The Strong museum in Rochester keeps 108 archival document boxes of Bally, Midway and Williams paperwork. Most of it is pinball: playfield drawings, wiring diagrams, engineering logbooks.
The finding aid for the collection also includes parts lists for a five-coin multiple slot from 1969 and a three-reel slot machine from 1972. Arcade histories tend to shelve those machines in separate rooms, but the Chicago companies that built them never did.
Bally sold Pac-Man cabinets while it made slot machines, and Williams gave up pinball for its slot business in 1999. Alberta let private operators run online casinos for the first time on July 13, 2026, and BetMGM’s app was among the first to open. Bonus rounds, recorded soundtracks and licensed names all passed through those Chicago factories long before they reached a phone.
Bally Built Slot Machines Before It Built Pac-Man
Bally’s gambling machine business predates its video game boom. The museum’s historical note says the company fabricated mechanical slot machines and gambling devices alongside its pinball games, and that it bought Midway in 1969. Midway kept its own name until 1982, when the two pinball divisions merged into one Bally/Midway operation.
Video games made the company enormous and then cost it dearly. Its amusement game business brought in $600 million at its 1982 peak, and by 1984 it had written off $100 million in video game losses.
In July 1988, Bally agreed to sell its pinball and video game assets to rival WMS Industries for about $8 million, according to the Los Angeles Times report on the sale. Spokesman William Peltier said the company had sold more than 100,000 Pac-Man machines and more than 125,000 Ms. Pac-Man machines.
The seller still kept a hand in coin-operated machines. It planned to go on making gambling machines and pointed its growth plans at fitness equipment. “The fitness business, that’s the growth business for us,” Peltier said.
WMS Tried To Merge With Bally Gaming In 1995
Seven years later, WMS went after a slot maker that still carried the Bally name. By 1995 it had a $142 million merger agreement with Bally Gaming International, which the Los Angeles Times called the nation’s largest maker of casino gambling devices.
The merger never closed. Bally Gaming said it could not complete the sale of its German operations on a timely basis, a condition of the WMS agreement, and it accepted a $215 million takeover offer from Alliance Gaming instead. SEC records show the buyer renamed itself Bally Technologies in 2006.
Slot Revenue Nearly Quadrupled While Pinball Lost Money
WMS built its own slot hit instead. Its annual report for fiscal 2000 says it introduced Reel ‘Em In in 1997 as its first single-themed, multi-coin, multi-line video gaming machine with a secondary bonus game, a game within a game that let players advance to a second round and pick among options there.
Arcade players know that structure from bonus stages. A mechanical cabinet had no way to hold one: a reel strip cannot open a second screen, which is why the feature had to wait for a video display to sit where the reels used to be.
Revenue followed the design. Gaming revenue rose from $56.8 million in fiscal 1998 to $126.0 million in fiscal 1999 and $216.7 million in fiscal 2000. Partway through that climb, in 1998, the company spun off its video game arm by distributing its Midway stock to shareholders.
Pinball had tried video as well. Revenge From Mars, the first Pinball 2000 machine, reflected images from a television monitor inside the cabinet onto the playfield through special glass, so animated figures appeared to sit among the ramps while a steel ball ran through them. One more table followed in 1999 before the line ended and the company turned solely to slot machines.
On October 25, 1999, WMS announced it would close the pinball division. Its annual report blamed competition from video and other amusement games and recorded a $21.3 million pre-tax loss on the disposal. Wired’s 2000 account of the shutdown added that the division had lost $17.8 million over three fiscal years and that WMS stock rose another 6% when Wall Street heard.
Mr. Do! Shared 1982 With A Five-Reel Slot
Japanese arcade makers crossed over too, and Universal did it early. It started as a jukebox leasing company in 1969 and began making amusement machines the next year. The entries for 1982 sit side by side: Mr. Do!, the arcade video game, and El Toro, a five-reel slot machine.
It became Aruze in 1998 and Universal Entertainment in 2009. Its path crossed WMS’s in 2006, when WMS chief operating officer Orrin Edidin told analysts that the arrangements with Aruze were primarily cross-licenses covering certain patents and technology.
Konami took longer to reach the casino floor. It began making amusement machines for arcades in 1973 and released Frogger in 1981, and its gaming business page dates its entry into casino machines to 1996. A subsidiary opened in Australia that year and a second one followed in 1997.
