🎵 Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Wedgehead Pinball Podcast. I'm your host, Alan, joined in the basement studio of my trusty co-host. It's Alex, the water boy. How you doing? I'm doing pretty good, Alan. Doing good every Monday. We're just the fucking... You're always so good. Yeah, I'm just always good. You know, these episodes come out on Mondays, but we record them on Mondays and Tuesdays always. And, you know, it's just a great start to the week for me as well as the listeners. and we just want to say we want to thank all of our loyal listeners who donated to our coffee account we are going to pintastic in april we will see the people out there but we will see the people we will we are the people we are men of the people and we are looking forward to seeing you all out there we're keeping the coffee account up because like we said when we first started it we're using these to fund trips to see people and scenes in different pinball locations across this country. So if you want to donate to our coffee account, it's ko-fi.com slash Wedgehead podcast. And when you send your donation, let us know where you want us to go. That's why we ended up in Boston. We got some people in Boston and from New Robert Englunds that wanted us to come out there, donate some money on our coffee account, tell us where you want to see us next, and we'll plan a trip out there. We'd love to meet you guys, play some pinball, share the love of the game. But today we got to get right to it, man, because we got a crazy episode today. Yeah, you got like a brand new game on the floor at Wedgehead today. We're here to talk about that right no we're here to talk about like something popular that like people like right no unfortunately we're not um no we're here to talk about good shit that the wedgehead pinball podcast loves talking this is what we're bringing you that other podcast i still want to talk about okay we're talking about gotlieb system three the end of an empire yep as many of our listeners probably already know by now i'm kind of a gotlieb guy alex is also a gotlieb guy both my bar and this podcast are winks to the colloquial nickname that was given to the single player em machines manufactured by gottlieb based on their iconic wedge-shaped heads yeah uh and they were for about 30 years the absolute best pinball manufacturer in the fucking business indisputably the best they were the kings and alex even he used to always hear me say that about ems and as he got more and more into ems and playing at wedgehead and then we went on that trip to past times i got it it's like when you played all the got leaps in a row going to past times was like they have everything organized by manufacturer they have them all kind of lined up not necessarily chronologically strictly but it's kind of like lumped by that so it's a really good like museum presentation of like the best of the best from all the manufacturers and you just realize naturally which row you end up spending all of your time in and you're like dude i've been standing in front of fucking Gottliebs for days. And that was their golden era, right? That was the EM era. That was when they were the kings of the industry. But much like every empire, eventually they all crumble. Yeah. Gottlieb went from having the best art, the best layouts, and the best reliability to maybe having the worst in all three of these categories by the end of their run in 96. Most of this had to do with falling behind on the technological sea change from the electromechanical to solid state electronics. During the late 1970s, they were the last of the manufacturers to do so, and their solid-state systems started out significantly underpowered and outclassed. This is something that happens in basically all tech industries. When someone's the best at something, they don't want to adopt the next thing. Everyone else was looking for a reason to jump ship from EMs because their EMs sucked compared to Gottlieb's. Gottlieb wanted to ride it out because they were the fucking kings. and so they're promising like this is a simpler system this is better there are games work better and everybody else meanwhile was already working on the next thing you see this everywhere you see it we're looking for a competitive advantage to be got leap yep and got leap was asleep at the wheel exactly you see it with like cameras with like companies refusing to give up on like uh film technology when they were good at it you see it with like like in the the biking industry right now shimano makes better shifters better analog shifters and tram and tram's the one that started jump into like the electronic shifting because you're like they're looking for something and now they will always be ahead in that side of the business gottlieb fell behind yep and that's actually a pretty big story and there's like a whole lot of fingers at that can be pointed to who and why gottlieb crumbled including some massive corporations like coca-cola and columbia pictures buying and selling the company and then passing around like a hot little potato But this isn't going to be that episode because I want to jump straight to the end of the story, the end of the empire, the end of Gottlieb. This episode is all about the System 3 era, which was, in fact, from 1989 to 1996. It was seven years of floundering yet another leap in pinball technologies and pretty much completely missing the pinball renaissance of the early 1990s completely. Yeah, being asleep at the wheel during, like, the golden age of pinball. and got leaves infamous system three era it's widely regarded by many pinheads as the worst era of pinball machines by any manufacturer ever and we always seem to find these games catching strays whenever we cover a die in the hill game by a different manufacturer they usually go well it's not as bad as the premiere games or these got leave games are the worst games ever but this is like a got leave game they like to like lump that shit in i mean the stink of this era is so bad that many people forever associate got leave as synonymous with bad and they talk about them as a joke company which is honestly it's sad because it's not true for decades they were the kings of the industry like we said and even in their decline there were some very talented individuals that were working at the company and some of these games are actually very fun so this week's episode is an ode to these games and the talented individuals that worked on them under crazy time crunches yeah so that's what we're going to talk about yeah system threes you might be wondering what's a system three or how can i tell which games are system threes well there's one defining feature that already sets the tone for this era and that is the pointy boy flippers these flippers that so this in the system three era right at the beginning of this gotlieb redesigned their flippers and they got a very uh like conical shape to them they're they're fat at the base and they're extra pointy at the tip they're flipper shaped but they're exaggerated on both ends. Yeah. Right. They're like exactly what you think of a modern flipper. They're just exaggerated. They're fatter at the base and they're even skinnier and pointier at the tip. Yeah. Like most pinball flippers like look like fingers where they're like slightly narrower at the tip. These look like triangles. Yeah. They're very unusual and they're universally hated pretty much. And all the system three games have these flippers. Yep. Yeah. They started putting them on games right before they switched over to system three. The first game with these flippers is bone busters oh that's a great game which was the last system adb which is the gottlieb system right before it but every single one of these games has these pointy boy flippers these system three flippers and there's they've got a few reason why they're weird right like in the first like we're talking about it's the shape and what's also interesting is john borg actually was the one responsible for them he designed them in his short time as a mechanical engineer and draftsman at Gottlieb. I love that fact because John Borg worked for Gottlieb for a very short period before jumping ship to Data East, and he left a permanent impact that everyone hates. It almost looks like intentional sabotage. Yeah, double agent. It's just genuinely hilarious. And you have to imagine he didn't go out of his way. He was just tasked with making these new flippers or whatever. I highly doubt he's like, I'm going to make these things bad, and then we're going to go get a job with Gary Sturd at Taddy East. It's pretty funny that he just like, he's like, I got leap. His one project, make the worst flippers of all time and then leave the company. Leave before the fallout happens. These flippers are also weird from a mechanical standpoint because the bats remained a two piece assembly. They have like a metal stem and a metal base. And then they have like a plastic shoe that grooves onto it. Yeah. It's hard to really understand that until you've seen them popped apart versus a modern flipper. But a modern flipper has like a shaft that's press fit into a solid one piece like plastic head. And that started in the 80s by other manufacturers. And by the time that the 90s come around in the bulk of this system three era, all the other manufacturers were doing single piece units. This was done the old EM style way. If you see old pinball machines and they draw a little hole at the base of the flipper, that's because they used to screw the plastic piece onto the base of the flipper. Flippers don't have that anymore. They haven't had it for 30 or 40 years. But Gottlieb kept them. Again, just sort of like when they fumbled the launch from electromechanical to the solid state era. Then when they do this again, they fling into old ways. And it's kind of endearing. It's sad when you know how the story ends. but it's kind of endearing to be like, man, they just like wanted to go back so bad. Yeah. Also, what's weird about these flippers is right around the same time, like the first game came out in 89, the first System 3 game, they never made the move into what we call solid state flippers, which means electronically controlled, which means that the full voltage runs to the flipper button, the flipper buttons. So it, you know, the power gets to those flippers. It's the old way of doing it. And every manufacturer, Data East was the first one, and then Williams quickly copied it. It's, again, it's the old style of doing it. It has more contact points, which leads to more chances