# Episode 11 - Life of a Former Pinball Programmer

**Source:** Wedgehead Pinball Podcast  
**Type:** podcast_episode  
**Published:** 2024-01-01  
**Duration:** 43m 31s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** Buzzsprout-14203041

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## Analysis

Greg Dunlap, a former Williams and Pat Lawlor Designs programmer, discusses his journey from pinball enthusiast in 1990s Chicago to software engineer working on titles like Monopoly, Roller Coaster Tycoon, Ripley's Believe It or Not, and NASCAR. He shares insider perspectives on the Williams shutdown following Pinball 2000, theme licensing negotiations, and his role in dot programming and display choreography.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] All pinball machines made in the United States were manufactured in Chicago for most of pinball history — _Greg speaking about Chicago as the center of pinball manufacturing_
- [HIGH] Greg met Larry DeMar at World Cup Soccer test location and later worked with him at Williams — _Greg's direct account of meeting DeMar and subsequent employment_
- [HIGH] Williams had a networking system for Star Wars Episode I at Expo that uploaded scores to a central server, which Stern later replicated as Stern Insider Connected — _Greg describing the Pinball 2000 Star Wars tournament system and drawing comparison to modern Stern technology_
- [HIGH] Williams employees were fired immediately after Expo, despite successful Pinball 2000 launch — _Greg's direct recollection: 'everybody went to Expo... And on Monday, everybody got fired'_
- [HIGH] Pat Lawlor originally designed Safecracker to be a Monopoly game but couldn't get the license — _Greg explaining theme licensing: 'Pat had wanted to do a Monopoly game for a long time... he had designed Safecracker to be Monopoly'_
- [HIGH] Gary Stern rejected an unlicensed theme park game concept from the design team — _Greg discussing Roller Coaster Tycoon licensing: 'we tried to talk Gary into doing it unlicensed and he said no'_
- [HIGH] Pat Lawlor originally wanted to do a Crocodile Hunter game with a revived alligator mech concept from an old EM game — _Greg explaining Ripley's origin: 'pat's original idea for ripley's was that he wanted to do crocodile hunter'_
- [HIGH] Steve Irwin's death occurred approximately six months after Ripley's development began, which would have complicated marketing — _Greg: 'Steve Irwin tragically was killed like six months later. And that would have been like a real drag'_

### Notable Quotes

> "All of the pinball machines that were made in the United States have been made in Chicago. That's a little different now, but for most of history, that's been true."
> — **Greg Dunlap**, early in episode
> _Establishes historical context for Chicago pinball ecosystem and test-location culture_

> "I had a lot of friends there already. I already knew Lyman. I already knew Dwight Sullivan. I already knew Louis Coziars. I knew Ted and Larry. And so it was cool because I was like right there and hanging out with a bunch of people who I knew and were into pinball."
> — **Greg Dunlap**, discussing Williams employment
> _Illustrates tight-knit community of pinball programmers at Williams despite economic decline_

> "Are you telling me that Stern Insider Connected is just Gomez redoing that? That's hilarious."
> — **Alan (host)**, reacting to Star Wars Episode I tournament system description
> _Community reaction to continuity between Williams Pinball 2000 technology and modern Stern systems_

> "That day that we found out about shutdown, it was like one of the saddest days of my life. It was so depressing. It was really sad. And then to be on the floor, like as everybody was like moving out and it was like dead and quiet up there. That was that was a rough time."
> — **Greg Dunlap**, discussing Pinball 2000 shutdown aftermath
> _Emotional testimony to the impact of Williams' exit from pinball on employees and community_

> "Every year I would be completely convinced that it was all over and there was going to be no more pinball. And I was very wrong, thankfully."
> — **Greg Dunlap**, discussing early Stern years
> _Reflects industry anxiety during Stern's precarious early years and perception of existential threat to commercial pinball_

> "I think that from a top to bottom standpoint NASCAR is the most well did... the way that the rules and the theme are integrated with the play field i think makes it as a package the best game of the four"
> — **Greg Dunlap**, reflecting on Pat Lawlor games worked on
> _Designer's retrospective assessment of NASCAR as most successful thematic/mechanical integration_

> "Pat had wanted to do a Monopoly game for a long time. And in fact, he had designed Safecracker to be Monopoly and they couldn't get the license worked out."
> — **Greg Dunlap**, discussing theme licensing history
> _Reveals long-term influence of licensing availability on game design at Stern_

