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Episode 194 - Interview with Gordon Hasse 9-17-15

For Amusement Only EM and Bingo Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 52m·analyzed·Sep 21, 2015
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.034

TL;DR

Legendary collector Gordon Hasse recounts 60+ years of pinball history and shares insights on wood rail design and preservation.

Summary

Gordon Hasse, a legendary wood rail pinball collector and Gottlieb specialist, discusses his early pinball memories from the 1950s, his extensive collection (later donated to Pacific Pinball Museum), favorite games across multiple manufacturers, restoration techniques, and his upcoming book on 1954 Gottlieb machines. He reflects on the superiority of EM design durability, the appeal and risks of payout pinball, and how post-WWII manufacturing innovation influenced pinball design.

Key Claims

  • Gottlieb's largest production run in the 1950s was Royal Flush (1957) with 3,500 units; Queen of Hearts was around 2,200-2,300; Alice in Wonderland was approximately 1,000 units

    high confidence · Gordon Hasse, discussing production numbers for early Gottlieb games

  • Domestic survival rate for 1950s pinball machines is estimated at 1-2% of total production runs

    medium confidence · Gordon Hasse, drawing on collector and serial number tracking community experience

  • Gottlieb games were better designed and more durable than competitors, with highly interchangeable parts across long production periods

    high confidence · Gordon Hasse, discussing technical preferences for restoration and maintenance

  • Williams was the true innovator of the 1950s era, while Gottlieb moved progressively in increments but maintained consistent design identity

    medium confidence · Gordon Hasse, comparing design philosophies of two major manufacturers

  • Early Gottlieb production runs were very small: Glamour had only 300 units; Daisy Mae approximately 600 units

    high confidence · Gordon Hasse, discussing rarity of early machines

  • Bingo machines were more profitable for operators than amusement pinball, returning 'many, many, many times' the revenue per machine

    medium confidence · Gordon Hasse, discussing operator economics and payout games

  • Multi-award games were a significant feature of 1950s pinball, with some machines offering 4-5 different ways to win (points, score, special, multiple special features)

    high confidence · Gordon Hasse, describing gameplay features he favored in the wood rail era

  • Post-WWII pinball manufacturers benefited from wartime manufacturing experience with new materials and processes, putting them 'on the leading edge' of electromechanical innovation

    medium confidence · Gordon Hasse, discussing war work and its effect on pinball design innovation

Notable Quotes

  • “You really had to scramble to find any information in those days. You know, I had several Gottlieb catalogs and a little bit of information that I could glean from other sources, but it was pretty tough finding your own way if you didn't have some experience with them.”

    Gordon Hasse @ mid-conversation — Illustrates the lack of documentation and knowledge-sharing infrastructure in early pinball restoration community, contrasting with modern internet access

  • “The brilliance of them, in my judgment, was that you weren't so much pitted against the game as you were pitted against yourself because you were constantly having to make choices and adjustments as the game played to determine what your best shot of winning was.”

    Gordon Hasse @ mid-conversation — Articulates the design philosophy and player agency in wood rail era multi-award games, a core distinction from modern pinball

  • “Once you get them set up properly and you've got all your contacts properly cleaned and gapped, there's very little that can go wrong. I've never had one of their transformers fail. I've never had one of their motors fail.”

    Gordon Hasse @ technical discussion — Demonstrates Gottlieb machine reliability and longevity compared to modern machines; key argument for EM preservation

  • “Looking forward ten or twenty years, you'll still be able to repair those Gottlieb games. I mean, worst case scenario would be you had to wind some coils on your own. But, you know, the stuff they're making today, I don't think that's going to be the case.”

    Gordon Hasse @ technical discussion — Prophetic statement about parts scarcity and long-term repairability of modern solid-state machines

  • “They were very addictive and very cleverly designed and it was easy to just become a degenerate gambler with those things.”

    Gordon Hasse @ payout pinball discussion — Honest assessment of payout machine addiction potential and operator design sophistication

  • “Production runs, for instance, Gottlieb's Glamour, 300 units... it's truly astonishing how, in some cases, that anything remains at all of those production runs.”

    Gordon Hasse — Highlights the rarity and precarious survival of early machines given tiny production runs

Entities

Gordon HassepersonNick BaldrigepersonPacific Pinball MuseumorganizationGottliebcompanyWilliamscompanyIra WarrenpersonSteve Youngperson

Signals

  • ?

    historical_signal: Gordon Hasse provides specific production numbers for 1950s Gottlieb games: Glamour (300), Daisy Mae (~600), Queen of Hearts (2,200-2,300), Royal Flush/1957 (3,500 as largest 1950s run); Alice in Wonderland (~1,000)

    high · Direct quotes from Hasse with conviction about figures gathered from production records and collector tracking

  • ?

    collector_signal: Estimated 1-2% survival rate for 1950s pinball machines in domestic market due to export, confiscation, destruction, and operator hoarding practices; most major finds already discovered; remaining machines in basements/attics

    medium · Hasse cites collector and serial number tracking community corroboration; 50-60 year recovery window suggests market saturation

  • ?

    design_philosophy: 1950s Gottlieb games (particularly mid-50s) featured 4-5 ways to win (points, score, special, multiple special holes) creating player choice and strategy; contrasted with modern score-focused pinball

    high · Hasse describes Dragonette (4 ways), Queen of Hearts (5 ways), Stagecoach (5 ways), fondness for single gobble hole games with up to 10-12 game awards

  • ?

    product_concern: Solid-state and early electronic machines face imminent parts scarcity; Gottlieb EM machines remain repairable indefinitely due to durable design and commonalized parts; modern machines pose long-term maintenance risk

    high · Hasse: 'There's already a scarcity of parts, especially for some of the early solid-state stuff... we're already starting to see those dry up'

  • ?

    manufacturing_signal: Williams positioned as innovator with distinctive cabinet graphics and early multiplayer experimentation (Race the Clock); Gottlieb as incremental improver with consistent identity and superior durability/repairability

