I don't want things to change. So I think maybe that's why I came in here. To try to maybe stop that change. To turn back the clock. To make things go back to how they were. But I know that's naive. I believe it's just not how life works. It's moving. It doesn't hurt me. Do you wanna feel how it feels? Do you wanna know, know that it doesn't hurt me? Do you wanna hear about the deal I'm making? It's you, it's you and me And if I only could make a deal with God And I'd get him to swap all this You could ask yourself a question Be running up that road Be running up that hill Be running up that building What are you doing, punk? I'm drunk I'm out I'm out Meet Gargoyle. Meet me. Welcome to the Pinball Restorers Podcast. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Pinball Restorers Podcast. I'm your host, Matt Listerud, and this is actually a very special episode. It's also a very sad one. When I started doing this, or basically the reason why I started doing this, was I had gotten a few machines. I was getting addicted to getting them back to running. And when I got my first Williams title, it was a 1979 Laserball designed by Barry Oursler with the art by Constantino and Jeanine Mitchell. yeah wide body some people hate it because wide bodies were floaty um but anyways i loved the game because it had a track mode in comparison to the other games i owned it didn't that didn't really have one it was it just had a beautiful modern feel to it and at that time before i really started to dig and dig and dig and dig and then take knowledge and just learn about the hobby, learn more about how games were made, learning all these little things. I had reached out to Barry Allsler because I just wanted to talk about the game he made. You know, it's just, I don't even know why I ever responded. Was it because I just happened to be interested in talking to the guy who designed the game? Maybe that was it. But so I called him and he was speaking through his iPad. He was so kind. And I joked, I said, you know, heck, I should probably make a podcast out of this or something. I was making that joke. And he goes, well, you know, find an app. He goes, just record it. You know, here, just call me back once you're set up. And I did. I called him like just literally a few minutes later. I didn't have an outline. I didn't have anything. I was just kind of just free flowing, sounding like an idiot, but at the same time, kind of getting some understanding. Anyways, he was so kind. He knew I was a novice and he was laughing about it. And the truly kindest man, and he's the reason I had my start doing this. And, um, when he passed away, I was, uh, I was deeply saddened because we never got another chance to try this. He had been the victim of basically two Ponzi scheme companies. And I'm not even trying to throw Highway into that category. It's just, at least they produced the game. But Deep Root is a special dumpster fire and Rob Mueller deserves to rot in hell. Not because he took people's money. um there are plenty of kickstarter you know video games get made with hundreds of thousands of dollars or even millions of dollars of just voluntary donation money they never get made or just go belly up nobody cares um in this particular instance uh yes he took people's real money you know not just what they were willing to donate to a cause but you know he took the money that people had invested and that's terrible in of itself but I do feel that taking a designer who was always a calm humble and incredibly caring and nice person who had I'd spent years in the industry, witnessed the nosedive of that industry. And you know what? Yes, people know you for the games you've designed, but you're working for a company that you worked for, you go, sure, that's a third-party health inspection company. Health, I would say accountability slash education firm. And I've dealt with them. I was a chef for 18 years. And the company I worked for had EcoSure for all of their quarterly inspections because they wanted to hold us to a higher standard than just the health department. And for the record, I have passed all of those inspections. But he was surprised that I knew about that. And so we talked about food. When he found out I had cooked for a living this morning and I had worked for an Italian restaurant, I was an executive chef at an Italian restaurant for eight years. And you're talking to the Italian guy from Chicago that hand makes every meal. That was the funnest part of the conversation. In fact, I didn't even record most of it because it derailed on into just cooking. And that was the stuff I liked. I liked knowing him beyond just making such famous titles as Dracula, Dirty Harry, Pinbot. But he started his career designing Phoenix and finished it with Junkyard. The man was truly talented, but he was always humble and he was pragmatic in his methods. And so I've decided to use this recording, and it's heavily edited. I took all the Deep Root stuff out because, guess what? But if you want to listen to Deep Root stuff, there's some other shows you can listen to. And