TOPCast 58: Duncan Brown

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Flash Topcast.

Tonight at Topcast we're going to be talking to a gentleman that has a pretty diverse history

in both video game and pinball development and operations.

This guy was an operator down south in Virginia for a while.

He also hacked a lot of his own games, video games and pinball games making and creating

his own games.

He then went and worked for Williams in their slot machine division and then went and

worked as a programmer in the pinball division for pinball 2000 Star War episode.

He now works for Larry DeMar, doing slot machine development.

I like to welcome Duncan Brown to Topcast tonight.

Duncan again he has a very diverse history in the coin op biz.

He's basically done it all and done a lot more than most people have done.

Now Duncan was not really willing to do much of a phone interview so he came to my

house for another project he's working on a book of pinball back glasses and he wanted

to take some pictures of some of the games that I had in my collection.

So while he was snapping photos of my back glasses I interviewed him here.

So we're going to talk to Duncan Brown right now.

This is obviously previously recorded.

So Duncan, tell me about how you started out in pinball what your first memories were,

how all you got involved in this sick industry.

My dad took me and my brother to play at R.K. when we were young.

And were we growing up at the time?

Well I was in Virginia but sometimes we play falling out of something but my distinct

memories are going when we visit his parents in Tallahassee, Florida.

We go down there and he knew where this really good arcade was.

We go there and it was all he owns like we played fireball for a dime a game.

Right.

Three games per quarter.

But the thing was his mom considered pinball machines the tool of the devil so he actually

had to sneak out to play pinball even though he was in his 30s or whatever at the time.

Really?

And this was your dad.

Yeah.

And so your mom thought that pinball?

No no no his mom.

His mom.

Okay.

Okay.

So he all grown up with kids and he still had him to sneak out to go play pinball which

I assume he did when he was a kid too.

Right.

So we were all hooked on that and eventually like we joined bowling league so we were

always around seeing wall and pinballs and all that stuff back in Virginia.

You're talking about the early video games?

No no the early mechanical.

Oh the mechanical pinball from 59 from 1.

No no no.

Was it called the mechanical?

It was a mechanical you know one of those half-selver mirrored arcade games.

Oh yeah yeah see raider.

See raider.

Yeah sure.

Yeah see raider.

And then see wall later it was spinning over.

See wall first.

See wall first was the video.

But see raider was the and then there was one called sea devil which came out a year later

and then yeah.

So we played all those you know from the earliest days.

Yeah EM arcade games.

Right.

Right.

So then when I was a teenager maybe not even much of a teenager like 12 or 13 I decided

I wanted to get a pinball machine so I you know copy down the name and address of the

route operator at the bowling alley and they had a stick on there and I drove over there

it was a town over and I went in and asked if they had any pinball machines they'd sell

me and they just laughed and laughed and laughed and shoot me away.

So that didn't go too well.

But eventually I saw one classified ad in the paper and somebody over in that same area

had a 19 is it like 56 or 57 William Starfire.

So I went and bought that and brought it home you know all the classic tricks have put

it in the truck with its legs on and head on and oh really.

Yeah.

But I got it home safely and the flipper links were broken and you know what did I know

where to get you know bake lighter whether that stuff is so right.

You know I ended up carving down some plastic and making you flipper links and made it all

work and you know I actually got it all running.

Huh.

And then later on while I was still.

And nobody taught you you just figured this all out on your own.

Yeah.

And then I had new electronics told me I had a solder and stuff.

Right.

And he had done like the is it the Bellsaw electronics course or something it was it was

something where you get like a heath kit TV to build a thing to the course.

I already knew all this electronics stuff but he took this course because it was cheap

way to get a TV and I got to build the whole TV and everything.

Yeah.

And how long did the TV last?

Oh years.

Really?

Yeah.

So I knew my way around electronics a little bit but you know I learned just taught myself

how to read the schematics and all that figured it out.

And then later on in high school a friend of mine oh you've got a pinball machine well

we've got one in our basement and we hit the glass and it smashed and it's glass everywhere

and it won't run do you want to just take it.

And it's like heck yeah so I got my second pinball machine.

What was it dear?

It was a got leaps superstar.

Oh.

Well I was fun.

Well you get to hear that.

I think that was fun.

No that's a good one.

I'm not going to run any of this shit on tempered glass for it again because I didn't

know any better.

I think you know cleaned all the bits and pieces out and then eventually I don't know I just

kept going from there but.

So in high school you were accumulating games.

Yeah.

And they were all basically low end freebies or close school.

I got paid like 200 for the Starfire.

Oh really?

Yeah.

Wow.

200 is a lot back in whenever.

Yeah.

You know for a huge game that's a lot of money.

You had $200?

Sure.

I did a couple of jobs.

Did you?

Yeah.

Okay so what kind of jobs were you doing?

Paper out of course.

Classic.

Back when kids delivered papers.

Right.

Back when people read papers.

Right.

And at the photography store in town I ran their dark room and stuff.

Oh so you had like almost a real job.

Yeah.

Huh.

Interesting.

So eventually I ended up at UVA at college and by the way what's UVA?

University of Virginia.

That's a major.

And by that time I had Valley Joules.

So I brought that down and put it in the suite.

There was like five rooms around a communal suite in these dorms.

Right.

Everybody had a great time with that.

And what year was it?

79 to 80.

Okay.

And at one point one of the little things, there's this whole relay bank in that game.

It was like these armature plates with tabs on them.

I don't really remember what they do but it was something for the features of the game.

And one of them just broke and have.

You mean on the relay the activator plate, the part that actually activates, moves the switches

that broke.

Well it wasn't just the switches.

It was, I don't remember the game but there was something more complicated than that.

It was a big armature plate.

Like you have on a gate assembly or something but it was a whole bank of them that did

something for this game.

And it just broke clean and half.

And when I took it all apart and looked at it, it was just a flat piece of metal and it

broke in and half.

And I noticed several of the plates had two dimples in them to give it more strength so

they wouldn't break in half.

I was like, oh you know, Valley figured this out and you know, somebody's already replaced

a few of them that broke.

So I actually wrote Valley.

This long hand letter and said, you know, I've got some of these plates broken.

You know, how do I go about buying?

I might see.

I've got a new design.

I prefer that one.