for the signal to get weakened or the power to get weakened. Yeah, and the switches get corroded, and they make worse contact. They cause greater resistance. It's probably the reason why a lot of the System 3s you, you know, the listener has played, feel like they have really bad flippers. is because they've got really dirty contacts that make things just a little bit laggier and a lot weaker. Yep. And these things can feel like shit when they're, like, not cleaned up and playing nice. Yeah, and they can work very well if they are. But, again, this is the old way of doing it. There's a reason why everyone switched. There's a reason why today nobody would ever do this. Nobody would ever run 48 volts, like, through the flipper button switches. Like, it would never happen anymore. But Gottlieb, and it shouldn't have been happening at this era either, but Gottlieb kept doing it. But Gottlieb didn't. And the last thing about the flippers, right, is they have a very long throw in the plunger and coil stop. And what that means is when you activate the flipper, when it's energized or held up, the angle of it is extremely steep and, like, exaggerated. And people call these trap-all flippers because it basically makes it super easy to trap and hold a ball. Yep. That's my biggest gripe is that it's just like you can catch anything on these flippers. It's so easy to stop the ball. So if you're playing with somebody that regularly traps to make shots, they can just stop the game anytime they want on these things. And that really is... The other things you can work around, it's like the design is whatever. It's off-putting for some reason. The two pieces is strange, but doesn't affect me. The not being solid state sucks if they're not maintained, but it's not a huge deal if they're playing well. But this one actually is my gripe. There are certain things, like some people put Williams mechs on these instead. Steve Young at the Pinball Resource sells different length of coil stops so the throw of the flipper is impeded earlier, which means it doesn't rise as much. That's pretty cool. I didn't know you could just do that. Yeah. None of these are great solutions because even the ones with what Steve Young sells, I've tried to use them before and it just causes the flippers. Even after I rebuilt them with all new parts with those, I would get one of them would stick with it. And no matter what I could do with the new stop, it just didn't work as well. And I had to add extra return springs. And we're getting into a technical side of this. But also these games were designed with these flippers. And there's something to be said about just like leaving what was designed with the game. You know, it's like the games as it is. Play it as it is. I mean, this is how these games were developed. They were developed to play with these flippers. So play it as it lies. Yeah. There were some other technological advancements in the System 3 era. It was designed and engineered by John Burrus. John had started back at Gottlieb in the late or the early 1970s in an engineering role under the legendary pinball designer Ed Krinsky. He eventually made a few games on his own as a lead designer, most notably games like Black Hole, Buck Rogers, Mars God of War. He then transitioned into a lead software programmer during the mid 80s for Gottlieb. And he did most of the programming on the Trudeau games, including Waterboys Rock. Nice. and on tag team which we have on the floor at wedgehead so he transitioned into being a software guy so he's kind of just like doing everything at gollib foreshadowing here we're gonna see a lot of that in this company it's everyone's wearing multiple hats and everyone's helping each other out on crazy deadlines yep but in between programming the system 80 and system 80 b games the predecessors to the system 3 as we discussed john was working on the architecture for the system 3 platform so for anybody that's listening is like what is a system what are we talking about we should probably just briefly say like whenever we like classify games by systems like this we're referring to the board set that the game uses which will be like common for a run of games so it's like system 80s were designed in 1980 in that get that board set in some variation lasted all the way up through 89 yeah when the system 3 came out yeah and so it's like all of these games kind of share these common parts when you design a new system it's a big um overhead task for the company like it's a big investment of time and you're kind of stuck with it for a while yeah it's just like in video games when they come out with a new console right like you have the playstation 1 you have the playstation 2 the 3 the 4 the 5 right like and they come out staggered over a period of time and everything's on that one platform all the games that get made are for that one platform and every time you adjust the platform you're adding more functionality to it yeah and they they did add quite a bit of functionality oh yeah the system 3 coming from the system 80 which was a fucking piecemeal nightmare that had been upgraded many times yeah so they increased the lamp and switch drivers and capacity which just means that the games can have more controlled lights more inserts and have more targets and switches and gimmicks and things they went from 64 lamp drivers to 96 so they're almost hitting triple digit number of the lamps significantly better they also fixed a big problem in the system 80 era which is called edge connectors and they looked like like if you look at an old video game cartridge like an old sega genesis cartridge and you looked at the edges they would have those connections and they would have like a plastic connector that would clip on it looked like that like little gold contacts the gold contacts on the pcb itself which is not a good idea because there's no way to replace that it's prone to like cracking yeah it's just like you're like oh that whole board can be shot and no other manufacturers did it like that gotley was the only one and surprise surprise basically not repairable or not easily repairable without hacks yeah and uh it's it's just not good so they changed that they moved away from those yeah they also improved the grounding from the factory and they worked on their voltage flow issues which the like i mentioned earlier the system 80 is a whole bunch of boards and they all had different they didn't have a common ground reference in them which created a lot of issues it's it's a common problem and so they address that with this one still has ground issues they're just much better you know we didn't get rid of all of the ground no i mean it wouldn't be a godly if there wasn't some ground issue you got a system three you're gonna want to do the ground mods still still but you know it's better it's way more reliable yeah they also have better menus audits and adjustment settings this is kind of the time when all these games get much better at this uh and gottlieb was one of the they weren't left behind it's not as robust as the williams or even the data east menus they were still kind of behind on these but you do have adjustment settings and you do have menus and things that are good for an operator and operating these games on routes they also probably most importantly they have more drive capacity for solenoids is famously their system 80 they only allowed their main driver board only allowed to power nine solenoids and system three could by default have 32 it's a lot they make good use of this as we'll get into later again like solenoids for anyone that's maybe new to pinball or is new to this terminology anything that moves anything in a pinball machine there are some motors sometimes but almost always it's driven by a solenoid we call them coils that term is interchangeable but basically so flippers pop bumpers anything that moves drop target banks like mechs any mech of any type a kicker an out hole a saucer a vuk you know a little guy riding a jet ski that bobs around every one of those needs its own coil so system 80 only allowed for nine and the funny thing about that is that's why they had to keep adding auxiliary boards because their main system could only power nine so if they had a need for 10 or 12 or whatever they would just piggyback another small board and they did it and it just became a fucking mess so they beefed it up so that standard they could have 32 which is a big big improvement yeah that's like 32 is plenty that is uh they were shooting for the moon without yeah no it's awesome here's a big part too is like during this era the 90s games the late 80s through the 90s the other manufacturers well because daddy's kind of just copied what williams was doing famously they kind have stole their board set they used to mount double a alkaline batteries like onto the cpu board and those would over time stay in there just like batteries left in an old flashlight or an old game boy or something and you forget about then they leak and they corrode and they cause fucking problems gotley was using lithium coin style batteries and this made them extremely reliable and way less likely to leak and damage the boards this is actually a good instance of technology that they implemented that's way better than their competitors it's way better than what williams and daddy east were doing and even their previous system system 80 that gets a lot of shit and had a lot of problems they had rechargeable kind of nicad batteries and even those were better than the alkaline double a batteries used by everyone else because those leaked less no godly you know they don't fuck around they're making robust systems here and the last thing we got to talk about as far as like just the technology of the system before we get to the games is they have a lot more memory which allowed for more sounds sound sampling and greater music as well as the ability to code deeper rule sets this is immediately noticeable in their first system three game lights camera action it was released in december 1989 so we'll just call it kind of early 1990 when the game is first out on the street lights camera action is actually the first game with modes a lot of people think it's adam's family and it kind of is like adam's family is sort of the first modern quote-unquote you know now it's now it seems quaint but like you know it has clear modes and it has a path to a wizard mode you complete enough modes you get to a wizard mode right like larry damari gets all the glory for his work on that and rightfully so but Jon Norris and his game