don't get me wrong. It's not that it's not fascinating. I just feel like it totally just derails from anything this guy was trying to do. And he gave me insight into some of the aspects of how games are made. And I like it from the fact that he had started working for Williams out of high school. His dad had worked there and he knew, you know, like Steve Kordak, he worked with them very closely, you know, and Steve, who, you know, worked at Williamson to his 90s. There's so much knowledge that was passed to him and so much knowledge that he then kept and then continued on. there's not a lot of designers out there in the current industry who have a history of making electromechanical games let alone early solid state and so it was kind of interesting to talk to him about a couple of things and I and sadly I was having so many technical difficulties that I'm not playing this up or playing it down or that I'm just going to use what I felt was the best recorded stuff. I'm not going to interrupt this with any commercials. I am adding a little bit of a soundtrack to it because every show that I do, I usually try to incorporate a theme of like a film or something that got made into a video game or sorry wow my God into a pinball machine And so I used Stranger Things inspiration for this with Meg Byers cover of Running Up the Hill I'm going to actually have a little bit of a backing track. This is a memorandum. This is not going to be a long episode. And I'm not going to add any news. There's nothing else. It's just you guys get to just hear Barry Osler talk about pinball, designing it, his history in it, and that will be all. There will be no mention of Deep Root because I cannot let Rob Mueller and everything that that man did cloud this man's legacy because he made my personal favorite game, Pinbot, and he was well-respected in the industry for just being a humble, nice, everyday guy and apparently an avid poker player. So without further ado, Barry Osler. well what happened was my father was working in quality control at williams down you know down near the shipping area and he says that they were looking for some technicians i guess some testers to work in the sample room so i graduated high school on sunday and started working at williams on monday i spent two and a half years in the factory and then i was offered a job up in engineering as a technician and I was working with all the game designers Steve Kordick and Norm Clark the people that were doing most of the games I was there about eight years and they were kind of down a game designer and I had some ideas for games and asked him if I can do a game and he said sure go ahead so I did Phoenix in 78 nice and my father taught me a lot of stuff too I mean I was soldering and building heat kits when I was six years old yeah so I learned how to use tools you learn how to solder learn how to drill I mean I was doing all kinds of stuff at that age quite impressive actually it was a busy year i had three games that one year well laser ball was one gorgar was second one and uh time warp there was over 20 000 games i think that were made between those three this thing's a wide body and it weighs a ton it took uh three people to load this one because I did not want to do that. How long did it take to develop this game? You said it was a busy year. And I look at these playfields, I look at those layouts. Is a lot of that time in the pre-development, trying to come up with something new, or is it like the art design? I mean, they would give us nine months from concept to production, but I never took that long. I mean, some guys would take a year and a half, two years, but I could knock a game out in six months, sometimes less. And in order to do three games that year, I had to kind of overlap things. But I'd say it probably took less than six months from the original idea to the time we made them. In modern times, I wish it would go that fast. Yeah, it's a little harder now. I mean, there's just too much involved in the games. Everything's changed. Themed games versus licensed themed games. It's one of those things where I feel like the original themed game is kind of a lost art. And I get it that companies take a risk because branding and name recognition matters. And I'm aware of that. I mean, Star Wars, Batman, stuff like that. I always loved original development. There are some hits that were in that regard. For instance, you've done Pinbot today. I know people who love Pinbot, they're sought after. But I feel like the licensed-themed games really took off, and that's why everybody I know owns an Addams Family somewhere. But I feel like that's just a lost art. To me, it's very impressive to come up with an original theme, and you said you could crank out a game, you gave me nine months of production, to come up with an original concept and move. To me, that's so much more impressive than kind of having a set of guidelines of like a theme or that you can just kind of roll with whatever the movie did or series of movies did. Right. You know, I'm looking right now at the pinball database at 1979, the games I did, and really Time Warp came out in September and Gorgar and Laserball both came out in December. and the total looks like it's over 27,000 games between those three games. Man. Yeah. That's just a lot. And the games are easy to make back then. That's the thing. They were so much easier. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's like they went from the difficulty of EM machines, and I always joke because I do know how to fix them, but when somebody talks to me about like, oh, hey, I just picked this up. Do you want to take a look at it? I'll just ask them this question first. I said, does it turn on? Yes. Does it work? Yes. Does it play well? Yes. They go, never open the game. Yeah, right. You know, because there's a lot of people that don't understand that in a short amount of time, in fact, like that technology advanced so fast, EM games, you know, using a cam with grooves to store the game's information to going to, you know, a read-only memory microchip on a motherboard. That was a fast thing that made, to your point, made the games that, so it went from more difficult to build one to easier to build one and now we're back to let's make this as difficult as possible to build one i know it just takes a long time they don't they didn't realize when they started this company it's going to take you know four or five years to get a game out the door for a new company that's what you see the cost part like if you go to like a marco or pinball life i mean just to buy a mechanism sometimes they want 70 80 dollars like for maybe a ball popper mechanism or a hundred dollars for a drop target mechanism so that's why sometimes you got to design your own stuff well yeah as you said like if you're going to be doing a launch you're making like you know say 2 000 runs of a game you know 80 adds up quick yes per part what was your preferred like method of attack here i mean do you have like a rule of thumb as to what you when you look at a plate a blank play field you're like i want to do this i mean not to give away trade secrets or anything but like I mean do you look at it from more of a mechanical end or do you look at it from more of an artistic end I don't know like in the past I would just come up with an idea for maybe a theme for a game and just some nice features on it but later on I would actually design around the theme like when they did pinbot with python he drew up a sketch of this you know the robot with the flipper fingers and I took his sketch and actually turned it into a game They had played through a lot of it. So I designed around the artwork. Other times we would just, you know, make a game and then come up with a name and decorate it. It depends on what period. What's your favorite game you came up with? What's your proudest piece? I mean, everybody, and I know that, you know, as art continues, but like, I guess from the early days, what was the one that you were like, I loved the fact I got to make that? I mean, they were all great. I mean, you know, it's hard to say which one of your kids is your favorite, you know. I mean, Gorgar was probably one of the big breakthrough ones. first hockey game. It sold the most out of all my games. Oh, awesome. And Dirty Harry was my favorite. Oh, trust me. They got an autographed picture of Clint Eastwood hanging next to it. And coincidentally, Dirty Harry was my dad's favorite game and my older brother actually had an autographed signed picture from Clint Eastwood that said squint like Clint and he just backed that technological advancement, like you just brought up, Gorgar, first, you know, speaking sound game. And in that period of time, you went from that to then, you know, to modern games, which have a full-blown soundtrack. I mean, it's just such a short amount of time to go from bells and chimes to, you know, full-blown soundtrack, digital recorded responses. And, I mean, that that had to be a lot to keep up with. I mean, I know the technology. It was different every time, yeah. And so I feel like you didn't have the option to just kind of look back and rely on a sequence of parts or from a mechanical, not the mechanical, from the electronics. You couldn't rely on kind of a tried-true. You had to make the jump, like, from machine to machine. And every couple of years it would change. We started with the chimes, then it went to like electronic sounds, just beeps and chirps in the games. And then we started putting background sounds in the game, like Gorger had a heartbeat, some of the other ones would have like a droning sound that I keep building throughout the game And then later on we went into music And music another one of those things like when they talk about licensure and original-themed games have the luxury of they can contract out and maybe get somebody to create, or in-house create music and soundtracks and sounds for a game. In the modern age, when you move to these licensed titles, there's only so much you can take or you have to make something sound similar and music is the worst because you have to deal with all these different