Game Plan (company)

Game Plan was an amusement game manufacturer that produced pinball machines, arcade video games, and slot machines from 1978 to 1985.^[1] Game Plan was a subsidiary of AES Technology Systems and was initially located in Elk Grove Village, Illinois, moving in early 1979 to Addison, Illinois.^[2] Game Plan was founded in May of 1977 by two principals of AES, Lee Goldboss and Mike Abrams, and their partner, former Chicago Coin engineer and designer Wendell McAdams.^[3][4][5]

The company initially produced cocktail-style pinball tables and produced five different models in their first year of existence.^[6][1] The company began producing full-size models with 1979's Sharpshooter, featuring a "Wild West" theme. Sharpshooter, incidentally, was Game Plan's best-selling game, having produced 4,200 units in all.^[7] From 1980 through 1982, Game Plan also released a small number of video games, most all of them licensed from other manufacturers, beginning with Tora Tora in 1980. Other games include: Killer Comet, Intruder, Megatack, Kaos, and Pot Of Gold.

Former Game Plan designer John Trudeau went on to design many other pinball games at Gottlieb/Premier and later Williams, including titles such as The Machine: Bride of Pin*Bot (1991) and The Flintstones (1994).^[8][9] Ed Cebula later worked as a playfield designer and mechanical engineer at Data East Pinball.^[10]