From unsolved mysteries to unexplained phenomena, from comedy goal to relationship fails, Amazon Music's got the most ad-free top podcasts, included with Prime. Because the only thing that should interrupt your listening is, well, nothing. Download the Amazon Music app today. Record sales have not exactly been stellar. Look, I need this tour. It's the only place I feel like I can breathe again. Based on the incredible true story. I'm Tim. I'm March 1 up to my first tour. Now, I just want to write something that helps people. You will never understand what I'm going through. Imagine what God can do again. Whatever you're going through, you're never alone. God is in fire, and it is beautiful. I Can Only Imagine 2. Now playing only in theaters. Rated PG. Hopefully you don't hear the pouring rain going on outside, because I can. No. No. Is it raining? Oh, it's pouring here. It's supposed to be shitty all weekend. It only rains on the weekend here. Yep. It's only supposed to be shitty this weekend. And then Monday it looks like it's okay. So we're doing Gottlieb. Yeah. 45. Holy crap. Now this is Alvin G., right? Yes. I read through the notes. Where did we leave off on the Gottliebs last time? So it was when they sold to Mylstar. Yeah. We haven't gone to all their awesome premiere games yet. Well, we did an ADB episode. But we didn't get into kind of – so we've touched on a lot of that stuff, but we didn't do it like Meet the Gottliebs. I just don't remember how far – I don't think we went into the 90s awesomeness of Teed Off and Surf and Safari, et cetera. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We did that like – that was our third episode. Oh, we did. Okay. Never mind. That was like a long time. That was like fucking four years ago now. See, I don't remember any of these things. No, that's five years ago. Holy crap. We've been doing this for five years. Mmm. Hello everyone, I'm David Dennis. This is Silver Ball Chronicles and with me is Ron, Pants are Optional Hallett. How you doing? Wow, that's an interesting intro. I am wearing pants right now. Well, they are optional, however. And I believe if you recall, when I scheduled this meeting today, I said the pants were optional. Scheduled this meeting. Interesting terminology. Yes, because we are now on Teams. Teams, no more because Skype is dead. Long live teams. Which you immediately had an issue where it blew out and then I wasn't on it and stuff. So we're starting to – Yeah, immediately. Yeah, we're already like 10 minutes behind because I screwed this up. But anyway, I think it's turned out very well. I didn't wear pants. So I took my advice. So what have you been doing? Recording podcasts with you. Yes, and you've got your massive clusterfuck coming up on the Slam Tilt podcast. Yes, my other podcast, Slam Tilt podcast, yes. Yes, with Bruce Nightingale. Yes, with Bruce Nightingale. He'll be happy we mentioned him. Yes, he does that podcast when he's not on a Antonio Cruz ship. Yeah, he takes lots of cruises. He's one of them people now, Antonio Cruz people. I don't get it. It seems like you've been a lot – it seems like you'd be crowded, lots of people around you kids everywhere just seems like it would suck it's like here in canada a lot of a lot of people that go to cuba that's the thing and then once they're a cuban person they go to cuba now all they do all you do is you hear about cuba cuba cuba cuba you go to cuba you want to come to cuba with me have you been to cuba have you seen cuba they have different dollars in cuba i don't get it but i guess we're pinball people and we we travel for pinball stuff is Are there any pinball games based on Cuba? Oh, there's got to be. Maybe Special Force, kind of. No, that would have been like what? Nicaragua, maybe? Wasn't that the big thing in the 80s? Okay, now that we've offended everybody in South America. And South America, too. I have to make references to the Canadian accent every episode. You spelled favorite wrong again in the notes, I've noticed. You keep putting those U's in there for some reason. I don't get it. I spelled it correctly. The king was here in Canada this week. Oh, King Charles. I'm so used to saying Prince Charles because he's been Prince Charles 90% of my life. Did our speech to the throne. We had a parade where he walked around people in funny hats. There was a guy with a big black stick and he banged it on a door. It was amazing. I miss the Prince's Trust Rock concerts. Remember those back in the 80s? No. You don't remember those? I don't remember anything from the 80s. That's right. You weren't alive. I remember E.T. and that's like it. But they were really cool. They'd have like all the biggest artists of the era. And Prince Charles and Diana would just sit up there on the balcony. And Prince Charles looked all awkward like he was trying to act like he was into it. It was hilarious. This is our first free and clear episode. We are no longer on the Pinball Network. We're our own podcast now. Yeah, we don't even have to mention Zach and Nicole Minnie of Flip N Out Pinball. Not at all. a pinball group that you partake in when it comes to the purchasing of your pinball machines. Isn't that correct? The last few, yes, that is correct. That's right. And you can call him on evenings and weekends at the most awkward times, and he'll sell you a pinball machine. We recommend you do it that way, too. Yeah. That's Zach, Z-A-C-H, at flip the letter N out, pinball.com. He also sells the Escaleros. Yeah, yeah, and now we're sponsored by them. So if you're like me and you own way too many games and you're old and decrepit, you need to get the Escalera stair climbing hand truck. You need to get it now. Trust me. Do you have one of those? Yes, I do. See, I got to put two pinball machines in my basement this weekend, and they've been upstairs waiting to come down into my basement for like three weeks. And I just – If you had an Escalera, it would be a piece of cake. I took Missile Command down last week. Do you think that's heavier than a James Bond? No. No? Because it was really heavy, and my wife and I yelled at each other all the time, got downstairs. The heaviest thing is the monitor. Yeah. Ugh. Brutal. So Patreon, we've had new patrons join us. Josh, Darby, and Brandon, thanks so much for joining the Patreon. Your merch should be out in the next month or so, so thank you so much for joining. Welcome. Remember, you can join us at $3 a month, no big commitment. But if you jump on it, $6 a month as a premium crony. You get access to the Discord. You can chit-chat with us. Most of it is my food and barbecue habits. We've also got voting on upcoming topics like this topic was voted on. Yes, in the Discord. By the Patreon. By the patrons. Patrons. Plus you get early ad-free access to the show. I post the show early on Patreon so everybody gets it ahead. and there's none of these silly ads that are throughout it that bother people. Becoming an elitist crony at $20 a month, after three months you get a free Silver Ball Chronicles t-shirt. And after some errors in shipping, I finally got that sorted. So trust me, you'll get your shirts now. You sent them to Cuba, didn't you? I did. Also, if you found us on any of your podcatchers, please leave us a five-star review or a thumbs-up. Write us a review. That really helps other people find us. We jump up in the algorithm that way. What happens if it's a 10 star? Then we're mediocre. So it should be the highest star you could possibly do. Yes, exactly. I think it's all five stars. I don't think anybody does anything more than five. I don't know why they do five. Everything used to be four back in my day. Where did the extra star come from? Was it four stars? Oh, it was four stars. Yeah, four stars was always like four stars. And then at some point, four wasn't enough. It became five stars. It wasn't enough, so now it's five stars. I don't get it. Look at that. You can also grab a shirt at silverballswag.com. We did sell a couple last month. So thank you, everybody. Cool. Make sure you get the ones with my name on it first. Those are the limited edition ones. What happens if I want to email Silverball Chronicles? Oh, well, then you'd have to use a computer, Ron. And you'd have to send your email to silverballchronicles at gmail.com. That's silverballchronicles at gmail.com. Can you tell we don't rehearse anything? Yeah, yeah. We all just jamble it together and then fix it in post. Here is a really cool email from Jack Guarnari, Jersey Jack himself. Yes, he emailed us, which always worries me when someone we've done something about emails us. I'm expecting to hear, like, your stuff was totally wrong. you guys suck and I'm suing you. