Dealing In Games

A leader in pinball, slot machines and electro-mechanical games, coin-op giant Bally has also been a player in the arcade video game sweepstakes ever since the beginning. Through its ownership of Midway Manufacturing, it had put out a couple of clones of Atari’s PONG in the early 70’s: Winner and its four-player variant Winner IV. Of all the companies that started riding on Nolan Bushnell’s coat-tails during the PONG bonanza, Bally and Midway perhaps posed the greatest threat. Particularly so when Midway and its development team Dave Nutting Associates break new technical ground in 1975 with Gun Fight, the first arcade game utilizing a CPU. So when the brass at Bally get wind that competitor Atari is developing a programmable home game machine in the mid-70’s, they decide they need to jump in too. Their bid is the Bally Professional Arcade, hitting the market in 1978, following the release of the Atari VCS the previous year. Charged with developing the console, Nutting Associates accepts two recruits fresh out of the University of Wisconson-Milwaukee, Tom McHugh and Jay Fenton. Fenton works on some Pinball projects, and eventually heads the team to design the Bally Arcade. Fenton would later be the designer of the revolutionary coin-op GORF for Bally/Midway, the hardware of which is adapted from the home machine. Jeff Fredricksen is also on board for the new game project.

Bally and its electro-mechanical arcade game days, with Target Zero, 1970 ad.

Bally Professional Arcade Manual cover

The “Bally Home Computer Arcade”, as sold by Panacenter home entertainment stores of San Francisco, 1978

Gun Fight, a shooting game built into the Bally Professional Arcade, 1978

Checkmate, a Snake-like program built into the Bally Professional Arcade, 1978

Scribbling, a drawing program built into the Bally Professional Arcade, 1978

Videocade game cartridges for the Bally Professional Arcade

Atari owned the home rights to Galaxian, so Bally had to release their own game (Midway) as Galactic Invasion in 1981

Muncher, aka TEST PROGRAMME, a Pac-Man type game for the Bally Professional Arcade, 1981

Bally Professional Arcade, Fun AND Brains

The Arcade runs a Z80 processor at 1.8 MHz with 4K of RAM and 8K of ROM available, along with a 7 MHz video processor capable of 256 colours, although only four of those can be produced on the screen at a time. Its screen resolution is about on par with Magnavox’s Odyssey². For future expansion, there is a 50-pin connector hidden behind a punch-out panel on the rear of the console, allowing data access to the Z80. There are a number of unique properties of the design, including a 24 button keypad on which overlays could be placed for certain games. The game cartridges, called Videocades, are almost exactly the same dimensions of an audio cassette tape. They insert flat into a spring-loader on the face of the machine. Four games are built into the system: Gunfight is a well-done port of the Boot Hill arcade game, Checkmate is a surround game that foreshadows the light-cycles in Walt Disney’s landmark 1982 videogame-culture movie TRON, a five-function calculator predictably called Calculator, and a doodling art program aptly named Scribbling. The system’s celebrated joysticks are somewhat similar to the Channel F‘s, with a knob on the top which rotates, as well as moving through eight compass directions. However, the Bally controllers are shaped like a pistol grip, with a trigger instead of a fire button. With the purchase of two extra joysticks, up to four people can play at the console. At the rear of the machine is a smoked plastic cover that lifts to reveal a storage space for the games and their overlays. The device also sports a pretty hefty 3-octave music synthesizer.

Click button to play 280 Zzzap and Dodgem on the Bally Professional Arcade

Computer, or video game system? Manual cover for the Bally Home Library Computer, 1977

Promises, Promises

Manufactured for Bally by the E.F. Johnson Co, the Professional Arcade debuts for $399.95, a steep price tag in comparison to Atari’s console, although on the cheap end for a computer and is generally marked down considerably by retailers. It is initially available only via mail-order, from a Chicago-based mail-order marketer by the name of JS&A. This company starts advertising the system in 1977, but production problems delay the release of the Arcade until spring of the next year. Even then, many systems are returned to the company as defective, due to issues such as RF shielding that retains too much heat inside the unit, causing overheating failures on the PC board. While revisions are made to correct this problem, FCC delays, production issues, parts and chip shortages and other snafus create voluminous backorder delays that will continue to plague the Bally through its lifetime. As is the want of early programmable video game console makers, the JS&A ads also make mention of an expansion module, adding dual magnetic tape decks and an alpha-numeric keyboard that adds 16K to the system and would, yes, turn the video game console into a full-fledged personal computer. A high-speed printer for the unit is also touted in the ad. Constantly slipping release dates for the keyboard add-on will be the continued bane of Bally users anxious to release the full power of their purchase. Due to the promised keyboard, the console initially sports the label Bally Home  Library Computer. This is one of the many names by which this chameleon of a video game system will go by through its tumultuous existence. In May of 1977, Bally president William T. O’Donnell announces that the company has signed a $7.3 million agreement with large department store chain Montgomery Ward to sell the Bally Professional Arcade, software for the system, and a home pinball unit through their stores.

The Bally Basic system. Program Rock-Paper-Scissor games, random line graphs, wild scribblings, the sky’s the limit!