lights camera action was actually the first and that was a gottlieb game that was a system 3 game it was the first system 3 game and it had adam's family beat by two full years golly i mean dude they kind of killed it with the system three system three is actually pretty good other than the flippers that's the kind of the funny part is that it's like the thing that you actually interact with the ball with and that you use all the time they kind of like fucked up that part yeah which is unfortunate because even the flippers they had before the fat boy flippers of the system 80 yeah famously extremely reliable like kind of indestructible they not super powerful They not super powerful is the problem It because they were running their flippers on 24 volts instead of 48 volts So when they jumped up the voltage, the flippers got stronger. Yeah, and they just fucking butchered them at the same time. Speaking of weird Gottlieb quirks, what are some other goofy shit Gottliebs cooked up in this era? So here's the thing. We talked about the system overall, but if you play Gottliebs, they play weird. We're talking about solid-state Gottliebs, from the System 1 to the System 80 to this System 3. But as an operator, they're also weird. Just weird shit. The way they do shit is weird. One of the big things is they screen-printed the entire underneath of the playfields with all the part numbers. It's very cool. And things like coil numbers, fuses, et cetera, right where all the parts are mounted. Fucking awesome. Honestly, this is the best feature that nobody has copied, and it's an awesome idea and should come back. It's so much easier to know what the fuck you're looking at and what it's supposed to be than having to pull your manual out, which may or may not be in the game 30 years later, or you have to go online to find a PDF for. Having it screen printed underneath the playfield, genius. Yeah. They also still used open stack relays, and Alex is a mechanical engineer, so he could probably describe a relay for the listener. But this is hilarious because even in the 90s, they were using what they would have been using in the EM era over 20 years before. Everyone, all the other manufacturers had switched over at that point for good reason. They had switched over like 20 years before. Why are they even using relays to drive stuff on here? I really want to go look at one now. That's very bizarre. Dude, everything they're doing, again, it's all kind of endearing. And it's just like they had they probably had some like 70 year old man there that was like, well, shit, we could just use realize like the good old days. And so that's what they did. Because now relays exist on printed circuit boards there. Yeah. They're used on circuit boards. Right. Yeah. But like, it's just different than seeing like an actual stack relays weird. So stack relays, what we're talking about is like if you look at the bottom of an EM cabinet, there will be just like stacks of leaf switches. and that's a relay and a coil will energize and move a bunch of switches at the same time yeah and change the path of the electrical circuit and so gottlieb was still doing this in the 90s so all of these games still have open stack relays and it's very weird they continue to use their use of auxiliary boards and small extra boards for a bunch of weird shit yeah which is also funny because it's like here's their opportunity to redesign the system and like go to a clean slate and consolidate things but instead they're gonna just like keep sticking with this modular system for some reason it's very weird because it made sense with the system 80 games because it was underpowered you only had nine solenoids so you had to add all these auxiliary driver boards and shit but they would build a little separate little board for each pop bumper for instance they would also have three different power supply boards when the other companies data east or Williams would just put them all on one single board and they rarely like Williams only had a few auxiliary power supply boards like on the super pins yeah when they added extra shit they did the wide body line you can listen to our episode on super pins you want to hear more about them but it was unusual like they had a big driver board they put all the shit on there data east kind of copied their system so they had that but then got leave still just did a bunch of shit like where Williams and data east were trying to consolidate their boards and only have like maybe five or six big boards to handle everything. Gottlieb would have like twice as many. Yeah. And it felt weird at the time, but now Stern kind of does this with their node boards. Like this is sort of the new system is, is kind of interesting. I think it's just because they can like consolidate communications that way. Yeah. It's weird though, that they have kind of moved kind of come around. Like at the first time you're like, what, this is like ass backwards. And you're like, well, and that's, I think this era is a reason why when Stern first started using their node boards and their spike systems, all the old guys were like, oh, no, no, no. Because what if Stern doesn't make it next year? What if they're out of business? What if pinball dies? Then who's going to make all these little boards? Because that's the problem is like these games were less popular than the other manufacturers getting replacements when a single board dies and they're not available. That sucks. Yep. Everyone was very afraid of what Stern does now with the no boards, but Gottlieb was kind of doing it. A similar idea in the 90s here. Splitting up responsibilities to just a lot of little boards. Yeah, instead of one big board or a couple big boards. Yeah, they've also got every coil and motor individually fused instead of just like consolidating fuses like we see on everything else. Everything else. Which is kind of fucking sick. It takes up a lot of space. Yeah. Especially like doing it like old school layout style. But it's kind of sick to just have an individual fuse for everything. You like for troubleshooting? That's so much nicer. It's actually awesome. And it definitely costs them more money. Yeah. Yeah, it's awesome for reliability. And they also mounted every single diode on separate boards instead of the more common way of attaching each diode onto a switch coil or lamp socket directly like everyone else did. Again, they started with this beginning with their first solid state system one through the system 80, 80B, 80C, and they just kept doing it into this system three era. They just never changed the way they did it. And it's not necessarily good or bad because the diodes are still there, but it's weird. It's weird because it's just like you've made this like harder on yourselves. It's harder to diagnose maybe sometimes. It might have been easier for manufacturing. like at the at the like the factory it might have saved enough time that they're like fuck it let's just keep doing it this way but it's weird because you're just like there's now like a whole dedicated board of components that everyone else has moved underneath to their respective like each light bulb has its own diode each switch has its own diode and for anyone that's listening a diode is essentially a gate it allows electricity to flow in one direction but not back to the other and that just keeps things so that lights are only lit when they're supposed to be lit when it's told by the the computer uh and same thing with switches so you don't get weird read errors yep so you need diodes they act like little gates but gottlieb just mounted them separately versus everyone else was mounting them directly onto the switches or the targets or the lamps their wire also is weird you have in the notes here it looks like old zebra stripe gum yeah you remember the zebra stripe gum Yeah, that's accurate. And it's like, again, you're like, where the fuck is Gottlieb sourcing their like wire from? Why does it have a different housing than every other manufacturer? It's just weird. All the shit they're doing. It's just like, it's like when we saw the Spanish pins or like, especially the Sega, the Japanese Sega, everything's different. And I don't know why. Yeah, it's like seeing a game built on a different planet. You're like, why would you not like, why are you reinventing every piece of this? And it's weird with Gottlieb because like like with the country, with companies in other countries, it makes total sense. Like they're getting different parts suppliers. They have different engineers. There's no overlap, really. But like with this, it's like, dude, you guys are right down the street from all these other more successful manufacturers. Why are you doing everything different? It's bizarre. I love seeing this. They're white wires with their little candy stripes on them. Like, it's just endearing to me now. I'm like, this is some Gottlieb shit. I love it. Because we're Gottlieb guys. We're Gottlieb guys. We love all the goofy shit. Yeah, but it's just like from like a manufacturing standpoint. You're like, why, man? Why is everything got to be different? And the last big kind of weird Gottlieb thing, they created something that they deemed smart switches and smart switches are specially switches leaf switches that John Burris developed. Again, the engineer behind this whole system programmer, the Renaissance man. Yeah, he developed it over a year with an outside company, and it was to replace the standard leaf switches and mostly for like targets and stuff like stand up targets. They were backwards compatible with every other normal target and leaf switch, meaning you could swap them in and out with regular targets or switches. But they were supposed to be more reliable in the field, and that's why they developed them. Burra said that the other switches were, quote, unreliable in the field due to atmospheric contaminants, making the switch contacts dirty. Now, since we operate a ton of games with normal switches and the industry... You're like, the thing that everyone else is using and has been using for like 50 years at this point, not good enough. I gotta assume that he's probably talking about cigarette smoke? When he says the atmospheric contaminants making the switch contacts dirty? maybe because you're saying yeah you're saying that you as an operator you've not run these atmospheric uh he's talking about real because of like targets and leaf switches super reliable they get out of whack in the sense that like you have to adjust the leafs yeah and i think this is where the smart switch was