yeah so i was up i was up really late so i will likely be very tired and low energy during today's podcast those damn dodgers winning that friggin game seven they're just piles of garbage hot flaming garbage that smells like soy sauce and don maglie does not get his world series ring Hello everyone, I'm David Dennis and this is Silver Ball Chronicles and with me is Ron Paella Hallett. What's up fella? Hola, me llamo Renaldo. Oh, very nice. Your name is so much cooler in Spanish. I can't trill the R, though. Yeah? Ronaldo. Yeah, I can't say that. Yeah, you don't have that. It's that thing that most Canadians have because we've got that French influence, so we're able to kind of pick those things up. Oh. Tons of fun. What's been up? How was Expo? It was great. It's always great. Always great. Never bad. Mm-hmm. Except that one year where it looked like they were, you know, pinball was going to be gone forever. But other than that year, it was good. that's pretty wild. I did not get to Expo. I am planning to make it one of these years, but it's got to be a good year. There's got to be some good pins out. None of this Star Wars, Fall of the Empire crap. Well, Pintastic Hotel, they went on sale today. Did you see the guys at Flip N Out Pinball, our sponsor? Yes, I did say that I saw Greg and Ken from Flip N Out Pinball manning the Flip N Out Pinball booth. Yeah, they had a whole booth? They did the whole thing. Did you give them all hugs? Did you give them hugs? No. No. No hugs. I did play Golden Tee. Oh, yeah. Okay. I heard that. I heard that on Slam Tilt Podcast, your other podcast. My other podcast. Yes. Very good. Very good. Now, did you happen to email Greg at flip the letter N out pinball.com for all your latest and greatest needs when it comes to Golden Tee? Sure. Because it's more than just pinball, even though it is Greg at Flip and the Letter Out Pinball.com. They also sell a lot of those Raw Thrills games. Big Buck Hunter, too. Yes. Amazing. So be sure to reach out to them. We wholeheartedly endorse them. And you've sold your soul to Greg. Oh, in other news, the pinball bar in my local hometown has started to really up the pinball quality of the pins in there. And I'm telling you, it's pretty great. They picked up a Roller Games and a Mouse and a Round. Huh? Ooh. Collecting that cheese and going through the mouse hole thing. Both games I've owned or currently own. Love it. Love it. Roller games. Just fantastic. I've played a lot of King Kong. King Kong Pro. So based on our last episode, oh, that's all time. There is not a terrible shot in that entire game. Even the brick shots are amazing. Ron, I think I prefer it over Godzilla. Oh, oh, wow. Yep. Okay. Hot take. Hot take. Hot take. We have to welcome those new Patreon folks. Welcome Steve over on the Patreon, and thanks for swinging in this month. It's just great to have so many huge fans that just adore us with throwing their dollar-dollar bills, y'all, at us. Mm-hmm. $3 a month gets you in as a pro crony. That's the thank you to us, but predominantly me. And the $6 a month crony, that's the tier you want to be on. You get access to the private Discord chat room where we chat about mostly barbecue. We also, you get priority on any of the podcasts. The biggest part of that is ad-free early access before the general feeds. Those elitist cronies, they're up there at $20 a month. After three months, they get a free Silver Ball Chronicles t-shirt. Just great. Thank you. Welcome, everybody. Ron, you've been hanging out on our Facebook page at Facebook page? Facebook page. At Facebook.com slash Silver Ball Chronicles. Oh, yeah. Every now and then I'll drop a hint as to maybe what the next topic is, what we're talking about. It's very nice. Everybody loves T-shirts, hoodies. I love T-shirts. Got mugs in there. Do you drink? You don't drink coffee. Oh, God, no. You can put hot chocolate in it. I never was into hot chocolate, and I love chocolate. Yeah? So go figure. And as always, you can email us, silverballchronicles at gmail.com. so we got a great email from gary p he says love the show i started from the beginning and i just heard ron talk lovingly about johnny mnemonic there you go love the community love everybody involved in saying hello and feeding ron's ego nobody ever sends a message talking about how great it is about you know the time that i said oh this game was great but johnny mnemonic Segasa, or Sonic Pinball, was Spain's major contribution to the golden age of pinball. Its products evolved from licensed electromechanical designs to original solid-state games under the brand Sonic. Established in March of 1968, Segasa, later known as Sega S.A. Sonic, initially imported and distributed American amusement machines before transitioning to a local manufacturer due to import restrictions. Production ceased in 1986, marking the end of Spain's efforts for world domination and its pinball adventure. Let's jump in this month to Pinball Tapas, Sonic Pinball. Do you like tapas, Ron? I was going to ask you what that meant. I thought you meant to put tapes and spelled it wrong. No, tapas. Tapas are like little plates of food that like a table would order multiple little – it's like little appetizers, but that's the meal. And then you all order what you want and then you all kind of share at the table. Tapas. And that's a Spanish thing apparently. Okay. Not a tapas band. Do you like paella, Ron? the shrimp and the seafood and it's in a really big sort of i like shrimp yeah yeah you like rice with your shrimp and your seafood all cooked in the same thing with tomato and spices that actually sounds good it's paella is actually very good i kid paella is very good it's worth it's worth to look that up ron yes do you like movies about gladiators uh do you like sonic pinball games Yes, I do. I like several of them. Several. So they're not just a one-hit wonder. Yeah, I might even own one. Actually, two. This was a difficult pinball podcast to put together. Segasa or Sonic. So they kind of changed, they rebranded, kind of changed the structure of their company kind of halfway through their existence. So it's really difficult to kind of piece together what was released when and by whom. And confusing. I mean, they're called Sega and Sonic, but they're not Sega Sonic. Yeah, and they're Segasa, but they're Sega S.A. Yeah. And then their logo changed like a dozen times in the years that they were. It was very, very confusing. The other thing is it's like because of the language barrier, because they're from Spain and they're from Europe as well, there's a double sort of issue there. Like they don't have the sources that they would have for like a Williams or a Bally or even the Australian contingent because of language barrier and because of sort of distance from the North America, which is the sort of pinball focus of the world, especially the Midwest. Their designers