The Scavenger's Daughter

Again, an article on the Addams Family. I'd like to speak of less-known Chas' cartoons, still, and those ones with extra-terrestrials. And these episodes of TV-shows The Addams Family, The New Addams Family as well as the animated TV cartoons where there are extra-terrestrials. Shit!

The Addams Family flipper has been manufactured and produced in March 1992 by Midway Games, Inc. (once Midway Manufacturing, the people behind Mortal Kombat, now in bankruptcy) one year after they absorbed WMS Industries Inc.'s video games division, who got in 1988 from Bally Technologies the right to use the brandname Bally as they bought the Bally/Midway Manufacturing division dedicated to pinball; that's for all theses reasons that The Addams Family got produced under the brand Bally.
With Raul Julia and Anjelica Huston (Gomez and Morticia in 1991 The Addams Family movie) voice-over, designed and programmed by Patrick M. Lawlor (designing), Larry DeMar (designing and programming, co-designer of arcade game Defender with Eugene Jarvis and of Jack*Bot with Barry Oursler and Jim Patla) and Mike Boon (programming) while John Krutsch (Jack*Bot, The Twillight Zone) was filling the technicals as well mechanicals needs and aspects. The music was composed by Christopher P. Granner (who did Pin*Bot theme, The Twillight Zone flipper music,produced by Midway as well, and the one of Pinball Magic from Capcom with Jeff Powell) and the artwork realised by John Youssi, who worked for IGT and maybe did the artwork of The Addams Family gambling machines, he did the packaging of Yoplait yoghurts and the magical covers of different books including R. L. Stine's.
The Addams Family is based on Williams Pinball Controller system, who use a Motorola 6809 8-bits as main CPU, as the sound is managed both by main CPU and a ADSP-2105 d'Analog Devices, generated by Yamaha's YM2151 board as well as a DAC and encoded by the Harris HC55536. WPC systems run on an Apple OS. All this making me think there may be a way to use other programs or to program some others for the flipper, but that's not the subject.
This was the only game produced with bot WPC system and Fliptronics I board. The Addams Family is then compatible with Fliptronics II board, which only added a diode bridge to ajust the flipper's voltage.

The game offered to score higher than most of those precedently produced, its animations and game modes were really innovative.
It was a big success, with 20 270 units sold on 20 750 produced.
As the production ended, after The Addams Family broked every previous Bally flippers sales records, Midway Games Inc. produced 1000 others, the Gold or Special Collectors Edition.



References :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Addams_Family_(pinball)
http://diehardgamefan.com/2011/01/03/diehard-gamefan-hall-of-fame-nomination-addams-family-pinball/
Differences between The Addams Family Gold and regular TAF pinballs
http://www.fliptronics.com/ Official Fliptronics' website
http://www.johnyoussi.com Official John Youssi website, partially in Flash, where he misspelled Addams Family « Adam's Family ». Just wrote it an email and he said his web designer will correct it and that he loved worked on this game as he was a big fan of the TV series. Can't believe he answered, and that fast!
http://www.pinballnews.com/news/youssi.html John Youssi's interview where he doesn't talk about The Addams Family.
http://www.flipperfrance.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=2460
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