> "I would say that my favorite play field of the four is probably Roller Coaster Tycoon. Yeah, I agree. I don't really think that the way that the rules came together on that game highlighted it in a way that I think was as successful."
> — **Greg Dunlap**, comparing games worked on
> _Design-level critique: strong playfield design didn't match rules integration quality_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Greg Dunlap | person | Former Williams and Pat Lawlor Designs software programmer; worked on Monopoly, Roller Coaster Tycoon, Ripley's Believe It or Not, and NASCAR pinball machines |
| Larry DeMar | person | Legendary pinball designer at Bally/Williams; also worked on Defender and Robotron video games; hired Greg at Williams |
| Lyman Sheets | person | Legendary pinball programmer at Williams (previously Data East, later Stern); former Papa Pinball World Champion; worked on Monster Bash |
| Pat Lawlor | person | Legendary pinball designer; created LLR Designs as contractor to Stern; designed Safecracker, Monopoly, Roller Coaster Tycoon, Ripley's, and NASCAR |
| Dwight Sullivan | person | Pinball programmer at Williams during Greg's tenure; mentioned as someone Greg knew before employment |
| Louis Coziarz | person | Pinball programmer at Williams; worked on No Get Gophers and Jackpot; also recruited to Pat Lawlor Designs; recruited from Rick Gaines Pinball |
| John Crutch | person | Pat Lawlor's mechanical engineer; designed motorcycle mech on Bonsai Raw, shaker motor for Earth Shaker, and gumball machine mechanism |
| Gary Stern | person | Owner of Stern Pinball; purchased pinball assets from Sega; made licensing decisions and theme approvals for games |
| Steve Ritchie | person | Legendary pinball designer; contrasted with Pat Lawlor's design philosophy; known for fast-play games like AC/DC and Spider-Man |
| Cameron Silver | person | Williams programmer; worked with Lyman Sheets on Pinball 2000 tournament networking system for Star Wars Episode I |
| Keith Johnson | person | Programmer who joined Williams during Greg's tenure |
| Duncan Brown | person | Programmer at Williams during Greg's tenure |
| Rick Gaines Pinball | organization | Location/arcade where multiple programmers (Louis Koziarz, Keith Johnson, others) were recruited from to work at Williams |
| Williams Electronics | company | Major pinball manufacturer; employed Greg 1995-2000; shut down pinball division after Pinball 2000 launch |
| Pat Lawlor Designs / LLR Designs | company | Independent design contractor to Stern Pinball; employed Greg 2000-2004 on four games |
| Stern Pinball | company | Purchased pinball assets from Sega; licensee of Pat Lawlor designs; sole surviving major pinball manufacturer after Williams exit |
| Pinball 2000 | event/product_line | Williams' final pinball initiative combining pinball with video screens; included Star Wars Episode I; led to company-wide shutdown despite successful Expo launch |
| Monster Bash | game | Pinball machine in development on Whitewood system when Greg arrived at Williams; programmed by Lyman Sheets |
| Monopoly | game | Pat Lawlor pinball game; first title Greg worked on; licensing took years to secure after Safecracker attempt |
| Roller Coaster Tycoon | game | Pat Lawlor pinball game; based on video game of same name; Greg's favorite playfield of the four games worked on |
| Ripley's Believe It or Not | game | Pat Lawlor pinball game; pivoted from original Crocodile Hunter concept after licensing failed and Steve Irwin death occurred |
| NASCAR | game | Pat Lawlor pinball game; Greg considers it most well-integrated thematic/mechanical package; features cycling loop toy and tight playfield |
| Safecracker | game | Pat Lawlor game originally designed as Monopoly but license couldn't be secured; later adapted into Safecracker theme |
| Wedgehead Pinball Podcast | organization | Podcast where this episode aired; hosted by Alan and Alex; associated with Portland Pinball Bar Wedget |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Williams pinball manufacturing and history, Pinball 2000 initiative and Williams shutdown, Pat Lawlor game design and licensing, Pinball programmer roles and dot/animation programming
- **Secondary:** Chicago pinball ecosystem and test locations, Theme licensing negotiations and IP acquisition, Stern Pinball early years and financial viability concerns
- **Mentioned:** Design philosophy comparison: Pat Lawlor vs Steve Ritchie

### Sentiment

**Mixed** (0.55) — Greg expresses deep passion and nostalgia for Williams era and pinball community, with positive reflection on his colleagues and creative work. However, significant sadness and depression about the industry shutdown and job loss during Pinball 2000 era. Mixed assessment of his own game designs—proud of NASCAR's integration but critical of some playfield/rules mismatch in others. Overall warm and grateful tone despite difficult historical context.

### Signals

- **[business_signal]** Williams maintained slot machine division with pinball programmers on same floor during industry decline, operating under assumption pinball division might recover (confidence: high) — Greg hired into slot department 1995-96: 'there are a bunch of pinball people who are hanging out in the slot machine department... biding their time in the hope that the pinball industry comes back'
- **[community_signal]** Pinball test location culture in Chicago during 1990s where manufacturers placed prototype games for enthusiast feedback and playtesting (confidence: high) — Greg describing how Williams would place sample games in Chicago arcades and designers would visit to meet players: 'they would make sample games and put them in arcades in the Chicago area... you would run into them and you would meet them'
- **[sentiment_shift]** Keith Ellen's public endorsement of Ripley's Believe It or Not elevated game's community reputation retrospectively (confidence: medium) — Greg: 'I do think that does seem like ripley's believe it or not is well regarded nowadays probably because keith ellen came out and said that he loves that game'
- **[design_philosophy]** Roller Coaster Tycoon had superior playfield design but rules integration did not maximize the playfield's potential (confidence: medium) — Greg: 'I would say that my favorite play field of the four is probably Roller Coaster Tycoon... I don't really think that the way that the rules came together on that game highlighted it in a way that I think was as successful'
- **[design_philosophy]** Pat Lawlor consciously incorporated more Steve Ritchie-style fast play energy into NASCAR to match theme and his personal NASCAR fandom (confidence: high) — Greg: 'Pat wanted to kind of channel a lot more of that Steve Ritchie energy into that game, and he was a huge NASCAR fan himself'
- **[event_signal]** Pinball 2000 launch at Expo followed immediately by company-wide layoffs; significant morale impact on industry (confidence: high) — Greg's direct account: 'everybody was busting their ass... And then everybody went to Expo. It was super exciting... And on Monday, everybody got fired.'
- **[licensing_signal]** Monopoly license became available for pinball licensing after Williams successfully used it for slot machines, enabling Pat Lawlor to finally pursue long-desired theme (confidence: high) — Greg explaining: 'After they did the Monopoly slot machines at Williams... Monopoly became a little more open to different use cases... that's part of the reason why I think the Monopoly pinball later ended up happening'
- **[licensing_signal]** Gary Stern rejected unlicensed theme park game concept; policy preference for licensed IP over original concepts (confidence: high) — Greg: 'we tried to talk Gary into doing it unlicensed and he said no... and there had been a period of time where a bunch of us... were kind of obsessed with the Roller Coaster Tycoon video game... we proposed that to gary and he said yes'
- **[market_signal]** Stern's financial viability questionable in early 2000s; internal perception of existential threat persisted until later in decade (confidence: high) — Greg: 'when it was a little better after we had been there for a while... Stern was still very much in dire circumstances... Every year I would be completely convinced that it was all over'
- **[personnel_signal]** Multiple legendary Williams programmers transitioned to Pat Lawlor Designs contractor model, including Louis Coziarz; Rick Gaines Pinball location served as talent pipeline (confidence: high) — Greg describing recruitment: 'There's a guy, Duncan Brown... Another guy, Cameron Silver. And they were basically all recruited off of Rick Gaines Pinball at the time'
- **[technology_signal]** Pinball 2000 introduced real-time tournament networking and centralized score tracking via barcode cards and central server—ancestor technology to modern Stern Insider Connected (confidence: high) — Greg describing Star Wars Episode I tournament system: 'they built a tournament networking system... you could get a card with a barcode... and then it would identify you... and upload it to a central server... Stern Insider Connected is just Gomez redoing that'
- **[licensing_signal]** Crocodile Hunter licensing negotiations failed; coincidental timing with Steve Irwin's death six months into Ripley's development would have severely complicated game marketing (confidence: high) — Greg: 'pat's original idea for ripley's was that he wanted to do crocodile hunter... we could never get the crocodile hunter people to return our calls... Steve Irwin tragically was killed like six months later. And that would have been like a real drag'

