Silver Ball Century ep. 71 - Late 1994 - Who Knows

I said a lot about Data East Pinball in the last episode, and soon there won't be anything else to say about Data East Pinball, because this episode contains Maverick, their final game before they're bought by Sega. Except: maybe their final game is Tattoo Assassins. Which is not a pinball game. It's a rushed, low-budget imitation of Mortal Kombat, because this was a world where Mortal Kombat was suddenly everywhere, and Data East leadership decided it was important to develop a competitor. So they put the pinball division on it. Not the arcade division. The pinball division, in Chicago. I'm not playing this non-pinball game on Silver Ball Century, but I think you should watch the extremely entertaining run of it on Big Bad Game-A-Thon, by pinball legend ScoutPilgrim, with commentary by the lead developer, Kevin Martin. Bally/Williams didn't have to worry about their parent company ordering them to make Mortal Kombat, because their parent company (Midway) already made Mortal Kombat,…