Domino Man

The player controls Domino Man, a bespectacled, balding artist in a beat-up turtleneck and with a sporting mustache who attempts to set up a number of giant dominoes across the screen.

Domino Man runs back and forth across the screen setting up each domino on a site marked by a black dot. Meanwhile, pedestrians meander throughout the playfield, so caught up in their own thoughts that they never bother to look where they are going. Or maybe over a domino, which will cause one Domino Man to be eliminated. However, pedestrians are the least of Domino Man's concerns. A killer bee constantly appears trying to sting Domino Man. Swat the bee before it stings! There is also a neighborhood bully who is a real bruiser and is about twice Domino Man's size, and when he appears, he will head for the closest domino. You must try to take down the dominoes before he knocks them over.

After you have set up all the dominoes, you will have a choice to either knock down all the dominoes or continue play in hopes of increasing the domino bonus value. After have have made the choice, you will move on to the next screen.

After the game is over, the game will have a poem displayed on the screen to evaluate the player's performance on the game. For example:

Roses are red
Or so goes the verse,
You set up 52 -
You could have done worse.

Ways to increase your score:

• Remove and replace the same few dominoes over and over again for as long as time, the people, bugs, etc., will allow.
• Complete as many screens as possible before purposely tipping over the dominoes and your score will increase exponentially!

The main character in this game is very similar (if not the same) as the bartender in Tapper and one of the Timber lumberjacks. Rumor has it that his likeness was based upon that of one of the Midway employees.

An interesting advertisement for the game read:

Domino Man's my name and building a domino chain is the exciting new game but if I do not work fast there's a mean old bully who wants to knock them over and a pesky bee who wants to stick it to me but if I jump on the bully's head he will go away and I can whack the bee with a domino and to make matters worse there's always clumsy people running into the chain knocking the dominos down but if you help me we will get this chain built yet and there's no more time to talk because the bully's coming this way so I have to gooooooo.....

The game uses the standard Midway-style cabinet for that era. In addition to pictures of dominoes around the monitor, the lower front portion of the cabinet (around the coin door) sports several large vacu-molded plastic dominoes.

In an attempt to ensure the market attraction of this game to all audiences, Midway included a rather obscure dip switch setting. The setting allowed the operator (not the player) to choose either "light-skinned" or "dark-skinned" Domino Man as the default. Other than skin tone, the graphics are identical regardless of the setting used.