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## Transcript

 Hello everyone, this is Alan from the Wedget Pinball Podcast. I am one-half owner of the Portland Pinball Bar Wedget, of which the podcast is named. We are in my co-host, Alex, the Waterboy's Basement Studio. How are you doing this evening, Alex? I'm doing great this evening. I'm Alex. I'm one-half of the Wedget Podcast, if you're just tuning in for the first time. And we're also joined today by our friend Greg Dunlap, former resident of Portland. And as you're going to see, he's been involved with the pinball industry. He's a great guy, and we're excited to have him with us today. How are you doing, Greg? Good. Good, good. You were one of the first people to reach out when we started this podcast. Yeah. Which I appreciate. You had some nice words to say, and you didn't have to. I'm not one to be nice unless I mean it, so you know that it was cool. So that's why I felt good. I knew that much about you. I think we want to start talking with you about how did you get into the amusement and gaming industry, and what year did you start at Williams? I have been a pinball enthusiast since the 90s. I played in my first pinball tournament in 1994. I was living in Chicago at the time. And for anyone who doesn't know, Chicago has always been the center of pinball for all of history, basically. All of the pinball machines that were made in the United States have been made in Chicago. That's a little different now, but for most of history, that's been true. What would happen is that when the manufacturers had new games and they wanted to test them before they put them on the production line, they would make sample games and put them in arcades in the Chicago area. A lot of us who were into pinball would go and play those games. And as a result, sometimes the people at the manufacturers would come to change the code or clean the play field or check the audits or whatever. and you would run into them and you would meet them and you would get to know each other. The first person I ever met actually was World Cup Soccer was the game that was out at the time and I was playing it and the guy came up to check the audits and he introduced himself and he said, Hi, my name's Larry. And it turned out that it was Larry DeMar. Oh my God. Who is a, you know, not only a legend in the pinball industry, but also responsible for designing and programming a couple of video games that people might have heard of, namely Defender and Robotron. And so we would meet and get to know these guys, and they would come to Pinball Expo, and we would talk, and there were people who would throw parties, and they would come and stuff. And that was one of the cool things, and it got me thinking about how people make these things, right? Like you go out and you play pinball, but you never really think about the fact that there are people whose job it is to do this, right? And so at some point I was at a job and it was going like crap. And I reached out to Larry and I said, hey, I'm interested in coming to work for you all. What do you got? And so I went in there and interviewed. I talked to him. I talked to Ted Estes. It went really well. But the problem was that at that time, this was like 1995 or 6, pinball was already well into its decline. And they were like, no, we don't have anything in the pinball department. but there are a bunch of pinball people who are hanging out in the slot machine department. How would you like to work on slot machines? There's this group of people who are kind of biding their time in the hope that the pinball industry comes back and that we can all migrate back to the pinball department, right? And I said, that sounds great. I would love it. And that's what happened. And I went and worked at Williams on slot machines. But the thing is, all of their software engineering at the time was on the same floor. The offices were all mixed up with each other. And so I was like right in the thick of it as far as pinball went. And I had a lot of friends there already. I already knew Lyman. I already knew Dwight Sullivan. I already knew Louis Coziars. I knew Ted and Larry. And so it was cool because I was like right there and hanging out with a bunch of people who I knew and were into pinball. But I was working on slot machines, which was actually totally fascinating too. Tell us a little bit about working on slot machines. So what did you do for slot machines? what was the programming like that you did and do you still see any of those machines out like if we go to like they all got retired really yeah even in like old vegas like if i like because my mother-in-law lives in vegas so like even if i go to fremont there's not maybe a couple of the ones that you worked on in the late 90s still around probably not um okay so williams had started making some slot machines with the dmds in them and kind of programming them to be a little more fun and like-hearted. And so I worked on, I worked on software for a couple of those. I found the gambling industry really interesting. I found sort of the psychology of how gambling works really interesting. I found like, there's different things like in the math of how they work and how, you know, working for a very regulated thing in, in all of, and I just found the whole business kind of fascinating. Yeah, definitely. I did that. But at the same time, like when I walked into Williams, the first thing I did was to go say hi to Lyman and he had a Whitewood on his, on his office and it was Monster Bash. And so like, that was like, when I came in was when Monster Bash was in Whitewood. It was incredible. It was, I find it hard to describe with words. It was a really, really amazing experience. That's very cool. Yeah. So anyone listening at home, Lyman Sheets, the late Lyman Sheets was a programmer at Williams, previously at Data East, I think, for a time. And then later on at Stern, he's pretty much considered the best pinball programmer of all time. Everyone has a lot of respect for him. He's a former Papa Pinball World Champion. As a player, just all around great human. As far as any, I don't know anyone that has anything bad to say about Lyman as a person. And everyone really has a lot of respect for his games. So that's really cool that you got to be there with Lyman and you were friends with Lyman worked in the same building as him yeah i mean and like sometimes like we would it was one of those places where i always wanted to be there and i lived like five miles away so i lived really close and so like i would just like go and i would work my day and then i would just hang out you know me and lyman would play monster bash for a couple hours or like he'd say hey let's call don and go out to the riverboats and we'd go out to the riverboats and play blackjack until midnight you know it was like it was just like and you know more and more people started coming in like Keith P. Johnson started to work there and other people. And so it was really just like this community of people who always wanted to be just embedded in pinball constantly. And it was really cool. That's interesting. I didn't ever really realize that it pulled so many pinball enthusiasts. I kind of thought back then it was just kind of like taking different talent. Yeah, a lot of people like Louis Kosiarz, Keith. There's a guy, Duncan Brown, who was working there. Another guy, Cameron Silver. And they were basically all recruited off of Rick Gaines Pinball