TOPCast 62: Greg Dunlap

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Welcome to Topcast, the Internet Pinball Radio Show.

And tonight we've got another episode for you with another game software engineer.

This gentleman worked actually at Williams in the gaming division first,

doing dot-mation programming on their slot machines.

Then after working at WMS Gaming, he moved over to Stern Pinball,

working with Pat Lawler designs on such machines as monopoly,

roller coaster tycoon, Ripley's Believe It or Not, NASCAR slash Grand Prix.

Special guest, special guest, special guest, special guest, special guest, special guest.

Tonight on Topcast, I'd like to welcome Greg Dunlop.

Greg Dunlop again worked at WMS Gaming on the slot machine division,

doing dot-animation programming.

He did the animations on many of their dot-mation slot machines.

The dot-mation slot machines were a more advanced slot machine

than incorporated three mechanical spinning reels along with a dot matrix display.

This is a larger dot matrix display.

Like we used in Sega Pinball for like Maverick and Baywatch.

And he did a lot of the programming for these games,

including monopoly advanced boardwalk, magic lamp,

which is a very popular dot-mation slot machine,

Palace of Riches and Riverbell 21.

And then moved to Pat Lawler design and worked on software and dot animation

for such games as monopoly, Ripley's NASCAR,

and roller coaster tycoon.

So we're going to be giving Greg a call right now on Topcast

and we're buzzing right now to see what he's doing.

Hello.

Greg, it's Clay.

Hey there.

We got to start all the way back at the beginning again.

So when, uh,

we're going to be doing the same thing.

So we're going to start all the way back at the beginning again.

So when, uh, I was around 12 or 13 years old,

there was an arcade that, um,

me and my friends used to kind of sneak off to sometimes

because it was, um,

it kind of had to cross a really busy, busy highway in the town that I grew up in.

And so we used to kind of make our way over there on occasion.

And, um,

and we used to play, you know, your typical Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, et cetera.

Um, for a while there, I got really into Black Knight.

There was something about that game that really attracted me.

And I remember at that time, there was a whole line of pinballs in there

and it was Firepower and Black Knight and Gorgar was there and stuff.

And, um, but I was playing a ton of Black Knight.

And, um,

and, uh,

at the time I eventually got my first pinball winnings from Black Knight

because the arcade had a contest every month to, uh,

determine who the high score was on every machine

that month and they would give that person a t-shirt from the arcade.

And so I got a t-shirt from the arcade one month for my Black Knight score.

And, uh, I wore that thing, man, I wore that thing way past its prime.

So that was my first pinball, uh, really memories of any seriousness.

Um, after that I kind of, um, fell away from pinball.

It didn't really stick with me at that time and it wasn't until years and years later that, um,

I was going to, uh,

West Lafayette, Indiana, um, where Perger University is with a, um,

friend of mine to see a band play.

And we got there really, really early and we were wandering around looking for something to do

and we encountered this laundromat.

And, uh, this laundromat had tons and tons of pinball machines in it.

Like, 40 games was unbelievable.

And so we went in there and started playing and that was the first time that I played Twilight Zone.

And playing Twilight Zone completely blew my mind.

It totally blew me away to playing pinball.

And, um, it was the game that really got me stuck into a pinball for real.

Um, that really got me into the games.

And after, um, playing Twilight Zone, this friend of mine also had a, uh,

an internet account, a dial account, um,

and she told me about wreck games pinball.

And so I got myself a dial up account and started reading a RGP and getting involved

with, uh, with that and, uh, posting to RGP and getting involved with, uh,

you know, talking to other pinball people, both in Chicago and around the, uh, country.

And that was really what, uh, got me started really being serious about pinball

and learning about pinball rules and who designed the games and what the similarities

between the designers were and things like that.

Um, so yeah, that's how that all got started.

Did you like Adam's family, which, you know, same designer, Pat Lawler?

Absolutely. Um, I remember after, um, after Twilight Zone,

let me think, I did like Adam's family, but after Twilight Zone,

the next game, um, which was not a Pat Lawler game, obviously,

that I got really stuck into was World Cup Soccer.

Um, because when you grow up in Chicago and you, um,

and you start, um, going around and playing pinball all the time,

you start realizing that Williams had, had arcades that they would test new games at.

And once you realize that, you start kind of shadowing these arcades,

um, waiting for new games to show up.

One of these arcades was called, uh, Densis Place for Games.

And, um, it actually only just closed recently.

It was in a very, um, uh, well-traveled part of Chicago, um,

called, uh, Reglieville, by Reglie Field.

And, um, so I used to go there and play all the time.

It was right down the street from where I worked.

And, one day I was in there playing, and, um,

somebody kind of tapped me on the shoulder as a,

about to start a new game, and he said,

do you mind if I get into the game there?

I worked for the company that makes this,

and I worked on this game, and I need to check the audits and,

and see how much money it's made and stuff like this.

And that was Matt Corial, who was one of the software engineers for World Cup Soccer.

And, um, so he was the first sort of industry person I met.

And, um, later on, that week I was playing, uh,

at another location in Chicago called Diversions,

which is also now closed, like pretty much every other location in Chicago at this point.

And, uh, the same thing happened, and that person was Larry Demar,

who of course is the other person working on software for World Cup Soccer.

And I was blown away at that point to meet Larry.

I mean, um, he told me who he was, and that he had done software for Black Knight,

and Twilight Zone, and Adam's family, and Fun House.

And I was completely blown away to meet Larry.

And I posted this whole thing to RGP about, oh my god, I'm at this guy and stuff.

And, um, and it was meeting them that, uh, they told me about the IFPA tournament

that was coming up in Chicago at the time.

