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Mr. Nordman, Let's Talk About Your Ramps

Silverball Chronicles·podcast_episode·2h 24m·analyzed·Mar 22, 2022
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TL;DR

Deep dive into Dennis Nordman's ramp design legacy, career path, and his pioneering work on Special Force.

Summary

Silverball Chronicles hosts David Dennis and Ron discuss Dennis Nordman, legendary pinball ramp designer. The episode covers Nordman's early career path through Bally, Marvin Glass, Gottlieb, and back to Bally, highlighting his design philosophy and first major game, Special Force (1986), which showcased innovative ramp design and theme integration. The discussion emphasizes the importance of industry relationships and Nordman's transition from cabinet design to playfield design.

Key Claims

  • Dennis Nordman designed the 'most iconic and perfect pinball cabinet of all time,' the Rapid Fire Cabinet

    high confidence · Direct statement by David Dennis attributing Rapid Fire cabinet design to Nordman; hosts present this as established fact in pinball history

  • Dennis Nordman was hired by Bally as a cabinet designer after presenting his innovative fiberglass pedestal-based cabinet design to Schaefer Distributing and Bally

    high confidence · Dennis Nordman quoted directly: 'I put the cabinet in my van and drove from Columbus to Chicago and made a presentation at Bally Pinball Division in Bentonville, and he was then hired as a cabinet designer'

  • Special Force (1986) sold 2,750 units

    high confidence · David Dennis states specific production number for Special Force

  • Dennis Nordman's custom cabinet had the playfield level 3-4 inches lower than regular pinball games to allow younger kids to see the playfield more easily

    high confidence · David Dennis describes Nordman's design philosophy: 'The play field level was about three or four inches lower than a regular pinball game at the time, but it had raised areas where you can rest your hands for the flipper buttons. His reason for making it lower is that so younger kids could see the play field a lot easier'

  • Bally knew Williams was working on Hyper Ball, so Bally created Rapid Fire as their own version

    high confidence · David Dennis: 'Valley knew that Williams was working on Hyper Ball, so they wanted to come up with their own version of Hyper Ball. So they came up with Rapid Fire'

  • Rapid Fire failed commercially and left Bally with excess cabinets that were repurposed for LE versions of games like Centaur II, 8-Ball Deluxe LE, and Mr. and Mrs. Pac-Man

    high confidence · David Dennis explains: 'they had a ton of cabinets left over. That's why they used them for all those LE versions' and 'They had a lot of rapid fire cabinets left over'

  • Dennis Nordman worked for multiple companies (Bally, Marvin Glass and Associates, Gottlieb, Milestar) and was laid off from each within a year due to industry downturns

Notable Quotes

  • “Ramps, Ron, are pinball.”

    David Dennis @ ~early episode — Thematic statement establishing ramps as core to pinball identity

  • “The undisputed king of ramps, without a doubt, is Dennis Nordman.”

    David Dennis @ ~mid-episode intro — Central thesis of episode crediting Nordman with ramp design mastery

  • “I put the cabinet in my van and drove from Columbus to Chicago and made a presentation at Bally Pinball Division in Bentonville, and he was then hired as a cabinet designer.”

    Dennis Nordman (quoted) @ ~career section — Direct account of Nordman's breakthrough moment entering pinball industry

  • “Everything in life is about relationships.”

    David Dennis @ ~mid-episode — Life lesson segment emphasizing importance of Nordman maintaining professional relationships despite frequent job changes

  • “Be part of the next trend. Check out Special Force at your Bally Midway distributor today. Oh, I'm in. It's an irresistible force.”

    David Dennis (reading Special Force marketing flyer) @ ~late episode — Original marketing copy showing confidence in game's commercial potential (which contradicts actual 2,750 unit sales)

  • “When the ball is in the trough, everything is completely silent, and the lights are all off on the play field, and you hear like crickets, like jungle noises, and then you can short plunge and catch the ball and do like a sneak attack.”

    David Dennis @ ~gameplay discussion — Describes innovative theme integration in Special Force plunge mechanic showing Nordman's design thinking

  • “They literally trademarked that phrase, so they must have thought that was going to be a big deal.”

    Ron (responding to 'The Next Trend Explodes') @ ~flyer reading — Observes Bally's confidence in Special Force as category-defining, contrasting with actual market failure

Entities

Dennis NordmanpersonDavid DennispersonRonpersonSpecial ForcegameSpecial Force GirlsgameRapid Fire CabinetproductBally Pinball Division / Bally MidwaycompanyMarvin Glass and Associatescompany

Signals

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Bally's Rapid Fire was direct competitive response to Williams' Hyper Ball in emerging hybrid pinball/video game category; commercial failure led to cabinet repurposing

    high · David Dennis: 'Valley knew that Williams was working on Hyper Ball, so they wanted to come up with their own version of Hyper Ball. So they came up with Rapid Fire' and 'they had a ton of cabinets left over. That's why they used them for all those LE versions'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Bally's Special Force featured cost-cutting in coin door design that created usability problems: relocated start button to flipper position allowed accidental multi-player coinup during single-play sessions

    high · David Dennis/Ron discuss coin door evolution from 'probably most expensive, elegant, complicated coin doors to a much cheaper, simpler coin door' and usability failure where 'you can literally bump that super easy and coin up multiple players'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Dennis Nordman's cabinet design prioritized user accessibility (lower playfield for children, raised flipper areas) and innovative materials (fiberglass pedestal), demonstrating critical thinking about pinball ergonomics and experience

    high · David Dennis: 'The play field level was about three or four inches lower than a regular pinball game at the time, but it had raised areas where you can rest your hands for the flipper buttons. His reason for making it lower is that so younger kids could see the play field a lot easier'

  • $

    market_signal: Special Force commercial underperformance (2,750 units) despite innovative design and confident marketing ('The Next Trend Explodes') suggests market was not receptive to military-themed pinball or Rambo-derived IP at that moment

    high · David Dennis provides sales figure (2,750 units) contrasted against marketing flyer's confident language 'Be part of the next trend. Check out Special Force at your Bally Midway distributor today'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.436

0:00
From unsolved mysteries to unexplained phenomena, from comedy gold to relationship fails, Amazon Music's got the most ad-free top podcasts, included with Prime. Because the only thing that should interrupt your listening is, well, nothing. Download the Amazon Music app today.
0:22
I started seventh grade this year. You know, it's never too early to start thinking about college. Don't even think about college until you've had some work experience. Oh, no. Two words, kid. Trade school. Connie, weren't you going to work with your dad? It's no wonder kids feel overwhelmed about the future. Bright Bound helps them identify their skills, explore their passions, and get on the path that's right for them. Well, I'm not sure what I want to do yet, but I'm excited to figure it out. Bright Bound. Find your why. Find your way. Learn more at brightbound.org.
0:57
The Pinkball Network is online. Launching Silverball Chronicles. Hit the whamps. Oh, God. I listened to that interview, and now I'm even more upset with that stupid voice. Where it's canon? It's supposed to be Nick Adams, American actor from New York City, with a legitimate New York accent. So they're supposed to be him. It's like, oh, God, that's even worse.
1:56
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us with Silver Ball Chronicles. I'm David Dennis with my co-host, Ron Goleaf Gohalet. How you doing, fella? As in the Toronto Maple Leafs? The Toronto Maple Leafs. Actually, I'm a Rangers fan. Sorry. No, I got my friend, my friend in Toronto. As most people know, I lived in Toronto for 10 years. I've got a friend. He's got my spot all picked out on Yonge Street in Toronto. I am so excited. He's been sleeping there for 13 years on the street, but he still got my spot saved. This is the year, Ron. Dead silence.

high confidence · David Dennis provides career timeline: Bally (1 year, then merged to Bally Midway and laid off), Marvin Glass ('cup of coffee,' laid off within a year), Gottlieb (1 year before sold to Columbia/Coca-Cola/Milestar, laid off again)

  • Special Force featured innovative jungle-themed elements including pop bumpers shaped like Vietnamese huts and silent plunge mechanics with cricket sounds

    high confidence · David Dennis describes gameplay: 'when the ball is in the trough, everything is completely silent, and the lights are all off on the play field, and you hear like crickets, like jungle noises' and 'pop bumpers, which are shaped like, you know, Vietnamese huts or something'

  • Special Force had a German regional variant called 'Special Force Girls' due to European sensitivity about military themes

    high confidence · David Dennis explains: 'Germans... tend to be very non-military pacifist, right? They try to avoid the use of military and violence in a lot of their entertainment' and changed theme to 'Special Force Girls' with cartoon ladies replacing military imagery

  • Bally 6803-era cabinets were made of cheap materials (cardboard/balsa wood) and featured problematic number pads and ugly coin doors as cost-cutting measures

    high confidence · Ron and David discuss 6803 cabinet issues: 'cabinets are horrible. They are made out of paper mache' and 'balsa wood. Cardboard.' Also describe keypad failures and coin door changes

    • Gottliebcompany
    Jim Patlaperson
    Tony Ramuniperson
    Schaefer Distributingcompany
    Hyper Ballgame
    Milestarcompany
    Silverball Chroniclesorganization
  • ?

    personnel_signal: Dennis Nordman's career path shows rapid industry churning during early 1980s downturn; relationships and reputation (not employment stability) were key survival factor across multiple layoffs

    high · David Dennis emphasizes: 'Everything in life is about relationships... Dennis knew a lot of people at Bally from his time there... Even though he's only lasting a year at each one of these individual jobs, He's built strong, positive relationships with people there'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Special Force incorporated innovative theme integration through vacuum-formed ramps, shape-themed pop bumpers (Vietnamese huts), memory drop targets, and atmospheric plunge mechanics (jungle sound effects, silent trough)

    high · David Dennis: 'pop bumpers, which are shaped like, you know, Vietnamese huts or something. It's theme integration, I think, at its finest' and 'when the ball is in the trough, everything is completely silent... you hear like crickets, like jungle noises'

  • ?

    product_concern: Bally 6803-era cabinets exhibited systematic cost-cutting including cheap cardboard/balsa construction, unreliable number pad controls, oversized coin doors, and integrated start button as flipper (usability bug)

    high · Ron and David describe: 'cabinets are horrible. They are made out of paper mache' and 'if you've got a bunch of... coined up amount on that machine and you're playing a single player, you can literally bump that super easy and coin up multiple players. Super annoying.'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Bally modified Special Force theme to 'Special Force Girls' for German market due to regional cultural sensitivity about military violence in entertainment

    high · David Dennis explains German pacifism post-WWII led to artwork change from military personnel to cartoon ladies with military hats, maintaining theme while accommodating regional preferences

