Re: your pinball SPAM for today

Greetings from the land of candlepin bowling! We have duckpin lanes, too!
I checked out the page using the lynx text-only browser, as is my wont,
and it looked good in that mode.

I think one has to be careful with the classification system. When you
talk about rolling balls down the alley, you range over not only ball
bowler games and Skee-Ball(R), but also a variety of "roll-down" games
from Keeney Roll-A-Line to Exidy Whirly Bucket. Likewise, the puck
family begins with coin-op shuffleboards and includes a lot of strange
games.

I think the best approach is to offer some reference points (possibilities
above) and present the bowling theme as the mainstream, while noting that
various other ideas have been tried over the years. Even collectively, we
may not have seen all the variations, but here are some to consider:
Bally/Midway Strikes & Spares 1985
ChiCoin Variety "roll down bowler"
ChiCoin Las Vegas ~1972 (first a shuffle pop-up, later truncated to buttons)
ChiCoin Top Brass
ChiCoin Criss-Cross Target
Midway Skee Fun
United Pool Alley (uses a cue stick, evidently)
that baseball shuffle by United

Also note that shuffle bowlers were made by Bally, Stern Electronics, the
independent Midway, and Williams (after they dropped the United name).
.................David Marston marston@mv.mv.com
Received on Tue Mar 13 21:30:43 2001