Spy Hunter

Bally used the same name for a video game released in 1983. "AGENT GK" on targets refer to the game's designer, Greg Kmiec. Uses the AS-2518-45 "Cheap Squeak" sound board. Included in this listing are images of original backglass artwork for this game, titled "Blowout". Collector Bill Kurtz indicated it was obtained direct from artist Tony Ramunni and that the name of this game was changed to 'Spy Hunter' to cash in on the popularity of the video game having that name. We contacted Ramunni but it was simply too long ago for him to remember that his original artwork became Spy Hunter. Designer Greg Kmiec tells us some interesting information about the creation of this game:SPY HUNTER was an homage to Ted Zale. I incorporated the roll-over button feature of his JOUST game into my asymmetrical design of the playfield. SPY HUNTER was originally going to be an Elvis' jukebox-themed game with the two rows of matching bonus lights in the center of the playfield acting as song-selecting push buttons on a jukebox face and the upper left area of roll-over buttons (taken from JOUST) to represent a swiveled-hipped Elvis. The only problem was that Bally didn't have the Elvis license (I think DATA EAST did at that time.) Marketing saw the game one afternoon and said that Bally didn't have the Elvis license. But Bally did own the SPY HUNTER video game license. As the whitewood was completely done with song lettering on it, at Norm Clark's request, George Christian and I stayed late that night and completely stripped all of the the parts from the top of the whitewood (including the bottom mounted units that came through to the top), sanded off the entire top of the playfield of its lettering and completely re-lettered the whitewood in a SPY HUNTER theme, so as to present a companion piece to Midway's SPY HUNTER video game the next day to marketing. We showed marketing an Elvis game one afternoon and redid the theme over one night in order to show them a different game the next day. That was pretty cool back in those days, because game themes and renderings often took several weeks to make it through the marketing and art departments. The AGENT GK feature was added by the Art Department. Trying to design a game from the theme up (jukebox) during the era of making a whitewood without a theme and re-branding it for production shows you how far ahead I was in thinking thematically back in those whitewood times, not to mention that radical asymmetrical playfield layout as an homage to Ted Zale. We have seen one undated photo showing a Spy Hunter at a public show. This game is reportedly made by Maibesa of Spain. The photo was taken at a distance from the game and is out-of-focus. We can barely see the name Bally/Midway on the right side of the backbox but we know that Bally's name has been found on other Maibesa games. We find insufficient information about this possible Maibesa version to make a listing on this site. One Spanish database with this photo reports a date of 1985 with an "Approval Number" (N�mero de homologaci�n) of A/00/00947 but has no other information.