Amigo

The Amigo, designed by Greg Kmiec with artwork by Dick White, was released in May 1974 by Bally Manufacturing Corporation, with a confirmed production run of 4,325 units. A four-player electro-mechanical game, its theme celebrates Mexican culture — dancing, music, singing, and happiness — rendered in the colorful style typical of Bally's mid-1970s output.

Gameplay features a classic EM complement: two flippers, three pop bumpers, two slingshots, four standup targets, four rollover buttons, a kick-out hole, and a spinning target. A right outlane ball return gate and an up-post between the flippers give players extra ball-saving opportunities, and an end-of-ball bonus rewards playfield progress. The maximum displayed score is a generous 199,990 points per player, with a replay wheel maximum of 25 and sound provided by three chimes and a knocker.

An interesting quirk of the Amigo is its so-called 'inverted backbox', with a front frame wider at the bottom than the top — upside-down relative to typical Bally backboxes, leaving a small ledge at the base of the backglass. A collector in Italy reports seeing many Amigos there with this backbox and German instruction cards, suggesting popularity in the German market; the same backbox later appeared on a test game for Bally's 1976 'Flip Flop'.