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Data East – Fake It Til Ya Make It

Silverball Chronicles·podcast_episode·2h 33m·analyzed·Jun 19, 2022
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.033

TL;DR

Data East history: Gary Stern's post-bankruptcy Pinstar conversion kits and path to founding modern Stern.

Summary

Silver Ball Chronicles explores Data East Pinball's origins following Stern Electronics' 1985 collapse. The episode traces Gary Stern's transition from bankruptcy through Pinstar (a conversion kit venture) with Gamitron and Bullseye 301, establishing the foundation that would eventually become modern Stern Pinball Inc. The hosts discuss Stern Electronics' IP ownership, the arcade industry bubble burst of the early 1980s, and how Gary Stern's manufacturing passion drove him to continue despite previous failures.

Key Claims

  • Gary Stern and his ex-wife own the intellectual property to Stern Electronics.

    high confidence · Direct quote from Gary Stern in Pinball News/Pinball Mag podcast interview about his 75th birthday celebration, confirmed by David Dennis as primary source.

  • Gamitron software is 100% identical to Stern Electronics Flight 2000 software.

    high confidence · David Dennis's direct comparison analysis during episode, supported by playfield design similarities.

  • Video game arcade industry collapsed from $3.2 billion (1983) to $100 million (1985) due to oversaturation and quality issues.

    high confidence · David Dennis citing historical industry data on the arcade recession and video game bubble burst.

  • Gamitron was designed by Harry Williams and Steve Kirk, manufactured December 1985 / early 1986, with 1,201 units sold.

    high confidence · David Dennis citing manufacturing records and Pinstar flyer information.

  • Bullseye 301 was manufactured by Grand Electronics (not Pinstar), only 150 units produced, with unknown designer and programmer.

    high confidence · David Dennis research on Bullseye 301 production details; Grand Electronics still operates as a go-kart manufacturer in Illinois.

  • The Gamitron conversion kit would not fit Stern Electronics games without modification due to backbox height and display placement differences.

    high confidence · David Dennis citing Internet Pinball Database reporter feedback and technical specifications.

  • Data East games are often criticized for shallow rules code but praised for great layouts, sound, music, and interesting themes.

    high confidence · Mike Wynn's comment quoted by David Dennis establishing the recurring theme of the episode.

  • Stern Pinball Inc. today does not own Stern Electronics' intellectual property; Gary Stern personally owns it and licenses it to them.

    high confidence · David Dennis explaining why Stern can use Sea Witch layouts and other Stern Electronics IP in modern games like Beatles and Ghostbusters.

Notable Quotes

  • “Guys who love cars, manufactured cars, they love cars. They're not good to make one car and put it on a pedestal and look at it. They want to manufacture that car, sell it to people, sell it to somebody in New York so that it gets driven, used, and enjoyed, then make more so they can design the next car.”

    Gary Stern @ ~26:00 — Core explanation of Gary Stern's motivation to continue manufacturing after Stern Electronics bankruptcy; directly addresses why he pursued Pinstar and eventually Data East/modern Stern.

  • “The bank foreclosed, and the bank was in worse shape than we were. The assets were sold at a foreclosure sale. And I eventually bought the IP back from the buyer. So now my ex-wife and I own the old Stern IP.”

    Gary Stern @ ~20:00 — Clarifies ownership structure of Stern Electronics IP and explains how Gary regained control despite company bankruptcy; critical for understanding modern licensing.

  • “I do this podcast for you and Bruce Nightingale. I don't do it for anybody else. That's all I listen to.”

    Ron Hallett @ ~7:00 — Humorous admission about Ron's engagement with the show; reveals personal dynamics between co-hosts and Bruce Nightingale.

  • “It's basically a narrow-body version of Flight 2000. Yeah, so Flight 2000 was that Stern, wide body.”

    David Dennis / Ron Hallett @ ~42:00 — Technical explanation of Gamitron's relationship to Flight 2000; establishes why many players prefer Gamitron's narrower layout.

  • “Comparative earnings at one half the investment. That was actually, that was all in capitals, by the way.”

    David Dennis @ ~50:00 — Highlights Pinstar's sales pitch for conversion kits—positioning cost savings as major advantage; shows manufacturing strategy during economic downturn.