And so that was the first pinball tournament I went to.

It was a IFPA 4, I believe it was, in 1994, and it was at, um,

the same hotel where they have Expo now.

And, um, and that was a lot of fun, and while I was there,

I got to meet in person a lot of the people that I had met on the internet through RGP.

Local people like Lewis Cozyars and Don Coons and the Sky Noel Steer.

And, um, also, um, people from all over the country like Keith Johnson,

I met for the first time then at Bowen Karen's, I met for the first time then,

and Brian Domini and a lot of other, you know, pinball players, Dan Wilson, I met, um,

a lot of other people who I had encountered on line, but not in person before.

Um, and that was, and, uh, and that sort of led to me starting to go to tournament,

and stuff like that, and being really more actively involved in the scene, as it were.

Now, did you know about pinball Expo at this point, too?

I didn't know about pinball Expo at that point, um, but I heard about it soon enough,

and I remember that, that year, um, some me and some guys in a band that I was in,

all, um, kind of, got, uh, piled into, uh, one guy's van,

and road tripped up to pinball Expo, uh, that year for the first time.

I remember that Williams had Twilight Zone there, and, um, this actually might have been,

I'm trying to, I'm trying to put timelines together, and now I'm trying to think if that was before the

IFPA tournament or after, because Williams had Twilight Zone there, so it seemed like it must have been before,

Data East had last action hero, I remember, and Mystery Castle from Elven G with the tournament game.

So that would have been before World Cup Soccer came out, right?

That would have been 93, right?

Yeah, exactly. World Cup came out in 94, obviously.

Right, so I'm, I've obviously got my timelines a little screwed up there,

but I did go to that pinball Expo, I only went for one day, um,

we kind of cruised in, stayed for an afternoon, and hung out, and played a bunch of games,

and, and took off, um, I didn't really connect with anybody while I was there, so.

Um, but after that, I went to every pinball Expo after that, um, obviously living in Chicago,

there was really no reason not to go, and I went to every pinball Expo after that,

for 15 years straight, um, and, uh, some of my greatest memories are staying up until, you know,

all hours at the night, um, playing overnight at pinball Expo with people like Orin Day and Steve Yankee and Noel and stuff,

and, uh, and, you know, coming out and watching the sun come up, and then having to qualify for the tournament.

So were you a pretty darn good player at this point?

I was, I rapidly went from, uh, crappy to not bad, and I slowly went from not bad to pretty good,

and I never really progressed beyond pretty good.

Um, I've always been really streaky, and so I will have really, really amazing runs of games,

every once in a while, but everything else will be total garbage.

Um, and so, you know, every once in a while I'll put together, I won one pinball tournament in my life,

and it was a tournament, it was a small tournament, it was endless content, but there were a lot of local players there,

and, you know, in Chicago, obviously the players community is very, very strong,

and, uh, I won one tournament there, and I was just on the run of my life,

I remember I was killing Shadow all weekend, um, and I've had some other instances where I played pretty well,

but other than that, you know, I'm a, I'm an above average player, by sure, for sure,

um, but I'm not, uh, I'm not great on the order of the people that I played with in Chicago like Lyman,

or Dave Hegey, or Jason Wargrik, or Dan Ferris, or any of those guys.

Now, how did you, now this was about mid 1990s, when did you start working at Williams,

and how did you get that job?

So, um, what happened was, you know, when I, when I first met Larry and Matt,

um, they, um, I went to that IFPA tournament and they introduced me to a couple of other people,

I remember I met Ted that weekend, because he was there showing Demo Man,

which had just came out, Demo Man, Soccer, uh, Rescue 9-1-1,

and, uh, World Wrestling Federation, the DADD East Game, were the games that were there that year,

and, um, I, so, um, as time went on, I started meeting more and more people in the industry,

and, you know, you kind of start, it kind of starts occurring to you, hey,

there were people who actually get paid to work on Pimbal machines, because, you know,

it's like, before you start meeting these people and talking to them about their jobs,

you don't really think about it, but as you do, you start thinking, you know,

that's kind of cool, but there are these people who are really,

they really love Pimbal, and they're really passionate about it, and they get to do it for a living.

And, um, uh, one of the things that really got me, to meet a lot of people was that,

um, at some point, John Norris started a Pimbal League in Chicago, and was called Pimgolf,

and if you search on RGP, you can find the rules and some postings from him about it,

but it was, um, basically the idea was that, because we had such a weird player base in Chicago,

not weird, but we had a group of extremely strong players like Lyman and Dave and Kevin Martin and stuff like that,

and then a group of kind of mid-tier players, and then a bunch of people who were kind of starting out

and who wanted to get into Pimbal, and so what he did was he created a handicapped Pimbal League,

and I recall correctly the deal was that, uh, it was like a golf system,

and the replay score on a game was par, and then if you got double the replay score,

you got like a birdie, and triple the replay score, was an eagle or something like that,

and so you kept golf points based on your play and what your score was.