The four companies reached slot machines at very different points in their histories:
| Company | Began making amusement machines | Arcade or pinball landmark | Slot machine step |
| Bally Manufacturing | 1932, with pinball | Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man through Bally/Midway | Mechanical slot machines built alongside its pinball |
| Williams Electronics | 1943, as Williams Manufacturing | Defender and Robotron: 2084 | Reel ‘Em In video slot in 1997 |
| Universal Co | 1970, after leasing jukeboxes | Mr. Do! in 1982 | Americana pachislot in 1980, El Toro slot in 1982 |
| Konami Industry | 1973, for arcades | Frogger in 1981 | Konami Australia in 1996, Konami Gaming, Inc. in 1997 |
BetMGM’s Alberta App Opened On The Market’s First Day
The latest market for slot screens opened in Alberta this summer. BetMGM described its launch there as the company’s first international expansion since it entered Ontario in 2022, and its Alberta lobby has grown one announcement at a time since.
In August, iGaming.News reported that BetMGM had secured exclusive initial distribution rights in the province for AGS’s Rakin’ Bacon! slot series. A September 10 press release added Vikings Big Kick LuckyTap, a Design Works Gaming title built on a mechanic its developer pitches as free of traditional reels and matching symbols.
Exclusive distribution rights keep Alberta’s apps from carrying identical catalogues, so the market now reads one app at a time. LineUps covers the province’s online casinos operator by operator, and its betmgm alberta casino page is the BetMGM one.
BetMGM’s announced additions come from other studios, but the oldest names in this story reached the province on the first day too. GGB Magazine reported that Light & Wonder, which now owns the Bally and WMS brands, was live from day one in Alberta with its content, platforms and operator integrations.
WMS’s fiscal 2000 report listed what it built into its machines: secondary bonus rounds, advanced graphics, digital sound and themes that sometimes used popular songs and recognized trademarks. The last of those shows plainly in the newer of those two additions, a game carrying an NFL team’s marks.
Online casino play in Alberta is limited to adults 18 and older, and anyone in the province who wants help with gambling can call the Addiction Helpline, run by Alberta Health Services, at 1-866-332-2322.
Robotron’s Co-Designer Also Directed Slot Machine Design
The digital sound on that list came from pinball. Williams introduced its DCS sound system on a 1993 pinball table, and its 2000 annual report lists DCS Sound System music, voice-overs and sound effects among the features of its slot machines.
People made the same trip. RePlay Magazine’s 2026 profile of Larry DeMar lists Robotron: 2084 among his video game co-designs. In 1984 he worked with Joe Kaminkow on Space Shuttle, the pinball game that, by that account, kept Williams in business.
The profile says he moved into pinball full-time at Williams/Bally by 1986 and served there as director of pinball engineering and director of slot machine design, two titles held at once. His pinball co-designs with Pat Lawlor include Banzai Run. He later founded Leading Edge Design and created casino titles for IGT.
His induction citation credits him with automatic replay percentaging, which adjusts the replay score to the skill of the players: a machine that reads how well its own room scores and moves the free game threshold to match, rather than holding a number set at the factory.
The citation also credits him with self-healing features that keep a game working when mechanical parts fail. DeMar holds 38 US patents across amusements, bowling systems and casino games.
Kaminkow went further into casinos. He secured the NASA license behind Space Shuttle and co-founded Data East Pinball before IGT recruited him to build slot machines around licensed titles. By 2013, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported, he had played a role in creating more than 1,000 slot machines.
The Williams And Bally Names Now Lead Separate Lives
The slot sides of Williams and Bally did end up under one owner, 19 years after the failed 1995 merger. Scientific Games completed its purchase of WMS in 2013 for approximately $1.5 billion in cash, and closed its acquisition of Bally Technologies in 2014 at $83.30 a share. It changed its name to Light & Wonder in 2022.
Chief executive Matt Wilson told GGB Magazine in 2024 that the company came together through Bally, WMS, Shuffle Master and NYX, and that the new name was meant to break ties with the past.
The pinball names moved back toward the past instead. In January 2026, this magazine reported that American Pinball would build reimagined Williams and Bally pinball machines under license with Planetary Pinball Supply, covering seven titles it had not yet named.
Zen Studios had already announced in 2025 that Banzai Run, the 1988 Williams table DeMar co-designed with Pat Lawlor, would return as a virtual table in one of its Williams pinball packs.
That announcement left those seven names for later. Alberta’s slot lobbies move faster: BetMGM has added titles with each announcement since July, and LineUps shares its reporting on the province’s market through its X account.
Both halves of the story still sit together in Rochester, where Bally’s slot parts lists share a collection with the playfield drawings.
