Midway | Code Like It's 198x

In 1972, as Video Games magazine told the story ten years later, a young engineer from California flew to the company’s headquarters in Franklin Park, Illinois, to show off two electronic paddles knocking a ball across a television screen. Midway’s managers were not interested. The engineer was Nolan Bushnell, and the game was Pong. A few years later Midway passed on Larry Rosenthal’s Space Wars, which became a hit for Cinematronics. Then, in 1980, it took on a Japanese maze game its parent company’s president thought was “silly”, and Pac-Man made it, in the same magazine’s words, “king of the coin-op hill”.

Fast facts

Founded: 1958, by Henry “Hank” Ross and Marcine “Iggy” Wolverton, as Midway Manufacturing.
Owners: Bally Manufacturing from 1969; WMS Industries, the parent of Williams Electronics, from 1988; an independent public company, Midway Games, from 1998.
Licensed hits: Space Invaders (from Taito), Galaxian, Pac-Man and Galaga (from Namco).
Own games: Gun Fight and Sea Wolf in the 1970s, Ms. Pac-Man, Tron, Mortal Kombat, NBA Jam.
End: bankruptcy in February 2009; Mortal Kombat and most of the company went to Warner Bros. that July.

Pinball and pitch-and-bat

Ross and Wolverton started out with Red Ball, which Ross called a “quasi-legitimate” bingo-pinball game, and followed it with pinball and “pitch & bat” baseball games in pinball cabinets. The pinball-style Winner (1964) set off an animated car race in the backglass when the ball hit a target. By 1969 the company was in financial trouble, and its founders sold it to Bally, the slot-machine maker.

Ross admitted that Midway was “lowest on the totem pole” when video games arrived in 1972. “Everyone else was ahead of us in terms of electronics,” he said. Three games put it on its feet in the mid-1970s, each selling more than 5,000 machines: a video game also called Winner, a copy of Pong that Midway licensed from Atari; Gun Fight, its first licence from Japan, from Taito; and Sea Wolf, designed by Bally’s Nutting Associates. From 1974 Midway made importing Japanese games a policy. The company’s name, Video Games noted, came from the naval battle in the Pacific in the Second World War.

Space Invaders and Pac-Man

The policy paid off in 1978, when Taito told Midway about the game that was causing a sensation in Japan. Midway, Bally’s coin-operated game division, bought the American rights to Space Invaders and began its own version in August 1978, with an upright cabinet that reflected the invaders onto a painted lunar landscape. It sold a then record 72,000 machines. Space Invaders Part II followed in America as Space Invaders Deluxe, and Namco’s Galaxian sold another 45,000.

Pac-Man nearly did not happen. Stan Jarocki, Midway’s vice-president of marketing, came back from Japan “positively electrified” by Namco’s Puck-Man and urged Bally’s president, Robert Mullane, to buy the rights. “He turned it down, plain and simple,” Jarocki said. Midway’s own governing committee overruled him. Renamed Pac-Man, the game reached America in 1980, and by the end of 1982 Midway had built 190,000 Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man machines between them. Ms. Pac-Man itself began as Crazy Otto, a modification by the independent General Computer Corporation, which Midway agreed to take on in October 1981. Nearly 100 companies held licences for some 500 Pac-Man products, and Midway expected $8–10 million from licensing in 1981 alone. By then it was expected to earn nearly half of Bally’s projected $1 billion revenue for 1982.

The money went into new games. Midway’s president, Dave Marofske, put profits back into research and development: Nutting Associates answered with Gorf and Wizard of Wor, Bally’s Arcade Engineering with Omega Race, and Midway’s own team was growing towards more than 100 engineers and designers. When Disney wanted an arcade game of its film Tron, Midway’s designers built it in three months from a script and some sketches; George Gomez designed a glowing see-through joystick grip for it, which he said was the first ever made. In December 1982 Video Games reported that Tron had overtaken Zaxxon as the highest-earning coin-op in the country. Bally also licensed Midway’s games to CBS for the Atari VCS and to Commodore for the VIC-20. In America Midway also sold other companies’ games under its name, among them Data East’s BurgerTime as “Bally Midway”. By the end of 1982 its trademark notices read “Bally Midway Manufacturing Co.”

Williams, Mortal Kombat and NBA Jam

In 1988 Bally sold its amusement game division to Williams, which had made Defender and Robotron: 2084. The Midway name survived. In 1993 an advertisement for a PC version of the 1981 Eight Ball Deluxe pinball table described “Midway Manufacturing Company (makers of BALLY pinball games)” as “a subsidiary of WMS Industries”.

Mortal Kombat, created by Ed Boon and John Tobias, reached British arcades by the end of 1992. Its fighters were digitised sprites. Computer and Video Games found some “pretty good (not to mention violent) moves” but was unimpressed overall, calling it a “bold attempt to steal Streetfighter’s crown” that fell short, and scoring it 72%. American politicians paid it more attention. When the US Congress held hearings on video game violence, “Congress focused on the violence in Mortal Kombat, and on Night Trap”, as Sierra On-Line’s Ken Williams put it in a guest editorial for Sega Visions, and the industry answered with its own ratings board (see the Mortal Kombat controversy and the ESRB). The home versions of those years came from Acclaim, not Midway. NBA Jam (1993), basketball with digitised players two to a side, was the other big arcade game of the period, and was updated as a Tournament Edition.