Introducing the Bally Professional Arcade, 1978

A $50 Audio Cassette Interface is eventually made available for the system, to be plugged into game controller slot #4 and used for loading and saving programs on a standard tape recorder via the later introduced $50 Bally BASIC cartridge, containing a version of Palo Alto Tiny BASIC programmed by Jay Fenton. Using this cartridge, BASIC programs can be entered with the Bally‘s keypad, facilitated by the four function keys that allow for entire BASIC commands to be entered with a two key press. A fervent following around the console is given voice by the long-running monthly Arcadian newsletter, put out by Bob Fabris from 1978 to 1986. Also supporting the system is newsletter Cursor, later renamed the BASIC Express, edited by Fred Cornett until unceremoniously going belly up after their July/Aug.1981 edition.

At the 1979 Winter CES, the add-on computer keyboard makes its debut, the total system of console and keyboard called the Bally Computer System, with the video game unit called the Video Console, and the computer add-on underneath referred to as the Programming Keyboard. For just the latter, the price is pegged at $650 or less, and shipments of the finished product are stated to begin by June or July. It promises advanced graphics capabilities, available control via a light pen, and even “Concurrent Processing”, a form of multitasking allowing multiple programs to be run at once. Bally’s continued inability to begin production of the keyboard creates such frustration in the Arcade user base that by mid 1979 some fans start sourcing their own memory boards to possibly create one themselves.

Bally BASIC logo, 1978

BASIC template to place over keypad. Green shift chooses green characters, red chooses red, blue chooses blue. WORDS button chooses gold commands, 1978

They certainly don’t skimp on words in this ad for the Bally Computer, from JS&A 1977

Bally Professional Arcade (foreground) and Bally Computer System

Brickyard/Clowns, games for the Bally Professional Arcade, 1981

Football, for the Bally Professional Arcade, 1981

Red Baron/Panzer Attack, games for the Bally Professional Arcade 1981

Sea Wolf/Missile, home video games for the Bally Professional Arcade, 1981

Magazine ad for the Bally Professional Arcade

Bally Bails

Bally is not prepared for the intense demands of consumer electronics, and is much more interested in the new market for gambling machines opening up due to the legalization of gambling in Atlantic City, which occurs the same year as the Professional Arcade‘s release. Bally’s legal fight to demolish the historic Marlborough-Blenheim Hotel (ultimately successfully) and construction of a luxury hotel and casino resort in the city on the 9-acre tract of land on the Atlantic City Boardwalk at Park Place (wouldn’t you like to get those two properties in Monopoly), further distracts the company. A price tag for construction of the new resort exceeding $50 million, along with a 10 million dollar loss on the system over 1978 – 1979, prompts Bally to make moves to exit the home video game market.

Astronomical

Page from the 1978 Montgomery ward Christmas Catalog, featuring Fidelity’s Chess Challenger

A 1979 ad for the Voice Chess Challenger electronic chess game by Fidelity, possible buyers of the Bally Professional Arcade

1980 ad for Fidelity’s Chess Challenger

At the 1980 Winter CES in Las Vegas, Bally announces to stunned attendees that they have a letter of intent, signed on January 4, to sell the company’s Consumer Products Division, including the Bally Professional Arcade, to Fidelity Electronics, Ltd.. They are makers of electronic chess games, including the highly popular Chess Challenger line. This plan strikes fear in the hearts of developers and dealers of the console, as Fidelity has a reputation of forgoing distribution networks and selling direct. Hence a group of them make a counteroffer, with Bally then sitting on the fence about actually shedding its consumer division. By the beginning of March, talks have broken down. An electronics outfit out of Columbus, Ohio called Astrovision ultimately purchases Bally’s Consumer Productions Division, with rights and remaining hardware for the home game, for $2.3 million in August of 1980.  By this point the Professional Arcade has built up a library of 14 cartridges, such as 280 Zzzap/Dodgem, Bally Pin, Astro Battle, Panzer Attack/Red Baron and Sea WolfMissile. Soon after the sale, Astrovision is on tours to Bally Users’ Groups around the country, making promises of a “state of the art” redesign of the console in the planning stages to allow the Arcade to compete in the new video game market.

Click button to play Panzer Attack and Red Baron on the Bally Professional Arcade

Cybervision 2001 computer, in the pages of 1978 Montgomery Ward catalog

Astrovision had gotten its start a few years previous during the genesis year of the mass-produced personal computer; in 1977, as a company called Authorship Resource Inc. (ARI). In Pennsylvania, under their United Chem-Con division they had created one of the first colour computers, called the Cybervision 2001. For a CPU, the Cybervision sported an RCA 1802 “COSMAC” chip, also featured in RCA’s own Studio II home video game console, released the next year. Loading programs through tape cartridge Cybersettes, users of Cybervision interacted with the computer via two 40-button alpha-numeric membrane keypads. Sold in 1978 by department store chain Montgomery Ward for a paltry $399, a second computer called the Cybervision 3001 was also added to the line the next year, as well as a prototyped 4001 version in 1979 that never saw release. Cybervision was ultimately felled by weak promotion by Montgomery Ward and stiff competition building in the market. The core development team of ARI then drifted away, with others such as general manager Martin S. Albert and salesman Ray George forming Astrovision from the ashes.

In 1981 the company, led by president Martin Albert, relaunches the old Professional Arcade as the Bally Computer System. Part of the deal includes technical support from Bally and Nutting, as well as rights to use the Bally logo. Rights to some of Midway’s most popular arcade titles, such as Wizard of Wor and Galaxian, round out the package. The launch is accompanied by some pretty dramatic bluster from Astrovision, such as the promise from Vice-President of sales Ray George of “explosive 1,000 percent growth”. As with their previous CyberVision, there is the promise of distribution via department stores such as Montgomery Ward.