Episode 348 - 1962 Gottlieb Tropic Isle and 1963 Bally Moon Shot

For Amusement Only EM and Bingo Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·10m 10s·analyzed·Feb 22, 2016

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.020

TL;DR

Moon Shot (1963) was Bally's carbon copy of Gottlieb's Tropic Isle with space theme.

Summary

Nick Baldridge examines two 1960s pinball games: Gottlieb's 1962 Tropic Isle (designed by Wayne Nions) and Bally's 1963 Moon Shot (designed by Ted Zale). Moon Shot is revealed to be an almost exact mechanical clone of Tropic Isle with different artwork and theming—a space theme replacing the tropical monkey theme. The episode details the playfield mechanics, scoring systems, and Bally's design innovations highlighted in Moon Shot's promotional materials, particularly features derived from their bingo machine engineering.

Key Claims

Moon Shot was essentially a straight-up carbon copy of Tropic Isle—everything from point values to playfield layout was exactly cloned
high confidence · Nick Baldridge, main content discussion of mechanical similarities between the two games
Bally had been building bingos and selling them by the truckload and hadn't put much money into flipper games for quite some time before 1963
high confidence · Nick Baldridge, discussing Bally's business pivot in response to legal climate changes
Ted Zale was Bally's designer brought in for Moon Shot and designed many of Bally's unique features on EM machines
high confidence · Nick Baldridge, crediting Ted Zale as the designer of Moon Shot
Moon Shot was the first flipper game Bally had made in some number of years (as of 1963)
high confidence · Nick Baldridge, contextualizing Moon Shot's significance in Bally's flipper production
Legal climate changes around 1963 forced Bally to refocus on flipper games in the U.S. and shift bingo production to export
high confidence · Nick Baldridge, discussing regulatory pressures affecting Bally's manufacturing strategy
Wayne Nions designed Tropic Isle and Roy Parker was the artist
high confidence · Nick Baldridge, crediting Tropic Isle's creative team
Bounty was the next-to-last magic screen game Bally produced but had trouble selling in the United States due to legal climate
high confidence · Nick Baldridge, discussing pre-Moon Shot Bally production context
Nylon ratchets used on Bally machines (instead of metal) are less prone to wearing and tooth breakage than metal ratchets used on Williams and some Gottlieb games
medium confidence · Nick Baldridge, analyzing technical specifications from Moon Shot promotional materials

Notable Quotes

“Well, if you're going to copy, you should copy from the best, and that's the market leader here at the time, Gottlieb.”
Nick Baldridge @ end of episode — Summarizes the design philosophy behind Moon Shot being a direct clone of Tropic Isle and acknowledges Gottlieb's market leadership
“Everything from the point values to playfield layout was exactly cloned. The Bally game was called Moonshot and of course had completely different artwork as well as a different back glass animation.”
Nick Baldridge @ mid-episode — Explicitly confirms the mechanical duplication while highlighting the only substantive differences (art and theming)
“Bally novelty relays are actuated by the famous Bally floating armature, developed and perfected for the heavy-duty precision performance required in bingo operation.”
Nick Baldridge (quoting Moon Shot promotional flyer) @ technical specifications section — Demonstrates how Bally leveraged bingo engineering innovations in flipper game design
“Nylon ratchets... as long as the operator didn't throw a bunch of grease on them to lube them up, are pretty trouble-free, and they don't tend to wear very badly.”
Nick Baldridge @ maintenance discussion section — Contrasts Bally's design choices with competitor reliability and maintenance implications

Entities

Nick BaldridgepersonWayne NionspersonRoy ParkerpersonTed Zaleperson Tropic Islegame Moon Shotgame Bountygame Gottliebcompany

