# Tickle the Ringmaster? Sample vs Production differences on Cirqus Voltaire!

**Source:** Pinball Shenanigans  
**Type:** video  
**Published:** 2026-02-11  
**Duration:** 14m 5s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdDaZmh6jug

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## Analysis

Mike Doss of Pinball Shenanigans presents a detailed technical analysis of his 1997 Bally Circus Voltaire sample playfield, documenting differences between sample and production versions. Key changes include the ringmaster head design (thinner on samples, thicker on production to prevent ball loss), insert text changes (Juggler/Acrobats Ready), spinner labeling (Crank Marvel to Spin), a removed opto sensor in the menagerie zone, decal applications, and the most notable: the original goal was to 'tickle' the ringmaster, changed to 'defeat' during production. The video provides one of the first comprehensive video documentation of sample vs. production playfield differences for this classic Williams game.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] Approximately 200 sample games of Circus Voltaire were made before production run — _Speaker references Internet Pinball Serial Number Database entry showing sample range and states 274 total Circus Voltaires were made_
- [HIGH] Sample playfields had a skinnier ringmaster head that would sometimes cause the ball to land inside the cabinet when lowered — _Speaker examines both versions side-by-side and explains the mechanical problem with original design_
- [HIGH] Original game design goal was to 'tickle the ringmaster' but was changed to 'defeat the ringmasters' during production — _Speaker attributes change to designer John Papaduke's peers suggesting the tickling concept was 'weird'_
- [HIGH] An opto sensor switch was planned for the menagerie zone on sample playfields but was dropped from production, possibly to save money — _Speaker shows routed playfield and removed insert, compares sample vs. production photos_
- [HIGH] Sample playfields used heavy-duty applied decals for ringmaster graphics and Multiball text; production playfields had these printed directly — _Speaker shows comparison photos and notes decals were added as a temporary solution_

### Notable Quotes

> "In the Bally Williams days, hardware game production was three steps: prototype, sample, production. Prototypes were made by hand and kept close to the development team—used for developing art, sounds, and software, and finalizing rules."
> — **Coyote (via Pinside forum, cited by Mike Doss)**, ~2:30
> _Foundational definition of development stages in classic Williams pinball manufacturing_

> "And the problem with that head is that once the ringmaster lowered into the playfield, sometimes—somehow—it would cause the ball to land inside the cabinet."
> — **Mike Doss**, ~6:00
> _Explains critical mechanical flaw that required design revision between sample and production_

> "You know, that's just kind of weird tickling all these ringmasters. I think we should, um, beat on them."
> — **Mike Doss (paraphrasing John Papaduke's peers)**, ~19:15
> _Reveals the design philosophy shift that changed the game's core objective wording during production_

> "They were going to have one of those right here. So, they had the playfield routed out. There's an insert here and, um, they ended up dropping that from production, possibly to save money."
> — **Mike Doss**, ~11:00
> _Documents a cost-saving decision that removed a mechanical feature before production_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Mike Doss | person | Host of Pinball Shenanigans YouTube channel; owns a 1997 sample playfield Circus Voltaire (serial 010197) |
| Circus Voltaire | game | 1997 Bally Williams pinball machine; subject of detailed sample vs. production comparison |
| Bally Williams | company | Historical pinball manufacturer; produced Circus Voltaire and established the sample/production development workflow |
| John Papaduke | person | Designer of Circus Voltaire; wanted ringmaster character to be friendly; original game concept was to 'tickle' ringmaster |
| Coyote | person | Pinside forum user who provided historical documentation of Bally Williams sample playfield development process |
| Funhouse | person | Unknown community member who submitted Mike Doss's machine serial number (010197) to the Internet Pinball Serial Number Database |
| Mike Hanley | person | John Papaduke's friend; his name appears in Circus Voltaire backbox as 'Hanley Cable Company' Easter egg |
| Internet Pinball Serial Number Database | organization | Online database documenting pinball machine serial numbers, manufacturing dates, and development variants |
| Pinside | organization | Online pinball community forum where detailed playfield comparison charts and development information is documented |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Sample vs. Production Playfield Differences, Bally Williams Manufacturing Development Process, Circus Voltaire Design Evolution
- **Secondary:** Playfield Restoration and Modification, Pinball Game Design Philosophy, Serial Number Documentation and Preservation

### Sentiment

**Positive** (0.85) — Speaker expresses enthusiasm for discovering and documenting technical details; appreciative tone toward community members who helped identify the sample playfield and document serial numbers; finds the design evolution interesting rather than critical