Um, and so, uh, I was in that league, and everybody from Chicago was in that league,

at one point or another, and, uh, I played with Orin Day for a while in that league,

um, from Data East, and so I got to know him really well,

and uh, through knowing him, I got to go, and uh, the Data East guys were a lot more open about

having people visit their factory than the Williams guys were,

so I used to go and visit Orin at Data East a lot when they were developing new games,

and I'd see Joe, uh, Cam and Cal would often have nights where he would invite the local players,

community, and to play games before they went on test and stuff like that,

so I got to get more of a, uh, idea of what the Pimbal sort of manufacturing was like,

um, at that point, and then, um, obviously through Pimbal Expo,

I got to meet a lot of people too, one year I think it was 95 or possibly 96,

um, Lewis Coziar's, and another guy named Steve Baumgarten hosted a party at Pimbal Expo for all of the RGPers,

it was kind of a secret party where there was a code word,

put up on a, uh, put up on the bulletin board, um,

which indicated what room the party was going to be in,

and everybody collected up there, and there was beer and whatnot,

and I met, that was the day when I met Ted Estes for the first time,

and, um, when I really met him for the first time,

I had met him very briefly at IFPA, but that was, as I'm sure we'll get too soon enough,

he had already known who I was by this point, so, um,

so anyway, through all of that, I just, you know,

you meet these people and you start thinking, maybe this is something that will be interesting to do,

and I was kind of, you know, I had thought about it at various points,

and part of it was I didn't have really, I thought the technical skill

to, um, to get into doing it, because, you know, I was not a computer science engineer,

I was writing software for a living, but it was at a much higher level than the kind of stuff that they were doing at Williams,

and I was completely self-taught, I didn't have any engineering background or any electrical engineering background,

which is really helpful for Pinball too, um,

but the other thing was kind of, you know, I didn't, you know, I loved Pinball so much,

and I didn't want to get into a situation where I was turning something that I loved, it's just a job, you know,

but as time went on, I started thinking about it more and more,

especially as people that I knew started getting jobs, especially at Williams,

like, Lyman went to work there, and Lewis Cozyars went to work there,

and, you know, they're obviously having a great time,

and I remember at Pinball, one year, one week, Louis and Larry, we'll be in Jackpot,

and, you know, they were obviously setting it up, and they were obviously very proud of it,

it's a great game, I love playing it, and we had a ton of fun playing it at Pinball for the next few weeks,

as it were, and that kind of got me starting thinking about it more and more,

but the thing that really, really got me kind of hooked on the idea was, one year,

at Expo, me and Don Coons were rooming together,

because oftentimes locals would get a room at the Ramada in order to, you know,

not have to be, you know, you could play until four in the morning and just go crash,

and not have to worry about getting home or whatever, and me and Don Coons had a room,

and Ted had invited Don to come into a tour of the Williams factory,

and this was right before the Williams factory at 3401 California shut down for Pinball production,

Johnny Namanik was on the line, which I believe was the last game that they produced there,

and he invited Don to come on a tour of the factory, and he said,

Don could bring someone with him, and, so Don asked me if I wanted to go,

and I said, yeah, of course, and you know, Ted said,

OK, you guys can come, and even though Greg was kind of a jerk to me or whatever,

you know, we can, we'll do this, and it'll be fun.

I have to ask you guys not to talk about anything you see in here,

and we are all, you know, pledged a secret sea and whatever,

and so we went, we toured around the production line, and it was really cool,

and they were making Pinball games. They were starting to make slot machines already there on the production line,

which was, you know, I saw that, and then he took us into where the engineering department

area was, into this area called the bottom of the stairs, which was kind of like the Pinball.

It was kind of like, when Pinball games went on test at Williams,

they would stick them at the bottom of the stairs that led up to Pinball engineering

for testing by not just the engineers as they walked by, but also people from other departments

could come in there and play and whatnot, and they had no pads on them to mark down

what your comments were, stuff like that, but it was also kind of like a water-cracker

spot, you know, people would gather there, you know, on their way back from lunch,

and you know, talk about, you know, rumors or whatever was happening during the day,

or complain about the rules of the guy who wrote the game, and, you know,

babble on about whatever while we waited for Alignment to finish playing, or whatever.

And so he took us to the bottom of the stairs, and Congo was there.

It hadn't been out on test yet, and he says, you know, I'm going to show you this game, it's called Congo,

and you know, it's not going out on test for a while when we played it,

but I remember sitting there at the bottom of the stairs, and Ted was playing, I mean,

I mean, Don was playing, and Ted was talking to him about the game and whatnot,

and I was just kind of looking around, and I saw those stairs going up to Pinball engineering,

and there was like, there's like back glasses on the walls and stuff,

and I was just remember being kind of taken in by the aura of the place.

I mean, you know, I used to drive past the plant all the time, I lived blocks away from it,

so I lived in the city, and to be inside, and to just sort of, you know,

this is where the magic happens, really kind of stuck with me,

and so it was probably a year or two later when I was ready to leave a job that I had,

that I contacted Ted almost basically on a lark, and said,

do you guys have any positions open? I'd be interested in coming in,

and he said, you know, we don't have any positions open in Pinball, obviously,

the decline was already starting or well underway at that point,

but we've got some positions in the gaming department,

and working on slot machines, and maybe you'd want to come in and talk about that,

and I said, yeah, sure, and so I got to come in and interview with him and Larry,

and we talked about slot machines, and Larry talked to me about, you know,

sort of, how their ideas of what they want to do with slot machines worked,

and I got to talk to him with it, and it was really intriguing,

because they were really trying to do a lot of things with slot machines that they,

that hadn't been done before, and they were trying to think of slot machines in a new way,

and obviously, Larry and Ted are both really passionate and creative guys,

and to my shock and amusement, they offered me a job.

Certainly, I did not have the technical know-how really raw to get it.

I mean, I've been programming for a number of years,

but they were working with C++, and I've never worked with a,

even with any pointer language at all, at that point,

and I can only assume that it was through sheer passion and desire,

that they offered me that job, and so I got to go and work it with you,

and that was sort of how that happened.

Well, let's talk about, you mentioned kind of briefly,

that you kind of got into a skirmish with a couple of these guys,

due to the devowling episode.

Why don't you talk about that?

