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The Capcom Debacle Part 2: Illinois PinBall Inc.

Silverball Chronicles·podcast_episode·38m 9s·analyzed·Jan 28, 2024
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TL;DR

Gene Cunningham's Big Bang Bar remake succeeded but bankrupted him after selling each machine at $2,000+ loss.

Summary

Silver Ball Chronicles explores Gene Cunningham's Illinois Pinball Corporation and its attempt to remake Capcom's Big Bang Bar (2004-2007). The episode details Cunningham's acquisition of Capcom and Williams pinball assets, his successful delivery of ~183 Big Bang Bar units despite industry skepticism, but also his subsequent financial collapse, asset hiding, and bankruptcy (2013) following massive per-unit losses.

Key Claims

  • Capcom's original Big Bang Bar had only 14 prototypes produced and is regarded as 'the greatest game never to reach production'

    high confidence · David Dennis (podcast host), citing Pinball News 2004 article

  • Gene Cunningham purchased rights to Capcom and Alvin G and Co. Games in early 2000, including all inventory and driver boards

    high confidence · David Dennis, citing company records and press releases

  • Gene manufactured approximately 183 Big Bang Bar units (originally planned for 101) between 2006-2007, with an additional 10-11 'EXP' units in 2010

    high confidence · David Dennis, citing IPDB and show records

  • Each Big Bang Bar remake cost Gene between $6,500-$7,200 to manufacture but sold for $4,500, resulting in a loss of at least $2,000 per machine

    high confidence · David Dennis, citing Gene Cunningham's own statements to Pinball News and Polygon

  • 121 people pre-ordered Big Bang Bar machines at the 2004 Pinball Expo after Gene pitched them

    high confidence · David Dennis (first-hand attendee), citing contemporaneous flyer and schedule of events from October 15, 2004

  • Gene Cunningham filed for bankruptcy in March 2013, 11 days after conducting a warehouse sale of his entire pinball collection

    high confidence · David Dennis, citing bankruptcy and trustee records

  • Gene allegedly hid at least 20 pieces of property from bankruptcy trustee records and transferred assets to avoid seizure

    medium confidence · David Dennis, citing bankruptcy proceedings and trustee documentation

  • Williams' licensing agreement with Illinois Pinball prohibited the company from manufacturing games, forcing Gene to create a separate entity (Pinball Space Ball Manufacturing, Inc.) to make Big Bang Bar

    high confidence · David Dennis, citing Pinball News and licensing agreements

  • Gene opened a skating rink in Bloomington, Illinois in 1973, sold it in 1988, and repurchased it in 1993 before pivoting to pinball

Notable Quotes

  • “We won.”

    Joe Kaminkowksi (referenced by David Dennis) @ ~7:30 — Reflects Stern's triumph over Williams as the last major pinball manufacturer standing by 2000, setting context for the industry desperation that enabled Gene's venture

  • “I thought only a nut would do that. There's nothing easy about pinball, about producing them. It's a lot of work. Tons of people, tons of times. How is that guy going to make this in some Illinois shithole?”

    Mark Ritchie (legendary designer, referenced by David Dennis) @ ~33:00 — Industry legend's skepticism of Gene's ability to manufacture Big Bang Bar, capturing the consensus doubt from experienced pinball professionals

  • “I had a lot of phone calls from people asking, when are they going to be ready? And I said, we're working on it because all these people trusted me with their money, then got word out that I was running way over.”

    Gene Cunningham @ ~48:00 — Gene's direct recollection of pre-order panic and his claims of cost overruns, later proven by actual financial losses

  • “He just sat on a stage in a shitty chair... with a microphone. That's it.”

    Ron (podcast co-host) @ ~37:00 — Humorous characterization of the modest presentation setup for Gene's 2004 Pinball Expo pitch that nonetheless generated 121 pre-orders

  • “When pigs fly. And pigs flew. Pigs actually flew. Someone had to make an apology video because they just busted on Gene constantly.”

    David Dennis @ ~55:30 — References the shock in the rec.games.pinball community (pre-Pinside) when Gene actually delivered machines after years of skepticism

  • “It cost a lot more than $4,500 for a lot of them because we made some special ones for some people... Case in point, my daughter's machine which is probably the most valuable one.”

    Gene Cunningham @ ~1:12:00 — Gene's admission that custom builds increased costs, with daughter's machine example suggesting personal financial commitments that contributed to overall losses

  • “Sometimes you got to say no to your daughter when it's going to cost you your home and your business.”