And then you know, I never heard anything from them.

Like four weeks later a little box shows up to my address with like 20 plates in it.

Really?

Yeah.

So, do you know who sent it?

No idea.

No.

Well, customer service.

Yeah.

So, you know, I replaced all my bad plates and that thing ran great.

And what happened to all these games?

You know, traded them and sold them over the years.

I wish I had the Starfire back.

I've never seen another one.

In fact, from my back glass picture project, I could really use a picture of a Starfire

at this point.

You know, we should just mention that you're taking pinball back glass pictures on conventional

film right?

Right.

That's right.

And you're going to at some point publish a book on this or something or something.

You don't even really know.

No, the goal is to get one insanely high quality picture of every back glass ever.

Right.

And you're, you're touching them up in Photoshop.

Right.

Right.

If the glass has any issues.

Yeah.

But you've gotten really good at this.

But you're not doing play field pictures just glass.

That's correct.

And I, of course, blown you crap about this continually because if you're set up to do all

the back glass, why wouldn't you just shoot the play field too?

Because for whatever amount of time it takes me to shoot a back glass picture, it takes

about 10 times as much time to do a play field picture, right?

And I don't even like how you do the play field.

Right.

The telly.

So there you go.

You're doing too straight on.

I needed more from a player's perspective.

Right.

You get it up.

I'm going after the art.

So straight on is what you need for that.

Okay.

Okay.

And yes, if you want to do one more dig, back glasses are pretty much the only art form

on the planet whose whole point is to be backlighted and I'm front lighting them for my pictures.

So there you go.

Just get it all out in the open.

No, I wasn't even going to bring that up.

But again, I'm trying to capture the art that's there and the only way to do that is to

do it.

And you're going is what is the time frame that you're trying to do this project through?

I mean, you messed up my life.

No, I mean, 1947.

Oh, right.

The original idea was flipper game.

Right.

Do you want me to say how it all started?

Sure.

When I came to work at Williams and realized that you'd go places and tell people where you

worked and they'd say, oh, wow, pinball machines, they still make those.

And you realize, wow, you know, we're in an industry where everybody knows what the product

is.

100% recognition of the product and no one knows where out there.

How can that be?

And so Williams needs to somehow advertise that fact.

You know, they're the leader in the industry.

It's up to them to keep this industry alive.

Let's just go out and tell people about pinball.

And that just wasn't done.

You know, that wasn't what they did.

But I had this great idea.

You know, like these Corvette posters or the doors of Dublin or whatever make this poster

of every Williams pinball back glass ever.

Right.

About 400 of them make a great poster and just be this cool promo.

People get excited about pinballing it.

So I want to, you know, talk to my boss about it and who are your boss?

Larry, well, Ted Estes and Larry Demarck.

Okay.

They thought it was a neat idea and said, go talk to marketing.

So I went over to talk to marketing and explained all this and how, you know, I'd like, you

know, copies of all the pictures they take and, you know, the PR photos over the years.

And her only response to me was, you're new here, aren't you?

She just laughed at me.

This is the most preposterous thing she'd ever heard.

And she said, oh, and we don't have those, you know, we don't have any of those pictures.

So anyway, fast forward years later after pinball shut down and I hear from someone at Midway

that in fact, when they finally let go of the PR company and they'd had for decades, they

sent over all the pictures that they did have to this lady and she threw them all away.

So, oh great.

So, would have saved me a lot of trouble.

But at that point, Larry and Ted said, look, you go get all the pictures and we'll make

the poster.

And then Larry and Kenna Ford, whatever it cost to make a run of posters, you know.

Right.

It sounds like a great idea.

So I said about getting all those pictures.

And while first I had to figure out what all the pinball's lambs ever made were and that

was not easy, but I came up with a list of about 400 of them.

But because there was no internet pinball database at that time.

There was, but it wasn't complete and, you know, they didn't have everything.

And I had a master list of every project number of lambs had ever assigned, but it didn't

always say whether it was a pinball or whether it was even made or...

Right.

Right.

So, and again, I decided to let myself to flip our games forward at that point.

Right.

So, I was missing some of William's history there.

So that went on and I got, well, over half of them, I probably had maybe 250 of them by

the time pinball shut down and then, like, then what?

What do I care about a William's pinball poster at that point?

So I decided well, I'll just get a picture of every back glass ever made.

Because including Gottlieballey, Staucoin, whatever.

Everything.

Because along the way, when I'd see a really rare, interesting game, I'd go ahead and get

a picture of that too.

But I've been skipping an awful lot of non-Williams glasses in my travel.

So I decided to just start getting everything.

And how far along are you in this project?

Well, part of my problem is the whole database of what I've got.

But I bet I've got 12, 13, 14, 100 different back glasses.

Already, you know, Photoshop.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

I'm way behind in that process.

Well, how many Photoshopped and ready for print?

Well, here's the thing.

I had all the slide scanner I could afford at first and got several hundred pictures

through the process with that.

And then I got a much, much better slide scanner, including the fact that it gets

rid of the dust on the fly.

So you mean now you're going back?

I'm going to go back and re-scan everything.

Well, let me ask this, why aren't you using digital equipment?

Why are you using old school film?

A bunch of reasons.

When I started and took the pictures on film, if I had used the best digital camera of the

day, or more realistically, the best digital camera I could afford, it would be stuck at

that resolution forever.

Right.

Whereas with film, all I have to do is buy a better slide scanner or rent a better slide

scanner.

Why not 35 millimeter print?

Why slide?

Oh, because it's much easier to scan slide.

Oh, it is.

You can throw them in a little feeder and they just go.

Yeah.

So in other words, I take five pictures of every glass.

I bracket my exposures.

And then I can pick the best one and chuck the other four in a box.

And then I can just stack up all the best ones in a bin and scan them all.

Whereas if you were doing negatives, they never print them right.

I need to re-scan the negatives, not the print.

So then they're all in these strips and you've got to figure out what the best exposure

is.

Right.

Slides is way simpler.

Huh.

Interesting.

Why anyway?

So you were back at college.

Did you graduate college?

Well, no.

There's a story about that.

And what's the story behind that?

Well, and you're still in Virginia, right?

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

At UVA, spending an awful lot of my time at an arcade there in town, eventually to the point.

What's the name of the arcade?

