Big House

Artist Constantino Mitchell told us his wife Jeanine did the playfield, plastics, and cabinet color work on this game. Pictured in this listing is a game with serial number 48021 and is very different than all other games in this production run. The score displays are at the top of the backbox, the playfield and cabinet art are different, the playfield has fewer inserts and no ball-and-chain, and the music and call-outs are different. Interestingly, serial number 48021 falls between the known serial numbers for Premier's 1988 'Excalibur', the last production run to have score displays at the top, and the known serial numbers for Premier's 1988 'Bad Girls', the first production run that moved the displays down into the translite. The regular production run serial numbers for 'Big House' followed those of 'Bad Girls'. We are aware of a second Early Production 'Big House' serial number 48023 but have no pictures of it. One theory that would support the serial number sequence described above is if games 48021 and 48023 were two of a few test games and, while waiting for field results for those games, another game that was ready for production ('Bad Girls') would be made and would make standard the use of the different backbox score display location by the time the test results came in for 'Big House'. In this theory, the test results necessitated all the other changes in 'Big House' for its regular production run and the relocation of the score displays was coincidental.