Before the Crash: Early Video Game History

The Rise and Fall of Cinematronics

The Rise and Fall of Cinematronics Tim Skelly 138 A Quick Buck For several decades prior to the eruption of PONG (1972) and its clones and mutations, pinball games were the kings of coin-operated amusement. That changed drastically when cathode-ray tube (CRT) displays enabled amusements like Computer Space (1971), Nolan Bushnell’s coin-operated version of Spacewar! (1962), and of course, Ralph Baer’s TV tennis game that inspired PONG. The new, virtual entertainments brought with them new economic models. Compared to the video games that would eventually eclipse them, pinball machines were expensive to produce and transport . Not so video games like PONG. Games that used CRT displays did not take up the large areas required by pinball games, allowing space for extra seating or more games. Even so, one has to ask why so many bar and arcade patrons chose to play early coin-operated video games when pinball obviously offered far more stimulation. In the early years of video games, people were thrilled to manipulate objects in the virtual world, a place few had visited at that time. Pinball games, though arousing and flashy, felt somewhat repetitive and a bit restrictive after so many years of the same type of gameplay. Leaving that and aesthetics aside, the economics of video games were clearly attractive to established amusement operators and anyone who had a small amount of capital. Simply put, they were cheap to manufacture and transport. If video games were a short-lived fad, not much would be lost. If they were more than that, they could be a gold mine. This formula had a strong appeal for Jim Pierce (Fig. 9.1), Dennis Parte, 01 Wolf text.indd 138 3/20/12 12:54 PM 139 The Rise and Fall of Cinematronics and Garry Garrison, the new owners of Cinematronics. It was 1975 when Cinematronics first opened its doors, and without consulting an almanac, I think I can say that it was hot that day, because it was almost always hot in the desert of the El Cajon Valley, a location far inland from the nearest, somewhat cooler, city of San Diego, California. Like virtually all pioneers who came to find gold in California, Pierce and his cohorts trod in the footprints of those who went before them, which is to say, they bought the schematics, software, and hardware necessary to make and sell their own copy of PONG. Shortly after their initial production run of that game, Parte and Garrison sold their shares to “Papa” Tom Stroud, a veteran of the coin-operated amusement business. Stroud, a frugal soul, saved every silver dollar he came across when working his route’s collections. By the time I met him, he had accumulated enough to fill the frozen freezer chest in his basement. (Yes, he literally saved cold, hard cash.) After surviving their initiation into the fraternity of men who sold PONG, Cinematronics purchased another game, Flipper Ball (1976). Little is known of the game, though an online source for video game information, The Killer List of Video Games (www.klov.com), has this to say of it: “A colorful video pinball game from Cinematronics. The game has an on-screen, horizontally-controlled flipper which the player uses to knock out bumpers and hit a moving target to score points.”1 “Colorful” is a reference to the game’s multicolored overlay, as the company began with simple blackand -white raster graphics and would not introduce color until Solar Quest Fig. 9.1. Jim Pierce, co-founder and chief executive of Cinematronics. Photo courtesy of RePlay magazine. 01 Wolf text.indd 139 3/20/12 12:54 PM 140 Tim Skelly (1981). Even color overlays were not used again until Star Castle (1980). Next up was Embargo (1976), the first original game designed and programmed at Cinematronics. In the words of engineer and game designer Robert Shaver, “I was a green kid just out of school and I only had chief engineer Bob Long for any kind of help. I did everything on that project except design the cabinet.” I can sympathize. I wasn’t an engineer, but after Starhawk I designed all of the game cabinets and hired the artists to execute the cabinet art. For an early black-and-white raster game, Embargo was clever and simple. Each of up to four players controlled white-on-black images of a boat that...