Cool topic! I also enjoyed watching DMD attract modes as a kid (and I still do!). I think my guns n roses shows an ad for a game called Circus. I always wondered what that game would have been, what the plan was.

Speaking of DMD attract modes. When I spoke to Gary Stern during his visit to Alkmaar I pitched the idea to have a shout out to Pinside somewhere during attract mode. He liked the idea and even put it in his little notebook but to this date it hasn't appeared. Now that would really make my day. Gary?

Rocky and Bullwinkle shows an ad for Jurassic Park.

Deathball 2000 was an inside joke at the 1994 Pinball Expo. It was shown covered up during the Data East factory tour, and was just a cabinet at the time with no Playfield layout or artwork, just a backglass.

Also, I remember Jurassic Park having an advert for Last Action Hero on the DMD.

Robin, the game you're thinking about is Carousel, which is actually a redemption game Data East put out shortly after GNR.

I'd love to see modern Sterns put in shout outs to Pinside in the game software. In the mid 90s, Data East / SEGA did similar things with RGP, and it truly made the pinball community feel connected to these machines even if it was only in a minor way. It'd be cool to see these shout outs / Easter eggs done in the modern day.

I found this gem of a post on the RGP archive (by Orin Day):

Well, somebody finally comments about my little display joke in GnR.

At that point in DE's existence the next game promo feature was
getting ready to be phased out. Among the reasons why it was
eventually removed were:

*) Operators seeing the "next" game theme and waiting for that game
rather than just buying the current game (though having the
message only coming up after 1000+ plays by default was thought
to help this)

*) Having potential licensing conflicts, what if the "next" game was
also a movie theme but from a different studio.

*) Getting calls because the "next" game wasn't the game shown in
"Coming Soon" - having customers ask "When are you coming out with
Game XXX, why was YYY instead" was a hassle for Sales, Support, etc.

*) Why waste sound and display resources on an upcoming game, sometimes
at the expense of the current game (mind you, this was not the case
in GnR)

*) [Last but not least] Operators didn't like it.

At some point during GnR we knew that the feature would never appear
again, so I went back through all the 128x32 DE games that had used
the feature and gleaned the best artwork for "Coming Soon" - most of
it was compressed so it didn't take up a whole lot of resources.

After that it was time to find a gag game to promote - Carousel was
the game - I used the logo page.

Carousel was not a pinball game, it was a novelty game of the "rolldown"
variety. The kind of game where you would roll a racquetball down a
sloped alley to win tickets - many contemporary games had either slots
or holes, this was a combination in that there was a rotating Carousel
with five or six different holes separated by vertical pieces of
plexiglass.

The original game was designed by either the California division of Data
East or Data East Japan and passed on to Data East Pinball after having
been to at least one trade show. It didn't work very well, I don't
recall the hardware system it used, and the parts were pretty much
"one of a kind" with very few good blueprints (no CAD stuff at all
was provided). It was a decent idea but a not-so-great implementation.

We basically reengineered the game, redoing the mechanical design,
reprogramming it using the pinball system and 128x32 dot matrix,
Brian Schmidt did the sound and Paul Faris redid the art. Lonnie
Ropp did the CPU code and I did the display work. The game then
went to the March show in Chicago, it was not received well enough
to warrant a lot of further work. We directed our novelty game
attention to games that made money more quickly, resulting first in
coin rolldowns like "The Mask" (which Data East California claimed
after Sega took over DE Pinball, they brought it to the 1995 spring
show in Reno - they had some pretty nice T-Shirts for it, if you have
one you might not know the art on the back glows in the dark), "Sega
Sports" and "Cut the Cheese".

Carousel included some interesting art, the "JACKPOT" effect used
the "evil Gigi clowns" and balloons as seen in Tommy. The crowd on
the backglass (does it still exist?) included likenesses of several
of Paul Faris' relatives.

If I remember correctly the "Coming Soon" effect would not come up
by default until at least 1000 games had been played, and the
adjustment was "OFF" by default. I'm glad somebody finally noticed it.

The one thing I never did get into GnR that I really regret was some
additional "silly" (not dirty) art for the match sequence. Maybe if
I have some time I'll put it up on the web somewhere for your perusal.
I should probably also include scans of the spinner decals - yes, GNR
used to have a spinner, its primary use was in the "Slash Solo" mode.
It was removed when the one-way gate at the pop bumpers was installed
and when the right orbit lane was widened in an effort to increase
pop action (at the request of certain European customers).

This is probably more than you ever wanted to hear on this topic!!!

OD

LAH advertised TFTC, if I recall correctly.

Let's bump this thread... my LW3 (June 03, 1992) shows a TFTC promo, my LAH (August 09, 1993) does so, too. My TFTC (November 04, 1993) shows the TOMMY promo. My JP (April 26, 1993) did not have any promo at all (for LAH).

So there's two reasons for Lethal Weapon 3 advertising TFTC:
1. It could have been under consideration for release before Star Wars
2. The game may have been updated to the latest ROM update (which changes Multiball to Tri-Ball among other features)

Interestingly Tommy did have a promo for WWF Royal Rumble in the game code. However regardless of the settings it would never actually show.

Chad has recently fixed this with his Tommy code update - so now you can see it if you so desire

... and its colored via colordmd That was fun.