No elves.

No elves, okay.

Eventually to the point where, you know, I'm complaining about their broken machines and

the part-time mechanics never there and they say, well, you know, if you know how to

fix them, why don't you do it?

So I started doing that.

And what year was this?

8081.

So you're doing solid state and electro-mechanical?

Well, all they had was solid state at that point.

Okay.

So yeah, I'm learning how to do that on the fly too.

All right.

And meanwhile, I'm becoming, you know, a world champion at asteroids and...

Wait a minute, wait a minute.

World champion for six months.

I had the world record for score on asteroids.

Really?

If you look in the old play meter magazines where they started putting out those speed-up

kits for asteroids to try to thwart people, the little...

I think it was Sparky's Electronics or something.

You know, their little barbs said, date line, Charlottesville, Virginia, you know, someone

gets the zillion, you know, points plays for 15 hours or whatever.

That was me.

15 hours?

Yeah.

You played asteroids for 15 hours.

Yeah.

And did you ever go to the bathroom for 15 hours?

You know, it's really odd.

I'm just going to tell you the first question everyone asked me is, how could you not go

to the bathroom for 15 hours?

Never mind that I battled flying saucers and rocks for 15 hours.

How could you not go to the bathroom for 15 hours?

That was the easy part.

That was easy.

It was the damn ship shooting at me.

It was the hard part.

15 hours.

And what I quit with 22 extra ships left.

I started at 4am.

Because I mean, I was there working on games.

They closed at like 2am and then I started a game and was just going and going and going.

And I hadn't slept before that.

So I mean, I'd been up for whatever 40 hours is something at that point.

And 22 extra ships.

But I figured out, you know, I proved the point.

I was staying, I was slowly climbing up in ships.

I was not losing ground.

The game wasn't getting any harder.

I'd wrapped it over, you know, however many times it was like, I was like 7 and a half million

or something was my score at that point.

So I figured I'd proved the point and just finally ditched it.

But I mean, the UVA newspaper got a picture of me playing it and having a little article about it.

Yeah.

And what classes were cut?

You know, that's the question by Dad.

He said, how is this?

It was on a weekend, but still.

He's like, how are you getting any homework done?

Yeah.

I called Atari and told them and they printed it in their little newsletter and sent me a t-shirt and everything.

And it was, took about six months, but then eventually people just started playing, you know,

forever, two days, four days, you know.

Right.

And if you go by the Guinness rules, you know, you can take breaks.

And I guess I was scared to leave the machine.

I figured, you know, if I broke my concentration, it was all over.

I'd lose all my extra ships, you know.

Clearly, I could have let a couple of ships die while I went to the bathroom or just sat down for a second.

But, you know, I was too afraid.

I'd never done that before.

So.

And what was the preparation to get to this point?

I just played a lot of asteroids.

I mean, I had a lot of really good games, but then I finally just put it all together one game and, you know, got in the zone and did it.

Right.

Where was this all leading?

Oh, eventually, I don't, I think I actually dropped out of school to work at this place full time, but it wasn't too long after that.

That's several of us that either worked their hat work there.

The side of the guy wasn't, you know, he was basically stealing all the money out of the company for his own purposes.

Oh, was this a company store basically was this?

No, no, no, it was a one guy, but he started expanding.

And he was, you know, playing shell games with the money that he's getting from the back for expansion building himself this insane new house.

And I seem to keep ending up at companies where the CEO steals all the money for his own purposes.

So anyway, we decided to go start our own place and just totally bootstrapped it.

You know, borrowed all the money to open it and, you know, we all loved pinball and, you know, who's we now?

Well, it was me, Greg Johnson, Dave Frenow and Hercules Capos.

Yes, his name really was Hercules.

Wow.

So we were all basically at that point, UVA dropouts, you know, and why did you drop out because this was too interesting and too much fun?

Yeah, I was learning more, you know, repairing games.

After I beat asteroids, I decided I wanted to know how it ticked.

So I started disassembling the code, you know, and were you an assembly language programmer at that point?

Not until then, no.

And I didn't have any way to read out the chips.

So I've rigged up a thing with, I think it's like 11 toggle switches and 8 LEDs and a socket and toggled in binary through every location in each of the three chips.

It's 6,000 bytes of code and data.

Rotted all that long hand on legal pads, hand translated it to assembly, you know, hacks first and then assembly.

I'm really good at sight reading binary to hacks now, and he listed it.

Yeah.

And, you know, he was starting to figure out what made it tick.

Which year's later came and what was this in 8080?

I know, 65 out of two.

It was 65 out of two.

Yeah.

Years later ended up writing a thing for a researcher at the University of Denver who wanted to use asteroids for complex scale acquisition studies.

So you mean you almost got a real job out of this?

Yeah.

Well, that was just a consulting job.

But I mean all of this led to where I am today, obviously.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Somewhere just one step above the gutter.

And somewhere in there, just before we left and formed our own company, I created a pinball machine called Chief Bank of Flip Galactic Poker Dice.

Right.

I bought a time warp in the crate, close out for 700 bucks, stripped it, never played a game on it.

It was brand new, brand new, and great.

Used that as the basis for everything, ordered a bunch of balli and Williams parts out of their parts departments.

Couldn't find the right plywood anywhere to make the play fields out of.

And we were working with Brady Distributing Company at that point.

And I called them and said, you know, what can I do?

Well, they call ballet and ballet said, that's the weirdest request we've ever had.

But we'll sell you 50 bucks a sheet.

We'll sell you a blank play field.

Really?

So I got to.

And fortunately they already had the little notch and the plunger route in there.

Right.

I would have a really hard time doing that.

Yeah.

But that was it.

It was blank other than that.

So I made one and you know, found out a bunch of things I didn't like how I'd done and then used the second one.

And but how did you get it?

It's a ballet play field fitting in a Williams cabinet that fit okay?

Yeah, they're all the same size.

They are.

They were at that point.

But I mean, even the cutouts and everything matched.

There were no cutouts.

I mean, it was just other than the plunger cutout.

There was nothing.

There was nothing.

So I had to do all the other cutouts.

Right.

So the troughs and all that stuff.

None of that stuff was there.

Yeah.

Huh.

Interesting.

And what was the feature of this game?