    • 2:44
    How you doing? How was your week? It was all right. Yeah, we're jumping into Silver Ball Chronicles a little bit quicker this time. We had a big gap between our last episode and the previous one before that. The last episode we did was Inside the Mind of Lyman Sheets, which was a bit of a tribute for you and I, for Lyman, and all that he gave to Pinball. We've got a lot of positive feedback on that episode, and I wanted to say thank you to all of those who reached out via email at silverballchronicles at gmail.com. We also had a few comments on Pinside and a few other various spots. So thank you for that feedback. But I'm just happy, Ron, that we were able to draw a large underline over the amazing career that Lyman had, even in the wake of his death. I played a game of Attack from Mars just yesterday where I got my first ever dirty pool. I've never done that before. Oh, very cool. And then right after that, I got the billion hurry up start of Total Annihilation. So thank you, Lyman. Also, you know, it's been a rough go here so far in 2022, but Barry Ousler has passed away. And we want to remind everybody, if they want to learn more about Barry Ousler, there's basically two episodes dedicated to him in the archives at silverballchronicles.com, or you can go back in your podcatcher. If you find the dedicated Silver Ball Chronicles feed, it's easier to scroll back and find the archive. But go back and listen to just the amazing things that Barry did for all of us here in Pinball. I'd like to think that somewhere Barry and Python Angelo are together again. Yes, they're fighting, being angry. And Python is still missing deadlines. Yes.
    4:38
    Anything exciting happening in the hobby? We got anything coming up here that you're really excited for? You're all in the tournament scene at the moment. Just playing more games, I guess. Rush launch party coming up, so looking forward to playing more Rush. I mean, you have to like Rush, right? You're Canadian. It's the law. So we did get a lot of feedback, Ron, about my jokes about synth music and my comments about being over Rush. Now, that being said, as a Canadian, Rush is pretty great. I'm not going to lie. I listen to it semi-regularly. It's on the radio all the time. We have a thing here called Shopper's Drug Mart, which is sort of like, I guess, your CVS down there. You're walking through the aisles. There's Rush playing, right?
    5:26
    Tom Sawyer, you just hear nonstop. It is still an amazing song, even though you hear it just all the time, right? But Rush is pretty great. I do enjoy them nonetheless. They just released a new video for YYZ. I'm sorry, YYZ. You guys spell things weird, too, so I won't say anything. I have no idea what you're talking about, Ron. Mm-hmm. You're my favorite. Yep, that's right. I saw on a keyboard selection thing, I was logging in and I was changing the keyboard settings. I bought a new keyboard. In it, I can choose British English traditional or American English simplified. I thought that was pretty slick.
    6:07
    Yeah, and then we're still looking for the any key. You couldn't find it. Exactly. Congratulations on Multimorphic on Weird Al. Looks like a lot of fun. I'm interested to see how it is. And, you know, I'm a big Weird Al fan. I haven't listened to him in 20 years since the Running With Scissors album. But other than that, great get for them. Remember, if it gets cold, reheat it.
    6:34
    Check out our Facebook page, facebook.com slash silverballchronicles. that way you can engage with us in our conversations and chats. Thanks so much to all those people that provide us feedback and chat along with us. You often make me smile. Ron hates all of you. He never comments in there. I hate most people. That is true. If you check out thisweekinpinball.com slash silverball hyphen chronicles, you can leave us a review so others can find us in the Pinball Promoters database. That's where you find all the podcasts and Twitch streams and YouTube channels available for those of you out there. If you find us in your podcatcher, see us on Apple or Google or any of those places, please leave us a five-star review so others can find us. That helps us out in our search rankings. You can also turn on the automatic download, so if I have to fix something or cut something out, you'll be able to get the unedited version. Let's go to some of the latest reviews, Ron. Yeah, you have scams from Apple Podcasts. Is that the username? That's the username, Scams. I thought we were getting scammed from Apple Podcasts. Okay, Scams says, really enjoy the show a lot. I do find myself listening often to episodes more than once. The only constructive criticism I have is that they could get to the specific subject of the episode quicker. Ooh, he's not going to like this one. I think the corrections, pin-side discussions might be better suited for being placed at the end of the episode.
    8:01
    I don't know. Oops. Whoops. Great feedback. Thank you, Scams. That really actually is pretty good feedback. I don't put it at the end mostly because I want to get to the subject matter, and then when I'm done with the subject matter, I don't want to talk to Ron for another month. So that's why I stick it to the beginning so we can get the banter out of the way. Maybe I could put a time code in it, like the episode starts at so-and-so, so you can skip it if you want to. Maybe I'll do that in our show notes going through. Good idea. Yeah. So we've got T-shirts, of course. Be sure to check out silverballswag.com to jump in and order some Silver Ball Chronicles merch. Get your T-shirts and your hoodies and your mugs and your stickers. Every dollar helps us out here with the podcast so that we can get Ron to all those tournaments in Wisconsin so he can make it up into the top 100. You're not paying for me going to tournaments. Just a light mail.
    8:55
    There'll be someone who thinks that's true. And the $1 we get for the T-shirts is not going to help. That's not even going to pay for the flight. That's not even going to get me into the tournament. No, but it is going to get you the chocolate bar when you're there. Hmm. What are you? You seem like you're like a Twix kind of guy. Are you a Twix kind of guy? I can't eat chocolate anymore.
    9:17
    Oh, yeah, I heard about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Episode 181 of Slam Tilt Podcast. You're going to hear all about Ron's diet. Yeah, that's my other podcast. Slamtail Podcast. Ding!
    9:31
    Ron, let's jump into today's topic. Ramps are mesmerizing. Hypnotic. They create an excitement deep inside you when you shoot them. It's like you can almost feel the ball rolling around the bend of the ramp. To many people, pinball is ramps. Without ramps, there would be no pinball. Which is why people complained a lot about Beatles, I guess. In fact, one of my non-pinball friends saw my Tron for the first time in my living room, and he said right away, Oh, I want to shoot that ramp. The only goal that this person had after not playing pinball for 25 years was, Oh, I got to shoot that ramp. Ramps, Ron, are pinball. The undisputed king of ramps, without a doubt, is Dennis Nordman.
    10:26
    This month, Dennis Nordman, let's talk about your ramps. Ron, what do you love about ramps? I like plastic, long, flowing ramps that do all kinds of crazy stuff. In general, there is plastic ramps and there are like metal habit trails.
    10:43
    No, a habit trail is something other than a ramp. A habit trail is like usually the stuff after the ramp, the ball coaster. Think Star Trek Next Generation when you launch the ball. That's a big habit trail. Okay, so we're talking a plastic ramp and then like a bend and a turn and then plastic return. And then we're talking a plastic entryway to the ramp and then a metal habit trail or a metal entrance and a metal habit trail or a metal entrance and a plastic habit trail. Wow, that's a lot of information right there. We are getting into the weeds here, Ron. Wow. I mean, most of the original ramps were just like just flat metal pieces that just it's just a ramp. You just go up it. Then they started using plastic.
    11:28
    Nowadays it's a combination. You have some metal, some plastic. You can do more with the plastic, though. You can make it do more things. John Papaduke, probably king of the plastic ramp. Yeah, just, yeah. Like World Cup soccer alone, the ramps in there are insane. My preference is always a metal ramp because I like to hear the shh-shh-shh noise, the shh of the ball, like, shinking? Is that a word? I don't think so. Up the ramp where it hits it and it goes shh, and you can hear it kind of grind down the habit trail. I love that. But when I'm playing the Steve Ritchie game, I want to have those plastic ramps. When you're playing the Dennis Nordman game, you want to have those plastic ramps. Think whitewater. Vacuum-formed plastic ramps. This is what we're getting into, folks. I hope you are parked on the side of the road or you're sitting down, because this is a wild episode. A wild episode of Ramp Action. Did you know on Whitewater, the ramp replacement kit, you know, if you want to replace all your ramps, it's like the most expensive one you can buy because there's more plastic, more ramps. Yeah, you basically have to buy a whole new game. Yeah, kind of. Let's dive in here. So Dennis Norman, he's from Columbus, Ohio, not Columbus, Georgia. That's from Tommy Boy. Oh, I never, never saw it.
    12:47
    Of course you didn't. That's an Adam Sandler movie, right? Oh, God. I don't really like Adam Sandler. Sorry. It's Chris Harley, man. It's Chris Harley. Oh, it's L. Yeah. Any other guy. And we're off to a frigging great start this month, Ron.
    13:04
    As with most people, Ron, when you discover pinball, you discover it when you're young. And it makes some sort of impact on your life that you're like, wow, that's kind of neat. And then you end up rediscovering it quite a few times throughout your life. Well, Dennis Norman says, I think the first pinball machine I ever saw, I was probably seven or eight. One of my father's friends had one, and I didn't play it very much. I just remember being fascinated by all the bright lights and things. That may even have been a flipperless game, and it was early to mid-50s. Very cool. That's a long time ago. And you've got a flipperless game. That's kind of an unusual thing to have. I mean, even a pinball machine nowadays is unusual to have, let alone a weird flipperless bingo game somewhere in a basement. That's pretty neat. Actually, even in the mid, let's see, mid-50s, you would have probably less than 10 years of games with flippers. Imagine. That's right. Yeah, so Humpty Huffy would have changed everything with the flippers, and we're talking probably a bingo of some sort. That could have been a pinball machine. Yeah, yeah, it could have been with the pop bumpers and stuff where you're doing mostly nudging, right? All nudging. Yeah. What we'll do is we'll do an episode on one of those pre-pinball pinball machines, if you will. So pre-war probably. Yeah, sometime. I just, it's hard to find sources because they didn't have podcasts when guys like Wayne Nions and stuff were doing, building games. It's hard to find the sources, but I'll dig a little deeper maybe sometime. Also, if I wanted to buy the Pinball Compendium for those old years, that's like $60. And I don't know if, I don't know if I really want to learn that much about them. Send your hate mail to silverballchronicles at gmail.com. Dennis didn't rediscover pinball until he was about 20 or 21 when he found a huge arcade in Sandusky, Ohio. Everybody, of course, knowing Sandusky, Ohio is the center of Callahan Auto Parts from Tommy Boy. Never saw it. Dennis went to Ohio State University where he studied industrial design.
    15:10
    As a project for his senior year, he designed a futuristic pinball cabinet, which he would use as an excuse to go play pinball and call it research.
    15:22
    He's a smart man. That summer, Dennis needed back surgery, and while he recovered, he built a full-size pinball cabinet. And it was designed to be made of fiberglass. That sounds pretty slick, doesn't it? Mm-hmm. It had an interesting shape, and it was unique in that it was on a pedestal. It didn't have four legs. Yeah, having a pedestal, having a pedestal is kind of unique. It's kind of, because when we think of a pinball, you know, machine, it has that very traditional, you know, four legs, looks like a coffin, got the thing on the top. That was one of the big concerns that people had when they heard Deep Root was changing the mixture, the design of the cabinet was, is it going to look like pinball? This does not sound like pinball, right? Well, Dennis had designed it so all the circuit boards and components would be housed in the pedestal. The play field level was about three or four inches lower than a regular pinball game at the time, but it had raised areas where you can rest your hands for the flipper buttons. His reason for making it lower is that so younger kids could see the play field a lot easier than on a regular pinball game. Hmm, neat. You know, he's in industrial design. He gets to kind of do something fun. He's trying to figure out what are the issues with pinball cabinetry, what are some of the problems that we could solve with pinball cabinetry. So this is this this might you know, it shows that he's a critical thinker, I think. Right. He's thinking about what are the issues? How can we fix those issues? How can make things different? Very, very cool. Eventually, he would show this cabinet designed to Schaefer Distributing in Columbus, and they thought it was pretty cool. So Schaefer Distributing at the time was one of the largest distributors in that sort of north, you know, western northeast kind of area. right? Dennis says, I put the cabinet in my van and drove from Columbus to Chicago and made a presentation at Bally Pinball Division in Bentonville, and he was then hired as a cabinet designer. This is the post-1981 boom. Yeah, well, we're at the beginning of the downturn. We are going to bring out some information here in a future episode, probably around the death of pinball, and we'll call it, you know, Bally or Bally Midway. But at this time, Bally is looking to try to shake things up a little bit. They're trying to reinvigorate things as that trend kind of happens on the downward side. So Dennis Nordman comes in as a cabinet designer, and he makes the most iconic and perfect pinball cabinet of all time. The Rapid Fire Cabinet. Ladies and gentlemen, you can blame Dennis Nordman for Centaur II, 8-Ball Deluxe LE, Mr. and Mrs. Pac-Man, and Rapid Fire. There are people who love that cabinet, so just to let you know. And the thing is, Rapid Fire was a direct ripoff of Hyper Ball. Valley knew that Williams was working on Hyper Ball, so they wanted to come up with their own version of Hyper Ball. So they came up with Rapid Fire, which if you've ever played that, it's basically like a combination pinball machine, video game type of, well, a pinball machine with video game elements. You have a physical cannon. You move around and fire at stuff like actual balls. What's better, Hyper Ball or Rapid Fire? I think I played Rapid Fire maybe once, but I played Hyper Ball a ton of times. Okay, so the jury is still out on it. Yeah, and Hyper Ball, I never knew what I was doing. Tune in later on, folks. We'll bring out Ron's review of Rapid Fire on a future episode. Yeah, but they thought Rapid Fire was going to be like the wave of the future, and it bombed. So they had a ton of cabinets left over. That's why they used them for all those LE versions that you just mentioned. Exactly. Dennis Nordman would say, and I quote, they had a lot of rapid fire cabinets left over. Oh, yeah.
    19:08
    This is around the time that Bally became Bally Midway. It was about a year or so that Dennis Nordman was there and the merger took place. And Dennis was laid off. Dennis was working with some redemption games after that. He had some ideas for a toy company in Chicago called, wait a second, Marvin Glass and Associates. You remember them? Yeah, George Gomez knows all about them. But once he was there for a short period of time, he was there for a cup of coffee in the big time, and he was laid off within a year. He then started at Gottlieb in Chicago and worked on submitting ideas for the video game division. Everybody was tossing money at video, and it didn't matter if you had a good idea or a bad idea, you got to build a video game. After a year, Gottlieb, which was owned by Columbia Pictures and then Coca-Cola after that, went through another sale to become Milestar, and Dennis was once again laid off. So he is having a hard go at the beginning of his career in pinball. Dennis made a drawing of a pinball game and submitted the idea to Bally. Dennis says, my theme at the time, it was called Ranger, based on the Army Rangers. That's right after the movie Rambo had come out. They liked it, and they hired me. Ron, you've seen Rambo. I've seen Rambo. Rambo, was that, so I was incredibly young. Actually, I might not have even been around when the first Rambo came out. Was it really influential? Because we see that the influence of Rambo, for some reason, in pinball pops up a lot. Yeah, I've seen several Rambo-inspired games. Even games like, what is it, I think it's Raven? Yeah, Raven. With the woman on there. She's like the female Rambo. This underlines the importance of relationships.
    21:02