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And Jack basically said that about you. But however, for me, he said the following. I listened to episode 44 of Silver Ball Chronicles, and I'm humbled by your collective thoughts about me. There's obviously a lot more to the story and to all my years in the industry and all the experiences I've had and all the things I've done, and I never did it alone. there were always people supporting me and guiding me and working with me as a team i'm sure i could write a few books about it while most of it was accurate it was not completely accurate and i'm fine with it as it is but i can fill in some blanks for you let's do some corrections yeah so here's the thing we always kind of know that things are accurate but not completely accurate That's like our thing because we like to leave that speculation in there. Is that under our name now? Silverwell Chronicles. Accurate but not completely accurate. That will be the next shirt. Yes. I'll get a shirt done with that on it. And we try our best to be as clear and to do those sort of things. But there's always like spin, right? Somebody is always trying to spin something. But there are some things you can't spin and those are facts. and I'll tell you what Jack has given us some facts here what about this one he says for Neiman Neiman Marcus we said that he sold games through Neiman Marcus well Jack says I never sold games through Neiman Marcus they bought 12 x-file games from Mondial Distributing in Springfield New Jersey and Sega Pinball programmed the game number on the dot matrix display with the Neiman Marcus name That was in 1997. And aside from running my game route, I was a consultant at Mondial from March 1997 to May 1998. Neiman put a plaque on the game and a certificate was signed by the design team. Ah, so there you go. So we talked a little bit about that sort of catalog industry of Neiman Marcus, particularly in that New York, New Jersey area. And that was how he bumped into the Abbas family. Now, Jane Abbas, Jack would say, bought a game from Neiman Marcus, and it broke. And since Mondale was the Sega distributor in New Jersey, they contacted Jack to fix her game in Florida. And because he couldn't do that, he reached out to the operator friends that he had in Florida, and they repaired the game for her. But that was how they originally had met. Pretty cool. What about F-A-O Schwartz? Is it Schwartz or Schwarz? Schwarz? Yeah, it is Schwarz. There's no T. Everyone always says that wrong. So this is like a toy company, right? Something like that. I've seen my kids with binoculars. It's a New York City thing. I don't know what it is. Yeah, and my other daughter got a Joshua Clay molding kit, and it's from this company. And my assumption is they just get their stuff made in China and they slap their name on it and they send it out. Jack says, I was cold called by the buyer from FAO Schwarz in New York City. They wanted a pinball game for their holiday catalog in 1998. I put in Star Wars Trilogy. They sold a few. The following year, 1999 FAO Schwarz catalog, I put a Star Wars Episode I and they sold for $7,500. That would have been expensive. even i don't think they would um williams went out of business october 25th 1999 so i had to cover the potential order so that fao would have stock i made a standing order for a hundred star wars episode one games though the holiday oh man through the holiday season and a few months later into the new year fao sold all 100 games in the year 2000 the first full year of business for pinball sales.com we did 1.4 million worth of business with 75 of it being fao schwarz wow thank you jack for that feedback and those corrections very very cool how amazing would that relationship be like as i mentioned in the last episode our jersey jack part one episode Jack was able to identify opportunities. He would see an opportunity and he'd be able to pursue it. But I'm sure he saw lots of opportunities, which he skipped, which might have been a terrible idea, but might have actually paid off. But there's probably tons of options where he skipped them and he avoided catastrophe. So Jack has always been very good at identifying relationships and potential winners. and there's a prime example of it. I just looked up FAO Schwartz. Looks like toys. They do toys. Now, another big, we got a lot of feedback this last episode and it was big feedback. So Rob Quinn reached out to us in an email and this one I thought was super cool and it also plays very close to your heart. Yes, Rob Quinn was the programmer for Stern's Nine Ball. Rob Quinn reached out and he said, just found and I'm listening to Silverball Chronicles episode number two. He's way back in the archives. He's in the weeds, my friend. It was a very good summary of the early days of Stern. I'm okay with a very good summary. He needs to correct an error, though. That has been propagated through the years. He's even trying to get the Internet Pinball Database to correct this, but they have not responded. Exactly. So back in the day, you didn't have, like, what is it, GitHub or whatever? that the programmers use nowadays to keep track of software stuff. There's a thing on IPDB, and there's 60 revisions of Nineball. But there's not 60. There weren't 60 revisions of it, production Nineball machines. He says, I was the programmer for Nineball. There were not 60 revisions of production code. There wasn't any real sort of software version control like Git back then, so we just numbered software revisions. The one that got released was number 60-something. The note makes it sound like there were 60 revisions after the game went into production, which was certainly not the case. Yeah, there you go. So that's a great example of how they were flying by the seat of their pants back in the day, right? They just kept rewriting the EEPROM as they were working through it. He also mentions, and this is the thing that plagues 9-Ball, is the losing of the balls all the time. Well, it kind of gets confused on how many balls it has. And he says, we did have all sorts of ball counting issues during development. The out-haul blade switches were a nightmare. They would bounce after the ball rolled over them and make contact during gameplay, if not precisely adjusted. Yes, that is true. It was also early in multiball pin development, and these issues were new and not well understood. Yes, there were problems in the field if the switches were not adjusted correctly. And he also says, cramming the rule set Steve Kirk wanted into 8K, not like 8 kilobytes, not 8 megabytes or terabytes. 8,000 bytes. Or gigabytes. Very, very cool. Thank you so much for that feedback. Anything else to tie that up? I thought it was interesting how he said Steve Kirk was not a Stern employee. he was doing it as a contractor so he would just show up once a week to get the new EPROMs for his game, which I assume he had at his house. Yeah, and then he'd give some feedback and do this and do that and they're trying to cram all of that. So he's designing some of the greatest games ever and he's doing it from his house. Legend. Steve Kirk. Legend. He's coming in, going to Portillo's, getting a hot dog, having a coffee. I'm telling you, Steve Kirk is my man. He's three for three. That's what I call him. Three for three Steve Kirk. and I have all three of them. Stars, Meteor, and Nineball. Yeah, I do love some stars. So let's jump into today's topic. Wow, is this the longest before jumping into the topic? I think it might be. It was a pretty good preamble. Ooh, preamble. Yes, that's the proper term. Yes, there's going to be lots of people who are not interested in any of that. I hope you are. If you like corrections, we'd like to be as correct as we can. And when the person actually involved says, hey, this is what actually happened, you got to – Primary sources? Yeah, primary sources. Absolutely. You got to say it. It only gets crazy if there's two people involved and they both say different things. Then, you know, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. Al or Steve Ritchie. Now, we visited David Gottlieb and Alvin Gottlieb before in our first episode of Meet the Gottliebs. David, the patriarch of the Gottlieb family, came from nothing and with smart business sense and tight budgeting created D. Gottlieb & Co. They navigated wars, they navigated recessions, and they also navigated a transition to another generation. All of this while becoming the Cadillac of the pinball industry. When David retired, it was his son Alvin who took over operations along with his uncle Judd Weinberg. That was when things really changed in pinball, and the industry would never be the same. This month, it's part two of Meet the Gottliebs. So what was happening in the pinball industry in the late 1970s? We're going from electromechanicals to solid skate. Yeah, the microchip, right? Silicon Valley. Which, at the beginning of it, Gottlieb actually did pretty well for all they get ragged on for their System 1 architecture. As we went over in our episode, their early System 1 games sold a ton. Because they were the Cadillac. They were built well, they were easy to understand, and they had really cool design features. Games like Sinbad and Countdown. Ah. So good. Sinbad is awesome. I love Sinbad. I love Countdown. Sinbad would be better if it was like a different theme. One of the reasons it's the theme it is, and I don't know if people realize it, it is a licensed theme. Yeah, from that sort of Sinbad. From the movies. Sinbad movies. Yeah, like late 60s or something. Well, no. The original Sinbad movie was in the 50s, and then they made two more in the 70s, and they're all mostly known for the Ray Harryhausen special effects. Who is that? One of the greatest special effects dudes ever, stop motion animation. Oh, right. I knew I knew that name somewhere. But I believe they were made by Columbia Pictures, who owned Gottlieb. So that's why they did that. That's why they had Close Encounters. Exactly. And we talked a lot about that sale from sort of like D. Gottlieb and Co. to Columbia Pictures in that transitional period. And then there was another transition, and that was when Gottlieb moved over to Milstar, or Mylstar as some people say. Why did Alvin Gottlieb get out of the ownership structure of Gottlieb? Well, we speculated before, and it was never really like, I couldn't find an article where Alvin specifically said why, or why Judd Weinstein specifically said why. But that's when Michael Gottlieb, the grandson of David and the son of Alvin, reached out to us in an email. And I made a pretty big correction in our last episode. This was the reason he gave us about why Alvin and Judd decided to get out of D. Gottlieb. Yes, Michael Gottlieb says, Dad and Uncle Judd sold D. Gottlieb and Company because they were getting older. Further, Atari had been bought by Warner Communications, which