didn't do podcasts, or I couldn't find any of those podcasts. A lot of the episodes that we're doing here, Ron, those come from this old pinball when they did their old podcasts. And that was from the mid-2000s, so it was sort of like when pinball had died, and they were trying to get the stories out because they didn't think we would be back in this situation. So it was kind of tough. However, if anybody is listening and they do have some extra sources for Sonic, please feel free to email us at silverballchronicles at gmail.com, and I'll add them to the next episode so people can reference them. Now, this episode doesn't cover Playmatic of Barcelona, Spain. That might be another episode. This is about Segasa Sonic. What do you think? Sonic or Playmatic? What is your favorite? I have liked more Sonic games than Playmatic games. Okay. I've played a couple of Playmatic games, all of them pretty decent, but I have to agree, the Sonic games that I've played, I've always enjoyed more, especially when they made a couple of original designs, and we'll get into those shortly. so i guess we should start at the beginning of segasa and like i said i'm doing my best with this topic i found one very very good source i took that source and i had to translate it and uh you know that source might be all made up i don't know but we're doing the best we can here because we got to tell all the stories of all the manufacturers not everybody wants to hear about bally williams in the 90s all the time right ron yeah no but there's plenty of that out there so segasa was founded in 1968 as the company called sega sa or segasa would you just kind of jam those together these were this company was created by shareholders of sega enterprises so the company like the the game maker sega or what would eventually become sega and sega genesis and all that stuff. So they were shareholders of that company, and they started Segasa in Madrid, Spain. Are you a fan of Madrid, Spain? I've never been there. Never been there either. Never been there either. I feel like Madrid is a big deal. That's where the F1 race is, I think, outside of Madrid. And then there's Barcelona. I will talk a little bit about Barcelona a little bit later. Now, the company's capital, the money, was actually owned by the Japanese firm Sega Enterprises. So a lot of the startup money came from the actual Sega. And its business purpose was to, quote-unquote, manufacture and wholesale recreational gambling machines. So I found that that was kind of neat. So when the company was set up, it had a very specific purpose to manufacture and wholesale gambling. So they began by manufacturing electromechanical arcade machines. I never really had seen electromechanical arcade machines before. All the arcade machines I ever saw were solid state. And they were like the 1990s solid state, right? So you didn't see any like the gun games or any of the – No. You pilot a helicopter around and stuff like that? So I've seen a few of them since I've joined the hobby because I've gone to a couple of shows or I've been to a shop or something like that. Or I've been to a collector's house and they've got something like that. And I think electromechanical arcade machines are super cool. Do you have any favorite electromechanical arcade machines? I like a lot of the gun ones, especially when they started getting crazy to put like an 8-track in there so it's playing sound and things like that. Yeah, it just boggles – like for somebody like me who more or less has grown up in the digital world, it's really confusing to me to imagine that something in that machine is physically moving around and making the targets fall down or lift up. or you're shooting like, what are the ones that are like a periscope game, right? Where you're using a periscope and shooting down like submarines. Like that is super cool. The smart thing that Segasa did is they used all of the technology and patents from Sega Japan. And they were mostly direct copies of other machines that were already manufactured in Japan. But now they were producing them in Spain. because Spain had high import tariffs, very topical word at the moment in world trade, so it made it more expensive to move machines from Japan into Spain than it was to manufacture them in Spain. So that reduces the cost. You don't have your own R&D firm. You don't have to reinvent the wheel. You're just kind of doing the same thing but building it somewhere else. Pretty smart strategy. But they eventually got into the video games. Yes. They made, they imported video games into space such as Pong, Space Invaders, Asteroids Yeah, so this was like what they did in the States too, right? Like didn't somebody in the States just buy the rights to those Japanese games and manufacture them in the States? Wasn't that the same? Midway bought them, yeah, from Namco That's where Pac-Man came from Pac-Man is Namco, but all the cabinets, everything, they're all built by Midway Yeah, it's really weird when you look at those old sort of video game sort of who owns the licensing, who owns the manufacturing, who owns the patent. Like it's this weird web of all these international companies that own these bits and pieces. It's so confusing. Usually the U.S. cabinets are preferred in the market because they're bigger. Usually like the Japanese cabinets were smaller. Are those the ones they call the caberlays? No, they weren't smaller like that because those were in the U.S. market too. They would have the full model, the cabaret, which is like the mini, and then they would have the sit-down, the head-to-head. Yeah. Actually, is that called the cabaret? Am I getting my – No, the cabaret is the small one. The cocktail is the little one. But I mean like the full-size one in Japan was smaller than the full-size one in the U.S. And that's mostly because in Japan, you know, they're in these large cities and space is worth a lot more. I think it's because everything is bigger in the U.S. As I found when I went to the U.K. and even a can of soda is like, wow, this is way smaller than I'm used to. We need a bigger marquee in this game, not big enough. Now, the biggest breakthrough for Segaso was really in 1972 when they began the in-house manufacturing of EM pinball machines. They reached a licensing agreement with Williams Pinball in the United States, And they decided to reproduce those models for the Spanish market. This, again, they're taking a very smart lesson here. They're saying, we got those videos and all those EM machines from Japan, and we just took their plans and built it here. Well, we're going to do the same thing with pinball. And who do you go to when you're going to make a pinball machine? You pretty much go to… Gottlieb. You don't go to Gottlieb. They're probably too expensive. Yeah, they probably were to expect, like, no. Right? You go to the second place, you know, or the