Checkpoint

Fred Young did voice characterizations on this game. Joe Kaminkow told us that the previous game, Data East's 1990 'The Simpsons', was to be their first game to have DMD. However, President and CEO Joe Keenan worried that development of the DMD might not be ready in time for that game and problems occurring had they rushed it into production could put the company out of business. The playfield layout for Checkpoint was based on the layout of Data East's 1989 'Robocop' which Joe said did not sell very well but they liked the basic design, modifying it for this game. Pictured in this listing is a test game playfield and two test game white cabinets, images captured from a video taken during the November 1990 factory tour of Data East. The playfield has a few differences from the production version. Joe told us their backboxes had DMD (not the alpha-numeric as seen on the prototype backglass pictured here) and that they decided that these white cabinets showed dirt and location grime too easily, including around the flipper buttons, such that the cabinet art was changed for production games. This game was produced from February 1991 to May 1991.