sparked an interest in Columbia Pictures acquiring a game company. D. Gottlieb had huge capital gains, and Columbia Pictures had a tax loss carry forward that year, so it made sense from a tax perspective as well. There you go So it was just an opportunity The opportunity came up The grind of years and years and years Alvin Gottlieb you know going from like the wedgehead era moving into this new time He getting older And there probably a lot of money on the table from somebody like a Columbia Pictures And Michael was too young to take over yet, because I think he was just a kid. Exactly, exactly. So Alvin Gottlieb would say, when Coca-Cola bought out Columbia, things changed. Coca-Cola was one of the mega corporations where you have a meeting about a meeting to decide to have a meeting. Now, that wasn't exactly our management style. So now you can see that there's some trouble in this Mylstar era, and we have a whole sort of episodes back in the archives about that era, sort of the 80A era, the 80B era. Do you remember what the Gottlieb employees said about the Mylstar name, what it is backwards? It was rat slime if you spell it backwards. If you spell it backwards. Yes, I can't unsee that now after that comment. So that was when it ended up going through a pretty catastrophic mess. And then there was the sale to Premier Technology. That was kind of the 80B era. That 80s cheese done right, I think, is what we called that episode in the archives, which then eventually led to the System 3 era of pinball through the 90s. And those are all in the archives. So we're going to skip a lot of that because the episode today isn't necessarily about Gottlieb. It's about the Gottliebs. You had mentioned previously, why didn't Alvin or Judd's children take over instead of Columbia or Coca-Cola? Well, Michael says, neither David or Judd had children that were interested in taking over the business. Judd's boys were all doing their own thing, and my brother and I were too young. Just comes down to it, right? It just was not the right time. And when you see an opportunity to exit, to transition out, you take that, I think. And who blames them, right? How did you feel the games changed when you could feel there was less sort of Gottlieb in the company? To me, they were always Gottlieb. Gottlieb was its own thing. It really didn't change much. They played by their own rules. They were always kind of quirky. all these weird designs for people always complain that all the designs are samey it's like you haven't looked at scott leave obviously because all their stuff is very unique all over the place that was very much the the style even in the previous sort of ownership structure right those em games were all weird they had weird flippers and weird places and they were experimenting and doing those things it's like that philosophy carried over through this i would actually say A lot of the EMs are kind of samey. When they started getting into solid states and the wide-body era, then they just went crazy. They just put things everywhere, like insane. And I think they kept that all the way through the 90s. They just have just crazy stuff in their games. That we talked about in previous episodes. You know, wipeout, you have a ski jump thing where the thing just rocks back and forth. And it's crazy, this stuff. Dancing cactus. Dancing cactuses. Cacti, I'm sorry. or the Stargate as the thing that comes out and moves around, which is super cool. It's all just when you look at the Williams games, they took a lot less risk. Right. And then as Williams aged, you could tell that the refinement of flow and shot feel and ball movement back to the flipper was always like a priority. and that's probably a holdover from like Steve Ritchie's influence through High Speed and Terminator 2 and all of that stuff. But then as you kind of look for something different, that different was totally all the way over on that Gottlieb side. They went different and they just went all in. That takes us to Michael Gottlieb. Okay, so we spoke about David. We spoke about Alvin. And now this episode is primarily about Michael. Michael grew up in Chicago, and his first memories of pinball were of Chester, the delivery driver for Gottlieb, who would show up every month and remove a pinball machine from Alvin Gottlieb's house and replace it with the newest model. David would play this game, and his family would play the game, and Michael would play the game and they would all build these fond memories of the new game arriving and the old game leaving. How cool would it be if the newest model of game arrived every month and the oldest model left? It's pretty much like Gary Stern apartment. It's basically... He still does that? I think he still does that. He'll have a game. If he really likes it. Joel, who does all the streaming for the Flip N Out Pinball channel, he's all in on that as well he gets the newest game in and the oldest game out pretty regularly isn't he the guy that hates you? that's what I thought so him and I have a rivalry we both have great hatred for each other yes your rivals over nothing ok this is Gene Simmons from KISS I would like you to join the Patreon for Silver Bowl Chronicles becoming a pro crony is the perfect way to say thanks and it starts at three dollars a month want to get early access to episodes before everyone else want to be as cool as kiss interested in having your comments and questions take priority in our episodes jump up to a six dollar a month premium crew and then go to kiss online stop that we're not going to kiss online just finish up the damn list want all the other perks and a shirt after three months Join us at $20 a month as an Ellie Letus Cronin. Maybe you just want a shirt. I understand. Swing on over to silverballswag.com and pick up a Silver Ball Chronicles t-shirt. Then afterwards, you can swing on over to kissonline.com. So the coolest thing that I got from this old episode, so a lot of it, we talk about this pretty regularly, that we look for these primary sources from the horse's mouth, if you will. There was an old episode of TopCast with Michael Gottlieb, and then about halfway through, he just brings his dad on. I don't know if conference calls him in or something. I can't remember. But this is where we get a lot of the information, and there's some cool stuff in here. One of them is David's first memory of the first pinball machine that he can remember, and that machine was… Jungle King. So I looked this up. Okay, this is from May of 1973. It's not a big seller. It's 825 units. So by all intents and purposes, not a big seller. Because they were selling, what, like 3,000 units on the regular in this era. This was designed by Ed Krinsky, who's the one who made that quote about rat slime. mm-hmm and uh Gordon Morison okay so i had just mentioned not a lot of production units and there is a specific reason why this did not sell a lot of units because this was the add a ball version and we spoke about this in our previous got leave episode what was add a ball ron uh you can win basically extra balls they don't call them extra balls instead of getting a replay Basically, in an area where winning free games was illegal, instead, you have an add-a-ball game. Mostly sort of like, what was it, like France and Italy and Europe. They had a problem with, like a game was a thing of value. That was the way that the legislation was. Well, add-a-ball, the ball, getting an extra ball was not a thing of value. It was just extending your play. So this is the same game as 1972's Wildlife, which was the two-player replay version, and Gottlieb's Jungle in 1972. Was the four-player version the Jungle one? Yeah, that's right. So the reason there's not that now, if we look at, okay, well, how many did Wildlife sold? Well, it sold 3,875 units, and Jungle, the four-player, sold 5,775 units. it sold a lot but not this specific model what is the theme of this game it's the tarzan guy did they have george of the jungle back then yes probably yeah probably so this is kind of like that right it's like the the good looking sort of cartoony muscular guy with the cartoony silly animals in the jungle very like kid friendly like clearly something that you know you wanted to incentivize younger players the backlash on this is awesome it's it's like a guy in a banana hammock hanging out with like animals a banana hammock oh is that what you call it see when i see jungle king being a child of the 80s i just think of the video game which is most people know it as jungle hunt and it was originally Jungle King and it was Tarzan and they got sued because they used the Johnny Jim Weisz Miller, you know, like that sound clip. It's actually in the game and they had to redo it as Jungle Hunt. So instead of Tarzan, they made him some like, like some British dude with a monocle who's like an explorer, but they kept all the other graphics the same. Michael Hunt. Michael Hunt. Wasn't that his name? Okay. What about this flyer? Check this out. It's exciting. It has fascinating features like multi-bonus. Making the top center rollover doubles bonus value. It also has a 10 rollover sequence. Did you know that? Hitting all 10 rollovers lights bullseye targets and side rollovers to score added balls. Yeah, so it's a symmetrical play field, right? So it's basically the same thing. Well, it is the same thing on the left and the same thing on the right, which I think comes from this era where they're like, I got to bang out a game this week, so I just sort of like copy-paste. But it does have kind of a fun gameplay because you can shoot these elephant rollovers kind of almost on a flowy arc, and it's a bit of a tight shot. It's really cool. No drop targets that I can see. No spinner. Two demerits. Yeah, and then it's got the bozo targets here, right? the wow targets where if you shoot those it goes right for the out lane however it does have the out lane gate so where the out lane gate opens and then it goes back into the shooter lane I love when that happens so you like out lane gates I love out lane gates and it also has this really cool ball save feature on the bottom left where the ball goes down the left out lane and then into a compartment and it shoots it out it's basically like a kickback except with a gate also having a gate so you can activate that gate so much fun, it looks like a cool game it's got that thing in the middle, there was a lot of these Gottlieb wedge heads had the pop bumper in the middle with the rubbers around it so when the ball would get into this pit as a pinball muggle you're like, yay, I'm doing things and getting points and there's action, but it's actually not doing anything at all. It's always very exciting. It's a cool game. And I can see why he remembers that it's stuck in his head because it's clearly got like the cartoony thing to it with the jungle. And, you know, I can see how he got that stuck in there. What are the other games that he remembers? He really likes Jet Spin and the bowling one, 300. I like 300. 