third place, Williams' team, because Williams probably wants to generate more revenue somewhere. And if they can license out those games, that's great. Gottlieb, Gottlieb's killing it on their own. They don't need any help. So their first pin was Casbah. Rock the Casbah. From the Slash's famous song. In 1972 years before The Slash actually made this song Amazing This is where The Slash created their song This Rock the Casbah came from this game Who knew Now Casbah is actually K but this is Casbah C And it's an area in Algeria. You've been to the Casbah in Algeria, right? I've never rocked the Casbah, I'm afraid. The Casbah is very much like an old fortified city. It comes from the Spanish mixture within the Arabic world. It's really cool. You can throw it into Google. That's literally what I've done here. It's in North Africa. It's like a citadel. It's really cool. So it's an exotic theme, right? It's like a Middle Eastern, Aladdin-esque theme. Yeah, you know what our listeners want? They want to know what the flyer says. all right let me bring up so do i i love the flyers all right you go ahead and read this oh no it's in spanish of course it is and i just completely butchered this entire language let's see with acclaimed and popular systems of balls balls that's actually it looks like it says something about bonus and extra ball bola extra extra double the bonus in the last ball ultima ball a ball i was assuming that yeah double bonus on the last ball see i'm doing it the art is really kind of neat here. It's like cartoony. It's got like perspective. It's like people hanging out in a bar and it looks like there's a king sitting on a throne. It's very exotic. It's a one player, five digit display. Five real display. There are no digits. Unless they were way ahead of their time. I think the best part about this pinball machine is that you can see that they are being very careful with their first pin. Right? They don't want anything too complicated. They don't want a million mechanics. They got two pop bumpers, two, what are these, captive ball, very target-looking things. And then in the bottom, there's no inlanes. It goes into like a weird kicker just behind the flippers. Yeah, like a lot of Williams games do. It kicks it out. Yeah. And people are like, well, what does this doesn't make, like, why would they make their own version? Well, actually, this is 1973 Williams Darling, or the four-player Jubilee. They've just rethemed it for their local market. So Darling doesn't mean anything in Spanish or in Spain. but casbah does because it's kind of this exotic spot on the other side of the mediterranean yeah to me the most surprising thing is they actually licensed it and didn't just rip it off because most of the time in european you could just rip it off i mean they're not going to be able to sue them especially in the 1960s yes they well early 70s in this case but they they made a licensing agreement yeah copying pinball machines especially american pinball machines was pretty common in Europe, but Segasa chose the more reliable and legal route, so hats off to them. But that also gave them sort of a competitive advantage, that it gave them almost a guarantee of a top-of-the-line earning pinball machine and mechanics that were already proven. They didn't have to do it all themselves. This was very much credited towards Federico Baldo, who is the industrial designer at Segasa. Very smart decision. Now, the pinball machines that kind of everybody knows when it comes to the early years of Segasa is 1973's Spanish Eyes. About as good as it gets. And some people realize this pin as being the Williams Spanish Eyes. Wow, the back glass looks way better. Isn't that look great? This is what I was going to bring up here. I need this back glass in my game. So Segasa, although manufacturing the game the same way, and putting Williams on the back glass, and then kind of on the other side it says a product of Segasa Madrid, or Es un Prado Segasa Madrid, they've gone and made Spanish ice, but the art is far superior. Like it's similar, right? It's the same It's a similar, yes, style, but it's actually good. Yeah, because I don't know if you know this or not. Europeans, very artsy folk. Old world. I have not played Spanish eyes. The playfield, I'm looking at the playfield now. The playfield art looks exactly the same. The plastics are different. At least some of them are different. The playfield, the figures on the playfield, the kind of the shape of the faces and stuff in the mid play field exactly the same as the williams version it's this is a cool game because it's in that weird era where they just weren't quite sure yet at the bottom of the play field in the middle there's a pop bumper and then the and then the slings are just above that so if you get kind of stuck in that middle pop bumper you're going to drain likely but you might be able to nudge it out nah you could save it you could save it a ton of times maybe if you're ron hallett uh it's great this is one of the more popular games i have for for newbies that come over the first time they save a ball out of there if they they love the game from that point forward as they should spanish eyes from from williams was 1971 so it's a couple years after that they did time travel in 1973 look at time travel look at this one It's called Travel Time now. That's right. So Travel Time from 1973 was Time Travel over at Williams. What do you think of this one? I think the art is better once again. It's unbelievable. If you're looking for back glass art to hang up, search for the Sagasa stuff. It is gorgeous. It's like a lady on a beach, but it's very like psychedelic. It's almost like a yellow submarine kind of in the background, right, with those weird swirls. That is true. That's kind of what it looks like. It's clearly like an island in the background. People are surfing. I have no idea what it has to do with. So it has nothing to do with time travel, and it has everything to do with travel or time around traveling. Again, it's a wide open play field. Yeah, this one is not at the level of Spanish Eyes, I'm afraid. It is not. It's got a kicker in the middle rather than the pop bumper. Still no inlanes. The highlight here is the back glass art, which is just stunning. Now, for the next game, there is no highlight, so I'm curious. There's no highlight here. So everybody remember Stratoflight from 1974? Well, this is Astro. flight yeah yeah it looks similar to the actual the regular one yeah it's just a big square of no fun it's terrible terrible it is a terrible game i hate saying things like that but this game just sucks it's yeah so we're gonna yada yada yada over this one someone's gonna be like that's my favorite game i'm sorry that's the best one that william's ever made what about gulf stream Gulfstream. Everybody loves Gulfstream. Remember the back glass with the