Recreativos Franco

Recreativos Franco is a Spanish pinball and gaming-machine manufacturer founded in Madrid in 1965 by brothers Joaquín and Jesús Franco Muñoz, who started out running coin-operated machines from a small workshop on Calle Hilarión Eslava and opened their own arcade in the city's Fuencarral district. The company began building its own machines in the early 1970s, starting with the pinball Mississippi in 1973, followed by Venus 5, Cabaret, Impacto, Cherokis, Dragoon, Jalisco and Alaska over the next several years. In the second half of the decade it launched a separate export brand, Interflip, selling four-player versions of its pinball machines abroad.

As the pinball market cooled, Recreativos Franco moved into video games in the late 1970s with titles such as Speed Race CL5 and Galaxian, then returned to pinball in 1986 with Super Star, its last machine in the category. The company also built coin-operated gaming machines, becoming in 1983 the first Spanish manufacturer to homologate the country's Type C gambling machines, and in 1984 took a 50 percent stake in fellow manufacturer Inder, which continued operating independently. It continues today as Grupo Recreativos Franco, a gaming and amusement group with operations across Europe and Latin America.