Back Jai Alai

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  1. By IPDB
    credit
    Tony Kraemer — Design
    ipdb.corporate_entity_name
    Williams Electronics, Incorporated
    ipdb_id
    3779
    ipdb.manufacturer_trade_name
    Williams
    ipdb.model_number
    479
    ipdb.notes
    Designer Barry Oursler provided us this information:This game was designed by Tony Kraemer. He wanted the flippers to look like the wicker "gloves" used in the game of JAI ALAI. Most people didn't know anything about the sport, so Tony was asked to change the theme. The movie 'Saturday Night Fever' had just come out, so the game name was changed to DISCO FEVER. Were were stuck using the banana flippers, since we had already bought a ton of them. I also was forced to use them on my TIME WARP game. Tom Cahill, former Service Manager for Williams, told us that one electro-mechanical single-player engineering prototype was made for this game. It had curved "banana" flippers which would make sense for the sports theme. Tom comments:I don't recall if there was a photo shoot for this game or not, but some similarities to World Cup and Disco Fever could be seen. The game was left in an apartment in Columbus Ohio. My nephew went to Ohio State and when they graduated no one in the group wanted to take it with them. He did not let me know for two years that he did not have it, and did not know what happened to it...... We previously showed a date of January 1978 for this game. The Williams Daily Production Log first listed a 'Jai Alai' on Mar-14-1977 as a 2-player machine with a quantity of 67 units authorized to be made. This game did not go into production and was deleted from their Log after Jun-21-1978 with none made. The Williams Daily Production Log also first listed a 'Super Jai Alai' on Feb-3-1978 as a 4-player machine with a quantity of 300 units authorized to be made. This game did not go into production and was deleted from their Log on Apr-4-1978 with none made, the same day that the solid state Williams' 1978 'Disco Fever' (which also had the curved flippers) first appeared on the Log with an approved quantity of 300.
    player_count
    2
    technology_generation
    electromechanical
    theme
    Sports
    theme
    Jai Alai
    theme
    Pelota