Entities

Gary SternpersonDavid DennispersonRon HallettpersonBruce NightingalepersonMike WynnpersonHarry WilliamspersonSteve KirkpersonBill Futzenruderperson

Signals

  • ?

    historical_signal: Detailed documentation of Gary Stern's transition from Stern Electronics bankruptcy (1985) through Pinstar conversion kits to founding Data East Pinball; establishes lineage to modern Stern Pinball Inc.

    high · Episode structured entirely around Stern Electronics collapse, Pinstar conversion kits (Gamitron, Bullseye 301), and Gary Stern's manufacturing philosophy as foundation for Data East.

  • ?

    manufacturing_signal: Pinstar's conversion kit business model as cost-reduction strategy during 1980s arcade recession; Gamitron (1,201 units) and Bullseye 301 (150 units) as evidence of limited-volume intermediate manufacturing.

    high · Detailed discussion of kit sales numbers, pricing ('comparative earnings at one half the investment'), and technical specifications for retrofitting Bally machines.

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Clarification that Gary Stern and ex-wife own Stern Electronics IP; Stern Pinball Inc. licenses IP from Gary Stern for use in modern games (Beatles, Ghostbusters, Deadpool). Critical for understanding modern licensing arrangements.

    high · Gary Stern direct quote explaining he purchased IP back from foreclosure buyer; examples of Sea Witch, Stargazer, Flight 2000 reuse in contemporary Stern games.

  • $

    market_signal: Video game arcade industry bubble burst 1983-1985: $3.2 billion (1983) to $100 million (1985); oversaturation and quality issues cited as causes; directly impacted pinball demand.

    high · David Dennis citing historical financial data on arcade industry collapse; connected to pinball sales decline and Stern Electronics' bankruptcy.

  • ?

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.461

0:00
Ever notice how ads always pop up at the worst moments when the killer's identity is about to be revealed? During that perfect meditation flow.
0:12
On Amazon Music, we believe in keeping you in the moment. That's why we've got millions of ad-free podcast episodes, so you can stay completely immersed in every story, every reveal, every breath. Download the Amazon Music app and start listening to your favorite podcasts ad-free, included with Prime.
0:37
The Pinball Network is online. Launching Silver Ball Chronicles. I hear like a fan or something in the background, just FYI. Oh, that's my tea. Okay. As long as you know that you'll hear that. I put a fan under my desk just to keep my crotch cold while we record.
1:03
And your wife says it works great. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, Ron Hallett. Thank you. He'll be here all weekend. Tip your waitress and try the veal. That better be in the post show.
1:24
Thank you. Hello everyone, I'm David Dennis and this is Silver Ball Chronicles, a pinball history podcast. With me every month is my co-host, the most charming man in pinball, Ron Pintastic-bound Hallett. What's up, fella? Yo. You ready for Pintastic or what? So are we, I'm ready. Are we The Silver Ball Chronicles or just Silver Ball Chronicles? What's the official name? I think it's just Silver Ball Chronicles, but we can be The Silver Ball Chronicles. Well, I've heard the lately, and I didn't remember the the. Some people, though, have also said that we are on the pinball network, but I've also heard we're on the TPN network. So, you know what? You can call us whatever you want. So, we're on the TPN. That means we're on the pinball network. Yeah, the TPN network. That's my favorite one. And that's a shout-out to Bruce Nightingale. Ah, yes. A wordsmith like no other. And if you want to hear his wordsmithing, check out my podcast, the Slam Tilt Podcast. This can be heard bi-weekly or weekly, depending on whenever Bruce tells me we're recording. There you go. And I'll tell you, we got that plug out in record time. Record time. Bruce will be happy. Woo! Looking good. And I'm excited because Pintastic will be my first actual big pinball show. I'm going to America. Jumping in the car with my beautiful wife. We are going to zip on down. probably going to swing into Albany, New York. We said it right. That's right. I did hesitate because I had to say it again in my head. I don't live in Albany, but that's good. There you go.
Seamus McLaughlin
person
Stern Electronicscompany
Pinstarcompany
Grand Electronicscompany
Stern Pinball Inc.company
Data East Pinballcompany
Gamitrongame
Bullseye 301game
Flight 2000game
Beatles (Stern Pinball)game
Ghostbusters (Stern Pinball)game
Deadpool (Stern Pinball)game
Silver Ball Chroniclesorganization
Slam Tiltorganization
Pintasticevent
Allentownevent

product_strategy: Pinstar marketed conversion kits as low-cost method to repurpose aging Bally machines; targeted location operators seeking cost-effective upgrades during economic downturn.

high · Flyer copy emphasizing 'comparative earnings at one half the investment' and 'maximize the income of your older Bally Electronic pinballs'; technical incompatibility with Stern machines limited addressable market.

