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Williams Jungle Lord (1981) Rulesheet and Owners List

by Jess Askey

General Description and Hearsay:

Jungle Lord is Williams' 2nd multilevel game and was released in the beginning of 1981. The game was produced in two different versions. The early sample games had a red cabinet while the production games were blue. An interesting point is that the color change effects the Backglass, Playfield, Plastics and doesn't just replace them, but the artwork is a bit different as well. Quite a change for a game that was so close to going into final production. I was told that the color was changed after Williams figured out (through testing?) that games with Red cabinets did not get played as much as games with Blue or Black cabinets. Apparently, there were about 100 sample 'red' games made. This matches with the data on the now defunct Serial Numbers Database as far as I can tell. The following info was blatently stolen from the Internet Pinball Database.
  • Model Number: 503
  • Production Run: 6000
  • Designer: Barry Oursler
  • Artwork: Constantino Mitchell
Another rumor about the game that I learned from Ted Estes was that apparently halfway through the development of Jungle Lord, the lead programmer quit Williams and left the software hanging. Larry DeMar had to step in and finish up the software in a hurry. This may be the reason that Jungle Lord has an unfinished feel to the features. In my opinion, the sounds, lights and overall 'shine' of the game seems to be very simplistic in comparison to BK and Pharaoh. According to the code, there were also switches originally placed at the tops of the ramps, these must have been removed for design reasons.

Game Differences:

    Cabinet:
      Red-Orange-Yellow or Blue-Red-Yellow. The stencils are very similar but are not exactly the same. (see pictures below). The easiest item to see is the streaks behind the blue tiger. Red does not have them. There are lots of other subtle differences as well so the whole stencil must have been re-designed.
    Upper PF:
      There seem to be two varieties here. The biggest difference is the background color and the shading color. The earlier production games (mostly red cabinets) have a yellow background with a red dot shade. The later cabinets (mostly blue ones) have a white to light blue background with a dark blue dot shade. Also, it seems as tho, there is more red in the details of the vines of the yelow backed PF while the blue backed PF has more browns. The Lamp inserts also vary, see below. NOTE: Playfields are stamped with a date, I don't know what this date means exactly but on the upper PF it appears to be on the upper left hand edge of the plywood.
    Lower PF:
      These are very similar in all runs. The only difference I know of is the dashed circle around the magna-save. The other version is missing this dashed circle. All other colors and the artwork are the same AFAIK. The Lamp inserts also vary, see below. NOTE: Playfields are stamped with a date, I don't know what this date means exactly but on the lower PF it appears to be on the lower front hand edge of the plywood.
    Lamp Inserts:
      I have seen various combinations of lamp inserts on both red and blue cabinet games. But in a general sense, it seems as tho, the earlier PF's (most likely found in red cabinet games) have translucent yellow inserts in specific locations while the later PF's had solid white inserts. The locations that this seems to effect are...
      • UpperPF Double Trouble Lamp
      • UpperPF "1" Target Lamp
      • LowerPF "2" Target Lamp
      • LowerPF "3" Target Lamp
      • LowerPF "4" Rollover Lamp
      • LowerPF "5" Rollover Lamp
      I guess they ran out of the translucent yellow inserts at some point and had to switch stock? I have seen red cabinet jungle lords with white inserts and also blue cabinet games with yellow inserts.
    Plastics:
      Blue cabinet games have blue on white upper pf plastics while red games have red on yellow plastics.
    Overall:
      From the mish-mash of combinations found on red and blue cabinet jungle lords, it seems as tho the PF printer had at least two different designs. Most of the early designs must have gone into the red cabinets but there are those odd games that are reversed so it must have been a situation of just gathering the odd part laying around to get a complete game built. Just a guess on my part...

Serial Numbers:

Im compiling a list of serial numbers of all Jungle Lord games to try and track down the number of red cabinets made and the variety of changes.. If you would like yours listed, drop me an email. Serial numbers are impression stamped in the wood and can be found in 3 places..

  • Lower Right Front of cabinet
  • Inside the backbox frame of the cabinet - This one is only visible if the head is off.
  • Top of Backbox

Looking at the numbers below you can see the break between the sample run and the larger production run. If you look up the serial numbers between the two groups shown here, you will find that they belong to late production Black Knight games which makes sense. Using the numbers below we can guess there there were at least 181 samples and about 5,500 normal production games. As this list grows, we should be able to analyze the numbers more accurately.

Owner Serial # Cabinet Color Upper PF Backgroud Color Lower PF Magna-Save Circle Inserts Plastics Date Stamp
Max Albertson 467219 Red Yellow-Red ? ? ? Lower:Jan9
From Serial # Database 467240 ? ? ? ? ? ?
Keith Elwin 467251 Red Yellow-Red Circles Yellow/Amber ? Upper: Feb23 Lower:Jan19
Jess Askey 467270 Red Yellow-Red Circles Yellow/Amber Yellow-Red Upper: Feb24 Lower:Jan5
Dale Rice 467306 Red Yellow-Red No Circles Yellow/Amber Yellow ?
Keith Apgar 467314 Red Yellow-Red Circles Yellow/Amber ? ?
Ron Hettrick 467400 Red Yellow-Red ? ? Yellow ?
------ This appears to be the break between the sample run and the production run --------
Marco Schulze (Germany) 485750 Blue (no extra stripes) Blue-White Circles Yellow/Amber Blue-White Lower: Jan 7
Torsten Baer (Germany) 485779 Blue Blue-White Circles Yellow/Amber Blue-White
From Serial # Database 485807 ? ? ? ? ? ?
From Serial # Database 489104 ? ? ? ? ? ?
From Serial # Database 489574 ? ? ? ? ? ?
From Serial # Database 489584 ? ? ? ? ? ?
From Serial # Database 489717 ? ? ? ? ? ?
From Serial # Database 489905 ? ? ? ? ? ?
From Serial # Database 490222 ? ? ? ? ? ?
From Serial # Database 490249 ? ? ? ? ? ?
From Serial # Database 490752 ? ? ? ? ? ?
From Serial # Database 495533 ? ? ? ? ? ?
David Gersic 495585 Blue Blue-White Circles Yellow/Amber Blue-White Upper:Missing
Lower:Feb 28 1981 and Feb 26 1981
Rich Marquette 496148 Blue Blue-White Circles Yellow/Amber Blue-White May 8
arcadegames.net(Australia) 496409 Blue Blue-White Circles White Blue-White None

IPSND Serial Numbers:

This section is a direct include from The Internet Pinball Serial Number Database, it allows me to show all current serial numbers from the IPSND directly in my site... pretty cool ehhh?