Signals

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historical_signal: Moon Shot (1963) is a direct mechanical copy of Tropic Isle (1962) with only artwork and back glass animation changed; illustrates design strategy and market positioning in early 1960s
high · Nick Baldridge explicitly states 'Everything from the point values to playfield layout was exactly cloned' and calls it 'a straight-up carbon copy'
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design_philosophy: Bally's strategy of cloning Gottlieb's successful Tropic Isle design reflects pragmatic approach to re-entering flipper market; Nick notes 'if you're going to copy, you should copy from the best'
high · Direct copying strategy with intentional choice of market-leading design as template
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industry_signal: Legal climate changes around 1963 caused Bally to shift from bingo-dominant strategy back to flipper games; bingo sales constrained by regulatory pressures
high · Nick discusses how legal climate changes forced Bally to 'refocus on their flipper business in the States and work on bingos for export' and mentions Bounty sales troubles due to legal climate
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design_innovation: Bally transferred proven bingo engineering innovations (floating armature, nylon ratchets, trip relays) into Moon Shot flipper design, demonstrating cross-platform engineering leverage
high · Moon Shot promotional flyer explicitly references bingo-derived innovations; Nick analyzes floating armature, nylon ratchets, and trip relay designs as bingo-origin features
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product_concern: Moon Shot's novel metal bumper skirts (vs. standard plastic) present durability trade-off: resistant to breakage but risk deforming and damaging both ball and playfield

Topics

Mechanical design and engineeringprimaryGame cloning and design copyingprimary1960s pinball manufacturing historyprimaryLegal regulation and market adaptationsecondaryBingo-to-flipper engineering transfersecondaryPlayfield mechanics and scoring systemssecondaryReliability and maintenance engineeringmentioned

Sentiment

neutral(0)