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.337

0:00
What's that sound? It's 4 Amusement Only, the EM and Bingo Pinball Podcast. Welcome back to 4 Amusement Only. This is Nick Baldrige. My guest this evening is Gordon Hasse. Gordon is a very famous wood rail pinball collector, especially well known in the Gottlieb He has made an incredibly generous donation to the Pacific Pinball Museum of a massive number of Gottlieb and Williams and other manufacturers' pinball machines. I want to speak with Gordon tonight and discuss some of his memories playing the wood rail All games on location, as well as talk a bit about his feelings towards payout pinball and his upcoming book that he's publishing on 1954 Gottlieb Pinball Machines. So without further ado, I'm very much excited to present to you, Mr. Gordon Hasse. Hello. Hi, Gordo. Yeah, is this Nick? This is Nick. How are you? How are you, my friend? I'm doing well, thank you. So first I just wanted to ask what were some of your earliest memories playing pinball? Well I think a couple of things that come to mind. During the summers of 1953 and 1955 our family took family trips to Miami Beach at which I was eight and ten respectively and it was a huge arcade. I'm sure there were more than one but this particular arcade was immense and I vaguely remember playing some of the fairy tale series games and Barnacle Bill in particular. My next play experience was back home in Philadelphia in the little community of Fox Chase. It was kind of a greasy spoon about a block away that usually had two machines installed at any point in time. I remember distinctly playing Williams 20 grand, one of the early 50s Williams Pitchin' Those were the earliest recollections that I had. I did a lot of playing in the mid-50s down in Long Beach Island in or around the town of Beach Haven. There was a place called the Beacon Arcade in Beach Haven, and they had some wonderful games there. It's where I first became acquainted with the Queen of Hearts. There was Joker. We've united to early ABC bingo, Hawaiian beauty. There was also a little snack bar or snack shop close to the house we rented. Since Peach Haven was kind of backwater in those days, the operators tended to get games I was a big fan of the old games that they would probably buy from big city operators. I remember playing a lot of fairly early 50s stuff there like Flying High, Coronation, Crossroads, Lady Luck and a few others. I got to play a lot of games that really were kind of before my time. I didn't really become an active player of current games until about 1956. There I remember playing Wishing Well and Rocket Ship and any number of the games of that era. Growing up in Philadelphia, Philadelphia was pretty much an open city in terms of pinball. The games were pretty much ubiquitous in Philly. There were a lot of corner stores in those days, mom and pops. That's the place where most of the games were and you didn't have to look far to find one, unlike today where those kinds of venues just simply don't exist anymore. You know, they were in barbershops, they were in coffee shops, diners, even ran into one in a shoe repair place at one point. Believe it or not. Anyway, that's kind of my early history with the games. When I was about, I guess, 11 or 12, my folks kind of took a dim view of pinball as being somewhat seedy and lowbrow. They didn't really encourage my play, so I think they thought, well, maybe if we buy him a used one, that'll sate his appetite. So over the next couple of years, I acquired the first games that I ever owned, the very I was a member of the William's Army Navy, followed by a Gottlieb Happy Days, followed by a William's Pitch and I was a fan of Star Series and then I acquired on my own, I remember bringing it home over the tracks of the trolley that ran into our community at the time in a little red wagon that a friend of mine owned, a 1950 Just 21, a turret shooter. I bought that home. Never could get that one working. Later games that I acquired before I started absolutely serious collecting, I came across a Gottlieb Green Pastures 1954 game that was under a tarpaulin on the balcony of a motel I was a kid in Wildwood, New Jersey and I purchased that and put it in my fraternity house in the basement. Eventually that got ripped off. Then I kind of went underground with pinball until I got out of graduate school and was working in New York City. That's when I started my serious collecting. The first game I ever owned as an adult. I no longer had any of those I owned as a youngster. I think my parents gave them away. I bought from a very early coin-op dealer, a guy named Ira Warren, who had a pinball restoration company on J Street in Brooklyn. I bought a dragonette from him. I bought a couple of games from Steve Young, which is how I met Steve. I bought an Ace High and Harbor Lights. That was kind of the beginning. In terms of how I learned to repair and restore them, I had tinkered with them as a kid and knew just enough to be dangerous. So at some point I decided, you know, I really want to collect these things. The Dragonette had gotten me excited and proved to me that even in the early 70s these 50s games were still available. So I went out to Nekoma Park, which is right outside of Oklahoma City, and I took a one-week I was on the course on flipper repair and maintenance from an old operator named Cal Clifford. Cal Clifford was the owner and sole instructor at Cal's Coin College. That was kind of fun. We spent a whole week. It was just he and I together. Worst of all, I didn't know whoever these Senators were so I took the credit card as you can see. pleading with facedown radio diciendo

  • Operators in certain territories continued operating payout pinball illegally because profits were high enough to absorb confiscation and fines

    medium confidence · Gordon Hasse, discussing illegal operation economics

  • Most major finds of games from the 1950s era have already been discovered; remaining machines are likely forgotten in basements and attics, discovered one or two at a time

    medium confidence · Gordon Hasse, reflecting on collector market saturation after 50-60 years

    • @ production numbers discussion

  • “I'm stuck in the EM era.”

    Gordon Hasse @ technology preference discussion — Clear declaration of focus on electromechanical machines; lack of interest in solid-state/electronic era

  • “They're derivative rather than original. They're all based on a movie or a TV show or a personality, leaving you little room for your imagination.”

    Gordon Hasse @ modern pinball criticism — Critique of contemporary pinball reliance on licensed IP versus original themes in wood rail era

  • “I think that in venues where gambling is allowed, they should continue to run them, but I don't think they have much appeal when they're in situations where they're competing with blackjack and other casino games.”

    Gordon Hasse @ payout pinball discussion — Pragmatic assessment of payout pinball viability in regulated gambling environments

  • “Queen of Hearts, which was a huge success. I think the total run on that was somewhere in the order of 2200, 2300, which was huge. The largest production run of any game for Gottlieb in the 50s was their 1957 Royal Flush, and that was 3500.”

    Gordon Hasse @ production numbers discussion — Establishes benchmark production data for 1950s Gottlieb games; Royal Flush as highest-volume title of that era

    • Cal Clifford
    person
    Chicago Coincompany
    Ballycompany
    Exhibitcompany
    Unitedcompany
    Gencocompany
    Keeneycompany
    Queen of Heartsgame
    Royal Flushgame
    Wonderlandgame
    Army Navygame
    Alice in Wonderlandgame
    Tri-County Amusementscompany
    George Melentynperson

    medium · Hasse contrasts two manufacturers: Williams 'truly the innovator' vs Gottlieb 'moved progressively in increments'; Gottlieb had 'better designed' machines with 'huge commonality of parts'

  • ?

    community_signal: Early pinball restoration knowledge was scarce and difficult to access in 1970s; Hasse had to seek formal training (Cal's Coin College) and gather fragmentary sources (catalogs, informal contacts); contrasts with modern community knowledge-sharing

    medium · Hasse: 'You really had to scramble to find any information in those days'

  • ?

    historical_signal: Post-WWII pinball manufacturers benefited from wartime manufacturing contracts and material/process innovations; Gottlieb (and others) did government war work; experience contributed to electromechanical leading edge

    medium · Hasse: 'I do think it's safe to say that a lot of new processes and materials came out of the wartime effort... probably was a good and positive thing'; notes Gottlieb made lifeboats and harnesses

  • ?

    operational_signal: Payout pinball machines were highly profitable for operators; profitability was sufficient to absorb police confiscation and fines in illegal territories, allowing continued operation

    medium · Hasse: operators 'could afford to have them confiscated or pay fines and still come out on top'; bingos 'return many, many, many times what an amusement pin did'

  • ?

    historical_signal: Payout pinball remained legal in select locations into 1960s: Hawaii, Tennessee, South Carolina, Raytown Missouri (1966); Hasse has personal experience playing payout games in these venues

    medium · Hasse: 'There are still a lot of them in Hawaii... Tennessee and South Carolina... Raytown, Missouri... as late as like 1966'

  • ?

    collector_signal: Gordon Hasse made massive donation of Gottlieb, Williams, and other manufacturer machines to Pacific Pinball Museum; suggests significant collection size and commitment to preservation/education

    high · Opening statement: 'He has made an incredibly generous donation to the Pacific Pinball Museum of a massive number of Gottlieb and Williams and other manufacturers' pinball machines'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Early pinball operators rarely sold machines to private parties to avoid creating competitors; this, combined with confiscation and export, severely limited domestic machine survival

    medium · Hasse: 'almost no operator would sell to a private party because they were afraid that they'd put it out on their own and become a competitor'; shipped out of country by distributors

  • ?

    design_innovation: Williams' Skyway features single flipper, multiple channels/holes, and unique playfield layout; represents experimental innovation typical of Williams in 1950s; noted for graphics and bold design choices

    medium · Hasse: 'Williams was truly the innovator... Skyway was one of those experiments that I thought was daring and pretty interesting'

