Comet

Designer Barry Oursler told us how this game got named:Comet wasn�t the original name. It was going to be 'Riverview', named after the amusement park that used to be across the river from Williams. After discussions with management and some of our big distributors, I changed the name and used one of the roller coaster names from that park. Comet was a common name for roller coasters, along with Cyclone and Hurricane. I figured I might as well keep the theme going. Oursler also told us that artist Python Anghelo wanted the top rollover inserts to be 1-9-8-6 in recognition of Halley's Comet near-Earth fly-by in 1986. Comet was the first solid-state machine to feature a one million point shot, using Steve Kordek's voice to announce "One Million!". An example of an electro-mechanical game with a million point shot is Williams' 1957 'Arrow Head'. Bill "Pfutz" Pfutzenreuter told us that Brian Dolatowski was the original programmer. Brian finished all the rules, then left Williams for another job. Pfutz inherited the game, fixed a few bugs, and convinced management to give him more time to make the game better by adding more light shows and flasher effects.