Entities

Gene CunninghampersonIllinois Pinball CorporationcompanyPinball Space Ball Manufacturing Inc.companyCapcomcompanyBig Bang BargameDavid DennispersonRonperson

Signals

  • ?

    manufacturing_signal: Gene Cunningham successfully manufactured 183 Big Bang Bar units over 18 months (2006-2007) by leveraging Capcom's existing inventory of 200 driver boards and other parts, eliminating the need for expensive remanufacturing at that stage

    high · Gene had 'like a couple hundred' driver boards from Capcom inventory; used them all up on Big Bang Bar; could not proceed with Kingpin remake because remanufacturing boards would have been prohibitively expensive (2010)

  • ?

    supply_chain_signal: Capcom and Williams fragmented intellectual property rights (tooling, reproduction rights, artwork, inventory rights, sales rights) into separate licenses held by different entities to maximize revenue; created operational chaos

    high · David Dennis quotes: 'The purchase of the inventory was one thing... the rights to be able to like the rights to be able to sell the inventory was another thing... It was ridiculous'; Williams explicitly did not sell tooling to Gene, only granted 'limited license' for parts replenishment; required creation of separate manufacturing subsidiary

  • ?

    product_launch: Gene Cunningham successfully delivered 183 Big Bang Bar units over 18-month period (late 2006–June 2007) after 121 pre-orders at 2004 Pinball Expo; generated community shock and apology videos from skeptics

    high · 121 pre-orders registered at 2004 Expo; ~12 units delivered to European customers by end of 2006; remaining machines completed and shipped June 2007; RGP community members documented disbelief turning to acknowledgment

  • ?

    business_signal: Gene Cunningham's Big Bang Bar remake program was financially catastrophic, with each machine costing $6,500–$7,200 to manufacture but sold for $4,500, resulting in minimum $2,000 loss per unit across ~183 units = $366,000+ total loss

    high · Gene disclosed to Pinball News that cost was $6,500 per machine; later told Polygon $7,200; sold base model at $4,500; explicitly stated decision to honor pricing despite losses; manufactured special high-cost variants (gold/brass plating, metallic green for daughter)

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.116

0:00
Ever notice how ads always pop up at the worst moments when the killer's identity is about to be revealed? During that perfect meditation flow.
0:12
On Amazon Music, we believe in keeping you in the moment. That's why we've got millions of ad-free podcast episodes, so you can stay completely immersed in every story, every reveal, every breath. Download the Amazon Music app and start listening to your favorite podcasts ad-free, included with Prime.
0:37
The Pinball Network is online. Launching Silver Ball Chronicles. I wonder if Stewie likes Capcom. Stewie, what's your favorite Capcom game? and break shop definitely break shop
1:23
Hello there, cronies. I'm really, really sorry I totally messed up the introduction in this month's episode. However, you can always visit our Patreon, remember to listen to all the commercials, and of course, nobody really likes that other show that Ron is on, the Slam Tilt Podcast. That's the one with Bruce Nightingale. Anyway, no introduction this month, we're just going to jump right into the content. Enjoy part two of the Capcom debacle, Illinois Pinball Inc.
2:22
Skippy. They have one game, Predator. Right. But like, what? Oh, my goodness. What would have happened if? There's just this romance. Oh, wait a minute. Skippy, actually, they were going to make, what, Experts of Dangerous? I don't know. Which was basically, what's the show? Help me here. I have no idea. Mythbusters. Oh. It was basically Mythbusters, but since they didn't own the rights to the name, like Discovery Channel did or whatever, it was basically Mythbusters, but they called it Experts of Dangerous. But it was Skitby, so it never happened. But we have this weird romance for these things, right? Like Pinball 2000. Like all these homebrews for Pinball 2000, right? This romance of what would have happened if Williams just hung on? Wizard blocks. What would it be like? Well, that starts to bleed into people. It corrupts them and thinks that they can do something to bring back the magic of pinball. Always chasing the next thing is very real. Pinball News in 2004 would say, One of the rarest games in modern times has to be Capcom's Big Bang Bar. Only 14 prototypes were ever produced, and it's generally regarded as the best game never to reach production. Huh? There's this lure, this magic, pixie dust that Big Bang Bar is this greatest game ever to not reach production. What would happen if it did? Well, by 2000, Stern was the only survivor in the industry. Part of the reason for that is they were always regarded as the cheaper, less packed, and boring alternative to Williams. And what would Joe Kamenkow say? He would say, we won. That's right. So it was around this time that there were rumblings of various affluent hobbyists, and they were looking to start up a pinball company, and they wanted to see what would happen. Well, one of those individuals would rise to the top, and he was looking to finish Big Bang Bar, the greatest game to never reach production. I kind of like Kingpin more. But it was good. So Gene Cunningham, this is the gentleman we're going to start talking about now. And this is where things get a bit wishy-washy because there's a lot of different sources. There's a lot of bullshitting. There's a lot of salesmanship amongst Gene, those around him, other individuals. There's a lot of stuff of people in the future telling what happened in the past. So this is very muddled. So I've done my best to try to pull out as much of that as I can and try to distill it down in a way that I think is most accurate.

medium confidence · David Dennis, citing historical records (episodic narrative quality suggests some retrospective sourcing)

  • The easiest way to distinguish original Big Bang Bar from Gene's remake is that the remake's side art extends to the bottom edge of the cabinet, while the original has a black line separating the art from the edge

    high confidence · David Dennis (pinball expert), based on visual comparison of machines

    • David Dennis @ ~1:13:00 — Cutting observation on Gene's decision-making priorities and the personal cost of his business failures

  • “The parts or the tooling... the tooling is what makes the parts... it's a mess trying to figure out who owns what.”