    • 9:48
    Yeah, you really had to scramble to find any information in those days. You know, I had several Gottlieb catalogs and a little bit of information that I could glean from other sources, but it was pretty tough finding your own way if you didn't have some experience with them. You might ask about some of my favorite games from the major wood rail manufacturers. And in Gottlieb's case, it's like, you know, which of your children do you like best? Because I have so darn many favorites, but I guess right at the top of the list certainly would have to be Queen of Hearts. That's probably my overall favorite game, regardless of era. I think Mystic Marvel, another card-themed game from February of 54, is a terrific game. I love Dragonette. I find Diamond Will, despite the fact that it has the reverse flippers, to be a terrific game to play. And I also have great admiration for Slug and Champ of 1955. I like virtually all of the single gobble hole multiple special games where you could win at up to 10 or 12 games at a time if you hit that extra special hole and that would All of these games will be games like Classy Bowler, World Champ, Frontiersman, Harbor Lights. I love those games. Night Gaze High is a terrific game as well. In the Williams corner, I would have to say probably Race the Clock, which is not a well-known game. It was William's first multiplayer and a four-player at that. I only ever got to play that in one venue. I suspect that the production run on that was very small because A, it was their first multiplayer, B, it was the first game they released that was set to run on a dime. That was a big step for everybody in the distribution chain from distributor to operator to player. I have never been able to find the actual production run on it, but as I said, I suspect it's very, very small. I advertised to purchase one for, I don't know how many years, maybe as much as a decade and never got a single bite. I like that game. I like Army Navy very much. I think Shoot the Moon is a fun game. It's
    12:59
    kind of primitive. It's early. It's November of 51. I also have a fondness for Skyway, which is not a whole lot of fun to play, honestly, but I love the graphics and I love the attempted The attempted innovation that Williams was always up to. I probably said this before, but Williams was truly the innovator in the era of the 50s. Gottlieb moved progressively in increments, but you could always identify a Gottlieb game. The game was a totally different experience, but they tried some interesting things. Certainly Skyway was one of those experiments that I thought was daring and pretty interesting. Coming back to Gottlieb for just a moment, I happen to favor, as a group, Gottlieb's games of 1954, particularly those that were the double coin games. The book that I'm working on about the finish concerns itself primarily with the Gottlieb The Double Coin Double Award Games of 1954 and the Double Coin Double Award Games in particular. As far as United, even though it's not a flipper game, I guess my favorite is their Manhattan Novelty, not the Bingo, but their Novelty game, which was their last non-flipper game. I think my love for it has mostly to do with the artwork. I think it's spectacular and among George Melentyn's best work. In the case of Chicago Coin, my favorite would have to be Thing, a nice satirical take on I'm thinking about... I have to stop and think for a minute about... Keeney, I couldn't give you one. They made so few true amusement pinballs that I certainly don't have a preference, nor do I have much playing experience. I think some of the things that I like from Genco were toward the end of their runs where they were doing some pretty daring things like summertime where they had a playfield in the back box as well as on the playfield. The There was another game they made. I think it was called Was it double award or double something same type of a setup?
    16:21
    There one turret shooter game Canasta is kind of an interesting piece I Like it because it's a card theme and it's also kind of an aberrancy. They didn't make any any other turret shooters and Let's see winding up Exhibit, I guess I would have to say some of their later work, like their last game was Trigger or one of the games in that era. What I like most about the exhibit games, and I didn't get to play many of those, certainly not on location, I think they did a great job in terms of their cabinet graphics. The Wally Williams They always had complimentary cabinet graphics as opposed to Gottlieb who always did strictly geometrics. They were often pretty, but Williams did a lot of really pretty cabinets. The cabinets on Four Corners, for instance, is terrific. The cabinet on Hong Kong is killer. The Hong Kong is killer and nice stuff, really nice stuff. Yeah, I've done an episode on Four Corners. I think that is a really interesting game,
    17:45
    both from the kind of semi-bingo aspect and also the artwork, as you mentioned, is just fantastic all the way through. The whole package is great on that one. Yeah, it is a good game. I probably should have mentioned that because it is on my list of favorites. I think because of my love of the Gottlieb games of the 50s, I didn't play too many of those Williams combination quasi-bingo games, although they were neat games. But they were hard to beat consistently and I like, I enjoy playing for scoring points more and the Gottlieb games supported you that opportunity. But they did make some really good games in that genre. Well, before we continue on, can I ask you what the gameplay of Thing is like? I've never seen one and I have a friend who's been looking for one for a long time, but I've always been curious what it plays like. Well, the distinguishing feature on that is kind of a hidden feature. There's a box in wrapping paper and ribbon, at least graphic representation of the same, What's touched me most is it was set vertically which I don't see on the dried colored neat° pins. It's a lot faster than we employ but it does get your head back in motion for a lot of things. It's kind of the opposite of Gottlieb's ball trap, which Gottlieb used on five or six of their games. Mermaid being one of them. It's that kind of a feature, but its configuration is quite different. But up to a certain point in time, you can't lose the ball at the bottom of that game while 24
    20:36
    Oh my, having a senior moment. In any event, it's a fun game. It doesn't play as well as the Williams or Gottlieb stuff from the time, but I think the theme and the cabinet graphics and in fact the backglass graphics are a ton of fun. It's different. It's a different experience than playing the Gottlieb or Williams. I'm overthoning and not that easy to find anymore. Yeah, my friend's been looking for quite some time. Now, you also mentioned Skyway, I believe, Williams? Yes. Was that one of their single flipper games? Yes, it was. Okay, okay. Yep. Those are very interesting. I've never played one or even seen one. I've just seen them on IPDB. But are they interesting players? Like Skyway, I am trying to recall, but I think there's a shoot on the left-hand side. Is that correct? Yeah, there are a lot of channels on the left-hand side. There are a lot of holes on the right-hand side. raum
    22:27
    The position of the flipper on that game, plus the fact that your kickers in that era of the Williams stuff were 50 volts rather than the weaker Gottlieb, it really plays nice. It's a lot of fun. Very interesting. I know that your collection was comprised of many, many wonderful Gottlieb games, including all in the Fairytale series. Do you have a favorite in some of those early flipper games? Not necessarily from Gottlieb if you don't prefer the play of those. Well, that whole flipper series, that whole fairy tale series were, as you probably know just from observing them on the Internet Pinball Database, were kind of painfully similar in terms of design. And they were also, they also I think reveal their pre-flipper origin because until we got to Barnacle Bill, there wasn't, I don't think, a conscious realization of the potential of the flipper as a targeting device. The six flippers on the fairytale games, you know, they're just kind of there to keep the ball moving around. It's very hard to target for anything off of those flippers because of the position and also the fact that they were linked together and powered by a single solenoid which meant that they were not particularly potent. I think if I had to choose one, I'd probably choose it on the basis of the graphics. My favorite graphics are on Old King Cole, particularly the playfield. Really, really terrific looking graphics. I can try to discern major points of difference between them in terms of their play. Lady Robin Hood is nice, too. I like the graphics here and I like the bullseye targets and that's fun to play. But I guess I'm more enamored of some of the graphics than I am of the play value. But of course you've got to look at it in the context of when they were made. At the time, it's great stuff. Yeah, I've played Humpty Dumpty and Jack and Jill and I vastly prefer Jack and Jill to Humpty Dumpty as far as gameplay goes. Yeah, just the flasher effect under the playfield, I think that's incredibly cool for the time especially. I love the graphic of Jack with his broken crown. Getting the vinegar put on. So switching to tech for a moment, which manufacturer's games do you prefer to work on the most, just as far as mechanisms and so forth? I know there's a lot of similarity. I prefer the God Leader. I think they were better designed. I think they were built to be more durable. There's a huge commonality of parts that they've used over a long period of time, so a lot of