I've always been a big history buff and lately I've gotten back into reading again. Of course, I've managed to combine those things with my love of pinball and have started reading old issues of arcade and pinball industry magazines.
Now I know all about the crazy history of Capcom Pinball. How it had three games in the works at the time of its demise, Kingpin by Mark Ritchie, Flipper Football by Bryan Hansen and the legendary Python Angehlo and Big Bang Bar by Rob Morrison. Interestingly, Pinside lists him and Melvin Brouwer-Williams as designers of the game. Melvin is the Dutch Pinball Exclusive guy who designed Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and bought up all of the Capcom assets. I didn’t realize that he was involved in the original Big Bang Bar. How did I not know that? That’s not right is it? I digress.
Capcom Pinball's management decided to go to market with the soccer or futbol-themed Flipper Football to appease the European markets, but it ended up selling poorly for a number of reasons (only 750 units), not the least of which was people who saw the games on location in bars kept bashing the soccer ball that was sticking out of the backbox. Flipper Football's poor performance along with Python Angehlo's antics in trying to develop the sexually-themed Zingy Bingy pinball machine and a host of other factors ultimately led to Capcom Pinball being closed.
BUT...the other day I was flipping through the September 1996 issue of RePlay Magazine and I stumbled upon this small blurb.
As soon as I saw it, I said to myself, WHAT?! How have I never heard this before. Right around the time that Flipper Football was launched Sega Pinball, the maker of games like X-Files, Independence Day, South Park and many others, reached an agreement to merge with Capcom Pinball. Who knew?
Obviously that merger never went through, Sega Pinball went on to get bought out by Gary Stern and become today's industry behemoth Stern Pinball and Capcom closed shop.
I wonder how pinball history would have changed if that deal had gone through? First of all, since Big Bang Bar and Kingpin were already in development around that time, the combined Sega / Capcom probably would have brought those games to market and produced them in significant numbers rather than only the handful that currently exist today.
What would have happened with Sega Pinball? Would the combined Sega / Capcom have been strong enough to have survived on its own and not gotten bought out by Gary Stern? If so, would he have gone off on his own and started Stern Pinball from scratch or possibly bought out Gottlieb instead when they closed shop around the same time period?
There's lots of fun hypotheticals and moving parts to think about here if you're into the history of the pinball industry. Crazy stuff
This is my french video about the story of capcom pinball if you want to watch it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YC6s7Kn3XoM&pp=ygUeY2FwY29tIHBpbmJhbGwgc2FtdWVsIGZsaXBwZXJz
More food for thought: WMS picked clean the carcass of Capcom and designed a version of BBB for the WPC system and their mechs, but it was cancelled during the prototype phase as the WMS flippers weren't strong enough to consistently hit the ramps (Capcom flippers are super duper strong as WMS sued them into oblivion, which required the redesign of all the major pinball mechs from scratch. This was in retaliation for poaching so many of their employees - meanwhile WMS and Gary were still going at it over his penchant for copying Bally/Williams over the years). The group that eventually bought out Capcom at one point was also trying to buy out WMS. (Or maybe they pivoted to…
I’ve always seen Rob Morrison credited as the BBB designer. Something seems off about the pinside credit for Melvin. Maybe he is remaking it?
Roger Sharpe also commented on Capcom mergers and buyouts near the end of his historic discussion of the corporate upheavals of the late 1990s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZpd1h0NdMY
The expanded description has an index of timepoints.