TOPCast 55: Jon Norris

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Flash Topcast.

Today on Topcast I'd like to welcome another pinball game designer, this gentleman worked

on his

for them too. So we're going to give John a call right now on the phone.

Hello?

John, it's Clay. Okay, are you ready?

Yeah, I'm ready. Okay, well, John, you know, you've kind of had a long history in pinball

and I see you've been, you've kind of started out as a collector first before you became

a designer. What should tell me how you got into pinball? You know, your first memories

of it and how you ultimately got to be coming a designer?

Well, that's kind of a long story, but I'll go at the beginning.

The first time I remember playing pinball was we, I was with my family and we were in Santa Barbara.

It's kind of like a coastal town here that has four big people on vacation and things.

Then they had an arcade and where I lived, the pinball is illegal in a lot of territories

in California, but back when I was growing up, so you know, we came back to a lot of places

where it was illegal, but I just didn't have to go. So basically, as I was in, I didn't have pinball.

And there was an arcade and I was, there was like a flea market downstairs and arcade upstairs.

The family was in this flea market and I ventured upstairs and discovered a whole room full of pinball machines.

And all that I can remember was the first game I played was red and that it must have been a manual lip

because I remember that I got two balls. So like when you looked at the ball,

there were two balls into the runway instead of one.

And that would probably maybe nine or ten years old up the time.

And then many years went by, to that first black line I was playing, but then many years went by

and my very first job I had when I was basically, it had just graduated high school.

I was working for a bicycle shop and an operator came by and put in a candy machine.

And then he asked the owner of the bike shop if he wouldn't mind a pinball machine too

because there was a little area where the candy machine was and there was plenty of room to put another game.

Of course the owner said, you know, when you heard that was 50-50 split and all that good stuff, he said go ahead and put it in.

And that game was a sweet heart.

And that was basically the game I was working there.

You know, you just start playing it every day and then after a while, you know, I got to like pinball and would go out at that point

and go and search them out and there were places like nature golf courses and other places.

This would be the early 70s that had pinball machines.

So you mean they put a 1963 Gottlieb sweetheart in in the 70s?

So it kind of an older game for that time.

That the paint was so worn off, you couldn't read it and that the lighting surf, basically that was the all-over special lighting surf.

You couldn't read what it would light it.

We always wondered what would light it.

And all of a sudden one day we got that all-over special lit and that light came on and every rollover gave a replay.

So that was this operator was getting all of his menus worth out of it at that time a 10-year-old game.

And of course, you know, if you look nowadays, you see a lot of games that came to roll the roll or being operated.

So that was it.

And then the owner of the bike shop saw that we were putting all our money into this machine and he went down to Sierra Robinson and bought a golf stream.

So he basically kicked out the operator pinball and put it in his own.

And that was kind of when I got started to get good at pinball.

It was like, you know, it could basically be for free.

And he would just open the door and rack of credits whenever it was slow and we would put a pinball.

And then when I was, you know, at the time I was going to college and I started playing pinball in ball analyses.

One of my favorite locations was Honeyton Lane, Detaining to Beach, which in colonial lanes in Costa Mesa, which were no longer there.

And then when I transferred to the university, they had a student union there.

At this point, these were late 70s.

And they had a mix of election mechanicals and that's in the first all state games that are coming out.

And at that point, I decided to start collecting games.

And I had a small collection.

I met Sam Harvey. It must have been 78.

Or so when I met Sam and at the time he only had a dozen games.

And I was just starting a collection and I played Sam's games and like slick chick movies.

I never played before.

And so him and Russ were on the lookout to get me a slick chick.

And it was kind of this grass-bubble collecting.

It was very grass roots where there were only a few people who knew each other.

And there were no conventions.

And basically anything that was organized back in those days.

And...

Well, now wait. How did you find Russ Jensen and Sam Harvey?

You know, two guys are like very early on were collectors.

How did you find these guys?

With Sam and Russ, there was a magazine called the amusement review that Jim Tolbert put out.

And it would probably be about 78.

And he was just trying to start a magazine and somehow Russ and Sam and me all found out about this magazine.

And we all...

I think I put an ad in or something one at Old Pinball machines.

And that's something that one point.

Remember Russ was calling me and we were talking...

We talked on the phone for a while and then later on he called me,

all those nilic collector near you.

His name is Sam. He gave me Sam's number.

And I called Sam and came over and visited him.

And in the house he still lives in.

And that's how I met those guys.

And there were no shows yet.