Basically, what happened was when Roach Show came out on test,

a couple of friends and I made the track out to,

and remember what the name of the, oh, it was a Gala West,

which was out in, I think, country side, Illinois.

I probably had the town wrong now, but it was one of William's test locations,

but it was way out in the suburbs, and we made the track out there to play it,

and we were playing the game, and the game was fun,

and it was hilarious and stuff, but it kept draining me like mad.

It's like these gaping outlates, and then really dumb things would happen,

like I would miss a skill shot, and the ball would drain,

and I wouldn't get it back and stuff like that.

It's stuff like now, I would sort of put aside as like pardon my dust,

text game stuff, but at the time the game was just infuriating me.

It was really, really making me mad, and so I went out,

and I wrote this post to RGP, slamming on Roadshow,

and how I thought it was terrible, it was pissing me off,

and I did so with this RGP Internet practice,

which had started a while ago, where I devolved it,

and what that means is you take the vowels out of the name and replace them with asterisk,

as if the name was being spoken like a swear word.

This was something that I believe that Kevin Martin had started with a review

that he had written about Dracula again that he didn't like at all.

And so I did that to Roadshow, and you know, a flurry of post games,

like oh my god, somebody devolved a Pat Waller game,

the world is ending and whatnot, and at the time RGP was much more player-focused,

it was much more about new games and rules, and tournaments and things like that,

than it is now, or it's much more about collecting and fixing and stuff like that,

and so it was a big deal at the time, and we, you know,

I really went back and forth about it and whatnot,

and they kind of took offense to it, though, right?

So that happened, and then it was a few months later,

and I went to Pimbal Expo, and Pat Waller had given his talk at Pimbal Expo,

his Pat Waller show thing that he used to do every year,

and I didn't get to go because I was stuck at work,

and I came in at Expo about five or six o'clock,

and I'm walking in, and Lewis Coast Yards comes running up to me,

and this was before he had gotten his job at Williams,

and he said, you'll never guess what happened,

you'll never guess what happened, and I'm like, what?

What? He said, Pat Waller was doing his thing, his show,

and he said, oh, by the way, here's how you spell road show on the Internet,

and he wrote up on the blackboard that was there,

our asterisk, asterisk, d, s, h, asterisk, w,

and then he talked about, he made some comment about how people on the Internet

or jerks or something, and I was like, oh my god, oh my god!

And then later, that was the same time when I met Ted for the first time at that party,

and he told me, you know, that at the time it's like, you know,

you put a game out on test, you're really frazzled, you want it to sell,

you know, you don't want to be known as the guy who made the game that bombed, right?

And so, and so you're really frazzled, and you put it out there,

and the first thing that you hear is some guy coming on the Internet,

who you don't even know, and he's ripping your game apart

and talking about what a piece of crap it is, and it makes you really depressed

and want to jump out a window, right?

And your frazzled, you haven't had any sleep, and everybody's totally stressed out,

and he's like, you know, obviously now, time has passed, and blah, blah,

but at the time it was like a big deal, and it did not go over well with those guys,

but they all forgave me and later on when I got to, when I got my job at Williams,

Ted introduced me to Pat Lawler, and I'm like, oh hi, nice to meet you, blah,

blockside, never met him in person before that, and Ted said, oh by the way,

Greg is the guy who devolved Roadshow on Rick James Pimball, and I was like, oh my god,

you had to bring that up, didn't you, Ted?

And you know, Pat was like, oh yeah, I guess you were, well, you know,

you're a jerk, but you're here now, so everything's cool, and then so that was sort of that.

And I bet Ted was just like smiling and laughing while he was saying all that and listening to it.

Oh yeah, I mean, you know, he obviously, he's an idiot,

he's an instigator.

He had been planning that moment for some time.

Yeah, he's a known instigator.

He's like that, he's kind of a funny guy, but he kind of likes, you know, doing that.

Yeah, so.

Well anyway, so you got into the slot department, now in the slot department,

this was like when they had gone beyond the model 400 slots,

which just had reels, and now they're doing dot-mation, right?

That's correct.

Okay, so now you're working on, what was your first slot, the Monopoly Advanced Boardwalk?

That's correct, it was, there were two slots that were made at the same time,

and they were the first slots from the licensed line of Monopoly,

which obviously Williams has now taken.

Are they still making Monopoly slots there?

You know, I don't know, I haven't heard.

They must have made about a dozen or more Monopoly models eventually,

but these are the first two.

It was a big deal because Parker Brothers was notoriously protective of their monopoly brand,

and Williams had previously tried to do a Monopoly Pimball game

and been turned down by Parker Brothers, and that was the game that later became Safecracker,

that was originally going to be a Monopoly, and so it was a big deal to have this license,

and it was Williams' first big license and get it right, and so the game was already largely done

from a math sort of, and rule standpoint, by Scott Slomiani,

who's obviously worked dot matrix on pretty much every Williams game there was,

and Bill Grub, who was a software guy, also in Pimball, who had got moved into slots,

and I joined them sort of doing dot matrix work and choreography and things of that nature,

sort of user presentation stuff, if you will.

Now the Monopoly Advanced Abort, was that a dot machine slot?

It was.

So actually both of the games that were done at that time,

Monopoly Advanced Abort, and Monopoly Row and Wind,

which was done by another group, were a dot machine game.

And so just to let people know what dot machine means is that you've got three mechanical reels that spin,

but you also have a dot matrix screen above it, and the dot matrix screen is a larger one,

like you, like Dates, was using for like Baywatch and that, so it's 192 by 64 pixels,

which is basically twice the size of a normal pinball dot matrix.

That's correct.

