1991 - When I first did the backglass I copied a original from [redacted1]. [Redacted2] wanted one so I copied the glass and finished it so it would work in a game. It was never finished by David Christensen when he did it. I wanted to test it out so I put the glass in an original game that had no artwork on it, period. It was stripped to, like, a red or green color, I do not remember. It was not in very good shape. I think the game went to [redacted1], I do not remember. When the glass worked in the game we made a run of the glass and I gave one to [redacted2] and sold the run out. I would not put the [redacted2] part on the internet, he would not like it..

1993 - The second game I found in a batch of games I found and it was in great shape, all original. All Williams artwork. I had a extra glass laying around so I pulled out the original glass and put that one in. I sold that one to a collector out of the country who was a friend. I think he still has it.

1996 - I got a request from a movie company and a swing club for the games so I made the 5 custom games. I had a friend in the printing business who made about 500 flyers for fun. I kept half of them, he got the rest and who knows were they went. I then did a second run of 30 glasses to put in the 5 games and sold the balance of glasses again to collectors. They are all long gone now. I did have the game at Pinball Fantasy 97 and then that one was traded for a new CD Jukebox at the show to a dealer back east and he sold it a few years later. Those games have custom artwork on sides and a custom plastic set plus a sound system inside that plays a custom tune when the bumpers are lit and the game starts up. It uses a tape system. They all had plaques on them also. The picture was at the Pinball Fantasy Show in 1997 in Las Vegas. It was taken by a staff member and was given to me. [See Files section; has name of game in large letters on lower cabinet.] Everyone knows these games because of the flyers.

The other games were never out there as I sold them quickly and never saw them again. Plus a lot of collectors put their glasses in original games so there are a lot of them out there. I have seen a few on ebay.

We asked Allan Reizman, Engineering Lab Supervisor at Bally from 1977 to 1983, to talk about why this game did not go into production and what Atari may have done differently than Bally in producing their Hercules game. He replies:

Bigfoot was well into development when I arrived at Bally as a lab intern in 1977. We had received a field test game a few weeks before that I think came from the Great America Amusement Park near Chicago and that had been used the previous season. One of my first tasks was to pick up the pieces (literally) of that game and determine why it failed. Once I had the game partially assembled, the flaws were pretty obvious. The game had shaken itself apart! When one of the thumper bumpers would go "kerchunk", the vibrations would cause all the lamps to burn out! Besides the lamp failures, the cabinet was separating at the seams, the coils were breaking loose, wires had become separated, and on and on.

The fatal design flaw was building Bigfoot to the same standards as a normal sized pin. What soon became obvious was that oversized components such as the bumpers put out double the vibration and double the stress on the body. Screws needed to be larger. Cabinet seams needed to be stronger. Every connection needed to be substantially reinforced to withstand the stresses of such a game.

Atari did things a bit differently with Hercules. First off, it was solid state. The controlled direct current of solid state games allowed for a smoother and less violent bumping action of the coils. Next, they free-mounted many of their lamps which, when combined with regulated DC, gave them longer life. Atari also improved and mounted their components in a more shock-resistant manner. All in all, Hercules was far more successful as a trial of the larger-than-life pin.

Unfortunately, these games were unsuccessful financially and the jumbo pinball experiment died. While all the engineering issues could be fixed, albeit at greater cost and weight, the marketing failures could not be overcome. The games were just impractical. Too large and heavy to build and ship, and too limited a market where they could be deployed. If it could have been proven the cashbox earnings justified the cost and space required to put one of these games on location, things might have turned out differently. But even at a hefty 50 cents per play (twice the game play price at the time), the games did not garner significantly more cashbox earnings than a regular-sized pin. An operator could put 3 or 4 other games in the same space and earn 3-4 times the income.

Today, you have to have a lot of space and commitment to set up one of these in a collection. When we moved our offices from Belmont Avenue in Chicago to Bensenville, I found a stack of the Plexiglas backglasses in the old lab building and hung one on my wall at home for years. Unfortunately, I sold it at a Chicagoland show some years ago and now I regret doing so. It was quite a conversation starter.

Jack Pearson credits Ron Halliburton with the conception of the the Giant Pinball idea and as the designer of this game. He also shares with us the following information:

To reduce the development time and cost, Bally sent us a new pinball game from their production line before we started work on Bigfoot. We played and studied that game until we understood how the game logic worked. For example, hit targets A, B, and C, then the target D doubles when hit. By understanding the game logic, we could create a new table layout without having to redesign the electronics. There were limitations when doing a new table layout. For example, if the Bally Pinball had 3 thumper bumpers, our table had to have a max of 3. However, we could reposition the thumper bumpers. The flippers and thumper bumpers required much more power than the Bally game so we had to build our own more powerful solenoids.

Bally sent us one of their production pinballs. We gutted that game, taking the electronic and wiring harness. We took the harness and electronics and put that in Bigfoot.

I rented a U-haul and personally drove the truck from our facility in Florida to deliver the prototype to Bally. After a few months, Bally decided they did not want to put the game into production and returned the prototype to us (Arcade Engineering). We, in turn, then licensed the game to Atari and shipped the prototype to them. I do not remember how many they produced. I do know the game had to be re-engineered as the prototype was designed just to test and many parts were one of a kind hand made.