Truck Stop

Released as a modified version of the prototype Bally Midway's 1988 'Ramp Warrior'. Pat McMahon did the backglass art. Greg Freres did the artwork for the playfield and plastics. This was the first game following the merger of Williams and Bally/Midway; if you examine the right side of the playfield above the ball launch, you will find a yellow traffic merge sign with the text "Williams/Bally Merge". This Bally game used Williams' System 11B sound board (D-11581) for its sounds and music. Reportedly, the upper flippers are Bally mechanisms, the lower flippers are Williams mechanisms, and there are various other Williams parts. According to artist Greg Freres and James T. Hawes, technical writer for Williams, artist Pat McMahon intended the truck driver in the backglass to be Joe Dillon, Williams' Sales VP and, later, General Manager. This game uses pinballs that are 1 inch in diameter, instead of the standard 1 1/16 inch. Otherwise, the balls get stuck in the wire ramps. Because the manual, parts manual, and available service bulletins do not reference ball size, we wondered if the smaller ball was a design intention or was a field solution to a problem. We asked Jim Patla to explain and he replies:Here is the story on the 1" balls, we had all the samples ready for the trade show and all we were waiting for was the wire ramps from our vendor. They were installed and they fit perfectly but then I shot the game and my very first shot stuck in the cage. A reference dimension was misread and the inside was undersized. We did not have time to have new parts made in time to ship the games to the show. I had an eureka moment and changed the balls to 1" so we could make our ship deadline. This much I remember. I am not sure what ended up in production. We have seen one or two reports of production games with wire ramps that flawlessly pass the 1 1/16 inch balls. 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. Production Run Records for Truck Stop: Production Start Date: Nov-23-1988 Production End Date: Feb-28-1989 Production Run Quantity: approximately 1598, records adjusted from 1606 without notation. First ship date: Nov-28-1988 Last ship date: Aug-8-1989