    Ron (podcast co-host) @ ~22:00 — Highlights the confusing fragmentation of licensing rights (tooling vs. inventory vs. reproduction rights) that plagued Gene's ability to operate and resupply parts

    • Jeff Powell
    person
    Mark Ritchieperson
    Joe Kaminskiperson
    Williams Electronicscompany
    Alvin G and Co.company
    David Vituloperson
    Pinball Newsorganization
    Silver Ball Chroniclesmedia
    Pinball Networkorganization
    rec.games.pinball (RGP)forum/community
    Kingpingame
    Wizard Blocksgame
    Polygonmedia
    Pinball Expoevent
    AMOA showevent
    Northwest Pinball and Game Room Showevent
    Bloomington, Illinoislocation
  • ?

    regulatory_signal: Gene Cunningham transferred or hid at least 20 pieces of property from bankruptcy trustee; conducted warehouse liquidation sale 11 days before filing for bankruptcy; held $1.1M insurance policy; moved from voluntary Chapter 11 to forced liquidation Chapter 7

    high · Trustee records documented hidden assets including cars, pinball inventory, commercial equipment; warehouse sale 11 days pre-bankruptcy filing triggered Chapter 7 conversion; Gene 'failed to mention' the sale to court

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: RGP/pre-Pinside community expressed extreme skepticism that Gene would deliver (referenced as 'when pigs fly'); sentiment dramatically shifted when machines actually shipped, requiring public apologies from vocal skeptics; vindication was temporary, followed by financial collapse revelations

    high · David Dennis: 'There's probably a video' of Gene's apology; RGP community members filmed Gene selling inventory post-bankruptcy to document potential licensing violations; 'pigs flew' quote reflects shocked reversal

  • ?

    product_strategy: Gene employed tiered pricing strategy to maximize collector value perception: Machine #1 ($12,000 gold-plated); Prototypes 2-10 ($7,500 brass-plated); Production 2-99 ($4,500 black standard); Machine #100 ($12,000 gold-plated); all prototypes received numbered plaques and card holders

    high · Gene's 2004 Expo presentation flyer with explicit pricing tiers; emphasis on 'pure gold' ($2,000 worth) in sidebars/casters/bolts; plaques with buyer names for prototypes; strategic use of low numbers and metallics

  • ?

    design_innovation: Gene's Big Bang Bar remake included specific technical modifications vs. original (1996): electroluminescent lights on plastic ramps (12V vs 24V original); smaller tube dancer (new mold, couldn't access original); extended side art to bottom edge (intentional aesthetic choice)

    high · David Dennis itemizes differences; side art extension described as 'easiest way to identify original from remake at a distance'; tube dancer size reduction due to Gene's lack of access to original mold

  • ?

    collector_signal: Pre-order holders began selling their spots on secondary market during manufacturing delay (2006), indicating panic and loss of confidence; Gene claims some offered to pay more to accelerate production

    medium · David Dennis: 'People began selling their spots. Panic was starting to set in... a bunch of stupid people put their money in early'; Gene's quote: 'some of them said, let us pay you more. And I said, no, I gave my word'

  • ?

    historical_signal: Pre-2000s pinball hobby was characterized by extreme parts scarcity; players canniibalized games for ramps, sourced from destroyed machines at expos, or hoped for remaining inventory; high barrier to entry; Gene's reproduction efforts (Addams Family side art, World Cup Soccer balls) represented novel market solution

    high · David Dennis describes 2004 Expo context: 'if something broke on your Addams Family, what did you do? You hoped that there was parts inventory... You stole parts from Popeye... you cannibalized a Popeye'; Gene working on replacement side art and parts simultaneously signals recognition of unmet demand

  • ?

    industry_signal: Gene Cunningham's trajectory (romantic vision → early pre-orders → manufacturing overruns → cost losses → financial collapse → asset hiding → bankruptcy) follows repeating industry pattern of underfunded/incompetent startups; David Dennis notes 'this happens every time' a new manufacturer launches

    high · David Dennis: 'this happens every time a pinball machine manufacturer starts up. A bunch of stupid people put their money in early before anything is proven. And then they lose their money'; episode framing suggests cyclical nature of failed ventures

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Capcom and Williams deliberately fragmented IP rights (tooling, artwork, reproduction, inventory, sales) into separate licenses to multiple parties to maximize revenue; described as intentional strategy to 'get maximum dollar... little bits at a time as opposed to one big bidder'

    high · David Dennis analysis: 'Capcom and Williams... they're splitting all these rights up because they want to get maximum dollar... they can split out the artwork from the rights to reproduce the pin to the rights to sell the pin... they can get all these other people to pay more money little bits at a time'

