Fireside Chat with John Borg

Pintastic Pinball & Game Room Expo·video·59m 2s·analyzed·Feb 12, 2025

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.037

TL;DR

John Borg chronicles 37 years as Stern's senior mechanical designer, from arcade kid to Star Wars and Guns N' Roses legend.

Summary

John Borg, legendary Stern Pinball mechanical designer with 37+ years in the industry, recounts his career trajectory from discovering pinball at age 8 through his pivotal work at Premier/Gottlieb (1987-1990), Data East (1990s), and Stern. He shares detailed anecdotes about iconic games including his first patent on Lights Camera Action, the rapid pivot from dinosaur mechanics to Star Wars at Data East, and personal interactions with celebrities like Slash and George Lucas. Borg emphasizes the demanding work culture (100-hour weeks), analog design processes, and the collaborative nature of game development across eras.

Key Claims

John Borg started at Premier/Gottlieb in 1987 on Victory as his first game assignment
high confidence · Direct first-person account of employment history and early projects
Borg received his first patent at age 23 for the inverted playfield mechanism on Lights Camera Action
high confidence · Detailed personal recollection with specific game and age reference
Data East development team included Joe Kamikow and Joe Baler as lead designers, with Borg as solo mechanical engineer
high confidence · Direct account of organizational structure at Data East circa 1990
Star Wars game was created in just days after Joe Kamikow pivoted Borg from dinosaur mechanics to the Star Wars theme
high confidence · Detailed narrative of rapid design cycle and mechanical adaptation
Borg and team worked 100-hour weeks during Data East's Hook development, with production halts due to DMD display crashes
high confidence · Personal testimony about crunch cycle and technical issues
George Lucas visited Skywalker Ranch for Star Wars pinball presentation and showed unusually high enthusiasm that surprised his staff
high confidence · First-person account of licensing meeting and post-presentation feedback
Demi Moore declined to appear on Tales from the Crypt backglass artwork due to concerns about operating game environment
high confidence · Direct account of licensing negotiation and artwork substitution
Slash requested G and R shaped ramps for Guns N' Roses pinball machine during design consultation
high confidence · First-person account of licensing meeting with artist
Data East transitioned from manual drafting/vellum processes to CAD during Tales from the Crypt, reducing playfield spotting costs from expensive to ~$100 per prototype
high confidence · Detailed technical account of process innovation and cost reduction

Notable Quotes

“I took the pinball job because I thought this is going to be a blast you know I'm going to be working with wood products and Sheet Metal and uh vacuum forming and injection molding and you know the whole gamut”
John Borg @ early in career discussion — Explains Borg's core motivation for entering pinball industry despite financial opportunity cost
“I remember thinking to myself how do they how do they make money how do they make money doing this you know you're make it's like making a car twice for somebody”
John Borg @ vitagraph discussion — Reflects on manufacturing inefficiency and cost burden of failed playfield technology
“my friend Steven Spielberg is making a game about dinosaurs and he goes I would really like to do it and that was pretty far along on this game he goes I want you to take and change your game into Star Wars”
John Borg (quoting Joe Kamikow) @ Data East Star Wars design section — Documents rapid pivot from dinosaur to Star Wars IP that shaped Data East's licensing strategy
“we had 20 or 30 games out on the floor that were being played by we and we had the people playing them and we were sitting behind them watching them just like trying to figure out what was making it crash”
John Borg @ Hook development section — Illustrates early QA/playtesting methodology and production urgency during DMD era
“100 hour weeks is a real thing then 100 hour yeah the 100 hour club we called it”
John Borg @ Hook discussion — Confirms extreme work culture in 1990s pinball development
“his people came in and they told us that they'd never they hadn't seen him that excited in months”
John Borg (recounting George Lucas visit feedback) @ Skywalker Ranch anecdote — Documents George Lucas's positive reception to Data East Star Wars pinball
“we took guns and roses and I extended the flat rail for the left orbit out to the left and I got that extra room”
John Borg — Shows adaptation strategy when widebody became standard and how creative solutions enabled Slash's snake pit plunger

Entities

John BorgpersonJoe KamikowpersonJoe BalerpersonTim SeelpersonData EastcompanyPremier/GottliebcompanyStern PinballcompanyLights Camera Actiongame

Signals

?
business_signal: Data East operated as lean organization with small design team (Kamikow, Baler as leads; Borg solo mechanical engineer) handling multiple concurrent games, resulting in intense work cycles but rapid iteration and lower overhead than competitors
high · Borg's account of organizational structure, 100-hour weeks, and rapid design cycles compared to Williams's claimed $1M+ per-game development budgets
?
competitive_signal: Data East games (War, Secret Service, Torpedo Alley) achieved distinct visual and mechanical identity compared to Williams, with emphasis on Kamikow's unique art direction and rule innovation rather than reactive competitive strategy
medium · Borg notes Data East wasn't reacting to competitor designs; ideas 'bubbled up internally'; deliberately cultivated different art style despite Williams comparison
?
design_philosophy: Borg's mechanical design approach emphasizes elegant problem-solving: using small magnets instead of complex jaw mechanisms, rapid iteration with clay models, and adaptation of existing designs for format changes (standard to wide-body)
high · Multiple design anecdotes (Godzilla magnet, rose plunger from standard board, inverted playfield mechanism) demonstrate iterative minimalism
$
market_signal: Pinball industry figures increasingly share mentorship roles: Borg now 'senior guy at Stern' training young designers, suggesting industry values experiential knowledge transfer and veteran expertise
medium · Seminar introduction notes Borg tells young designers 'how to do things the right way'; Borg's 37-year tenure and cross-company experience positions him as industry elder
?