The big feature was 25 drop targets in a five by five matrix.

Like playing breakout with drop targets.

Right.

And you wrote the code for this using Williams system or ballet?

It was Williams.

I used the system six.

You used system six in and again, I got that all out longhand on legal pads to figure out how the system worked and how the data chip for the game worked.

And finally towards the end of that, I was borrowing an Apple 2 plus and could actually program my own chips.

I bought a prom program or board.

Right.

Right.

So I could poke all the data there in program chip and got it running.

Yeah, because the Apple 2 was well, but the Apple 2 is 6502 and the Williams doesn't matter.

It was just binary data.

Oh, right.

So you weren't assembling and testing it.

Now, the game roms are mostly data in a Williams game.

There's some code, which again, I had to hand right and just hope it worked or try to figure out why it wasn't.

Yeah.

And how did you debug stuff?

I mean, you know, just sheer determination.

I didn't have any tools.

So it took you how long did this whole product take?

Probably six months.

Really?

And were you satisfied with the results?

Yeah.

So you didn't use like, there were operating system, you know how long?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's just the data chip.

You did okay, gotcha.

Gotcha.

And which chip was that?

Is it an ICSAT 14 or something like that?

So you were using the green flipper roms.

Right.

And a 2716 e-prone.

Right.

Right.

So then ICSAT 14 is the actual data for the game, the personality chip.

And which is like you said, a 2716.

And that's where you were just changing all the code in there.

And you were making all the calls.

You figured out all the calls to the flipper roms to do, you know, update the scores and all that stuff.

Yeah.

That's pretty impressive.

And nobody helped you from Williams or anybody.

Okay, you didn't know Eugene Jarvis at the time.

And you didn't know Larry DeMar.

So you didn't know any of these people.

No.

Okay.

It's funny years later when I was at Williams, John Poppiduk said, man, you know, if you'd drag that thing up to Chicago and shown it would have been Steve Kortek at the time, they would have hired you in the spot.

Right.

Yeah, they would have.

Yeah, for sure.

What did I know?

Some Redneck and Virginia making his own pitmobile machine.

Right.

Right. It's pretty cool though.

So you still have the, what was it called again?

Chief Bank of Flip Galactic Poker Dice.

Now the interesting thing is obviously leaving this company we were working at Noels to go start our own place.

Wasn't going to make the owner of Noels very happy.

And I had limited ability to move stuff.

So even though I owned this thing, I had no way to move that game out of there before I left, but I could grab the play field.

So you mean you left?

Did you have the code I assumed to?

That's one reason I haven't brought it to Expo yet is because I've got Apple 2 discs with the code, but none of it appears to be the right code that runs the game.

So I kind of need to redo that.

I hope you have good notes.

Yeah, I have a lot of notes.

So you didn't keep a master set of e-proms?

Well, you know, they would have been sitting in the game when I, what I mean, keep a secondary set as a backup.

If I did, I haven't run across them.

Oh man.

So all you have to playfields.

Well, some years later, I bought a used time warp for good karma sake and dropped it in that.

I've got it all in that.

Right, right, right.

And let's see.

So we started our own arcade.

And what was your arcade called?

Professor Feathers.

Why?

Well, Edgar Allen Poe, who was a UVA student, by the way, so this all fits, wrote a story called The System of Dr. Tar and Professor Feathers.

And there's also, there's an Edgar Allen Poe themed album by the Allen Parsons project that has a song with that name.

Right.

Kind of had that as our theme song.

So we kind of spent the first year paying back all these loans and we bought like $70,000 worth of games and we had a restaurant in there too.

Yeah.

And I had a restaurant in there too.

You know, so.

Man, this is pretty impressive that it's just some colleges.

You guys actually start with any of your own money?

No, we had no money.

And you know, again, the lawyer we got to help set up this business said you guys are morons.

You don't start a business with no money.

We can do it.

So we did.

I mean, we made a lot of money, but the problem was.

You did make a lot of money?

Well, we paid back all those loans and everything.

You did.

And the problem was at the end of the year, we got in all our big debts paid off, but then we're sitting there with year old games.

Right.

And then we had no money to buy new ones.

So, you know, business started tailing off again.

And so we had to borrow more money to get more games.

It's a never ending cycle.

Right.

And especially, I mean, once you've got some debt going, then you start paying penalties and interest on the debt and you just never get out of debt.

I mean, it's tough.

Our biggest problem was we were all young and idealistic and we priced the games really cheap to bring in food customers and priced the food really cheap to bring in game customers and tried to make it up on volume.

Never worked out of that.

Somehow that doesn't work.

So we were priced the games.

I mean, you were running 10 cent games or something.

Two games for quarter, five balls of games.

Oh, wow.

That was our, we were, we were insistent that that was the only way pinball should ever be priced.

And then to bring in business on our slow days, Monday through Wednesday, we set all the video games at two games for quarter.

Oh my gosh, really.

And then we, but this is during Pac-Man AI, would think you'd be making money hand over fifths.

Again, we made an awful lot of money, but we had really high expenses from borrowing all this money.

Right.

And let's see.

To bring our original location was a real, you know, out of the way and we didn't have enough money for a sign.

So that's kind of running joke.

You had to look for the building without a sign to know where we were.

And so to bring in food customers during lunch, we decided to run a special where you get a free drink with lunch.

And our reasoning was it costs us almost nothing.

I mean, a couple of pennies plus the cup cost more than the syrup.

So we're giving way almost nothing and bringing in customers.

But that's of course the wrong way to look at it.

What we were giving away was the single highest profit item in our entire restaurant.

Right.

So just, you know, on and on, stuff like that.

We all learned a lot at the school of hard knocks.

And never applied any of it.

Because I mean, once we'd started any of this, we didn't want to piss off our customers by taking away the drink special.

They'd come to depend on.

So we just continue that.

So three and a half years of that.

Three and a half years?

Yeah.

And I've heard what games were you running?

Pinballs.

You know, Black Knight, Lost Turns.

We run the games we like.

CWitch, Meteor, Stargazer, Nine Ball, Eight Ball Deluxe.

We replaced our Playfield and Eight Ball Deluxe twice.

Really?

You just played Fields Flops?

Yeah.

Morning, New and Night.

It was just played all the time.

Of course, it's two games for quarter or five balls game.