300 is good. I remember Royal Flush was really good. When we had that in 76, it was kind of weird because if you had a game that you really, really liked, you didn't want the truck to come and take it away for another one. But it was my dad's old line, what's your favorite game? And his answer was always the next one. Classic. That's like a takeoff. Gary Stern modified that to the game on the line is his favorite. Now, any time that Michael and his brother Joe would have a day off school, Alvin would always take them to the factory. And that's mostly because I think back then they didn't have daycare. So you just let your employees deal with kids. Michael would say it was like Willy Wonka land. I could see that. It would be amazing. Well, Alvin says, I was born into the industry, and as a child, my father took me around his factory. When the boys were old enough, it was my pleasure to take them around and show them our operation. Oh, that's such a dad thing, isn't it? like i remember going to the factory with my dad and i'm gonna take my kids to the factory yeah at the age of 16 michael spent one summer working at data east under joe cam and cal that's interesting see if the sun if the sun of the got leaves working at a competing company yeah but this was the time right like by the time michael was 16 right it's the Mylstar era the they've moved into premier technology it's not the same company anymore like it has some of the it's it's premier and it says Gottlieb on it so and his name his name is Michael Gottlieb but while he was at that he used to help put together playfields got coffee donuts he put stickers on Monday night football this is the son of like what the biggest person ever in the pinball industry David Gottlieb grandson but yes I'm sorry grandson he put Harry Williams in that as well, right? Gary Stern. But Gary Stern wasn't Gary Stern at this time. Well, what does Michael say about it? He says, it was a trip. It was really a fascinating experience. A lot of the lessons you learn when Joe and Gary were doing what they were doing on a very, very modest budget. You know, those were very valuable lessons. It doesn't matter how much money you have. You're a lot more resourceful when you don't have nearly as much. George Gomez talks about this right at the current day Stern where like you have your bill of materials and you have these you have to play in the sandbox the sandbox and that makes you more that makes you more creative as opposed to being able to do anything and everything. The way I think of it now, like, I love movies. I'm probably a lot like Jeff Teolas that way. I love movies. Nowadays, you could, like, I remember all these terrible, silly movies that I saw when I was younger that hold this, like, nostalgia in me that I don't even know how I would find those today with streaming, right? There's just so much content across so many different platforms, and you can just access it at any time. And you don't necessarily have to pay as much attention to it because you can do six things at once while you're watching this film. I think that speaks very much to the same way you have to be resourceful. When you've got everything, it's a lot harder to be as creative and focused. But when you're in the sandbox, I think that drives a lot of creativity. Now, Michael went to Northern Illinois University and did a degree in business management. What can you tell me about Northern Illinois University? Your favorite? Oh, NIU. Yeah, they were where it's at. I have no idea. I've never heard of it. It's sort of like my university. It's like, I got it. University of Ottawa? OU. The real OU, not that fake one you guys have. Alvin G. and Co. Okay, here's where we get into a thing. So Alvin came up with this game idea called soccer ball. which was like a two-ended pinball machine. Right? And we had seen these competition pinball machines before, right? They had tried them kind of in the 80s. Do you remember those? You mean like Joust? Exactly. Like that was this kind of idea. But Alvin's been like retired for years. We're talking like early 90s now. He's been retired for years. And then just kind of like one day he's like, I've got a great idea. so alvin and michael originally intended for gil pollock and premier technologies to build that and that's the new gottlieb right premier technologies but at the time premier was so busy building their crazy amount of of games in the early 90s they just didn't have too many teed offs i love me some teed i would be saying there's too many lights camera actions that'd be It's late 80s, early 90s It's on the borderline Yeah, exactly So what did Michael say? Michael says, Gottlieb Hospital had a building On a piece of property that they had bought So we thought, let's start a pinball company And see what happens And that was exactly what we did Now this was the Rebirth of pinball, right? Like it had this Weird death in the early, mid 80s But things just started bumping. Late 80s, early 90s, it was hot again. When you're sitting back and you see all this money on the table, you kind of want to get to the table. You want to be there. But the problem that they had with developing this new pinball company was you couldn't use the Gottlieb name. He couldn't use his own name. That's why they went with Alvin G, the G being Gottlieb, and Co. to tie it back to D Gottlieb and Co. I mean, it's a good work around. Most people in the industry would probably know who Alvin G was. Anybody in the know would probably know they were Gottlieb. And anybody who didn't know would be like, oh, pinball. They don't care anyway. Now, they targeted 13 games, mostly for the European market because that's who loves soccer. And I will include a video tour of Alvin G and Gottlieb from an old TNT Amusements YouTube video. Yeah, which is from Expo. Pinball Expo had that was their tour that year. Exactly. Now, who is TNT Amusements? That's Todd Tuckey. He is a legend in the industry. I guarantee if you're listening to this podcast, you have been on YouTube and you have seen Todd Tuckey's oddness all over YouTube. He is not just entertaining and fun, but his archival footage you know what i mean like all this old vhs recordings that he did hit some of the first tutorials like in the late 80s like no one did wild all this stuff and he's put this on the youtube and now youtube of course has all of this on there and it's like there for life basically so cool to see that being paid forward so people like you and i can reference it and spread it even further so so tip of the hat you can see there they're building mystery castles there's a mystery castles in this video that they're building and we'll speak about that there's the the world tour band what's his name and we'll get to that in a second uh there's there's people like like uh filling out their uh soldering and all that stuff and and the soccer game it's it's so cool all this stuff is so cool and then all of a sudden in the middle of it a Judge Dredd pops up like, wait a minute, that's not in their factory. That better not be in their factory. Wait a second, there's a Twilight Zone? Some last action heroes? I assume that's probably back in X-File. Yeah, so really cool. Very neat. Go ahead and check that out if you're looking for some time to kill. Now, what made this sort of Alvin, G, and Co. kind of interesting? What was their catch besides this double-ended sort of idea for a game? Well, they had to come up with new boards. Yeah. Because you just can't go and steal Williams boards and make a game. Well, that East did, but most of the time you don't want to do that. You want to come up with your own stuff. So they had a combo PCP and driver board. Probably like a combo MPU and driver board, I assume is what that meant. It was contracted out. this was when everyone had all those add-on boards etc so so like if you open up a a system adb or you open up a even some of the later system threes it's like there's a board tethered to another board tethered to another board there's a sound board and a driver board all through the 90s and a power board it's just all over the place well they came up and contracted So contracting it out, contracting out basically meant that they gave somebody the requirements and then they built the board. They didn't build the board in-house, which was probably more common. Which is – it's the same thing that Gottlieb did when they first went to solid state. They also contracted it out. Which ended up being fantastic at first but a train wreck when they tried to expand or change it. I do that. They did that once and then they said, you know, let's do it again. Yeah, exactly. You know, that worked out so well in the 80s. They also made sure that they had high fidelity stereo sound, which was by far superior to most of the other sort of sound boards at the time See the thing is I never heard one of these Every time I play one of these it at a show You can barely hear it anyway So I've never heard one of, like, an Alvin G game by itself to really critique how good the sound sounds. Yeah, so some people say that the pin sound board installed in these games is even better, but it's taken that long to do it. Now, that's opinion. That's not actually fact. Well, what is a fact is that base sample rates were CD quality, 320 kilobits per second. I don't even know what that means. I don't think it's kilobits, KPS, whatever. That's the sampling rate, whatever. 