at the time. Oh, wow. And that was how a lot of them got the attention of the manufacturers because they were fans. And Larry always wanted to hire people who were passionate and creative more than anything else. Like he wanted people who loved what they were doing and were going to bring lots of ideas to it. That's really cool. You can see it in the games, man. Those games were awesome. Like the 90s Bally Williams games were a high point for pinball, I think. a lot of creativity went into those games as far as the way they, the layouts that you were getting, the toys, the mechanisms, and even the codes that we might look back now and go, these may be shallow by today's standards, by modern standards, but they were incredibly deep and offered a rich experience. I mean, we got wizard modes and you got very cool things that didn't happen in pinball before. Even though they were made for a location market, they still offered a deep and rich kind of playing experience and still, honestly, some of my favorite games today. Yeah, me too, for sure. I guess after that, how long were you at Williams? So I was there for about five years. What happened was Lobster Bash got made and then and Cactus Canyon was in the works at the time, too. Everyone was trying to think, but everybody knew that, like, you know, the signs were not good for pinball. And that's when sort of the whole Pinball 2000 thing started. And so I got to, it's always hard for me because I don't want to talk about it as if I am responsible for any of this work that happened. I just happened to be around and watch it happen as kind of an observer, which is interesting in and of itself. But like, but I was there all through Pinball 2000 and then all through the shutdown. And then after that, like all of our, all of the remaining pinball people in the slot department, like in the next year, kind of all drifted off and bailed. I have to say that watching the Pinball 2000 thing happen was probably one of the most amazing. I'd never seen any group of people come together and pivot like that and just like reinvent every single piece of what they did for a living, top to bottom, in a year. That was incredible. It was absolutely amazing to see happen. And on the inside, I saw the documentary tilt the Battle to Save Pinball. I've seen a bunch of times. The documentary sort of portrays it as like we were given a task to increase sales of pinball machines and do something different. And it seems like the project was successful, but then they shut it down anyway. Was it really a surprise, like they say in the documentary, as far as like you were still getting shut down? Did any of the Pat or George who are working on in 2000, did they feel like it was actually going to say pinball? and were they actually surprised that after Expo, I think it was supposed to be announced, and they were all surprised that they were still shutting down the pinball division? Yeah, what had happened was that we had all gotten ready to take Star Wars Episode I to Expo. Actually, it was really incredible. They built this, I don't know if you all have seen this, but they built a tournament networking system for it so that you could get a card with a barcode on it and swipe it on a game, and then it would identify you, and then it would take your score and upload it to a central server so that you had live stats of the scores that we... Whoa. Are you telling me that Stern Insider Connected is just Gomez redoing that? That's hilarious. I ain't done. And it's like the same technology and everything. And it was funny because the pinball Lyman and Cameron Silver who were the ones who put this together they kind of just did it in their spare time because it would be fun for Expo And so it was like everybody was busting their ass to make a show that this game was good and that it was going to this work was important Nobody was acting like they were going to get laid off. And then everybody went to Expo. It was super exciting. It was super fun. It was super reinvigorating. And on Monday, everybody got fired. And so it was a feeling of like hope for the pinball industry and that you guys had done it and that you'd live to fight another day, so to speak. And the rug just got pulled out. That's interesting. I don't think that people felt that they were out of the woods, but I don't think that people felt that things were dire. You know, you kind of have an idea if you've been in like a hiring freeze for years and stuff that things aren't great. But that's still abrupt. That day that we found out about shutdown, it was like one of the saddest days of my life. It was so depressing. It was really sad. And then to be on the floor, like as everybody was like moving out and it was like dead and quiet up there. That was that was a rough time. Yeah, that's kind of a unique perspective for you watching that one from the sidelines a bit. Yeah, I would say for our listeners, and we'll probably maybe do a whole episode on Pinball 2000 in the future. And I'd love to have you back for that one, Greg. Sure. For the listeners out there, there's a great documentary called Tilt the Battle of Safe Pinball that I mentioned earlier. But check that out because it'll give you the whole story of the end of Williams and their move into slot machines only and selling off the pinball business. Talk about how you get linked up with Pat Lawler and his design company, Pat Lawler Designs. which he was then can you explain how all that worked to the listeners because it was a time when stern pinball gary stern buys the assets to i think at the time was sega yeah right it was data east then it was sega and he bought those assets and rebranded it a stern pinball and he's the only pinball manufacturer left and you started working for pat lawler design how did that happen well Well, basically, Pat ended up after Williams closed. There was, you know, a flurry of activity where people were kind of hanging out waiting to see what happened. If the pinball division will get sold and then if it got sold with the, you know, with all the employees go with it, like would they still be able to keep the gang together, basically? And when it became clear that wasn't going to happen, people started drifting off and doing their own things. And one of the things that Pat did was he started his own design company, LLR Designs. designs and what basically he was was a contractor to stern so he didn't want to work for stern he wanted to kind of like build games on his own and sell them to stern then stern would license them and produce them and that's the same deal that steve ritchie had for a while right as well and more recently that's what scott denisi has done for spooky yeah and so um we were at like a williams you know we would get together for lunch or whatever and pat had hired already had his group together with lewis cozy ours who was a coder who had worked on no get gophers and jackpot and some of pat's later games and then John Krutsch who was pat's mechanical engineer for basically his entire career like he designed the motorcycle mech on bonsai raw and he designed the shaker motor for earth shaker he designed the gumball machine you know him and pat have a wow yeah okay and they were doing their thing and i was you know kind of just chatting with pat a bit and i was like you know the job i got after williams is kind of a shit show i would love to come work with you guys if you have anything and he and what was happening was that