Universal

Universal was a Japanese amusement machine company founded in Tokyo in 1969 as Universal Lease Co., Ltd., later renamed Universal Co., Ltd. Through the late 1970s and 1980s it built a name in arcade video games, starting with clones like Scratch (1977) and Cosmic Monsters (1978) before moving into original titles such as Space Panic (1980), Lady Bug (1981), and its best-known release, Mr. Do! (1982). The company later became Aruze Corporation and, in 2009, Universal Entertainment Corporation, which still manufactures pachinko and slot machines today.

Between 1977 and 1980, alongside its video game output, Universal produced four pinball machines: Hard Rock (1977), an electro-mechanical Hercules (1978) unrelated to Atari's identically named machine from the following year, Harem Cat (1979), and Asteroid Killer (1980). Harem Cat is the best remembered of the four — a six-player solid-state machine notable for using a video monitor in its backbox to display scores, one of the earliest pinball machines to do so. Universal did not return to pinball manufacturing after 1980.