    • 5:08
    Now, Gene Cunningham opened a skating rink in 1973 in Bloomington, Illinois. He saw the rink as a business, but not necessarily as a passion.
    5:21
    All the kids there, they hung out. They met on a regular basis. It was a social sphere for that generation. They found love. They found heartbreak at the rink.
    5:35
    Is this a movie? But Gene, you know. Big bang, a rink. Gene Cunningham just saw it as a business. And he got tired of all the crap you deal with with kids, and he sold the business in 1988. Now, by 1993, he would eventually buy the business back. And by the early 1990s, Gene began to notice that pinball was booming, and that was why pinball entered Gene Cunningham's life. Strictly transactional. Now, what was it like to deal with Gene? I've never dealt with him. Well, here's some. Oh, it was reported that Gene was very difficult to deal with and was very overbearing. With his competitiveness and business sense, Gene began buying up warehouses in the area. Some people saw him as a collector, a hoarder, or a dreamer. Some people say he was a nut or something between a con man and a businessman. He's like a business accolade. And I'll tell you, I work with a lot of business owners, a lot of successful business owners, and a lot of people are very off-put by them because they can be intense A-type personalities. Sometimes that rubs people the wrong way, but Gene was a bit weird even for that. So in early 2000, Gene had heard through the grapevine that Capcom was shopping around to sell its pinball business to a buyer. The idea was that they have all these pinball assets and patents and stickers and drop targets and stuff somewhere in storage, and they might as well get some money for it. It was also said that Gene pursued the purchase of the old Bally Williams parts business at this time. Now, this begs the question, Ron, what happened with all of Bally Williams parts when they went under? That's a whole other episode. I can give some insight on that because I was there through most of it. There was you had Gene, you had like James Laughlin of the Pinball Inc. and the other art guy whose name is escaping me. Then you had Wayne in Australia. then you had battles going on and then eventually you had rick at planetary pinball bay area amusements which is now planetary pinball it's just yeah but but pinball was was basically dead right it's like who wants to buy a bunch of crappy pinball stuff yeah you can sell the parts yeah george george gomez says it wasn't like anyone was beating down the door for this stuff it's not like as soon as bally williams went under that like there was like all these companies that were just super excited to start their own pinball company because people at a corporate level understood that that was a terrible business decision. But for some reason, these romantic business collector community, boy, they could smell opportunity. And according to David Dennis, we will cover this in greater detail during another podcast. I might. It depends if I give up or not. Illinois Pinball Corporation. It's got pinball as two words for some reason. It does. And pin is capitalized and so is ball. Yeah, but it's one word, I believe, in all of his material. Yeah, so we'll get into that in a second. In early 2000, Gene Cunningham purchased the rights to Alvin G and Co. Games and Capcom. In addition, he also purchased the rights to reproduce Capcom's games. Yeah, he also got all their inventory. Their 200 driver boards and stuff like that, which he would use later.
    9:01
    He just bought a bunch of stuff. Jeans Company, which was called Illinois Pinball Corporation, purchased all the remaining inventory of replacement parts for Williams. And they could also remanufacture, and this is in quotes here, some replacement parts. Now, here's the thing, okay? It's really complicated to dig through a lot of this stuff, and I've tried my best. So if you know anything more about this than I am able to sort of summarize here, please send me an email at silverballchronicles at gmail.com. The purchase of the inventory was one thing The purchase to be able to like the rights to be able to sell the inventory was another thing Being able to remanufacture replacement parts was another like license or another thing Right. So it's not like you just, oh, I've got to buy Williams and you bought Williams. It was like, no, you could buy the remanufacture of parts and then somebody else could buy the inventory. But then somebody could buy the sale of the inventory like it was ridiculous. So it was very, very confusing. It was in 2000 that an individual named David Vitulo, who is a Williams representative, released a press release. To our vendors, please be informed that we did not sell our tooling as part of this transaction to Gene Cunningham. However, we have granted to Illinois Pinball a limited license to use the tooling specifically for the replenishment of pinball replacement parts inventory. yeah so there's like i found these press releases and information and contact back and forth that they're like that williams is like very much saying like we didn't sell them the parts of the tooling and the tooling is what makes the parts like the tool that makes the part and i can tell you when i got in in 2004 there was already rumblings that gene was just not making the parts like where's the parts yeah there's he's got the parts he could sell some parts yeah like where's the new where's the new inventory that's where is it right but he doesn't have the machine to make the coils and he doesn't have the machine to make the trunk on theater of magic that stuff it's a mess trying to figure out who owns what and what is owned by who and then if somebody's a bit sketchy maybe they are selling the parts when maybe they shouldn't be right but that's against licensing stuff it's it's really really sketchy oh it's it's really i was at shows were you know after gene lost the rights and he was still selling stuff and people were there like filming him selling stuff because they were going