they were working on the game that was it turned out monopoly and they were getting very behind on code and they needed some help he's like if you want to come work for us you can and he didn't have a ton of money to pay and he also was working out of a town called Marengo, which is an hour and a half from downtown Chicago, where I lived on days when there was no traffic and there was never days with no traffic. Not quite the five minute commute. No. And I said, yes. And so that's what happened. I went to work with Pat and we did four games together. I worked on Monopoly and Rollercoaster Tycoon and Ripley's Believe It or Not and NASCAR. Hell yeah. I want to give this floor to Alex here because one of these games that you worked on is one of the games he talks about all the time and is one of the games he ran into when he was going to college in Sioux Falls. They had a NASCAR on location and he loves this game. Yeah. And so I want to give him the floor and ask you a couple of questions and be a little fanboy to you. But yeah, go ahead, Alex. Man, I don't even know where to start with NASCAR. I do genuinely love NASCAR. It's one of those games. I'm kind of worried now that I've been playing pinball for a long time. I don't want to spoil it, so I never play it too much. But pretty much every time I see one, I play it. And every time I enjoy it, it kind of makes me want to own one myself so I could set it up how I'd like. As far as questions for you, man, just seeing the development of Pat Lawler's greatest game of all time in real life, undeniably the best. At that point, I guess when you're kind of working under Pat Lawler, was Pat just doing whatever the hell he wanted? Because those, that game of Stern's, they're loaded. They've got a lot of mechs. It doesn't seem like he was concerned with like the bill of material. So was there really any oversight or was it was just kind of Pat going crazy? Oh, no, there was oversight for sure, especially like when it was a little better after we had been there for a while. But like when we started, like Stern was still very much in dire circumstances. And there was a very, very long period of time there, probably up until like much later, like around when Iron Man came out, when I was like, this is Stern's last year. They're never going to make it another year. Every year I would be completely convinced that it was all over and there was going to be no more pinball. And I was very wrong, thankfully. But, you know, there was definitely oversight. One of the interesting things about NASCAR is that because it's got that kind of the cycling loop thing, that like eats up a lot of space in the cabinets, right? And so there's not as much space to put other stuff because it's not like there are any other real toys on that game. Yeah, you almost have like a safe cracker size playfield. There's that like a up-down car in the middle of the playfield. You got that trailer with the spinning clock. With the spinning thing, yeah. But other than that, there's not a lot on that. What I like about NASCAR is I like that it plays fast for a Pat Lawler game. That sort of gets pigeonholed as like the stop-and-go guy, as sort of the opposite of Steve Ritchie. like when people talk about the classic pinball designers and they're and they contrast their styles a lot I really like Steve Ritchie I like Pat Lawler games too there's some Pat Lawler games I love a lot but they're they're typically like hit a shot set up another shot very controlled he likes to hold the ball a lot and NASCAR's faster which I think obviously fits the theme it's kind of like getaway it fools you into thinking it's faster than it is because it's just well throwing balls around with a mag but I mean you can hit combos and you can hit combos in other pat lawler games it's not that you can't but it's just you know what i mean it's like you know you play fun house it's a slow game it's you're always in a you're always in a subway you're always in a scoop it's always catching the ball behind or you're throwing in rudy's mouth and it's a great pinball machine but it's just way different than playing you know acdc or spider-man or any of the Steve Ritchie games yeah and it's interesting because like i i i've always loved pat's games much more than Steve's games, but I think that's just because I'm by nature a much more nerdy and analytic, analytical kind of person. So I like the opportunity to do something to stop, to think about what I'm going to do next and set it up and do it and then recover and then think about what I'm going to do next. It's just like in, it's just like in my nature, but definitely on NASCAR. I think that Pat wanted to kind of channel a lot more of that Steve Ritchie energy into that game, and he was a huge NASCAR fan himself. So I think he wanted to find some of that energy. I guess that's what we want to talk about next is how are these themes chosen? Because, you know, full disclosure, some of these themes, I don't think people think are A-list themes. I don't know what you're talking about. Dude, they hit Ripley's Believe It or Not and the massive IP. So we want to I want to wonder if like is it was it just a product of the times like this is what Gary could get. You and I have spoken privately about some of these things and you were able to enlighten me on how some of these themes came to be. but I wonder if you could bring that to the podcast. Like, how did Monopoly come to be? How did Roller Coaster come to be? How did these games come to be? And like, who decided the themes? Like, was it the teams? Was it Pat? Was it all of you collectively? It worked different ways. Like, I was mentioning earlier before we got on that podcast that Pat had wanted to do a Monopoly game for a long time. And in fact, he had designed Safecracker to be Monopoly and they couldn't get the license worked out. And I think they were a lot more protective of the license back at the time that Safecracker came out. After they did the Monopoly slot machines at Williams, I think that Monopoly became a little more open to different use cases. And that's part of the reason why I think the Monopoly pinball later ended up happening. they had already acquired the license when I started so I wasn't really privy to that but I know that Pat had been interested in doing that for some time but I think that it was different in different instances I think most of the time people would you know say I have an idea for a game or a license and they would take it to Gary and Gary would say yes or no and if he said yes then it would be, you know, contact the licensee. Can we make this work at an affordable way? And if so, then you can go with it. But sometimes the licensees would come to Gary and say, hey, are you guys interested in doing a game? And then Gary would go around to the teams and ask them if they had any interest in it. Sometimes Gary would say yes, and you couldn't get the licensors on board and so you'd have to pivot. So some interesting ways that that worked out, I'll talk about here for roller coaster tycoon hey we when we were first talking about themes i had had i've i've long been a huge chuck jones and bugs bunny fan and i have always thought that looney tunes would be an incredible theme for pinball and so i brought that up to pat and pat liked the idea and then he brought it to gary and gary said no because he thought it was for kids and oh that which summer interesting when and now and now of course spooky