
Black Widow


The only pcbs that have the Black Widow name in solder trace are
prototypes (picture #1). Every Black Widow pcb sold by
Atari was a converted Gravitar pcb and will usually have a sticker over the Gravitar
name (picture #2). Conversions were either done at the factory, or by
operators with field kits. Factory conversions included mods to the audio
section that most operators didn't bother doing (the game will still work, but
the sounds won't be exactly correct).


Taito released a Black Widow game soon before Atari released theirs. It was designed by Mark Blazczyk and was a raster game. Supposedly only 50 were made before Atari bought the rights to the name from Taito, since Atari already invested so much in their version and deemed it less costly to buy Taito's than to rename theirs (with new boards, cabinets, manuals, etc).

