Low Production: Banzai Run

yaggy

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Why on earth do you suppose only 1700 units were produced?
Anything decent had runs over 5000 easy. High speed was over 10K.
It's such a fun game, always been popular, but semi-rare to a degree.

My GUESS is that the functioning backbox increased total cost by another
thousand bucks or so, making it way more expensive than all other pins?
Unless the early collection reports showed incredible earnings, I can see
why ops would skip over a pricey pin, initially, and cause Williams to shut
down the run early.
 
Why on earth do you suppose only 1700 units were produced?

Because that's how many people wanted to buy. I assume it wasn't extremely profitable on route. It also came out after Cyclone which was a huge seller.

It doesn't really surprise me that it didn't sell well. 1700 isn't really that rare in pinball terms. For a game like that it's actually a pretty good run. I'm sure the main reason it didn't sell better was the increased cost and lack of desire by operators to take the risk on an unproven concept.

There are not many games out there with over 10K produced.
 
According to Pat Lawlor in his interview on Topcast, the operators looked at it and saw a lot more work to maintain the machine, that would still bring them in the same amount of money per play. Simple economics.
 
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I loved Banzai Run Bitd....Geese basically summed it up on why it didn't do well on location. At 4k, they will be sitting on it for awhile :rolleyes:
 
Why on earth do you suppose only 1700 units were produced?
Anything decent had runs over 5000 easy. High speed was over 10K.
It's such a fun game, always been popular, but semi-rare to a degree.

My GUESS is that the functioning backbox increased total cost by another
thousand bucks or so, making it way more expensive than all other pins?
Unless the early collection reports showed incredible earnings, I can see
why ops would skip over a pricey pin, initially, and cause Williams to shut
down the run early.

High Speed was 17,080 machines made to be exact. Ya I like the banzai run, haven't played since I moved to Arizona.
 
Banzai Run is one of my all time favorites. I think it is one of the most enjoyable pinballs produced. I wish I could find one, and I'm not sure that it would fit in my basement (that backbox is TALL!)
 
I know of one that just became available, it'll run around 3k if you are interested. (not mine)
 
There's also that guy Sean that always sells on CL out of the bay area in California...

He had a pretty nice one that he only wanted around 2k for...

search "easilyamused" and i think all his listings will pop up
 
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