128 and above is considered CD quality. So this is 320. Yeah, so it's super good. So they're sitting around the table and they come up with this idea for this football soccer game. And they're like, OK, well, we got this building over there by the by the hospital that we can use. And oh, why don't we you know, this is what we need for a bunch of boards. And then they kind of outsource that. And then all of a sudden, before you know it, holy crap, we have a small pinball company on the way here. Nowadays, there's a startup every you can't throw a dead cat without hitting a pinball startup somewhere. But during this time, you've basically got Williams. You got the startup of Data East. And that's that's kind of it. Right. Well, Premiere or Premiere Capcom would be a little bit later, but there's no sort of like everybody has a big brother. They all have this big company behind them. Nobody is kind of just Alvin Gottlieb, you know, in his garage. You know what I mean? Like that's more common now than it was at this time. Do you want to talk about this game? This this this football game? Football, soccer ball. I'm trying to think if I've seen this game. Oh, you've totally seen this game. Now they made a thousand units. It was 500 of each. One of them was for the European market being soccer. They only wanted to make 13, and they made 500? Yeah, 1,000, 500 of each. Yeah, it's pretty wild. So let me open this thing up here. We're on the IPDB.org, and we're going to look at the awesome flyer that has to exist for this. Yes. There we go. Just describe what the game looks like before we read the file. Yeah. What is this? I don't know if I've ever played this. Oh, no. Okay, yeah, I've seen this before. But I don't know if I've actually played it. I know I've seen it. It looks like a regular pinball machine play field. It's a regular cabinet. It's a regular cabinet. Yeah, there's no head. It's higher in the middle. Like the play field kind of goes up into the middle and then down to the outside. Yeah, I assume it's two pieces of wood. It's probably a play field cut in half. Yes, and then it's kind of glued together in the middle. Yeah, it's probably got a bracket or something. But there's no head. There's no head in the middle. There's no head in the back. It looks unusual, but it doesn't look totally different. You know what I mean? Like you look at it, you're like, oh, it's a pinball machine. But you're like, where is everything? Now the displays. So it has no head. Where would you put the displays? I'd probably put them on the apron. Yeah. So they've got them in the apron, but not flat. They're like on an angle, and it's like you're looking at the display across from you, which is under the other player. Does that make sense? Yeah, you're not looking straight down. Yep. Which is pretty ingenious for a problem that they created. But this is the football one, so this is clearly for the European market, which is soccer. Well, they use the correct term in Europe, football, because that's what it is, the game where you hit the ball with your foot. Right, exactly. We're not going to get into that. I don't need to cause an international incident here. As opposed to the U.S. where you play football by throwing it, and the only person who kicks it is the one who's not considered a football player, the kicker. But you know, in A.G. football and A.G. soccer, it has a new feature, the switch flipper, trademarked. So this is the thing that Alvin kind of thought of and thought this would be really cool for a game. The switch flipper is like a regular pinball flipper, but it has almost like a gate on it. And the gate is hanging over where the ball would hit the flipper. It's like a wire, but it's like a solid wire. It's not like a flimsy wire. So what does that do? What does it do? Well, it adds special scores and features if the flipper is hit by a ball before it's actuated. So if you hit the button on the cabinet, it reacts different than if you don't hit the button and the ball hits the switch and activates the flipper. And this is under patent number 4971323. Actuate certain flippers in an automatic mode. Auto flip, trademarked. To provide single player operation. Play the computer. so you can play this two-player game in a single-player mode. Which is pretty kind of neat, right? The auto-flip mode gives incredible ball action due to the ball keeping the flipper coil actuated throughout its entire stroke. That might be a little too techie for a flyer. We're trying to sell games here, Ron. Stop trying to ruin it for everybody. I'm sorry. And it's got spinners. I've got to find one of these. I've never played one of these. It's got some drop targets, right? It's got some kind of flowy-ish looking shots. It's pretty cool. It's different and weird, but it's cool. It's very green. Did we ever talk about the green pinball curse? What, if you have green, it's just not going to sell? Yeah, so that was a thing back in the 60s, and I think slightly after that, was that green games did not sell. They also had the thing where they didn't want it to be all black. yeah very firepower came out and sold like you know 17 000 units or whatever like okay maybe it's not bad so then they make a game called blackout that's entirely black so they had to come up with a catchphrase for alvin g and co and it was the name for originality and quality so they couldn't use the name gotlieb but they wanted to lean in as hard as they possibly could that this was a Gottlieb first. The other thing is, when you look at their logo, Alvin G and Company, it's in the Gottlieb font. Yeah, it's clear. It's in the classic D Gottlieb and Company font you would see on all their older games. It's exactly the same. I wonder how they got away with that. What, using the same font? Yeah, nowadays, if you get started using the same fonts or the same designs. Premiere wasn't using that, though. It said Premiere, and it just said a Gottlieb company or something on it. with their later, like, 80s Gottlieb font. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. Maybe that's why it wasn't a problem. What was Michael's memories around this game? Well, he says his biggest memory of the whole thing was that it was a nightmare. You ship test samples out, and they're not working. There was a period of time where I flew to Robert Englunds, Japan, then back to Robert Englunds, then to Germany, then to Spain, then to Italy, then back to Japan, fixing games. It was just a prototype run, but it was a real nightmare. Could you imagine the cost of doing that? Frequent flyer miles. How does he have the money to do that? He's got to have a bunch of stuff with him. He's got to have a big bag of tools and parts. But that's how it happens, right? And we see that even with new startup games today, right? Like they always have their their problems and their issues. And, you know, they're back then you'd prototype things, which is what he's talking about. But you didn't. Nowadays, you don't really prototype and put it out on location and put it through the the ringer to put it in Japan and Robert Englunds and Germany and Spain and Italy and doing all that flying around like that must have been terrible. Flying seems like a lot of fun. Then you do it a bunch. You're like, this is terrible. It's not fun at all. Well, here's the big breakout game. This is the one that everybody knows. I play this. The follow-up game. It is from December of 1992. It sells 1,000 units. So you can tell that when they're buying materials, they're buying enough materials for, like, round numbers and then parts. It's pretty funny because nowadays some of the other ones you see, there's, like, 827, right? No, not here. 1,000. This is designed by Jerry Armstrong. It has art by Dan Hughes. Now, you would know him from Corvette and Indy 500 on the Williams side. Tim Elliot did a little bit of the art here, and he did Earthshaker and Road Kings. Ooh, Road Kings. Oh, God. And Andy G. Reynolds, he would do the art for Punchy the Clown, and we'll get to that in a minute. uh len verdine he did uh uh he did there's no r vidine vidine uh the music by kyle johnson and sound and then software by uh reeman merchant and you know reeman merchant i know he did a bunch of games he was like he was like the the b tier or c tier guy he was a godly no not god He's like, game plan, game plan, Bally. He did a bunch of stuff in Europe with Bally Wolf, Alvin G. He was at Data East for a while. He did Simpsons and Back to the Future. He was like the C-level programmer who just banged it out all the time. He did Special Force. He did Special Force, which we mentioned earlier. Awesome. He was like the guy that was always there everywhere. Now, the theme of this game. So what is the theme of their – okay, well, let's go back to the name of this game. I don't think we said that yet. I don't think we said it yet. Al's Garage Band Goes on a World Tour. That is a