KISS Prototype

Mfr Date:  1980 – Bally

Qty Made:  Prototype – 9 were originally built, but only four are still known to exist.

Designer:  Jim Patla

Artwork:  Kevin O'Connor

Reasons We Like This Game:  Engineered by the "Tour de Force" designer of the day, Jim Patla designed well known "serious" titles like Centaur, Playboy, Mata Hari, Silverball Mania, Rolling stones and so on.  Based on the Greatest Rock N' Roll Band in the World KISS! this game is simply the ultimate collectable ever produced by the band.  What makes this game so incredible is the artwork.  Without a doubt, the best looking rock and roll pinball machine produced ever; from the faces on the side, to the lighted KISS backlight, to the wonderfully detailed playfield, KISS will always remain the highlight of any collectors gameroom and is probably our most requested game.  Coincidentally, Kevin O’ Connor did artwork for some of our other favorite games including Monster Bash!

Mechanically, KISS has a little bit of everything...  Five inbound lanes, four drop targets, four stationary targets, four jet bumpers, two spinners, a set of slingshots and two flippers. Notably, KISS combines a lot of simple shots with hard shots, and a nice balance off short to long shots too!  Why the unusual configuration of four jet bumpers?  Why the four band members of course!  Gene, Paul, Ace and Peter; each jet bumper has a different picture of each band member on the surface.  These bumper caps alone are a highly valuable collectable in their own right!

Special Features:  KISS is the most popular celebrity themed pinball machine ever built.  The artwork by Kevin O’ Connor is divine, the colors are vibrant and well defined.  The game even plays a chord from the song “Rock N Roll All Night and Party Every Day"!  While most games have 2 or 3 in bound lanes when you launch the ball, the Kiss game has a whopping five!  Also while most games only have 2 or 3 jet bumpers, KISS has four of them, one for each band member.  The playfield layout is really nicely done and the balance of shots from left to right, easy and long, are executed well and include a nice variety.  There's even two spinners!  We're suckers for spinners since such few games have them and KISS has two!

Unique Special Features:  Kiss was one of three games to be used as a prototype for Bally’s new hardware platform. (the other two were Eight Ball Deluxe and Flash Gordon). Featuring an all new platform that used alpha numeric displays and the new generation of solid state design with speech capabilities.  Only 9 of these prototypes were ever produced and this is one of them.  We are not certain how many still exist today because only nine were produced, but we assume less than five.

In addition, the hardware (CPU, power supplies, solenoid driver board, lamp driver board, etc) are all unique from the production run, are completely hand wired, hand assembled, and labeled by the original engineers for this game.   Also, each solenoid is hand wound and has rubber and silicon grommets to cut down on the noise the machine generated.  This is a notable point, since this game is considerably quieter playing than the production games of the day.  Interestingly, these unique solenoids were never mass produced (probably because of either cost or production interference) and only the prototypes have them.  Just like an Eight Ball Deluxe prototype, Bally was still experimenting with using blue scoring displays but decided against it because costs were still relatively high.  (The production run used the traditional clear fluorescent display)  Each one of these amazing prototypes were built entirely by hand and are a testament to not only the era, but also American craftsmanship and the amazing engineering and electrical ingenuity pioneered by Bally's designers.

We have installed the latest rom revision as we do with all of our pinball machines. Revision 1.0

Click here to check out our Total Pinball Restoration Process!

Price:  $ 15,995

Call 847-973-2337 to order!