    Dennis knew a lot of people at Bally from his time there, and as he had sort of worked around pinball in Chicago, he got to know people like Jim Patla, Greg Freres, Greg Kimick. They were, you know, he's been able to build those relationships. And even though he's only lasting a year at each one of these individual jobs, He's built strong, positive relationships with people there. Everything in life is about relationships. And, Ron, here's life lessons with Dave. Are you excited? Oh, my God. Is this a new segment that people will hate? It is. Okay. Always be nice. Do your best. Keep your friendships because you never know when you may need someone's help. build your personal brand and think about what you want people to say at your funeral and live today so that that comes true so in other words be nice to who you meet on the way up because you may meet them on the way down exactly literally it's the same thing okay but this is more positive and less sad okay this is the important thing that i think dennis got as he was a hard worker He was a smart guy, and he kept his nose clean, and he kept grinding, and people respected that. And he got to make a game, the greatest game of all time, Special Force. This is a combat military-themed Rambo ripoff. It's from September of 86. It's one of these Bally 6803 games, and we'll talk about that in a second. Sells 2,750 units, not very many. design, Dennis Dorgman. Art by Tony Ramuni, and we'll remember him from doing the art in Embryon. Black Knight. He's famous for Black Knight. Very, very interesting style of art. This is the sound by Neil Faulkner. Software by Raymond Merchant. Have you played Special Force? Oh yeah, of course I played it. It's a solid state game. I played almost every one of them. I have played a lot of Special Force. I had a friend of mine, the first time I ever sort of got into pinball, and I met a guy and he had some machines. One of the machines that he had was Special Force. Doesn't it have the missile thing? It does. Yeah, you hit a missile, and it does a little light show, and a missile comes and knocks a drop target down for you, which is pretty cool. They have these memory drop targets. It also has the nudgeable outlanes, which was really cool. And it's very green. Very, very green. Well, plastics, anyway, are very green because you're in the jungle. It's a really cool, it's kind of a cool game. Dennis would say that since this was his first game, Jim Patla did a lot to help him through it. He actually wired the whole game himself and hated every moment of it. That has to be the worst part about building a game. is running all those frigging wires, especially in this era. Dennis would say he knows almost nothing about electrical work or programming. He can change a light bulb and that's about it.
    24:14
    Dennis's strength is definitely design of a play field and interesting ideas and not necessarily doing the grunt work, if you will, or the really difficult, annoying, tedious tasks. Let's put it that way. The gameplay of this is particularly interesting. This is where the memory drop targets come in on the left side. So it has inline drop targets, very famous, a Bally staple.
    24:43
    And you have a second set of pinball, of flipper buttons on the side. And the extra flipper button, you can build up missiles by shooting a set of dangerous targets. and you build up your missiles and then you can shoot down these tanks, which are these drop targets, and those reveal a multiplier shot behind them. It's kind of neat. But it's also kind of lazy because you can set how many you get right out of the gate, how many missiles you get right out of the gate.
    25:14
    It also has two, they're memory drop targets. And what's the difference between a regular drop target and a memory drop target, Ron? Typically, it can control it being up or down and remember its state, hence memory targets. It has these cool bad guy drop targets. That's like Raven or the Scolari Brothers in Ghostbusters, where they've got, they kind of block shots on the right side. Let's talk about the crazy plunge ramp thing that's going on here on the right side. That's its patented name, by the way, crazy launch ramp plunge thing. I think that was what it was called in the flyer. I will include links to all of these, you know, in their show notes. Just go ahead and click in and take a look and search through IPDB in the show notes, and it'll show you the multi-level layered vacuum-formed ramp that's there. The coolest part about the plunge on this game is that when the ball is in the trough, everything is completely silent, and the lights are all off on the play field, and you hear like crickets, like jungle noises,
    26:29
    and then you can short plunge and catch the ball and do like a sneak attack. Or if you plunge the ball full plunge, it goes into the pop bumpers, which are shaped like, you know, Vietnamese huts or something.
    26:43
    It's theme integration, I think, at its finest. What do you think? I think we need to see the flyer. The next trend explodes with special force. The next trend is trademarked. They literally trademarked that phrase, so they must have thought that was going to be a big deal. I noticed that. I was going to bring that up. Special theme, special features, special earnings. Rockets and bombs explode with bursts of light and sound. Attack drop targets with rockets without using the ball. Helicopter funnel ramp. Ball can be taken hostage. Wow. Skill shots, free hostages, 2 million point escape bonus, multi-ball play. Yeah, the whole ball can be taken hostage thing. I know that that sounds pretty awesome, but basically what that is is it means you can lock a ball. But it sounds way better when you say it that way. Sounds way better. Marketing. Marketing is true. I want to play this now after reading this flyer. Be part of the next trend. Check out Special Force at your Bally Midway distributor today. Oh, I'm in. It's an irresistible force. Did you know it has factory-installed Mylar on key wear points? Free. No, it has manual free testing. Wow. So what is that? What are we talking about with these 6803s and their manual free testing? Probably just means because it has alphanumeric display so it can tell you what you're doing so you don't have to look at the manual. I'm assuming that's what it means. Yeah, the worst part about probably the 6803 cabinets, besides being made out of cardboard. Well, the worst thing about 6803s are the cabinets and the stupid number pad. So the number pad, I think, might be what they're talking about when it comes to testing, manual free testing. I actually think they're talking about this alphanumeric because it'll tell you what you're testing. So what is the keypad? Let's wind it back. What is that keypad? It's literally, it's a keypad that's inside the game. You can take it out, like, hold it in your hand. and use it. This is what you use to get into the menu. It's like a really crappy TV. To change the settings, you know, look at stuff. That's what you use. There's no, like, buttons or anything. Like, the older games, or most of the other games, they have buttons, like, inside the coin door, and you get into, like, a service menu. This thing, you use the pad. It's the wave of the future. The problem is that the pad doesn't work. You can't get into the service menu. Yeah, if you break the pad or it's the pad, it has those. it's like a plastic cover over those little buttons. You see those in those, like, when you buy those LED lights from China, those photo picture frames that have those, like, cheap little remotes. Like, once you wear that out, you're kind of toast. And also the cabinets are horrible. They are made out of paper mache. Yeah, yeah, like balsa wood. Cardboard. They fall apart easily. Plus, they did weird things with some of the cabinets with the shape and stuff. I'll mention around this time, when things kind of went downhill at Bally, they started to cost cut. And when 6803 came out, we're in an era of, for example, special force. The cabinet doesn't say special force on it. It just says generic Bally Midway art, or just says Bally Midway. Like where they used to have the squawk and talk board, then later they had the cheap squawk, it was called. so it costs less money. They also changed the coin door to just this massive, ugly, black slots in the top coin door. Yeah, they went from one of the probably most expensive, elegant, complicated coin doors to a much cheaper, simpler coin door. The worst part about the coin door is that on those sort of older Bally's, it had this very silver start button, right? You put your coins in, you push the start button. Well, what they've done is they've now put the start button on the left side, and it's a flipper button. So if you've got a bunch of, you know, coined up amount on that machine and you're playing a single player, you can literally bump that super easy and coin up multiple players. Super annoying. But the good thing is they saved so much money with all that, they were able to put those extra flipper buttons on the side for the missile function. This also had an alternate theme. In Germany, Germans, let's say, had a little bit of a holiday in the rest of Europe in the 1940s, in which they're not particularly proud of nowadays. And because of that, they tend to be very non-military pacifist, right? They try to avoid the use of military and violence in a lot of their entertainment. and, well, they decided to change that theme from Special Force to Special Force Girls. What's the difference between Special Force and Special Force Girls, Ron? I'm thinking there's a lot of attractive girls on the artwork. That's what I'm thinking. Yeah, I want to see this now. I've never heard of this before. You've never heard of this before? Special Force Girl. I've never seen any of the art for it. What they have done, Ron, is they have changed the back glass away from the original design, which is a guy with a knife, Rambo-looking fella, and then a military guy holding a, I don't know, what is that? You're an American.
    32:15
    M16? Sure. It's got like a helicopter and missiles. and then we've got two sort of cartoon ladies with not a lot of protection if they were to get shot at, but they got the military hats on. So other than that, very effective. And the other major difference is the flyers in German. Do you want to try to read this one, Ron? You mean the German flyers in German? Yes. Jetz verstart. I don't know what it says. Maybe it means first in design, first in something, I'm guessing. Oh, I think you're right. I think I'm right. First in design, first in price. Oh, okay. I think that's what that is. Yes, we remember from our Williams episode, Germany was a pinball hotbed. They bought, I would say, the majority of the export games would go to Germany. Yeah, they had a lot of sway. So if they wanted to have a non-violent, you know, women objectified theme, boy, oh, boy, they were getting it. Yeah, if they wanted different art, if they wanted lightning flippers, if they wanted stuff changed, they could get it done. They got it. Dennis would then move on to his next game fairly quickly. That would be Party Animal, which is the 1980s frat party theme from May of 87. It is a 6803, sells 2,250 units. This is art by Pat McMahon, sound by Michael Bartlow, and software, again, by Riemann Merchant. And this is the first of the Party Trilogy. What is the Party Trilogy? The Party Trilogy, which I assume we'll be going through all of them because they're all a dead storm. The Party Animal, Party Zone, Dr. Dude. Dr. Dude, who emails us at silverballchronicles at gmail.com quite regularly. I don't know if it's the Dr. Dude. I think it might just be a doctor. Steve Ritchie was the designer of a lot of firsts in pinball. If you go back to Steve Ritchie 1, which was our pilot episode, and that's a rough episode, by the way, folks. If you go back to Steve Ritchie 2 or our highest rated episode, Steve Ritchie 3, you will hear about all the firsts that Steve Ritchie did in pinball. The king of firsts. The king of flow. Well, you know, Dennis Nordman will not be outdone. So Party Animal was the first game with belching and the first game with a flushing toilet.
    34:51
    I love it. Congratulations, Dennis Nordman. You did it. Toilets are great in pinball. They've been on a lot of really good games. You did it, Dennis Nordman. Take that, Steve Ritchie. And there were two trans lights for Party Animal. There was a bar version and a home version. The bar version had the characters with beer steins, and they're hanging out on the back glass. The other one was more of a dad's root beer back glass, which was kind of more of a family center or at home version. Yeah, which is interesting. In 1987, they would even consider home sales or that it would be in a home. Yeah, that's odd that they would do that. The back glass is fun. Party animals. It is very fun. Yeah. Literally animals out partying. The party trilogy is all about fun and goofiness. And, yeah, over-the-top silly. Yeah. Right? The little details in the back glass are fantastic. All of that certainly has to come from kind of the quirkiness of Pat McMahon on, you know, all of his games kind of was a bit quirky. But you could tell that he could have a little bit of fun with this, and he went all in. What does the flyer say for this one? It's party animal. Let's party. Get the good times rolling this summer with Bally Midway's new party animal pinball. It also contains licensed music. Really? Oh, yeah. It's got, like, I think Louie Louie's in it. It got I wonder if the flyer says but it at least four or five songs When did Animal House come out Oh God 1978 Oh okay So then they not trying to piggyback on that but it might have had some influence I do like on their flyer it says Limited quantities available, act now before the party's over. And then it says, for a good time, call. And it's got the phone number.
    36:36
    Wow. Mini Jukebox. Okay, I said five, it's eight. Plays eight well-known party anthems. Not just songs, they're anthems. Well, this game was at a tournament I was playing at, and that's all I kept hearing. I didn't realize it actually played licensed music. I'm like, is that Louie Louie? It's like, yeah, it is. And then it would play another, like, Wipeout or something. I don't remember all the – but all well-known songs. Spell pig out and really get the party going. Players change tunes by hitting the jukebox targets. Multiple wild party sound effects. I don't know what that would be. Shooter Lane door prize gets players started. You know, it incorporates all the latest pinball engineering advancements. Yes, like paper mache cabinets and a horrible keypad. But it has cool ramps. It is a wild ride nonetheless. Let's just say that. Inline drop targets, as per Bally law. A cool jukebox. The jukebox toy is very neat. Sits kind of in the middle, in the back. It's got three stand-ups in front of it. But it's vacuum sealed, so it looks really cool. Very well done toy. It's not just a standout piece of plastic, which is cool. It has two side ramps. So the ramps aren't sort of front to back. This is Nordman's second major design. You know, he's worked with Patlet a few people. But this would be a serious no-no nowadays, where there's no ramps kind of from the flipper straight forward. There's two to the right. And I don't know if that would get through designs nowadays. I think people would crap all over that. Yeah, I think we need to have a more open mind and try different things. But that's just me. Let's talk about this flipper up here, this third flipper to those side ramps. Is there anything that when you look at that, you're like, huh, that looks familiar.
    38:27
    Well, it looks familiar to a lot of games. Well, this flipper, I think, looks a lot like the flipper that's in Avengers. It kind of sits up around the orbit. It floats in the middle of the play field. There's no post in front of it. It is part of the design, which is kind of cool. Avengers or Godzilla? Avengers, because it's not like you can't shoot around it. You know, when you're shooting up to that Avengers tower, and then on the left side is the Hulk shot. It's not positioned in exactly the same place, but you can see that you can't do something that hasn't been done before in pinball. And think about it. Ballets of this era, they really try to create an atmosphere. Like everything, there's even art on the apron that matches the theme, tons of plastic. The cheapest thing is probably to do the art. You got your in-house art team, let them go to town. This is probably one of Pat McMahon's best because he really had a lot of fun, I think, with this because he could kind of do whatever he wanted with, I would say, a lot of freedom. I'm looking at a koala bear. I believe that's a koala bear. And he's saying, good day, Mike. Of course he is. It looks like a lot of fun. I haven't played one. I know somebody in my area that has one, but I've never played one. I know a certain host of a podcast that really needs to go to some shows and play some games. It's bad. Yeah, I'm thinking I'm going to get to Pentastic, actually, speaking of that. I mean, for our listeners, how many times have you heard Dave like, oh, I haven't played that, I haven't played that, I haven't played that? But I'll tell you what, I have played some of the weirdest random stuff, though. So take that. Okay. let's jump into a really fun one here this is blackwater 100 yes blackwater 100 it's a motocross theme from march of 88 it's a 6803 it sells 3 000 units his largest seller to date now in this era kind of selling 3 000 units in in you know is is pretty good considering that you're not you know Williams. We're getting into kind of the upward swing, if you will, now in the late 80s. This is the art by Tony Ramuni, sound by Neil Faulkner, Dennis Nordman, and Greg Ferreres. That's interesting. They're doing the sounds, but we'll get into that in a minute. And Gary Oglesby on software. The license for Blackwater 100. Oh yeah, I forgot. It's actually a licensed theme, technically. It's not just motocross, and we just called it Blackwater 100. The Blackwater 100 is a motocross ATV race. It was held in Davis, West Virginia, and it was known for having a bunch of water crossing sections near Route 93. The uniqueness of this event were that people would get super close to the action in all of these water areas, and they were actually flipping around and splashing around and having a good time while these motocross bikes were going by in a dangerous fashion. They were called mud fleas. Super unsafe. If you want to think good old boys, this is basically a good old boys kind of event. I've been to events like this in my area, and they are a lot of fun. There's a lot of beer coolers, a lot of smoking. I'll include the video, YouTube video about the Blackwater 100. In fact, when these ATV and motocross guys get stuck in the mud, a lot of the people who are on the sidelines actually help them get out. Dennis drove to the Blackwater 100 in Virginia when he was living in Ohio. Dennis is a large motocross fan, drives his own motocross bike. Unfortunately, the event was canceled in 1993, And I'm assuming probably due to safety or the quality of the family environment. Does this seem like an entertaining weekend for Ron Hallett? Not something I'd probably go to.
    42:35
    But remember, I don't like people. Dennis and Greg were on sound. What's up with that? I know Greg Ferris would end up doing a lot of speech calls in games in the future. They did. They also, the two of them actually took some recording equipment to the Blackwater 100 motocross event, and they would record a lot of those sounds. Dennis would also bring his motocross bike to the Bally office. He would drive around, and they would record that sound to use in the machine. So those machines are not sort of synthetic, created noises of motocross bikes. Those are actually noises of Dennis Nordman driving around.