Topics

Career origins and pinball discoveryprimaryPremier/Gottlieb era (1987-1990) mechanical design and manufacturing processesprimaryData East era (1990s) game design, licensing, and development cyclesprimaryMechanical innovation and patent work (inverted playfield, U-turns, magnet mechanisms)primaryCelebrity/IP licensing interactions and negotiationssecondaryManufacturing technology evolution (vitagraph, manual drafting, CAD transition)secondaryWork culture and crunch cycles (100-hour weeks, production pressure)secondaryGame design philosophy and rule setsmentioned

Sentiment

positive(0.82)— Borg expresses genuine affection for his career, celebrates accomplishments, and speaks warmly about colleagues and licensing partners. Anecdotes demonstrate humor, adventure, and passion. Minor criticisms of aesthetic choices (painterly backglass, narrow title for Hook) are constructive rather than bitter. Even difficult experiences (100-hour weeks, manufacturing failures) are reframed as exciting challenges rather than complaints.

Transcript

youtube_auto_sub · $0.000

hello pinball history fans this is an unprecedented seminar and you know how much I like to give unprecedented seminars here at pantastic New Robert Englunds John Borg I looked back at your list this massive list page after page uh and you're like the uh the senior guy at Stern Pinball now you're telling all these young designers how to do things the right way right sometimes they tell me what to do okay we've got some good guys yeah um were you into pinball as a kid or when did you really get the the first time I saw a pinball machine I was I was eight and it was called Hay burners and it had this great big gigantic backbox with a bunch of horses that ran down a track and I loved playing that game and then later on when I was in my teenss I started to play at a place called Galaxy world in Carol Stream Illinois it was a huge arcade they had full 40 pinball machines and video games and it was ridiculous a gigantic arcade so I would uh I went in there and I was I was into video games 80s Video Games I loved Tempest and uh Space Invaders and just all kinds of the 80s videos games um I played flight 2000 a lot with a friend of mine and we would sit and do battle on flight 2000 and I would sweep that three bank and get that bonus X up and just blast that spinner and play like crazy so when when a when a ball ended in Flight 2000 you got this really long bonus count if you were really crushing it and it would just go and it would just increasingly get you know more intense and I would sit there with my arms crossed and I would gloating oh oh it hurts doesn't it um and me and my friend we were both very competitive and we were both about the same caliber player and we we just we did battle on that game that was a lot of fun and then I started seeing the you know some of the 80s Games coming out like um some of the Premier games I remember Genesis and heavy metal meltdown and and the game started to get better and then the Williams games big uh big guns I loved big guns um and then I just started playing pinball never knew that I would I had no idea that pinball was even in Chicago I just liked pinball and uh one day I was looking for a mechanical engineering job and I went uh to the Tribune and I found a an ad in the paper that was about the size of two postage stamps it said mechanical engineer needed phone number underneath it so I called them up they offered me a job I was also offered a job to work as a Hydraulics engineer at another company for $1,000 more a year I took the pinball job because I thought this is going to be a blast you know I'm going to be working with wood products and Sheet Metal and uh vacuum forming and injection molding and you know the whole gamut um and that's I studied Plastics engineering and mechanic Engineering in school and uh so uh I went that route instead and uh I'm really glad I did yeah I think we all are and so you were you were playing those games and not noticing the manufacturer name like Stern Electronics I didn't really flight 2000 uh when I started to play in the in the big arcade Galaxy world I noticed that there was Gotti and there was and there was Bal and then there was Williams and that's when I started to know that there were different companies making them you know for um and uh luckily I got into one of them yeah so what was your first assignment once you got in uh when I started to work at UH Premier gotle in 1987 and the first game I worked on was Victory um I I'd never designed a game there but I I uh I worked on a lot of games did a lot of mechanical engineering for a lot for the guys there were three mechanical engineers and three designers there at the time so I was I was very busy um so I worked on Victory um I remember when I first started to work at Premiere they they tried using a back printed real heavy myar with an adhesive on it and they laminated it to the Playfield and they called it vitagraph so it was the first four-color process Playfield where everybody else was still screaming like diamond lady di Victory so they tested it on Hollywood Heat and it it worked worked great they had some playfields made they sat around for a couple months and dried out real well then when they went into production with it the board has it's wood it has moisture in it and all the heat from that big Transformer in the cabinet would just rise and the moisture come up underneath the myar and we were getting bubbles all over so we were getting games Shi back from from Europe and we had to rebuild them and you know and then we eventually stopped vitra and we started screen printing them and and sending out re refurbished games with screen printed playfields uh didn't look near as pretty as the fourcc color art um but I remember thinking to myself how do they how do they make money how do they make money doing this you know you're make it's like making a car twice for somebody and uh and then we you know then we went back to screen printing and uh uh Diamond lady also started out with a Vitor graph Playfield um because they were they were locked into it at the time and then when they started seeing this is failing then they went to all screen printing um I worked on a couple other games there um I worked there in between 1987 and 1990 I worked on Victory Diamond lady um TX sector which was I was I did lead on that one um that was a really fun game I really enjoyed playing TX sector um the back glass was photorealistic when we first made it and then we made it look painterly it looks really blurry and kind of funny looking the original one was beautiful and when I saw what they did to it to make it look painterly I was like um any famous mechs that we would recognize from any of those Premier games that we yeah I did a I did a mechanism on lights camera action that was my my first patent um in the pinball industry I was 23 I think 23 years old uh when I got that patent and I made a section of Playfield that uh turned upside down and so there was like a little U-turn shot that fed a Flipper on one side and then when it flipped over to the other side there was a little plastic form ramp that you could take the ball up and get up onto the upper play field and play um so that was my that was my uh that was my first like wow this I can't believe I you know I got my first patent um uh I worked on big house and Robo war and if you look at a robo war game there's these funny looking buildings in the artwork on the back glass and one of them looks like a cork screw and it's purple in color oh oh yeah the purple cor now if you look at the the game big house there is a cork screw shaped purple mechanism that you shoot the ball into a shot and this thing turns and it lifts the ball up into another wire ramp up above um so big house was actually supposed to be Robo war and I'm not exactly sure I don't remember it's a hundred years ago I don't remember uh why they decided to theme that game big