publishing companies oh yeah you could only use certain songs you can't use this song because it's a different publishing company but you can use these songs what is your favorite part of the process when incorporating the art to what you're doing is it like when you finally get to see the end or is it when you're actually visualizing this being built? Probably visualizing it because a lot of times I would work with the artist to try and, especially on a play field, try and move the lights around on the game to make it tie in with the artwork. If you look at some of Python's stuff, he'll take the clown's eyes and we'll put lights in his eyes and those will be your bonus multipliers or whatever, or bad cats. I think we had three or four cats on the bottom. Their eyes would light up with different numbers in them. So we try to work the artwork into whatever we're doing on the playfield to make it fit. If you look at Laserball, we just took the game and then just kind of decorated the playfield. He's just got a bunch of girls on the playfield and a bunch of little things. You've got the two girls up front that have the ball shooting out of their hands. But everything else is mostly just little geometric patterns all over the playfield. the later stuff, who would actually tie the artwork in with whatever was being done I think it depends on the artist people like Python, he'd go nuts he was always excited with it and you can see it in the artwork he does oh yeah, I just always love his name my wife was looking over my shoulder and I was looking up some of these artists and I was trying to take notes because every game that I do, I'm trying to put a little assembled piece of history with it because I always feel like people end up with this, and then they're combing over eBay looking for original scorecards, or they're cruising on an internet pinball database to get what type of specs or all this stuff so they can try to piece something together. I've just taken some time and just kind of reached out to people who worked on these, who develops these. And I've actually, I really appreciate the fact that, you know, again, you were willing to answer as well, especially about something you did, you know, 40, 41 years ago. I don't mind doing it. I like keeping in touch with people. How is the Carl Weathers down in Texas right now? It's like mid seventies right now. I envy you. I'm at minus three. I lived in Chicago. my life I know how bad it gets my wife my wife had to work today anyway so oh okay all good all good yeah well one of her girls quit so she had to she had to kind of fill in for her oh no what does your wife do fill in she she works at a local airport uh she's the general manager at Stinson municipal airport oh gotcha yeah it's more like a private it's all by the city you know but it's a smaller smaller airport. Oh, no, gotcha, gotcha. Small, another small thing. So, by history, I did 18, I will say this, I did 18 years in the restaurant industry. I was a chef for 16 of those. I will say this, I did pass every one of my EcoShare inspections. I worked there for like 11, 12 years. So, you're familiar with EcoShare. Oh, yes, oh, yes. In fact, for most places, they dread the health inspector. And when companies, because I worked for a company, Compass Group, I worked for Bon Appetit Management Company, and we contracted for third-party verification. And they'll always, always pass my mind. And I just laugh because people scramble and the health department shows up. Because it's not that they do anything wrong. They're always afraid that there's just going to be the one thing. You know, it's restaurants. You're busy. It's that one thing, like, you know, a box got set here on the floor of the cooler versus being on a shelf because you were just in the middle of a rush. And it's not that you didn't want to be back. You just didn't have time. And so they always dread the health inspector for that. And when it came to EcoSure, who takes it above and beyond? Looking underneath all of the equipment, guess what? We're checking for grease buildup. We're going to check your drains. We're going to actually take a thermometer and go to every one of your hand sinks and verify that your hot water heater is actually working. I know. I read all the reports of these places. I've read some horror stories. Oh, no doubt. The worst one I read was the Hardee's. you know, the hamburger place, where somebody, one of the inspectors went over by the booth. The booth was kind of loose and kind of pulled on it, and there was a huge roach nest in it, like millions of roaches living inside the booth. Oh, good Lord. Once they get in a restaurant, they are so difficult to get rid of. And one of my coworkers at the time was like saying, he's like, I can't believe places have roaches. They must be so filthy. and I said, believe it or not, a lot of restaurants get the roaches from the transport of garbage to the dumpster and then the empty can coming back. I said, because it's warm out, you track their eggs. Because guess what? The dumpster company isn't disinfecting