And then there was the fun fair where we went to and we met more people.

And you know, the fun fairs, while those...

Lex Cogelang shows that's basically two box slot machines.

But there are some pinballs.

And so we went to that show.

And this would probably be late 70s or early 80s.

And we had a lot of fun show every year.

And then in the...

I think it was 85.

Because we knew Rob Burke also,

because I was talking on the phone sometimes.

And then he was talking to a pinball expo.

Wait, wait, wait, wait.

Before we talk about Rob Burke and the pinball expo.

Something I've always kind of wondered was,

what was the population of games?

I find that on west of the Mississippi,

pinballs seem to be much more rare than on the Midwest and the East Coast.

Did you have any...

I mean, did you have to go long and hard to find games for sale or games to play in California?

Yes, and at that time I did,

because I was trying to start a collection.

And for example, one of my early wood rails was a dragon egg.

And it was up in Portland, Oregon,

and then rust found out about the game.

And I drove all...

It just from Los Angeles.

I drove all the way up to Portland, Oregon,

which is probably a thousand miles each way just to get the game.

Wow.

And you know, there was also a newspaper,

all those newspapers that people compared free ads in called the recycler,

that you would basically...

You would know that they're really pinball collectors competing,

so you would just look for any pinballs for sale in the recycler.

And basically call and go over and look at the games,

because a lot of times Sam and I would go out from ads in the recycler.

And sometimes we would find two or three ads and go on a Sunday or Saturday game hunt

to look up on these games with that in the recycler.

And then as years went on,

and the hobby became more established,

then that became tough,

because you had to get the recycler early and call before the other collector call.

But in the early years there wasn't really that stress to do that,

because there was no one else looking for games.

Now how did you know about...

You started playing in the metal rail era,

in the games from the 60s.

How did you know about wood rails?

I mean a lot of people don't...

I taught too.

They've never even seen a wood rail before.

And what type of prices were you paying back then too?

Well, Sam basically told me about him,

because he had been a player since the basically late 50s.

And then I was also working part-time for a route operator.

Doing his repairs.

And my first wood rail was at one of the bars

where we had a pool table work,

where I don't know,

because I was his employee,

but where the operator had a pool table cigarette machine,

jukebox, and penball machine.

The bar made there, you know, new diagnostics games,

and she asked me one day what this old game was worth.

It was a got laid plain bill.

And I had no idea.

And she said that, you know,

if you want it, you can pay $100.

You know, give me $100 and come get it.

So I went and picked up the twin bill,

and I'd really never played wood rail before that.

And I just...

It was just a wonderful game.

I just fell in love with that game.

And at that point I started to look for wood rails.

Well, twin bill is actually

probably one of the better single player wood rails

from the 1950s, certainly from the mid-50s.

It's a great game.

It is a great game.

And I paid $100 for that game.

I think that in the late 70s and through the 80s,

I paid typically between $100 and $300 for each wood rail.

And at the time,

because this was by when after I got rid of the Chicago,

where there are many more wood rails,

and I would go to the Chicago Land Show.

I'm Friday morning when the trucks came in.

You know, all these guys had, you know,

were there sort of booths selling,

two boxes, slot machines,

and more, you know, non-pinball.

And everyone's wanted to have a pinball with them,

and they would basically just want you to...

They wouldn't even want to bring it inside.

They just wouldn't sell out of the back of their truck.

And at the early years, like 86 or 87,

there were no other collectors there.

So I would get there, and I would have to be buying,

I think, one stud one.

So I must have bought 8 or 10 games.

You know, because no one else wanted them.

Of course, in later years,

by the time you got into the 90s,

in the pinball exit,

I had established,

and there were more collectors,

than it was a more difficult.

The find them,

because there were a lot of other people looking for them at the same time.

But, I think that, you know,

I was paying,

rarely, rarely, over $500 for a wood rail.

And at that time,

they had to be, you know,

just a mint game.

You know, these are the years before eBay,

because when I see, when I sold my collection,

I was forced to sell my collection.

I was basically selling it for what I,

my collection for what I paid for the games,

because I hadn't appreciated it.

And the poetic irony was,

just three or four years later,

when eBay came out,

and all of a sudden,

everybody, everybody could,

the whole country could bid on the games,

you know, the prices doubled and tripled.

We're five times now,

and they were when I sold them,

just 10 years ago.

What was your attraction to the wood rails,

opposed to, you know,

wedge heads or, or, or, or,

or even solid state games?