It got an awful lot of play.

I mean, it was making like $100 on a good day.

Even at that.

$100 is a day.

Yeah.

You know, Pinball Machine.

Right.

It's insane.

But again, with that kind of pricing, that meant a lot of plays.

And so we ran through Playfields.

But they were cheap.

It just took a weekend to swap them in.

Why, what did they do in charge of for a Playfield back then?

That's like $100.

Right.

We had Spy Hunter.

It would make $100 a day.

We had the video or the Pinball video.

Okay.

I mean, we had some videos it made.

It had a ton of money, too.

Right.

We had lean-in disks of Tron.

You know, the environmental cat.

Right.

Right.

Sit down Spy.

Or sit down Star Wars.

You know, we had a lot of cool games.

Pac-Man, of course.

And the whole place lasted, would you say, three and a half years?

Yeah.

Three and a half years.

Basically, you know, it was just sheer will and determination on our part and willing us to work for no money, you know.

And everything kept it up.

And we finally just, you know, we got tired of it.

We just couldn't take it anymore.

And so all four of you just decided you just early on, one of us, a day for no, decided to go back to Louisiana and become an accountant or something.

So, you know, we sort of bought him out.

He was the smart one.

He was the smart one, yeah.

So, somewhere in the middle of all that, I designed my own video game.

You designed your own video game.

Yeah.

I completely reverse engineered the Williams video game hardware, like Stargate, Robotron, era.

And then bought a used Robotron and Stargate dirt cheap, one to use as a development platform in home and one to put the game in the store with.

And it took about a year, but I wrote Alien Arena from scratch.

And how did that go?

It sucked.

It was pretty bad.

We had a couple customers loved it to death.

But one of the biggest problems was I like developing code in the dark.

I don't like ambient light on my screen.

So, what looked really good to me in my little cave at home, you get it in the, you know, sun and overhead lights of the arcade and you can even see it.

I mean, I just chosen all the wrong colors.

And it's not just a matter of turning up the brightness.

I mean, it needed a total redo on the colors.

So, that was tough.

And do you have the code for that game still?

Yeah.

Can we run it in main?

Yeah, it's in main.

Oh, it is.

Yeah.

At some point, I'm going to release the source for it.

But it's, again, it's all kind of trapped on Apple II floppies.

And I've got it, I've got it off textually, but I'm trying to get it to compile in a newer assembler before I release it.

Huh.

And it still had some issues too.

Like what kind of issues?

Well, it, it had a working high score table, but for some reason the code that's in the game now doesn't and I can't figure out why.

And when you put this together, were you actually using an assembler at this time?

Yeah, I did buy a 68 on assembler for the apple.

Okay, so you were actually assembling it on the apple.

Right.

And, but again, I had to assemble it in chunks and loaded in chunks.

And, you know, I felt hardwarded, downline loaded to RAM in the game.

Really?

Yeah.

So you could program it on the apple and load it into your developmental machine.

Yeah.

And that they were somehow connected.

Yeah.

I built a card to go in the apple and a card to go on the machine.

Where did you come up with all, you know, I mean to do that is obviously not that easy.

Words your electronics background other than making that heat kit TV.

Self-taught.

Self-taught.

Just bought, you know, books on logic chips and sorted out how it all worked.

Huh.

Okay.

Man.

You've had a lot of free time.

I used to, you used to have a lot of free time.

And then by the time I wanted to release Alien Arena to the world years later, you know, I had kids and stuff.

I've just never had the time since.

Although here I am taking back last pictures six hours from my house.

Maybe I should be doing that instead.

Oh, I know another problem.

Years ago, just before I moved up to Chicago, I sent the code Rick Sheevey to program into ROMs and run a granite at one of his game nights.

And discovered that I'd forgotten I had cut the watchdog circuit for development.

Obviously you can't have the watchdog when you're halting the game and stuff.

I had never written code to service the watchdog.

It just had to occur to me.

I hadn't done that.

So he threw this game in a stock system and it's just resetting constantly.

So he had to go cut the same little trace to make it work.

Huh.

So that's something I really need to add to it.

That's a point.

Alright.

Alright.

Interesting.

Alright.

So now what is this program?

What year does this bring us up to when you close Professor Feathers?

It was open from January of 82 to October of 85.

Okay.

So that was kind of a move this game.

So you know, we just, we basically yes, caught one of the first big downturns in the video game industry.

You did.

And how did that go?

Well, you know, you saw what happened.

We were in this constant cycle of not having enough money to buy new games and having to borrow money to buy new games and so on and so on.

You know, more of our perfect timing.

Right.

Oh, I, again, more of the young and idealistic stuff.

The city of Schultzville instituted a Meals tax to pay for this Taj Mahal Convention Center that they all wanted and no one else did.

And it's just a whole bunch of weird politics.

It was just a complete scam and they're putting it all in the backs of the local hotels and restaurants, which is completely unfair.

And all the people that decided this owned property near where this thing was that would all go up and value.

So anyway, to protest that, we refused to charge Meals tax.

It was a 3% Meals tax.

Hmm.

Wouldn't charge it.

Well, eventually, you know, they got aftress, obviously.

And then eventually we always had to pay it.

But we just, we always made them take it down to the line.

We basically met them in court each month.

Right.

To pay our, that, that month's Meals tax.

But that means we were eating another 3% of our potential profit because we were very shortening it.

But that was, that was just us.

Okay, so it's 85 in the arcade closed because you guys weren't making enough money to really make this work or your job.

Right.

So we basically, you know, walked away from it for its debts or whatever.

I mean, we got some Greek guy that basically take it over, he turned it into a pizza restaurant.

Now, when you were selling food, who came up with a menu for the food and who was doing the cook and...

Well, we all, we all did, it was subs.

Yeah, and subs, subs and fast food.

No fries because that would have involved expensive, you know, extinguisher hood and stuff.

Right, right.

So yeah, it was just, you know, and it was great.

I mean, we encouraged people to eat while they play.

We had a huge lunch crowd.

Businessmen would come in.

We had tables, you know, that set at a nice height out by the machines.

And then, you know, four of them would play a four player game and all eat while the one guy is playing.

And it was great.

They loved it.

They were very, very sad when we closed.

And that wouldn't be.

Yeah.