### Signals

- **[community_signal]** Unknown community member (Funhouse) submitted Mike Doss's Circus Voltaire serial number to Internet Pinball Serial Number Database, likely motivated by creator's YouTube videos (confidence: medium) — Speaker discovers his machine was already in database under different username; speculates community member saw his videos and documented it
- **[design_philosophy]** Original game concept to 'tickle the ringmaster' was deemed 'weird' by John Papaduke's peers and changed to 'defeat the ringmasters' during production (confidence: high) — Speaker quotes design feedback that led to gameplay objective reframing; visible on both sample and production playfield text
- **[design_philosophy]** John Papaduke intentionally designed ringmaster character to be friendly, reflected in original 'tickle' objective; community feedback influenced final tone (confidence: high) — Speaker attributes character design intent to Papaduke and explains peer-driven modification of core game mechanic language
- **[manufacturing_signal]** Sample playfields used applied decals as temporary solution; production playfields had graphics printed directly onto playfield surface (confidence: high) — Speaker compares photo evidence and notes heavy-duty decals on sample version vs. printed production version
- **[product_concern]** Skinny ringmaster head design on samples caused mechanical failure (ball dropping into cabinet); thicker production head with ruffled neck resolved issue (confidence: high) — Speaker shows side-by-side comparison and explains mechanical root cause of design change
- **[technology_signal]** Production phase involved eliminating planned opto sensor technology in menagerie zone, likely for cost reduction (confidence: high) — Speaker shows routed playfield section and insert cutout that were abandoned; speculates cost savings as primary driver

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## Transcript

Okay, so here is my Bally Circus Voltaire from 1997. When I first brought this into the basement and started to shop it up, I was recording and posting videos on it and someone pointed out that, hey, you have a sample playfield. I didn't really know what that meant at the time, but I have since done a bunch of research and I'm going to talk about the differences between—well, first what a sample playfield is and the differences specifically between the sample playfield and the production playfield on this Circus Voltaire machine. And there's a bunch of differences and I don't know that it's really been documented before in a video form. So, I thought it would make for an interesting video.

[music]

I'm Mike Doss and this is Pinball Shenanigans.

[music]

So, there's basically four stages of development when it comes to pinball playfields. You got your prototypes, then you got your whitewoods, then you have sample playfields, and then you have production playfields. On Pinside here, someone by the name of Coyote posted what he knew about sample playfields. And here it says, "In the Bally Williams days, hardware game production was three steps: prototype, sample, production. Prototypes were made by hand and kept close to the development team—used for developing art, sounds, and software, and finalizing rules. Prototypes came right after the whitewoods. Sample games were made once things leveled out. Sample games were set up to prepare the assembly production line for the game run and to get some games out in the market. Sample games were usually sent to test sites or locations like mine that had an agreement. And in return, we would have to inform them of any ball hang-ups, mechanical issues, and bookkeeping records from the game for the first few months. At my location, we could then purchase the game at a discount or if we didn't want it, send it back. Changes were made to the art, mechanical bits, and software changes as the game then went into production. Some games had big changes between sample and production. And he puts, for example, Circus Voltaire and Twilight Zone, while others had very little, like Road Show."

So, in the case of Circus Voltaire, there were approximately 200 sample games made. This is my serial number here—manufacturing date 9121 1997. And you can see the serial number 533621000. And then this 197 pretty much means that it was the 197th playfield made of the samples.

This is an interesting website that I go to from time to time: the Internet Pinball Serial Number Database. And so the other day I was checking out the serial numbers for Circus Voltaire and I found that my machine had already been entered, probably by the previous owner. It starts with the lowest numbered serial number. Uh, these here I believe are going to be the prototypes, and then you can see that there's this blue parentheses here that ends right there. All the serial numbers in this zone here are samples. And you can see here's mine right here: 010197. And that is the only one that is located in Canada that has been uploaded to the database. And then from here on down are your production playfields. Actually, I'm not really sure what this means here. But yeah, they made 274 Circus Voltaires including the samples. Of course, they're not all entered in the database, but I found that to be somewhat interesting.

Okay, just for fun, let's click on my serial number. And what I just discovered is that this was submitted while it was in my possession, but not by me, because I am not Funhouse. So maybe someone saw my video and posted it for me just to have it documented. So I guess, uh, thank you Funhouse for submitting my serial number.

Okay. So now that we know what a sample playfield is, I'm going to talk about the differences between this sample and the production playfield. Probably the biggest one is that most samples and prototypes had a skinnier version of the ringmaster. And the problem with that head is that once the ringmaster lowered into the playfield, sometimes—somehow—it would cause the ball to land inside the cabinet. So they made the ringmaster with a thicker head. This is what the original skinny ringmaster looked like. Might be hard to tell, but have a look at that. And we'll go back over to the machine. And here again is the fat-head ringmaster. You can see his neck is just kind of filled with all those riffles and that prevented the ball from dropping into the cabinet.

