Mad

Mad was a solid-state pinball project developed at Data East Pinball by Joe Kaminkow and Ed Cebula, with preliminary software work by Neil Falconer. Conceived under Kaminkow, the game was designed around a MAD-magazine-style theme, complete with a planned talking Alfred E. Neuman head toy -- a piece with an eerie resemblance to Rudy from Williams' Funhouse.

Despite reaching the whitewood prototype stage, Mad was never put into production, never fully programmed, and never released. According to Kaminkow, Data East chief Gary Stern pulled the plug over concerns the theme wouldn't sell in the German market, though no further explanation was given. Today, only the backglass translites and the sculpted 'Rudy'-style head are known to survive.

Because the game never progressed beyond a whitewood, no complete playfield layout, finished artwork, or working ruleset was ever established. Mad remains one of Data East's unreleased prototypes, notable chiefly for its MAD magazine tie-in and its unfinished talking head toy.