Mr Game

Mr. Game was the name Bologna's Zaccaria factory carried for its final run of pinball machines. Zaccaria had built pinball since 1974 out of Calderara di Reno, near Bologna, growing into one of Italy's largest manufacturers before the company went bankrupt and changed ownership in 1988. Relaunched under the Mr. Game label from 1988 to 1990, the factory built four pinball designs — Dakar (1988), Motor Show (1989), Mac Attack (1989), and World Cup '90 (1990), most of them designed by Tony Ramunni. Two also circulated under other names: Motor Show began life as the unfinished Zaccaria-era Fast Track — only a single completed example is known under that name — and a limited run of Dakar was rebadged Dakar Sofficini for a Findus snack-brand promotion.

Mr. Game machines carried a redesigned cabinet, with trigger-style grips replacing the usual flipper buttons, and a backbox that swapped segmented scoring displays for a small color TV screen, sometimes showing video-game elements alongside the score. When the pinball business folded in 1990, the Bologna factory passed to Tecnoplay of San Marino, a company founded in the mid-1980s and run by Mauro Zaccaria, son of Zaccaria co-founder Marino Zaccaria.