those dumpsters. They pressure wash them empty when they dump and then they bring them back to you. And so I always tell people, I said, one of the little known facts, cockroach will eat off of your thumbprint for a month. Oh. And so, yeah. I'll have to bug you for some cooking ideas now, because I do a lot of cooking. I'm like an amateur chef. Well, I do a lot of Italian cooking. My mother was Italian. I grew up in an Italian neighborhood. Ah. Trust me. I made a big tray of manicotti a couple weeks ago for company, and then my wife took some to work, and all the guys at work are gobbling it down. Your husband should open a restaurant. I made pasta vasoul last week. I mean, I'm like, you know, Chicago pizza, the deep dish. Oh, yeah, I'm a huge fan of Chi. I'm a Chi town guy. My wife actually used to live in Chicago, Illinois, for a brief period. We actually are high school sweethearts that got back together years later. But she went down to Chicago and fell in love with everything from the cuisine to the food and then got in a lot of trouble really quick and then she her next uh phase of her life was great lake she yeah i make my own crust from scratch and everything but i saw a video the other day uh John Papadiuk showed it to me this one chef what he did with his pizza crust like for the deep dish normally i would put like olive oil in the pan and put some cornmeal in there so it doesn't stick this guy would take like a big chunk of butter and butter the whole pan and then he covered the whole inside of the pan with grated parmesan and shake it around like you're putting flour in a cake pan and then when you bake it when you when you bake it all the cheese gets caramelized on the crust i gotta try that yeah no it works really good for that because one of the one of the things is i worked actually for a restaurant for nine years um when i used to make a parmesan crostini fans that would be sitting up you know spiked upright into a dish it was very easy to do um just you know use a uh a sheet pan and with a parchment paper and i would you just take parmesan cheese uh not grated um just shredded and it would melt down but it didn't stick to anything because of the its lack of lactose content it's right caramel to your point It caramelizes, and so it would melt into this perfect fan mass. But then the second it was cooled off you could just pop it off the pan and never have to worry about it ever sticking to anything So yeah no to use it for a pizza crust that would be awesome Yeah I going to try that One of my favorite Italian dishes and I know that people hate me for this is that I actually I really, I really loved veal. So veal salt and bocca was one I really loved. And everybody does chicken for that now. But, you know, breaded, pan fried veal cutlets with wrapped in prosciutto ham. Oh my God, delicious. Have you ever made a crustless pizza? The crust was what? I'm sorry. Have you ever made a pizza without crust? Yes, I have before. I have before. You made the crust out of Italian sausage. Yep, I did. We actually, we took, we did, we've done it two ways. We used prosciutto ham once and wove it kind of like, I've seen people do bacon waves. We kind of wove it like that in thin strips. and then we used just a light bit of olive oil on a flat top, and you sear cooked it just enough to where it locked, not to where it was actually completely cooked, because then we would build pizza on top of that. And then once that was done, you could bake it in the oven. But that way you didn't end up with an overcooked bottom, or you kept it from turning into burnt bacon. And that is one of the fun ways I've done that. Oh man, I could talk about cooking for hours too, crap. It made a homemade mac and cheese, but in the middle of it, it has bacon and tomatoes. You kind of layer it. Yes, you did a macaroni cheese bake. Okay, you did a cheese bake. Oh man, no, I love doing that. But we've actually, my wife has done Gouda on top before, which adds a totally different flavor profile to macaroni and cheese, but it does work. And then she added, she used bacon, and then she, what was the unusual thing she used? It was pre-grilled seasoned shredded chicken. And that turned out really good. I was actually really surprised by, just because it's something I didn't think of putting in. And, I mean, I know stuff that won't work, but I was just like, I came home to that, and I was like, oh, that is awesome. I found this recipe years ago, but it's unusual. It's made with Velveeta and Gruyere. Now, that is interesting. And you make a cheese sauce with them. You grate it all up, you know, dilute it with some milk and everything and put the seasoning in it. But the reason the Gruyere gives it a nice flavor and the Velveeta keeps it smooth. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And I'm going to actually, I'm going to try that. I'll book my wife here in about 15 minutes and be like, yeah, we're going to go make a quick run to the grocery store. Have you thought about opening a restaurant? I mean, you know, coming from that background, and I feel like there's not enough Italian restaurants these days that are actually good. I mean, I've thought about it, but I really don't want to have to deal with the people, you know, the stuff that goes on those restaurants. people trying to steal from you customers coming in and complaining all the time or trying to rip you off ah there is that pinball pinball for me has been kind of a safe hobby in fact over the last over the last year it's been my saving grace because everybody else is saying oh I have nothing to do I'm downstairs playing one of my teams or working on it there are people that you know with a lot of turmoil in events, it's nice to just talk to somebody and they'll be like, so what have you been up to? I'm like, well, I've been restoring this pinball machine and we talk about the processes from doing the metal refinishing, cleaning up all parts, having to deal with wiring diagrams, interpreting wire diagrams, especially with these older games that never had a color-coded scheme on a map where you get to cheat and look. You actually have to count those color codes. But it seemed to be such a conversation of doom and gloom preventer. People wanted to know more about it. In fact, a friend of mine actually bought a machine after a conversation about it because it's been such a fun, neutral hobby. And it's kind of an unusual one. There's a lot of people who didn't, you know, you can tell when somebody's a video game nut. but until somebody coughs up the money to buy a pinball machine, there's a lot of people that don't know you play, you know, just because how often do they see you in front of one, you know? So it, it, it added a different component to how I was known among my friends. So that was a, that was actually kind of a relieving thing this year. So how, how did you end up working for EcoShare? uh really I was before that I was working for bets and distributors who distributes parts and games and I spent about eight or nine years there and I was doing purchasing for them of all things I just kind of walked into that job and I got laid off over there because they said they're taking all the purchasing and moving it to their corporate office in New Jersey so I was looking for a job and put a bunch of resumes I couldn't find anything because I went over to uh Kelly services just to get a temp shop and they sent me over to eco-share I worked there for a couple months and they hired me full-time not a badge not a bad thing I mean it's been nice to know that first off that you enjoyed cooking you've had you've had other work I worked at a pizza restaurant I started off in a tiny beef place when I was like 14 and I worked at a pizza place when I was 16 I I mean, between me and this one other guy, we'd make 200 pizzas a night on Fridays and Saturdays. Holy crap, where was that pizza place located? It was in Chicago on Taylor Street. It was called Papa Charlie's. Just the only reason I ask is because sometimes these places still exist. So that's why I'm like, oh, they're not. Yeah, that's what it's called, though. Just because I go to Chicago frequently not for work. I still haven't taken a tour of any of the factories yet just because of the fact that by the time Chicago was in my market COVID hit yeah send me a message if you've got any other questions oh yeah by all means I will in fact I might even just call and bug you at another point I'll let you definitely see how far I get in this game and Gorgar and Timbot are on my list to acquire and yeah I'm hoping to be able to get those because, you know, I still have room in the basement and I'm building a shop actually, a new garage come this spring as I happen to own a large lot. And I own two classic trucks, but I think that what would be cool is when I open the door to that garage, you see obviously the two classic trucks parked side by side, but the entire perimeter of the garage is lined with pinball machines. Like I have this, I have this goal. I have this goal and it's achievable, I think. alright well thank you Barry I appreciate your time and yeah I'll reach out if I can but you enjoy the rest of your Saturday thanks take care bye ladies and gentlemen that concludes my interview slash conversation with Barry Osler and pardon us bantering and sometimes me bantering you know it was a conversation so with that being said I just appreciate anybody who gives us listen um and i do uh hope that people do contribute to the gofundme and memorials to him because he did leave outstanding medical bills when he passed away he is survived by his wife kathy preceded in death by his first wife he was seven years old and a giant in this industry and a giant loss in this industry. So from the rest of the community, the people, the games, the friends, his history of design, making classic titles, Dirty Harry, Dracula, Phoenix, Time Warp, Scorpion, Laser Ball, Junkyard, working with helping him finish Jackpot, Space Shuttle, what is claimed to have saved pinball in the early 80s. just so much and such a kind man. So thank you. This is Matt signing off. And as per Barry's wishes, game over.