long title. But a cool title, I would say. Okay, so the theme of this is like a rock star music pin, one of the first kind of music pins. What's going on on the flyer here? Well, they're telling you to plug it in and crank it up. Plug it in and crank it up. Now, the art, you can tell that this is very much that Earthshaker style of art. So if you've seen Earthshaker, which everybody probably has, from Williams, you can see, yeah, that art style is pretty much the same. Let's flip over. Yeah, totally. So we flip the thing over, and then what do we see here? Help Al take his garage band on a world tour. Make the shots that take him from city to city on his way to fame and fortune. Rad action features for rock and fun. Did you know this game has the world's first spinning ramp? Spinning ramp? How does that work? Well, the spinning CD ramp adds excitement two ways. adds English to the ball on entry shot and a challenging ramp shot too. Well, it has an ear-splitting frenzy. That sounds terrible. I don't want it to split my ears. What's with CD? The C period, D period, is that the guy's name or something? No, I think it means like a CD, like a compact disc. But no one ever writes it that way. I've never seen it written that way. I guess you're right. That's what it means, CD. For those younger listeners, that's compact disc. That's what we used to listen to music on. That came after tapes. That came after records, tapes, and then CDs. And then before the iPod. Yes. It's kind of that weird space in the middle. Very cool. It's cool. It's got drop targets. It's got to have drop targets. It's got multiball. It's got a video mode. It's got a DMD. It's got it all. Hey, Pinheads. I just wanted to let you know that when I'm not doing this podcast and making bad jokes, I'm Dave the Financial Guy. At Dennis Financial, our advisors strive to provide a return on life for our clients, not just a return on investment. The value of advice is something that we take very seriously. A valuable advisor doesn't just provide investment advice. They share wisdom. And this is where the true value of an advisor emerges. Don't take my word for it. Just listen to Ron Sterling, an average Canadian. Yay. If you're in Canada, Dennis Financial is for you. If you're looking for a more human dimension to your financial advice, Dennis Financial, Inc. has you covered with advisors licensed in most Canadian provinces. We're also doing secure online video meetings. Contact me via email at david at dennisfinancial.net for a free rate quote and a copy of our Value of Advice e-book, or check out dennisfinancial.ca. Insurance solutions provided by Dennis Financial, Inc. Canadian residents only. It has a patent pending bump buttons. Ooh, the bump buttons. That impacts players' fingers with a new feel. Really? So they got something on the, okay, I played this before and I don't remember that. Maybe it was turned off. State-of-the-art digital stereo sound. Dot matrix with video mode. Ultra clean wiring. Combined CPU. Okay, they put periods in that too, which no one ever does. So there you go. and driver board, extensive user-friendly diagnostics and bookkeeping. Yeah, so like the original Gottlieb, we're leaning into how easy it is to maintain the quality, that kind of stuff. The back glass is weird, okay? So it's what I assume is Al, and he's riding an electric guitar rocket over Europe with a lady in tow. All of the stars have smiling faces. Including the sun. Which is terrifying. But you can tell they're having fun. This has one of the coolest upper playfields I think I've seen. you will recognize this upper play field from Guns N' Roses limited edition. It's the shape of a guitar that's got, what are those things called? Like the, almost like a plinko kind of thing when the ball goes up the ramp and it comes down the neck of the guitar and then it bounces around and then over a rollover back onto the play field. I think the art is more Dr. Dude than Earthshaker. Okay, yeah, I can see that. little more little more like creepy strange cartoony thing i never considered it creepy why is everything creepy it's just it's just it's the faces it's the faces are a bit a bit weird it had a cool topper right with your way to fame and fortune yes and the band members all have names it's Stitchy, Gloria Al Delmore and I can't read the last name Deeskins because he's the drummer you hit the skins I get it, very good well done, but we're going after that kid that wants to be cool in a rock band kind of thing it's very fun and it looks the same as other games of the era yeah it does and that it's got the same speaker panel with the dmd they didn't go crazy with any yeah completely different weird cabinet design or anything like that now michael gottlieb would tell ipdb that al's garage band was based on people that he actually knew they were all real people oh it's doctor's doctor skins not d skins We didn't see the R. Yeah, the people he knew, Al, Gloria, Delmore, and Dr. Skins. Only one character, Stitchy, was not a real person. Oh, I find that hard to believe. There's no one named Stitchy? You know Fred Young? The late Fred Young. Yes, he did voice characterizations in this game. He was like the guy that did all the voices back then, right? He did a lot of games. He did them for Daddy East. He did them for Williams. Now he's doing them for Alvin G. And for an unnecessary factoid, the game in the manufacturer's flyer shows a Vuck, a vertical up kicker, at the end of the horseshoe ramp in the middle right play field of what would have been the top lock. This Vuck was subsequently removed by the manufacturer. Reportedly, 20 games were made with this top lock Vuck. Yeah, let's file that under really cool. I want one of those. It'd be worth more. Around this time, they were having some success, but they wanted to kind of focus on, like, redemption games. But they ended up with like, it was like not really traditional pinball, but it had pinball elements. And then we get back into a traditional pinball game, the tournament classic, Mystery Castle. Mystery Castle. The horror supernatural theme. Yes, dancing skeletons. We've got 500 units designed by Wally Welch and Michael Gottlieb, art by Dan Hughes, and again, software by Riemann Merchant. Fred Young also did the voices for this game. When we talk about Mystery Castle, I mean, the first thing that pops into mind is the perfect game to end a national tournament with. What they really think is fantasy and excitement. Alvin G and Company invites you to attend a scavenger hunt at the Mystery Castle. Good luck. You'll need it. Yeah, it's like a piece of parchment paper being written on by, like, a mythical hand. Then we flip it over, and we get a picture of the game and the play field. A user-friendly game. Alvin G and Co. The name for originality and quality. So there is a scavenger hunt for the hidden items. Collect the items. Collect the earnings. Complete the six position drop targets. Six position drop targets. What is that? Light the hidden face. Enter the castle. Prepare for doom. Will you get to play doom? No. I bet you it would play doom. I bet you these DMVs would play doom. Collect all 15 items to achieve the ultimate, the crown. Shoot the four ramps. Find the secret door. Experience the excitement of a scavenger hunt in an old castle. Find the items, but be prepared. The spirit forces may propel you into doom. That sounds like a terrible scavenger hunt. So when we look at this play field. Okay, let's start with the backlash. Hold on. Go back one. I got to say one thing. So their service number, their 800 number, 1-800-858-FLIP. I love that. It's a good one. What's the stern one? um kickers yeah that's i've spent i believe it's been that since data east it's like 1-800 kickers so the back glass is awesome yeah it's it's so good and there's like this castle it's very like mysterious yeah right it's got cool colors and stuff and then there's like this sign outside of it almost like a almost like a like this way for a hamburger off the highway sign and it says scavenger hunt inside it's like that doesn't look very safe but it it kind of goes off the rails art wise when we look at the play field right like they're going for a you're inside of a castle look but it it's so it's like cobblestones or something right is that what that looks like sure with a big parchment right in the middle Yeah, and it just looks terrible. Ooh, strong take. The world under glass. You don't like cobblestone with yellow and pink? It just looks rough. It looks rough. I get it. I mean, it looks like what it should look like if you're in an old medieval sand castle, but it's just not pleasing to the eye. They should have gone with something that's not brown. How does it play? You've played this game. Usually it plays, I mean, the games I've played of theirs usually played long. Yeah, yeah, it's a bit of an easier go than most. Michael Gottlieb told IPDB he has no memory of production numbers for Alvin G, but when asked if 500 was the number for Mystery Castle, he felt it sounded right, saying, I know we did not build many. And I think some of it, the reason you didn't build many was just that it just isn't as pleasing, You play the game with your eye first, and that's something that's been repeated over and over and over again. But it's got the side ramp shots, so that's really cool. It's got some awesome plastic ramps. I think it shoots really well. I've only ever seen it played on a stream. And it has dancing skeletons. Yeah, so everybody loves dancing skeletons. That's always good, yes. What was that old was it that old Looney Tunes with the dancing skeletons Wasn that a Looney Tunes thing Somehow dancing skeleton seems like a very Gottlieb thing Yeah it totally does doesn it Yeah it right up there It's kind of