So you were doing, so you had an artist that did the animations,

and then you were doing the sequencing, putting them together,

programming them together for the actual animations, right?

Yes, programming the sequences together, sort of timing them together with,

I also did light shows, for instance, if you've seen Advanced from Boardwalk,

it's got a very large monopoly board on the back of it.

So I did a lot of light shows for, when you play the bonus game on that game,

you actually play a game of Monopoly, so I did all the stuff to move you forward

or backwards on the thing, or if it was in a tracked mode to sweep across it

and do all sorts of interesting things, a lot of light effects that I did on that,

I stole from pinball and stuff that they used to do,

and a lot of synchronization with the sounds and the lights and the animations and things like that.

Yeah, I should make it clear though that Williams was doing with slot machines

really, as you kind of touched on, was kind of revolutionary.

I mean, nobody had, like their IGT was the big competition,

and they just had basically three reels with real basic sound.

I mean, they're good, good basic slot machines, but the dot-mation Williams stuff was like the next step up.

I mean, it really was a big deal.

It was really interesting because Williams was trying to break in,

and they had sort of two things working against them.

One was that obviously IGT was the big player on the block,

and as a matter of fact, in slots, IGT was very similar to Williams,

as in pinball, Williams was to date east and premiere in all the other pinball companies.

IGT was the one who had all of the market share in slots,

and they would wield their patents in court very often,

and Williams was the victim of one of those patent disputes over a patent called Tellness,

which IGT had, and the Tellness patent basically defined a way to extend the odds

of a physical real slot machine.

And you can sort of think of it if you take a slot machine at its most base level,

I think of one reel with ten stops on it.

And so if you're paying a dollar to play, and there are ten positions,

there's only so many levels of math that you can make that work at to pay out a certain amount,

and keep a certain amount in order to make the game profitable.

So if you think of a game that costs a dollar to play, and nine of the reels don't give you anything,

and the tenth reel gives you nine dollars, then what's happening is that every ten spins,

you're winning nine dollars and losing ten dollars.

And so that machine would be said to pay 90%, and because it's giving you 90% of what you get,

what you put into it.

But the highest payout that you can have on that is the amount that you've put in times ten,

because I mean that's all of the, because you're not going to pay out more than people put in.

And even that you're not going to do because then it would pay out even money.

So IGT made up a way to sort of extend the odds of a physical slot machine in software,

so that it would assign spots in software to physical slots on the machine.

So for instance, it could have 999 spots mapped in software to nine slots on the machine,

and then a thousand slots mapped to the one that pays,

and now suddenly they can pay out a thousand dollars on a tenth-grill slot machine and stuff.

And so that was how they were able to do things like mega bucks,

which only have three reels, but are able to pay out several million dollars.

And Williams had fallen victim to a lawsuit from them,

and so they had to a, figure out a way to make the slots pay more,

because people were starting to expect that because of this technology that IGT had in B.

So if distinguished themselves mechanically from all of the other slot machines,

they had learned through pinball that one of the things that got old slot machines,

I mean old pinball machines off the floor, was technological upgrades.

Going from going to solid state to from electro-mechanical,

maybe old games obsolete and going through dot matrix from a real,

from a segment displays, maybe old games look obsolete.

And so they were trying to figure out a way to dress up their games

to make the old games look obsolete so that they could sell and get more floor space.

But they were also trying to bring a lot of the fun of pinball and the humor

and the presentation and the sound and all of that stuff from pinball to be a part of the slot machines as well.

And so that was, you know, in a too short, but also in some ways too long,

explanation of sort of what was going on there.

Yeah, Williams was the first company to use, like a bonus game in their slot machines.

That's a clamp didn't have any kind of bonus game, did it?

It didn't have a bonus game, but it did have a thing where if you've got a certain combination

of spins on whatever symbols in the window, it would give you a random multiplier.

So it wasn't like a bonus game, but it was again a way of extending the payout of the game

through ways, through a way other than just what you could physically do with the wheels.

Right, now monopoly had advanced to boardwalk actually had a bonus game though, right?

Yeah, yeah. If you got three rich uncle penny bags anywhere in the windows,

you would start the monopoly bonus game and you would go up to the top and have this huge top box with a giant monopoly board on it.

And Mr. Monopoly would spin the dice and if you landed on properties they would pay you coins.

And if you landed on railroads they would pay you money and a community chest and a chance pay you random awards.

And landing on jail made you lose and if you passed go you got bonuses and things like that.

It was really cool.

So it was a way to get to give the player more money than just by spinning three reels.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, I just picked up a magic clamp and yeah it's got really nice animations.

I mean like the lamp opens up and like a UFO comes out and shoots 10X.

So if you win you get 10X the winnings.

Right.

And the guy in there's a guy that jumps out of the lamp and does a little dance and gives you something to see some other rex factor.

Right, right.

One of the things that we did on monopoly was that if you went too long without winning anything,

we would make rich uncle penny bags do something funny on the screen.

So I think it was if you went five spins in a row without a win, he would kind of spin it,

he would kind of go four and swing his cane and a ball would fly off and you'd hear a crashing car window sound or something like that.

Or he'd float off the screen and come back off the side or stuff like this.

And you know anything we could do to kind of keep the player engaged while going through inevitable streaks where nothing's really going on.

Now you did Palace of Riches too, right.

I did some work on Palace of Riches which was mainly just to bring it into compliance with another state that we were trying to expand into.

What they were trying to do, the state required them to keep like 50 games worth of history in the machine and we were only keeping 25 or something like that.

And so I had to write a thing to extend the amount of information that was being kept in the game.

And I think I had to keep more detailed information for it too.

I think it was Colorado, I can't remember now, then I had to do those changes for.