house um but I remember after we changed it to Big House I made these little Spotlight assemblies that you know search like like you'd see in a prison yard and these these three spotlights would just go back and forth when you started your multiball we ended up taking that out and made them stationary um uh I worked on a game called Hot Shots which I thought was really fun but at the time got Le had 20 volt 24 volt flippers and we had this big long shot to the right of the game that went up back through this big vacuum form ramp and came back around and the the the weaker uh powered flipper couldn't make that shot so we made this thing that had two like skateboard wheels that that spun and when you shot the ball around the corner it hit these this mechanism and it just launched the ball through the ramp but the skateboard wheels didn't last real long as soon as that skin started to break it left a little pile of of out you don't see very many of those around anymore um but that was a really fun game to play Jon Norris designed that he was he was a big rules guy and he uh uh he kind of really sparked my interest in game rules I remember when we started when we were working on victory victory was a game that you played you started out with checkpoint one and you had one shot to me and checkpoint two and checkpoint three and you had to get to all the way to the end and then Jon Norris implemented a countdown bonus in that which is the first time i' had ever seen that so you checkpoint one and all a sudden you see these points counting down counting down coun down oh I gotta make just made you uh a lot more tense about making the shot and a lot more pressure um I really enjoyed playing that game that was it was a lot of fun yeah was there anyone there uh influencing you based on what the other companies were doing because like the big house could have been U reacting to police force you know cartoony law enforcement kind of thing or any yeah no not not really so they would the ideas were just bubbling up internally yeah um the you know when D came on the scene at the same time I got into the industry you know I was really impressed with war and Secret Service um I even like torpedo alley which at the time people didn't think that was such a great game uh I think they do now um uh and you know I saw that they looked a lot like Williams um but goly just they had their own thing and their own art style and and they just they just stuck with that and and ran with it um but it was uh it was it was interesting I I think I thought there were some games that that we had had produced there that the art could have been allowed better I think there were a lot of different artists um Connie Mitchell was the the art director and he farmed a lot of the art out to different artists so it was always different um I remember uh Jeff Busch who uh he did the Houdini game um he did the game called bone Busters that Premier Technology made and you know that was a really nice nice art package you know it was kind of strange with you know was it was the cabin it was pink yeah you know um and it had skulls all over it and uh uh you know we even put a great big skull up on top of the backbox that moved back and forth we call them old One Eye yeah now I remember that being the feature game one year at pinball Expo the year it came out and uh I think part of the motivation in probably including the pink color was that they were trying to say all right we're not just doing single level games look we'll actually have a big bomb like the other companies yeah most most cabinets are black and when people oper games they wanted them to stay decent looking and clean so if you had a white cabinet you know it was it was going to get it was going to get beat up on out out in the wild yeah so that that game was kind of shocking like Premier is doing all this you know the topper and all you know that cost money yeah we thought premere was making cheap games and yeah um Glenn Anderson was a BAL engineer and I don't know the scope of his work I don't know how long he was in the business but he he was retire ired and he actually came and designed that mechanism for us so we bought this great big skull and we had like 15 fixtures you put the jaw on it you drill the holes and do this and do that and um it was quite quite an assembly okay so it's not just the materials but actually all the different labor steps that used up yeah well all right are we ready to move on to your next gig after we're going to start talking about Data East um when I started to work at Data East in 1990 I worked on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles um which I just recently got to do again the second time um but I just had small tasks on that game I worked on checkpoint and um Batman and Star Trek and then I got my first uh I got my first mechanical lead um on Steven Spielberg's hook and I worked with Tim seel on that game and that game we had just dot matrix had was in probably three or four models at that time and hook exploded I mean hook hook sold more copies than Batman and Star Trek did which was pretty amazing and the game was really good um but I didn't think the title was all that strong and then after that cam Co started Me on he said Johnny goes I want you to start thinking about dinosaurs make a dinosaur eat a ball and I'm like okay now I'm working in Joe cam CO's office he made room for me in his office I had a big six foot drafting table and his desk was behind me and I I remember this was always behind he'd be looking down watching what I'm doing I drew this I took a Godzilla model and I sketched it and then I made the I made Godzilla throw pinballs which you saw later in Fr in Mary Shell's Frankenstein um I made it move back and forth and then I made it bend over and eat the ball and but there I didn't make the jaw move to close on the ball to hold it I put a very small magnet way in the back of its mouth so it drew the ball up to the the magnet and then I made him and then he would lift back up and he would move over to the side and he spit it into a into a pit like thing uhhuh so then one day Joe came up to me and he said my friend spe my uh my my he knew Steven Spielberg of course he did and of course he he knew everybody and he he uh he said my my friend Steven Spielberg is making a game about dinosaurs and he goes I would really like to do it and that was pretty far along on this game he goes I want you to take and change your game into Star Wars and I'm like wow what but then I thought Star Wars okay um so I took the dinosaur out I put the Death Star in place of it and I revamped some of the shots uh and then I made the big R2-D2 model that went over on the other side got a game up real quick we uh we printed the Playfield and then Marcus rothr was the artist on that game he painted he he airbrushed that back glass in 3 days we told them what we wanted I drew my stick figures and and it was and it came in a few days later I was just blown away I loved the art um it was really nicely done um uh Carrie fiser was unhappy with her her likeness in the back glass she was laying down kind of seductively and uh so we had to put her in a in a sitting squatting position with her chain going to Jabba um the uh I have a copy uh that I actually framed it's in my office at work of the original um and it's the only one it's and it's not even a translate it's actually a it's a big printed photograph um so I kept that and I pulled that out of a box a few months ago when we moved into our new building and I'm like I'm going to frame this and put it in my office yeah so I'm getting the general impression here this is a pretty fast cycle now we were being told you know Williams people were coming up on stage at the pinball Expo and they're saying things like uh we have a one-year design cycle so if you want to do four games a year you have four complete design teams and uh they were throwing around numbers like development cost of a