supposed to take over because they were supposed to basically be adjustment free. They basically worked on what they call the Piezo film principle. Have you heard of that? You're an electrical engineer, you know what Piezo film is? No. I looked it up. When you're working on these in the Gottlieb games, basically the way you can tell is it has a little green printed PCB in between stacks. So again, this is expensive. Gottlieb's putting money into this solving a problem that's not really a problem. Yeah, they're like creating a problem to solve and that's like john burris was probably a fucking genius and someone probably should have started saying no i guess a piazza from is basically it absorbs shock and turns that into an electrical current in some way and so what it does is instead of having two leafs close together when hit with an impact just hitting the thing with an impact was enough to close the circuit i mean that's very cool it's very cool because it's like there's no more contact Yeah. I understand why he was like, this is like the future of everything. And they probably thought this was worthwhile because they probably assumed everyone would adopt this and they would make tons of money just making their fucking smart switches. Because, I mean, it sounds like an awesome idea. The problem is the other things were a lot cheaper and they work totally fine. They work fine. You just need to adjust them sometimes. Yeah. I found regular switches to be no more or less reliable than these smart switches. So, again, it's just weird Gottlieb shit at this point. Weird Gottlieb shit, man. This is the sea change of this era. We start this right off, right at the beginning in the alphanumeric era. Like everything else, Gottlieb fumbled the launch of the dot matrix display, the DMD screen, as we usually call it. They were actually approached by the company making the displays, and they were offered to be the first company to switch over and use these displays. And if they did, they would get exclusive rights to the DMD display for a year before they sold them to the other companies. So they had the ability to have this kind of game-changing display and be the first ones with it. So what did Gottlieb do? They, of course, did not take the opportunity. They, of course, turned him down. And they had to watch as Williams had the full-size DMDs for a full year before they did. Fucking John Burris was probably over there trying to figure out how to get score reels back in the games at this point. Like, dude, there's not a single opportunity they were given where they'd made the right choice. Yeah, it's a bummer, man. And even Data East somehow was able to skirt this exclusivity by using a smaller size DMD and beating them to market. Because, like, Williams got the regular normal size DMD, and they got it for a year. But Data East, you know, Joe Cam and Cal and companies kind of sneaked in there. Yeah, they got the little checkpoint DMD out there. They're like, well, we'll use the smaller little ticker one. Yeah, it's just a little guy. Basically, it just means that, like, the System 3 has a whole bunch of games that were still using alphanumeric displays. and they continued for longer than their other competitors. And now we get into their first games, right? Like we get into the first one, which is technically I said Lights, Camera, Action was the first one because that's a full-size pinball machine, but there was one before it. Yeah. Have you played this game? I actually haven't. Okay. And I've played quite a few cocktail cabinets. So Caribbean Antonio Cruz was technically the first game. They only made 377 units. It's a contracted game designed and manufactured by Gottlieb, but badged with the name International Concepts. It was just a failure to revive the previously failed offshoot of pinball machines that we call cocktail pins, and cocktail pins were just smaller sit-down pinball machines. Yeah, you can put them in cocktail bars, and you can put chairs at them and sit there and put your drinks on it and stuff, and then you play a little pinball, you know? Yeah, they were weird. Perfect concept. They tried a few times. This was kind of like a last-ditch effort. Gottlieb manufactured these for a separate company. That's why we don't really consider it. the first real game i hope that they had international concepts pay for all of the development of system 3 and like lumped it into that if they're like that's how that kind of shit happens because you're like why would this be the first implementation and you're like i bet international concepts unwittingly just paid for like half of the development of this shit yeah and then they did lights camera action which actually made i mean that game's fucking loaded with shit going on and it's got the modes that we talked about it's an alphanumeric game but at this point nobody has uh dmd so it really like lights camera action really was kind of like a fucking ass kicker it just it didn't yeah i guess nobody really has like this isn't the license wars yet not quite yet so it's it sold 1700 units seven one thousand seven hundred and eight units and it's kind of surprising to me it didn't do better because that thing's fucking again though i think the at this time the name recognition of gottlieb operators have long memories you know and it just wasn't good but this was a fucking great game and if you ever get a chance to play lights camera action you should you would think that they were building up some like momentum you're like oh shit lights camera action first game with modes all this extra shit really cool turning table mech that again john bork designed for them really cool animated backbox games loaded right but then what happens what's their next game well you know they actually might have learned something though for once because they did something they keep trying shit different here they really went the opposite way from a big loaded game that was a flop into making a flop of a very unloaded game which was silver slugger the baseball themed game that would played a pivotal role in a different episode we did paramount versus gottlieb lawsuit episode episode 47 of the show yeah the street level experiment they called these games street level games so gottlieb Again, just outly being weird, like they always are. They went back to the drawing board and they said, what did we do good? And they're like, well, we used to sell games. And so they're like, why don't we make games like we used to? Yeah, because all these new games are complicated to design, complicated to manufacture. And we're hearing some gripes about operators that they don't want to fix these complicated games. Yeah. So Williams, you know, was the biggest manufacturer at the time. And they had just bought Bally, who was the second largest manufacturer. and so you know they were bringing in the super talent of pat lawler at this time gottlieb was way behind the eight ball and they were selling a paltry number of units comparatively like pat at williams really revolutionized the industry and reinvigorated the pinball sales with his large custom mechs features and gimmicks and everyone's falling suit yeah and like we said though gottlieb instead saw that and made it with lights camera action made a very yeah a very comparable game to that but then they decided to take a step backwards and see if they couldn't find their slice of the market by simplifying the games taking out the expensive mechs and ramps and selling these stripped down games for a lower price point to price conscious operators or operators concerned about the reliability of these new more complex games and the maintenance required they made six of these games in a row they went from lightsaber actions to making six of these games just pumped these things out with no ramps or no mechs and you know they stopped making the fully featured games for all of 1990 into february of 1991 and then they quickly scrambled back into making the more modern fully featured games that the other companies never stopped making because they realized oh shit we fucked up these games aren't selling this isn't what the market wants we're getting creamed like yeah if you look at this it's like so so they did six of these is silver slugger that i said vegas silver slugger did 2000 units was the first one of these that's actually a modest success like they had good success with it percent of what pat lawler is doing so that's pretty good for gotland vegas sold 1500 deadly weapon was next sold 800 title fight does a thousand car hop does about a thousand and then hoops the the final street level game does just under 900 units of these games i've not played any of them because they've all had poor sales they're not games you really see on location hoops is the one that i've heard of really hyped up and i really want to played i believe i played all of these surprisingly the one that sticks out to me that i haven't really played much of is vegas i believe i have played it but i haven't played in a while the other i have uh memories of traveling to different locations in big collections and playing these games but hoops like you said it's basically it's a tournament darling it's been featured in many pop and pinbird banks since as long as i've been in pinball, a friend of the show, Ty Ueda, New Robert Englunds pinball operator, said in his pin side review for the game Hoops, quote, Hoops is simply the best pinball machine and I will fight you about it. Also, recently, former world champion Bowen Kerins recorded a tutorial on Ty's Hoops machine. And as he starts that tutorial, he says, Hoops is actually a pretty sweet game. Those are two big, big compliments for Hoops. And the big thing about hoops is when you look at the play field, that's where it has a very interesting spinner shot and a shot that goes all the way into the left in lane from the top of the play field, kind of like Keith Elwin's Jaws. Interesting. So it's very interesting where Keith gets his inspiration. Interesting that a big tournament guy would maybe look at a big tournament game and take a little inspiration from it. But it's a bummer that, like, these games, they don't seem to be – I mean, I haven't really played – I haven't played any of them. I can't remember. I think I ran into a Hoops, like, right when I got into pinball. I thought they might have had one at the Vegas Museum, but I checked and they don't. So, Hoops is considered the best of them by, like, true pinheads that have played these. Silver Slugger is also considered pretty decent. The rest of them