Yeah, people are real, you know, they got to understand that that slot machines are high security and that, you know, like when if you pull the batteries out of your WPC pinball and you lose the audits, it's really no big deal.

But if you do that on a slot machine, it's a huge deal. So there's a lot of protection against that.

Yeah, there is. And you know, slot machines being a regulated industry, we always kind of always had to write software for the worst possible scenarios because it would sort of be, you know, Vegas was always sort of the baseline of the standards for any slot machines rules in terms of what had to be kept from a regulatory standpoint.

Every jurisdiction that opened up a new, that opened up to gaming had their own little tweaks and quirks for those rules that they had to imply.

And so we always had to sort of write for the most stringent possible.

And it's interesting that you bring a power down because a great deal of our testing was centered around what happened if a game powered down in the middle of a spin or in the middle of a bonus game.

Because the rule, of course, had to pick up exactly where it left off and that the result had to be exactly what it would have been if the power had never been shut off in the first place.

And they had to be able to survive for a certain number of hours with the power turned off based on the battery that was on the CPU and stuff like that.

And we spent a great deal of time, the guys in the testing lab would literally just sit there and at random just hit the power and bring it back up and see what happened.

And, you know, just make sure that everything was working properly and getting the right information back.

And, you know, they were, they were infamous at just finding that one little gap of time in which nailing the power would cause everything to go to blue and we'd have to handle it.

Yeah, I've got a winning streak, which is a Larry DeMars lot machine out on the garage and I was playing around with that during the bonus round where if you get whatever on the three reels it goes up to the dot matrix and virtually spins those and you get additional coins until you lose.

But you basically just sit there and watch the game and I pulled the plug on it during that bonus round and brought it back up and yeah, like you said it takes off right where it left off.

You know, so if this is someone like anything that pinball has to deal with.

Oh yeah, and they, and when you submit your games to the regulatory agencies to be approved, at least in Vegas, you actually had to submit source code along with it.

And you had to send a burned ROM and they had to be able to compile your source code and burn a ROM that matched that ROM and you know, there were all sorts of hoops that you had to go through to make sure that everything was, you know, just so.

And then they put the ROM in the game and it's got security tape over it and stuff like this.

So it was a really, really interesting industry to get into and it really kind of spawned in me a love for the gambling industry and gambling games in general and Vegas.

I used to go out there like two or three times a year as a part of my job.

The whole industry is really, really fascinating and it's obviously changed a lot in the, in the ten or so years since I worked at Williams.

But it was really cool. It was a lot more interesting and fun than I ever expected it to be.

And that was only, I mean, to some extent it was because I found the, working on the slots really interesting and I got into that as a department.

But in some, but I mean to great extent it was also because I was working with people who were really, really creative and really talented and really inspiring.

But I also got to be on the same floor as Pimball and you know, I would hang out when I first started, Lyman was working on Monster Bash and we used to every day at five o'clock, me and him and Vince Potterrelli and then a few months later when Keith Johnson started, he would play with us too.

We would get together and play Monster Bash and we would just play for the longest time of so much fun. Those guys were hilarious.

And it's like we would just completely trash talk each other and just go on and on about, oh my god that ball went out so bad, you're so doomed and all of this kind of stuff.

And when Phantom Flip was first starting to be tested it was notoriously unreliable and Vince started up this thing where in the lights for Phantom Flip were blue.

And when you lit Phantom Flip he would be, oh my god you're stinky blue friend is here and all this stuff, a lot of those quotes and stuff ended up, we ended up doing a recording session down in the Sound Lab and they got used for the Lyman's Lament Mode on Monster Bash.

It's a ton of fun and I loved watching the games if they came up and you know talking to people, you know the doors were always open.

You could always walk in and just jab about whatever happened or go to lunch or every day at 3 o'clock somebody would call snacks and a whole group of people would go down to the cafeteria and get stuff out of the machines and sit around and jab about whatever.

And it was a really great interactive, passionate environment. I've never worked in a place like that ever since.

Yeah, the Lyman's Lament, I think a lot of people maybe don't even know about that in Monster Bash. You have to enter a set of flipper codes before you hit the start button.

And it's really, to me it's the best part of the game. I love playing Lyman's Lament.

There is actually a way to get it just by playing the game. It is an actual award and I forget what you have to do to get it.

But it's something that's like you know that you would never do normally. I think that like if I can't remember but there are like, when you go into the scoop and it gets you a random award and the random award is the name of one of the venues that the band is played at throughout the world.

And there's like you know 50 venues or something like that and if you collect them all it gives you Lyman's Lament.

Or something I can't really remember what the deal was. But yes, most people do it by using the flipper code that you have to do before you start your game to get it.

Which I believe if I recall correctly translates to Keith Johnson's initials K-E-F.

Yeah, there's some people don't know what flipper codes are. But basically you have to what you hit both flippers together and some amount of time and that's kind of a reset and then you have to tap the left one and the right one at certain number of times and you're entering each letter and kind of like a Morse code almost.

Yeah, I mean it would be basically for instance in all of George Gomez's games at Williams he had a flipper code which were his initials and it would show the credits for the game.

And so you'd hit both flippers and then you'd hit the left flipper seven times. So A, B, C, D, E, F, G and then you'd hit the right flipper and then his middle initials A and so you'd hit the left flipper once and then the right flipper and then one, two, three, four, five, six, seven on the left flipper for G again and then the right flipper and the credits rule.

And so there are all sorts of flipper codes some very well known some not it well not not at all known in games for various things and and yeah the limit limit is one of both.

Yeah and what it comes down to is the left flipper button is the is the letter and the right flipper button is like enter for that you know.

