Chicago Coin - Later History

Later History

Chicago Coin, more so than its main competitors, tended to be a general purpose arcade amusement company. The company made products such as shuffle bowling games, electromechanical car driving games, and skeeball tables. In 1973 Chicago Coin attempted to get in on the Pong craze by releasing two arcade game consoles: TV Football and TV Hockey. The company also manufactured a unique arcade videogame item in 1975 called Super Flipper, which was essentially a video game simulation of pinball with a display monitor housed in a miniature pinball cabinet. In spite of these efforts, Chicago Coin was in financial trouble, and by 1977 the company's assets were sold to Stern Electronics. It is erroneously believed that Stern Electronics, Inc. became Data East Pinball, which became Sega Pinball, which became Stern Pinball, Inc. This is untrue as interviews with Gary Stern, president of all 4 companies has pointed out. Stern Electronics, Inc. went bankrupt in 1984 and did not become any other entity.