pointy elbows? Lots of pointy elbows, yes. So many pointy elbows. They thought that this was really cool art, so they just went with the same one. They didn't make any changes. The play field itself, again, we're not talking Gottlieb here in the Williams days, are we? Interesting. We're looking at the pictures on IPDB. It looks like someone changed the flipper bats. Yeah, to the Gottlieb ones. Yeah, they got Gottlieb bats for some reason. What they're doing here is in this time, it all of a sudden became apparent that, oh my goodness, people wanted to play these games. They wanted to play pinball. Pinball as a form of entertainment, of distraction, was a big deal. So they're just banging out as much as they can as quickly as they can. Basically the same thing they're doing in the States. They're just doing it in Europe or in Spain specifically. The issue is Williams, in my opinion, was significantly behind Gottlieb when it came to designs. They just kind of did whatever, and you can kind of tell that whatever was not great. What do you think? Are you a Gulfstream fan? Not really. Not really. All right. Well, we'll just continue on. If anyone has a Sagasa Spanish ice pack glass, let me know. Other games that were really popular were Ace High, which was a 1974 copy of Williams' 1973 Dealer's Choice, but it had the same colors as 1974's Lucky Ace. Does that matter? No. Triple Action was a big game for Williams. Baby Doll and Big Ben was their last 1975 pin. In some cases, Segasa was able to help Williams break into the Italian market, and the Big Ben pinball machine was a great example of that. Do you remember how hard it was for Gottlieb to get into Italy? They had to create at a ball because it was gambling if you could win a game. So they had to make it so you win a ball, which was in the same game you were currently playing. And Big Ben, remanufactured by Segasa, helped Williams break into that Italian market. So that was a big turning point. But not as big as the 1976 rebrand. I'm very excited. So Segasa, with all of its success at home, set its eyes on the export market. It wanted to start selling pinball machines abroad. So they've noticed, oh my goodness, we can make a lot of money by making these pinball machines. What if we just made our own pinball machines, we didn't license as many pinball machines from Williams, and then we sold them in the United States or in the UK or in Italy ourselves? Well, that's when Segasa rebranded as Sega S.A. Sonic so that it wouldn't be confused with the Japanese Sega. Which is weird because then the Japanese Sega used the Sonic for their character. I mean, that can't be a coincidence either. Instead of Segasa, now it's Sega Space S.A. So now it looks more like Sega from Japan. So it looks like there's more confused. Europeans, man. So then they expanded their manufacturing operations to Parla, Madrid, which is, I guess, a section of Madrid. This is when they set their eyes on the U.S. and Europe, but they had to expand their team. Some of the names that they added, the legends in pinball that I'm sure you remember. uh manuel oh god i think it'd be manuel velasquez you need to watch more baseball manuel velasquez val valid verde who was the commercial director so now you needed somebody to sell somebody to be on the business development team and he was a former real madrid footballer yeah you had his poster in your bedroom right next to uh don mattingly i wonder if he owned a world cup soccer He probably did. Now, this is, of course, where IPDB, the Internet Pinball Database, gets a bit messy because some of the pins are listed as Sega, others are listed as Sega. Some of them are listed on both of the lists. It's very confusing. We can all say that it's because of Jose Maria Gaeldo Goma, the game designer that we are talking about, Sega Sonic Today. His first design was Casino Royale, named after the 2006 James Bond film. No. I think it was just called Casino Royale because it's Casino Royale. That's right. It's just a Royale. casino. Backglass. Awesome. Playfield. Really good. It's got a nice orbit shot. It's got one of those sucker shots in the middle where you want to put it in the hole to build up your bonus. Will it stick in that hole though? I'm looking at it. It looks like it would reject a lot. It does. So it is a casino-based, you know, pin. This is something very common back in those days, right? It was gambling or cards, ladies in general, sometimes cars. Those were the themes that sold. Cowboys. Solid, I would say. Solid first outing. The game was actually so popular that other companies throughout Europe pirated the design and copied it. Nice. Predominantly the Italian market in 1977. Oh, my fellow Italians, what are you doing? No, but the Italians are in no way ever untrustworthy. I find that that is slander. What about Monaco? You vacation in Monaco quite regularly? I'm sorry, Cairns. Or Cairns. Well, they're pretty much the same game. That's right. You've been to Cairns for the film festival? No. But I have played this game. I played Cairns and Monaco. Really? Yeah. That seems like it's really hard. In this, we got an orbit spinner. You know how I feel about orbit spinners. It also has one of those swinging targets in the middle. Classic. 19 sort of 70s, late 60s design. How about this back glass? What do you think of this one? Another good back glass. Another good back glass. They're in like a vacation resort, clearly in Cannes, France. There's a lady water skiing. Little bit of bikini action, but the bikini is kind of low in the back. Kind of low. A little crack showing, yes. Yeah, it could be a plumber theme. Yep. But the art in general is really good. Now, in your research, did you find anything about when they started clear-coating the playfields? No. See, one of the things that's unique in the collector market, it's basically two really unique things about the Sonic games. One is the playfields are clear-coated. So they generally look way better than you would think a 50-year-old game would look. I mean, most manufacturers were not clear-coating in the 70s. No, that started sort of Pat Lawler in the late 80s. Yeah, it started like in the late 80s. So they were ahead of their time in that. So the playfields generally look good, and they usually play fast. These games play really fast. The cabinets themselves are very solid as well. No, that's actually the other thing they're known for is having horrible cabinets. Yeah, the wood, not so strong in Europe. Yeah, like particle board. They're not good cabinets, but their playfields are excellent. Also, as an owner of two of them now, I will say that the mechs are all Williams mechs, obviously, because that's... Yeah, because that's who they've licensed a lot of that stuff from. But they improved on it. Like their flippers, instead of the parts just being screwed into the wood where they eventually