to report him and stuff like yes i'm yeah apparently with you know the purchase of the capcom parts and the rights to reproduce the capcom stuff which is different than the williams stuff he was going to remake break shot and he was going to call it pool player so in an old article from pinball news I was able to pull this quote. Gene was at the recent AMOA show in Las Vegas showing three games, but reports have been largely negative, citing the fact that neither game was fully working, and both broke down frequently during the show until they were unplayable. The flyer looks rather amateurish, with the picture clearly showing the reflection of the photographer's tripod in the back glasses, most strangely dispelling of Illinois pinball itself, which is spelled out as I-L-L-I-N-O-I-S. So they misspelled their own name in the banner in Illinois Pinball Inc. at the foot of the flyer. And it was capital P-I-N space capital B-A-L-L. So it's just it's just a mess. By 2003, by 2003, Gene picked up the rights to the tooling and artwork for Capcom. And he also acquired the Bally name. Yeah, that's cool. Until Wayne in Australia also acquired the Bally name. Oh. And that was a whole thing there. But see, isn't it interesting? You can make a whole episode out of the right stuff. It's great. So here's the thing, okay? There's the rights to the tooling. There's the rights to the part. There's the rights to the artwork.
    13:03
    There's the right. So what's happening here, okay, is that Capcom and, to some extent, Williams Valley, they can smell somebody who's kind of dumb, I think. And what they're doing is they're splitting all these rights up because they want to get maximum dollar for either their shareholders or the owners of the company if they're not a public company. They are looking to maximize every dollar. And if that means that they can split out the artwork from the rights to reproduce the pin to the rights to sell the pin, they can get all these other people to pay more money little bits at a time as opposed to one big bidder to pay a bunch of money up front. This is where this hoarding thing gets into, this hoarding mentality or this tunnel vision that people get into sometimes of spending money on stupid things. Let's jump ahead to 2004.
    13:52
    Gene Cunningham had made plans to then remake the 1996 game, Big Bang Bar. He was going to make 101 units and eventually increased it to 183 units. So Pinball, now he's got a new company. Gene Cunningham has created a new company called Pin Space Ball Manufacturing, Inc. What the heck is that? I think it's one word. It's just they capitalize the B in ball for some reason, even though it's the same word. Pinball News says the games will be branded Capcom despite being made by Pinball, Inc. This is a company Gene set up for the purpose of making the games and was necessary because Williams' licensing agreement with Illinois Pinball prohibits that company making any games. So you have to create a new company just to make this game, even though it's basically the same guy, same company. Right. Confused? So you have to set up other companies. Those other companies purchase various pieces of the rights because Williams won't let Capcom own everything else. It's the same company. It's a different thing. It's ridiculous.
    14:53
    Ridiculous. Apparently at this time as well, Gene was working on replacement Adams family side art and replacement parts for games like World Cup soccer. So, for example, the ball in there. The soccer ball. The soccer ball in my game might be an Illinois pinball soccer ball. This is hard for people to understand if they're new to the hobby, if they came in sort of post-COVID or like me just before COVID. Yeah, this stuff wasn't available back then. Back in like 2000, if something broke on your Addams family, what did you do? You hoped that there was parts inventory somewhere that hadn't run out yet. No one was making new parts, so. You stole parts from Popeye. You cannibalized a Popeye and tore it down. Or an NBA fast break. Yeah, or you found a game that was just destroyed, but it still had some ramps. So you were able to save the ramps and reuse them. And you only found those things if you were deep in the community at a Pinball Expo type of event, which were few and far between. So the barrier of entry to get into the pinball hobby was incredibly high. Because if you had no skills at soldering and you were as dumb as a post like I was... Oh yeah, you had no chance. Nah, you couldn't do that. This brings me to, I think, a pretty exciting time in the pinball industry. We're going to call this Gene's Expo presentation. I thought you were going to say that's when I got into it, so it was more exciting. So was this your first expo? Yes. In 2004, I went to my first pinball expo, and as a complete noob, I attended every single seminar, including this one. Which was the worst seminar you attended?
    16:33
    Oh, God. You're so mean. I don't remember. There was probably some really boring seminars with stuff I had no idea what they were talking about, I'm guessing. Replacing topside screws in your Malley single-level playfield game.
    16:51
    Gene had this grand presentation, which you attended. Yes, I did. What was he pitching here? All right, well, he was pitching Big Bang Bar. Now, I didn't know what that game was. I had no idea. Capcom made games. I had no clue. I mean, I totally do. I have no idea. But you don't know the lure? No. Of the greatest game to never be released? Is that the games seemed kind of expensive that he was pitching? Because I knew the Stern games at the time were under $4,000.
    17:20