Another minor difference is that this juggler insert is orange on the sample playfield as well as the Acrobats insert there. On the production playfield, you can see that these inserts—um—are not only white, but they also say—it's kind of hard to see here—but "Acrobats Ready" and "Juggler Ready." Mine just says "Juggler" and "Acrobats." I guess they wanted to just let you know that, hey, after you've hit one, two, three shots up the left orbit, now your juggler multiball's ready to start locking balls. So again here you can see just says "Juggler"—doesn't say "Juggler Ready." And same with Acrobats. And I do prefer the yellow inserts actually.

Here's a couple other changes that were made that are sort of related to each other. This here says "Crank," and this is the marvel for the spinner. And this here says "Crank Me Up" behind the spinner. And then you've got these four inserts here. So they ended up changing "Crank Marvel" to "Spin" and they added S-P-I-N letters to these inserts. Here you can see the production playfield says "Spin" and it says "Spin" on the inserts as well.

So when I was playing the other day, you got the sideshow insert here. This is for your sort of mystery mode. And I couldn't quite figure out how to light it when it was already used up. And I accidentally discovered that hitting these targets is what reignites it. Uh, you can see there's no text in front of these inserts on the sample playfield. So you can see here on the production playfield they added the text "BHO" in front of the targets, although it's pretty hard to see.

Okay, this is one of the bigger changes that was dropped from production. So, in the sample playfields, they initially were going to put in an opto sensor switch right here in this menagerie zone so that when you hit the ball, it would register a hit just like the ringmaster. There's an opto sensor right here. So, as soon as the ball crosses it, you hit the ringmaster. They were going to have one of those right here. So, they had the playfield routed out. There's an insert here and, um, they ended up dropping that from production, possibly to save money. But I have the insert under the playfield, and just because it was there I decided to add a flasher and light it up so you have this effect. So on the sample playfield with the flasher added, you can see the menagerie insert lights up. Here is what that insert looks like from underneath the playfield. You can see the cutout for it. And, uh, that's where the opto sensor was going to go, but that was cut from production. And you can see that in this playfield here.

So, this appears to be a photo of a new playfield. And this is the zone right here that, uh, the insert would have been, but that was cut from production.

When I first started shopping up this machine and noticed these decals right here, I was wondering what is going on with these. But now we know what's going on. These were added onto the sample playfield. They're heavy duty decals. This is a ringmaster here, a ringmaster here, and a ringmaster here. And on the production playfields, that's printed right on, of course. And also, they added the word "Multiball" to each of these inserts. And on this photo here, you can see the printed ringmasters and the words "Multiball" printed right onto the production playfield.

There is one more decal that was added, and that is this "Defeat All Ringmasters" decal. You can kind of maybe see the edge on that. But, uh, this change would have required, you know, physical and software changes because underneath this decal the insert says "Visit Ring Three," and, um, they just thought it would make more sense to have it say "Defeat All Ringmasters" once you defeat these three guys. I think it's four total, actually. So, it just, I guess, made more sense because you got Ring One here, Ring Two, Ring Three, and then "Visit Ring Three." It's just one of those changes that was made to make more sense of everything. And I'll show you what that insert looks like. You can actually see it from underneath the playfield somewhat, but I have a photo somewhere.

Someone did up this whole map chart here on Pinside that talks about the differences between the prototype, sample, and production playfields. And on this particular photo, you can see here just barely "Visit Ring Three." And we have one last change.

I find it the most interesting one. So, designer John Papaduke wanted the ringmaster character to be friendly. And, uh, initially the goal of the game was to tickle the ringmaster. And, uh, you'll notice when playing this game occasionally you shoot the ball at him and he giggles. So, I think John Papaduke's peers said, "You know, that's just kind of weird tickling all these ringmasters. I think we should, um, beat on them." And that text "Tickle The" was changed to "Defeat The Ringmasters" and that's reflected here as well. So, I think, uh, defeating ringmasters sounds much better than tickling them. And here you can see that change on the production playfield. Much better.

All right. Well, I hope you enjoyed the video. Now you know what a sample playfield is. Hopefully I described it sufficiently and you especially know the differences specifically on this Circus Voltaire pinball machine. So, hope you enjoyed. Thanks for watching.

Oh, and just a quick little Easter egg: John Papaduke's good buddy Mike Hanley got his name into the backbox here. "Hanley Cable Company." There's a little Easter egg for you.

Okay, before I go, I'm going to show you one more little Easter egg. If I can get this to work...

_(Acquisition: youtube_auto_sub, Enrichment: v1)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 435722c4-4d72-4e8b-ad2f-8c07340f28c0*