Another great character from the early days of the UK industry, Tony Lynch, has passed at the age of 79.
Tony Lynch died in hospital in Cardiff on Tuesday of this week.
Tony had a 50-year career in the British gaming industry with several companies, of which the best-known was Automatic Fruit Designs, which was highly successful with club machines in the late 1970s.
He went on to found Coinmaster, and was a pioneer in automated casino table games.
Tony had other companies along the way, latterly with AutoDice, a joint venture with Austrian slots maker Amatic, but was always developing new ideas for the gaming industry right up to the end.
He leaves a wife of 18 years, Lyn, three daughters and many grandchildren.
InterGame’s David Snook, who was a friend of Tony for many years, said: “The gaming industry in Wales has thrown up several very colourful characters over the years, and Tony was one of them….I always think of him in the same terms as my old friend Arthur Thomas, also from Cardiff, who we lost a couple of years ago – another colourful character who was always developing new ideas for games and game features.
“Tony Lynch was always full of stories, always an amusing and invigorating conversationalist with an infectious laugh. But he also had a keen and inventive brain that was always seeking that magical ‘something new’ to put into a machine. They didn’t always work, of course, but he would always laugh it off and get on with the next project.
“There was never a dull moment with Tony; I shall miss him very much - another of whom you could reasonably say ‘they broke the mould’….”.