    43:20
    This is also another great first in pinball, but an actual, like, first this time, eh, Ron? A buy-in feature.
    43:30
    The worst. The worst? What's a buy-in feature? When your game's over, you can buy in for more money. Usually you can play like another ball. Keep that train running. Those are really popular in those Bally Williams wide bodies. The buy-in was a big deal during that time. In Blackwater 100, a buy-in can buy in anywhere from one to three extra heats, depending on an operator's setting. The player has 15 seconds after heat three to press the start button to continue. Pressing either green button cancels the buy-in. It has some unique code as well in this game. Typically, in pinball, you get one ball until it drains, and you do that three times. Blackwater 100 gives you three heats of at least three balls each. For each heat, three balls must be loaded into the starting gate, at which point you start the countdown and that begins. Have you ever played Blackwater 100? I have not. So you plunge three balls to the gate, and it's like the starting line, and then it does a countdown.
    44:40
    And what they don't tell you, and you just have to know this, there's actually like a skill shot, kind of. There's like you hit, I can't remember if it's the flipper button or one of the other buttons. It'll count down like three, two, one, start. And the closer you hit the button to when it starts, the more points you get. It's like a skill shot. When you look at Blackwater 100, you know there is a lot going on. It has the most plastic I think that has ever been in a game. Nothing compares to this. It's super impressive. It is super impressive. It also has arrows and yellow bits at the back of the play field and the front of the play field, which I think are the rules, which you had mentioned a moment ago, are a bit confusing. It also has the only instance of the phrase suck-in I've ever seen in a game. There you go. Another first for Dennis Nordman. It literally says suck-in on the play field. But it has a shot where the ball actually is on a ramp. It's on plastic on the freaking apron, like behind your flippers.
    45:44
    Have any other machines before this had so much on the apron? No. Like this is the apron itself. Someone can correct me on that, but I challenge you to correct me on this one. So this is like, they call it the arch or the apron. the part at the bottom where the ball kind of drains between the flippers and then goes down or into the trough down there. Basically, yeah, the metal or plastic part that covers all the stuff so you can't see it and the ball drains. This thing, what it's done is it's taken that basically unused real estate and actually put playfield elements on it, like actual things to do. It's almost like it has a flipper down. It has a flipper on it, yes. And you can shoot around it through a gate. It'll drop the ball into the in lanes on the left and right side. It has multiplier lights.
    46:45
    Like, it's almost like a game in itself. Check that out on IPDB. It's really, really interesting. I don't know if it's any good, but it's interesting. It's all right. The other thing that strikes me about this pin is all of the vacuum-formed ramps. So the ramps themselves are not, like, just a ramp. Like, it's all part of the pinball machine itself, and it's creating a world under glass. Where it looks like mountains and mud pits where motocross bikes are driving around them. They're all painted in quite a bit of detail. Oh, yeah. Right? It's not just a clear ramp. It's like blue, gray, brown colors. Yeah, if you want to talk about theme integration. This is something else. I'll have to look further in your notes, but I thought this was the last Bally before Williams bought him. So this was a heck of a way to go out. It was really cool. This era, and we'll bring this up maybe in another episode, this is where Bally was trying to be very different than everybody else. They figured they couldn't compete on things like code or build quality with Williams. So what do you do? You try to do something that's completely different. And I will say, as much as we put poo-poo the 6803 with the cabinet and the number pad, the one thing the 6803 could do, it could drive more lights than the other systems, the other manufacturer systems. So they would have a lot of computer-controlled lights on the game, tons of them. It was very pretty. Around this time, Bally Midway would also bring in a Dan Langlois. He's most known for doing, like, Black Belt, Heavy Metal Meltdown, a few games. and they were really off the wall when it came to design, flippers in all directions. It was very weird. Dennis Nordman is sort of of that same class. They tried to do things that were completely different to invigorate and stand out amongst the Gottliebs and the Williams of the time. All right. Looking at the flyer, mud, sweat, and tears.
    49:07
    Bally puts you out front. Bally puts you out in front with Blackwater 100. Don't get left behind. Add Blackwater 100 to your collection and watch your earnings accelerate. Brand new price per play strategy. Wonder what that meant. Wonder if that was a 50 center. Maybe. There's a great photo in the back here of two guys running through the mud. And one guy, his front end. He's not making it. His front end, his wheel on the front end is buried in this black and white photo, and he has fallen flat on his face. Thank God he's got a helmet, though. You know, motorcycles and pinball really seem to get along. If you go back to Evil Knievel, you've got No Fear, Blackwater 100, Harley Davidson. You know, it's the world's toughest race. It's not just about laps around a track. It's about a grueling course that takes the rider through swamps, rivers, mud, and more. Get ready for the ride of your life. And all those things are on the art, by the way. Every one of them. Red, yellow, green, go. With a motocross-style start, you get triple the action. Three balls rev up at the player-activated start gate to authentic dirt bike sounds. Feel the excitement of multi-level play field depicts actual race environment. Hair-raising turns, treacherous rocks, plus special test feature shot with fit flipper challenge. I take it that's the flipper on the apron. That's the weird one on the apron. It's your special test. Yeah, it's got like a raised upper play field kind of thing in the back with two flippers. If they made this today, the budget would be like $20,000. This thing is cool. I don't know how it plays. I'm sure it plays fine. It plays fine. It's probably got a bit of clunk, I'm sure. The other issue is it's got the valley flippers of the time, which are not the greatest. Yeah, they're a bit... Hmm. Sluggy? Squishy? Yeah, they're not snappy, let's put it that way. Yeah, we've been spoiled by the engineering at Stern, I think, recently with their quality of flippers. It's kind of ruined everything else. It's very cool. I think this got a lot of attention when it was launched in 1988.
    51:23
    Would you own one, Ron? Is this the 6803 that would be in your basement? No. There's only 168.03 that would be in my basement. Can you guess what it would be? Oh.
    51:34
    Hmm. Eight ball champ. She whizzed. Oh, of course. Yep. Great art on that one, too. Wait a minute. Your notes say it's the last Valley Midway game.
    51:45
    It does. Valley Midway was then sold to Williams to become Williams Valley Midway. but most people just sort of call it Bally Williams. So for the transition to Williams Dennis says when we came into work one morning, I wasn't there my wife said we've been sold to Williams. Some of you will be let go. So that was kind of a nerve wracking time. And if you're wondering why his wife said we've been sold to Williams, his wife was actually a secretary at Bally. Yes, they both had met at Bally. The Bally designers really struggled for a while in this new model, there was a lot of competition between the Bally designers and the Williams designers. It was like battle lines were drawn. In fact, they had a lot of trouble even getting stuff done in the model shop or getting prototypes done in the prototype shop. Eventually, they realized that the Bally designers could do a great job, and eventually the pressure stopped with the silly competition that would happen. That doesn't sound like a whole lot of fun, Ron. No, because the Valley guys were kind of the outsiders. They got bought by Williams, though. They were the number two team. Yeah, because they had to prove themselves. That's why a lot of them know, like, when they would have the games, it would be under the Valley logo instead of the Williams logo, like a lot of the Valley guys. Yeah, the Williams guys didn't want them to have that logo name, right? So they'd play these little games back and forth. Yeah, like Steve Ritchie would not do a Valley, Like when they took him over. Every Steve Ritchie game is a Williams game from that era. A little trivia there. Unlike some of the other designers who would do, like, obviously Pat Waller did Bally games. He did Williams games. I mean, it's the same company. Dennis Nordman's breakout hit was the first release that he had at the new Bally Williams. That was Elvira and the Party Monsters. This is from September of 1989. It sells 4,000 units, so his biggest seller yet. The design by Dennis Nordman and his mentor Jim Patla. Art by Greg Freres. Sound and music by the legend Chris Granner. And software by Mark Panaccio. This is a licensed theme. It is. Elvira. Cassandra Peterson is an American actress, writer, and singer. She's best known for portraying the horror hostess Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. She gained a lot of fame in Los Angeles on a television station, KHJ-TV, wearing a revealing black gothic cleavage-enhancing gown. She would host Elvira's Movie Macabre, which was a weekly B-movie presentation where they would sort of mock the show in between commercial breaks. Yeah, they showed bad movie, and then she, during breaks in the movie, would come on and make comments. This seems right up your alley. Up my alley? Well, B-movies are always up my alley, yes. Were you aware of Elvira? Yeah, I was aware of Elvira. I saw some clips of the show, but I was more aware of her being Elvira. She's famous for being Elvira. I was not particularly aware of who Elvira was because I'm a generation younger than you. But for some reason, she was always on the periphery of something. For some reason, I kind of knew who she was, although I didn't know the details of who. I was like, oh, that's Elvira. But I didn't know why it mattered. I didn't know who. I didn't know what she did. I just sort of knew that for some reason. And I think it's because she was, like, very high in pop culture, like on T-shirts in stores sometimes, or you'd see her in, like, a random silly thing. This was Williams' first licensed theme in a long while, and it was Roger Sharp's idea. None of the Williams team were interested in touching the Elvira licensed. They all had other projects on the go at the time. Roger would bring this up to the Valley team, and Dennis jumped on the opportunity. Working with somebody like Cassandra Peterson must have been pretty daunting, right? Like, working with a movie star or a television star seems like it might be difficult. Well, according to Chris Granner, it wasn't. He said she is an exception to the rule. She was super flexible, super easy, as long as it was fun and had plenty of room for that double entendre humor. That is everything about Elvira. As long as we presented to her and our designers a platform for all that to come out and flower. She saw very quickly what we were after. She was our partner. She was one of our beloved licensed partners. She was all in. Mm-hmm. Did you know that Steve Ritchie worked on Elvira and the Party Monsters? Yes, I did. Now it's time for story time with Ron. Yes, Dennis Dorman hadn't ridden any dirt bikes since college. He found out that Steve and Mark Ritchie had bikes, and they went down to a riding area in southern Illinois. Dennis says, so we were riding and we came out of the woods onto this nice little dirt road and there was about four of us. I was showing off and I blew past Mark. I was concentrating on Mark and not the road. The road made a sharp right turn. I hit some rough stuff off to the side of the road and flew over the bars and all I could remember is a loud noise. I can remember just kind of laying there on my side and looked down at my left leg. My femur was bent in a V-shape, and I thought, oh, man, I really screwed up now. Oh. Ugh. You ever break a bone, Ron? Not yet. Oh, actually, no. Actually, yeah, I did. I broke my little finger. That's not this. No, I didn't have bones protruding out of my, yeah. Yeah. Ugh. Just thinking about that. Ugh. Dennis had spent three months in hospital, and he was just about to finish up the Elvira Whitewood. So during the three months, three months that Dennis was in hospital, Steve Ritchie, Mark Reggie, and Jim Patla would refine a few items and help the game through production. Now, if you look at the art on the back glass, there are several broken bones on the barbecue. Those are representative of the broken femur that Dennis had. Ouch. Ouch, ouch, ouch. This has to have a classic flyer. Like, come on. It's got to. monstrous pinball, you're going to have a ball. Elvira and the Party Monsters. This is a four-page flyer. This is, they wanted to make sure that they were able to get Elvira on this flyer as much as possible. And they did. They definitely did. When they named a game after me, it had to be built.
    58:36
    Tons of double entendres in this game. I told the boys that Bally's Elvira had to be good, and it is. Players can't keep their hands off my new game. Everywhere you look, big, beautiful features beg for attention. Pinball has never been so good or so satisfying. Believe me, everybody scores big with Elvira and the Party Monsters. The profits and the action begin with my name. Oh, my. There is a lot to read on this flyer. It is basically, it is exactly the same thing that you just read over and over again with a lot of, like, oh, my.
    59:09
    Right? It says Elvira is no cheap date because they went from a quarter to 50 cents on this game. Players will pay to play with me. It takes more than a quarter to turn me on. One chance to party with yours cruelly costs 50 cents, and nobody argues. Players who come back for more get a deal. Two rounds with me cost 75 cents, and players who really have stamina can play three for a dollar. Oh, my.
    59:33
    Yeah, so that's the flyer. We can't read any more of these. We might get in trouble. Yeah. Oh, my. I guess we'll talk about the art here let's talk about the art let's go to these pictures of the back glass and stuff here so we can focus, oh my, okay alright, so we had mentioned in the last episode about Smarky, Smarky being Elvira or Cassandra Peterson's husband written on the barbecue tongs that she has on the barbecue, she actually has I Love Smarky on it. Smarky would actually pass away not a couple of years ago. So you can see that those bits and pieces of their love through all three of her games. Now she's on a barbecue on the backlash. She's barbecuing. Dennis Nordman is right over her shoulder. Yes, Dennis Nordman is the werewolf because he's got that sort of famous Dennis Nordman beard. Dennis has a fantastic beard, doesn't he? He does. You're Italian. You probably have a great beard. I can. I get beard envy. I got this. My ancestors, British, clean-shaven gentlemen, so I don't have the heritage that somebody of your ilk would have with a fantastic beard. So I get beard envy sometimes. I believe Jim Pat was Dracula because that looks like Jim Pat led to me. Yeah, they all have sort of a stylized version. It's a fun back glass. There's lots of hidden little bits and pieces that Greg Freres has put into this back glass, little things written on Norman's broken ribs on the barbecue, for example,
    61:24
    Jim's frog legs on the barbecue there in the background. You've got the gravestone pizza, dig it. Like there's lots of things in there that you can really kind of pull out. It's a very fun, interesting backlash.
    61:39
    Definitely a Greg Ferreira's artistic piece. Oh, yes. The play field, on the other hand, I'm not a big fan of the art on the play field. It's fine. It's fine, but it just, I don't know, it's too many colors maybe. Too much Elvira? She's on there like a ton. At the bottom, the play again, shoot again thing is almost like a magic crystal ball.
    62:11
    It has the multipliers. It's got Elvira. You go up a little further. It's a very fanny layout. All the shots are left to right. Big, long plastic ramp. This ramp is interesting because it does this kind of – in the middle of the ramp that returns to the right side, it zigs and it zags, and then it comes down, and it almost looks like a water slide with a dead guy on it, which is – it just bleeds theme. Sorry about the pun there. And then it goes down and then back up. So the ball does like, and that'll become a really, you know, he did that in Blackwater 100, but it'll really become a staple of the ramp design that Dennis Nordman does. He loves to have ramps that go, do a deep, a steep downward and then a back up. It's not just straight. It's kind of fun. One of the mechs that really stands out is in the center of the play field where you shoot it and it rotates. What the heck is that called? It rotates? Yeah, this little thing. What is this called? I thought they were just targets. Yeah, they're targets, but doesn't it move at the top?
    63:21