million per game at that time uh what what are you allowed to say about the data East practices in the 934 I think it cost more more than a million to make a game today yeah more today now yes um uh they had really good teams back then and they were a much bigger company um we were a very small company it was uh Joe Camco and Joe Baler were a team designing games and then I was by myself and I did all my own mechanical engineering too so when you design a game and then you have to go and pick all the part numbers and do all the detail drawings um and then this was this was mechanical drafting this is a drafting board I had a I had a great big drafting board and a big electric eraser and if I wanted to move a ramp say I laid out a game and I'm like oh well you know what I want to move this ramp over like an eighth of an inch I would take and lay a piece of Vellum over the top of it retrace the ramp erase it off the original drawing and then put it underneath and square it up and line move it over and then redraw it um we used to have people uh that made the plates that go in that big pants presser that we have that puts all the little dink marks in the Playfield where all the parts are going to be located we used to have uh Joe Baler used to do it at at gly when I started working there and uh and we had a guy named Glenn ritma that worked on it uh he he made the plates at day to East and he would take a piece of blue steel that was the size of the Playfield and uh and he would put this bluing dye on it and he would actually scribe and Trace and and reduplicate the the the the vellum drawing on a plate and then he would go around drill all the holes and pin it up and then one day Joe Baler and I I I was making I was working my first game on CAD at Data East was Tales from the Crypt so when it came time to spot the Playfield I just took my drawing which we used to spot through the drawing the Vellum drawing to make the the first prototype um I uh I just uh we we took that plan I I because because I was working on CAD so I could turn off all the layers of all the parts and just leave all those spotting marks that were on the bottom and then I could do the same thing on the top and we sent it out had a piece had an NC machine just go and pop all the holes in and uh it cost us about 100 bucks and I was like you know wow this is the way to go you know so so then our you know this this guy Glenn that was making these plates that was his job he also made fixturing so he got to do more work on the fixtures and and he got you know he got that area stronger in the company and uh but he didn't have to sit and make those plates because that was very timec consuming to you know to relay out a Playfield on on steel a lot of those uh the public documentation of those games says it was done by design team number 28 what does that mean I thought that was really interesting because I when I was working at Gatti I saw that on one of the first games and I thought they have 28 design teams we have three I'm like wow that was just something camoo threw in there yeah so I don't know I don't know if there's any other story that you were sometimes on Design Team 2 I was design I came in when I came in I was design team 29 yeah SOLO design team yeah well um someday we got to get Joe camoo here himself and you know really get into yeah Joe is Joe's really great he's an extremely smart and well-spoken man he he just I would listen to him give seminars and I would go to licensing meetings with him we'd fly to California and go talk to somebody about you know whatever we were going to be working on and he just never says the word um or anything he just he just gets right to the point boom boom boom boom boom uh he uh has a tell Communications background um that's what he studied in school you know so he was at one time I think he was planning on being a weatherman or something like that and uh but he just loved the game industry yeah not just the articulation but also um in presenting hook he would say you know it's got this 360 degree ramp and you know like that's that was a great Innovation that uh you know he would just radiate this enthusiasm um I would like to ask a little bit about how that worked behind the scenes because in those same presentations and this is getting into the Sega pinball era but that just in that early to mid 90s he would often say something like uh oh my game development team basically is uh they're working 80 hour weeks and they're trying so hard to get things done I I made the 100 hour club uh when we were making hook we had is issues with the display crashing and we had 20 or 30 games out on the floor that were being played by we and we had the people playing them and we were sitting behind them watching them just like trying to figure out what was making it crash um I don't even remember if the programmer found some some bug or something eventually but um so we had to stop production I mean we're ready we were making games we had games all over the factory and we were only in 30,000 square foot building at the time and now sometimes if we if there are some parts missing we we line up playfields down a down an aisle waiting for the par and I think there was I've seen more playfields lined up than the size of that other Factory could fit so so so the uh 100 hour weeks is a real thing then 100 hour yeah the 100 hour club we called it so but yeah we worked a lot um uh I I have a a snapshot of Tim CLE and Joe Baler and I building a d Star Wars at like 4 o'clock in the morning um and we were really crispy the next day you know we all went home and you know but this is like couple couple hour nap couple shows com couple hour nap back to work you know and uh um but it was it was fun it was fun it wasn't uh it wasn't you know there were times where I was like boy I wish I could be out you know fishing or doing something else right now but you know we were having fun and and we just did whatever we had to do to make it work yeah it's like that book uh the soul of a new machine which describes the creation of the data General mv8000 at first 32bit uh super mini computer which was about five miles away from here where that whole thing took place and they you know they've got to show it at a certain deadline and they just have to keep putting in the hours and uh do do you remember any time when you just had to blow off steam in some way or conked out or anything oh I ConEd out a lot um we did have weekends sometimes we didn't get to use them but uh that was when I when I got my my rest MH so all right and anything in in that dat Easter mention um when we did the Star Wars game um I missed my 10-year High School reunion because I had to fly out to uh California to Skywalker Ranch to present the game to George Lucas that was amazing trip so we get to Skywalker branch and we're in this room and the game arrived we set it up um we had lunch and they told us that the chickens the chicken that we had was walking around that morning you because they they grow and do everything there um uh so George Lucas walked in and Joe started up the game and started showing it to him and he was playing it he was like oh you know the Death Star he got the Death Star open and he goes he goes he hit a backhand you know George of course didn't know what a backhand was so he was just flipping and he eventually got the thing in there and saw the the big display effect the intro to the multiball and uh you know and he was like he wasn't very he wasn't like jumping up and down or excited or anything he walked out and his his people came in and they told us that they'd never they hadn't seen him that excited in months and I was like wow so uh that was that was the that was an interesting uh that was an interesting interesting trip for me and I'm sure all of the classmates from high school were so jealous oh yeah yeah when I went to my 20th I got to tell everybody about my my 10th so yeah um how about other other things that