loosen up and then the flippers suck, they go into a base plate before Williams was using a base plate Yeah so rather than going directly into the play field there like going into metal base plate Smarsh But they the same parts other than the base plate So when you order like a flipper rebuild kit you can just order the Williams one and it fits right in there So the flippers are better. Their chimes are better. They sound better. Is it four pieces or three-piece chime? I think it's three. I think it's three. I think that Stern has the four. They're a mix. it's just they're like improvements over the Williams design in a lot of ways. It's funny where you can see the engineering team and Sagasa in general spent a lot of their time. They knew just like when we got into kind of that 1980, 1981 ballet, they knew that art drew people in. So they put a lot of effort in the art and you could really tell. They also put a lot of effort into serviceability to make sure that it lasted through a lot of plays. When it comes to things like the cabinets, they knew it only needed to last like five years. It didn't need to last 50. Boy, that three years worth of hardcore, straight-on play needed to last. So it needed to draw you in with the art. It needed to last like a rock for three years, and then it was no big deal after that. It was pretty smart. You know the clear coat they were using was not safe in any way. Oh, surely not. Nothing in 1976 was safe. No. Like, just look at the... Wasn't that lawn darts? Weren't lawn darts popular in 1976? This is Gene Simmons from KISS. I would like you to join the Patreon for Silver Ball Chronicles. Becoming a pro crony is the perfect way to say thanks, and it starts at $3 a month. Want to get early access to episodes before everyone else? Want to be as cool as Kiss? Interested in having your comments and questions take priority in our episodes? Jump up to a $6 a month premium credit. And then go to Kiss Online. Stop that. We're not going to Kiss Online. Just finish up the damn list. Want all the other perks and a shirt after three months? Join us at $20 a month as an Elilitis Chromie. Maybe you just want a shirt. I understand. Swing on over to silverballswag.com and pick up a Silver Ball Chronicles t-shirt. Then afterwards, you can swing on over to kissonline.com. I played with him all the time when I was a kid. I mean, you didn't throw long darts at people. Yeah, sure. Nobody ever did that. I mean, you knew not to do that. You just threw it straight in the air and then tried to run away before it landed near you. No, you threw it into a circle on the other end. I mean... And the child seats in the 1970s, definitely solid. I don't even think adults had seat belts in the 70s. I don't remember having a child seat when I was a kid. My child seat was kneeling in the back seat, putting my hands up and looking over. The clear coat was just par for the course. My grandfather, so he used to do auto body work at his repair shop, and he would, like, spray lead paint on, like, 1950s and 60s cars, and he didn't wear a mask. You know what I mean? Yeah, I'm thinking some of the Sonic employees probably had some issues due to all that clear coat. That brings me, I think, to kind of the neatest, most interesting pin around this time from Sonic. That was Faces. Ooh, named after the Rod Stewart band. Oh, no. No, it's not. So Faces, this is the one I think that a lot of people would know or would notice or see. They sold a lot of these, particularly in North America, and it is wild. It's a lady's face on half of the back glass, and it's all like you were on acid. Yes, it's very trippy. Yeah, she's like purple and pink, and her eyes are all like wonky, and her hair looks like roses. It's got a lot of blue, white space. And I'll tell you, one of the most beautiful back glasses and pins in general. The play field is gorgeous. The cabinet is gorgeous. It's so cool. I mean, it looks like Picasso himself made this pinball machine. He could have. It's possible. Never know. It was actually the art director. The artistic director was Miguel Angel Extraveran Armendia. Wow. And you thought we screwed up the names on the regular on Silver Ball Chronicles, but boy, oh boy, we got nothing on this episode. Pretty bad, yeah, this is pretty bad. Miguel died in 2004, but he was the art director, so he's like, let's go all in on European crazy. Yeah, and Faces looks exactly like Grand Prix. Oh, imagine that. so if you're looking for an like grand prix they sold what like a billion of those but it has an extra flipper so in grand prix when you're shooting so so the left and the right side of grand prix have spinners and it's a mirror image right the left and right side but on faces the the the right side has another lane and a spinner which i think is is kind of cool i'd like to know how it shoots the pop bumpers also kind of look like eyes and then there's lips in the middle of the play field and it looks like hair going down the middle there's faces in the middle of the play field and is that a collect saucer on the right yes it is yeah because on grand prix they're on both sides on this one it's just on the right it's on the right as an extra flipper to help you access that orbit on the right side or to make you want to shoot it and then inevitably drain because you've used that flipper. I would love to play one of these and compare it to Grand Prix. I love Grand Prix, but this is much more interesting. I mean, everybody loves Grand Prix, right? I don't dislike it. Spinners, man, come on. I'd rather play Hot Tip. Spinners, collect at the saucer. Spinners, collect at the saucer. I'm more of a Hot Tip guy. I'm on Team Captive Ball. What about Mars Trek? Mars Trek a tournament darling this should be in every tournament everybody loves Mars Trek Mars Trek the same kind of trippy art style as Faces but a little more spacey and like a little less it's wild but it tends to be a little less Picasso and maybe a little more something you can actually see so you're on Acid but you're in space on Acid Now, the cool thing about this one, this is an amazing pin because it has two spinners kind of halfway up the playfield. And behind those spinners is like a horseshoe ramp, right, or a horseshoe return, a little bit like Stern Star Wars. Yeah, it's a horseshoe. It's just called a horseshoe. So you do spinner, horseshoe, then it comes back towards the player through the other spinner. and the lanes at the top after you plunge are on an odd angle. They're not straight up and down north and south like they usually are. It's got a third flipper that's on the side but way low. And dangerous. Yeah, well, it's almost get it out of the outlane area flipper. Yeah, this is a great game in all ways. The actual job is to hit the Mars targets. I played one of these at Pintastic, and I was shocked at how much I enjoyed this game. I was like, oh, a