http://historian159.rssing.com/chan-12531872/all_p6.html<<
Chicago Coin’s most interesting video game (IMO) was Super Flipper.
I talked about this one earlier, so I won’t go into the details here, but Koci revealed some interesting information about its origins as well.
Q Who developed the Super Flipper game?
A That was developed by a company in Ancona, Italy.
Q How do you spell that?
A A-N-C-O-N-A
Q Do you know the name of the company?
A Model Racing
Q Company?
A Company.
Q Is that company affiliated with Chicago Dynamic in any way?
A They recently became our distributors for Italy. Prior to that, we had purchased – or at least arranged a royalty agreement on a game called Trapshoot.
Q Was that a video game?
A No sir, it was not.
Q Was that a game that they had developed and licensed you to make?
A Yes, sir.
Q Was Super Flipper a game which was completely developed by Model Racing and sold to you as a complete package, or was it a development agreement between the two companies?
A It was completely packaged and sold to us as a completed game.
Q Is Model Racing Company of Ancona, Italy a manufacturer of video games, do you know?
A They have manufactured this one, and I think it could have been their first introduction to video games.
Q Have they distributed Video games of U. S companies in Italy, do you know?
A Up to -- actually, I don't know, Mr. Anderson
Q For how long gas Model Racing Company been a CDI distributing company in Italy?
A About a month, month and a halt.
Q What contact had CDI -- and when I say "CDI," I mean Chicago Dynamic
A Right.
Q -- had CDI had with Model Racing prior to that first representation about a month ago?
A As I mentioned before , we did arrange a royalty arrangement on Trapshoot, which was about a year and a half ago, two years.
Q Have you had any other dealings with Model Racing Company other than the recent distributorship and the arrangement on Trapshoot and the arrangement on Super Flipper.
A No, sir, not to my knowledge.
Q How did Super Flipper first come to Chicago Dynamic’s attention?
A The manager of our Wiesbaden office, by the name of Michael Barr [sp?], is in close contact with all our distributors and manufacturers throughout Europe. And as I recall the story, they had called Mike – that is, Model Racing – that they had Super Flipper pretty well finished, and that he, Mike Barr, should make arrangements for somebody at CDI, if they could run over to Italy to look at the new game.
Q Did you go and look at it?
A Avron Gensberg went there, Mr. Anderson. I have been there many times.
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Actually, this "revelation" is not entirely new. The Italian Coin-Op Video Games Zone had earlier speculated that Super Flipper was a licensed version of Model Racing’s UFO, which they claim was “the first original [video] game made in Italy”
The site claims that UFO was shown “in January, 1975 at the AMOA Exhibition” but this is clearly wrong, since the AMOA (actually just the MOA at the time) was held November 1-3, 1974. I suspect they may have meant the ATE in London, whish was held in January, 1975.
Model Racing was there. In fact, here's a photo of their booth at the show, featuring their shooting game Duck Shooting
I don't know if they showed UFO, however.
I do know that they showed UFO at the Milan Fair, which I think was in April.
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