    And his game, like the base model, was like $4,500, which is like, my God, that's expensive. The first machines of Big Bang Bar, you could order them. They were going to be $4,500. Oh, I have it right here. I'm just going to – I have from the presentation the flyer because I kept everything. I looked this up last night. I have the flyer, which I sent to David. I have the schedule of events from it. So I can tell you that this seminar was Friday, October 15th at 1115, Illinois Pinball Co. Update, Speaker Gene Cunningham. And he just sat on a stage in a shitty chair, right? Yeah. Yep. He was just on a stage sitting on a chair. With a microphone. That's it. Yep. That's it. I think there's a video of this. There's probably a video. They used to film all the seminars on, like, this big old camera with, you know, the kind where you put the VHS tape right in it, like that size. And they had that for years. I don't know where half that stuff went. I mean, it was old technology then. But I have the Big Bang Bar pricing document. It was handed out to everybody. All right, break it down. Are you ready? Yep. Okay, there's three columns. Machine number, trim package, and price. So we have machine number one will be gold-plated, a special prototype, and it will be $12,000. Now, apparently this machine was Gene's, but he wanted to put it on the flyer anyway. I guess so. Then machines two through ten.
    18:54
    Now, these are prototypes. So the first prototype, Gene, prototypes two through ten will be brass-plated, hand-assembled prototypes that will be seventy five hundred dollars each whoa so i don't know where they ended up then we get to regular production these are the hundred that eventually became 180 whatever or 190 i think eventually so the number one regular production model will be gold plated twelve thousand dollars two through 99 which are the ones everyone owns will be black at Then game 100, which I wonder who has this one, will be gold-plated, $12,000. Man, oh man. So here's a quote from Gene Cunningham himself. He says, machine number one will be plated with pure gold. Pure gold. $2,000 worth of gold in the sidebar's legs, feet bolts. Feet bolts? I wonder what that would be. The leg loaders. Casters. Yeah, casters. It will sell for $12,000, and it's already been spoken for. Okay, that would be his. The rest of the first 10 would each have a plaque with the number of the machine, the name, and the name of the original buyer. Ooh, exciting. So part of this tells me, okay, hey, you know, he understands this collector thing, right? Like low number LE thing. Pricing, pretty high. But by today's standards, not too bad. 12,000 is like Elton John. Yeah, there you go. And the Elton John isn't made of solid gold. So the other thing is, I don't know if he knows gold plated versus pure gold, totally different, right? Like gold is really soft. You know what I mean? Like you don't want gold ramps or legs that are going to get bounced around because they're going to mark and scratch. This is a stupid idea, but I can understand what he's doing. He told the crowd that he wouldn't start until he received at least 55 pre-orders. By the end of the show, 121 people had already registered to buy a machine. That's crazy. He had two shows where he had the opportunity to buy in. It wasn't just Expo. I think it was Expo and Texas. Yeah. I think Texas was actually the first one and then Expo. And if you were at those shows, those were all the people who got in. Now, he was asking. After a month, he sent out a letter to all these people and asked them for a 50% deposit. Now, what about these old guys at Capcom? Jeff Powell? He says, I heard through the grapevine that Gene Cunningham had bought off the parts. Everyone was skeptical. No one knew for sure if he had the rights to do it. but somehow he had gotten the dumpster drawings and everything. We were all skeptical. Is he really going to do it? What about Mark Ritchie? He says, I thought only a nut would do that. There's nothing easy about pinball, about producing them. It's a lot of work. Tons of people, tons of times. How is that guy going to make this in some Illinois shithole?
    21:50
    Wow. I love Mark Ritchie. I could totally see him saying that too, yeah. So by June of 2006, assembly of the machines started taking place, and he had a few of those machines together. Then Gene had started to ask for the rest of the payment. Boy, this sounds familiar. Except these actually did get made. Well, we'll get to that. At the time, people began selling their spots. Panic was starting to set in, and this happens every time a pinball machine manufacturer starts up. A bunch of stupid people put their money in early before anything is proven. and then they lose their money. So this time is just like every other time they're starting to freak out. Well, Gene Cunningham says, I had a lot of phone calls from people asking, when are they going to be ready? And I said, we're working on it because all these people trusted me with their money, then got word out that I was running way over. And some of them said, let us pay you more. And I said, no, I gave my word that I'd make them for $4,500. And that's what it was. He says, now this was an interview with Hindsight, Gene says that people were giving up saying, let us help you more. Let's give you more money. He's like, no, I'm going to stick to my guns. Those people are stupid.
    23:03
    They're really stupid. Either that or they don't exist. Yeah. So we'll leave it that way. Well, at the end of 2006, approximately one dozen machines were delivered to European customers. I remember that. The remaining machines were completed and shipped in June 2007. Okay. He did it. Yeah, and he lost his ass. We'll get to that in a second. But here's the thing. He got them out the door. What was it like chit-chatting around the thing? Were people like, holy crap, he actually did it? Yep. That was on RGP, Rec Games Pinball. That's pre-pinside. That's where we all hung out back then. So that was the pinside of your? I guess you could say that. Complete, unmoderated pinside.
    23:46