stuff is interchangeable, more so than some of the other manufacturers who do a lot of one-off stuff. I don't have any working knowledge of the electronic games. I don't for the most part care for them and never felt the need to own one or to learn how to maintain or repair them. Whatever expertise I have resides entirely in the EM stuff. Well, yeah, I guess I should have couched that in EMs and parentheticals. No, that's okay. No big deal. I just am not... I'm stuck in the EM era. Well, you know, I love working on EM machines and I agree about Gottlieb's durability. If you have them working, it's pretty hard to make them stop. Absolutely. The worst thing you can do is not play them. Once you get them set up properly and you've got all your contacts properly cleaned and gapped, there's very little that can go wrong. I've never had one of their transformers fail. I've never had one of their motors fail. Some of those damn things have been brought back from the dead. The other thing is that looking forward ten or out whatever you still be able to repair those Gottlieb games I mean, worst case scenario would be you had to wind some coils on your own. But, you know, the stuff they're making today, I don't think that's going to be the case. I'm right there with you. I mean, there's already a scarcity of parts, especially for some of the early solid-state stuff. So, that's going to get worse as time goes on. No question. And, you know, there are going to be clever people that keep those machines going, but as far as original parts, you know, we're already starting to see those dry up. That's going to be like cars in Cuba. So, what is your favorite feature from the wood rail era specifically? What did you like to see in a game when you stepped up to it? Well, there were two things that I favored most, and one of them I've already mentioned, The game was a single central gobble hole and you could build up its value as high as 10 and in one case as high as 12 games for a special. Both Wishing Well and Frontiersman, you could win up to 10 games on the extra special with The Ball In other words, dropping one ball in the hole. You could win 20 if you build it up properly and had two balls left and dropped them both in the hole. Derby day would award up to 12 games. You know, there's nothing like that in modern pinball. You play for points, period, paragraph. The other thing that I liked very much and was sorry to see The way these games were created, the way they disappeared was until the introduction of real scoring on Gottlieb single players, most of their games in the 50s and even earlier, you could play for either points or score. It made for a very interesting situation because you had two major ways to win on most of those games. Most of the 50s games, particularly the mid-50s games from Gottlieb, you had at least two and in some cases three additional ways you could win. You'd have score points. We've had a special base when completing a number rotation, Dragonette and four bells, four ways of winning, Queen of Hearts, five ways of winning, Stagecoach, five ways to win. I mean, they were great. They were wonderful games. The brilliance of them, in my judgment, was that you weren't so much pitted against the game as you were pitted against yourself because you were constantly having to make choices and adjustments as the game played to determine what your best shot of winning was, especially when you had a situation where you could win on five different features. That's what I miss most about the modern stuff. That and the fact that they're filled with what I can only characterize as toys. They're derivative rather than original. They're all based on a movie or a TV show or a personality, leaving you little room for your imagination. They have playfield surfaces that are so dense with graphics that sometimes I can't even follow the ball. So you know, call me old, call me crassety, call me old fashioned, but I know what I like. Hey, there's nothing wrong with that. Well, it's interesting that you talk about winning multiple replays and having to adjust your strategy as you play. Now, as I mentioned earlier, you know, this podcast also talks about the bingo games. And I wondered, you know, what were some of your thoughts on payout pinball in particular and, well, payout pinball in general and bingos in particular? Well, I've owned a couple of bingos. I've played them on location and enjoyed them and enjoyed the gambling factor. I recognize the problems that gambling pinball, payout pinball, has posed in the past. I know of situations from my childhood where I would hear tales from adults about working guys who would, on a Friday night, go into their favorite bar and put their whole paycheck into a Bally one ball and then have no money for food or rent. They were very addictive and very cleverly designed and it was easy to just become a degenerate gambler with those things. I think the one balls were the most pernicious of all because the time of play was absolutely minuscule. The bingo's very interesting and the designers were absolute geniuses, especially as the evolution of those games continued. The features were just extraordinary. I don't know if you spent any time inside a bingo. Oh yeah. Well then you know. It's just extraordinary that you could do those things electromechanically. Fascinating games, fun to play. I think that in venues where gambling is allowed, they should continue to run them, but I don't think they have much appeal when they're in situations where they're competing with blackjack, Tim Kitzrow, Stock and Central Maria Pence, Wikileaks and Aquae, Olymper Inc, But I think you know, where they can be operated legally fine, terrific. There are still a lot of them in Hawaii. I suspect a lot of them are still operated in Tennessee and South Carolina, which was among the last places the law was ever really introduced in the United States. I'm not sure that they are any more. But yeah, I think they were terrific. It's hard for collectors to find some of the early payout games. They're highly desirable among a segment of the collective market and they're fascinating to play. And the fact that they had automatic payout games, you know, as early as somewhere in the mid-30s, this is pretty cool. Yeah, especially I like the ones that hid it in a secret drawer. I think that's pretty clever. Not a very secret drawer, right? Well, yeah. But you know the good dodges were incredible, you know, paying out in tokens or paying out in tickets, well, yeah, which you could then redeem for cash. But I played some bingos in Raytown, Missouri, as late as, which is right outside of Kansas City, as late as like 1966, and those were equipped with payout. The Valley Company, Subsidiary of Walter Kidde & Co., Inc., Mirco Playfields, Scott Danesi.
    37:35
    What's your take on the bingo scene? Did you play the bingo scene in the same way, or was it entirely different for you? Well, you know, the primary motivation for playing bingo is pecuniary. You know, you're playing to hopefully win money. It's a totally different smoke. I never met anybody. Well, I did. I met one guy who claimed that he had literally made a living in the 50s as a young guy playing bingo. I played the same game enough times and you figured out how to get that number 16 hole, which was always key. I could see that it's quite possible. But as with all pinball, it was really the casual player that made most of the money for operators. Operators, of course, were up to bingos because they returned many, many, many times what Well, you know, there's a lot of stuff to learn about what an amusement pinball would return, and it was so damn durable, I mean, you know, there weren't any real playfield action components so your playfield was good forever and ever. You can find those games, really old ones like Atlantic City and stuff like that from the early 50s, playfields are still great. Mm-hmm. multiples of what an amusement pin did in those days but
    39:05
    you know and the other thing was a lot of the operators were operating them in territories where they weren't legal but they were so profitable that you know they could afford to have them confiscated or pay fines and still come out on top
    39:22
    You know that kind of thing is incredible you know I've I've gotten into them I've played them just in the past couple years and I'm a young guy. Of course, I never played them when they were legal to operate in my state especially. And yeah, it's interesting to think about for me. But when I play them, I certainly chase the replay. That's my motivation. Yeah. And it's pretty gratifying in a similar way for me. And so you get a lot of things to do, but having never had that experience. I think the thing that I enjoyed most about them was if you hit a really, really, like that five in a line and to hear that three-reel counter chunk out those plays, it's just really a rush. I agree. It's quite the thing. Turn the machine off and back on, it counts them all down. Yep. Unbelievable. Well, those guys didn't miss many tricks. They really didn't. No. It's not exactly a knock-off button. It's a switch, and it just happens to do that as part of the startup sequence. Yeah. Yeah. So, let's move back into the wood rails. Okay. And let's talk about some of the really rare games that you've had pass through your hands. I wanted to know in particular about Williams Wonderland and Army Navy. I've never seen those in person and I've always been curious about them. They have beautiful artwork. Well, the Army Navy was the first game I owned and I played the devil out of it. A lot of fun to play. In typical fashion at the time, you could play for score, but you could also play for points. The points in this case