    Maybe it doesn't. I know. This had the deal where it's got a skull where you lock balls, and his eyes are green, but they were originally supposed to be red, and there was a whole story behind that. It was something like in the south or something. The red just wasn't like you couldn't do the red, so they made it green. There was some bizarre reason. When it comes to gameplay, I have played a lot of this game. This is a fun little game. It's like a bridge between kind of that System 11 and WPC. It's got like a little bit of extra layer of rules. It's got some fun speech. Lots of flashers. Yeah, it's really kind of elevating the game. So they've moved from the 6803 board set. They've moved into System 11. Because that's what Williams was using when they got taken over. Yeah. So now they're able to sort of get another layer of exciting kind of different. And you can really see the difference between, OK, the original 6803 and what the leadership at Williams would allow them to do where they couldn't do it. Maybe so much on the balance. The flippers are way better. That's for sure. Way better. Now, the competition would continue. Now, they were able to do their prototypes and stuff in the lab. and they were given a little more leeway, but there was still a lot of competition. Some of that competition came down to when your machine was released, and there's sometimes I think you don't want a pin to be released. One of those times is probably around a Steve Ritchie game. The other one is you don't want your game released somewhere around a Pat Lawler game. Ward Pemberton, you'll know him, of course, from Fathom, and one of my favorites, Mousing Around, and Gilligan's Island. Elvira and the Party Monsters released just before Whirlwind, the same time within a few months of each other. There was intense competition. Can you imagine that you're kind of positioning your game and you want to do it, and you're getting your best seller of 4,000 units with Elvira. You've got a license. It's got this teenager-inducing double entendre stuff. And then swinging in right behind you is Pat Lawler's Whirlwind, which is probably, what, the best System 11? And the funny thing is, in today's market, that would be seen as the opposite. Like a virus with a license, Whirlwind would probably sell nothing because it had no license. Yeah, how true is that? So the competition continues. We're going to go into Dr. Dude and his excellent Ray. This is a malpractice party game. I'll practice party feet. August of 1990, it is a System 11. It sells 3,983. Dennis Nordman on the design. Art by Greg Freres again. Chris Granter on sound and music. Bill Futzenruder on software. You always say his name right, but you can't say some of the easier ones right. It's crazy. I don't know what that is.
    66:26
    This was the last System 11. And it is also the second in the party trilogy. Yeah. And actually, at the very end of the run, the Dr. Dudes, there are WPC Dr. Dudes at the end of the run. This is Dennis Nordman's first game released at the new Bally Williams. But he had been working on this game prior to Elvira when he was at Midway before the purchase. They still hadn't sorted out some of the names just yet with the whole Bally Midway Williams thing, but eventually they would release it. This game, Ron, was going to be Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The spinning disc was going to be a bad guy machine to destroy.
    67:14
    Interesting. Management thought that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was too childish, and they did not pursue the license any. Fail. That was a bad idea. It sells 3,983 units. If it had been Ninja Turtles, they probably would have sold more, right? They would have sold more. Well, somebody did pick up the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles license. Yeah, because they picked up every license. And how many units do you think they sold? I don't know. How many? Do you think they sold more because they had the license? 19. Yeah. Yeah, that's a yeah.
    67:51
    No, they sold less. Oh. They sold 3,750 units. So what do I know? If you want Ron to consult with you on licensing, send us an email at silverballchronicles at gmail.com. But I'm actually quite surprised at that. I don't know if that has to do with the fact that it's Data East versus a Bally Williams thing, where Bally Williams tend to sell more machines anyway. That's true. I do think, though, if Bally Williams had done Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, they would have sold another thousand units for sure. This theme was Greg Ferreira's idea. Greg says, Dr. Dude was me fulfilling my Mad Magazine fantasy. We wrote the script and had lots of fun. Good old Mad Magazine. We had spoke before about Greg's love for art in general. You can go back to our Bally art episode. There's two of them there called Moving Units. In there, we spoke about Greg Ferreres and how he would often model and use Polaroid pictures to be able to make sure that he got the perspective correct on all of his photos. Well, Doug Watson actually modeled for Dr. Dude's hand on the back glass, kind of the way he's positioned.
    69:12
    He's holding the stick. It's a tongue depressor. Yeah. That's a very fancy way. The stick is probably not the best way to say that, I guess. This is very comic book-y, very over the top. Oh, yeah. It might have the most text of any Backglass ever. There's a whole story going on on the Backglass. Yep. They didn't just make a flyer like Fathom to make a comic. The whole story is there. Basically, this guy, he's a nerd, he's a geek. Then he, what does he do? He experiments on himself. He makes the excellent ray, gets hit with the excellent ray, and he becomes Dr. Dude. the coolest doctor around. The whole nerd culture is very different nowadays than it certainly was in the 1980s. It's like not a bad thing to be a nerdy anymore. Yeah, being a nerd now is cool. In 1990, it was not cool. It was like the worst possible thing that you could be. And I find that kind of funny, right? Because now it's like pretty much everybody's playing video games in one way or another or board games or whatever. But that was like the weird thing to do back then. Yeah, your comic book movies made billions of dollars. Yeah, you wanted to be the cool guy. You didn't want to be the nerd. And this is a perfect example of that culture personified. The doctor says, get hip, earn respect, be the envy of your friends. That's sad. That's actually really sad. Only Dr. Dude has all the right ingredients for success. I should talk, because he kind of talks like a bro surfer guy. Yeah, do the bro. Start again and do it with the bro. Only Dr. Dude is all the right ingredients for success. With the multiple value rewards of the bag of tricks, Grand Champion High Score today, Reflex Targets and 1,000,000 point Reflex 1-2-3 sequences. You get that, dude? Whoa. That's excellent. Players will quickly discover the excitement of gaining a heart of rock and roll, magnetic personality, and gift to Gab. They take a spin in the molecular mix master to activate the excellent ray. Oh, yeah. You can do that voice all day. All day. Yeah. Love it. That's literally what he sounds like in the game. Because that's the way you wanted to sound. Yep. You didn't want to sound like Ron. No, you're going to need to change. I want to be cool, man. Scoring punch for profit power. This is a ramp excitement frenzy here. We're shooting behind the backboard. We got one ramp that lands in the upper playfield, like it just dead-end ends in the upper playfield, with a magnet in the middle of it. And then that goes to a habit trail down to the other side if you don't flip. You know, only Dr. Dude and his excellent array will keep players coming back for more. With operator earnings, they're just what the doctor ordered, dude.
    72:05
    You know, and it's got the excellent, the Mixmaster, which is basically, it's just a spinning disc. Yeah. But, you know, from this game on, any game that has something similar, most players will just say, oh, look, it's a Mixmaster. They actually pulled it off. It's kind of fun. It's kind of unique. It is a goofy, funny game. It's funny and fun enough to not be silly.
    72:30
    It's silly. I don't know. Once you get too silly, once you get too silly, you're off in the weeds and you can't do it. But I don't think it's silly. I just think it goofy enough It technically called a molecular mix master It literally just a spinning disc You hit it up there You hit a long another long plastic ramp You go into the Mixmaster, which has got some, it's got like a, looks like a phone handset cord thing plugged into it. It's supposed to be, like, electrified, even though it isn't. It's just for look. It's science, Ron. You've got to have these little curly wires. I think this is the kind of thing that's missing in a lot of newer games. If you look at the Mixmaster, like it has all these cables that obviously aren't connected to anything going to it to make it look like it's, you know, science-y type stuff. Like Metallica, originally his helmet was supposed to have one of these same type of cords coming out of it because he was getting electrified, but it was cut. If you really want to picture what this Mixmaster looks like, is it's almost like Dennis Nordman reused this in Pirates of the Caribbean with Stern. It didn't almost reuse it. He completely reused it.
    73:41
    When we first saw the game back when it came out, it was like, oh, the Mixmaster. It made a return. Yeah, can't come up with new ideas, can you? Hey, if it's a good idea, I say reuse it. Yeah, totally. It's also very similar to the Tron spinning disc.
    73:55
    Very cool. It's a neat little toy. I think it's those things that set games apart as being unique, when they've got something that's completely kind of weird and different.
    74:09
    Hey, Pinheads. When I'm not doing this podcast, I'm Dave, the financial advice guy. In a recent survey, we found that 70% of those polled were concerned about their retirement strategy. Canadians have a number of concerns when looking out over the next 15 years. Professional financial advice is key to helping you through a variety of challenges, ranging from inflation, market volatility, and determining how to maximize your retirement income in the safest, most effective, and tax-efficient way. Today's economy requires an experienced hand and a personalized plan. Don't take my word for it. Just listen to Nordman. I am the Nordman, and I approve of Dennis Financial's investment and insurance advice. Their opinions on vacuum form grants are great, too. If you're looking for a more human dimension to your financial advice, Dennis Financial Inc. has you covered with advisors licensed in most Canadian provinces. Contact me via email at david at dennisfinancial.net for a free rate quote and a copy of our value of advice e-book. Or check out dennisfinancial.ca. Insurance solutions provided by Dennis Financial Inc., Canadian residents only.
    75:23
    And like we said, it has like the most text in any game ever in the artwork. It's written all over the play field. It's like a comic book threw up all over the play field. One thing that's always broken on this is, like, the nerdy workout guy next to the weird teeth. No, he's not a nerd. He's a jock. Oh, he's a jock. Okay. He's a jock. Oh, yeah. You got the gift of gab. It's one of those you got to do things in a certain order. You got to get your gift of gab. You got to get your heart to rock and roll. Is that what it's called? I'm thinking of a Huey Lewis song.
    76:01
    I think it's called The Heart of Rock and Roll. You got to do all these different tasks, and you got to go up into the mix master. You get multi-ball. You got to go, I think, into the mix master again, and then there's a jackpot shot. I'm trying to remember all the different things you got to do. But even the habit trail in it is all curvy and kind of crazy. It's not like a straight-looking habit trail.
    76:24
    Yeah, it doesn't just go straight. No, not at that. And it's not like big, huge, sweeping things on the left side. It's like it just wiggles really quickly on the left side. Just little details like that. I appreciate it. Dennis Nordman is developing his style, right? He's in five games now. He's really sort of developing his style, his fingerprint, and it is kind of the fun, not-too-serious kind of gameplay with some wiggles and wobbles on his habit trails and ramps. He's going to change his style in a few games. You'll see with Dennis, all his games are not the same. They're different eras. Once we get through this, once we get to Whitewater, we're going to get into what I call the flow era. Party Zone was the next game. That is a party theme. This is the final in the party, quote-unquote, party trilogy. August of 91, this is a WPC dot matrix game, the first dot matrix game that Dennis would do. He's still sub 4,000 in his production. So he's 3,862 units. He teams up again with Greg Ferreres and Jerry Pinsler. This is the only game that he would work on. The mechanics were by Zofia Ryan and Wynn Schilling. And Zofia Ryan over at American Pinball at the moment, she's best well known as being an awesome engineer at Bally Williams, doing things like the Time Expander in Doctor Who, a lot of the mechanics on Junkyard. Sound and Music by Dan Forden. software by Jim Strombolis and Mike Boone. Now we're getting silly. Party Zone is silly. It's very silly. I like it. Well, Greg Ferreira says, Williams was even higher than high in creativity.
    78:07
    They brought all the art teams together. We could do almost anything we wanted, working together and working competitively. With Dennis, we didn't want to be serious. We wanted to be fun and have fun. Elvira, Dr. Dude, and Party Zone. You can see that in the work. Yeah, if you look at Steve Ritchie, he was really like testosterone, music, you know, loud, fast. You look at Pat Lawler, he was very whimsical, right? He was some sort of amazing toy, fairly child or family friendly. And you got Greg Freres and Dennis Nordman working together, and they wanted to be something completely different. They just wanted to be fun. But unfortunately, we're getting into silly now. I like silly. According to Greg Ferris, when Star Trek The Next Generation happened, Steve Ritchie came up to him and said, Greg, Star Trek, are you familiar with it? Are you a fan?
    79:10
    And Greg said, yeah, I'm a fan. And Steve said, good, I want to work with you, but I don't want any of that funny stuff on my game. Dr. Dude, Party Zone, none of that funny stuff. And Greg said, don't worry, Steve, Star Trek is not very funny. There's an example. They were known as the fun, silly guys by this point. That was their niche. The thing is, Greg Ferreris also did Fathom, probably some of the greatest pinball art that has ever been done, and none of that was silly or funny. Yeah, so true. That was basically a guy getting pulled under the water and drowned by mermaids. The standout part here in this game is not necessarily something like the molecular mix master. Now, with Party Zone, we're getting away from kind of these crazy mechanicals, and we're moving into some sculpts. Yeah, this has Captain Bizarre. And Captain Bizarre is what? He's a head. He's the guy that talks you through the game. He's a head right in the center of the play field. He's got like a weird helmet on, safety goggles. Yep. He's like a pilot. And his mouth moves up and down, and he talks to you. Plus, this also has, if you remember Party Animals, where it had all like, what was it, eight different songs. This has, what does it have? It's got three or four, but you can select them. Pinball Wizard's one of them. And this guy, I think Chicken Dance is another one. I'm trying to remember all the different songs. Ugh. Wow, not a fan? I love Silly. It's got one of my favorite, Supersonic. The Supersonic Robotic Comic. Just the name alone.
    80:57
    The Supersonic Robotic Comic. There's a dancing crash test dummy. He's on a little rod and just bounces up and down. Jerry Pinsler, he's the guy that did all of these sculpts, all these very fancy sculpts. That was the only thing he's ever done in pinball were these amazing sculpts. You can check these out on IPDB. They're all connected to coils in one way or another, so they all kind of move and dance. He's got crazy ramps, but there's no real crazy mech in this game. Sort of he used that kind of in the last one. But what he loses in mechs, he gains in character. I'm like, look at that picture of the supersonic robotic comic. He's not funny. He's fast.
    81:43
    And he sits in the backboard. Yep. And he's like a 1950s metal robot with those nose glasses. Like the mustache nose glasses, yeah. Yeah. And he tells jokes that only Captain Bizarre can understand because he talks like.
    82:04
    That's literally what he sounds like. Perfect. The left ramp has a huge opening. You cannot miss that ramp. The only issue with the game is most of the game is just hitting that ramp repeatedly. Just over and over and over. But still, for atmosphere and silliness, it's not a big game. That ramp goes through the backboard. It comes back around. It does a loop. 360 loop, yeah. It comes back down around to the flipper. It is a serious ramp. There's no joking with that ramp. Crazy art. in the Cosmic Cottage. Don't forget that. Yes. There's a ramp on the right side. When those ramps both get down towards the flipper, they don't just sort of drop down on the in-lane or out-lane. They do this like, almost like the shape of the letter G, right? They kind of like swing around and then drop down, which is kind of unique. Unfortunately, one of the bummers of it is the ramp on the right side is from a vertical upkicker. so you don't get to shoot a ramp and it come around. You've got to shoot it and it stops, and then it pops it up onto a wire form and then down onto the ramp. So that's kind of a bummer because you want it. I don't know. I always want to shoot ramps. I don't like when there's vertical up-kickers to ramps. I find that kind of boring. And it's got the apron, all kinds of custom art on it for matching the theme. Let's see. What does the flyer say about this? You are now entering the party zone. But how is this going to increase my earnings, you may ask? I'll tell you how. Big bang, big bucks.
    83:47
    Yeah, I think that's like the jackpot shot or whatever it is, the big bang. When it's time to party, there's no better place than Bally's Party Zone for Midway Manufacturing Company. Players will have no problem with this guest list, none other than the party animals, party monsters, and party dudes. So they're all in this game. They're including Elvira's Party Monsters. And Party Animal Heritage. And the Party Do's from Dr. Do. They're all here. Once the gang arrives at the Cosmic Cottage, it's a happy hour multi-ball party where players can collect multiple jackpots and shoot for the ultimate big bang. Jimi Hendrix's Purple Haze creates the mood. Oh, yeah, Purple Haze is another one of the songs. Playfield lighting pulses red. A snonic boom shakes the playfield, and players win over 20 million points. Wow. 20 million. Captain Bizarre turns heads and profits. I don't know. I've played this game twice, and I thought it was fun, but I can almost guarantee if this was in your collection, it would just start to grain. Oh, yeah, I would never own it. But I think for a location, definitely. Definitely. How can you turn down the supersonic robotic comic? I never get tired of saying that.
    85:09
