The cabinet for the game was designed by Atari's product designer, George Faraco. His design featured a joystick for each player, which was encased in a pink dome that the player would rest their hands on to control the joysticks, meant to resemble breasts. Faraco later acknowledged that "they didn't have bumps on them or anything, but the way they were the size of grapefruits next to each other, you got the impression of what they were supposed to be." Atari's second engineer, Don Lange, who assisted with the game, has also stated that the design was intentional on the part of Faraco, who fellow Atari designer Regan Chang has claimed "had some really far out ideas". According to rumor, Faraco got the idea from a joke that joysticks resembled phalluses, and that Atari should make a game with female controls. Like Faraco's initial design for "Space Race", which was changed due to its expense after a few dozen units, the joysticks for "Gotcha" were changed to standard ones shortly into the production run prior to the October 11, 1973 release. The design did inspire the advertising flyer for the game, however, which features a man chasing a woman in a nightdress with the initial design of the cabinet behind them. The final cabinet stands over 5 feet tall and weighs nearly 200 pounds. The breast-like controllers reappeared in yellow in prototype versions of the 1974 "Touch Me" arcade game, but were not used in production. Due to their acquisition of Atari's Japanese division, Namco distributed the game in Japan in November 1974.