you you did your Mech that you're particularly proud of in that area um well you know one of the games the early games that I made at dat East that I was really proud of was Tales from the Crypt um it just had ramps all over it it was very full um John here did the speech um I'm friends with him on Facebook and I still talk to him once in a while um that one was real special for me um the tales from the backlash has a scene on the comic book that shows Joe peshy and two blonde girls and they're and they both have chainsaws and they uh the episode was that these two girls were in love with Joe pesi and they fought over him they they cut him in half so they could have half of him um originally we had another comic book scene that was on the back glass that was of uh Demi Moore was in an episode on Tales from the Crypt and she was told by a um I'm trying to think of a a fortune teller that she that she was going to be a millionaire and she was going to meet somebody that was that was really disgusting and that this person would you know she would and she was going to be rich that's what the woman told her so she meets this guy and she's a she's a waitress and she's getting hit on in the bar and uh um this by this this really strange looking character and she goes this must be the one so she and he kept talking about his Rich Uncle so uh so finally she marries him and she's you know living in poverty and and so one day she she goes to the market and she's the millionth customer and she wins a million dollars so she goes out shopping and she comes home all preed up and she's got hats and all kinds of clothes and she tells him to go take a walk and then he pulls out a big knife and you know chops her up um so Demi Demi Moore did not want to be on a on a pinball back lass uh she didn't want to be in a game uh operated game environment I guess or something so we changed it to the Joe peshi bag glass and uh so the original back glass was of course a painting it was an airbrush painting and a a gentleman that I that I had talked to had had purchased the original painting and he he was up in Canada and I told him the story about the Demi Moore he took a little Razer Blade and he sliced at the edge because he noticed that it was kind of puffy in the Middle where the comic book was and he looked underneath and he saw the artwork underneath he goes oh he goes I can't believe this he goes I feel like I just found treasure and uh so I would imagine that that would probably be worth a few just with yeah with what it is and and that it's airbrushed and uh and that it has that that history to it uh I think that would be worth a lot of money today you have another one you anecdote uh let's see here um because if you don't I uh Guns and Roses ah yeah um guns and I started working on Guns and Roses I met with Slash we sat and talked about the game and I wanted wanted to sit down with them and just draw on a piece of paper and just start drawing some sketches he told me he wanted a a ramp that was shaped like a g and one that was shaped like an r and that wasn't where I was planning on going with it and I'm like okay so now this Guns and Roses was being made at the time as a narrow normal standard pinball machine so uh he also said he wanted a snake pit so I got the G and the and the r ramp in there and then one day Cam and Co came up to me and he told me he goes we're going to make we're going to start making wi bodies so Maverick was in the works uh at one time and I'll tell you about that in a minute but I took guns and roses and I extended the flat rail for the left orbit out to the left and I got that extra room I put all the extra room on the left and I took and I put a rose plunger on the left side of the game that so it was really easy for me to make to you know because when Tim CLE had to to go back and he made a Maverick as a wide body and that was when we changed back and went back to the standard size board so he had this great big paddle boat on the game he had to take and that was injection molded Paddle Wheel and a vacuum form and a mechanism he had to take and Shrink that down to make that all fit into a standard size pinball Playfield so he had a ton of work to do and mine was like I think I had it done in like two days I'm like PL I I I actually drilled the hole in a cabinet I put a plunger in it and I made a little rose out of Joshua Clay was terrible looking um but I draw stick people and I make rough sculptures of stuff when I'm just trying to get the idea across um but uh that was an interesting time it was like you know we only made a few wide bodies servs Batman Forever um I helped Paul Leslie work on that a little bit he that was the only game he ever designed um I worked on ramps with him and uh on that but uh but that was a really nice widebody game I every time I do a game I I I wish I could have that extra inch and a half um it it makes a difference some people say that wide bodies play differently but like Guns and Roses Atari type white because your whole body is just like Guns and Roses was designed as a standard game and I just added that big long shooter and that's where slash got his snake pit you know plunge the ball with a rose and it'll spin around in the snake pit MH um so he was very pleased about that when he found out that that went in there too yeah and Joe has told a lot of stories about Slash being a very oh uh activist Lor shall we say oh yeah um I went to Slash house in 1993 after the earthquakes hit and I'm walk I walk into his house and it's beautiful house there's cracks on the walls all over the place and he's got these great big gigantic glass panels it's like a zoo he's got a 20 foot bow constrictor in his living room you know next to his television and then he goes this over here this is the poisonous snake room and and I'm like I don't want to go in there he goes I don't go in there either he goes I have people that come and take care of that for me so so um so all of a sudden I'm you know he's got games in his living room he's got a game room I'm walking around his house you know checking it out and all of a sudden a cougar he has a six-month old cougar that walks around the house and it's about the size of a German Shepherd so it took a shining to me right away you know because it didn't know me he walked up to me and it brushed up against me like a house cat and I'm like wow this is this is so cool I cougar so I'm petting him and then you know he didn't chew my hand off so I'm like okay this is good so then he laid down on the side next to me with his legs up like on his back like a dog and I I squatted down and I started rubbing his belly and the next thing I know wh the Paw comes up and smacked me in the side of the head I flew backwards and I landed on the floor and when I you know when I opened up my eyes his M his mouth was on my neck and I was like wow okay that I didn't move I didn't try to push him or I just laid I just laid there I like it's going to be over in a second or I'm going to live to tell the story and I'm glad I'm here to tell the story yeah SL so slash walked slash was he walked into the room and he goes Curtis get off and he just kind of let me go he was just playing with me so I'm I I told slash that I was glad that he was well fed now I think the person that was the most afraid in that room when that happened was Joe because Joe was standing right there when it happened coming up next a celebrity animal care tips yes oh what else do I have here there's a there's still a whole lot of games left on this list um sure oh and then I thought I might add uh I don't know if Dwight was just kidding me or not but he told me that he he was doing a search one day on the I internet pinball database yeah and he said that I have designed more games than anyone other than Wayne n and I'm not sure if that's true or not if he was just joking with me but I do have it's a long list it is a long list I've got it printed out here with three