So, or was I, oh yeah, so he turned it into a pizza restaurant when we walked away and that lasted a couple more years.

And did he buy all the games from you too?

No, no.

The IRS got all the games from us.

The IRS did?

Well, right.

I mean, we were perpetually behind, you know, when you don't have enough money to pay all your bills.

Right?

One of those bills you might not pay is the IRS that withholding.

You're right.

You're right.

And you don't pay that because you never had it.

But the IRS says, no, you had it and you took it away from your employees.

And we're like, no, really, we never had it.

We don't care.

You know, you, you always have that money.

That's very evil of you not to have given us that money.

So, we were, you know, in a constant state with them, always paying off stuff.

So, when we closed, they were real keen on, you know, recovering that as much as they could with assets.

And then once we closed, they were the nicest people in the world.

You know, we were the IRS.

I mean, they worked out a payment plan.

I mean, once it was this.

How long were you paying off this thing after a couple years?

Were you really?

Yeah.

And were all of you were just you?

Well, some of us more than others, yeah.

I took a lot of it.

So, you know, they got real nice.

At that point, we're obviously not some ongoing scam trying to take money from them.

We're just some guys that owe them some money and they were real nice.

So, where was I again?

Oh, yeah, the machines went there.

So, he got some route operator to put in games and everything.

So, we all went our separate ways.

Dave, for now, had already become an accountant, I think, down in Louisiana that that was years ago.

Greg went and became the manager of a food line grocery store in the N Charlesville.

Hercules eventually became manager of Bodo's bagels in Charlottesville.

And then eventually started his own bagel restaurant down in the Norfolk Virginia area.

So, he's still in the food industry, I guess.

You still talk to these people?

Yeah.

Herk had this weird brain fungus a bunch of years ago.

Yeah, he caught some weird disease.

And he was in the hospital for a while and has weird missing parts of his memory.

He doesn't remember Dunkin' Brown?

Well, he does.

But then eventually his email address stopped working and his stores either disappeared or moved.

I mean, no one's been able to find him.

Find him.

It's not like we've driven down to Norfolk to look.

But he just kind of, I mean, I'll track him down again.

So, I think he's going to be able to find him.

I'll track him down again.

So, I went to work at Comdyle of telephone manufacturer there in Charlottesville.

In their, basically repair facility.

But one thing they needed, they had just come out with this new key system product,

you know, a system that runs a whole bunch of phones.

It's like a PBX but smaller.

And they were having a whole bunch of field returns, failures, warranty problems.

And they really needed someone to troubleshoot what the heck was going on.

And they tasked the repair facility with doing that.

Right at the same time, I'm applying for a job there because a friend of mine works there.

And I'm obviously this great troubleshooter and they're like,

you know, you can get him for nothing and you know, he'll do all this work.

So, I did that and you know, I went to the meetings every week where they were trying to decide all this stuff.

You know, I'm the representative from the repair department.

And I'm in the meeting with like the heads of all these other departments.

And I'm just, I'm literally like this solder gun jockey from the repair department

who's also keeping track of the warranty stuff and going to the meeting.

And they had no idea.

I mean, they like one time I was talking about, you know, this connector

that was always getting mangled and what a pain it was to replace it.

You know, it's like 40 pins worth of desiring and soldering.

And I was like, don't you have a girl that do that?

You know, they thought I was just some, you know, manager engineer back there

who had little people to do all the actual soldering and desiring.

No, I'm not only doing this but I'm repairing 300 other phones a week

and I'm going to keep my quotas up here.

They just had no idea.

But so eventually I actually warmed my way into the engineering department there

and was helping design and prototype all these phone systems.

And how long did you do that?

I must have been, I don't know, these years aren't going to all add up.

But it must have been at least three years.

And then an old friend of mine who was actually my RA at college

was running a bunch of the computer systems and stuff

at this little startup data processing company there in Charlottesville.

And actually my wife, by that point, she was already my wife,

was working there doing various things.

And you know, he said they, now that they're expanding,

they really needed someone to take over all the computer management.

They had a VACX 11785 in the basement of this house, you know,

this little startup company, but they were expanding.

So I went there and became, you know, eventually,

I don't remember what my title eventually was,

but I mean they got fairly big and I was like, you know,

manager of worldwide operations or something.

And you know, we bought computers and all these sites and expanded all this stuff.

And I did that for seven years.

And eventually, you know, they were getting big, which was fine.

I mean, when I started there, you know, I was like employee 15 or something.

And it was, everybody was all pitching in and making this company work.

And as they got bigger, we were still, you know, kind of had that whole, you know,

camaraderie going, but they got in a guy in there and XG,

a guy who, you know, wanted to take the thing public and, you know,

just make lots of money that way.

It was no longer about the job.

It's all about making the balance sheet look right and stuff.

And just he was, you know, all kinds of reasons it was getting very unpleasant to work there.

So I, you know, other places that ran back to around town,

BMS, you know, I started asking around to them and a place called GE Fanick.

It's a joint venture between GE and a Japanese company called Fanick.

They really needed someone to run their, some of their computer systems,

but also their phone system.

And we had, by that time, gotten a big phone system at the place I was

and same kind they were about to buy.

So I knew all about that.

So they hired me on there to do that.

And I ended up, you know, lots and lots of systems, installations there

as they got bigger and stuff.

And when I eventually left there, it actually took three people to replace me.

But, you know, but so I was very happy there and doing quite well.

But then I had gone to Wild West Pinball Fest in 1996 out in Arizona with my wife.

So these are the 90s where up to now.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay.

You know, I got out there to Arizona, dangerous Dan, you know,

great time, you know, wrists or by the end.

But this whole time you were still playing Pinball.

Oh yeah.

Did you own any?

Well, there was a period after Professor Feathers where I was really dirt poor

and scrambling to even survive.

When you own a business that's not paying you any money,

but it's a restaurant.

Hey, you eat for free.

Yeah, you eat for free.

Now don't tell the IRS that.

They probably want to account for all that.

But again, you're never going to actually starve and die in that.

Right.

We could look at this.

But then once I stopped doing that, then there was always, you know,

the fear of starving and dying.

I mean, it was tough.

So it was tough.

I mean, so yeah, the idea of having enough money and room and time to own a Pinball machine

didn't happen again for several years, but probably into the early 90s.

