Why did Willis make CPO's?

GoldenAge

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Hi,

Can anyone tell me why Willis CPO's were used back in the day? I remember seeing them on some games as a kid, and I still see them available from time to time in my game-related internet travels. How did they create a market for these panels? Why would an operator have wanted to use an non-standard panel? Were they cheaper than replacement OEM ones or something like this? Were they licensed?
Can anyone educate me on these?

Regards,
Ryan
 
My understanding is that Willis was a company actually that made control panel overlays -- official ones -- for some games. Having said that, I have no doubt given the cheesy design on many of their substitute game CPOs that they were cheaper than a manufacturer-obtained CPO. They had the means to do it, and Ops in the 80's were just looking for a cheap solution to fix the problem. In hindsight, we often forget how "disposable" these games were considered 25-30 years ago once they'd run their course.
 
from what i've read...arcade ops didn't want to pay high prices for OEM stuff so Willis made these cheaper priced CPO's as replacements....some of them are pretty cool.
 
Considering that roughly half the games I see on location are broken in some way and cosmetically a wreck, it's hard for me to imagine an op that cares enough to apply a new cpo at all. The cheapest solution is to not ever fix your games, which seems to be what operators do nowadays.

I suppose it was different once upon a time, sigh.
 
Willis set up their own little corner of the operating world, like a lot of other people did. If you wanted a new harness, there was a company, listed in every Replay magazine, that made harnesses. If you wanted conversion kits, there were companies selling used kits. If you wanted joysticks, you could buy from Happ or whatever. If you wanted a control panel overlay, Willis was the company to get them from. You could track down the OEM cpo through your distributor, and pay out the nose for one, or you could just call Willis everytime you needed one, they made them for about all the games that were popular. Ops didn't care what they looked like and they were probably half price. The reason Willis did it was because they were in the business of making cpo's! So they made them for everything! That was a measure of success for them.
 
I think Willis did the art for Exidy's Mouse Trap. Anyone else notice the "Willis" at the bottom of the side art?
 
TVts_willis.jpg
 
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