Sonic. I've only ever played one other Sonic. I'm like, oh, and I played it, and I'm like, this game is awesome. Don't you love how fast they play? Yeah. Okay, so here's the thing. Do these play faster than the Sterns? Uh-oh. Different eras, though. Yeah? Who's got the crappier cabinet? it uh certain cabinets aren't too great either but no no sonic's got him on the crappier cabinet yeah so that's that's august of 77 that's probably the one that i would want oh but this is the one that you want or because you have it well yeah i have it it's sitting downstairs right now this is prospector from 1977 this is an unlicensed version of laurel and hardy yes laurel and hardy are everywhere on this game and i guarantee you they didn't get a cent from it or well their families didn't get a cent from it that's right stan laurel and oliver hardy they are prospectors on the back last as they were known in spanish is el gordo yay flaco so the fat man and the skinny Skinny man. Yes. Those words I actually know. So, yes. Yes. So my wife often calls me Gordo. And I'm told that that is a term of endearment. Or she's fat shaming me every day and I'm completely unaware. This is perhaps based on the 1937 Hollywood movie by Laurel and Hardy called Way Out West, where they were seeking to help out a prospector's daughter. You remember Way Out West from 1937? I remember Way Out West, as it was called in the U.S. Yes, it was MGM Films. I have to. Now owned by the evil corporation of Amazon. That is true. Very evil. I mean, could it be based on that? Yeah, probably. Critical response, how many Rotten Tomatoes have we got here? It's not rated. Right, so Laurel and Hardy was like a slapstick comedy, right? Where it was a little bit like both of them kind of getting into trouble and funny situations and falling down. Well, they're one of the few ones they had success in the silent era and then just as much success in the sound era. Yes, the talkies, they called them. Yeah, talkies. It didn't hurt them at all. Yeah, some people, like Buster Keaton struggled. He was around that era as well. Worth the lookout. I'll put that link to Way Out West 1937 in the show notes. Do you want to talk about this pin? Because this is near and dear to your heart. I love it. I'm a prospector. The back glass is good. It's got Laurel and Hardy. They're prospecting. laurel's laurel's got some like tight pants on i'm sorry hardy he's got which one's the chubby one again hardy is the fat one yeah so hardy standing in the water in in in very tight swimming shorts like prospecting i guess looking at gold yes there's lots of really cool like interesting things in the back glass kind of floating around laurel is is on the other side He's writing down things, I assume doing accounting. He's the straight man, I would assume. Yeah, kind of. You'd have to see their routine. Would you go with a hardy mustache? Do you think that's a good mustache? No, not these days, no. Because it's the Hitler mustache, basically. Are you sure? Yeah. All right, so tell me why is Prospector a great, great game? Two spinners right in the middle of the play field. And basically the whole game is you want to collect silver and gold because you're prospecting. Silver bonus you get by the spinners when they're lit. Gold bonus you get by going over the switches that say build gold bonus. You can get a double bonus. You can double your gold bonus by hitting the five and the six targets over on the right. Gold is worth more than silver, just like it is in real life. So you can get up to $200,000 points in gold bonus if it's doubled. It also has all these kickers on the top that can kick the ball around. So you can get a lot of action up there without ever doing anything. That's the other thing I like. It's a little bit of play field design, but what it is is really rules. This game nailed some really good kind of bonus collect rules, and that's, I think, what makes all the difference. Yeah, you can collect the silver bonus. The gold bonus, I think, you can only collect when you drain, if I remember. It's very – it's a great game. We played this, I think, on stream when I was at your place. And which – see, the thing that gets me about this game is both the part that I hate and the part, I think, that makes it interesting is that when you rip one of those spinners, like you just smash it through the spinner, it's going to hit the pop bumpers behind it, and then it's going to come back down into the spinner and stop it from spinning, which makes me so angry, but at the same time I think is part of the draw. Yeah, and the other interesting thing is like the saucer in the center, it's got like a metal guard around it, which I believe is factory. So again, nowhere in the saucer. Like how many saucers in like a 70s American game are you going to see that don't have some kind of wear on them? Well, how about Joker's Wild, also from 1977? Now this – Based on the game show? Maybe not. This is unbelievable. It's a forced perspective look. So it's like you're at the top of a saloon. You're looking maybe from the balcony kind of down onto the bar, the card playing. um there's a jester there's people that are dancing fellows with sabreros with hats there's um ladies there's guys with guns on the table it's really kind of neat because the perspective is that you're looking down onto this amazing kind of like crazy wild time very very smart design kind of looks like a spaghetti western or something doesn't it except for the uh joker in the picture with his outfit yeah he's like yeah he's like a jet yeah he's like a jester or something but they're i guess joker's wild like it's a card theme the playfield itself also forced perspective so it has three spinning reels under the middle of the play field three spinners three spinners double inlanes single out lane no slings it's kind of a neat different kind of thing going on here and you haven't you haven't played this one i haven't played this no neither of i haven't seen any of these i don't know how many of these were sold uh in the north american market but this is definitely something that looks very cool It's got that center spinner too, right? So you could rip that center spinner. It has three spinners. That's all I need to hear. That's pretty neat for back in the day. 1977 also saw Super Straight, Birdman, Butterfly, Cherry Bell in 78, Chorus Line, High Lie kind of game, 1978, and Space Queen in 1979. Shout out for Super Straight because that's the other one I own. No, you have a Super Straight from Sonic. I have a Super Straight. It doesn't work currently, but we've got to get it working. Okay, so when it gets working, you can report back. It is the fastest Sonic I've ever played. We'll add a new segment to the podcast. We'll call it Repairs. You can tell us about Super Straight. So late 70s, that's when sort of the tide began to change. Yes, Bally and