Right.

And then I started collecting video games and Pinballs again.

So anyway, I'm quite happy at GE, but I go out to Wild West Pinball Fest.

And there had been this whole thing where a safe cracker had recently come out.

And you know, I've been posting the wreck games pinball at that point and everything.

And they had, when did you start on the wreck games pinball thing early 90s, right?

Yeah.

You could probably find out.

Yeah.

Google my first post there somewhere.

But I actually started out on RGBAC and then eventually on the video game side.

Yeah.

Right.

So there had been this thing where they had all the speech calls from safe cracker or a lot of them on their website.

But they had paid some company to do this whole website.

And so there was a speech call that said tokens the Stuff Dreams or Mata.

But the link for it, the company that had done this, had listened to the speech call and written a link as Duncan's the Stuff Dreams or Mata.

Which I thought was, you know, appropriate of course.

Of course on the Stuff Dreams or Mata, but it seemed really awesome.

When they posted this, I posted to the Pinball News Group.

You know, what is that supposed to say?

I didn't know what it was supposed to be tokens.

And I guess, you know, Larry DeMar had seen that and laughed and everything.

So when he saw my name tag out of Wild West Pinball Fest, he introduced himself.

Oh, hi.

And by the way, just Larry DeMar was head of Pinball at Williams.

Right.

Right.

Right.

And he had seen, I guess, posts over the years where I had, you know, reverse engineered the very code he had been writing years before in Stargate and Robicon.

So I guess they had kind of noticed me that way.

Unbeknownst to you.

Unbeknownst to me.

And so, you know, I talked him there and we got along real great and everything.

And then I don't know what it was.

I guess it was maybe six or eight months later.

I had posted something to the Pinball News Group looking for a ROM that I didn't have.

And Ted Estee's actually emailed me the binary I needed.

It was some sound ROM.

And at the end of his email, he said, oh, by the way, if you're ever looking for a job,

let me know.

And Ted Estee's actually took over Larry's position.

Right.

So now Ted is head of Pinball, he's head of the Pinball programmers at Williams.

Right.

And also slot machines.

And slot machines, right.

The simultaneous, the mechanical slot machines.

Not the video slots.

Right.

Because they were trying to infuse some creativity into this new product they were coming out with.

And they thought, oh, let's throw them in with the Pinball programmers.

Right.

Which actually created all kinds of friction between the people that came from the slot department.

It was an interesting scenario.

So I wrote him back and said, man, if you'd asked me that 15 years ago, I'd already been your doorstep before the electrons had dried on my screen.

But I got mortgage and mortgage.

But I said, it's not that I'm not interested.

But it's just way more complicated.

So we kept talking.

And eventually they had me up there for an interview.

And my wife really, she'd been in Charlottesville for 20 years and really liked everything.

And had moved from the office to the office.

And she was like, oh, I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

That it worked...

Because I wanted to have funny pictures over there.

She said, oh, I really ended up being her roommate open.

And yeah.

But within many months, together almost frequently we cried together and my dad was great.

We also keeled out

and had beautiful children.

And Sharks decided to apologize for big greets.

maybe they could offer me a little more money and you know we eventually worked it out

I was like yeah you know I really got to do this I mean it just seemed like destiny

every all these weird things I've done through my life that had just been yeah no reason at all

designing my own pinball machine design my own game at all it's obviously pointing towards this

my destiny right I went up there and did that and the way they stuck me in they didn't have any

pinball openings but they had an opening for a slot programmer and they especially needed someone

reverse engineering skills because you're looking at IGT code or something well a machine

that should prove that IGT's patent was invalid as long as how they thought it worked really

was how it worked but they needed someone who could figure out how it worked and did you I did

and it was but it was kind of by the time they thought of that the judge was so pissed at them

that he wasn't willing to listen to any more of his words yeah why was he pissed at William

because he thought they were just had were obviously ripping off his patent this judge

well wait you should back up what the IGT was suing Williams over mechanical slots right

correct right because it was it was infringing on what was that and the teleness patent

which telness basically a way of mapping a large number of numbers so that you can get

fine gradiation of the odds to a smaller number of physical stops on the wheels so in other words

you have say 22 stops on the wheels and to normally it's one out of 22 shot I mean

historically each symbol has an equal probability but telness you know had this amazing idea

you know what if we simply said you know you have 500 numbers to choose from and we'll put in

you know a couple of one symbol so that's a one out of two 50 shot and a whole bunch of another

and we just once we decide what symbol based on that big huge set of numbers and we just map it

to the equivalent physical thing on the wheel so it's a way to get really long odds on wheels

and Williams did rip this off from IGT no basically when telness invented that patent it was telling

this just some guy okay his name is his last name's telness right when he does thought of that it

was not legal I mean if you had 22 stops there had to be a one out of 22 shot this idea of

there being different odds was kind of considered cheating I mean right in other words if you made a

real with 500 stops on it the cabinet would be you know two stories tall and you'd go oh my god

look at that huge real right you know way I'm ever going to get that jackpot so yeah so this

this was kind of this misdirection that but anyway the the idea of creating odds like that

long odds for things was incredibly well known I mean it was not unique in the idea of

probabilities or math or anything but somehow I got a patent on it and basically you know this

this very well known idea as applied to slot machine right becomes this patentable idea so

one thing Williams was looking at is this old you know well not even gray market it was like

illegal slot machine where they got around the laws that said you can't have a game with reels

by using those little elevator things where you rear project a symbol oh right right um

that's what they were doing this this other company back in the 60s in winter or 70s um it must

been 70s yeah they would they use three of those to project some you know they replaced the one two

three four strip inside this thing with the you know cherries and or something so it was you

know it was this quasi legal game but you know looking at the pay table they had to be doing something

like that for the odds and which I proved they actually were but it was too late so anyway

Williams came up with a completely different way to do long odds you know wasn't this look up in a

table thing tell us was doing um but in their wisdom they decided they wanted to hold you know

they they got the venue change to Chicago figuring they'd have a friendly judge instead of Nevada

where they understand slot machines right so they got a judge who didn't understand slot machines

didn't really understand how patents worked because his line of thinking was if somebody does

gets a result and somebody else gets the same result they must be violating the patent

you know regardless of how they got there it's like how they got there's the whole point of the

patent you're right it's like driving to Chicago through Detroit or driving to Chicago through

