'Jacks to Open' was a remake of the 1-player EM game Gottlieb's 1977 'Jacks Open'. Note that the order in which the drop targets stand is different from 'Jacks Open'. John Trudeau, a fellow designer at Mylstar, provided us the following information: 'Jacks to Open' served as the test platform for the first alphanumeric displays, although they first appeared in production on Premier's 1985 'Chicago Cubs "Triple Play"'. We actually made ten complete 'Jack to Open' games with the alphanumeric display and a new backglass (having new art to fit the openings for the new digits). There was some management concern that it wouldn't make any difference in the cashbox. That turned out to be undetermined, since there really was no way to tell how much the game would have made without it, at the same location. But we did get some positive feedback because of the initials-entering capability it now had. And players in general liked the displayed messages too. We are aware of two of the ten alphanumeric test games, both shown here. For only one of them do we know the cabinet serial number, 13789, which numerically occurs during the production run and indicates that it and likely the other nine test games were pulled randomly out of the run for conversion instead of being designed either before or after the run.
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