pages and it doesn't even include your your partial credits I guess this is yeah but you you could sit down with know J Stafford sometime straighten it all out um you did a lot of six player games Apollo 13 yeah that was a lot of fun I got to meet Jim leval when we did that game uh we were driving up to his house he lives in um north of Chicago northwest Subs so we're driving up to his house and I go when we get there is he going to be like in the basement he's got moondust all over he's jumping around because he never got to actually be on the moon you know I was making jokes about it and stuff he was the nicest guy he signed backglasses for us um a few years later we had a receptionist that worked at Data East and she was also a hairdresser and she worked on uh people that were in you know in film and they were going to do a documentary on Jim leval and she worked on him did his makeup and stuff like that and she said you know I used to work at the pinball company that made your your game and he goes oh I love that game I play it all the time she took a Polaroid of him and he signed it said hi hi John I play your game all the time and and she put it in a frame and gave it to me and I thought that was really nice um meeting him was great and then after that I did uh I worked on twist Twi and I I flew to Panka City Oklahoma where they were filming it and uh I flew to Dallas on a on a jet and then I flew in a little prop job to Panka City Oklahoma and there there a cable running down the middle of the plane with chickens flying back and forth and stuff like that it was it was that kind of a it was a very small plane I think there were six six people seven eight people maybe and uh flew to Panka City Oklahoma met Bill Paxton so they took over this whole town and there was a school that was there and we were going to record Bill recording speech for Apollo 13 and twister at the same time so um uh so then Bill took us out after we did the speech recording we were walking around sets and we go walking by all these trailers that are there and Bill goes over and he knocks on door the trailer and she goes who is it and he goes it's me Bill he goes the pinball guys are here because I guess Helen Hunt knew we were coming she opens up the door and she's in curlers getting ready for a set and so we talked to her briefly and then we went back out and we were walking around sets and I got to see the the great big fans and they were you know throwing debris into the fans and and then there was a big group there working on another set and all of a sudden this football comes flying out of this crowd of like you know 10 or 20 people and and Bill caught it and he threw it back and they threw it back again and then I it was coming to me and and it was way over my head I jumped up in the air and it hit hit my finger and it bent my finger back and I was like ah I thought I thought I broke my finger um that was lot that was very painful um but I it was just I was having so much fun I forgot about it after a while but yeah walking around with Bill it was great um he's a really nice guy he's just your average run-ofthe-mill person um he had no no ego whatsoever he was just really friendly with us and we had a good time good time working on there mhm well in this uh era I think we get to the uh the one-offs and the like so you did Richie Rich whatever doing it means yeah I didn't have anything to do with uh too many of those um the one that I really liked the most was the Michael Jordan game that we made but I didn't get into too many of those um the one the one oneoff that I was that I was involved in was we took a checkpoint uh when Desert Storm happened and we took uh and put a uh a piece of paper on the play field that was arted and we just taped it down and we put the thing out in a location and it made money like crazy so instead of shooting the ramp to see how fast your car was going you were getting sorties per hour and uh we got in the newspaper for it and and then uh it was called Operation Desert Operation Desert Storm we did a little little little Quicky backlash for it and put the thing out on location yeah well that that checkpoint was uh historically significant game anyway just it it showed at uh pinball Expo the October before it Joe wielded in like Saturday afternoon and it had segment displays so you weren't revealing to the Williams people there what you were up to yeah yeah one time we had an expo group come through the factory when we were in Melrose Park and we took a game and we put a mirror in place of the glass and we called it death ball 2000 you know and then there was a big metal grate that stood in front of the so you had to stand on this big metal grade and there was no Playfield in it yeah that's but everybody was looking at it going wow this is really cool that was inspired by a story in a uh Supermarket tabloid the weekly world news where it just a little half-page story deathball 2000 the pinball game kids are dying to play yeah right right and and Joel liked that I guess and said let's let's make a fake game out of this and and it's on the dots for as a Coming Attraction you did coming attractions on the dots for the while yeah um on another side of uh how you were getting through th those times uh there was something going on with Williams at the combined Williams ballet pinball operation really clamping down and you know an obvious visible example is that you had to say triball because you they were trying to claim a trademark on multiball and but the probably the biggest thing I know of was a distribution thing that you were losing Distributors because Williams was saying you can only carry our line oh sure that probably uh you know wouldn't affect you to day except that you're being told well business is I also believe that they were able to push more pinball machines if you took some number of Mortal Kombats yeah right they had they they had that leverage too and we did but we didn't dat East wasn't a big video game company it wasn't really huge yeah so so what what was that like from your side were you uh just had to work hard and just keep making fun things for people to shoot um that was about all we could do I me we were a small group I yeah what was your lead time like you you sign a license and and you know from start to finish of game yeah uh the best I've ever done is four months on Iron Man well no wonder your list is almost as big as Wayne n when when the when the company was uh after 2008 seven seven and8 uh everything was quite Bleak and I worked on Big Buck Hunter for probably a year and I remember I would walk into the factory in the morning and I'd hear screw gun go off and I didn't hear anything for a while huh it was very quiet in the factory um we had an expo tour that year I set up a computer with a big screen and I showed people AutoCAD drawings and I showed them how I you know extract everything off the drawing and make a routing drawing because we weren't running production at the time um that was that was those were scary days um but uh you know a couple years later um I had to work at then the layoff happened and then I was the only designer left um they actually let me go too and they were gonna have Ray tanzer was going to design a game and then Ray left and went to Namco and then Gary called me up a couple weeks ago and said you know come back to work and I'm like okay that was quick um so yeah so I went back to work um uh and I was very glad to get back to work but I was I had to I had to finish uh 24 that Steve was working at the time I had to work that out and finish the details that weren't finished and then I had a Whitewood with no drawings of CSI and Keith P. Johnson and I worked on that game uh we changed a little bit of it up we took a pop bumper outout and we added the centrifuge in the middle and we did a little bit of work a little some changes on that but they wanted to Gary wanted to keep it somewhat intact you know and not just