Roller Games eventually encompassed several separate leagues: National Roller Derby (NRD), which was renamed to National Roller League (NRL) Canadian National Roller League (CNRL) and Japanese National Roller League (JNRL). In the 1960s, Roller Games experienced rapid growth, and established teams in Baltimore, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Florida, Hawaii, Canada, Mexico, Australia and Japan. In late 1961, the company was acquired by Bill Griffiths Sr. In 1960, after Roller Derby had settled into its new home in the San Francisco Bay Area, former Roller Derby skater Herb Roberts founded the Los Angeles-based National Skating Derby, Inc., and its flagship Los Angeles Thunderbirds team. Roller Games and its flagship team, the Los Angeles Thunderbirds (T-Birds) has endured several boom and bust cycles, including a roller derby attendance record in 1972, a major reorganization in 1975, appearances on ESPN in 1986, a TV series called RollerGames in 1989–1990 (and its corresponding arcade game by Konami and its video game for the Nintendo Entertainment System there was also a pinball machine based on the show), and a small number of untelevised exhibition matches in 1987, 1988, 1990, 1993, and the early and mid-2000s. Roller Games provided a mostly televised, increasingly theatrical version of the sport. Roller Games was the name of a sports entertainment spectacle created in the early 1960s in Los Angeles, California as a rival to the Jerry Seltzer-owned Roller Derby league, which had enjoyed a monopoly on the sport of roller derby - and its name - since its inception in 1935.
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