doing the looney tunes game so i interested in seeing how that comes out yeah but then we were talking about other things that Pat wanted to do another theme park game We talked about ways to do it We tried to talk Gary into doing it unlicensed and he said no And there had been a period of time where a bunch of us at Williams were kind of obsessed with the Roller Coaster Tycoon video game. Makes sense. That game is fun. That game is so good. Yeah, it was fun as hell. It was fun as hell, yeah. And it was of its time. like at the time that game came out it was very yep of the time like it was it was very yeah all of my friends like we would go over to each other's houses and watch each other play roller coaster tycoon which is insane maybe some younger listeners or people new to the hobby maybe don't realize that but roller coaster tycoon was a kick-ass yeah ck and it spawned a ton of knockoff or spinoff games or whatever yeah like all kinds yeah there was like railroad tycoon and skyscraper tycoon all of this stuff anyway we proposed that to gary and he said yes and so that's how roller coaster tycoon came to be pat wanted to do a theme park game but we had to have a license and so we worked a license into this concept that's awesome right ripley's has a funny story we pat's original idea for ripley's was that he wanted to do crocodile hunter and he wanted to bring back there's this old em game called nip it and it has this um feature well i'm familiar i'm familiar it's alligator themed i'm familiar yeah yeah it's alligator there's an extra button on the cabinet where this alligator mech comes out and grabs the ball and pat wanted to like revive that idea in a modern pinball game but we couldn't get the we could never get the crocodile hunter people to to return our calls and so we pivoted and pat wanted to do something kind of like spooky or creepy and again pat had an idea and we backed a theme into the idea that's really interesting And then we ended up getting very lucky because, you know, Steve Irwin tragically was killed like six months later. And that would have been like a real drag. Yeah, terrible time to market your game. Yeah, exactly. No, you just throw a little angel halo and wings on him on the back glass. Right, right. Well, I would have really sucked. So we dodged a bullet on that. historically speaking i think a lot of these games aren't pat's most famous games or the games that people remember most fondly but i do think that does seem like ripley's believe it or not is well regarded nowadays probably because keith ellen came out and said that he loves that game so the church of keith ellen everyone all of a sudden is like this game's incredible i want to ask you like do you what do you think of those four games that you worked on with pat lawler designs which one is your favorite and why i think that from a top to bottom standpoint nascar is the most well did hell yeah yeah if you look at the rules and the play field combined it's not my favorite of the four playfields by any means but the way that the rules and the theme are integrated with the play field i think makes it as a package the best game of the four i would say that my favorite play field of the four is probably Roller Coaster Tycoon. Yeah, I agree. I don't really think that the way that the rules came together on that game highlighted it in a way that I think was as successful. Interesting. We do a trip where we take our, we call it Boy Ride, which we'll do an episode on that later. But we take some of us and we travel to different cities. We do a daily road trip and we go to different places. And we ended up at a brewery and we're playing their Roller Coaster Tycoon. for a long time and having a great time really because it had been a while since any one of us got to play it and it was fun to shoot like it was definitely fun to shoot because speak really for the code or the rule set because we didn't play it long enough but it was a good time when that troll kind of bounces up and down and then it gets the ball does that like it's it makes me laugh and i'm like this is why i love pinball like i really love this yeah as someone like when i was a kid and i played pinball before i understood rules or anything all i cared were about habit trails like cool ramps cool rails and roller coaster tycoon is so cool yeah it delivers that yeah it's got like the three different bright colors which you don't see a lot of color habit trails around that time and so it's just cool well and and like we said we were all fans of the the ip i think we all we grew up like alex and i grew up playing the the video game so it's like you're talking about the best-selling cd-rom game yeah exactly it always had a badge on it This is like best-selling into all the millions of 10 million units, whatever it's sold. I just love that they put that on the actual cabinet art. I think I want to end about your time working on pinball. I do want to clarify, like I see on IPDB, it says that you worked on dots and animations. Can you describe like your programming and what goes into that for the listeners? So basically a typical division of labor for software on a pinball machine is somebody would write the game code, the rules, basically, and then somebody would work on the dots or the display. That was like and it was usually kind of the person working on the display was sort of like what you gave the new kids to work on because it was easier and it's much less likely to make something catch on fire or whatever. and so i i mostly did dot programming and a little bit like i did i would do light shows i would do choreography basically as oh that's cool and so what would happen is that um we would sit down and we would talk about say a mode and we would say okay here's this mode we've got what kind of art do we want for it and what do we want the screen to look like or would we want to be happening then we would take that to the artist and he would you know put together some animations for it and then i would convert those to you know a digital representation and then i would make them happen you know i would like lay out the screen i would make them animate i would have we would have places for things like where are we going to put the score where are we what what is the text going to be you know like oh you like x to do that's cool why yeah well yeah because it would be like you know five more x to do y and then what happens when somebody makes a shot like what's what's the animation going to look like for that and stuff like that so and then some of it like you could like you could figure it out yourself like for instance in roller coaster tycoon for the multi balls there are these like little animal characters in roller coaster tycoon like there's a tiger and a panda bear and stuff like that and um and i told the animator like during in a multiball like when nothing's when you're not hitting any jackpots when you're just playing around it like shows the score and then i like wanted to have one of these characters be animated and dancing like the characters in the in the snoopy christmas yeah that's okay and so and so like there's one where like the tiger is dancing and his like head is just going back and forth and stuff like this like they're all mimicking the peanuts characters and stuff so we could do fun stuff like that but like day to day i was just like putting putting screens together animating them testing them lewis would send me like you know a