Well, I always liked the game rules,

because the, um,

the designer didn't have a lot of budget to work with,

so he had to make a fun to play a game,

and the game rules part of it.

Now, it was kind of always a game rule,

specialists,

there were almost like my things to study, you know,

they were, these were really cool.

Like, he did that with his two or three relays, you know.

And the, um,

well, in the wedge heads were basically the same.

I like the wedge heads just as much.

I mean, you know, I would say from 1951

through the last wedge head,

there were just a lot of really good games,

in the single player games I like,

because they were jackpot games,

so that, you know,

when you got the special lit,

you could, you know, in five or ten games, you know,

it was kind of the,

the skill, the luck ratio,

was such that, that the designers could put those features in the game,

because the good players couldn't dominate the game.

You didn't have ball time of two or three minutes of ball.

You had game, you had,

you had ball time of 30 to 40 seconds,

and a lot of, a lot of luck factor,

whether you lost the ball or not,

with those ingredients,

you could make a game,

or when you lit the special,

if they lit the rest of the game,

and you could win, you know,

basically get the game up to the credit limit.

Now, what about, what about Williams and Balli games?

How did you, how did you, how did you like those or dislike those?

Well, some, some, I, mostly like Gottliebes.

You know, I played everybody's games,

and, you know, Williams had some really, really good games too.

And Balli, of course, Balli's 50s games,

which are, you know, I had never really played the ball to pop in our circle,

so any of those, you know,

the last 10 to 15 years,

because they just, I just never saw any.

But Williams games, you know,

they're all, all the companies,

even Balli games, you know, going into the 70s

and, and forward,

made, made a lot of really good games too.

But, you know, I was just, I guess,

it was just, you know,

the first level was always they, they got the games,

and, that's only a collection centered around the Gottlieb games,

but I also have a lot of the great Williams games like Four Roses,

and, and there were some really good games like Hotline and Things.

I mean, they made some really terrific games in the, you know,

in the Electro Mechanical Era, you know,

Dolphs play Meals, the game that really got me,

that, you know, that I played a lot,

and they had the interesting combination of the replay and add-able

in one game.

I mean, you know, it was,

the whole stream was a game where you could,

it was in Ball Inplay, it was Balls 2 Play,

it was starting off a five ball to play,

and some of the features awarded you, you know,

additional balls, and some of the features awarded you replays.

So, you could get up to, you know,

it was like an add-able, you could keep the game going indefinitely,

but you could also win replays, do another things.

So, that was an interesting combination that,

at the time, I didn't know how cool a novel was looking back,

or only a few games that were ahead of that feature.

Now, back to, oh, I forgot to ask you,

you said you went to college,

where did you go to school and what you graduated in,

and out of college, were you working to be able to afford

to buy these games?

I went to Cal State Fullerton,

and I graduated in 81 with a bachelor's degree in art.

I went with a photo and design emphasis.

And then I had a friend in Northern Cal,

I was living in Southern California at the time,

and I had, you know, I just loved Pinball,

and I wanted to get it in the Pinball industry at the time,

Atari was making Pinball games,

and I had a friend who worked for Atari,

and he said that there's a possibility that I could get,

you know, get a job there,

because I just had a school at the time,

I guess, that Atari was having really good sales with,

you know, their games.

So, I basically moved up there to try to get into Atari,

and I could never get in,

but I ended up getting a job looking for undrived laboratories

as a report writer.

So, that's when I started, you know,

making up money with a real job,

to be able to start to get a small collection,

and to say I really wasn't.

I had a pretty small collection up until I was worked for Gottlieb,

and I think when I moved to Chicago,

I probably brought about 10 games with me to Chicago.

I think I had to sell about 10 games at the time,

or maybe 15 or 20 games out of my mini-story in California,

because the deal with when I was hired by Gottlieb

is that they would pay for my move by a writer truck,

so they would reimburse me for the rental of the writer truck,

so I basically went down and rented the biggest truck

I could legally drive,

and loaded as many games that I could into it,

and had to sell the rest.

Now, did you go to the first pin-robberk pinball expo in 1985?

Yes, I did.

And how did you find out about that?

I got the job with Gottlieb.

Oh, okay, well, explain.

Well, I was working at Under Artist Laboratory,

so I was a big pinball nut and a pinball,

and I decided to make a game,

make a custom pinball machine,

and I made a game,

and actually had a location,

and for a while,

and then I took pictures of it,

and I think I had a video-cap of it or something,

and then I made a little resume,

and made a lot of playfield layouts,

and I think what I did was,

and I went to Chicago to the first pinball expo,

knowing that this is my first time

to really be able to give resumes to the pinball companies.