    Just the way it says it in the game, too. It's the supersonic robotic comic! This was Dennis Nordman's first DMD game as well. I think when you start to get into this DMD era, it really significantly changes the way you can design a game because you've got this extra level of stuff or information you can relay to the player. How did it influence Dennis Nordman? Well, Dennis says, nope, I just let the dot matrix guys do what they wanted to do. There you go. We had mentioned this before, that Dennis is like, I'll design the play field, I'll do all that stuff. And then he just, he gives it to Greg and Greg makes a game. Well, he gives him the art. Yeah, exactly. He'll really design whatever it is. He'll take it and sort of put it together on the play field, and then he'll give it to somebody else and they'll wire it. Right? He's really hands off. You had mentioned that we start moving into different eras when it comes to Dennis Nordman. We are now going to begin the Flow Era. The Flow Era. It's almost like Steve Richie, you think you can make flowy games? Nah, I'm going to one-up you. I'm going to make even more flow. Whitewater is his first game in the Flow Era. It is a myth and legend sports theme. January of 1993, it is a WPC Flictronics 2. It sells 7,008 units. This is almost double the unit sales of Dennis' highest game, Elvira and the Party Monsters. John Yousey does the art. Mechanics by Wynn Schilling. Sound and music by Chris Granner. And software by Mike Boone. Now, this is also a Williams title. Yeah, it's a Williams title. Not a Bally title. Yep. still don't really know what the difference between somebody using it and not is. Besides Steve Ritchie, I have no idea. I think we talked about that one of our previous episodes. There's something to do with themes, too. If it had a lot of attractive women in it and stuff, it would always be a bally. You know, there were actual caveats they had, like what was the theme, and that would also sometimes determine whether it was a bally or a Williams. Whitewater is an interesting theme because Dennis Norman's like a motocross guy. He's like an, you know, we call that like X Games or back in the day it used to be called like Extreme. But Dennis said, I never did whitewater rafting, but I just thought it'd be an exciting theme. So he convinced management that it would be good. The weird thing is it has Bigfoot in it. I don't think of Bigfoot typically when I think of whitewater rafting, but he's in there. This has some serious ramps, and we'll get to that in a second. Oh, it's incredible. But there's like one mech of basically a Bigfoot Yeti-looking dude. Yep. And he rotates left and right on the top in the middle of those kind of upper rings. His head can spin 360, and he holds a diverter, which moves. And he's smiling all creepy-like. Yep, because it's Dennis Nordman. It is, in fact, Dennis Nordman. He's got Dennis Nordman's sort of like mustache, and he has this huge, fun smile, right? Dennis Norman's a tall guy, so they kind of modeled it after him. They didn't kind of. It is him.
    88:21
    And you also mentioned, like, how does Bigfoot fit into whitewater rafting? Well, Dennis says, I remember going to the library and getting a lot of books on whitewater rafting and learning all about it so I could get all the terminology right and make it seem like a real rafting experience. That's where I got the idea for Bigfoot. And one of the books I read, it mentioned there was a river in Washington State with a legend that Bigfoot comes out at night and steals all the rafter supplies. So that's how I got the idea for the Bigfoot character in the game. There you go. Mystery solved.
    88:54
    On the flyer this time. Whitewater, go with the flow. Yep. This is also unique in that the title of the game is not on the backless. Did you ever notice that? I have never noticed that. It's not on the backless because the game comes with a topper. It's nothing you had a patch for before. It came with the game. And the thing is, it's an animated topper. It has like this special foil that gives this waterfall effect. And it's like uncopyable. It's like a Stradivarius. You know, like you can't get the wood to make a Stradivarius anymore. You can't get however they made this foil. It can't be done or it just doesn't exist anymore. The thing that they did with this topper is something that's called a negative image. and that's what creates that weird image color twinkling thing that it does. It's really, really complicated, and they tried to make it as simple as they could, and it was Greg Freris who convinced Dennis to do this type of topper. There's a whole explanation on IPDB to the ins and outs of this, but I'll just pull out kind of the basics, which is this complicated process. What they do is they print layers, and the various layers are designed to be peeled off. And that kind of makes the image shine under the light. But because the layers are different layers, it sheens differently. And for 20 years now, people have been trying to do repros with that topper, and they just can't get it right. They just can't get it right. They've never been able to replicate it. So if you are getting a whitewater, it better have the topper. Better have it. Because you're not going to get one. So let's, when it comes to ramps, we're in a totally different sphere now, right? So the craziest vacuum-formed ramps I think that Dennis Nordman did was probably Blackwater 100. Yeah, you can't beat Blackwater 100, but for just sheer, on a Williams game, amount of plastic, you can't beat this. Blackwater 100, they were mountains. They looked like mountains. They were just everywhere. This thing is literally a mountain. It is a crazy vacuum-formed ramp that then has plastic ramps that the ball travels on kind of interweaved around within it. Yeah, if I remember the ramp kit, I think it's six separate ramps, like six separate plastic pieces. It also has a custom apron that it's slanted down to accommodate the one ramp. It's like a custom. Oh, put the ramp on the left side. Yeah, it's a custom apron. You can't just use a regular apron with white water. It's a custom apron. So you plunge the ball. It goes up a wire form and, like, basically into the mountain. Yeah, well, did we mention it's a bi-level play field? Did we mention that? I guess we should, yeah. Because this is a piece of playfield that is cut out and mounted on top of the other playfield. And then the plastic bits of the mountain kind of go around it to give it the illusion that it is, I guess, a whitewater rafting adventure. But it doesn't take up the whole top, but it takes up like the upper right-hand section. And that's where Bigfoot sits. It's almost like two-thirds at the top. Yeah, with his diverter. And you actually plunge up to this upper playfield. And then you can either hit it in the whirlpool, or you can hit it in the, they all have names too, the ramps. Like the Spine Chiller, the whatever. I can never remember which ones are which. But there's the crazy one on the left that's literally, it goes up and down, looks like a roller coaster. Is that called Disaster Drop? That's the thing. They have all these names, and I always get confused about which one is which. They all have signs written on them somewhere as to what part they are. but you plunge up to the third flipper on the top playfield, and you can let it drain to the right flipper. You can flip late and catch that sort of the ramp on the left side. I want to talk about that in a second. Or you shoot early, and you get kind of the inside ramp on the upper playfield as well, and those are kind of up where Bigfoot sits. So this ramp on the left side, it goes away up, and then it takes two wavy drops, just like a whitewater raft. One of those drops is very, very unique. The ball comes down, it goes up the ramp, and then it goes, tink, off the glass, and then back onto the ramp, down to your flipper, where it does one of these G-shaped swings. Not on every game it doesn't hit the glass, but on most of them it does, to the point where they actually had a, they had like a bulletin, a service bulletin, saying like, yes, this is normal, don't worry about it. It's really cool that it tinks against the glass like that because it's a thing that is unique and interesting. It doesn't take thousands of dollars to make it work, but it's incredibly effective and exciting when you see it. Very, very cool. It also has a whirlpool shot, which is like another one of those kind of goes around a toilet bowl kind of thing, right? And it goes down into the side. It's a funnel. But, yes, you can call it a toilet bowl.
    94:19
    How did Dennis Nordman design these ramps? How do you do this on drafting paper? Well, this is where Dennis sort of started using, and really to a higher level than he had used before, something called foam core. Dennis says, the hardest thing to do is figure out what toys you want to incorporate, where to put them, how to make everything fit, and make your shot smooth. Some just aren't smooth, but after a while, you have experience for what works and what doesn't work. It doesn't always work the way you think it's going to work. So he would use foam core, which is a lightweight, easily cut material. It's often used for mounting photographic prints or the backs of picture frames. And a lot of people make scale models and painting with them. So he would layer these thin bits of foam core down, and then he would basically use various tools to design the shapes of his shots and his models. So that way, when you're shooting the whitewood, you can see how the ball will travel on a vacuum-formed ramp. Then he would provide those foam core designs, I guess, to the engineering team, and they would make it work. in production. This game must have a massive bill of materials, or what they call BOM, B-O-M. You got the vacuum-formed ramps, you got the vacuum-formed sculpts of the mountains, you've got a Bigfoot kind of toy thing. So I'm sure you got to find ways to make it fit within a budget, right? Well, Dennis said the nice thing about working at Williams, you could pretty much do whatever you wanted to do within budget, but the budget was higher than today, or at least went further. Now, these quotes are from when Dennis was at Stern, like in 2005. So, just for a background on that, he's doing Pirates. Pirates of the Caribbean. Yeah, Dennis says, at the time, for the cost of the game, we're way higher than what we can do now at Stern. There's always stuff we had to take out. I don't think a game like Whitewater could be made now. Now, again, this was set in 2005.
    96:34
    This was before companies like Jersey Jack. I guarantee you Stern's budget's a little higher now if you look at games like Godzilla with a full moving building. Yeah. There was also a running joke at Williams that the design teams would put drop targets in everything, so when management asked for stuff to come out, you just took the drop targets out. Yeah. The only thing I think that would make this game better would be drop targets on the left side. Honest to God. There's the Boulder Garden. They're pop-upers, but they have cool little boulder sculpts on top of them. Isn't that great? Full theme integration. When you hit it in there, the boulder garden.
    97:09
    Oh, yeah. And they're down really close to the break. You can totally get drained out of there, yes. And the pop-upers actually change the Whirlpool Awards. Very cool. How's the code on this? I love this game. This is a great game. I love this game. This is an A-level Bally Williams. This is a would-consider-owning game, yes. Because it has, well, for the tournament people, it has the thing. The thing is, one of the Whirlpool Awards is five-time scoring. So what you try to do is you try to get five-time scoring started and then start multi-ball. And the five-time scoring is only for like, I don't remember, 20 seconds, 30 seconds, whatever it is. So then you try to get the jackpots. When the multi-ball starts, it just feeds the ball to that upper flipper on the upper play field, and you're trying to hit the one ramp. And if you hit three of them in succession, then all your jackpots are tripled. Plus you have a five times multiplier running, so you just get insane scores. But then it also has the vacation jackpot. It's one of the cooler things ever. Where you do all the features of the game and you start multiball. But instead of multiball starting, the game breaks. Like literally the whole game goes dark like you just broke it. And most players, like the first time they ever get this, if they don't know what it is, they think they broke the game. And then the game will go crazy. Think of, like, Lord of the Rings when you destroy the ring. Yes. It flips itself and everything goes just crazy. That's what this does. That's so cool. On IPDB, it has a lot of photos of partially stripped play fields. So where the ramps have been taken off, you can kind of see where the ball is going under there. There is a lot going on in those mountains. Let's just say, like, when Williams would do promotional footage for, like, distributors, they're all out there on the Internet. Like, almost all their 90s games will have, like, they're, like, promotional, how great the game is. And if it's something like Terminator 2, we keep it on clutter for easy cleaning. When they show Whitewater, they don't mention anything about cleaning. Yeah, we don't want to bring that up. Because we don't want to bring that up, because this game is obscenely complex with just the amount of crap on it. You are not going to be able to clean this thing easily. This is a lot of fun. I have played this quite a few times. I don't have one locally, so I usually end up playing it when I'm out and about, you know, on vacation or something, when I used to do that. This is a lot of fun, this game. But it does take a little bit of time to sort of get used to where the feeds are coming from. That's the one thing with a newer player that I think might be difficult, because things are popping up out of the mine on the left side, so there's like subways in this game where the ball will move under the play field and then it'll pop up out of the mine on the left side, which is like a scoop, but you didn't shoot it in there, or it's going to go into somewhere and come up a vertical up kicker into the upper play field, and if you're shooting the whirlpool side, where does it come out, where is it going? There's a lot of like where the heck did the ball go? which is the only negative thing, but at the same time, that negative thing makes this game just awesome. And it also has when the up kicker on the upper play field kicks the ball off, it plays the sound from it's either Comet or Cyclone. They reuse the sound. God, slackers. Well, I always saw it as they were paying homage to the other game. And the thing is, even though they made 7,000 of these, even years ago this game was expensive. Now it's just obscene. This was always one of those. Is it Dennis Nordman's best game? I can't say that when I own one of his other games. Well, some people would say his best game is the next one. I'll say Whitewater's his best original theme game. There we go. Demolition Man is a licensed sci-fi action movie theme. February of 1994. It is a WPC DCS system. Sells 7,019 units.
    101:10
    Another 7,000 seller. Art by Linda Deal and Doug Watson Mechanics by Wynn Schilling and Sound Music by John Hay Software by Ted Estes and Bill Grupp And this was one of the Super Pin Series. The Super Pin Series. So let's explain what a Super Pin Series is. It's a wide body. Basically, yeah. Let's jam more crap into the pinball machine. Yeah. We need more space to do it. And I used to be able to name them all. Was it Twilight Zone? Indiana Jones, Demoman, Star Trek Next Gen, yeah, Popeye, Roadshow. Is that it? It might be it. There you go, ladies and gentlemen. Ron Hallett. Not only can you remember everybody's social media posts of all time, you can also recite the Superpin series. Well, the other thing is, because this is a license, they had some issues. Yeah, they always have issues with licenses. Why people hate going and dealing with licenses. According to Doug Watson, he had serious difficulty creating the back glass because the movie production team kept rejecting his designs. Oh, yeah, this story, yeah. And Doug eventually discovered that rejections were all from one person, Wesley Sipes. He wanted to ensure he did not look like a crazed character on the back glass because he was concerned about his upcoming career in Hollywood. If you watch the movie, Wesley Sipes plays a crazed character. Yeah, he's completely like an insane, hyper-violent criminal. Simon Phoenix. Because of this, the final back glass is much simpler than early designs, and all three characters were given mathematically equal back glass coverage with handsome features. He was concerned. Like, this is probably his best role. Yeah. Oh, no, that would be Blade. But yet Sylvester Stallone is nude on the side art for some reason. Oh, my. Yep. Demolition Man is the 1993 American sci-fi action film. This is directed by Marco Bramiglia on his directorial debut. It stars Sylvester Stallone, Wesley Snipes, Sandra Bullock. Stallone is John Spartan, a risk-taking police officer who has a reputation for causing destruction while carrying out his work. That is the typical 1990s cop movie, the renegade cop that gets the job done no matter what. And Wesley Snipes is Simon Phoenix.
    103:31