Williams were leading the field in the old solid state. This was where I think Sonic made a very smart decision, and they made the game called Storm. Storm! You remember Storm? Yeah, it was called Flash when it was made here. That's right. So they took Flash, the Steve Ritchie Smash classic. His biggest selling game, still. That started basically the first game with the Flash lamp. Yeah, flash lamps. Right. It had his signature side flipper. First one that had it. Loop shot. First time he did it. And the three drop targets in the center and the five targets on the left that he did a ton of times And he just made this game over and over and over again for 40 years Not really but yeah But yeah, Storm, so that was a wise decision. Like, take the one that's a massive hit and do that one. They sold tens of thousands, I think, of Flash. They sold almost 20K of Flash, yes. Yeah, that's right. Like, huge numbers. It's Steve Ritchie's biggest seller. Yeah, how could you not just take it and call it something else? super, super, super smart. That's when they also jumped into Night Fever based on the movie Saturday Night Fever. Oh, wait, no, no, it's just Night Fever. This looks an awful lot like Saturday Night Fever. Yeah, it is Saturday Night Fever. It literally is Saturday Night Fever. But it is not Saturday Night Fever. Yeah, if it only played Night Fever by BGCP, awesome. Yeah, exactly. What was the one when they Stayin' Alive? Wasn't that the one? staying alive is in this yes there's like five major hits that are all in there yes staying alive more than a woman how deep is your love god what was the other one oh it's great but this looks like john travolta on the back glass and it's night fever and it's clearly it's clearly trying to rip off saturday night fever yes it's literally the scene where he's doing the dance number in the the club pretty neat pretty neat what do you think of this play field this is this is this is a whole other adventure down here does not look like a big winner in my opinion it's hard to tell i see i see a lot of drop targets i think those are dropped are they stand-ups i can't tell in this picture on the on the back on the back row those are uh drop targets okay so that's better yeah But further up the field, these ones are stand-up targets. So it's not... It is wide open, and it doesn't look like there's much to hit other than the drop targets in the back. And then there's like an orbit that kind of goes under a plastic, and then it kind of trickles out kind of in the middle here as I... It doesn't look as cool as a lot of the EMs we just talked about. Yeah, it's... I don't know what they're trying here. um the spinner on the right side over here it goes into these three lanes is it just a rip-off of disco fever but without the uh the banana flippers i'm trying to remember what disco fever looks like no i think it's i think it's similar to disco fever but no they did not use the banana flippers on this so what was really missing in the late 70s when it came to pinball machines well by goodness it was licensing this is this is what took off licensing segasa registered a series of pinball back glasses with the trademark office in spain and they wanted to then build these machines in a similar fashion than they have with the williams partnerships These were Kiss from 1979, Paragon from 78, Playboy from 78, then Time Warp, Stellar Wars from Williams. They also licensed Hot Hand and Magic for all, I don't know why. For Stern, okay. Genie from 79, Pinball Pool, which is friggin' awesome, from 79, from Gottlieb. From Gottlieb. And Sharpshooter, 1979 from Game Plan. None of those pins were actually produced, but they did register all of those trademarks. Hmm. Now, we'll never exactly know what Segasa's intentions were, because that's when the economic crisis of the early 80s started to affect the entire world, not just the United States. And we're talking about the sort of the downturn in the 1980s with rapid inflation, the Reagan years, and, of course, the spiral in video games. Too much garbage created video games that were garbage. By 1984, things had started to improve, and Spanish pinball was back, baby. yeah when they register two williams pinball machines comet and space shuttle yes and why was space shuttle so important that was the game that kept the lights on at williams yeah space shuttle saved pinball but it was really this game the greatest game that segasa ever made gamatron i i would like to have this one this is one of i know this is on my my podcast Slamto Podcast, my other host, Bruce Hislist, he would really like to have a Sonic Gamatron because he has the regular Gamatron, Gamatron, Gamatron. But the backlash on this is superior. So much better. So it is a giant robot. It looks like, what's his face? Megatron. And he's shooting lasers out of his face and his chest against people on like a moon base or a planet. And he's being attacked by like airplanes and guys and they're shooting rockets at him. It looks awesome. But where did Gamitron come from? Where did this idea or concept appear? Well, it started, well, technically it was what, Pinstar? It was Gary Stern company, Pinstar. They did a different version, basically a conventional size version of Flight 2000. So Flight 2000 was a widebody. Yep. And the widebody kind of made it a little floaty. No, it still plays fast. It's a stern. Yeah, but it's like widebodies in general, the ball just lumbers around. Disagree. Play some Cheetah. I cannot endorse these views. so what they've done is pinstar the sort of the re-theming company what they did is they made like a kit and you could replace uh i think it was like a bally yeah the idea was you would put it in like a yeah an old bally game that wasn't making money anymore you put this thing in there new game half the price new game yep half the price exactly and it has a really cool lock mechanism on the left side where you shoot it up and it locks a ball the ball walker and then it has drop targets lined up one through five and then it has a spinner on the right side with sweepable drop targets after that spinner yep what they did was they took that wide body design and they squished it into a standard size pinball machine this rather than an upgrade kit sonic made it as a standalone pin so it wasn't a kit you bought this was actually from the factory but it has a weird head because we're now into solid state and instead of putting the uh the score displays in the back glass through like a little window they've put them below the back glass almost like a modern stern or you know most modern pinball machines today where you've got a full back glass and then the score unit underneath or an lcd screen in today's world yeah it's a lot like the what was it called the the le models that bally did that were just rapid fire cabinets yeah left over where they did the uh was it eight