were related to scoring in football. There were two main pop bumpers on the playfield. One of them would advance the football in one direction and the other one would advance it in the other direction. If you reached the goal post in either direction, you'd score six points. Then there were also some rollover buttons on the playfield that were within the arc of the building or the incrementing of your movement toward the goals. They would light at the appropriate time. At the bottom of this tree you've a vigil tomorrow to pay back twoemie 10. empresa del municipio United cor chops of center i love you and yourself you're always watching us and your country but now funny or wrong and if you don't for the trolls market the seguir catch respect counts the murder circuit And I'm some of your primaries. All right, we got that picture. Here's the shot of a Elliott, what we see right after the arm adoption and since the morning tap selectlist. What do you see? The last, I guess, three digits were dummies. They were just painted on wood. So only the numerals preceding it were actually moving. Nice, nice cabinet graphics, football graphics on the cabinet. A real good game. I played the heck out of it. One of them in my collection was... I shouldn't say one of them. I donated that, among other games, in my collection to the museum. I can't tell you too much about Wonderland, although I will tell you that the backglass is one of my very favorites. I did play the game as a kid. I don't remember. I know I never got mine restored to play, so I'm going to have to tell you quite honestly, I can't tell you much about it except that I love the artwork. That's all I know too. But it seems to be very desirable. Collectors are always looking for it. And it seems like it was much more rare than Alice in Wonderland. I don't know if that's true, but... Probably so. I think the production run on Alice in Wonderland, which was the last of the fairy tale series, was only about... was about a thousand games, and I'd be surprised if Wonderland was more than half of that. Wow. That's, uh, those productions are pretty small, you know, by 70s standards, you know, which is where I'm more familiar, 60s and 70s, so, um, that's pretty astounding to me. Oh yeah, I mean, that's why the Dorian Woodrails are so hard to find. I mean, the production runs, for instance, Gottlieb's Glamour, 300 units. Whoa. 300. Huh. I mean it's truly astonishing how, it's astonishing in some cases that anything remains at all of those production runs.
    45:41
    I'm trying to think of a couple of others there. Even a game like Daisy Mae, which was a beautiful game, I can only make about six hundred of those. Queen of Hearts, which was a huge success. I think the total run on that was somewhere in the order of 22, 2300, which was huge. The largest production run of any game for Gottlieb in the 50s was their 1957 Royal Flush, and that was 3500. Wow. So, I mean, it gives you a pretty good idea. Yeah. That's incredible. I'm glad that there are so many uh... restorable candidates that were out there uh... for people to get well it's it's it's been my experience and pretty much confirmed by other collectors and people who collect serial numbers that it's very likely that of the complete run of all the The survival rate here in the domestic market is probably on the order of 1-2%. For any number of reasons, not the least of them being a lot of that stuff was immediately shipped out of the country. A lot of it was shipped out of the country after it came off location by distributors her out 메�ne the The game was developed by distributors to keep newer games working. A lot of it was confiscated by police and destroyed. And believe it or not, a lot of it was simply put out for the trash. And a big reason for that was in that era almost no operator would sell to a private party because they were afraid that they'd put it out on their own and become a competitor. There was a place called Tri-County Amusements, which was right outside of Philadelphia. I used to buy machines from them on occasion. They always had a junk pile of what were probably, in many cases, salvageable machines that were just out there as junk. At this point in time anyway, some 50 to 60 years later, most of the large finds of games from that era have been discovered. What remains is probably forgotten in basements and attics. It's now become a onesies, twosies kind of game. Yeah. So I wanted to talk next about your thoughts on pinball and innovation and the effect that World War II had on both of those factors and specifically the end of the war. But you know, if you have any particular thoughts about any of the manufacturers and what they were doing right after the war, I'd be interested to hear. I don't know that I can speak too knowledgeably about that. I do think it's safe to say that a lot of new processes and materials came out of the wartime effort. From the end of the war on, the pinball manufacturers were kind of in the vanguard of innovation in terms of use of materials and various plastics and other components. They were kind of on the leading edge in the area of electromechanical stuff. I think a lot of that had to do with just the experience of having to conform to government contracts to make things that they never made before. Gottlieb made lifeboats and harnesses. Every one of the pinball manufacturers was doing war work. I couldn't tell you what the other ones were doing, but I have some photos of some of the stuff that Gottlieb was making. I suspect that the variety of experiences and materials that they had to become familiar with probably was a good and positive thing. Do you have a particular take on it? Well, I guess my take is that because of the war efforts, there were improvements in the manufacturing, which is pretty apparent in the quality of the games that came out afterwards. And also because the kind of smaller manufacturers were absorbed or disintegrated because of the repurposing effort. So, what's really interesting to me about that particular era is that coming out of the 30s, everybody had a pinball company, it seemed. Yeah. And everybody was really experimenting quite a bit with features and ways to entice the player. N matches player, in the Payout Game, And I just find that kind of interesting. Well, I don't know if that's... Go ahead, I'm sorry. I don't know if that's a patent thing. You know, maybe everybody waited for some patents to expire or what exactly happened? Well, I know that the shaking out, I suppose, was kind of inevitable. I think that probably, and I can't document that in truth, but it seems to me that the initial surge was in the early to mid-30s because anybody that could buy wood and nails or pins or whatever decided that they could make these pin games, pin and ball games. The game was a little bit more of a game. Initially, the demand was almost unlimited because it was the pression. Anybody that
    53:12
    could find a way to make a living did it. Some people did it by manufacturing these games. Some people did it by distributing and operating these games. The guy in the My pokie is a benim beat a little The manufacturers learned a lot of different lessons. There's very little that's new in pinball. Most of the themes and the ways of winning and the game rules recur time and time again. You see stuff that ... I mean, there were multiple player games in the 30s. They weren't like our multiple player games, but they had in some cases, they had 10 balls of one color and 10 balls of another and you were supposed to shoot them. Ultimately, in some cases, they had two playfields side by side with either a single coin shoot or two coin shoots. I think one of the things that happened, at least in my estimation, and one of the things that I find so interesting about the games of the 50s is that at that point in time, virtually all of the aspects of the modern game were in place. The flipper was in place, drop holes, kick holes, trap holes were in place, cyclonic kickers were in place, dead bumpers and pop bumpers were in place. At some point in time, I think the manufacturers recognized that this was kind of the archetype and what other ways were there for it to move? You put in voices, you put in multi-level playfields, you put in Magna Saves, all variations on a theme, but the basics of the game, in my judgment anyway, had been established by the 50s. The demand for this stuff had really fallen off tremendously particularly for the makers of the amusement games they were all of a sudden faced with absolutely fierce competition from shuffle bowlers Shuffle bowlers in the 50s were big business. Not only did they sell well, but they were set up to take in a dime a game. Some of them were four players, some of them were six players. I think one of the manufacturers made a game called Team Bowler where there were 12 players, literally two teams of six each. Jukeboxes were competing for collections. We're competing for nickels and dimes. It became a very tough business. Nobody in the 1950s were making long runs at pinball. Williams and the other manufacturers, for the most part, their production runs were a fraction of what Gottlieb's were and Gottlieb's weren't very long to begin with. Well, ironically, it was in one sense the golden age of pinball because all the modern features were in place and, you know, the great Roy Parker and George Melanton were doing the art and the Harry Williams and Wayne Nyans and Harry Mads were doing the design and, you know, it was just, it was just a great time.
    57:49