    The thing was, it's when pigs fly. And pigs flew. Pigs actually flew. Matt Piggs actually flew. Someone had to make an apology video because they just busted on Gene constantly, said he'd never make it, and they said they would do an apology video if he actually ever made them. So he actually had to do an apology video. He did it. Yes, he did it. He did it. It's like those Dutch pinball guys that somehow. Even after cheating everyone out of their money, they eventually, and there's still people who haven't been made hold yet, but it looks like they will be eventually, only eight to ten years after they bought the game. Amazing. absolutely amazing so anyway the differences of the remake versus the original four prototypes ah yeah i read this you're missing one but oh okay we'll point that out when we're done here so they had a lot like this electro luminescent lights on the plastic ramps that used like a 12 volt in the remake and originally apparently it was a 24 volt which is silly but i don't know it's on the list so i put it here the tube dancer is 13 smaller in the 1996 game gene didn't have access No, then the 1996. Oh, okay. So it is smaller. So Gene didn't have the original mold, so they had to make a new mold for the Dancing Lady in the Tube. All the remakes came with numbered plaques and card holders.
    25:03
    Now, not necessarily something was mounted there, but they were there. And reportedly, no manufacturer sticker was on the cabinet. The back of the cabinet. Right. Probably the back box, I would assume. And there was originally a Capcom cabinet sticker on the back there. So what's the thing that I missed? It's the easiest way to identify an original Big Bang Bar from a remake, and it was something Cunningham did on purpose. Okay. And if you look at the pictures of an original and a remake, the side art specifically, on an original Big Bang Bar, the side art does not go all the way to the edge of the cabinet, like on the bottom. It stops, and there's like a black line that goes across. He did not like that. So on the remakes, the side art goes all the way to the bottom. It goes all the way to the edge. Well, that was a good move. So that's the easiest way from a distance you can look at one and immediately tell if it's an original one or a remake. Without even having to look into the play field, you can tell. Crazy. So three years later in 2010 at the Northwest Pinball and Game Room Show, Gene Cunningham reported that there were additional units of the games to be made because they had extra parts and play fields sitting around. So why not make a game? I think at that point he was like, I'm not making Kingpin, I'm going to use the rest of the parts. Yeah, IPDB would say that you can see these other extra part games because they have EXP written in the serial numbers. And they guess there's probably 10 or 11 of those machines. So there's probably 191 of these units out and about. Yeah. This is when Gene was said to set his sights on Kingpin. Yeah, he was going to make Kingpin. And then maybe William's Wizard Blocks. Yeah, the problem was with Big Bang Bar, one of the cost savings was the fact that he just had the inventory from Capcom of all the board sets, like the huge driver board that takes up the entire back box. He had like a couple hundred. He used them all up making all those games. So if he was going to do Kingpin, he was going to have to have the boards remanufactured. yeah and back in the back in this time you're not sending an email to asia with the drawings 2010 maybe but still it would have cost a crap load of money that he didn't have to pay the first time because he just had the inventory yeah he was going to have to make more crap gene's troubles really started to become evident and apparently it started to leak out the gene was having some serious fighting over his home and his business from various creditors and it was believed that every Bing Bang bar that he manufactured was sold at a massive loss. Yeah, it was sold at a massive loss. So that is said that each machine actually cost about $7,200 to $6,500 American dollars to manufacture. Now, where do we get that number? Well, it came from an article in Pinball News where Gene Cunningham shared that with Martin Ahab over there. Yeah, he said it was made in Ayoub, I think it's. Right. Yeah. And a lot of this information, by the way, is from Pinball News. Check it out. A lot of the old stuff because he's been doing this since the 90s.
    28:23
    So, yeah, Gene told Pinball News that it cost $6,500 a machine. And then in a Polygon article years later, he said it cost $7,200. So which do you believe? Yeah, so it's either he doesn't know, which is probably really true. He probably doesn't know how much it cost him per machine. I'd say $6,500 is fair. So he basically lost at least $2,000 on every machine he made. I can totally see that. Yeah. And here's a quote from Gene. He said it cost a lot more than $4,500 for a lot of them because we made some special ones for some people. Gold trim, brass trim, sidebar and legs. Case of my daughter machine which is probably the most valuable one It all done in metallic green Well sometimes you got to say no to your daughter when it going to cost you your home and your business In 2009 Gene started to fight the bank over foreclosures He entered into an agreement with a Georgia-based pinball company to sell off Illinois Pinball and its inventory for just under a million dollars. Instead, the deal soured, kicking off nearly a three-year mess of arguments, claims of theft, broken deals, counter deals, and finally two major lawsuits. Yeah, the company in Georgia, that's probably Pinball Inc. That's probably James Laughlin. I think he was supposed to sell him the stuff, and then it went in the crapper. Yeah, a company in Australia and Georgia, they paid Gene Cunningham money for the inventory, but not all of the million dollars in the deal. Now, it seems like he sold stuff to both of them when they both probably assumed they were all buying everything. And I think all the parts eventually did go to Australia. Like all the stuff in his warehouse, I think, eventually went to Australia. Now, by 2013, all of the money had run out, and by March, Gene was forced to sell off his warehouse of pinball machines, his entire collection, and then 11 days after that, he filed for bankruptcy. Apparently. So it just keeps going. It just keeps going. Hey, you