bunch of codes and i would like try them out like and you'd have to test things like what happens if somebody scores 10 million points or if they add another digit does it make the score roll off the end of the screen or you know things like that and make sure it looks good with different, you know, if you've got 50 of something versus five of something, and then we would have to do stuff because it gets translated into other languages. So you would have to do things like German was always a pain in the ass because German is a very long language. So we would have to remake the screens for Germany because the text is so long. And, you know, that was always at the end of the project. And doing the translations was always really tedious. But the part where you're, like, putting screens together and trying them out and it's fun and you're like doing new like i did a thing where in monopoly where if you hit the bank it shakes this it takes a snapshot of the screen and shakes it like you like if oh yeah something and there was no code to do that so i just had to figure it out myself you know and it's like different things along those lines yeah those are kind of the fun little things that test you at work that actually keep it interesting and there was always discussions about like you know So like the fun part for me was the beginning part where we're talking about like what do we want on the screen? What kind of light shows do we want? How do we want to work it all together? What's going to happen when you hit a shot, you know, and all of this kind of stuff. And then putting it together was also fun, but not as fun as coming up with the ideas and then doing the stuff at the end where you're like doing like, you know, I've got to do the display for the for the administrative text for this fixture or, you know, you know, translations and stuff. that was always kind of like dragged on at the end, you know. It's like, in a lot of ways, it's like any other job in that, you know, there are parts of it that are really fun and parts of it that are really tedious. But, of course, the upside is that at the end of the day, you get to go out to a bar and see a pinball machine that you made getting played by people, which is really fucking rad. That was pretty much my biggest question for you is I would kind of expect, I work, I'm an electrical engineer, and so my day-to-day is just kind of a grind. And I'm always curious how much of a difference it makes just on a day-to-day satisfaction level if you're passionate about the end product. And is that something you really miss? And is it something you would move away from California for if you were given the opportunity again? It's kind of a hit and miss. And I think that it was really interesting. I think that one of the things that we really missed at PLD was because we were working out at Pat's house rather than at the Stern offices. is we didn't have that communal atmosphere that we had at Williams where everybody's on the floor everybody's talking about each other's games there's there's that real feedback loop that happens that would be huge difference we didn't really have that and I think that was a bummer and I think it hurts some of the games if I'm honest about it like other people might disagree but that's my feeling also I have to say that you know and I don't say this in any way to be seeing anything negative about Pac who is a genius but we didn't see eye to eye on a lot of things in the rules and stuff like that and so there was a lot of conflict there and sometimes two people have conflict and neither of them are right or wrong right it's just like different visions right oh 100% yeah yeah so from that perspective it was always it was a bit of a struggle for me because I was working on pinball and I could and there is nothing like seeing something that you've made out in the world and people having fun with it and that's still like is a big thrill for me today but also it kind of a bummer because I feel like a lot of myself isn in those games or not as much as I would want It really is like any other job in that way Like it was very special but it was also like any other job in that there were some things that were great about it and some things that sucked about it. And sometimes people, you know, don't see eye to eye on things. And sometimes situationally, it's not, you know, the greatest. And so it's easy to glamorize, but there's a lot about it that was just like the same problems you have anytime you get a group of people. Yep. That makes sense. And that's kind of why I was excited to talk to you, because it's just a different perspective than like the big name celebrities you normally hear on. What do you mean? Greg Dunlap is a celebrity? No offense. Well, I get I've also been out of the industry for long enough that I can like, you know, say you've got it at enough. Yeah, but my my my job, you know, we are like excited. Alex was very excited when I said that you wanted to come on and talk on the podcast because, and no shade to anyone on any other podcast or whatever, but it's like a lot of times they have people that are currently working at pinball machine companies and they can't say a lot. I mean, they can't really talk about the game, the new game they're working on. If anything went wrong or got yanked out of their game, they can't say that they lost a battle and like they really, it would have been better with their vision. And they can't because they're still working at the company. So a lot of those interviews aren't as interesting as I think they could be. And I found some of the best interviews were like, there was one that I listened to with Chris Granner after he had been out of the industry for long enough, which is Sound Designers. Yeah, Chris did sound for all of the PLD games. Dude, Chris Granner's the fucking man. He is. Oh my God. He is incredible. The work that he did on games like Funhaus and Banzai Run, not Banzai Run, he didn't do, but Twilight Zone, Adam's Family, that guy, he was really good. Yeah. Fishtails, Whitewater. I mean, the dude is a legend. We'll do a whole episode on him just because I'm a super fan of Chris Granner, and I believe that his sound design added so much to games and that I think he's the GOAT. And I really don't understand why he doesn't do any more pinball work. nowadays with the industry doing better than it did before i'm sure he makes more money working in video games now or whatever but like oh man he's just so good at pinball i just feel like the pinball world's lacking without him in it but i won't disagree that's good greg it was nice to to chat with you i just want to talk about after you left at lawler designs and you stopped making pinball machines you were working for the pinball outreach project or pop for short and you had a location in Portland that I used to go to and I got to play a lot of really cool games there for the first time. I got to play Volley, which is a cool late. Oh, yeah. Full-size flipper EM from Gottlieb to Wedgehead and then Beat the Clock is the other one I remember. Oh, yeah. That game's cool. Yeah, which is a George Christian game. The guy that did 8-Ball Deluxe and Frontier and some other great games. But that game is timed. It's not, you don't have balls. You have, and a couple of pinball machines did that, but that's probably the best one. Yeah. Or maybe the only fun one. I don't know. Yeah. So Pinball Outreach Project was an organization that was started