    It was just a terrific age and the stuff made at that time, in my judgment, is among the very best despite all the things that have happened in the interim. I agree. I mean, opening up one of those games is also a treat. Well, compared to even more modern EMs, or most especially a bingo, I mean, There's so many mechanisms and some of them became more refined after that era but as you say the basics have been in place and I find it pretty easy and comforting to work on on a wood rail if the parts are available so I enjoy those games quite a bit. I do too. Not the least of the smell of them when you open them up. Oh yeah! It's intoxicating. So, kind of carrying on in that earlier theme, and my apologies if you don't have many thoughts on this, feel free to say pass, but I just wondered what you thought of conversion games, in particular the ones that were produced during World War II to kind of keep the games going. What is your thoughts on why those types of conversions don't exist today? Well, there have been sporadic attempts... not attempts. There have been some conversion games made almost on a continuing basis dating all the way back to the 30s where you could buy a replacement board. There have been conversion games to a limited extent as far as I know in virtually every era. The stuff that was done during the war of course was out of necessity and it was an attempt on the manufacturers to first of all have an income stream in addition to their government contracts and at the same time keep a foot in the door in terms of manufacturing John Popadiuk, Bob Betor, Knapp Arcade, Raydaypinball, Bally Williams, Straight Down the Middle, Pinball Machine, St. Paul, Knapp Arcade, St. Paul, Knapp Arcade, St. Paul, Knapp Arcade, St. Paul, Knapp Arcade, I intend to complete my background in aspect of the We had a different playfield configuration of the components. They were virtually different games, not just rehashes. Even Gottlieb sneaked a couple in there. We did a game called Cover Girl, not the one from the 60s but one that was done during During the course of the war, and of course, Harry Williams and Lynn Durant, who had been the driving force of Exhibit before the war, started United, and that's how they started out, strictly doing conversions. Smartly they tried to buy up as many old United games as they could because they'd been the The designers of those and that was the easiest way for them to get from A to B is to rehab their old games. But, you know, it served the purpose. The distributors and the operators were hungry for stuff and a lot of those late free war Google Playfield.com 1 I think it's a great idea to have a listing of pinballs and look at the number of conversions. It's astonishing. In many cases more than one title, sometimes even titles from more than one manufacturer, would be solicited by converters to be made into a single new title. So there might be two or three games that were original games with different titles, I think it was the entrepreneurial spirit at work and I think it served the existing need pretty well. Yeah, that's fascinating that they were able to take games from different manufacturers. I mean, it makes sense as far as getting a broader customer base, but it seems like that would be very, very difficult. Yeah, I find it kind of interesting. Now, I'm not saying that was the common practice. The common practice was to draw one game or multiple titles from a single manufacturer, And in some cases, they went beyond that. I suspect just out of necessity. Very interesting. So what are your thoughts or do you have any particular favorites or standouts as far as flipperless games? I know your heart lies with the 50s Gottliebs where flippers were firmly in place, but Do you like any of the older games and their style of gameplay in particular? I didn't play too many of the pre-flipper games. Matter of fact, as a kid growing up, I didn't play any of them, but in later life, I've had an opportunity to play some of these games in the hands of other collectors. Some of them are quite wonderful, in particular, and these are almost always mentioned, but the three Rockola totally mechanical games, Army, Navy, World Series, and World's Fair Jigsaw, are wonderful games to play. You can maybe trigger a certainuspicious asking for an interview with Chuck K sprinkle. While you might be awake for a short moment only, head up to the 25-minuteie and enjoy a mineralлавpary Freeze ideia, my camera Dan delivered Christmas music and a signed bettingslice. An toss in the right over the tere in the сю� financials bank, and another round30 numa afwade plantoكnoe6 silky-glitch hog 새. The Balls were used recovery shooters where if the ball went into this enclosed area it would be automatically fired back onto the playfield. They also had kick holes in some cases that were aimed to hit a stretch rubber below them Which would then impel the ball back up the playfield. Games like God Leaves Marjorie from right after the war or I'm trying to think of another one that was really nice. Lucky Star. I mean they were kind of fun to play even though there were no flippers because there There were other ways that you could move the ball back up the playfield. A lot of them are very pretty games. If you look at the first six or seven games that Gottlieb made after the war, starting with Stage Dealer Canteen through Flying Trapeze, they're all pretty nifty looking games and We do have a considerable amount of play value. Yeah, I agree. I've always appreciated the artwork on the Flip the List games, and I feel like it draws you to either the sequence or features that you're trying to complete pretty well, especially on the playfield. I agree. Yeah. So from here I wanted to talk a bit about your donation to the Pacific Pinball Museum. This was a very famous event. There's an article about you on Pinball News and it's a considerable donation. And I was curious what inspired you to make the donation? Well, there were a number of things involved. To be perfectly honest, I had originally intended to try and launch my own pinball museum with the intention of the games being restored and playable just as they'd done at the PPN. I was tired of the pressure. I was tired of the congestion and the other things that go with living in New York, the high cost of living, etc. I thought to myself, where would you want to do this if you're going to have a museum? Of course, the first thing that popped into my mind was, well, how about Orlando? That's the number one tourism destination in the country. But when I got down here, I quickly realized that the Big Three, that the Disney, the Universal, and the SeaWorld really had a terrific lock on the tourism market and the secondary and Do you think that despite the success of the I had ongoing storage costs which exceeded $1,000 a month and some of those costs had been going on for more than two decades. So I finally decided I had to get out from under this. So knowing that I couldn't do it, I started approaching parties that I knew about or I was very, very impressed with the show. I was very, very impressed with their board of directors, Michael Sheese and his wife, Melissa Harmon, and Iris Artarian, and the whole group of people that are board members. We're just great folks and very pinball engaged. And we started a conversation about how we might incorporate my collection into the PPM collection. And they very generously offered to pay for the move of these games, which was a monumental Lemme tell you where we're heading next. Just through the mailchip going through, we're just passing from Camp sunk to issues out in thegeneration. And again, we're not buying the typewriter to that now our I agreed with him that what we would do, that it would not be an outright gift during the course of my life, but it would be on loan until I passed. And the reason for that was that since the museum is a 501c3, a non-profit, should for some reason the museum fail, the disposition of assets can only be to another 501c3. So the arrangement we made was to insure against my games disappearing if the museum should fail. So it's a permanent loan until my death and at that time it becomes the property entire of the museum. But I was very happy to see it happen for any number of reasons. Number one, it fulfilled my long-term hope of keeping this rather complete, well absolutely complete collection together. Durant abnormal I did keep a handful of duplicates. In every case I donated the game that was in better condition of any of the duplicates that I had to the museum and kept the poorer example because I wanted them to be as pristine as they could be for the museum. But in all, there were 240 wood rails. More than half of them represented a complete run of Gottlieb single player wood rails from the end of the war, starting with stage door canteen through the end of the wood rail era. It was made in, I think the first month of 61. It'll come to me at some point. So it was all the single players plus I had both versions of Duet, which was Gottlieb's first two player, which was released in both a standard size cabinet and the deluxe size cabinet. I also had a Super Jumbo, which was their first multiplayer and a four player. So it was a very nice complete run of Guttnig games and a handful of games from other manufacturers, primarily Williams games. Little by little, they're being restored and rotated in and out of the museum. Right now, as you probably are aware, the museum is working toward moving out of their multiple storefronts into a 1904 former Carnegie Library, this magnificent, beautiful building i5 pinball INDISC, 07-1 sewing market in Alameda, CA
    76:31