are sort of, like, forgettable. I like the concept. I like what they were going here, but they just didn't seem to nail it. Like, none of these really hit on what they wanted. It's a bummer because, like, I feel like a year or two earlier when they made Diamond Lady, like diamond lady rips and you know like yeah you could have made that game without a ramp and it would have been just as good yeah like it like you could have i don't know because it's like they have like alien like they had tons of good games like just a few years prior that are genuinely very very good it didn't have very many moving parts because they were system 80s and they couldn't and it's like man why couldn't you just repeat that success and maybe it's because they cranked out six of these things as fast as possible so well they had to keep cranking them out because they weren't selling so they actually had to get on the line like and once again so they get the the failure of the six street levels and they go oh shit they they all meet up in their their fucking gottlieb you know boardroom and they're like we got to do something else we need games with ramps and we need them now yep and the first game back is cactus jacks it was their first return to fully featured modern games it's Jon Norris on design he's the lead guy credited with design but it was actually the guy that designed the play field was an outsider named reinhard bangurder reinhard brought this layout to gottlieb as a basically a homebrew he was trying to break into the business they had it on the shelf at gottlieb and they weren't really even gonna make it but because they were on a time crunch because they had nothing in the queue they had to scramble to make it happen and make a game with ramps after their failed you know street level experiment so this game got greenlit for production. Jon Norris says he only had like six or seven weeks to design this game for production, you know, which is ludicrous. Like, the Williams guys were getting a year, you know. He was doing it in six or seven weeks That not even two months although he said his normal average time was eight to ten weeks so it wasn really that short That kind of par for the course for all these games I wonder if John talked to the other guys and knew how different the environment was. And so I think it's important when people talk about these games or play these games, think about it like, oh man, they designed these games for production under two months. Cut them a little slack. Yeah. And this game's just got a goofy-ass theme where it's like... It's kind of like fucking VeggieTales going on. It is kind of like VeggieTales. Yeah, it's got a fucking watermelon wearing a cowboy hat smoking a cigarette in the middle of the playfield, which is badass, dude. That's the kind of watermelon I'd hang out with. It feels like we're in the 90s here, right? Like, Cactus Jacks ushers in the 90s. it's got some cool like western fruit themed game with some very cool art i love this because it's goofy this is what reminds me of the 90s and the 90s games and it's actually a pretty fun game i've not played this game enough to like really know what's going on or like know its flaws or weaknesses and you'll catch that's a recurring theme this episode when you don't know these got leap games that well and you don't have someone whispering in your ear telling you like this is the scoring next play a lot of these are fun super fun and i that's what i think of cactus jacks is i'm like i remember being like this game's kind of fun man no it is fun dude i that's why we're doing this episode is i want to put a shine on some of these games and how they're cool yeah next one from this alphanumeric system 3 era with rams is class of 1812 it's a ray tanzer game that's based upon a shell joe kamenkow whitewood again same story basically just like shit we need a game what's a game that's almost done they go pull one off the fucking shelf joe kamenkow doesn't work for gottlieb at this point he barely worked there he made this design he didn't get played he goes over to work with his buddy gary stern starts to add ease so this game had been sitting on the shelf for a couple years it's the only one of his games from his time at gottlieb that ever ended up getting made although as well after he had already left it sold 1670 units and it was supposed to be monster mash and it would have been the first licensed game but when they reached out to license it management balked at the price tag they thought it was super expensive Jon Norris also said once we start doing licensed games we realize how comically cheap that license would have been to get but it ends up being class of 1812 very again this kind of like monster bash before monster bash was a goofy kind of campy horror theme with music it plays the uh 1812 overture if you're familiar with classical music it's a very famous piece of classical music. What doesn't it have like that chicken song in it too? Yeah, dude. It is goofy. It's got like the beating heart, big plastic thing. Yeah, it's got the chattering teeth. It's goofy. It feels like something like it feels like a Greg Freres Nordman game almost, but with that Gottlieb twist of like knockoff stuff. Well, and this is also at the time when they've already seen the first Elvira game, and they've seen the first kind of party game. So it seems like they were kind of feeding into that, and they saw the success of those games, and this is Gottlieb's version of it. Definitely. It is also a fairly highly regarded game. Yeah, I think it's considered one of the best of this system. This era, anyway, at least the alphanumerics. I know a lot of people really like this one. It's not one I've run into, but it's a cool-looking game. It's a cool-looking game. They didn't make a ton of them, so you don't see it a lot. It is highly coveted by certain collectors. Yes. Surf and Safari is the next game. It's another Jon Norris game. and what's interesting about this game another goofy 90s theme has an alligator at a water park so you know i fucking love it a strange combination of like anthropomorphic animals and then like sexualized women which is a common on these gotlieb games of this era it's very it never used to be never used to be gotlieb was always like buttoned up classy they were the classy manufacturer that's gone away and then suddenly it's like hell yeah get the fucking uh you said this is an alligator it's supposed to be like a dinosaur alligator weird fucking animal they've got they're like get him in there he's partying there's a girl it's just like fucking like getting out of the pool and stuff it's crazy batshit insane theme i would say but it's also this is another fun game again from the 90s man this just feels very 90s Jon Norris game like i said steve kirk is credited on mechanics for this game it's got that ramp that you can just repeat over and over it's fun now this is where it gets weird because Jon Norris said that steve helped him with minor tweaks to his layout. But it's really wild if you're a pinball nerd to see Steve Kirk back and get a design credit on anything. Yeah. Because this ends up being his last pinball design credit. I'm pretty sure that Steve actually never even really worked at Gottlieb. That's very bizarre. Right? So for listeners, Steve Kirk, most famous for his time at Stern Electronics, and he made games like Stars and Meteor and Nineball. He made some great machines for them. and then he also made Swords of Fury for Williams. Yep. And then some other games. He was famously kind of a genius, but also supposedly hard to work with, so he didn't stick around. But then a couple years after he's last seen at Williams with the Swords of Fury game, in 91 we have Surf and Safari, and he gets a design credit. Jon Norris said that he helped him with just like the placement of supports and some tweaks and whatever. When I was at Chicago Expo, and I was talking to John Borg, who like we established, created the flippers created the mech on lights game reaction john borg was here for a little while now he's been at data east which became sega which is now stern he's still there he told me a story about how he used to go out and play pinball after work with Jon Norris and steve kirk interesting so i think they were just buddies and i think it was like they were both really good players supposedly in their day they were very good pinball players you know i think it was just sort of one of those things where he's showing him the white wood and Steve Kirk just like oh what if you did this or what if you just kind of tweaked that or whatever so he gave him a little credit but i don't think he was ever actually working there very very interesting though to see his name pop up like one last time on surf and safari of all things and i think that is what's really cool is like that story that john borg told me i was like that's so fucking cool to think of like a young john borg who has since made so many games and Jon Norris and steve kirk some kind of like legendary pinball designers just all kind of like shooting the shit out of bar and playing pinball after work like i just thought that was really cool that is and then the last game of the alphanumeric era is this is my favorite of this run of games it's called operation thunder it's a Ray Tanzer game with Jon Norris on software and rules i wrote down this game fucking rips sold 2,500 units it's got modes and it has a wizard mode it's a fighter jet theme and it's the first game that has john burris's smart switches that we discussed earlier cool art cool playfield layout i fucking like really like this thing they got one at next level and it's a very cool game this game fucking rips dude i love operation thunder what a fun fucking game and this is the game in particular i think the other games that we mentioned are also very fun but i'm like this is the game i'm like i would put somebody in front of and explain the rule set to them and just be like if you don't like this game you don't fucking like pinball like if you if you just blanket statement or like got leap system three games suck this is the game yeah this is to me especially the before they get to their dmd era here this is the best of the alphanumerics in my opinion i'd agree with that of the ones i've played anyway uh and then we get to finally the dmd finally arrives finally get the licensing to use a dmd or whatever the exclusive contract has expired so they can get it and they actually fucking don't mess this one up for once they used it they secured a big license startlingly big