Symbols
Confirmed To be conf. MAME Emulated
Original Under License Bootleg

AEA


  • American Electronic Assembly.
  • Main office location: Tencarola (Padova). 
  • Founded by Tiziano Tredese, Lanfrnaco Chinea (formerly manager of Model Racing) and Dalla Pria Group; directed by Tredese, this company disappeared in the middle of the eighties.
  • AEA builded machines with original boards (mainly from Sega/Gremlin), with slightly hardware changes, and finally three original games.
  • Except for Asteroid, All AEA productions were manifactured under regular license.
Name Orig. Year Emul. Info
Head-on
1979
Clone of Sega original
Super Head-on
1979

Clone of Head-on 2 (Sega), to be confirmed
Silver Dollar
1979

Clone of Deadeye (Meadows)
Aliens Multispeed 1980
Under Sega/Gremlin license
Asteroid
1980
Clone of Asteroids (Atari)
Mini Monaco G.P.

1980

Clone of Sega original
Carnival

1980

Clone of Sega original
Borderline

1981

Clone of Sega original
Arcade Super-Reflex

1982


Rolling Ball

1983


Kubiks

1984


Super Head-on

Probably it's the colorized version of Head-on, equipped with an Hantarex HTC90 monitor.

Aliens Multispeed



It's identical to Space Invaders as gameplay; but the hardware is totally different. On the cabinet is wrtten"AEA by Gremlin", but the screen shows the name of Sega, which controlled the Gremlin.  From a preliminary scan,  it seems the board is similar to the one of Space Trek, but the monitor is monochrome (perhaps a Hantarex SV-1) covered with colored strips.

Two unit are still existing; the pictures cone from PaYrYcK.

Asteroid

On the marquee are the logos of AEA and Playtronic: the Dalla Pria Group owned the brand Playtronic and has a share of AEA company. This game does not appear to be an authorized copy.

Mini Monaco G.P.

The board was an original Sega with no CPU; the cabinet was very tight.

Borderline

The Romset used by MAME comes from an AEA machine. The PCB inside is identical to the original one made by Sega.

Arcade Super-Reflex



Only one example of this game has been found, and it is not working. The owner decided to change it to a multigame machine, so the original board and controls were removed.
On some sites it is listed as a prize game. It has no mechanism such as coupon dispensers or tokens, but it does have a counter inside. which advances each time the player reaches a certain score. The brochure says that a "biri-biri," a victory sound, is made when a certain score is reached, so it is probably the arcade operator who decides whether and how to reward those who succeed. Only two people reported playing a game of Arcade Super-Reflex, and none physically received a prize.
The cabinet is rather odd: it is very tall, contains a small monitor mounted at the bottom, and a series of mirrors that reflect the image - this perhaps explains the name - into a back-mointed screen, surrounded by side plates to give an illusion of depth.
The controls are also puzzling: there is a joystick with button at the top, but it appears that only the button is connected to the board, while the lever is only "partially set up."
The flyer, in Italian and English, is not very helpful: bonuses, malus, time, three-of-a-kind, poker, black holes...from the pictures it looks like some kind of slot machine and that the only skill required of the player is to press the button at the right time and choose the right symbol to make a combination.
According to some sites, Taito marketed a version of this game in Japan.

On the left is the cabinet, but with the original controls already replaced; on the right are some screenshots from the flyer. All taken from the Tilt website.

Rolling Ball

 




Images from the flyer, thanks to Federico Croci.

Roll over the targets with a white marble.
Avoid other balls; stupid (yellow), smart (orange), very smart (purple) and sticky (red).
Also bonus stars, fuel recharge, vitamins and so on.