I took a day to do it,

and I gave one resume to each pinball company at the time.

I think there were, I think, five at the time,

five pinball companies that were at the pinball expo,

that there were Williams, Valley, Gottlieb,

Game Plan, and...

Stern, maybe?

No, Stern has already liquidated.

Maybe it was just those four.

I remember I brought five resumes with me,

but maybe I brought one back,

and didn't get it out.

And this would be, you know, pinball expo is always in the fall.

You know, I was just, you know,

I'd young kid and would love to get into pinball design,

and then that really didn't think I'd ever hear back

from any of these companies,

so my plan at the time was to build,

but I called it emulator,

or the pinball cabinet,

where there were plugs in the cabinet,

so that I could make a pinball playfield

and screw the parts on,

and then plug each of the part like a slipper

and a pop-up in the same shots into his board,

so I could experiment with all these different playfield layouts,

and I was going to build this action emulator

and actually ship it to Chicago,

and get a booth,

and have this thing with all these different playfields,

and show how I could plug one playfield in,

and you know, two minutes,

or change playfields over,

and that's how I can have like three playfields with me.

But as I was just getting started on that project,

I got a call from Gil Pollock,

and he asked me,

he had my resume,

and he asked me if I knew how to program on Gilgames.

He needed a sound programmer,

and I said, no, I go,

I really don't know how to do that I could learn,

but at the time I would obviously be willing to go there and learn,

but they weren't really looking for a trainee,

they were looking for someone who could come up and be productive.

But then I said to him,

I'm always willing to come in as a junior designer,

and pinball designer.

And then we talked for a while,

and just, you know, whatever,

and then that probably was a month or two after pinball expo,

and then in May of that year,

which would be 86,

because pinball expo would have been like October,

or probably October, or November of 85,

and then the next year,

in February,

or still I got the call from Gil about the sound programmer job,

which I didn't qualify for,

but then probably late April,

I get the call from Gil,

and saying that, you know, they're doing well,

and they'd like to bring me the fly me to Chicago for an interview.

Wait, wait, wait.

When the game used to that,

you designed your own game,

and were operating it, was it a lecture mechanical,

or was it solid state?

It was a hybrid.

It was a solid state.

So I used iron stars,

but I used to, you know,

to convert over into Tour de France,

which is the game I made.

But then there were some features that I wanted to add

that I didn't know how to program or do that,

so I put stuff switches

and realize things in that,

and that would be a lecture mechanical circuit,

and that would be a hybrid of a two.

So basically, it was a step switch

that every time you hit a target,

it would advance the light

on the flight field insert,

when it got to the end,

a special light,

and then whenever you hit it,

at that point,

the relay, that click,

would just close the switch to the ad credit,

to an ad credit,

like coin slot switch.

So I basically kind of was kind of just made a hybrid,

and I think at that game had the first,

it was the first game to ever have music,

because this is like,

copy,

this is novelty,

what they did in the video games they had,

like an 8 track,

and then whenever the game was on,

it would play music.

And no pinball had done that.

They had like flash,

where you just played a sound,

that got louder and louder or higher and higher,

and it would play music.

So I did a light,

and it was a boom box,

and I got one of those endless cassettes,

a six minutes long,

and I recorded the MacBooks to the France,

in that whatever,

the flip or enable relay was on,

it would turn the boom box on.

Right. The reason why I asked that,

is that, you know,

you thought maybe you had to do some programming,

and that would have made some decision

at the Gottlieb job.

Now, I,

I didn't, I basically didn't know any programming,

I knew pinball real well,

and I loved pinball,

and I was enthusiastic,

and I think that probably more or less,

what, you know, weighed their decision.

I was all I bought in as a junior designer,

I was basically just working on other designers,

and I was working on other projects for the first year or two.

I made a couple of my own games,

but they were never, ever really considered

to go into production,

so I was still learning,

you know, how to make a game that was,

a play field that was manufacturable,

it's one thing to have a play field layout in your head,

and then the other thing for it to go down the assembly line.

So I was basically the first year and a half,

or so I was just learning, you know,

I would stand at a play,

designing John Ferdot,

and Gil Kamiko, or the designers,

and I would work on their, on their games,

help build them, help wire them,

and then basically just learn.

So that's why you didn't, you know,

I went to work there in 86,

but I, you didn't see a game for, you know,

until I think of 88 when Diamond Light came out.

