Pinball Manufacturers: Bell Games

Founded in 1978 by Mr. Cavazza in Bologna, Italy, Bell Games (initially operating under the name Bell-Coin-Matics) entered the European amusement industry with a very specific, highly lucrative business model. Rather than designing entirely new games from scratch, Bell Games capitalized on the thousands of aging Bally solid-state machines sitting in Italian arcades by manufacturing aggressive, cost-effective “conversion kits.”

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, importing brand-new American pinball machines into Europe was incredibly expensive. Bell Games solved this for local operators by providing them with brand-new playfields, backglasses, and ROM chips that could be dropped directly into an existing Bally cabinet (utilizing the original Bally MPU boards and wiring).

By 1985, the demand for their conversion kits—specifically Saturn II—was so high that Bell Games ran out of recycled Bally circuit boards. Forced to evolve, the company restructured as Nuova Bell Games and began engineering their own custom printed circuit boards to meet operator demand.

Transitioning away from simple clones, Nuova Bell Games began releasing completely original, fully-built pinball machines featuring complex targets and unique ball-launch mechanisms. Notable original releases from this era include the incredibly rare sci-fi/fantasy hybrid Future Queen (1987) and the high-octane Cobra (1987).

As the late 1980s approached, the global pinball market began to shrink rapidly. As imported American machines flooded back into Europe featuring advanced, complex rule sets, the market for localized conversion kits and budget machines dried up. Nuova Bell Games produced their final pinball machine, U-Boat 65, in 1988 before completely exiting the pinball industry to manufacture amusement park rides. Today, surviving Bell Games conversion kits and their rare original cabinets are heavily prized by European collectors looking for obscure, alternate-universe takes on Bally classics.