Right although on some games they do it with the right flipper button is the letter and the left flipper button is enter and to some extent that just depended on who was programming the game or whose idea it was or whatever and then I think at Stern I think the flipper codes are like they have to be four letters or something like that there's all sorts of different ways to do it depending on who was working on it or whatever.

And the lineman's lament I think you hit on you got to hit both together then eleven left one right five left one right six left one right and after you do that I will say totally and then you'll be in and lineman's lament and you could start a game or something like that.

Right I think you have to do that before you start a game and then and that again is Keith Johnson's initials K E F and and if you start the game then I think that the first time that you shoot into the scoop you'll get lineman's lament which is something like you get 50 exponents and then for the rest of the game it's giving you these these wacky quotes.

Right right and the quotes just kill me I mean it's just lineman just sounds so you know I don't so linemanish I guess.

Anyone who knows lineman recognizes that instantly. Yeah yeah no I always thought I thought it was like really entertaining you know so but you know it's wacky.

A lot of ways monster bash was the game that I've been involved in in the industry that I have the most fond memories of even though I never worked on it because I love lineman he's he's a great friend of mine and it was when I first started it was really excited to be at Williams and it's a fantastic game

and I got to watch it sort of build up piece by piece over time and it was you know the first time I had ever seen that and and and I just it was a really it was just a really great time for me then and I've got a lot of really fun memories about monster bash because of that.

All right we're going to take a little break from talking with Greg Dunlop and we'll be right back after these messages.

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On the web at classic play fields dot com. All right we're back with more interview with Greg Dunlop here on Topcast.

Kind of back to the slots a little bit just because I've kind of gotten into the into collecting the William slot machines are really hard to come by.

I mean at the time Williams had like 1% market share and I GT was just like killing them just like you said but another one that you did was riverbelled.

21 which was kind of like a slot machine with like a blackjack built into it right.

Yeah yeah I think if I recall correctly I got kind of handed that game it wasn't quite finished and the programmer had gotten taken off to another project and I got handed the game and I had to finish it off.

And if I recall correctly it never got approved for Vegas it got there was something in the in the way that the cards because you know it had a kind of a blackjack theme along with it too.

If I recall correctly it was like if you were dealt blackjack at the same time as a winning real spin then there was a multiplier or something like that I can't remember.

But I think there was something about the way that it determined the cards that made it not approved for Vegas and so obviously it's not very well distributed.

There's a rule in Vegas that says that if you put a digital representation of a physical thing onto a slot machine then it has to retain the same odds as the physical thing would.

So for instance if you had a digital animation of dice rolling then the results for each individual die had to be 1 and 6.

And if you had a digital representation of cards being dealt then your individual chance of any card had to be 1 and 52.

And in Advanced Abort Walk we had we rigged the spins or the dice rolls per say quote dice rolls and so you'll notice that in the animations for Advanced Abort Walk when you're moving your piece it's Mr. Monopoly taps a couple of buttons on his thing and a number appears on the screen because we couldn't do it with dice because we are messing with the odds of getting any particular space.

And I think that Riverboat Gambler fell victim to something in that area but I mean it was a game that I didn't do a lot on it and I don't remember it very well.

Yeah a lot of those dot-mation titles you just don't really see there. They really are hard to find.

You know? Yeah I mean I remember when I first started at Williams we actually knew where every single Williams game in Vegas was and whenever one of us would go to Vegas we would actually go and go through the strip and check them out and make sure the DMDs weren't getting burned in and the people were playing them and if we noticed people being confused by something or if you know we sat around.

I remember there was a bank at the Luxor of like six of six dot matrix games you sit around and watch it for half an hour and if nobody came by then you could say it was dead or whatever and people would come back with these trip reports about you know all of the about how the games were doing and what they noticed and things like this and you know obviously now you could never do things like that.

I mean Williams games are pervasive all over the place. Well yeah because during the lawsuits with IGT basically what it did is it forced Williams into the video slot arena much more strongly because IGT didn't really hold any patents in that area.

Right the Thomas Patton was a way to extend the odds of physical reels but for video slots that didn't that whole thing didn't apply at all and right around the time that monopoly was coming out Williams was also having some success in the video slot side with a game called real men which was kind of inspired by there was a company called a risk of crack from Australia that did a lot of video slots in Australia but they hit never really caught up.

So we got on over here and it was sort of an attempt to replicate that style of game and that obviously gained some momentum and now that's pretty much all you see in Vegas these days.

Yeah I mean the physical slot machines are really really I mean the video slots are really taken over the physical slots.

Oh yeah. Yeah there are you know real real slots as it may be a really seem to be kind of a thing of the past now.

Williams is really excelled at the video slots. I mean they seem to be kicking some butt.

Oh yeah I mean their games are extremely popular. I mean I have some friends who still work there and they're growing like mad at this point and I keep hearing about how they're taking over more and more of the space that midway at the Williams site at California and Roscoe in Chicago

Williams was on one side of the street of one side of Roscoe and midway was on the other side of Roscoe and Williams at some point crossed over and started taking up space in the midway building and it's been growing and growing more and more into their space.

And you know obviously they're doing very well I don't really follow that industry the way that I used to but I mean I saw some friends who were working it so everything I hear is that they're doing great.

Yeah and it's interesting that some of the slots the dotation slots were developed by pinball guys like I heard that Lyman Sheets worked on Mermaids Gold which is another dotation William slot.

That's correct I mean Scott from the on obviously worked on a bunch of Scott slots Scott and Bill Grubb did a big bang piggy banking which was really the first big bonus game hit that Williams had.