So,

and how did you get that,

how did they, uh,

promote you to have in your own game,

because Diamond Light, you worked on by yourself, right?

No, there wasn't any other designer that helped you.

Right, it was my first, it was my first game that I did myself,

because I would basically, you know,

at the time of year working on other designers' games,

there's a lot of holes in time,

like you have to weed on something,

then I can go back and work on my game,

and then, I put the prototype up,

and, uh,

a white wood that I built,

and, uh,

and,

it was kind of, you know,

people liked it, it was kind of fun to shoot.

It was a fun to shoot a playpeel,

and, you know,

it comes upon the game,

and we're going to make that game.

And, uh,

and at the time,

Ray had Ray Cancer,

at his first game too,

and, um,

you know,

so we were basically,

at that time,

John Trudeau had done everything,

and of course,

we also had,

when we were на that time,

you know,

been working on the game and Chopin was my first game.

I know I'm fine and I would confidently say,

this is a great idea,

talk to the back executives of the show Brunner were waiting

it wasn't really a great idea,

but, see,

it was necessary to,

to make it look like a pulp,

and played games and things like that.

There,

no matter how funny the game was,

people would study,

they did game games

and some kind of,

of course,

programming. I had worked in the assembly language programming. I would make the basic program.

They didn't have any bells and bells, but it would kick the ball out of the hole and

score the points. Those lines jumped to sub-routines and sub-routines were on the operating system.

So you just called sub-routines from a library in the operating system. It really wasn't

complicated to make a game. The ball goes to the hall. It advances value and scores

points and kicks the ball out or whatever. The limitation I had was that you couldn't really

do anything. You couldn't put any really cool features in the game. That's why when my first

game came out, it had so many features. I had to wait and wait and wait to put these

features on a game because the system wasn't the earlier system wasn't capable of

putting a lot of those features on the game. Now you did diamond lady by yourself, but then

the next game, it looked like the next game you did was robber war and you did that with

John Trudeau. Now why did John help you on that game? Well John, robber war was a

John Trudeau game. He was his play field layout. You see what I would do in those days was

I would basically, if I did a game, I would do the play field and rules for a game.

I did both. The play field and rules. It's kind of like we write a song. You do the lyrics and the

music. But a lot of the other designers didn't really want to be bothered with writing the

rules. They would let me do rule steps for their games. That was basically all throughout

Godly. I would write the rules. Basically that frees the designer because the designer doesn't

have to do that. They can spend all their time doing the mechanicals and engineering and

getting ready for the assembly line and managing the project. I got the game designer

also project manager where I gave her a part of the rules. Even if I was working on my own

game, I would have a lot of time if you were working on the other designers, I would design

rules that would get other designers games. I would probably put more time and effort into

doing that rule set for their game. I would have won for my own game.

Now Diamond Lady sold about 2700 units. You must have been pretty proud of your

accomplishment. Yeah, I was. I fired call for Ants to love the game.

We sold a lot of games to France. At the time there were one of our main customers.

France was a really big hit over there. I was looking back at the game. The game was way too

hard for the average player. It took me a few games to learn to design games for the average

every day. Person just wanting to have fun for three or four minutes rather than try to design

games for our level players. I was good player and I was designing games to challenge me on some

of my early games. As the time went on, I learned to design games that would try to appeal

to beginners, medium levels and advanced players. When I looked back at Diamond Lady, that was

one difficult game. There were a couple things that I was allowed to do on that game.

Because it was my first game and I was told I had to do it a certain way. One was the kickback on the

drain. I wanted it to do like Williams did it or when you lit it, it would stay lit until the

player used it. I was overruled that it would time out once it was lit.

The player would have to keep trying to qualify it and that was the weakest part of that game

was that it should have stayed lit until the player used it and then would have to do something at

that point to try to rely it again. Maybe it would be more difficult the second time and

you could be more difficult for fair time and so on. But I was kind of overruled on that.

The other thing I wanted to do is I wanted to put a play more post in the game and they didn't want

to put the time and money into making molds and things to play more post because

they did not have a play more post than flipers. So I had to be creative and I put the drop

target there so the player got one saved. So the ball hit the drop target and it saved.

The drop target would go down. Now what did you just call it? A play more post?

You are talking about an up post between the flipers? Yes. Gotcha. Like a ball save.

Yeah, like Valley used a lot in the 70s. Right.

So Williams and Valley had it, but got it and never had it. I finally got it on Mario and

Dreddy which was my last game. I eventually got one but it took several years to get it.