    And do you happen to have an address or something? You can send it to me in an email later. Yeah, I'll be happy to. Show notes. Yeah. But we've had very encouraging responses, particularly in the area of game donors, but also in the financial area. A couple of good-sized corporations have made contributions, and we're doing a lot of grant Ol ave han der We por neon a So, that's pretty exciting, and if you ever get out there, you must visit, ask for Michael Sheese or his wife, Melissa Harmon or Jim Gruber, and tell them Gordo sent you. I've got an in, huh? There you go, man. Do your machines carry a placard that says from the Gordon Hassey collection? Yeah, Michael has done that for all of the games. He's credited the donor and identifies the game on a little marquee above the machine. A lot of the stuff that's in there is Larry's Artarians, who is, I think, the head of the board. He is the head of the PPM board. Major, major collector. A lovely guy. He's a huge collector of both wood rails and god made wood rails in particular, but he also collects other wood rails and wedge heads. Got a magnificent collection. Excellent. Is there mostly older EM stuff there or is it a good mix as far as the wood rails that they keep on hand and the wedge heads? It's an excellent mix. What Michael has, well I shouldn't say what Michael, but what Michael and his team have done, I think very smartly, is the room that you enter as you first go into the museum, 06.00 In truth, the choice between pinball versus pinball is what we were hoping for when we originally started, regardless of the pinball industry. visibility to the industry first, competition success, man ranked number one in the 2020 There are accommodations for private parties. There are art exhibits by local artists. There's performance art several times a month. It's a rockin' place. It sure sounds that way. Yeah, I was looking up information on United's Pixies and I saw that they have one in the collection. The artwork is incredible on that, as with most of the United games that they made in the bingo days. George Martin, thank you very much. Yeah, they have the bingo version of Manhattan from my collection there. I don't think it's... it was set up here for a while. I don't know whether it's still set up. Jo Harland, A וא� Reader, Daniel Kacja, Ronald Kacz, Hello. Thank you for sharing this with me and I couldn't have done it without you. It's my pleasure. It is a pleasure to be here. I'm a professional insider and I've been reading your book for a long time now. I'm hoping to read it in a few years. What do you think about it? I certainly think it's a great book if you're comfortable talking about it. Absolutely. I welcome the opportunity to talk about it. It's something that I've been working on, on and off, for a considerable amount of time. Years, in fact, much longer than I'd like to admit. It's finally at the point where I'm proofreading it and rechecking all my footnotes and I'm happy to discuss it at any length. I can kind of give you a quick rundown. The purpose of the book is to present, I suspect for the first time, an overall review The first two years of the Gottlieb Games of 1954 presented in a pop culture context. By that I mean looking at the culture in which the games existed, looking at those aspects of the pop culture that were incorporated into the games, and also looking at how the The game's affected the cultural environment in which they existed. And it's got 20 chapters, two appendices, and it's going to run about 300 pages. The first chapter is a brief pinball history. I'm not going to go through all the individual sections. We're through about 20 or so sections in there covering everything from Bagatelle to the one balls, the Johnson Act, to bingos, to add a ball, mechanical animation, bowl scoring out, reel scoring in, on and on and on. Number two, which is I guess the main section of kind of historical context, it's a discussion of the interesting things, many of which had some effect on pinball or were adopted in part by pinball. Well you know as you said there a lot of really interesting things that happened in the U and that called the truly great 48 There a deal with several The third chapter I titled Pop Culture Highbrow Lowbrow and Nobrow There I deal with several aspects of the popular culture. The Soundtrap, The Wheels, The Great White Way, The Big Screen, The Big Screen, The These are some of T Mill's いう 내�由 and CLUB of JO Explainings. Chapter 4 deals with the coin-operated amusement machines of 1954 and that really talks about all the things that were competing with pinball at the time for the players nickel or dime, primarily the profusion of shuffle games. Chapter 5 talks about the parts and service that are currently available for pinball collectors, titled Chapter 5, Things That Will Enhance Your Enjoyment, the 1954 Gottlieb Wood Rail Classic. There is a section on reproduction backglasses, one on reproduction playfields, and one on reproduction paper items. Chapter 6 is about understanding the rules and the threat of that playing 1954 Gottlieb machine. Chapter 7 is 5 Balls, 5 Cents. It is simply an introduction to the individual chapters on the 13 games made during that year. And then the chapters that follow, chapters 8 through chapter 20, are individual in-depth studies of each of those games. Each one of those sections has a background, a section on theme and artwork, a section on how replays are won, a section on how to get the most fun out of that game, and a recommended The game's covered are Green Pestures, Lady Luck, Mystic Marvel, Jockey Club, Hawaiian Beauty, Dragonette, Daisy Mae, Gold Star, Lady Luck, Four Bells, Super and Deluxe Jumbo, Diamond Wall, and Stagecoach. In each case, there's a reproduction of the original factory photograph of the game and a reproduction of the original sales flyer for that game. And finally, in the two appendices, one is an overview of the entire coin op industry in 54 and the second is called voted most popular and that talks about which of those Those games were most popular at the time. Which of them were most highly valued today? So it's pretty comprehensive. It's probably going to run close to 300 pages. Well, I'm ready to pick one up today. I wish I had it printed and bound and could send it to you, but that's still a ways off. Okay. So no date yet, right? No, not yet. I'm still struggling with the title because I'm very confident that I can't sell enough of it to the collecting and otherwise pinball engaged community to make any money with it. So I've tried consciously to straddle the more general market. The Follow us on Twitter and Facebook for updates. If you would like to be notified of a list of all the pinball games available, please send me an email at hasse.gordon at gmail.com. I will be happy to put them on the list and let them know when this thing is ready to roll. Excellent. Well, be expecting an email from me as soon as this is all done. Yeah, that sounds amazing. It's been fun. As I said, I still have to complete my proofing and I have to go back and recheck my sources because it carries a couple hundred of footnotes. I've tried to make it to some degree scholarly. That's a massive amount of work it sounds like. Yeah, it's been a lot. It really has been. But I'm close enough to the finish line now that I can see that it's going to happen. Excellent. Yeah. Excellent. What else can I help you with if anything, Nick? Or what other questions might you have? Well, if you have any just general thoughts on games either in 54 or beyond or before that are particular favorites for you or that you enjoy playing, what's one that you come back to time and time again? Queen of Hearts. It's really a wonderful game. There are five ways that one replays.
    91:16
    The traditional score and points are two of them. Another one is by completing the four card suits at rollovers at the top of the game. Another is a number sequence, whereas Jim Glaniel, In the playfield, there are two two-way gates, one on either side of the playfield. They light for special, and every time you roll under them in either direction, they score a replay. And then there are the five gobble holes on the playfield which represent the ten jack, Twin Outs, Internet type it is I think it even pays on a full house, which would be three balls in one game, if two in another. It's just a killer game. It's just nonstop fun. Gorgeous graphics. I love the little graphic of the king and the queen toward the bottom of the playfield What's your favorite game on the game? It's a wonderful game. Frontiersman is another big favorite. That was obviously a takeoff on the Davy Crockett craze of 1955. Davey Crocket Another wonderful game. Harbor Lights is a big favorite. Also, a multiple special draw pool game. World Champ is another example of a great multiple special draw pool game. Slugging champ. The game is one of Wayne's best. It's a baseball theme that is not a pitch and bat. It's a traditional five ball game. Multiple ways to win. There are so many great games in that Gottlieb area, particularly in the area of card games. Scott was renowned as the quote unquote king of cards and that goes all the way back to Gin Rummy in 49 and Joker in 50, Queen of Hearts 52, Poker Face which was almost a duplicate of Queen of Hearts but different and great graphics, Mystic Marvel in 54, Ace High in 57 along with Royal Flush also in 57. Terrific games, just terrific games. I sound like a broken record I know, but I do like the Gottlieb Card games. They are excellent games, yeah. I haven't played all of those, but I've played a selection and I've got to say I enjoy them too. How do you feel about the rehashes of Queen of Hearts as far as the play field goes? You know, they did away with the gobble hole, but, you know, kind of brought the playability back again and again in the Wedget series. Do you like any of those games, or does the removal of the gobble hole change the whole game for you? Well, are you talking about the ones that have the