Game Plan (company)
Game Plan was an amusement game manufacturer that produced pinball machines, arcade video games, and slot machines from 1978 to 1985.[1] Game Plan was a subsidiary of AES Technology Systems and was initially located in Elk Grove Village, Illinois, moving in early 1979 to Addison, Illinois.[2] Game Plan was founded in May of 1977 by two principals of AES, Lee Goldboss and Mike Abrams, and their partner, former Chicago Coin engineer and designer Wendell McAdams.[3][4][5]
The company initially produced cocktail-style pinball tables and produced five different models in their first year of existence.[6][1] The company began producing full-size tables with 1979's Sharpshooter, a "Wild West" themed table. Sharpshooter, incidentally, was Game Plan's best-selling table, having produced 4,200 units in all.[7] From 1980 through 1982, Game Plan also released a small number of video games, most all of them licensed from other manufacturers, beginning with Tora Tora in 1980. Other games include: Killer Comet, Intruder, Megatack, Kaos, and Pot Of Gold.
Former Game Plan designer John Trudeau went on to design many other pinball games at Gottlieb/Premier and later Williams, including titles such as The Machine: Bride of Pin*Bot (1991) and The Flintstones (1994).[8][9] Ed Cebula later worked as a playfield designer and mechanical engineer at Data East Pinball.[10]
Pinball tables (full-sized and cocktail)
- Real (1978, cocktail)
- Black Velvet (1978, cocktail)
- Camel Lights (1978, cocktail)
- Foxy Lady (1978, cocktail)
- Chuck-A-Luck (1978, cocktail)
- Family Fun (1978, cocktail)
- Star Trip (1979, cocktail)
- Sharpshooter (1979, Game Plan's first full-sized pin)
- Vegas (1979, cocktail)
- Old Coney Island (1979)
- Super Nova (1980)
- Pinball Lizard (1980)
- Global Warfare (1981, widebody; only 10 units produced)
- Mike Bossy the Scoring Machine (1982, never produced)
- Sharpshooter II (1983)
- Attila the Hun (1984)
- Agents 777 (1984)
- Captain Hook (1985)
- Lady Sharpshooter (1985, cocktail)
- Andromeda (1985)
- Cyclopes (1985)
- Loch Ness Monster (1985, only one prototype produced)
References
- ^ a b Rossignoli, Marco (2011). The Complete Pinball Book: Collecting the Game and Its History. Schiffer Publishing, Limited. pp. 81, 257. ISBN 9780764337857.
- ^ ""Game Plan Moves To Addison, IL."" (PDF). Cash Box Magazine. 40 (38): 57. February 3, 1979.
- ^ "Game Plan Pinball History". Gameplanpinball.com. Archived from the original on 2011-07-11. Retrieved 2010-08-09.
- ^ Pinball Expo 1985
- ^ "Game Plan comes back with pins". Play Meter Magazine. 11 (22): 8. December 1, 1985.
- ^ "The Internet Pinball Machine Database". Ipdb.org. 1980-04-01. Retrieved 2010-08-09.
- ^ "The Internet Pinball Machine Database". Ipdb.org. 1980-04-01. Retrieved 2010-08-09.
- ^ "gameplanpinball.com". Archived from the original on 2011-07-11. Retrieved 2010-08-09.
- ^ "john trudeau list of games at arcade-history". Arcade-history.com. Retrieved 2010-08-09.
- ^ "ed cebula list of games at arcade-history". Arcade-history.com. Retrieved 2010-08-09.
External links
- Game Plan Pinball.com website - History Archived 2011-07-11 at the Wayback Machine
- Internet Pinball Database - Game Plan