This game was designed by Tony Kraemer. He wanted the flippers to look like the wicker "gloves" used in the game of JAI ALAI. Most people didn't know anything about the sport, so Tony was asked to change the theme. The movie 'Saturday Night Fever' had just come out, so the game name was changed to DISCO FEVER. Were were stuck using the banana flippers, since we had already bought a ton of them. I also was forced to use them on my TIME WARP game.

Comments from Steve Ritchie:

Eugene wrote all the sounds for Superman and one of his amazing programs that created some sounds by introducing bugs to the program. He later created G-wave, an incredible breakthrough at the time. Recording music and sound on silicon was not an option in 1977.

Eugene and I worked together on Superman for what seemed like years. It might have been 13 months or so. I stumbled through many whitewoods, but ultimately, it played nice for it's time.

I brought my Echoplex (a guitar player's tape loop mechanical echo chamber on the cheap) to work, and connected it to our Superman Prototype. The continuous background sound that emanated intrigued us.

Atari management refused to let us apply this fun discovery, which made the player feel more a part of the pinball game, and added progressive adrenaline to any pinball as the game progressed. Why didn't management feel what we felt?

I left Atari to make pinball machines at Williams before Superman was manufactured, and applied the background sound concept to Flash, which was also the first game to use Flash Lamps, (that's how they got their name) and a 3rd-flipper-repeatable loop shot. I was also a lot happier working at Williams, happiness being an important ingredient that enables a designer to create to his/her potential.

We asked Chris Granner to tell us about the music for this game. He replies:

The main play tune for TZ is a WPC (synthesized) version of the loooonnnng guitar solo section from Golden Earring's "Twilight Zone". The Jackpot tune is a WPC version of the CHORUS of that song, where you hear the main melody of the song. There are snippets and takeoffs from dozens of TV show moments, way too many to list. The actual AUDIO from either of these sources is NOT reproduced in TZ pinball.

In this listing is an image of a playfield under blacklighting, revealing a serial number. We asked Pat Lawlor why the manufacturer did this. He replies:

The reason for the serial numbers seems strange by today's standards. In 1992, Williams' agreement with its distributors gave them exclusive sales right to a territory. They did not have the right to sell outside of their territory. But some were doing just that. In order to track the game's origin from a distributor into the wild, the blacklight number was added. Williams knew where the game was originally shipped. If the game turned up outside of that territory, it was assumed that the distributor had "Bootlegged" the game outside of his territory. Then it was up to management to decide what penalty to incur on the offender. Remember, this was during a time when it was PROFITABLE to sell and operate pinball machines. This practice would be laughable today because ANY sale of a pinball machine is a good sale.