Now it looks like you did bad girls after Diamond Lady and working on Robo War.

Tell me about that one. Bad girls was supposed to be kind of they wanted to remake

a big ball of the lucks. So a bad girl is kind of a ball of the lucks dish but it's different

and different rules and stuff. And as a matter of trivifery for bad girls is there

are 10 bad girls in this world with system 3 in it because that's the game system 3 was tested in.

Yeah, but it was a system 80B game, right?

System 80B game but there are 10 bad girls that we made that we sent all over

different places to have system 3 in it. So if somebody ever comes up with a system of 3 bad girls

they have themselves a rare game.

It's a matter of trivia. A trivia item.

Yeah, that's great. I love that stuff.

But that was another one of those early games for me. That was basically way too hard for the average player.

If I had the two over again I would have made it a little more user friendly and so on.

But that was a kind of brutal game. It had very short ball time.

We had a lot of features, a lot of specials and things.

It was probably one of the last balls that had a bunch of specials on it.

Yeah, it probably had three or four different specials.

Kind of like originally ball, the last had a lot of specials.

Just a few years later we lucky to have one special on it and there's usually in the outlane.

Right, yeah because basically specials were, you know, it's kind of like a consolation in the outlane.

It's going to drain anyways but you win a game.

Yeah, but that was basically kind of going into the 90s, the special.

In the reason why I've done a lot of thinking about it and the reason why is because the game's got had too much of a skill to luck.

Too much of a skill factor and the skill to luck ratio.

And if you had specials, good players to sit there and stay on the game all day.

You know, back then I'd got the 90s because the ball time had increased.

And there were less luck factors to make the ball drain and ball in and so on.

So you really couldn't put specials on games anymore because you'd get, you know, someone at the time like me on a game.

And then I could stay there all day and the operator, operator's not going to make any money.

But, you know, up until the mid 80s you could put specials on a game because the, you know, there wasn't.

The drains were a little bigger and the distance, the distance was a little further apart.

So there were other factors that could, that would, that would, you know, the players really lucky had that long winning streak where they can just win and win and win and win.

Although I go to my partner, we're eight on the left so I can stay on the ball the luck.

And I was, in fact, when I was a player, I could stay on the, on the left.

As long as I wanted to.

And a lot of times the operators in the places I used to go would ask me not to come in at certain hours, you know, that, that was a busy hour so they made the money.

And if I did, they'd let me stay on the game and in the off hours.

And there were a couple of times I remember when there was one point when I was playing a game and the owner of the arcade walked over and turned the game off and said that this game is out of order.

So it just came out of order.

It gave me a token or whatever for another game and not sure the moment I left that that game was turned back on.

But, you know, that that was the, you know, the going back to the specials is that if I were, if I were to ever get back into the pinball, I would try to design games and have shorter ball time and a little bit more luck in the luck of skill ratio and bring the special back.

And I'm going to give the players because I remember back when I was just learning that was that was the reason why I played pinball is because other things, you know, you play and when your game was over, it was over.

But with pinball, if you got, if you were really executed your shots or you got lucky, you could, you could win several games in a row before you had to put money in the game again.

Those days are gone. You could design the game so that you could bring that back instead of, instead of, you could still have, let's say you're trying to shoot for a four minute game time instead of having a three ball game where each ball is a minute and 10 seconds.

You could do a, go to a five ball game, reach ball is only 35 or 40 seconds. You still get the game time so you can value out of the money. At least that novice player gets to plunge five balls instead of three balls.

So there are a lot of thought that I put into if I ever get back into pinball and try to design games to attract the next generation of players rather than trying to get the pinball fixing how those to give it a big thumbs up.

Now, ex-Caliber was another John Trudeau game that you did the rules for, is that right?

Yes, ex-Caliber was, it was, that was the first game that they really came up to me and it was on November eight off sites junior at the time was running engineering.

And eight off came up to me near quitting time on a Friday and said that we were basically going to go with ex-Caliber and already had the artwork and everything was done at the time.

It just wasn't really fun to play, but I hadn't worked on the rules on the game. I had already done the rules on a couple of other games that were fun to play. So I think at the time they saw that I was proficient in developing rule sets.

And eight off came to me and said how do you like a challenge John and I go what's that he says. I'm Monday morning and I need a rule set for ex-Caliber and all you get to change is the pipeline screen.

So any of the other people, whenever you screen the play field there are four or five or six screens and each screen costs a lot of money to be remade.