for gottlieb to somehow land in super mario bros so Jon Norris game it was both the first license and first dmd from the company sadly it's based upon the video game characters and not based upon the incredible major motion picture which inspired this shitty video game series but it did sell 4200 units likely based on theme alone and probably because people were confused they were thinking it was the movie turns out it's the video game based on the movie it speaks to got leaves reputation that they managed to get like truly a monstrous license at this time they've got all of the technology the game's pretty like loaded with shit they've got like really good art on their very accurate mario art on there and they could still only sell 4200 units in a time when other guys are doing like 15 to 20,000 yeah and you're like damn got leaves name was trash and then they even double dipped because they made a smaller game called super mario brothers mushroom world and it was kind of their bizarre attempt to double up on the same license sadly it's still based on the crappy video game characters and not upon the characters portrayed on the silver screen by oscar nominated acting legends bob hoskins john louis gazzamo and dennis hopper the public is not stupid and they weren't about to be fooled a second time we only want super mario brothers pin if it's based on the live action movie okay when are they gonna learn yeah they only sold 519 units of these mistake this game is hilarious have anyone seen them they shipped with little tiny legs it's like so it's a small play field like very very small compared to a conventional pinball machine it has the full size pinball backbox on it and then it has tiny legs they look like cartoon proportions They're hilarious. If you've ever seen one, they used to have one in another castle, kind of in the Seattle area, had one that they would move around. They're fucking, it's a funny game just because of the novelty. If you play one, you kind of, if you're an adult, you have to like either sit down or you're crouched way over and both things are just a funny experience. Yeah, it's funny to make your friends play it. Yeah, sometimes, I mean, people do put them on tall legs so you can play them like a normal human. but honestly i don't know why you would because if you're taking this game seriously it's not going to be good whereas if you're just like you know taking it for what it is it's very the next game up we have cue ball wizard ends up being the highest selling system 3 game 5,700 units. This was designed by Jon Norris and features an actual cue ball that you hit with a pinball. It's a very gimmicky game, but it really incorporates the classic pool theme in a way that nobody's really done before or since. There's a ton of pool games, but like this one literally feels like you're using your pinball to hit a cue ball to play pool in a way that none of the other ones truly do yeah it's got like a big rubber like a big rubber band it's like stretched across the play field with like a cue ball that's not a no wait no it's not a rubber band that's a that's like a metal bar that looks like a metal bar yeah yeah the ball always comes back to the center i don't like this thing but i guess i haven't played it enough to remember that it's a metal bar so it's one of those things that apparently it earned buckets back in the day apparently it did super well on route i think it's because it's one of those games that like maybe pinheads don't necessarily love it but a casual player will get a fucking kick out of it yeah it's probably like i want to hit that ball yeah and then you can hit the cue ball and then you can hit another cue which hits an eight ball and hits these targets up top like it's a very interesting mechanical game apparently it did well at the time i mean they sold the shit out of them and apparently it earned very well for many years afterwards really interesting and then after that they go back to the license idea and they get another really kick-ass hot licensed street fighter again they didn't learn their lesson though because they based it on some stupid video game ripoff of the classic jean-claude van damme movie this was the era when they were making these awesome movies starring jean-claude van damme or like you know john louis gazzama or whatever and then they create these knockoff video games based on these awesome movies and that's what it was based on it was some shitty video game series that nobody cares about this was a big seller for gottlieb it sold almost as many years it's 5 550 but it's not as well regarded probably again because it's not based on the movie so this one does not have uh unlike mario it does not have very accurate art either it has really really shitty art of the street fighter characters from the video game not the movie like alan wishes it was we all wish it was it's a loaded game it's got all kinds of shit and it has like the same little sound effects from when people get like knocked out that you just hear over and over and over when you play it because like every street fighter character is a shot and you hit that shot once and they get knocked out i just want to say that Around the same time, Williams and Bally released the best-selling game of all time, The Addams Family. It was based on the movie, not on the shitty video game that they built on the movie, right? And, like, that was starring Raul Julia. Raul Julia is M. Bison in the movie, and they could have made that, and they could have had a big success like Williams did, but instead they did this. And, you know, they suffered for it. This thing, though, this game is fucking, like, it looks almost like, if you look at this, it looks like a modern Stern layout. almost yeah like there's some goofy shit there's the two big holes on the lower play field but it's got the ramps in the right spot it's got like a pop-up a ramp it's got an upper flipper like loop shot that goes into this weird it's kind of like a csi style centrifuge little mech thing it's got the weird chun li scissor kicks flipper that's just spinning around endlessly i don't really know if that one is doing too much for the game but really it's like it's quite the game and it's disappointing that it's not better than it is it is pretty fun i do kind of like this thing I have a soft spot for it. My buddy Errol, he owns 81 Arcade in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. He has the fucking nicest. He's just a Street Fighter fan. And he has the absolute nicest Street Fighter pin of all time. He did a custom translate for it based off of, like, the Super Nintendo box art or something. So it's actually good box art. And it's all very, like, professionally redone. The whole thing, he's got a color theme. It should be based upon the movie poster. I don't... What's up with these video games? Like, do people care about this shit? Nobody cares about these. Oh my god. Monstrously, arguably the most successful arcade series of all time, I think. Yeah, based upon the movie, though, what came first? Okay, okay, so back to pinball, though. The next game, they didn't get the license for this one. They just knocked it off. It's teed off. it's a caddyshack type ripoff license with uh what alan has in the notes an awesome factory topper it's an awesome topper gottlieb didn't do a lot of toppers but they put a stuffed gopher in like a plastic case at the top that's what constitutes an awesome topper looks like shit dude are you you kidding me that's fucking awesome dude it's a custom plushie like a fucking chicken nugget you don't like stuffies dude it should be yeah it was in a claw machine if you put that thing in a claw machine i'd probably dump 20 bucks in there trying to win it that's awesome you see the trash they're putting out nowadays and they're calling toppers like this is fucking rad it's super tall so this game did it come out before no good gophers it did that's an interesting little bit there because It was designed by Ray Tanzer, Jon Norris on rules and software. The game's fun, and it's probably so much fun that Pat Lawler would essentially make his own ripoff game a couple years later. Because it's the same goofy theme with gophers fucking with golfers. Yeah, man. The gopher on Teed Off is weird looking, though. Unsettling. That's what I would say. It is a startling little gopher. It is kind of a fun game. It's really fucking green, that cabinet, man. And you see that they don't make cabinets that green anymore. No, and it sold pretty well. It sold 3,500 units. Yeah, you actually see these. When I got into the hobby, this was like one of those games that would come up. It was like a sub-2000. I mean, I got into the hobby not that long ago, so my prices aren't like 2000s prices. They're like just pre-COVID prices. And these things were like under two grand all day, I think. That's how I remember it anyway. Because it was one that people would be like, oh, they're fun. It's actually fun. This is a game that doesn't get shit on as much as some of the other games. It's one that people just seem to have a sweet spot for. Then the next game we have is Wipeout, which is another Ray Tanzer joint. And this one's interesting because it also has Tanzer doing the rules package too. This is also interesting because it's like one of your favorite fucking games of all time. Mm-hmm. You love Wipeout. So, supposedly Jon Norris... I don't have more in the notes about this one. Supposedly Jon Norris wrote the rules to all the other Tancer games except this one. Interesting. This is a wild game, and it features two incredible mechs. It's got an awesome fucking flyer, dude, where the machine is on skis ripping down the slopes. Very sick. It was also, like, we didn't mention this in the tech before, but, like, Gottlieb was the first manufacturer to get UL listed. which should make you happy. I love it. You love UL. I love to hear that. Right? I love seeing things UL listed. That's a big part of my job. No, but Wipeout fucking rips, dude. It's a goofy theme. Why is UL listed so big on the fucking flyer? Because it's a big deal, dude. That's some good shit. That's how you sell games. It glides past the competition. As it says, this game is fun as fuck, dude. it's got some crazy call outs called rip the crud this is a fun game i've i've only played really like beat copies of it and i still really like it which bodes well for the game i love the theme i love the colors the colors are really good i love the mountain theme like it literally has a working ski lift in this game where it'll turn on a ski