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.030

What's that sound? It's For Amusement Only, the EM and Bingo Pinball Podcast. Welcome back to For Amusement Only, this is Nicholas Baldridge. Tonight I want to talk about two very different, yet very similar games. We'll start with 1962, when Gottlieb put out a game called Tropic Isle. Tropic Isle is a game about mischievous monkeys who are throwing coconuts and disturbing birds and women that are hanging out on the island well, this game has a unique triple roll-under arrangement where right in the center of the playfield below the pops, which are arranged in a fan up above, you can roll the ball around these three swinging gates, and each one scores five points when you swing through it. Well, if you manage to complete A, B, C, and D, the sequence on the machine, then it'll light the roll-unders for 50 points, which is quite the jump. So it's well worth your time to attempt to do that. Now, down in the lower third of the playfield, there's a rollover button on the left, which will light the two purple bumpers for 10 points apiece instead of a single. And on the right-hand side, there's a rollover that lights your green bumpers, again, for 10 points apiece instead of a single. Your slings are a single point. unless you light them, in which case they become 10 points. And then you have a sequence at the top, 1 through 5. If you complete the entire sequence, it will light special on the playfield, and you can collect either by draining directly in the center, or on the left and right outlanes, which normally score 50 points apiece. The back glass has a cool back glass animation There is a set of monkeys that climbs a palm tree Now in order to make them climb and reach the top you have to hit A B C and D If you do so several times, then you'll earn a special. The more you do it, the more specials you earn. So it's well worth your time to shoot that sequence. But it's fairly difficult. that main feature right in the center of the play field it's pretty easy to brick a shot right off of one of the posts and drain but all in all this is a very fun game Wayne Nions was the designer and Roy Parker was the artist and so you kind of know what you're getting into there you've got the classic duo and great gameplay well Well, Bally, in 1963, really hadn't put much money into flipper games for quite some time. If you'll recall, they had been building bingos and selling them by the truckload. They were just selling tons of bingos at the time. So, what happens when the legal climate starts to change? It kind of changes your opinion of what you're going to manufacture. And this happened for Bally too. And so they really decided to refocus on their flipper business in the States and work on bingos for export until they could figure out a friendly way to get those into the U.S. market. Remember, in 1963, Bounty, the next-to-last magic screen, had been produced, but they had trouble selling it in the United States because of the legal climate. And so they brought in designer Ted Zale. And Ted Zale, I've talked about before on the podcast, he designed many of Bally's unique and interesting features on their EM machines. But his first effort as a designer was actually a straight-up carbon copy of Tropic Isle. Everything from the point values to playfield layout was exactly cloned Valley game was called Moonshot and of course had completely different artwork as well as a different back glass animation You have a space game with female astronauts all over the playfield and one male astronaut down at the out hole. What's interesting is the back glass animation feature, as it is on Tropic Isle, it carries over from game to game. So once you get all the monkeys to the top of the tree, then you earn your replays on Tropic Isle. While on Moonshot, it's rockets, and you're launching them to the moon. And once you get all three there, you earn replays. Let's take a look at the flyer for Moonshot and see what Bally thinks makes this such a great game. Remember, this is the first flipper game that they've made in some number of years. So the first bullet point is unitized construction. and they show a flipper assembly, and they say that essentially you can just swap out the whole assembly and you don't have to mess around with pieces and parts. Of course, that probably wasn't true because the assemblies probably cost a whole lot more than the pieces and parts, but hey, at least they were thinking, right? 50-volt circuit, so very similar to the bingos where almost everything is driven by 50 volts. You have all your coils driven by 50 volts in this flipper game. Heavy gauge wire. Apparently they used a heavier gauge wire than had been used in the past or perhaps used by Gottlieb. Metal bumper skirts. This is interesting. I don't know that I've seen original Bally metal bumper skirts before. If I have, I did not notice. But that's an interesting idea. The thought being that your bumper skirts break, of course, over time, being plastic and hit by a big metal ball. And so rather than having to disassemble the entire bumper to replace the skirt, you just make it out of metal and then it can take a lot more abuse. Well, of course, the issue is, as that metal deforms, you got a much bigger problem because it's going to nick up your ball which will then nick up your playfield pretty quickly. Nylon ratchets. This is something that I actually like quite a bit about Bally machines They are instead of metal ratchets on the back of the stepper units they use nylon, and the nylon gears, as long as the operator didn't throw a bunch of grease on them to lube them up, are pretty trouble-free, and they don't tend to wear very badly. The metal ratchets, as used on Williams games and some Gottlieb games, do sometimes wear. Sometimes teeth break and so forth. And of course that can happen on the nylon ones too. It's just less likely to do so. Floating armature. This one's pretty interesting. And they reference our old friends, the bingos. Bally novelty relays are actuated by the famous Bally floating armature, developed and perfected for the heavy-duty precision performance required in bingo operation. Lateral action and valley floating armature equally actuates every switch leaf in a relay, eliminating the frequent touchy adjustment required in relays actuated by pivot-type armatures. And these are just the same type of armature plates that they used in the bingos. Time-tested trip relays. Now, the trip relays used in these games were very similar to the bingos, and of course they're referenced here, too. Trip relays in Bally novelty games are the positive action type proved in hundreds of thousands of busy Bally bingo games. So rather than having to pull up, these relays use gravity and pull down. And I believe that's what they're saying. I've certainly seen the opposite from other manufacturers. So this is pretty interesting. Like I say, Ted Zale' first game, and it's essentially just a carbon copy of a Wayne Nions game from the year before. Of course, if you're going to copy, you should copy from the best, and that's the market leader here at the time, Godley. Well, that's all for tonight. Thank you very much for joining me. My name again is Nick Baldrige. You can reach me at 4amusementonlypodcast at gmail.com, or you can call me on the bingos line. That's 724-BINGOS1, 724-246-4671. you can listen to us on iTunes, Stitcher, Pocket Casts via RSS, on Facebook, on Twitter at Bingo Podcast you can follow me on Instagram also at Bingo Podcast or you can listen to us on our website which is forumusementonly.libsyn.com thank you very much for listening and I'll talk to you next time