    And the opening scene, they blow up an entire warehouse. And they actually blow it up because, you know. There was no special effects of the 90s. Well, they had CGI, but it really sucked then. So they actually blew up the warehouse, and it was quite impressive. So this takes that cop against the crazy, you know, hyper-violent 90s movie and kind of gives it a bit of a twist. And that is that in 1996, because of blowing this up, and I think it was a school or something. No, they blew up a warehouse, and it turns out the hostages were in the warehouse. John Spartan didn't know that, but they blamed him for it. Because he was the renegade cop. Yeah. So him and Wesley Snipes, they get frozen. They get cryogenically frozen, which was a thing in the 90s, where basically you're frozen in ice and you live through your prison term in a humane way. Phoenix is thawed at his parole hearing in 2032, but he escapes. And society has significantly changed in that time where basically crime and violence have all been eliminated. But, like, it's awesome. Highly recommend. Can't get too much into the movie, but I highly recommend it. It made a crap load of money. Everyone's telling me it was a bomb. It's like, yeah, here it is. Budget, $45 to $77 million. Box office, $159 million. So, yeah, it made more than double what it cost to make. And the game is based on the movie. So in the movie, there's like this claw thing. I think it's at the end, like in the final scene. So there is a claw toy in the game that you can control. Plus Demoman is extremely unique in that it has the handles. It has these big-ass handles that you can use instead of the flipper buttons. All of the actors got their own Demoman pinball machine. No, she didn't get one. Except for the woman. Yeah. That's super. That was the whole thing. Another thing that's really fun is that this is the era where Williams was doing promo VHS tapes to give to their distros. And they would review these tapes to determine if they wanted to purchase that. And the marketing team on this, boy, oh, boy, did they do a heck of a job. It's the one I told you about. These are the videos I was mentioning earlier, folks. This Demoman promo video is a whole thing. But there's the one for No Fear. There's the one for all of the games out there. But this one is particularly cringeworthy. So in this video, yeah, they have this woman dressed up like... Actually, she's dressed up like Stallone was. No, she's dressed up Sandra Bullock. Yeah, Sandra Bullock. And she's, like, playing the game in all kinds of really weird fashion. Yeah. She turns to the camera and she goes, how about a little demolition? And you're like, oh, my God, that's really bad acting. Yes, and then she says the line, get demolition, man. It'll blow you. And then Joe Dillon, the head of sales who's in this video, he's like, away. It'll blow you away. Oh, and then she hits him with a cattle prod. It's like, oh, man, because you can tell this is specifically designed for a bunch of dudes who run distros. To be fair, that line is in the movie. Yeah, true. Sandra Bullock has saved the line. And the other thing about this game is this is one of the, I think, the first or earlier games that Williams actually had a home ROM version. It wasn't commercially available, but they did an alternate ROM because this is an R-rated movie, and they obviously could not use – they couldn't use a lot of the lines from the movie because of that. So they did, like, a home ROM version that's basically uncensored. And that's the one I'm running, of course. Let's talk about the flow of this game or the shots. It is the flowiest wide body ever, probably because it's not really a wide body wide body. There's two shots on the left that you never, ever shoot. There's the car crash and, like, the eyeball thing. Dennis Nordman sort of did something very similar to the way Pat Lawler did Twilight Zone is that they sort of squished the left side of the play field so the right side is more of a traditional pinball play field size. They kind of filled up the left side. So Lawler put the, what is it, the pyramid power shot thing and kind of squished everything. It's the power. The power.
    108:02
    So Nordman sort of did something similar with a couple of shots on the left side. The ball doesn't go over there all the time, and it's kind of closed off, which is very smart, actually. And it has, like I mentioned, it has these handles on the side that are big, beefy, metal handles. They are not coming off. and I think as the story goes, when they were prototyping this, when they had this at Williams, the president, what was his name? The one everyone hates. The one who shut him down. Neil DeCastro. He looked at the handles and was like, people are going to break those off. So Nordman just took the handles and just shoved the whole game like three feet both ways.
    108:43
    It's like, yeah, it'll be fine. Dennis Nordman would say that tournament players absolutely despised the upright handles. And he didn't care because he thought that it would make the game unique and interesting. I don't despise them, and I'm a tournament player. Yeah, but you're weird because you're not top 100. The other thing about the tournament if you play with the handles combination combos are worth more You get a trigger bonus So you actually get more points if you play with the handles than if you play with the flipper buttons It's a three flipper game. So it's got your two on the bottom. It's got the one on the left side. It has some serious ramps and diverters going on up there. It's great. It is a really great game. It is really, really great. But it suffers, again, from kind of a flat theme. Theme is great. You're wrong. The art is not the greatest. I'll give you that. But the thing with Demoman is it's not, it's like it's not cheesy enough to be a cult hit, and it wasn't successful enough to be like a serious hit. So it's kind of got this weird middle-of-the-road kind of ho-hum. Ho-hum. I think it's kind of cool, but it's not quite. They did predict that Taco Bell would rule the world. Yeah, in the movie, all the restaurants eventually go out of business. the restaurant wars and only one restaurant is left and it's Taco Bell. Unless it's the European version of the movie, in which case it was Pizza Hut for some reason. It's a fun movie. I watched it quite recently, actually, because it was on, I don't know, it was on Netflix or something. So I watched it and I'm like, man, this is kind of a fun game. But it's like if you had a demo man, if I had a demo man in my house, people wouldn't come in and be like, oh, man, demo man, I remember that movie. They'd be like, demo man? You'd be like, oh, yeah, it was this movie that Stallone was in. Oh, yeah, I remember that. But there's other movies in that era where people are like, it's like The Shadow. Nobody would ever remember The Shadow. It's not cheesy enough to be a cult hit, and it's not commercially large enough to be an actual hit. The game is awesome. So it's got a lot of multiballs, right? That was how they really hooked you? It's got four different multiballs, and it's got all the claw awards. There's two wizard modes, I guess you could say. Can you explain the claw and the claw rewards first? The claw is on the upper left-hand corner, and it's literally just like an arm that moves back and forth. It has a magnet. So you hit the ramp, the claw will come over, pick up the ball, and then you can just – It's like a magnet. And then you can drop it in one of, what is it, five different spots, and they're all different claw wards. Like one's prison, one's super jets, capture Simon, lock freeze, which just gives you a multi-ball, or it gets multi-ball ready for you. and there's the, oh, what's the other one called? The one where you hit the center over and over, that one. But if you play through all of these modes, it will light the computer shot for the demolition time, which is a cool little wizard mode where you've got to hit the stand-ups. It's a multi-ball. You hit stand-ups and shots. The stand-ups add balls, and then you just hit shots and get points. That's one of the wizard modes. The second wizard mode is if you go through, and it's not really wizard mode, if you go through all four multi-balls, it will light the right ramp for the demolition jackpot, like a combination of all the jackpots you've got. And Demolition Man is the pinball that will blow you away, according to the flyer. It contains all the star power and firepower of the Warner Brothers movie, original and all-new music, sound effects and dialogue with the DCS sound system, thunder and clarity, sensational modes and multi-ball sequences inspired by the film's most memorable scenes, and a play field that's years ahead of its time. And it actually has Sloan in it, like custom speech, which you would never be able to get a star at that level to do custom speech these days. It's a great game. I wouldn't own it, but I think it's a great game. People are like, go on to the next game. We're tired of talking about Demoman. Yeah, you can tell them the games that Ron really loves and wants to pump up the value. Well, no, I'm excited. I love Demoman. Demoman's fun. I do enjoy Demoman. Continuing into his flow period, his next game, which we did cover in our Next That Made Us episode, was Indianapolis 500. Super flowy. Which is another really great game. Super flowy. Yep. And we also covered Scared Stiff, which is flowy in its own right. Also flowy, yep. In Pinball is Dying, Part 2, Bally Williams. So you can check out those in the archives. We're not going to review them again. We're trying to get you through here so you don't have to pause us and wait. You want to let's do it all in one go. Dennis was let go in the final months of development in Scared Stiff. That was during sort of the culling of the herd at Williams during that time. Dennis says, I had no idea it was coming. That was it. I was done. In fact, that morning, myself, Chris Granter, and Paul Height went downtown Chicago for a sound recording with Cassandra. They were working on Scared Stiff. They had screwed up their schedule, and Cassandra wasn't available. So we came back to the office, and that's when I got laid off. It was me, John Trudeau, and Barry Osler. Ouch. Yep. That's a tough day. You see, those three workhorse designers. Yeah, Barry Osler was on vacation. Like, he came back from vacation to find out he was fired. Barry Osler wouldn't make another game ever again, even though he worked on quite a few designs. After Williams, Dennis would design some redemption games for skee-ball. He designed one called Tower of Power, which was actually a very popular redemption game. And you see those in almost every location that has sort of a vintage redemption game. Dennis made some freelance games, which he would sell to Bromley, who was a redemption game provider in the 1990s. Joe Kamenkow, who was one of the founders of Data East, would contact Dennis Norman to work at IGT, which was a mechanical slot machine designing firm at the time. They're still around. Still around. He worked on toppers and bonus reels and sort of interesting things. So then that brings us to the year of 2006. Do you remember 2006, Ron? Kind of. I was alive. That was the year that Nintendo released their Wii games. Oh, the Wii, yeah. Google. They bought YouTube in 2006. Yeah, I remember that. Yes, the Iranian Missile Crisis, and they did nuclear tests that year. Saddam Hussein was found guilty of war crimes. So was Saddam Hussein, but yes. Easter weekend, tornadoes in the U.S. Midwest. Or tornadoes, as you call them. I love your notes.
    115:34
    Damn it. and the Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy. I don't remember. Yeah. We're Canadian, man. The Winter Olympics is like the... The Summer Olympics, yeah. It's like a big deal for us in Canada. But you know what also happened in 2006? No. Dennis Nordman did his first game in a decade. Oh, my goodness. Dennis comes into Stern Pinball. At this time, Steve Ritchie and a few others were working there, Pat Lawler, and they were contract. So what they did is they had their own company, And Stern hired that company to do a design for them. For Steve, I think it was SRP, Steve Ritchie Productions, and Pat Lawler was like Pat Lawler Design. Very original names. Dennis Nordman, however, was an employee of Stern because he would get health benefits and his salary, and most of the other designers decided they wanted to get maybe like a higher pay and take care of that themselves. The contract designers also were able to work in deals for royalties and sales incentives. So if they could sell more, they would get some royalties or sale incentives on their games. Dennis, he just settled sort of for the path of least resistance, which I think is probably a better idea in my mind. His first game back was Pirates of the Caribbean. This is a Disney pirate movie theme. July of 2006, it is a Stern-Sam game. We don't have sales numbers because at this time it is a private company. Dennis Nordman on design, Kevin O'Connor on art, Dots by Mark Galvez, Mechanics by Ray Tanzer, formerly of Gottlieb back in the day, and John Rothemel. Sound and music by David Thiel. Software, Dwight Sullivan and Lonnie Rock. I can say from sources I have, until ACDC came along, this was Stern's highest seller. Really? I find that surprising. Or at least you have your Lord of the Rings and your Simpsons pinball party. So it was on par with them until ACDC came along. They sold a ton of these. These were everywhere. That ship mech, which we'll talk about, was insane. Something else. When it came out, we couldn't believe it was on a stern. Let's put it that way. It seemed too cool. In 2003, the fantasy swashbuckler pirate film was produced by Disney and Jerry Brockheimer. The film was based on the intellectual property of the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction at Walt Disney theme parks. This is like a ride where you're sitting on a boat and you're going through a ride at Disney, and there's pirates, and they're in all these funny situations. and they're shooting, you know, cannonballs over your head. It's great. It is fantastic. It has so much nostalgia about that ride. I love that ride. Have you been on that ride? Yes. You don't have the same feeling. I think. Is it a Disney World or Disneyland? I think it's both, but it's a Disney World for sure. I don't remember. I think I was in the Pirates ride. It's very cool. It's a lot of fun. There's a lot of scenes in that movie that are derived specifically from the ride, and a lot of people don't know that. You want to hear something amazing? I actually saw the movie. Yes. This is a great movie. Pirates of the Caribbean, The Curse of the Black Pearl. This is an awesome movie. I liked it. The critics expected the film to be a huge flop. It had a $140 million budget in 2003, and it did $654 million in box office return. It has a 79% Rotten Tomatoes, stars Johnny Depp in his iconic Jack Sparrow character, Keira Knightley in one of her most, I think, fun performances, and Orlando Bloom with a goatee. I will say the only reason I actually watched this is because I was a huge Johnny Depp fan. This is what launched the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, which consistently didn't get great after this. No. They're fun, but the movies really, really, really drop off. Yeah, I watched the second one in the theater, and I didn't have any desire to watch the third one in the theater. And that was the end of that. The pin was not released with the film. And we spoke about this in a lot of our other podcasts, where Stern is very risk adverse. They usually wait for a film to be a hit, and then they'll release it on the second film. So if the second film kind of tanks, it's not a big deal because the first one people still remember. And they did with this, and it came out about the same time the second movie came out. And they had to keep the secret because they had, like, in the movie, like, what's in the chest? And spoiler alert, it's Davy Jones' heart is in the chest. But they had to keep that a secret in the game. Like, they couldn't release the game until the movie came out because that would give away the heart. Because they have an opening chest in there that has his heart in it. Yeah, Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Man's Chest was released in 2006. And At World's End would follow in 2007. And this is like that, you know, cliffhanger ending kind of movie with the follow-up. Dead Man's Chest would do a billion-dollar box office in 2006, which is huge, huge numbers. And World's End, that would fall a little bit short at $960 million, which is still massive. After that, there was 2011's On Stranger Tides and Dead Men Tell No Tales in 2017. And there's apparently another to be released and another spin-off. They're going to keep doing it. They're going to beat it into the ground. They're all kind of fun. The first three are the only ones that matter. The first one is an all-time classic. Absolutely. This has some crazy ramps as well. This has some crazy, crazy ramps. Dennis brings back the Mixmaster. It makes a triumphant return. It's on the left side. Yeah, there's basically almost three main toys on this thing. There's the Mixmaster. There's a chest that opens. and then there's the pirate ship. The pirate ship is saying this. The pirate ship was, I mean, for Stern, they were not known for having incredible nets. I mean, they would have like a toilet. You know, they had the ring shot, things like that. But this was a ship that actually you would hit it and the sails, and people forget about this part, the sails actually move too on it. They jiggle. They go up and down and you keep it and the thing rocks back and forth like a ship. And if you hit it enough times, it will literally sink into the play field. It will go up and then go down into the play field. It, like, collapses on itself and folds and then into the play field, down into the bottom. This thing was so, was a bit of a problem. They actually had to put a massive ball, air ball protector over it, which looks terrible that most people took off. Yes, it does. This has an iconic plunge. you plunge up to a clear play field basically that's that's a vacuum formed ramp that has a sticker on the bottom and it there's it's very skill shot based which is really cool you can shoot it really short and it'll come back to the flipper on the right side you can go all the way up to like almost like a mini whirlpool shot that kind of jiggles down into the pop bumpers. You can walk the plank, which is just short of that little drop hole that goes into the pop bumpers a little bit deeper. On the left side, there's the rum ramp, which is like a zigzag kind of flowy ramp down to the left side into the left in lane. Yep. And if you're playing in a tournament, you always short plunge. Go to the right flipper and you hit it in the mix master. Yep. You just shoot it up into what's the Port Royal or Tortuga shot. The Tortuga shot, The code, unfortunately, is a bit lacking because you shoot up, which is weird for Dwight Sullivan, by the way. You shoot up into the spinning disc, and then there's targets. And you bounce it around in there, and then it'll come back down the ramp. And then you shoot it again up there, and I think you do it, what, twice or three times? However, it depends how many targets you hit. If you hit enough targets, multiball will be ready. Then you hit it up there, it starts multiball. Then you can hit more up there. The more balls you shoot up into the Tortuga shot, into the spinning disc, it locks more balls. You can lock, what, three or four balls up there. And then it increases your multiplier. Yeah, something like that. How was it? And then you shoot your targets and get your jackpot. Because I always play it the same way. I just hit the Mixmaster, start multi-ball, keep hitting the Mixmaster, hit the ship, and that's it. That's all I knew how to do in the game. The funny thing is all the players, when we would play it, we would call it the Mixmaster. Yeah, it has a Jack the Monkey shot, which is like an inverted 180 ramp, where it goes up into the ramp and into the habit trail down to your right side. It has Dead Man's Chest, so you shoot that a bunch of times, and then the chest opens up to reveal Davy Jones' heart. This is Dwight Sullivan's major game when he gets back into Stern. You can really see a lot of Dwight Sullivan's fingerprints on this game. It has a really deep wizard mode to get to. It's got a couple of mini wizard mode things. It's kind of woodchoppy, right? You shoot the same shot over and over again, which is kind of a bit of a trope in that late 90s, 2000s era. And the game is a lot of fun. It's very cool. I like this game a lot. It's the anti-flow game. But it is so stop and go. Catch the ball, wait, line it up, shoot, catch the ball. Like, it in no way incentivizes you to shoot the ball. It is clunk-a-saurus. If you think the Simpsons pinball party is clunky. We can tell you've played this game a lot.