John Yalsey did art for a lot of slots Kevin O'Connor did art person slots Keith Johnson I don't think he was working on a new version of a winning streak if I recall correctly that I don't think I've ever got finished when but he got hired into the slot division Duncan Brown got hired into the slot division and then went on to move to work on pinball 2000.

Lots and lots of those people had a lot of influence on those games earlier. Now do you know who did the jackpot series you know jackpot party jackpot limbo and jackpot stampede which were all like those are like the most popular dotation Williams games.

Jackpot party was being done while I was there it was done by a guy named Al I had forgotten his name now his last name him and his brother Ben worked at Williams and they were designers and they did that game and it was immensely popular obviously it was really really well received and had that bonus game where you chose the slides and stuff like that and we played the hell out of that game on the floor it was really fun.

There's still making versions of that for video. Yeah yeah yeah I'm trying to find a jackpot stampede that's the one I'm looking for.

Those guys are still in the industry I believe Al is working at Williams again he had gone to IGT right around the time when I was there and then he came back to Williams if I recall correctly.

Now were you around for you know black the black Monday of pinball in 1999. I was I was. Tell me about that.

So well I mean first I'll roll it back a little you know obviously the time came when everybody was talking about what they were going to do because things were pretty doom and gloom around the time when you know when I got there which would have been around 99 I suppose at this point and they had already been through two major rounds of layoffs and you know there was a lot of room or monitoring.

And stuff going on the floor about how long we were going to be able to keep it up at this point I mean you know we're talking about games that are shipping you know 1200 to 1500 units which is a long which is a long ways from 23 thousand in a year which was with Adam's family was doing.

And so one of the things that was being worked on when I was there was a game that John Papadu could put together with a big video monitor in the in the back box where the back class would be basically and him and Cameron were working on some stuff like that with that and I remember thinking that that was interesting but you know it would probably it would probably boost things some but I was I was hard pressed to see how it was going to be something that blew every single way.

And I knew it was going to be more expensive and heavy to ship and whatnot so I was like but it was cool I mean it was really cool and so but eventually obviously and everybody knows this story George and Pat went off in their garage and I wasn't even really aware that this was going on at the time all that I knew was that one day George came into the office and he had something under a blanket and is in there and you know he was discreetly he showed it to management then he was starting to discreetly show it to some people on the floor.

And I remember asking Tom you been about it and Tom you been kind of a drew me a lunch napkin drawing of it. Tom you been the software engineer he did he worked with George on a lot of games like Corvette and he kind of drew me a lunch box lunch napkin drawing of what Pimbal 2000 was and I remember looking at it and saying what the hell is this you've got to be on crack right.

And then the first time that I got to see it I remember thinking that it was cool but what really blew my mind was that it was Pimbal 2000 the prototype that those guys made was done on and all the Miga PC and Scott Slomianni had had a lot of experience working on the Miga with doing some animation with the paint program that's built into it.

And so what he what Scott did was he opened up the game and kind of pulled out the mouse and put together these little animations of of like little smiley faces or something popping up and down out of the screen on top of where drop targets were and then he ran it and I remember seeing it and kind of shooting with these animations going on and I remember being completely blown away.

I was completely floored it was you know when they launched Pimbal 2000 they the slogan was sort of you've got to see it to believe it and I was completely sure you can have somebody tell you for an hour what it was like and have no idea until you played it and then you were like and then you just instantly got it.

And so they started building that and I got to say that watching that happen was one of the most amazing experiences of my entire life.

I mean everybody just came together and just just bolted and poured everything they had into making this thing work.

It was really mind blowing just I mean from a raw engineering perspective obviously you could fill a room with the upgrades that they made to the system both from a software and a hardware standpoint.

But I mean when I think about the creativity and the sort of just just raw passion and desire that went into and creativity that went into doing that it was really really mind blowing to watch happen and really really mind blowing to be a part of even as peripherally as I was which was basically none other than you know trying to lend more of support to people and being amazed at it happening.

And it was really it was really an amazing experience going out to this place Town and Country Mall which had a arcade which is now closed and going out there for the day that revenge from Mars launched and there was sort of you know they had champagne out there and toasted it and it was really you know triumphant getting that getting that to happen and it was and it was really exciting and there was a lot of it was it was very cautious optimism right.

Everybody was happy to be done and thought that we had created an amazing thing but I thought that they had created an amazing thing but it was really you know I mean obviously there was a lot of work to be had and you know nobody really knew what was going to happen and it sold well and then and then but then and I remember it was right around that time or a little after when Larry to Mar resigned in left Williams which which was really I'm distressing to me because Larry's not only an amazing guy but he's an amazing leader.

And he was an amazing manager for everybody. And so I was really kind of distressing to me personally when he left and then you know as the star wars thing happened there's the thing everybody knows about when they had gotten really good pre-orders and then Neil decided to race the price and then the pre-ord some of the a bunch of the pre-orders got canceled and the rumors and stuff going on and you know it was it was all very for a long time for a while there it was very everybody was working and everybody is excited about it.

And I was working on the games it was all kind of you know fatalistic too and and I was and I was sitting around and I was kind of you know me and Ted Estes and Bill Grubb and we're working on an operating a new operating system for the slot machines and I and and we were kind of waiting to see really we were kind of waiting to see what would happen from my perspective with pinball to see if they would need to bring a new design team or something on or need some more people.

And and I was I remember thinking for quite a while that that that this was like I was really starting to get worn down by the politics of it and by you know everything I've always kind of been worried about happening in pinball if I got a job right which is that it would become a job and it would become more about the business of making pinball than it was about making pinball right and I didn't even make pinball again but but you know internally this is the kind of things that I was going to do.