lift and you put your balls there it'll grab it up to the top of this mountain and you'll go down this like mechanized slalom course uh down the right side and it is fucking fun dude it just a fun game and i love this game waterboy right like it not one of my favorite games of all time but i fucking love it dude it one that comes up a lot it probably well this is probably my favorite of well this one or the next game is probably my favorite of the dmd system three games the next game has been the one that like since like it's the game that made me realize that these system threes are kind of fucking rad and it is gladiators Jon Norris Design it's a game that was originally supposed to be based on the video game series not the fucking like animated cartoon or whatever Alan's going to say here, but it's based on a video. It was supposed to be based on a video game series, The Legend of Zelda. It got switched, and they tried to kind of, like, make it a knockoff American Gladiators instead. No, it was supposed to be American Gladiators licensed, but they had to make it on a short turnaround. For some reason, they missed the deadline, and so they had to end up making it unlicensed and just called it Gladiators. So basically this switched themes twice and became what it was at the last minute. Jon Norris has said it's probably his favorite layout of all the games that he designed. And it's definitely up there with Diamond Lady for my favorite Jon Norris layout. It's a fucking cool layout. It's a very cool layout, very unique game. It suffers from an exploit on the upper left flipper where it's easy to catch and repeat the looping ramp shot. John mentions this in his TopGast interview, saying that Godly management wouldn't let them update their ROMs like Williams or Data East would. So he was never able to fix this exploit with code because they only put it on test for two days. And once they found it, you couldn't fix it. It's just unreal, dude. That's the shit part. That's like the tragedy of a lot of these Gottlieb games is they just didn't have quite enough time to make them as great as they could have been. But even with that exploit, it's like, well, just don't do that. And this game's fucking fun. It is super fucking fun. This is a rad game. It's like loaded with goofy shit. it's got a vuck that like sends the ball down a trail that just shoots it back out at the players that the player at the flippers doesn't have slingshots it has kicking targets yep where the slings would be kicking targets instead of slings i just i really like gladiators this is one of those games too that i will grab people and i did this to uh johnny crap when we were at expo and i was like have you played gladiators it's like no and i was like we're gonna go play gladiators like this is like i'm a pusher man when i'm pushing people on got leaves and this is one of my go-to's i'm like play gladiators it's fun you're gonna like gladiators like so this is one i always go to then the next game they made after this was world challenge soccer oh with the dog on it and the goal yeah pretty much uh except they got made because they heard williams was going to make that doggy soccer game and they decided to try and snipe some of their thunder so Jon Norris took the car hop layout from the street level game the hit game car hop added some ramps and the goal mech, and they released that game, it was meant to be sort of a small stopgap release for them, something to kind of keep the line running for six weeks until their next game. But it sold 1,400 units, and basically that's all they were going to make anyway. John North said it was actually kind of a smash hit for them. Nobody talks about it now because Doc Soccer came out a little bit later, and that's the game everyone talks about. Unfortunately, when people use the WCS acronym, they're talking about that hack shit and not the beauty of world challenge soccer but the game after that was rescue 911 and it was designed by bill parker new designer but had Jon Norris on rules this sold 4 000 units and this game has an incredible helicopter mech this is one of those games that like people remember from their childhood like non-pinball people yeah i've had multiple friends be like oh have you ever played that game where there's like the helicopter that picks up the ball and i'm like i have yeah the unfortunate part about this is that it happens literally all the time on the games so it makes it kind of boring yep but this is one of those mechs where it's kind of like the castle in medieval like it is memorable it is exciting it is extremely cool yep it actually sold pretty well probably as a result that mech because it this thing had to earn i'm sure it earned well it just for pinheads like us you just get to the point where you're like i don't want to play this over and over again like it takes too long you can't skip it right like it gets to the point where like this is a really cool mech but you're like that's all there is in this game so unfortunately like not the best usage when we talked to roger sharp on the show he alluded to this game he brought this game up about one of the reasons why the williams games were so good during this era is because they would make something like things hand or the bookcase in adam's family and they'd make this really cool mech but then they would dial back how often you saw it yep you know they thought about that godly was like trying to get their money's worth out of this and that's just not the way that it doesn't work well long term but after that they go back to the licenses they get one that's actually based on a shitty movie so you'll be happy about it it's pretty a nightmare on elm street this is a bill parker ray tanzer game it was previously featured on the show as a die in this hill game episode 33 so if you want to go back and listen to that we'll talk about it in more detail big time license cool mechs and they flew Robert Englunds in he came in and recorded custom calls for the game sold 2800 units yeah not bad not bad not bad for them shack attack after that funniest fucking back glass of all time it's not shack like cartoonishly like dinosaur hue like just 100 feet tall on the playfield it's this weird cartoon it's just like everything from gottlieb in this era the artist didn't have enough time but it's very funny well it sold 3380 units Jon Norris the designer hates the art package and the sound call outs from the coach on this game i still think the game's fun regardless although this game is commonly commonly shit on it's still fun to have i think it's fun i don't know why people hate on it one of those ones where it's like so loaded with shit that it's definitely fun for at least a while because you're like it's got so much stuff it's got a very target it's got a moving hoop and a little jump ramp exactly it's got like this weird the one that always got me the first time i played it i didn't know if it was like supposed to be like that is this like a saucer that's just kind of like in the middle of the like that's not really an orbit shot but it's like a weird it's just like this little like kicker hole just like in the middle of the play field that you can't really ever shoot intentionally the ball just kind of stops in it yeah very very confusing choice from uh This is Jon Norris from Retanzer. Yeah, Jon Norris. This is Jon Norris. I'd love to ask, like, what? He said that the original back glass on this game he thought was awesome, but that the licensor, Shaq, or his management team turned it down for whatever reason because I guess he was dunking a basketball and the backboard was exploding like Shaq did during this time in real life. And so they ended up with this where he's a giant on the back glass, which honestly. It's kind of iconic at this point. It's iconic, dude. this is one of those like man dude it's really something it's really something and then the next game is uh stargate which was a ray tanzer layout with Jon Norris on code and rules it's the highest rated system 3 game by far yes it's the only game that we've talked about That's in the top 150 on Pinside. So, again, even this one, which is considered the best by the majority of pinball players, it's still not highly rated. It's not in the top 100. Based upon the excellent Kurt Russell movie where he wears a beret. He wears a beret in pretty much the whole movie. That's pretty good. I mean, that's kind of a guaranteed good movie. You got Kurt in a beret. It seems like Gottlieb finally learned the lesson from the whole Super Mario Brothers and Street Fighter mistakes. Somehow, though, this is still the only Kurt Russell machine ever made. That is a shame. It's shocking. And he's only on one small graphic on the left ramp. Disappointing. So I don't think they got his actual license rights. They got to just get publicity stills for his likeness or whatever, and they used that one spot. It sold pretty well at 3,600 units, but that's only half of what they could have sold if they had properly centered Kurt Russell on the art package. people will talk about this game as shoot the pyramid because it's always like shoot the pyramid shoot the pyramid shoot the pyramid you gotta shoot that pyramid it's got crazy steep little side ramps and oh yeah very cool game very very cool game this is another one of those ones where it's like well this is just undeniably a good game in my opinion i agree yeah stargate's an awesome game so after that they secured you know kind of like the they're going back to like the shack attack idea but this time they got mr frank thomas and they made big hurt they got Reebok and Frank Thomas they did not get the White Sox they did not get MLB they didn't get anything except for Frank Thomas and fucking Reebok yeah so he's the same thing with Shaq right like it's not the magic although he's in magic colors yeah and he was on the Orlando Magic but that would have been an extra licensing thing uh this is the game we had on the floor last year for baseball season at Wedgehead this is a game that again it's not super highly regarded but it's got some great fucking mechs it's got a roving glove that will stuff you it's got a lifting jump ramp that goes into a grand slam it's got some great call outs it's got good art and like casuals love this game dude this is a fucking game one of those games in a lot of these games they kind of like have good central mechs they have stuff that you walk up and you're like oh that's what i'm trying to do like you walk up to big hurt and you're like i'm trying to shoot baseballs out of