Check this out:
April, 1962 - DOM for Tropic Isle (date taken from a Gottlieb parts catalog which identifies the date as "Date of Mfg."
January 24, 1963 - Project Date of Moon Shot (date taken from Bally documentation)
February, 1963 - DOM of Moon Shot (date obtained from I don't know where. Maybe from an old Bally parts catalog which I personally do not own. The hobby has had this date from before the IPDB.)
Wayne previously told me that the name of his Tropic Isle while it was being engineered was 'Monkey Shines' but David Gottlieb had the name changed (to avoid controversy). Wayne showed me an old picture of the Monkey Shines game while in development, although taken at a side angle where the playfield could not be seen, IIRC.
Dennis Dodel pointed out that, on Moon Shot, the rocket is launched not from Cape Canaveral but seemingly from an area of tropic isles off the coast of Ecuador. Is that only our imagination to notice the "tropic isles" connection here?
Just now I saw this coincidence (I’ve capitalized the common lettering MO and SH):
MOnkey SHines
MOon SHot
Is that again our imagination at work? Did Bally get a copy of Tropic Isle and produced Moon Shot as a jab to Gottlieb? As a response to Gottlieb's active participation to pass the Eastland Bill which had so badly hurt Bally's bottom line?
I called Wayne just now and shared all of this with him. He does not recall Moon Shot but agreed that Gottlieb obtained copies of the Bally games as they came out, to study them, especially the bingo machines, Wayne said. (After-thought: Bally had stopped making bingos several months earlier, before Moon Shot). Wayne confirmed that Tropic Isle was his original design (we already knew that).
I told him of the three coincidences of Moon Shot:
1) playfield is same layout as Tropic Isle, same backbox animation using three rockets rising along a curved path.
2) backglass art launches rocket from tropic isles (I admit this could sound like a stretch to say it that way, but hey)
3) MO and SH are common to both Moon Shot and Monkey Shines.
(EDIT: At the time I spoke to Wayne, I had mistakenly told him that Tropic Isle was April 1963, not April 1962, so, based on my misquoted date, I had suggested to Wayne that perhaps Bally somehow got wind of Monkey Shines during the engineering phase.) However, with the correct date being 1962, I think Bally simply waited until Tropic Isle was produced. In any case, Wayne was as amazed as I am of these remarkable coincidences, but was not dismissive, and then he told me the following, something he said that he never told anyone before:
At that time, Bally sent a bingo game to New Orleans but had first called the US Govt to tell them that they shipped it. The USG confiscated the game at New Orleans and made the court case where Wayne was on the stand for two days, he said. (At this point I told Wayne I had read about this, in the link that Dennis provided above. Wayne seemed surprised to know this. Two document links actually, one 1963 and the other 1968.) Wayne said the USG told him to watch your back at this point, that this is not child's play. That these people are not good people. After the two days of testimony, Wayne told David Gottlieb that he never wanted to testify in a court case again, that he wanted no more of it. Wayne never had to testify again.
(Sidebar: Per The Pinball Compendium 1930s-1960s, designer Ed Krynski had worked for Keeney since 1956 and stated the laws changed in the early 60s against gambling devices making it hard to continue in this product line and, after having testified in several court trials over these devices, he left Keeney and went to work for Gottlieb who, as we know, was a company known for eschewing gambling machines. Seems like Krynski also wanted to get the heck away from danger.)
Wayne suggested that Moon Shot may have been a revenge of sorts (his word). Before ending the call today, we agreed I would email him the link to the Moon Shot images on IPDB. I will also send him the link to his testimony. He will email me the engineering picture of Monkey Shines, photographed by Alvin Gottlieb, for placement on the IPDB. He said the picture shows Monkey Shines in a line-up and, although the picture is not dated, Monkey Shines was not the next game to be worked on, but was the 4th or 5th game to be worked on, as shown in the picture. Maybe we can see what the other games are.
Thank you, Dennis, for showing me this thread.