes others did.
As an absolute amateur playing games in pubs, it was blindingly obvious to me within about 10 minutes that Bad Cats (2,500 sales) was a very different league to Whirlwind (7,300) / Funhouse (10,750)
Prima donna head designer culture - what they say goes or they walk out ?
All manner of financial pressures to inflate short term profits, head off takeovers, generate cashflow ?
Desire to target different marketplaces - kids v first timers v seasoned pros ?
Deliberate mix of expensive (ie Mercedes S Class) and cheaper (ie Mercedes A Class) games to keep costs down ?
Take Jungle Lord - look at the simplicity of the art and compare it to a Gorgar from the same era
Or Future Spa or Grand Lizard, with different artists and styles for the respective playfield and backglass
How did Bad Cats ever get made, cute art but - for its year a game with no multiball, only 2 flippers ? At the same time games like Funhouse and Whirlwind were coming out of the same company
Hurricane and Gilligan's Island somehow came out of the same company around the same time as Twilight Zone and Addams Family ?
Now if I was in a place with only one pinball, I would very happily play any of these. Williams/ Bally was well resourced, it had an extensive pedigree in Pinball. It had large teams of people working on games for many months yet it was capable of producing some games that sold 10x the volumes others did.
As an absolute amateur playing games in pubs, it was blindingly obvious to me within about 10 minutes that Bad Cats (2,500 sales) was a very different league to Whirlwind (7,300) / Funhouse (10,750)
