R.M.G.

R.M.G. — Renato Montanari Giochi — was one of the many small artisan coin-op firms clustered around Bologna in the 1960s and 70s, working from a base at Quarto Inferiore and turning out Electromechanical pinballs and video games whose market reached well beyond Italy.^[1] Founded by Renato Montanari, the firm produced a modest line of roughly fifteen machines from 1970 onward,^[2] most of them bootleg rebuilds of Gottlieb designs recreated from scratch. Montanari presented the firm’s wares at the first ENADA coin-op trade fair, held in Rome in 1972.^[3]

R.M.G. also traded as Skill Game, issuing a run of tables badged “The Best” in place of a maker’s name — among them The Best Wizard, its take on Gottlieb’s Wizard.^[4] That label had a curious origin in the Italian trade: print shops that supplied backglasses to game makers began selling glasses straight to arcade operators, cutting the maker out, and lettered them “The Best” where the manufacturer’s name would otherwise sit.^[5] The firm built pinball from 1968 until 1974, when the business was reconstituted as Europlay.^[6]