Voices of Greg Freres and Steve Ritchie are "Wise Guy" and "Skull"; Greg and Steve wrote the speech script together. Pictured in this listing is a game, serial number 100824, with its skull toy having a curious yellow discoloration everywhere except the jawbone. The game came with an operators manual printed in German and its cabinet had been fitted with a ticker vender mechanism. Such mechanisms are banned in Germany, so the owner assumes the vender was added in Italy, where he obtained the game. He brought the game back to Germany and subsequently he met up with artist Greg Freres at a show there. Later, we asked Greg to comment on the discoloration of the skull. He replied: I really don't know why the top part of the skull was discolored compared to the "jaw" portion. My assumption was that we may have tried to do a "wipe" technique on early parts (painting the part to create some visual interest and then wiping it off leaving a bit of a patina behind. This technique was usually reserved for parts that had texture built into the part. For instance, the skull entrance on EATPM used this wipe process to enhance the texture, or the climbing rock on No Fear also used this technique to give the rocks a more natural look. However, this No Fear skull was a smooth part to begin with so a wipe technique doesn't make much sense because there aren't any "nooks & crannies" for the paint to get left behind. BUT this skull has some slight texture in it...this lead me to believe that MAYBE this was an early part pulled off a temporary tool and that temp tool may not have been sanded to a smooth finish...MAYBE we were still experimenting with the idea of having the iconic NF skull symbol pushed more towards a real skull instead of a 3D representation of their logo (???) I also thought that MAYBE this skull was discolored from years inside a smoky bistro BUT why then wasn't the "jaw" section as discolored? That's why I started thinking we may have been experimenting and this one got left on a proto game. Secondly, once it was brought to my attention that the game had a low serial number I noticed the translite was also an early translite, not the finished production translite. You probably already know the story about the ski outfit that Glenn Plake is wearing - production has a red and black combo vs the all yellow outfit that I painted on the illustration. I think about 200 translites were printed to cover the "sample" run, and then we fixed the art, re-ran the films, and printed the rest of the production translites with the new colors. So the fact that his game ALSO has the early translite leads me to believe that his game is possibly from the proto run - perhaps one of the first batch of games that ended up in Germany (or Europe). Greg also pointed out to us that Williams certainly would not have added a ticket vender to the side of the cabinet. He is cautious to actually pronounce the skull�s yellow color as an authentic factory result, and we allow the possibility that the Italian distributor or operator (or whoever added the ticket vender) may have experimented with it. We also note that the serial number, while relatively low, is not within the first 200 made. Still, there is the Sample translite, and for the story interest alone do we show pictures of this game with its translite, skull, and ticket vender.
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