by my wife, Nicole, and she was, you know, getting active in the pinball community in the Bay Area. And she had a friend who worked at UCSF and, and she was just, she just had a situation in which I believe I've got this story, right? her sister had had a pregnancy that was difficult. And so they were spending some time in a children's hospital and she was just thinking about like kind of how bleak the place was, right? Thinking about how it would be much better if they could have like pinball in children's hospitals so that people, so that like families and kids, especially those who were in them for a longer period of time would have something fun to do, you know? And so she started working with some people in the Bay area to do events at different places. Like she would do an event at UCSF Children's Hospital, and they would do other kinds of events using borrowed games and whatever. After we met, she moved up to Portland, and we started working on putting games permanently on location in places. And so right now there are four pop games on location in Portland at Randall's Children's hospital and a couple of Randall McDonald houses and things. But her dream had always been to have a location where that was like all ages, kid friendly, where she could hold events and where we could offer free pinball for kids. And that was like really for the promotion of pinball to kids. It was a really, really cool thing that we did and it was really fun. But the problem was it was just not maintainable. Like it ended up being like a part-time job for me personally, like, like helping to run the place. We had some amazing volunteers, many of them from the Portland pinball community. And I am always thankful to them for the efforts that they put in over the years to pop, but it was never enough to keep the place going in a way that I didn't have to still be, or Nicole spending a significant amount of time there running. And so it was like over time, it was just like taking more and more of a toll for us and a lot of times it was barely breaking even too because like one of the unfortunate things for me about pinball in the modern age is that like if you have a place where people can't come and drink because the pinball audience is so tied to the bar audience now like it's very very hard to make money oh yeah that's something i'm going to talk about i have a whole series planned for this podcast that's pinball economics and about just that where it's like i don't think a lot of people realize this but like pinball itself even if they're like and it's a dollar a play or whatever it's like they're not making money at that it's like the parts and the labor it's just there's no way they're making money that way it's everything subsidized by alcohol sales that's why that's why it's hard to find a place where if you have kids and getting them to play pinball it's hard to find because so many of these machines are at bars. So, and they're at bars because the bar makes the money and the pinball machines just brings people to the bar. That's how operating pins makes money nowadays. Yep. That's true. And the funny thing is that most of the value in the pinball, you don't get to see until you sell them because right now pinballs hold their value so well, but it's like, if you buy a $6,000 game and put it on your floor, that 6,000, it's like buying a house that six thousand dollars doesn't mean anything to you until you sell the game maybe a hundred percent that's what i think a lot of the hobbyists don't realize for operators it's like an operator is not selling games so the sunk cost just hurts them yeah i mean you could always sell them but then if you're trying to get more then you don't have the games on exactly yes it's this cycle of like you don't make money operating games i'm going to go further into that in the future anyway but to get it back to pop that's a very cool project i didn't realize you guys still had pins at hospitals and stuff up here yeah yeah and we're actually looking into like doing i live in monterey california right now and we're talking to they just one of the hospital groups down here just opened a mental health center for kids and we're going to be putting a game in there and so you know i won't say that pop is like super active but it's not like it's not like a done deal by any needs you gotcha that's cool well i will say personally i loved going to pop it felt i mean we opened wedgehead a little bit after i think you ended or or the same year you ended in 2017 or so is when we opened and that's what we always tried to do with wedgehead you know my business partner roadsy very well i got to meet you through roadsy but i always appreciated going being able to go somewhere and play games of all eras it's something that we try to do now at wedgehead is something that we focus on. Roadsy and I will always fight because there will always be a new game coming out and he'll want to bring in some Stern machine from the last five years or something that we know works and people like. And I'm like, no, we got to bring another EM in or we got to like, we have to prioritize making sure that we always offer a selection of games so that it doesn't just end up being Sterns from the last five years. It's so easy to default to all Sterns because they're reliable. they just are going to work people want to play them when they're new anyway yeah and so yeah it's always kind of an effort so we put a lot of effort and there and you don't it's not like you don't get any credit for operating old games right like right like nobody gives you credit for it and there's plenty of players that just completely ignore the fact that they're on the floor at all but there's a whole group of people that they live to see you know an embryon or a paragon or or something out on location or a volley or yeah you get to see those games and like that's what we travel for that's what i travel for i will travel to locations that put those games out and wedgehead i always want to be that space as well and pop was that and it was awesome it was great like when like we would have grandparents bring their kids in and the kids would be playing iron man or spider-man and then the grandparents would play volley and you could see their eyes light up because it's like so nostalgic for them like the chimes and the score reels and everything like it was really cool that is cool well i think we had a nice long chat there i just want to thank everyone for listening i want to thank our guest greg for joining us i hope that helped everyone understand a little bit of what it's like a peek behind the curtain into the pinball industry from someone that used to work in it then later transitioned out of it but is still a pinball player. You're still a pinball head. He loves pinball as much as anyone I've ever met. And I want to thank you for joining us. For everyone else there that there's listening, I want to end this like I end every episode, which is go out and play pinball. Yeah, and specifically play Pat Lawler's best game of all time, Stern NASCAR. Specifically, focus on playing Greg Dunlap masterpieces. Yeah, the quadrilogy. Yeah, the quadrilogy. You're going to need to play all of them. So find a Monopoly, find a Rollercoaster Tycoon, find a Ripley's, find a NASCAR, and go out and play them. Yep. Until next time, everyone, good luck. Don't suck.

_(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: a038ab24-86d5-4952-bca0-335918e58487*