Midway Games

In 1996 WMS bought Atari Games, the arcade company behind Primal Rage and Area 51. The same year WMS sold shares in Midway Games to the public, and in 1998 it spun off the rest, making Midway an independent company. It now published its own console games, and by 1999 its home division had a European headquarters in London, Midway Games Ltd, publishing for the Nintendo 64, PlayStation and Dreamcast. Arcades were shrinking, and in June 2001 Midway announced that it was closing its arcade division.

The media owner Sumner Redstone spent more than $200 million of his own money on a controlling stake, Edge reported in 2005, and his daughter Shari became Midway’s vice chairman. John Romero was creative director at Midway’s San Diego studio in 2005, making Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows. The losses went on. In December 2008 Redstone sold his stake, and on 12 February 2009 Midway filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. That July the court approved the sale of most of its assets, including Mortal Kombat, to Warner Bros. The Chicago studio became NetherRealm Studios, which went on making Mortal Kombat games for Warner Bros.; the rest of the company was wound up.

The people carried on elsewhere too. Jarvis had already left to found Raw Thrills in 2000, and Steve Ranck, who made Hydro Thunder at Midway, later founded Specular Interactive, whose arcade games came out through Raw Thrills.

Sources

Video Games (Pumpkin Press), vol. 1 no. 3, December 1982, pp. 52–55 and 72, Andrea Stone, “The House That Pac Built”, with the sidebars “That’ll Be a Six-Pac to Go” and “MCP to Midway: Three Months or Else”: Bushnell and Pong, Larry Rosenthal’s Space Wars and Cinematronics, Jarocki and Mullane, importing from Japan from 1974, the Battle of Midway, 72,000 Space Invaders, 45,000 Galaxians, 190,000 Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man, nearly half of Bally’s revenue, Hank Ross and Iggy Wolverton, Red Ball, Winner, the sale to Bally in 1969, “lowest on the totem pole”, the three 1970s games and their sales, Gun Fight as the first Japanese licence, Dave Marofske, Nutting Associates and Arcade Engineering, the in-house team, CBS and Commodore, Tron in three months and the glowing grip, Tron overtaking Zaxxon, licensing.
Video Games vol. 1 no. 1, August 1982, pp. 23–26: Namco offering Puck-Man to Midway, Mullane’s objection. Vol. 1 no. 5, February 1983, p. 98: the Crazy Otto modification and the Midway–General Computer agreement of 29 October 1981.
Retro Gamer, issue 117, August 2013, pp. 57–62, Stuart Hunt, “Invasion of the coin snatcher”: Midway’s development from August 1978, the reflector cabinet, Space Invaders Part II known in the US as Space Invaders Deluxe.
Electronic Games, 1983, monthly arcade charts: Galaga (Midway). Electronic Games, July 1983, p. 88: BurgerTime as “Bally Midway’s”. Electronic Games, vol. 2 no. 7, September 1983: trademark notice, “Bally Midway Mfg. Co.”.
Dreamcast Monthly, issue 2, October 1999, p. 42: Williams buying Bally’s amusement game division in 1988; Midway Home Entertainment’s London headquarters, Midway Games Ltd, and its formats.
Computer Gaming World, issue 108, July 1993, and Compute!, November 1993: Amtex Eight Ball Deluxe advertisements, “Midway Manufacturing Company (makers of BALLY pinball games)… is a subsidiary of WMS Industries, Inc.”
Computer and Video Games, issue 132, November 1992, p. 99: Mortal Kombat arcade review (“Arcade by Midway”, 50p a play, 72%).
Sega Visions, April 1994: Ken Williams (Sierra On-Line), guest editorial on the Senate hearings, “Congress focused on the violence in Mortal Kombat, and on Night Trap”; the proposed industry ratings board. Sega Visions, October 1994: the ratings system presented to a joint Congressional hearing on 29 July 1994.
Nintendo Power, issue 56, January 1994: “NBA Jam © 1993. Midway is a trademark of Midway Manufacturing Company”. Issue 62, July 1994, p. 57: NBA Jam: Tournament Edition, two players a team in the first version, digitised graphics.
Nintendo Power, issue 85, June 1996: “Ed Boon and John Tobias, the creators of MK at Williams”.
Sega Visions, June 1994: “Acclaim, the company that brought you Mortal Kombat and NBA Jam”.
GamePro, June 1996: WMS Industries acquires Atari Games, creator of Primal Rage and Area 51.
Edge, issue 146, February 2005: Sumner Redstone’s controlling stake, Shari Redstone as vice chairman.
Edge, issue 149, May 2005, pp. 44–47: John Romero at Midway San Diego.
Edge, issue 225, March 2011: Mortal Kombat from NetherRealm Studios, published by Warner Bros.
Edge, issue 241, June 2012, Specular Interactive profile: Steve Ranck, Hydro Thunder, “the slow demise of Midway”, Raw Thrills.
Retro Gamer, issue 24, 2006, pp. 78–80: Eugene Jarvis’s Raw Thrills, founded in 2000.
“Midway Games”, Wikipedia (web, secondary): Hank Ross’s full name, Henry; the 1996 share offering and 1998 spin-off, the arcade closure announced on 22 June 2001, Redstone’s sale in December 2008, the Chapter 11 filing of 12 February 2009, the sale to Warner Bros. approved on 1 July 2009, the Chicago studio becoming NetherRealm. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midway_Games