fun, right? It's not taking itself too seriously. It doesn't sell too many units. But the next one... So what kind of games sold really well in Alvin Gottlieb's time? Western themes. And gambling and poker. We want to go with the same thing. Maybe we can get back to where Al's Garage Band was. Maybe we can get back to the sales numbers that we had with the football game. That's when we get into pistol poker. This is November of 93. There's only 200 units. Willie Welch and Michael Gottlieb on design. Wally Welch. Sorry, Wally Welch. Dan Hughes, Len Vadin on mechanics. The Dots by Versina Jordan. Jordan, sound and music, Kyle Johnson again, and Riemann Merchant on the software. Now this, Pistol Poker, this is probably the one I think that, I've seen a lot of images of this game. I've never played it, but for some reason I see it a lot. And I think it's because it's such a cool art package. It's so bright. It's so yellow. And it's very like, it's Western theme. There's nothing else to say. Take a look at the flyer, Ron. What do you think of this one? Hey, partner, there's a new player in town. You don't know his name, but you know his game. Pistol Poker, Alvin G and Co. Hey, partner, that pinball earning's been leaving you flat. Alvin G takes pinball to the next level. Pistol Poker, the deal you've all been waiting for. Well, I like this true multi-level play as opposed to fake multi-level play. innovative backbox card matrix yeah they have a whole half of the backbox that the trans light is a grid of cards five different jackpots not just one over a dozen bonus rounds oh this would hurt country western fame and music oh the what was the other game that had country music uh roadshow has a terrible seller but it's a great game i love that game free parts kit it's not terrible it's all thousands there's tons of them out there free parts kit included included what like what parts it's just like the goodie bag or are there parts that are going to go bad so we've included them free yeah exactly you got like a like a bunch of like coils and stuff so it has an upper play field like a raised upper play field yeah a second play field yes which is something we hadn't really seen for a long time who was the last one that had that i mean like an actual upper play field right like like you got twilight zone but that wasn't really like an actual upper play field it was sort of like that weird sure it is you can play it so shadow but it doesn't have a flipper on it it doesn't have a uh shadow's got a kicker thing yeah but it's not a flipper it's it's like a it's like a it's like a thing and shadow is actually after so i guess i I shouldn't even say that. I don't know. Black Knight 2000. It harkens back to kind of that era, right? The Black Knight kind of thing. There's probably an early 80s Gottlieb that has it, and people are shouting us right now, you idiot! Like Gladiator, I think. Doesn't Gladiator have something like that? I don't remember. Doesn't that have the pit? Doesn't that have the pit thing where it's like the... It doesn't matter. We're just rambling now. It's unique. It's cool. I like the art package, although it is very yellow. it's it's it's like a it's like a shootout in a in a bar it's got it's got loops and vertical up kicker things and pop bumpers it's cool it's a cool one this is worth uh this is worth the stop and flip i think if you see one floating around you have not played this one right no i played it you play this one what did you think it was fine yeah okay i played it at the I give him a shout. The Sanctum in Connecticut, they had one of these. They had a pistol poker. Very cool. Do you remember what the code was like? Like what the objective was? Like a lot of, well, I don't, I'm not the best with rules, and I don't remember what you were supposed to do. And I'm also looking at Gladiator, and it does not have an upper play field, so I was wrong. What's the one that's got the weird pit thing in the top corner of that Gottlieb? The pit thing? Yeah, like you would shoot the ball up, and it would go around. skill shot where it goes around a circle over and over yeah that's um it's what is that it's it's it's at the rochester pinball collective you think i would remember it like the whole game is basically the skill shot but yes did you know fred young did voice characterizations on this game too yeah yeah so who do we need to do voices i don't know what's fred doing i don't know he's napping over there great the other cool thing is in the art there's a bunch of easter eggs and we all love Easter eggs and pinball. That's like, that is the be all and end all for pinball. The pistol poker game. So, so you'll see El Gustano or the worm right on the wanted poster. And that's actually Wally Welch, who is the, uh, one of the designers. That's pretty cool. You've got, uh, the piano player is Kyle Johnson. He's the music and sound designer. and Dan Hughes is at the card table tipping his hat to the barmaid. And they're all included there. One thing that I do find interesting about this art package, you've got this cowboy on the back glass and he's all over the place. He doesn't have a mustache. Oh, God. So do you think that's a missed opportunity? Why? So it looks like Roger Sharp? Yeah, do you think that they lost sales because they didn't have a mustache? He doesn't have a mustache. Is that why 8-Ball Deluxe sold so well? Because the guy had a mustache. Yeah, exactly. The only reason. So let's move on. That's a cool game. That's a good one. Now let's get into my favorite game. Oh, really? From Alvin G and Co. Okay, wait a minute. It says the category. That cannot be the actual category. This is the actual category of this. We're talking about Punchy the Clown. This is the horrifically terrifying carnival theme. What? No. and it's from September of 1993. So you can see that we have built a bunch of different games and a lot of games through like 92, 93. It's impressive. It only sells 103 games. So if you see one of these, it's particularly rare. It's designed by Jim Shurd and Michael Gottlieb. Andy G. Reynolds did the art. Kyle Johnson on music and sound and Riemann Merchant on software. So what is this theme that I say here? This horrifically terrifying carnival theme. That's what it is. It's got a clown and he's punchy. It's a mini pin. It's a small pinball machine. It is not a full-size pinball machine. It's more of a redemption game thing. It's not as long or as wide. I think it's short, too. Isn't it like for kids? Yeah. Punchy holds your ticket to a carnival of earnings. The clown does look a little disturbing. It's terrifyingly disturbing. It's obviously designed to be cute. I'm just looking at the picture now. He's on the back glass and he's on the play field. And he's got these big, bright blue eyes and this big smile. Are you unhappy? Are your earnings down? You need to get Punchy the Clown. Adjustable leg height for both children and adults. The ticket dispenser is included. All ticket levels operator adjustable. State of the art electronics. full bookkeeping and diagnostics adjustable to normal pinball play all in a mini pin trademarked configuration boost your earnings with punchy the clown 195 pounds yes it is much lighter yeah it's it's like you can see what's going on here okay so williams is bally williams is basically eating everything in that sort of 91 to 92, 93 era, right? They are selling a billion pinball machines. You know, you have the Adams family in there. You got like Twilight Zone. You got Terminator 2. You've got Data East, who's kind of picking up the other stuff. Gottlieb doing their thing. And then you've got kind of Alvin G, this startup who's just trying to bust in. and they've tried traditional pins, they've tried unusual pins, and they've done fairly well. Now you can see that they're starting to adjust what they're actually doing. Now they're, I had mentioned they were doing or considering redemption games a few minutes ago. Well, now they're doing the same thing, right? This Punchy the Clown is basically a redemption game kind of thing, right? But it's pinball, right? It's got some drop targets. I was looking at the flyer. Their phone numbers are all 708 area code, which is Chicago, but the sales one is 314, which is St. Louis. That's interesting. I wonder if their sales department was in St. Louis. So what's – like it's got – it looks like – it's a pinball machine, right? It's just small. Yeah. I have played this before. I played this when they had this at a show and they had it on the shorter legs. So you had to play it on your knees? Yes, exactly. That's why I remember it. it's it's fun right like it's it's a bit creepy but it's not like it's goofy it looks it's more goofy than creepy so that the other uh got leaves back in the day like those 80b ones wasn't there an 80b game that was like a carnival one and it was sheer terror this one's just eyebrows that jutted out maybe it would look scary like he's he's very endearing and he's getting a pie thrown at him which is kind of fun and he's playing like an organ terribly the thing is in 1993 were were clowns evil yet no so around i want to say around 91 i was like a clown for halloween okay so that means they weren't scary yet what was it it when that came out that the tv the tv miniseries does that made him evil no when did clowns become evil i mean killer class from outer space i think was before this Yes, that's true. But I think I think that that didn't happen. Clowns didn't become ultra creepy until I sort of became more of like an adult where then when you look back at the art style of all of these things and they're trying to be really cute and kitty and art itself has just moved on to be different. now when you look at it you're kind of like they try to make it maybe too realistic or too