the stadium yeah like this makes sense i also love that they did on this game they put an oversized pop bumper on it because it's the big hurt i don't think i ever noticed like i don't know why they did that but like it's so funny it's just like this is a fun game like this is gonna help it all the modes are basically multiball so it's super easy but it's fun the next game was water world oh water world that's a game for me man yeah well the water boy Yeah, and this is actually one of the games they had at a pinball spot right when I got into the hobby. So I played a lot of Waterworld with like zero idea what was going on. The Waterworld I played was also like half broken. Yeah, Ray Tanzer with Jon Norris on code. The game was heavily cost cut when Ray Tanzer had gone on vacation. Apparently the company ripped out four or five mechs. Holy shit, this was with four or five ripped out? It has so much shit in there still. Yeah, and it left them on Ray's chair from when he got back from vacation. Jon Norris was quick to say that this isn't the game that Ray designed. It was heavily cut down. That's a bummer because, I mean, they nailed it on the art. They got Kevin Costner's wispy hair in this. Yeah, we got Dennis Hopper on it. We got pre-turkey hair plug Kevin when his God-given hairline is going. It just looks fucking horrible. This was a massive license. This movie famously bombed. It was one of the most or maybe the most expensive movie made up to that point and just lost a shitload of money at the box office and unfortunately forgot lead that spilled over when they released the machine. And they were, I think, betting that this was going to turn the tides, and it just didn't. But it's still a fun game. It's a cool game. It's got really cool ball trails that are curving around the pops. It's got the flipping Ds. Which is a sinking ship. Yeah, you know about Ds? Yeah. uh and it's yeah it's got like this it's got this weird ball lock half pipe ramp thing that's the flipping ship and it makes like a bunch of sounds lots of sharks cool game actually i mean i genuinely think it's a fun game we were playing this at next level not long ago we're both like this game's kind of fun these games are fun dude little dude on the jet ski when you shoot the orbit that's it starts like jumping around yeah it's pretty cool this game's fun man these games are fun After that, they try something different. They make strikes and spares, which is like a bowling game. Yeah, again, this is kind of a thing that they used to do in the EM era. I think they were grasping at straws here. They only sold 750 units of it. It's in a pinball cabinet, and it does have flippers, but there's a series of little pins and switches that you're supposed to hit. Yeah, it just, like, delivers the balls to you via, like, bowling ball return kind of looking things. and it's bowling it's okay it's a novelty game it's not really pinball the next game was uh mario andretti which was Jon Norris game and sold 1120 units the good mario yeah exactly it features auto percentage on ball times so what and it would bring up the center post in between the flippers when it could sense that a player was a low skill casual and help increase the ball times for him you know i forgot to mention that on water world that was something that really confused me when i first got into it is it had a minimum score on there and it would just keep saving your ball until you hit that minimum score and we were like when i got into the hobby me and my buddy would always just be like why is it keep giving me the ball back because it doesn't explain this to you because they don't want to hurt your feelings but it seems like gotley was really trying to get like casuals into shit that's what Jon Norris said he designed mario and dreddy with casual players in mind. He also has famously said that he thought his first game, Diamond Lady, which is my favorite Jon Norris game, he thinks it's too hard and that he would have made it easier then. You play a lot of these games, I say they're fun. They are easy. They are long playing. I think he was certainly trying to think about this from like people first stepping up and playing it. And then what ends up being the last game that Gottlieb ever produced, the final game in 1996, is Barbed Wire. going out on a high note bill parker design licensed the failed pamela anderson action movie of the same name it's actually the second pinball machine to feature pamela anderson sells only 1 000 units and it has a funny very fat guy mech in the middle of the the play field that's the noteworthy part about this my buddy owns this and bay watch the pam anderson lineup which is just incredible it is incredible the game's actually kind of fun too lowly regarded but very i again if you like these games like a lot of these games there's a big difference in games where it's like this is a good enough game to go spend like ten thousand dollars on and then the bar for like this is a good game to go put like 50 75 cents into or whatever every pinball machine that's like something that it's like there's no game made that's not worth playing and these games are definitely good enough and fun enough that like even if you've played them and played a poor copy in the past give them another go when you see them because like it's fun barbed wire is a good example of that amazing i mean it's not a fucking like amazing game but it's fun if you think it's an amazing game and you think that more people should enjoy it you can come and defend it on or die on the hill pretty much all of these games are eligible yeah like everything except for stargate everything except for stargate would be eligible to defend on the hill i think they're all lowly rated enough so if you love these system threes like we do please send me an email to wedgeheadinfo at gmail.com and tell me what game you want to defend and we'll set up a time in the future to do so i included the game that was going to be the next game the last game that was in development was also a licensed game it was uh brooks and dunn based off of the country duo brooks and dunn they had just built like a prototype and then they shut the company down which kind of speaks to how fast that kind of happened it's not like gottlieb was like slowing down it's not like they transitioned to making slots they just fucking stopped it's really a bummer we talked about this game a little bit in our episode 68 the band pins episode where alex claims that this would have been the game to save gottlieb oh yeah he's like if they would have just got this across the finish line got out the door would have been the one 15 000 units but yeah it is really kind of just like a sad note to go out on it's like they're just kind of acquiring i mean they did have some like big licenses in this time and they just couldn't get the numbers even with those licenses yeah it's a bummer too little too late i mean the whole market was going down anyway at this time and gottlieb had bought a struggling gambling company sms that built lottery machines and much like williams they wanted to extend themselves into the gaming industry as the profits were higher being they do this in the early 90s but this was a poison pill because the company that they bought wasn't profitable and was getting railroaded by the bigger manufacturers in the business, keeping them from getting the gambling licenses required to sell their games into pretty much every state. So their competition was keeping them from being successful and getting into the game, right? Gottlieb just bought a failing company. Yeah. And so Gottlieb was starting to get hit with the payments on the debt that they took out to buy the SMS gambling company. It was bleeding them dry. Because Jon Norris, in his TopGast interview, said that he felt that Gottlieb could have survived the market downturn, as they had already proven before, because he was like, We're good at making small runs of games and designing them in under two months and et cetera. Like everyone do it a little bit of everything. Jon Norris design program and assemble all of what he does. What he's saying, he's like he's like we were doing fine when we were selling a thousand units of games like we were able to keep the lights on. But it was this debt that ultimately sinks the company. It's just really just sad. It is sad. And it was a hard time regardless, because during the same time, Capcom came and went. data east sold the sega and williams bally started layoffs and eventually closed a couple years later after this so who knows i mean they were able to run lean before and they did have the dedicated talent there at the company who didn't seem like they wanted to leave gottlieb at all like Jon Norris or Ray Tanzer or any of those guys like and maybe brooks and dunn would have been a smash maybe once williams left the industry they could have taken some of that market share yeah but as it stood though the once almighty got leave goes out with a whimper not with a bang and it's just a bummer man personally i blame the flippers i think john borg was a double agent he sank god leave he went over to help daddy's sega store and become a behemoth he was the guy that did it he knows what he did and it's time that people know the fucking truth it was the fucking flippers it's the pointy flippers the pointy boy flippers this episode and it's what It all comes back to. I want to go encourage everyone at the end of this episode, go out, utilize the pinball map, and find some of these weird pointy flipper games and play them. They are extremely rare to see on location, but not impossible. You can get over the weird flippers, and you have an operator who cares about maintaining these games. A lot of these games are actually pretty fun and worth your time. Yeah. And it goes without saying that all of the Gottlieb games before this are very much worth your time. Yeah. Gottlieb games are fun. even all these solid state games is fun man they're different dude they offer a different experience if you're the kind of person that's like defending boutique games nowadays because you just enjoy seeing something different than like the popular stern offerings you're like well boy do i have a fucking company for you yeah you're gonna love godly dude if you like seeing some like weird shit you're like this is it we want to encourage you to go out and play some of these games go and find them and i want to thank you for listening to another episode of the wedget Pinball Podcast. And until next time, good luck. Don't suck. Thanks for watching!