St. Louis you know you're both getting to Chicago but two different ways right and he's saying no

you and it basically he's like you know you guys with your slick lawyers are trying to pull a fast

one on me here you know they brought slot machines to court and charts and you know it just none of

had any impression on him he was convinced so by the time they came up with this just irrefutable

evidence of prior art in a slot machine for this idea that wasn't patented because it was illegal

you know it was too late and what was the outcome and what Williams have to do Williams basically

had to stop doing slot machines with long odds I mean they had to do you know however many

stops that's their odds and you can't give big jackpots that way so their machines are as exciting

ironically that forced Williams to concentrate more on video slot machines where igt wasn't

doing anything right where they could do long odds because the patent was written to talk about

reals physical reals right and they added in the dash of Williams humor and creativity and stuff

you know with filthy rich and what was that they had won a fishing game it was real real man

real real pocket and just started eating igt's lunch I mean eventually you're right because of that

so it's just interesting that yeah igt forced them into another into another corner which they excel

yes and to which they could actually compete very well right as the industry was in any of that

moving from physical reals to video right never it'll never happen completely but right you know

so that was just interesting so anyway i got in there working on the spending reals did a bunch of

stuff but also you know were you there during their operating system dilemma here in Detroit

the some guy found a way right now it's after that was after okay okay do you know anything about

the history of that just the the operating system they had was not very well written i mean it was

one of these things were wrote it i don't even know but it was one of these things where some engineers

had kind of thrown this together so that you get to a trade show and show off this proof of concept

and it was a huge hit the trade show and the marketing people all came back and said okay let's

start shipping it you know and so it just it got worse from there it had kind of a bad not

completely thought out history by the time i got there they'd actually taken the original same

source code and split it into video and spending real and they were going off down their separate

paths all right so i was doing the spending real stuff and other people were doing the video stuff

and i don't even know which i think was the video that had those issues in Detroit it was the

double up thing right i don't remember the exact thing i think if you somehow you could put a bill

in and hit some sequence and all that was different yeah that was another thing that was another

thing yeah that they had several things all really now did you know anything about that one no

again that was all after after after you were out what i did know was while i was fixing code in

the spinning real slots for Delaware who has these really weird online system restrictions where

all the machines are controlled by a master central system so for instance the casinos have to close

it i don't know 1am or 2am or something and by golly they do they're not going to depend on each

you know race track manager coming in and shutting down the central system kills it

caches it out right right at the time so there were always all these weird you know you got to keep

track of time things and they always had weird bugs with daylight savings time and stuff so i got

in there to fix the daylight saving stuff because Williams kept fixing it in spring only to have it

break and fall right right right so i fixed all that i looked at that i was like yeah you know there's

you got this horrible problem coming up on year 2000 and it's totally not going to handle that right

this thing totally blows up on the year 2000 because they're only doing two digits and weren't handling

it and it's just going to go completely wrong and in fact the the system we had to test with

was it didn't even handle it correctly but i had to kind of dope out that this is what it would do

if i had a system that did work it's not going to work so i fixed that and told you know we had

these weekly conference calls with Delaware i told him yeah you know it's you need to fix your

tools and i fixed our code and everybody else probably i'll look at this too you know igt's in on

the conference call everybody who's there so i fixed that and as far as i knew it was in but come

to find out they had fixed it and sent it to Delaware and made all the chips but had never kind of

gotten around putting them in the slot machine this was two years i mean this was quite a while

before i left Williams yeah because i was still doing slots it was over two years they've been

sitting there and never done anything so after pinball shut down and i at the time i just started

working at lad i hear on the radio yeah only seven things in the whole u.s actually failed in

y2k and one of them was William slot machines in Delaware they all croaked right at the stroke of

midnight and they had to rush out there and get all these chips in which in Delaware is really

you know you got to have a cop stand in there when you change chips right right right so from the

gaming commission has to see right and they they have a thing called a cobatron that matches what

it's way more involved than a checksum but it's basically checksumming the chip right so for every

machine this whole squad of people has to go yeah so it was a huge fiasco so while i'm doing all this

slot stuff i'm tally around with all the pinball guys because you're really trying to get in at

Williams into the pinball division right and not the slot machine right so i'm doing my job and

i'm also you know learning everything i can about pinball and and just you know immersing myself in

that so then when pinball 2000 starts you know they start working on that and they're going to

rearrange things and maybe hire a couple people i'm like yeah you're raising your hand yeah and then

you know there was also some re-shopping going on with the slot departments again need the lights

again yeah i'll probably need them on and off between each machine um basically they were taking slots

back away from pinball again okay because at the time just to give it pinball was financing the

slot machine development right oh yeah i mean slot machines were losing money big time and pinball

was the company making money and there's the whole thing with spinning off midway too which

happened in that time well what was the spinning off of midway what do you mean by that they

decided it was Williams Valley midway they did video games spin machine slot machines they did

everything and they decided they wanted to make midway a separate company why um well frankly to

make people money you know what do you mean by spinning midway off as a separate company people

in positions of power at Williams Valley midway could make lots of money the stock split and the

buyouts of contracts and you know maybe there was some reason they gave the shareholders that

even made sense or might even been real about why that would be a good thing i mean historically

Williams had always done all these different things you know if pinball was down maybe bumper pulls

where they made their money but i mean they were always very diversified and making different stuff

so that no matter which industry goes up or down they'd always stay open and start splitting that

apart kind of lose that so for some reason pinball and slot machines stayed together in midway

went off on its own separate company um and this is about the time you know the video slots are

starting to make some money and so the slot machine division is actually starting to make money

whereas pinball is starting to not make money and then what year is this about eighty ninety eight ninety

seven is when i came there so you know ninety eight yeah um so you know pinball is going to try to

reverse its fortunes with pinball two thousand everybody's really excited about it and were you

in pinball two thousand right from the get go not the early early stuff that was kind of being

developed as a side project no but then about the time they decided to midway had been spun off

and they decided to take slots and pinball and totally separate them again you know i was going

to have to go with slot people over the slot building and not be able to sit with all my pinball

friends anymore you know you're going to California Avenue right well they're both well ones on