Paragon

'Paragon' is the first widebody production game from this manufacturer. We had heard anecdotally that when the Golden Cliffs feature is at maximum and then a ball lands in its saucer, the tune that is played is the interlude from The Ohio Players' song "The Worm" that was on the charts when the game was being designed. Designer Greg Kmiec later told us:It has come to my attention that the song was indeed "The Worm." Every ball in the saucer added one note to the tune. Paragon was Bally's first wide-body. You might be able to recognize features from different games in the layout: the Capt. Fantastic bottom flippers, the Old Chicago bottom thumper bumper on the left, the Knockout Wiggler channel on the right (the across-the-playfield feed into the Knockout Wiggler lane was an homage to Ted Zale), the Harlem Globetrotters in-line drop targets on the left side feeding a reverse Capt. Fantastic across -the-playfield drop target shot and the top two saucers similar to Wizard.An earlier game that builds a song tune note by note is Bally's 1978 'Playboy'. The standard version of this playfield has four flippers as shown on the flyer. An unknown quantity of the games shipped to Europe had only three flippers. In this version, a ball guide and a single post replaced the upper right flipper, and the flipper assembly was not installed. In addition, a mini-post was added at the opening beneath the pop bumper in the Beast�s Lair to make it more difficult for the ball to leave the playfield that way. We asked Greg Kmiec to comment on why the 3-flipper version was created. He replies:I wouldn't have originally designed Paragon with that lower right section that way because it looks like the pinball could get stuck between those two wire forms. If my memory serves me correctly, I seem to recall that the Italian, French and German markets were quite strong for Bally during that period and Bally was often visited by various foreign distributors. I recall that they relayed the fact that their players liked to hold the pinball by the flippers. The way it was relayed to designers through interpreters was that their players liked to hold the pinball on the flipper, take a drink of beer and brag to other players about the skill shot they were about to shoot. That couldn't be done with the original Paragon design. I tried something different with Paragon, since it was Bally's first wide-body game. It was relayed to Bally that the foreign player preferred one return lane on each side at the bottom of the game that "returned" the pinball to the flippers for a playfield skill shot. This type of design became known within the industry as the "Italian Bottom." It was used extensively then throughout the industry and is still in use today. I do seem to recall adjustments being made to Paragon for foreign games [to have the "Italian Bottom"]. I don't recall how many were changed or if they were changed for only one country or one distributor, but they were definitely changed in the factory on the production line. It might have been due to a combination of two factors: the foreign distributors requesting something their players wanted and Bally realizing a cost reduction on the Bill-Of-Materials by eliminating a flipper. Bally might have been willing to change part of a production run just to sell a new wide-body game. Reportedly, all Paragon games in France have only 3 flippers.