    125:45
    I like this game. I really do. I like the theme. I like the mode. I guarantee you Gary Stern liked it because they sold a ton of these. Yeah, it's fun. I like the movie. It's a lot of fun. It's got some cool toys. I had a friend of mine who had one of these as well, and I played it a bunch in his place and I really liked it, but it didn't last long. And honestly, the art is not that bad, especially for this era, the Photoshop era of Stern. It is not bad at all. They didn't put a lot of character faces on it. They avoided that. It has the single best Johnny Depp impersonator I've ever heard. It's not actually Johnny Depp? It's not Johnny Depp. That's a Disney-approved Jack Sparrow Johnny Depp soundalike. And, man, he was good. He was very good. It's like I wouldn't mind sound-alikes if they're that good. One of the issues, I think, with the flow and the clunk is that there's no orbit shot. Well, Dennis says about the orbit shot, my reasoning was I was trying not to intimidate a casual or new player. How many of those players have any idea about those kinds of shots? It must have appealed to a lot of people because we sold 5,000 of those at this point. Well, there you go. So he's just basically like, you know what? It doesn't have an orbit shot, but who cares? I sold a bunch of them, so nah. And you know what? He's actually, that is actually quite true. 100% true. It's all about selling games. It's about selling games. Is it Scott over at the Loser Kids has one of these, and it'll never leave his house? It means that much to him and his wife and his family that they just love this game. I don't know if it would last a long time in my collection, but I think it would. Well, if you want to sell me one really cheap, you know, 4,000 Canadian, let me know. What does Dennis say the secrets of pinball design are? Well, he says, I don't think there's any one secret. There's several combinations of all elements that can make a fun game. You don't need all the elements in every game. For example, Pirates doesn't have flow, but it's fun and successful. Whitewater and Demoman had much more flow, and they were successful. I don't know the secret to a successful game because there's just dozens of different approaches.
    127:46
    As he would prove with the next game. Ron, have you seen the special with lit documentary? Yes. The Pirates of the Caribbean pinball machine was predominantly featured in there as an example of new pinball design and code. And there's a really great scene where they have Dwight Sullivan explaining what happens when you shoot the ship. And it is hilarious because Dwight's obviously excited to show this. He's super excited about his new game, which is even crazier that they're letting somebody record them before the game is even out. And in this documentary, there's a lot of Dwight speak. And we've talked about Dwight speak before, right? Sure we have. Chuck Ernst says that Dwight speak is when he can't get things out of his head. They're in his head, but he can't get that out. And he just goes on and on and on, which is pretty funny. One other thing that's really cool about Special When Lit is a lot of the tournament players that are featured in this game are complaining about how complicated the new code in all of these games is. That's because they're all old. And now, in 2022, 14 to 16-year-olds that are winning championships are like, what's the problem? Seems fine. We're looking at this code and we're like, man, I just wish I could shoot it into the Tortuga shot again over and over and over and get a higher score. You know what I mean? Like, it's pretty funny that that was the critique, that Pirates of the Caribbean was too complicated of the code. Stern's manufacturing line is very, very interesting. In fact, they would often put machines on and off of the manufacturing line. In manufacturing, Ron, it is like a no-no to ever take things off of a line and then put them back on. Usually you run something until it's done, and then you move on. So it's really unique that Stern will revisit titles over and over. Stern did it right. Williams did it wrong. Williams would cut off things like Attack from Mars. They could have rerun it. that they used that policy. Stern was always like, if Simpson's Pinball Party is popular, we'll do the next game, but we're going to put Simpson's back on if we have time. We've got to keep the line busy. So the Simpson's Pinball Party had at least six or seven runs. Lord of the Rings, same. Pirates went back to run a few hundred more as well. Yes, they did. That's how big a seller this game was. The logistics involved in taking all of that stuff off of the line and putting a totally different game on the line. That's a big deal. I don't think hobbyists and those in pinball really appreciate how incredibly difficult that is and how amazing it is that Stern actually does that. For them to go through, like, 2022 is the year of, like, catch up on all our back orders. If you look at their schedule, that they're switching back and forth between titles, that is a huge feat. And, you know, we should all kind of give some credit where credit is due. Up next, I know this is the game that everybody loves, Wheel of Fortune.
    130:59
    Ron, this is the licensed game show theme from October of 2007. It is a Stern-SAM system designed by Dennis Nordman with the art of Kevin O'Connor and Margaret Hudson.
    131:14
    Dots by Mark Galvez. Mechanics, Lonnie Ropp. Music and sound by David Thiel. Software by the legend Keith B. Johnson, Lonnie Ropp, and Lyman Sheets Jr.
    131:28
    Take it away, Ron. That's your game show voice. That's right. Yeah, this was an interesting game I'll say that Why would you choose this? Of all the things that you could choose Why would you choose Wheel of Fortune? I can't answer that question Dennis says I like the theme And I was happy to get it I think it's the kind of game that you're going to walk up to We keep trying to do things to attract new players If we just design games for the hardcore players We'd be out of business We have to keep trying to attract new people Okay, so that makes a little more sense Keith Johnson says It's a lot older than what our demographic supposedly is, 20-somethings in bars. People thought it would be a good theme because, at least around Chicago area, that show was always on TV. When people get off work, they go on to bars. I think one of the biggest problems that occurred in general was that it was basically the south side of Chicago. People thought that was a microcosm of the rest of the nation in terms of what was going on, and I don't know that was necessarily the case. Okay, so Keith Johnson's kind of on the other side where it was like, I don't know. It says, when anybody walked up to the game, they're going to know exactly what their main goal is and exactly what they have to do. A lot of games are so confusing, and you don't know what you're supposed to do. As a casual player, you just bash the ball around and hope something good happens. But with Wheel of Fortune, you know that you're supposed to solve word puzzles. Yeah, so that makes sense. That's, you know, Wheel of Fortune I think is a bit of a turd theme, but he is 100% right. If you're a casual person, you're going to be like, oh, I've got to spell words. I'll pick a T, Pat. Like it has call-outs like that. Well, I remember in Europe they were like, what? What is this? We have no idea what this is. Yeah, the other thing was that the producers were very hands-on and protective of this license. Dennis wanted to do more silly things, more fun, awkward puzzles to solve, but the IP holders were much more conservative, and they didn't want anything like that. So some of the fun trips that people could win, some of the prizes in the script, were all more or less overruled. Wouldn't it be cool if they had like a Captain Bizarre head that was Pat Sajak? See, there you go. This game also features original speech by Pat Sajak, the host of Wheel of Fortune, and Charlie O'Donnell, the show's announcer.
    133:49
    Okay. All right, so if we go back to the code again, so if we go beyond the theme itself kind of being a, I don't know what's up with the theme, Dennis would say that Keith got on this game, and I was really happy that Keith was there and Keith was excited. I don't know if he actually was. But he at least faked it. Fake it until you make it. We should talk about the play field. Because the one thing that they don't mess with anymore is the bottom, where the flippers are. It's always the Italian bottom or whatever you want to call it. You know, in lanes, lead to the flippers, out lanes. Wheel of Fortune does not have that. This has, in the center, all these posts and two lanes you can drain through. Yeah, this is very, like, old-school wood rail. And then the outlanes, actually, if you drain the outlanes, you have one of two lanes you can go into. You can get a free spin. If you go under the correct lane, you can get your ball back. It's like a second chance. Yep. But the in lanes, there's just one in lane, and it's not kind of north-south and then moves to the flipper. They're kind of already on an angle when they drop down from the ramps. It's very valley-like, I must say. And it's really weird. I'm surprised they let him do it. They let him do it because he sold 5,000-plus units in his previous game. But you can tell that after this, never again. It also has kind of a bash toy in the top with the contestants. Well, they're not bad. They're just bobbleheads. The bobbleheads are the contestants of the show, right? They're spinning the wheel. And it's Keith, Maria, and Lonnie. Yeah, it's Keith Johnson, Lonnie Ropp, and Maria was someone who worked on the line. They literally just pulled her and just used her likeness. I wonder if she even got paid. I doubt it. Keith is awesome. He's got his pens. Yeah. He's got his pens and his tie. He's got his glasses on, his little wispy hair. It's got Lonnie who looks like he's about to murder somebody. The left side has a very similar shot to Pirates where there's like a shot behind the ramp or behind stand-up targets, which is under the ramp. This is very similar to Pirates. And it has a very wiggly, vacuum-formed ramp. It's fun. It's very whimsy, right? It's clearly Wheel of Fortune. Like you cannot mistake it, that it is in fact Wheel of Fortune. The main toy is the wheel. The fortune wheel, as it were. The wheel of fortune. And it spins. And it's fully controlled. It can stop on whatever it needs to stop on. It's a pretty cool toy. The code really shines here. That's Keith Johnson. Again, at this era of Keith Johnson, he is just full of excitement and great ideas. The only issue with the game is the entire industry was tanking. I remember I went to Expo the year they were making this in the factory and the factory was almost empty it was not pretty and I remember they cut this like they never let Keith finish the code, it never was done there's like one of the inserts which is the wizard mode or whatever it doesn't even light up it's not even programmed about the unfinished code, Keith says I don't have any regrets with any game that I worked on other than Wheel of Fortune not getting finished I'm happy with every single game that I've worked on. It's turned out good. Wheel of Fortune definitely was on the right track. I just didn't get the extra resources that I needed to get the game done. So that brings us to the end of the episode, Ron. We've seen a lot of amazing, crazy ramp designs, and a lot of interesting, fun eras in Nordman's career, or at least early career. Dennis Nordman is now working at American Pinball as a designer, and he's very much in charge of mentoring the younger up-and-comers who are designing over at American Pinball. So there's a lot of exciting things, I think, on the horizon. He has done games since CERN. I mean, according to him, he designed most of what you see in Alien by Highway and now Pinball Brothers is making that. He did a bunch of designs at Deep Root Pinball, which never saw the light of day, and now he's at American. and this year we should be seeing a Dennis Nordman title, which is exciting. I hope we can see something from Dennis Nordman. He also did a contract game with Whizbang, his company with Greg Ferreres, where they did, what was that really offensive one? It was called Whoa Nelly, Big Juicy Melons. Yeah, so that's a whole controversy in itself that we could review. He also worked with Multimorphic on Lexi Lightspeed. He's done one of those pitch-and-bat games called Zombie All-Stars. He also worked with Jersey Jack, supposedly on Wizard of Oz, that pop-up on the lower left there. That was his idea. Yeah, so he's still very active in a very exciting part in pinball, and he will rise again in another one of our episodes when we cover some of the goings-on later on in the 2010s and beyond.
    139:04
    Ron, what is your favorite game we talked about today? Not necessarily the one that you own. Oh, okay. If it's not the one I own, then it's Whitewater. It's Whitewater, yeah. I'm going to have to say Whitewater is probably the one that I would love to have in my collection. It's just so iconic, so fun and different, and it's fun to shoot. Probably followed by Indy, Indy 500. Indy 500, really? I love that game. I would probably follow up, if I had to choose a second game from Dennis Nordman, I'm going to go Pirates of the Caribbean. And even though it's a clunky snooze fest, it's a cool game that I really enjoy playing nonetheless. Well, Dennis has a lot of different styles, and you always got to challenge yourself with new ideas. Dennis says, I still like to experiment with new stuff. And when you experiment, you can fail a lot or not always be successful. But that's what makes the design process challenging and keeps me interested. When I just start doing clones of something that was successful, it wouldn't be fun for me anymore. Wow, that's deep. I wish more designers would take that approach, too. Yeah, don't just keep making T2 over and over again. More like be afraid to fail. Although, to be fair, there was a period in pinball where it's hanging on by a thread where you can't afford to fail.
    140:26
    It could be the end of the company if you fail. I think at least in the current climate, we're at a point where that is not the case. I think it's time people can take a little more chances. As always, you can send your comments, questions, corrections, and concerns to filmablechronicles at gmail.com. We look forward to all your messages, and we read every one. Please subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or your favorite podcaster. The favorite is still still wrong there, Dennis was saying. There's no you in there. You have a British accent. Well, I don't care. I'm American now. Turn on automatic downloads so you don't miss a single episode. Remember to leave us a five-star review wherever you found us or on this week in Pinball Promoter Database. That way more people can find us. Do you want to plug the shirts, too? Oh, the shirts, yes. It's fieldofballswag.com. Go check out our shirts. They're awesome.
    141:36
    Yeah, give me one sec. Uh-huh. Diet. This is before companies like Jersey Jack were created specifically to make more expensive games. Are you okay? Did you fall over? Oh, I forgot. I moved away from my microphone. Yeah. Hold on. All right, all right, all right. All right. How's it going there, Peter?
    142:41
    Got to drain that lizard, you know. Oh! Giggity, giggity, giggity. All right. So Dennis made a drawing of a pinball magame. A pinball magame? Wow. It's a pinball magame. That's right. Hey!
    142:56
    Oh, Joe. Oh, God. I got it right here. Yes. Joe Davola. No. Callahan? No. Oh, here it is. Dylan. Joe Dylan. Yeah, Joe Dylan. Okay. Dude, you've got to see this video. It's f***ing insane.
    143:19
    And that was Elvira and the Party Monster. You can't say party. Wow. Ramps. Ramps are the true highway for pinball. They are both the ends and the means. The alpha and omega. The yin and the yang. Ramps are nothing and everything. Before I donned a cow and began my quest to rid the pinball manufacturing landscape of conmen and ne'er-do-wells, I honed my ramp creation craft. As a neophyte in the art, I knew I had to journey and learn from true masters of elevated precision. I searched for years until finally, in the Himalayan mountains, I found an organization dedicated to vacuum-formed precision and hot habitrails. They were known as the League of Slap Saves. Their leader, Rampal Ghul, took me in and trained me as a master designer, looking at the world under glass not as a two-dimensional playfield, but as a three-dimensional under-glass experience. As many know, I learned that Ramp Owl Ghoul and the League of Slapsafes were not actually pursuing pinball perfection, but instead planned to use the silver ball as a weapon against humanity. I stalked them with my fists and rage and superior design intellect. To this day, I continue to hone my ramp-creating craft. Balder designs, deeper visions, more expressive experiences. But my priority as a Silver Ball Knight is to ensure we never see a new League of Swapsaves and false pinball manufacturers who cannot even provide designers with an engineer must be exposed and the pinball community alerted. Such is the fate of the pinball canary in the coal mine because pinball has shown us all that it is full of people ready to believe in completed games. I am the Nordman.
    145:29
    you