progressive kick holes? Yeah. Yeah, I find those fun. Sing along and I forget the names of some of the other ones. But yeah, those are fun to play. The last card-themed wood rail that Gottlieb made had that feature, and that was a lot of fun to play. I wish I could remember the name at the moment. It's interesting because, according to Wayne Nines, Gottlieb moved away from the gobble The Balls were the first pinball holds because they met an extraordinary amount of resistance in the European market, particularly in France, which was a huge market at that time. The French just didn't like that. They hated the fact that these things would allow the ball to exit the playfield. They wanted a playfield where they could continue to play and not have that kind of what they I think that's considered to be an ambush. But I don't know. Things change. Games evolve. I thought that their gobble hole games for the most were terrific. The trap hole games, although there were some great games, notably Carnation and Flying High, they were a little bit slow playing. The interesting thing about the trap hole games, and Dragonette was another one, I think they made probably nine or ten of them in the 50s. The interesting point, which I don't think anybody has spoken to, is that when you had a game with trap holes, unless you lost a ball or more than one ball, In the early days of pinball, at the bottom of the game in an out hole or a trough, the topography of the game changed on a continuing basis. So you were seldom playing the same game two balls in a row. And sometimes it worked very much to your advantage because the balls would be trapped below bottom uh... and some mixed bag eight-founder balls تم puesto They had no out-hole games like Chinatown. Yeah. I was going to ask you about Chinatown in particular, actually. I really enjoyed that. I played that for the first time last year. And the gameplay of trying to reach 21 is pretty fascinating, especially for the time that it came out, you know, where the game is actually tabulating. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. You know, what you're doing. And it's not a bingo, you know, so it's not like it's doing ongoing calculation. It's a sequence-driven thing, but it's very fascinating because you've got essentially an upper playfield that's all trap holes and you're trying to make that number 21. Or 35. Or 35? Or low score, which is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. We are anυτ �w lwa you ww atmosphere lion confirm Georgia It's a very complicated issue that everyone's very scared of and out there, much that we are, very much concerned about. Uhm.. You opened U-Boatzen. That's a new identification thing. The first frontier with 1A or 1F in baseball. I thought, I thought Mario noches was in the others. But at first I thought we had two. You spoke about Roy Rose and the other player. The one that I had in the collection, which again was donated, came to me and the cabinet had been repainted flat black and I spent the better part of two days with fluorite steel wool and solvent, bringing it back to its original graphics, which are beautiful. The game is a beautiful cabinet.
    101:35
    I love that game. If you spelled out Chinatown, you had that rollover button at the bottom center that was a game every time you rolled over it. If you got the C and the A at the And they've got a lot of great games. You know, you can play at the top left and right rollovers. You'd like the center rollover for special. Great little game. Lots of ways to win. Great graphics, too. Mm-hmm. Do you have any particular feelings for games like San Francisco that, you know, rattle off 20 replays but they're mental rails? Are you familiar with any of those? I'm familiar with San Francisco in a vague way. I can picture the backglass. I don't think I've ever played the game. It just kind of reminds me of some of the wood rails in the way that you can win those multiple specials and the sounds that it makes. I'll have to look into that because I was unaware of its features. I think it's probably pretty exceptional. I don't think there were too many later games where you could win that number of replays. What did you have to do in order to get them? I don't recall if you had to spell San Francisco or what the sequence was, but it gives you either 20 or 25 replays. It's just some exorbitant number for the year that it came out. That's great. Yeah. And I wasn't aware of any other kind of throwback replay earnings like that, but didn't know if you were either. So any other good favorite games, any comfort food as far as the games go, maybe from the metal rail era? Honestly, I didn't get much into it, to be perfectly honest with you. I kind of became a pinball dropout at about the time that the wood rails came to an end. I was frankly very disappointed because I thought they didn't know what they really had and they were so intent on trying to quote unquote modernize the games that I think they never fully appreciated how good what they had already developed was. It probably sounded like a Luddite or a goofball, but I don't think they've ever equipped the The stuff that they made in the mid-real era in terms of combining great play excitement and terrific accompanying graphics. I gave a... Well, you saw the presentation that I gave at the PPM on the difference between original content and derivative content. That to me has been a big disappointment. I don't like the replacement of photographic backglasses or silk screen backglasses with photographic backglasses. I think that took something away from the game. Oh, it just occurred to me, harking back to your question about particular likes, I very much enjoyed the few games that Gatley had made during the 50s that had a holdover feature, which among them would have been Frontiersman, Lovely Lucy, I thought those were fun games and I thought it was smart design because if you had or if you were playing a game or saw a game sitting there where most of the things that had to be done to complete that holdover feature had been done, well you were not sure going I mean, you know, it's a nice, it's a nice crackerjack bonus. I think that another thing that was fun, although I am not a big fan of the Gottlieb multiplayers from the 50s, I did love the sensation of double matching where you would be rewarded with 10 games and this machine gun report of the stepping unit racking them I've been playing I-20 a lot lately. I had a good time playing that game. That game was a real thrill. That to me was the most attractive feature of many of those gauntlet multiplayers during the fifties. They are not as widely collected and I think because the folks who had the opportunity to play both single and the multiple players recognize the superiority of the former, but There are others who enjoy the multiplayers quite a bit. Wayne Nines claims it's what saved the factory in Guttlieb Pinball. So who's to argue? Good point. Well, Gordo, I wanted to thank you very much for your time and for coming on the show. I hope that everyone will consider donating time, money, or even games to the Pacific Pinball Museum. I think their mission is very good. As you can see, there are folks out there who are very interested in keeping these games alive for future generations. I want to commend you on your efforts in this regard, Gordo, as well. Well, thank you, Nick. I appreciate your wanting me to chat with you this evening and it's been a pleasure. If there's anything in the future that you'd like to add, I'd be more than happy to speak with you. I thank you for indulging my sales pitches and I look forward to hearing the broadcast. Excellent. Well, thank you very much and have a good evening. Thank you, my friend. Take care now. You too. Go on. I want to again thank my guest, Gordon Hasse, for coming on and sharing his knowledge of these great games. Now, Gordon was kind enough the very next day to email me with information that we had discussed on the show. The first being San Francisco, the game that I mentioned That awarded some exorbitant number of replays. It's actually a maximum of 10. Not quite correct. But uh... that happens on a double match. This is one of the latest double match games that was ever produced and it may be the latest double match. I'm not familiar with one later and Gordon was not either. The latest he was familiar with was produced in 1954. So this was ten years after that. So thank you for that information as well, Gordo. Now, he also sent along information on the Pacific Pinball Museum, which we discussed in the show and I'll be putting in the show notes. It's located in Alameda, California, which is near to San Francisco. Their phone number is 205-6959 and they're open fairly late every day except for Mondays on which they're closed the admission is fifteen dollars per adult and seven dollars and fifty cents for kids under sixteen you pay once and you play all day it looks like a really good deal and the fact that they have These amazing machines a whole run of Gottlieb's Wood Rail games that's incredible in one place I would highly recommend everybody go out and check them out give them a call again if you can donate time, money or even gains that would be fantastic And that's all for tonight. Thank you again for joining me. My name again is Nick Baldridge. You can reach me at 4amusementonlypodcast at gmail.com or you can call me on the bingos line. That's 724-BINGOS1. 724-246-4671. You can listen to us on iTunes, Stitcher, Pocket Casts, via RSS, on Facebook, on Twitter at bingopodcast. You can follow me on Instagram at nbaldridge Or you can listen to us on our website which is for amusement only dot libsyn dot com thank you very much for listening and I'll talk to you next time