Gamatron

Gamatron was a conversion kit produced by Pinstar, a company started and owned by Gary Stern between the collapse of the 'original' Stern and the formation of Data East Pinball. The playfield is a version of Stern's 1980 'Flight 2000' and features a device similar to that game's ball-walker at the upper left, completing G-A-M-A-T-R-O-N letters to enable locks, etc. The Bally/Stern boardset is used - a PinStar daughterboard plugs into the CPU socket. A binary comparison of the software indicates that it is 100% identical to Flight 2000's software. The kit could easily be used to "upgrade" a worn-out game from the early 1980's, but it did not include the features that were starting to drive the market in 1986 - namely ramps, speech, and displays capable of showing text as well as player scores - thus not many Gamatron kits were sold and few examples exist today. Reportedly, this kit was used to modify existing Stern games as well as Bally games. However, the manufacturer flyer shown here states only, "Fits most standard size 4 player Bally Manufacturing Corporation pinballs". A subsequent report told us that this kit will not work with Stern games without modification, for two main reasons: 1. The height of the replacement plexiglas backglass is too tall to fit into a Stern backbox. 2. The display placement of the replacement plexiglas backglass is set to work with the "standard" display placement of Bally games. Stern games did not follow a standard where the displays were placed, and typically change from game to game. Duncan Brown told us that Steve Kirk explained to him that he placed his personal design number on the backglass of every one of his games (in the order in which they were designed). Here are the ones we know: Stars has SK-1 on the jet wing. Nine Ball has SK-3 on the wizard�s cap. Meteor has SK-5 on one of the rockets. Pinstar's Gamatron has SK-9 on a launching rocket. The prototype game, Ramp Warrior, has SK-13 on the truck's license plate while the production game, Truck Stop, shows this license plate laying crumpled in the street. We don't know what games belonged to SK-2, -4, -6, -7, -8, -10, -11, and SK-12. On this game, various sets of initials were placed around the backglass in addition to Kirk's design number. The initials are listed here, followed by the names we have: SK = Steve Kirk HW = Harry Williams JJ = Joe Joos Jr. GS = Gary Stern SS = Sam Stern SM = Seamus McLaughlin, handwritten, likely his signature as the artist SE = Unknown KH = Unknown SB = Unknown DS = Unknown AF = Unknown