ball deluxe le and then centaur which they didn't call le they call it centaur 2 for some reason but it's very similar to that yeah and and uh Cabinet quality, questionable but better. Well, I don't know if it's better, but they didn't bother with any art. It just says Sonic on the side. Yeah, this was kind of like a – they dove back in to pinball, right, because things had started to kind of relax, and it wasn't quite as bad in the recessionary times. But they just didn't get their footing again. so 1987 pole position what was it has nothing to do with the video game other than it's about racing yeah f1 very cool of course f1 was much bigger in the european market oh yeah than it than it was in the north american market again forced perspective look you're looking down on racetrack they've added some ramps because you know to be alive in the 1980s you got to have ramps right the interesting thing is when they came back to make the solid state games they changed their pop-upper caps they used to be just like they looked a lot like the williams ones and their regular size these look more like the playmatic ones that they're just big squares yeah they're probably buying them from the same manufacturer to reduce cost i really like the ramp on the right side you shoot the ramp it goes through a wire form and then into almost like a left out lane that then crosses over into the in lane that looks like a really cool repeatable shot and uh marlboro if you're into cigarettes we got it right on the right sling they're all set for you yes probably wouldn't see that on a u.s game smoking is good for you yeah it's it's pretty nuts it's great art as well right like the back glass kind of went with that uh gotley photorealistic actually yeah it looks it looks like the mario andretti one actually yeah it does it's kind of rough but i i liked it i got to play this at um pastimes arcade i never played it before they're like oh this is pretty good like who did this oh sonic sonic was still around that's what i said yeah exactly now that i mean by 1988 uh leadership had changed at segasa and they started to kind of waver on the fact that they thought pinball was still profitable. Now, you've noticed throughout this episode, if you're listening, that we haven't mentioned any of the sales numbers. We don't, because they didn't announce any of these sale numbers like they sort of did with Williams or Bally in the 1970s and 80s. So we don't know how many they actually sold. So for us to say, oh, they weren't selling enough pinball machines, or why would they close down? They were selling so many. We just don't know. But the leadership decided to give it one more kick at the can, and they licensed Laser War from Data East, and they were going to adapt it to the Spanish playing style and have some of the components replaced. But as they were working on that pin, leadership basically decided, you know what? We're done here. Let's move on. And that, my friend, was the death of Segasa, Sonic the Animal. I wonder how much Gary Stern knows about them because I figure they had to have licensed out his thing for Gamatron and then he starts Data East and then they're going to do a Data East game so they must have some kind of relationship there's more to this story I think there's more to that so if you've got any other additional information floating around silverballchronicles.gmail.com I would love to add it to our next episode or if we're doing a Playmatic episode or something like that Maybe I'll tack it on in there. So here's a tidbit. So in my Prospector, my Prospector still had the original goodie bag in it. Oh, weird. Like extra plastics and stuff? The bag that it came in, it didn't actually have any of the stuff in there. But it was, and it just says on it, Sega. But in the Sagoosa font. So talk about confusion. You have the Sonic game, the goodie bag says Sega on it. That's so weird. yes so that's what i mean with this episode it was so was so difficult to find the sources and what what was when and who was where and i couldn't find any quotes but i think in general it turned out okay if you think this episode was terrible go back and listen to the bingo one oh god i want to know the relation between that sonic and sonic the hedgehog because obviously it's the same it's not the same company but they're financed by the same you know if how did that end up happening because the one sonic was around long before the other sonic but they have to be related they have to be maybe yeah where did they where did they come up with was it sonic based on sound or speed were they like oh if we've got this patent somewhere in the world or this trademark they just sonic the hedgehog you know what do we call this well our old pinball company that we help finance. They changed their name to Sonic, so we'll use that. Thanks for the listen this month, everybody. Sega! And see, as always, you can send your comments, questions, corrections, and concerns to civilworldchronicles at gmail.com. We look forward to all your messages, and we read every one. Please subscribe to us on your favorite podcatcher. Turn on automatic downloads so you don't miss a single episode. Remember to leave us a five-star review. That way more people can find us. Join us on Patreon to support the show. Becoming a pro crony is the perfect way to say thanks. And it starts at $3 a month. Want to get early access to episodes before everyone else have a strange love for stickers? Join the Discord chat by jumping on at $6 a month as a premium crony. Want all the other perks and a t-shirt after three months? Join us at $20 a month as an elitist crony. Maybe just want the shirt. I understand. Do you have a diaper? Possibly? Like a themed Silver Ball... No, sorry. Swing on over to SilverBallSwag.com and pick up a Silver Ball Chronicles t-shirt. Faces, faces. Oh, that's because it's Sonic and not... See, this is where it gets messy. Faces of love long ago. I know in tournaments we would always call this feces. First winner race. Especial loteria. Okay, that sounded more Italian than it did Spanish, but... Is he as pretty in real life as he is on television? His hair looks better than mine. Okay. I'll say that. Well, my hair is going south. Not good. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Not good. Not good. It's the Dodgers bullpen, man. Like, you just can't get the bats going. The bats, bro. Congratulations, Blue Jays, on the Game 7 win. Absolutely amazing. Just bullpen, hitting, offense, defense. They were just phenomenal in Game 7. So congratulations to you. Don Mattingly finally gets his ring. It's so great. It's wonderful. Wonderful. So congratulations. See, this is what's going to happen. I'm just going to cut in whoever wins tonight so that it seems like we actually recorded this after. Come play in the snow. 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