So you can change the black line screen which is what most of the type bases written on the play field. But I can't change any of the inserts where they're at.

So I basically had to make new with what was already on that play field. I came up with a new rule set. So I basically worked out weekend and came up with a rule set and gave it to the programmer and that's what ex-Caliber ended up being.

How did that execute? How did that come out?

I thought it came out pretty good. It was the first game that really had a bonus round as a fact that it was, it was where the game rules changed.

Then the prior had a timed event where the task to complete a task. And then when it was over if you were able to accomplish it you got the jackpot and if you couldn't you didn't when it timed out.

Up to that it was multi a multi ball had that where you had to do your make your shots very multi ball. Once it went out of multi ball basically the rules went away.

That was the first time that we basically changed all the rules in the play field. So it was they had 15 seconds or whatever to accomplish the event in one ball play rather than multi ball.

And then that kind of led to a light scan reaction that was a mode based game.

Now before light scan reaction the last systematic B game you did was hot shots and that was your design right?

Yes, watch out for my design.

And we'll tell me about that.

Hot shots was going to be an aircraft carrier jet fighter game in that lot the ball launcher was going to be like the catapult that launches airplanes off an aircraft carrier.

And all of the drop targets there were I think 16 drop targets on that game were enemy planes.

So it was like this action adventure you know naval aircraft battle game.

And then as we are as we committed to the game.

Data East came out of torpedo alley.

Right. You know what's it's right then they came up to a real alley so they held a meeting and they say well got to go with this game but we need to change teams now.

Well as well these things were it was decided in a meeting what we're going to do we'll just go make it into because there are so many targets we'll do the hit shooting gallery game.

So that's how it ends up being hot shots.

And it's matter trivia.

The guy had a photographic backlash in the Carvel Barker the elderly gentleman with the gray hair is Louis Gianini who had been a god of employee for about 40 or 50 years.

So it's kind of you know not that's another trivia thing but that's kind of a neat thing about that game as it had Louis on there and he was basically the tool room guy who made all of our custom parts for us when the custom parts made by hand and he was a really excellent craftsman.

So it is you know skills are really appreciated in my first instance with Louis is first time I ever went down working on the in the tool room on the bandsaw or drill press or something is probably making a big probably on the drill press drilling inserts for a black play field.

Of course it makes all kinds of saw dust and wood chips all over the place and Louis we solid I was doing making this huge mess and he went and got a broom and a dust pan walked right lean them up against the machine I was using and walked away.

And it's suddenly telling me when you're done you can get your mess.

So no so hot shots the name stayed the same but the theme changed is that what you're saying.

No the name changed to and I don't remember I see a lot of times I will call a game something but the name will change and the theme will stay the same.

I have to look at my notes I don't remember what I called it the reason why it being hot shots was because I think Connie Mitchell we were in the meeting I think he came up with that name and everybody seemed to like it so that's what it is.

We needed a name and we need one today it was like we were under the gun and time crunch there to get this thing you know it was changing the artwork was to get a going.

That was one of the games that changed theme but there are a couple others that changed the theme too.

Either that I had nothing to say or had to do a license and then you license things so.

Now how about licensing how hard was it for you to actually get a license theme.

Well it took 80 East to force Williams and us into going into the license because you know a total camincal I've been doing that for a couple of years and it was obvious where you know I basically keep up with the Joneses or whatever is that we had to you know start considering license games.

In license games you know I have positive and negative about it license game you add the element of license approval and you take away some creativity in the theme when you make your own theme up and whatever you have control that is created people the pinball company have control over the whole thing.

Where if you were the license name like Mario not I mean I see from our brothers I mean we're sitting there having to every time that we're working on the artwork or whatever we're having to submit the artwork to the Nintendo and have them say yes or no change this.

So it kind of you know as long as the game makes more money and sells more that's the whole that's the whole thing you're trying to do and that's the whole reason for a license.

But I really didn't enjoy it as much as working on a unique theme.

I think I only worked on this like all the games near the end that got live all license games.

All those early games like diamond lady and and that girls and hot shops life camera action run license.

Yeah basically everything before super Mario brothers was on license.

Almost everything after it was licensed.

Right.

You know if you look at if you look at if you look at why I think why that was I had to kind of think of the ones that weren't.

There were very few that weren't license at that point.

Well let's go back to 1989 and after hot shots you did the first your first system three game which was lights camera action now I played that game today and I had never even seen that game before and that's a pretty cool game I gotta admit it's got the back box animation thing I thought was really well done.

Well the that game the one you play have the flood lights on it.

