Black Belt

'Black Belt' is Bally's first game to have their "Self-Percentaging" feature. Rehman Mercahnt told us that Howard Shere took over the software programming when Rehman went to another project. This game was also produced as Bally Midway's 1986 'Karate Fight'. Artist Greg Freres had to change the name on the backglass from Black Belt to Karate Fight at the request of a European distributor. We do not know if this became a permanent change in the production run, or was only a backglass substitution occurring before games designated for export went out the door. Freres does not recall the distributor's specific reason for the name change or how it actually affected the Black Belt production run, and offers the possibility that all games shipped as Black Belt and then Bally shipped the new glasses later. It could be that the name was changed for Europe to avoid confusion with Zaccaria's 1986 'Blackbelt' released a few months before. We presume the Production Run quantity of 600 shown here includes the games having the Karate Fight backglasses.