change the whole game and start over because there was some work done on there was a plan there yeah how did you feel about the budget on that game see side yeah like was it um I know I I saw it when it came out and it seemed had enough stuff on it but there was a grumbling online at the time that yeah um the skull mechanism was pretty interesting um it was that was that was pretty cool you know went in the ball went into each eye and you lifted up and and and sent him out um but there can always be more there can always put more I mean yeah there's a few games where I had you know really loaded him up um John Trudeau made a game he he went his first version of Ghostbusters was like $400 you know plus over budget and he had to back way off when I saw when I saw what he was planning I'm like oh boy like that's a lot that's a lot um so the you know so sometimes we got to you know we got to take things out or change things or downgrade things a little bit and U but yeah I'd like to see the build just keep growing and growing you know the more the merrier uh is there any game well let's say from any time uh in your career that you would encourage these people to take another look at like it may not have been one that properly respected at the time uh Lost in Space um I saw a Lost in Space unfortunately that movie w we got the Lost in Space 65 guy for him y there he is I uh uh I enjoyed working on Loston space but that was another really really short time frame and I remember when we all went out to see the movie we were like oh yeah we're done with this one on to the next um I was excited because Gary Oldman was playing Dr Smith and he is a amazing actor You' see him in movies and you don't even know it's him until you see the credits and when he was playing Dr Smith I was really excited and then and then when I saw the movie I was horrifically disappointed oh God but but I love the 65 version that's the way we should have made it we should have just gotten rid of all the other characters uh but you're reminding me of another movie thing and this Joe was so proud at the time that Last Action Hero you're going to have a synchronized release with the movie that's another good example of a game that everybody didn't think was that great because T2 had come out and that was a great movie Last Action Hero came out and I think it's a I still thought it was a good movie um I watched it about maybe six months ago it was entertaining but it wasn't it wasn't a Terminator 2 you know caliber movie um but nobody really took credit for that game I started working on it uh Ed Sabula started working on it then I started working on it and it just kind of bounced hands and I think if you read the design credits for Last Action Hero it says designed by lman sheets so um but we everybody's name was on that game everybody worked on it and you know I I designed the crane and the tar pit and first crane the fir yeah yeah we got I got a patent on that too ball uh oh God I can't remember what the name of the patent was uh something to carry a ball from one space to another and release it and we we we were Williams and and and D East were were really going after patents at that time to protect yeah part of the same thing we were talking about um when I did lights camera action at gotle um a year later or two years later they came out with Bri a pinbot which had the face that flipped upside down yeah so they were that was a patent infringement so we ended up getting to use automatic percentag in for that instead of getting a cash settlement they just gave us automatic Gary's a lawyer and he probably figured out' be better to do that yeah oh and also we were talking about Star Wars a little while ago with the triball m uh there was a video mode in that game and we were not able to use video mode either so when you shoot the ball into the C3PO shot and you see that little video event happen with the speeder bikes flying through the woods or whatever um that was controllable by that shifter mechanism that's barely used in the game other than to open up the Death Star for you prematurely yeah so uh there was a video mode there um and then that never never went back in because the the suit the the uh the suit was settled you know way after Star Wars production was was made yeah now you did have a couple non-licensed ones like the you're involved in some way in uh Striker extreme and sharies and high roller casino yeah Baler Joe Baler um he handled Striker extreme um and which what was the one that I did Sharky shootout um I worked on that with Dwight Jon Norris designed a game called Golden Q yeah and they ordered production s for it to build like 250 to just get a start and then they then somehow they decided that they didn't want to make that game so Gary came into my office one day with the wire ramps the the the drop Target bank with all the trip coils on it the metal ramp and the eightball assembly and put the stuff on my desk and said make a game out of this H you know use this but make another game I can so we Sharky shootout yeah so the the Kelly Packard golden Q tournament Edition that was John naris big rules guy his idea of how we're going to solve the problem that tournaments take so long so it's a game where if it's in tournament mode you get more points the faster you finish yes that was that was ingenious I I really that was fun to play yeah and and the Playfield was uh as close to eight ball deluxes they could come and yet throw a ramp in there because they couldn't do inline drop targets anyway they got that thing on the side and they need a ramp so it's a no brainer yeah that worked out great um oh let's see what else about that game oh the eightball assembly um the eightball assembly originally just had a little paddle that came down to divert the ball off it went through always to the right flipper and when the paddle was energized it would come to the left flipper um I took that mechanism and I had all those parts and I I made I had to redesign it and we didn't remake the part we actually fixtured and add some more holes to it and I put a motor in it and I put a blue vacuum form inside of it and I made it a magic eightball so when you shot the mystery it would spin around and it would stop in a value and light up like a magic eightball would when you're yeah so remember that that was and and that was the first game I got to work on with Dwight and I didn't get to work with Dwight again until um monsters monsters and turtles we worked on together so it had been a long time yeah did you have a role in high roller casino um no just maybe a little mechanical support but not much not much at all yeah okay um did uh did they give me credit for that in the database well I I just printed out anything that has you your name in any role okay MH um did you uh you get really into rules on any of the games oh yeah I do I I like I like to write rules um my guys are a lot are really really good at it um yeah so when you're working with Dwight do you have arguments about no Dwight Dwight usually he he's he's pretty good at planning and and uh when I worked on Turtles he you know he pretty much knew what you know we worked on the Playfield together and he pretty much knew what he was going to do and what he wanted to do with it um uh like um when I when I started to work on Rush uh Tim was working on lead Zeppelin at the time and I wrote about maybe I don't know I want to say I want to say half but I'm going to say probably 30% now after Ray and Tim went after it they added a whole lot more than what I you know I started the rules I did the Bas steel day Rule and uh and I wrote a bunch of of the rules up for them and I just handed them a book and I go you know this is what I've got um and then Tim started working on it and then Ray came in and they crushed it they just did a great job this is Tim seon we're speaking of yes yes Tim seon got to get all those I mean I like that this industry is so small that most