cheerful or something and it just it it just doesn't sit right it kind of makes me sad i mean clowns used to be about fun and then at some point they just like if you're a clown like oh you must be like a killer clown you're evil or something let's bring clowns back right yes let's make clowns fun again what does michael say about this game well he says i got up one morning and thought, wouldn't it be fun to do like a mushroom world type thing? The play field be the face of a clown. I brought that to the guys and they essentially drew it up as I envisioned it. It was fun coming up with those ideas. The problem with Punchy the Clown is it was a horrible redemption machine because it required skill. Redemption machines are all about taking your quarters quickly as possible and with as little amount of skill as possible. I made the mistake of wanting to offer the consumer, the player, some level of entertainment value. Oh, see, that's an interesting insight into kitty gambling right those redemption games basically designed to take your money really quickly give you zero satisfaction or quick satisfaction for a second we haven't talked about that in our episodes or anything about that right we've always just kind of joked about it but it's interesting to know that there's a completely different philosophy in stealing a quarter there than there is on the pinball or arcade version do you think alvin g came too late into pinball yeah they come in around the high speed era i think that would have gave them that would have gave them you know four or five more years okay before they probably would have went under like everyone else did so they would they would have had more games i think the problem was timing i think that they came in like right at that peak like right at the top of of the mountain and the only place that they had to go was kind of trending downward and you could see by like 96 oh oh yeah everybody was struggling and then by 2000 well then 96 godly went bye-bye three years earlier they probably would have generated enough sales to kind of propel them a little further and they probably would have survived maybe until 2000 what is my what are michael's thoughts on the death of alvin g and co michael says we had a lot of challenges things didn't go exactly as we had planned we moved from soccer ball into regular pinball machines for a very short period at that point the industry had really slowed down a lot there was a lot of inventory out there and not enough buyers for all the games that distributors had sitting in inventory when you're the last man in the lowest man on the totem pole you're the first one that gets nicked good point if you've got the ability to purchase a hundred pinball machines you're probably purchasing what like 60 bally williams games and you're purchasing 40 data east games like why would you take a gamble on another new company you know what i mean i get what he means there and then when you're sort of the newest person that you try to build relationships they already have relationships and then things trend down i don't know if there's anything you could do the other thing that was uh touched on that i read a couple of times in some of the uh the sources that i saw was that williams really pushed a lot of distributor control So they had a lot of power over their distributors on requirements to purchase number of units. What happened if you didn't purchase those units? They would go to your competition. It's hard for Alvin G to break in when you're dealing with that. In the end, when they decided to close Alvin G, that must have been an absolute nightmare. trying to get rid of all these parts, clearing out all this stuff. It must be emotionally difficult because you really, I think, tried hard. And I think it would be a difficult go realizing that, you know, geez, we had something special, right? We had a good board set. We had good technology. We had a good philosophy. It just didn't work out. It's always got to be tough. Something you started dies like that. So where did Michael Gottlieb go after Alvin G started to close its doors? He went to Joe Dolan and Roger Sharp and got hired at Williams in April of 1994. So that means the video we referenced, the tour, was from Expo. It's out of October 93. So by April of 94, Michael was working at Williams. Yeah, they were pretty much on the way down after that. Well, they were probably on their way down at the beginning. Yeah, that was like six months later after that video. Michael Gottlieb would eventually work at Midway Games in 1994, where he would produce Xbox and PlayStation games. So that's pretty cool. I bet you we've played, I don't know you, but me, I've probably played some Midway Games that Michael worked on. In 2009, when he moved over to Bally Technologies Gaming Division, that's their slots area, he was a senior director of game development. And then he would bounce around with various independent game developers and is currently, or at the time when I wrote this episode, senior VP of JVL, which is a slot engineering and gaming firm. Alvin Gottlieb was put into the Pinball Expo Hall of Fame in 2007. I was there. Yes. When were you inducted into the Pinball Expo Hall of Fame? I have not been inducted into the Pinball Expo Hall of Fame. Okay, well, we're working on that. So let's get Ron into the Pinball Expo Hall of Fame. That's going to be mostly for his other podcast, the Slam Tilt podcast. Yeah, I think we'll have the Pinball Podcasters Hall of Fame, and I'll just create it myself and induct myself. Oh, yeah, the pinball community really loves awards. Well, you know, in 2023, Michael Gottlieb inducted Alvin and to the American Amusement Machine Association Hall of Fame, the AAMA. So that's part two of Meet the Gottliebs. Well, we forgot Michael's last comment. You're in the business because it's what you want to do. When you have a passion for something, you'll put up with a lot. Now, in retrospect, I'm a little bit older and I think back, oh, my Lord, I was a monkey out there dancing for peanuts, but I loved it. I loved every minute of it. The real question is, would I do it all over again? The answer is absolutely. Yes, because there were some of the best times of my life and the most fun I ever had. Michael Gottlieb, he just must be just the most positive, nice person. Just reading that quote makes me just like want to hug him. I just want to be like, oh, Michael Gottlieb. Because you can tell he was on a shoestring budget. He was flying everywhere. It was stressful. It was terrible. But man, would he do it again? Absolutely. How awesome is that? Most people, when they look back at a time like that, would be like, oh, there's no way I would ever do that again. It was too much stress. What's the legacy of the Gottlieb family? It is quite big. Basically from the 30s all the way up to the 90s. It makes me so melancholy that Gottlieb just went the way it did. Like it just it's to this day, it still makes me sad. Like, you know, Williams and Bally Williams kind of go in the way it did is, you know, sucks. But the whole Gottlieb thing, I'm just so invested in the growth that they had with pinball and the creation and an actual family and stuff like that. I think their legacy can't be understated. From a self-made man who was squeaky tight with his dollars to his workaholic son to his positive and exciting grandson, I think the Gottlieb legacy is pretty amazing. Do you have any last words? Beautiful. No, no, no. End scene. I can't follow that. Stewie, you gotta do your thing Oh, I still have to do this but not on the pinball network anymore I thought that meant I didn't have to do this, whatever As always, you can send your comments, questions connections and concerns to savablechronicles at gmail.com We look forward to all your messages and we read every one. Please subscribe to us on your favorite podcatcher Turn on automatic download so you don't miss a single episode Remember to leave a five-star review. That way more people can find us. Join us on Patreon to support the show. Becoming a pro crony is the perfect way to say thanks. And it starts at $3 a month. Want to get early access to episodes before anyone else? Have a strange love for stickers? Do you know what Discord is? Interested in having your comments and questions take priority in our episodes? Jump on there as a $6 a month premium crony. what all the other perks in a t-shirt after three months join us at 20 a month as an elitist crony if you just want a shirt i understand swing on over to silverwallswag.com and pick up silverwall chronicles t-shirt especially the ones with ron's name first I would be interested to see... What, Raymond's working? Yeah, I want to know what he's on. But why would he leave? Because... Why would you leave Stern? Stern is like the... I guarantee you, because he could be the man as their main pinball guy. Yeah, okay. Well, Alvin says, I was born into the industry as a child. No, yeah, as a child. That made no sense. Of course he was born as a child Yes Well Alvin says Well Alvin says I was born in the industry I was born in the industry Let me try again Man this is hard It's okay I understand Well we forgot Michael's last comment Okay Michael says you're in the business because it's what you do No Remember to leave us a five star review That way You're going to scroll up a little I want to keep it flowing come on you've made it on time for the McDonald's breakfast menu you think to yourself finally I can start my day but what if breakfast could be even more perfect with the hot honey sausage egg biscuit it finally is go to McDonald's and get it while you can support is available 24-7 with VerboCare we're here day or night ready whenever you need help Because a great trip starts with the right support.