Living: Beating the Game Game

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Hank Ross had another idea that everyone hoped would give the game a last, irresistible quirk of personality. This is known in the business as "the tweak. He proposed having Bally's enormously popular Pac Man, a dot-gobbling yellow disc, help the player by eating balloons on the clown's head. And so it came to pass, and a sneak preview was held at a local arcade. The results, after all of this R. & D., were disastrous. The game, renamed Kick, took too long to play, and thus took in too few quarters. To remedy this, the rate of fall of the balloons was slightly speeded up.

Some time early this year, after further tinkering with the game, Kick will be shipped to distributors and then will appear in the arcades. Bally's development people think it is fun, but right now, no one has any idea whether it will be a lap jumper or a puddle maker. "This is the most democratic business in the world," says Mount Prospect, Ill., Arcade Owner Bill Herman. "You got a ballot box, and people vote with their quarters."