everybody gets to be uh everybody not named John gets to be just a first name Lyman Dwight Lonnie Etc U but for the historical record we might as well get their full names out there um is there anything from your design history where you liked a particular uh flow or combo or something that you're especially proud of wow um that's interesting I mean you you managed to make a ball Traverse the letter R which is probably not too easy but yeah um gosh I I really liked shooting uh Iron Man you know and shooting and getting the the bogey ch round started on the ramps you know because back and forth similar to T2 you know left ramp right ramp left ramp right don't miss you know just keep going and get all the way to that feature um I'll probably think about that a little bit later and I'll probably think of something that I should have told you yeah well you can come back yeah right you can come back can I come back okay okay uh yeah we are getting close to the end here um I only have about 30 more games to talk about yeah no I'm only kidding uh any other uh like bragging rights uh you know your favorite Mech or your favorite uh implementation of rules versus MAC um when I worked on Iron Man um the budget was was very low they didn't want me to do a lot of tooling so when I started working on Iron Man Gary asked me to find some old ramps that existed oh yeah find some old ramps that exist so we don't have to spend you know Oodles of dollars on tooling and make mtts so so I I was looking around I'm like oh boy this is going to be interesting um you know it may change a lot of the game um so I uh I looked at the ramps from X-Men because I really enjoyed shooting those you know a lot of Swirls and and nice geometry and I called up the vendor and I said do you have part number 545 889 62- tooling he says it's a boat anchor he told me it was a boat anchor for the for the president's boat and I'm like okay so I I I kept looking and I kept looking and then I found the ramps for Austin Powers and I thought this might work so I took the left ramp and I had them change the tool and I added about four or five inches to the entrance just to make the shot and the incline smoother a little less little less abrupt and then the right ramp stayed the same except I changed the trimming on it um and that that that worked out great um the main work on that game there wasn't very much on Iron Man but it was a really fun game to play I play I play 10 games on Iron Man I get my butt kicked like six or seven times and then that eighth game you just get to Jericho and you just go Um or do or die and uh you know it's a game it's really well balanced um good you know and scoring wise too as well um but that was just a really fun game to play and and Mortals could get to the wizard mode you know Mortals could get to the end of that game my little brother came up after I bought brought the game home my little brother's playing it in the basement and he doesn't know anything about pinball he's he shoots and he you know he doesn't shoot to flip you know flip he doesn't flip both flippers at the same time but but he's he doesn't know rules he doesn't know anything about much about pinball he comes upstairs and he goes is 100 million a good score I'm like yeah I go what did you do he he lit all the characters on One ball and he just flipped and hit the Do or Die shot with like 35 million on it and that that put him that put him up and over and I'm like wow I'm going to have to you know and I just brought it home I think I had like a 90 million score on it or something like that so I had to best him yeah that's the big brother way yeah um kiss was you know what I said that I had made Iron Man in four weeks or four months four weeks God don't ever try ask me to make a Game of Thrones four months um kiss was another one we were working on Game of Thrones and I think they thought Game of Thrones was going to be Lord of the Rings and uh it it was great game and big upper play field and a lot of stuff and he needed a lot of support so he was working on it and then they asked me to jump in front of him and take the spot his spot for for Game of Thrones to do kiss so kiss I started on kiss right after Christmas so after New Year's say I started getting after it um and then I released everything for production in April and then in May the beginning of may we were building it in the new building that was the other thing I was worried about we're moving into a new building and we're going to be building kiss in like three weeks yeah sure it was amazing the way they transformed and and got that place up and running that reminds me of one of my uh final questions any shout outs about art right because I'm a big Kevin oconor guy by the oh I love Kevin oconor um who do you uh Jeremy Jeremy is amazing um uh uh Michael the guy that that new artist it was my first time working with Michael um he uh he did the art for Rush when I saw the when I saw the Ellie cabinet um I liked the premium cabinet a lot but I when I saw the Ellie cabinet I like it looks like a piece of furniture I go I'm I'm definitely this is the model I'm definitely buying this one you know I'm not going to buy a premium I'm going to I'm going to get an Le um and and how about sound shout outs for uh Jerry's amazing Jerry um yeah uh Brian Brian Schmid Jerry Thompson um Brian Schmidt was was just amazing in his day um uh you know back in the mid 90s I kind of went off into the into the weeds and made a couple of pinball games that weren't really pinball games per se it was a pinball cabinet but it went all the way down to the floor we made one called Derby days and then we used the same game and and renamed it roach Racers and we took the dot matrix and put it underneath the window on the Playfield but we turned it sideways so you could see your horses running and it was kind of like a homage to hay hay burners and uh um I had a lot of fun working on those on that was a Redemption piece Redemption yeah and when we made roach Racers we made one of the one of the roach that you picked your your one of four roaches and then as you played the game you would hit pop bumpers and targets to advance your your roach or bug and one of the bugs was uh hariry Gary and we made it we put Gary's hair on little bug character um and then I made a bowling game it was like the old bowling games from like the you know 50s with mechanical bowling game you hit the pins and then the pins are drawn up um you knock them off magnets I made one of those um and it was called it was called is that that cosmic bowling and then the best Redemption game that I ever made was the simplest one I made it in like a month it's called cut the cheese and you've probably seen that at arcades around Newland it's a it's a coin roll game very small cabinet there's a toilet in the Middle with a mouse sitting up top of the reservoir Bowl in the back and the music is just there's a YouTube video if you if you Google cut the cheese Sega or something I believe it'll pop up the music track is hilarious and the and the sound effects so you're hearing this music and it's it's real real quirky music and then you hear this little mouse character talking and you go and you hear a you know cheese you know he's like cut the cheese and the the whole the whole idea of the game is to roll the coin down the middle and make it go up a ramp and get it into the toilet while the toilet bowl is open and toilet bowl the the seat is moving up and down so if the seat's down the coin just lands on top and then it gets knocked off you had to get the you had to get the coin into the toilet and spell the word jackpot on toilet paper that came down to the bottom of the playl that was a lot fun all right well thank you so much and uh we've got a good momentum going here so we'll just pick up next year right sounds good start with with all those stories you didn't have time to tell okay all right I still another half a list for next year thank you