know all this financial stuff, man. That's what you do. Gene fought with the bankruptcy trustees. So when you go into bankruptcy, there's a person that sits in the middle. They're not the bank and they're not Gene. They're the person in the middle. And they have to inventory all of the assets. So they look at the company and they say, okay, where are these 3,000 coils? Or where is the building that it owns? Or where is the side art? And how many pieces of side art do you have? So they inventory everything. Allegedly, Gene had hid at least 20 pieces of property from the records of the trustee. He also transferred the ownership of some of these things, various assets, to hide them from the trustee, which included cars, more pinball inventory, and even commercial workout equipment, which if you saw Gene, he never used. And he also held about $1.1 million insurance policy. You can tell that Gene is a bit sleazy in these last few years, and generally that's kind of what happens when things start to go south is you start to, you know, try to hide your mistakes. And hiding things from a bankruptcy trustee, not a great idea. One of the other things, which is probably the biggest issue that he dealt with, was that Gene failed to mention that he had a warehouse sale 11 days prior to bankruptcy. So he sold off all of these pinball collections and all of this stuff 11 days before he filed for bankruptcy, which is a big no-no. Apparently, it was so bad that Gene moved from voluntary bankruptcy, and people refer to that as Chapter 11. We have something very similar here in Canada. And he was moved to a liquidation or a forced bankruptcy, which is called a Chapter 7, where all of his creditors were then just like sicked on him. So, Ron, do you remember hearing all about this? I read an article somewhere about some of this, but it was from Gene's perspective. So I didn't hear about a lot of the other stuff. Yeah, so most of the time everybody tries to spin this as basically being like, the bank is being unfair and they're coming after me and look at me and how great I am and everybody got their pinball machines. But really when it comes down to it, it's just a terrible business person. By August of 2016, Gene had a mountain of creditors and he owed hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes. Then they finally were able to close his bankruptcy. I have included an amazing pin side thread about Gene Cunningham in the show notes. Zip on over to silverballchronicles.com, click on the source, the sources page at the top there, and go to this pin side thread and read through some of this stuff. Have you seen this thread on pin side? I have not. You have not seen this? Oh, this is a good one.
    33:41
    So in here, basically what it is. What we should also mention is Gene Cunningham passed away on November 27, 2019.
    33:50
    Yes. So artifacts, the thread is called Artifacts of Gene Cunningham, Illinois Pinball. Like I said, it's included in the show notes. and what it is is a pinsider who is based out of Chicago went on a bit of an adventure or a pilgrimage to Bloomington, Illinois and he decided to look at what was left over of Gene Cunningham's legacy and in here are a bunch of photos of his old warehouse Gene Cunningham's old home where his warehouses used to be in his home pictures of inside of his home It was pretty crazy. Yeah, I think I've seen some of these. There's also other people chime in, and they start showing off Gene Cunningham's pinball game collection, a very rare and fancy, expensive collectibles. Oh, yeah, he had a huge warehouse, and they were all just stacked up.
    34:48
    Other people have posted all of this old, cool stuff that Gene had taken over when he purchased Williams and some others. It's well worth its read. I'm not going to get into all of it here. You don't need to read everything. I just read most of the pictures and things with lots of upvotes because those are obviously the ones with the dirt.
    35:10
    But it was really cool. It's really cool to see that. And it's also kind of sad. Well, that it all got broken up and went God knows where. Most of the parts went, like I said, they went to Australia. Gene Cunningham would then pass away in 2019 after, I would say, just a terrible downward spiral in the last 20 years of his involvement in the pinball community. It had highs and it had lows.
    35:39
    But Gene, I guess you could just say that he has once again helped build up the Capcom debacle. Just kept it going for another 20 years. That's not very nice. Was Gene Cunningham a hero or was he a villain? People got their games. As far as buyers are concerned, he's fine. Yeah, it's sad. It's sad to see the spiral of what had happened, but they did get their games. And I did buy something from Illinois Pinball, but it wasn't a game. It was a spinner for my No Fear because it's a custom part, and at the time that's all you can get it from was Illinois Pinball. The funny part of that story is, though, I ordered it. I never got anything. I said, hey, I didn't get it. And they couldn't find where they'd sent it or a tracking number, so they sent me a second one, which I got. and then like a month later I got the first one. Weird. Yeah. So I had two spares. There you go again. The reason why Gene Cunningham went bankrupt. Giving away stuff for free.
    36:50
    Hey, Stewie. Get over here. Alright, alright, alright. Here I am. Join us on Patreon to support the show. Become a pro crony is the perfect way to say thanks and it starts at $3 a month. Really, you're still calling them cronies?
    37:06
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    38:01
    so my daughter she's eight she's like right into the simpsons she's like binge watching the simpsons yeah that's a good thing just make sure it's the older episodes that's what i said So my wife's like, should she be watching that? I'm like, yes, she's perfectly fine. I watch that.
    38:36
    Wait a minute. Yeah. If you said you watched that, I'd be like, okay, she's not watching that then.