No this one did not have the flood lights it just had the you know the gun draws the guy the two guys in the back box that drew the guns.

Right well the game itself had that had the I wanted to do an animated I wanted to animate a backlash and I wanted something that would be very inexpensive because of the budget.

And I think that the reason why that's a.

I got an approves because the money to the cost to do those was very low can't remember.

At this point how I got those flood lights on because that was a really expensive unit my guess is one of our competitors must put something on the top of the back box.

Then the company allowed me to do it now did they all light act light camera action today all have these flood lights are just some of them all have the flood lights.

Okay because the one I played today didn't have it.

Well time unit so a lot of them over the years may have been lost or if the game was in a place where it had a low ceiling it couldn't fit that it would have been.

You know not installed and put it and it ended up being in the back of the person's warehouse so now what was the purpose of these lights.

Well the lights was to.

The artwork was designed with blue light in a red light and the artwork was designed so that most of the artwork was blue or red.

So whenever the lights went on the play field lights I forgot they went off or were damn I don't remember what we end up going with.

But it creates an ambience and what a neck it goes back to but I saw many years before that there was an arcade back when I was a player before I was in the industry it was in scott's valley it's called special effects.

They had a room set up with black light or some then there are some games that have black light artwork where you know the used to the fluorescent paint and I think valley black track and roller disco and there were several pinball games made that had fluorescent paint.

That would fluorescent black light when you put that work into a black light room and I also thought that was really cool but then I also know that if you use a red light on a red artwork or a blue light on a blue artwork that there are almost copper pen recolors and you can get a really weird effect if you go between the red and the blue.

I made a game called red alert that whenever you went to a red alert the light light to go on to create tension and climatic feeling whenever you are at that point in the game.

I basically resurrected it from that game because it was a movie and it was supposed to be kind of being the same as the climax so that's how that unit got on the game and I think that the unit was about 25 or 30 different games that's a lot of money.

Now this was the first system 3 game for you. Was system 3 a much better system to work from from my design point of view?

It was a different night and day. There were a lot of features that were on lights camera actually I could catch up feature and automatic skill that we just couldn't do before that because since maybe B couldn't do it.

When you say couldn't do it why couldn't system 80B do it?

I didn't have enough memory, I didn't have enough drivers. I think I had to do it more than memory. It was like automatic skill feature.

That program would require a lot of memory because they had to keep track of the player how the player was doing in the game to figure out what their skill level was in order to adjust the features for that player.

A lot of people don't talk about automatic skill because a lot of people don't know that it existed in those games.

What automatic skill does it looks at how the skill it's making decisions on what the skill level of the player is.

Whether they're looking both the players at the same time, whether they're catching the ball, showing that a NAS player.

What they're when you have little shots, how many flips are before they complete. There's all kinds of data that's being collected on the players.

The game is in doing so adjust the timers for the time to routes so that the beginner would have a lot more time to complete their tasks than a proficient player would.

I had no idea. I never even heard of that.

I don't know if all of them did, but that's the feature that I wanted to put in all along.

There were a lot of features I wanted to put in the games that nobody would ever, even when I was working for Sega, they never wanted to do.

One of the things was I wanted to design a system where the operator could buy the system, it would be a sub-middle system.

I wanted to go with other game companies and it would be a cell phone.

What the game would do is it would use this. You would have the cell phones in all your games.

You would program one game to call in at 12.30.

Every game would call in at 12.30.

You would have to go to the game and transfer data to a computer program.

You would get to work and get a report from all your games to see how much money they're making.

I always had all these ideas that could never get down, but at least I got the auto skill.

The other one was the catch-up feature where the lights camera actually had the catch-up feature.

It would look to see the auto skill as part of it if it would award the catch-up so that you could catch up with the other player's score.

I've heard of that feature in other games.

We used about it often in maybe a half a dozen games, but light cam action was the first game they had the catch-up feature.

These are features that I wanted to put in the earlier system, but I could put it in the system.

That's why you saw all these features suddenly appear on this one game because I had thought of them, but this is the first time we had to cast the implement button.

John Burris programed that game and he probably looked back at it. He probably hated me at the time because I thought he's featured a lot in this game.

What about that turning play field, that little mini turning play field? That was pretty cool.

John Borg came up with that. Also, if I light camera action, it has the ball through the air with those deflector plates.

John Borg at the time, before he was a designer, he was working as a mechanical engineer, a mechanical draft person or whatever, that got leave.

He basically would put these cool features on his own.