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Gary Stern's stated motivation: manufacturing passion and desire to create products that are mass-produced, sold to end-users, and enjoyed in the field; drives willingness to restart after bankruptcy.

    high · Direct quote from Gary Stern comparing himself to car manufacturers; emphasis on production cycles, selling to operators, and designing the next game.

  • ?

    product_concern: Gamitron conversion kits incompatible with Stern Electronics machines due to backbox height and display placement differences; limited to Bally four-player machines.

    high · Internet Pinball Database reporter feedback cited by David Dennis; technical explanation of why Stern machines used non-standard display locations.

  • ?

    community_signal: Silver Ball Chronicles growing audience engagement (Facebook comments from listeners); hosts gathering community quotes and feedback for episode production; merchandise (t-shirts) monetization.

    medium · Multiple listener quotes read on-air (Daddy Azusa, Garrett Fuller, Chris Vaughn, Ian); mention of silverballswag.com merchandise store with revenue sharing model.

  • ?

    event_signal: Ron Hallett attending Pintastic 2025 as first major in-person pinball convention; planning to visit Level Zero arcade in Albany, New York with wife.

    medium · Ron's discussion of upcoming trip to Pintastic, visiting level zero arcade, seeing classic Bally/Williams and Data East machines in restored condition.

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Community reports that Gamitron (narrow-body layout) plays faster and better than Flight 2000 (wide-body) despite identical software; playfield geometry affects play experience.

    medium · Ron noting 'a lot of people prefer this layout' for Gamitron due to faster play and less 'floaty' feel compared to Flight 2000.

  • ?

    rumor_hype: Unconfirmed rumors that Flight 2000 playfield was more Steve Kirk design than Harry Williams design; fits with Kirk's role refining Flight 2000 into Gamitron.

    low · Ron noting 'rumors I've heard for years' from multiple sources; lacks primary source confirmation.

  • ?

    collector_signal: Bullseye 301 (150 units) and Sonic Gamitron variant (1,200 units) positioned as rare collectibles; only one Bullseye 301 observed at Allentown swap meet.

    medium · David Dennis noting rarity and suggesting collector value; Ron's observation of single Bullseye 301 cabinet at Allentown; Sonic variant described as difficult to find.

    • 3:36
    So we're going to zip on over there. I'm going to go to level zero. I'm going to play some of the greatest Bally Williams of all time in the greatest shape I've heard. I'm going to see some of those classic sterns, those broken Porsches, as you call them. And you'll see a Data East game. Oh, the topic of today, because you have a RoboCop. No, I have a Lethal Weapon 3. I have the greatest Data East game ever made, which we won't be getting to in this episode. Yeah, as I edited up this episode, Ron, it took a path I was not expecting, and it was a lot more content than I had expected in the earlier years of Data East. So, other than that, we're just sort of waiting for Jersey Jack's every two-year release for their pinball machine, and Stern is still in a holding pattern. So there's not much going on in the hobby itself, but we are excited nonetheless. You can swing on over to facebook.com slash silverballchronicles to check us out and chat with us. We've had a little more engagement this month in the podcast because I wanted to work with some of our listeners to get some of their quotes for the episode. But you can also swing on over to the TWIP Pinball Promoters database over at thisweekinpinball.com. There you can find all kinds of pinball content, including other podcasts, Twitch streams, and YouTube channels all in one place. Take a moment and leave us a five-star review so more people can find us there. or in your podcatcher, if it's Google Podcasts or Apple Podcasts or Stitcher or whatever you're using. I don't even know if Stitcher's a thing. Just leave us a five-star review. That way, more people can find our content. Ron, we've got some awesome quotes over on our Facebook page about our last episode. Okay, you give me these names. Daddy Azusa says, I've been checking you every day for like two weeks for an episode. So glad it's here. love the work you put into this show yeah and Garrett Fuller says friggin love the show great stuff and Chris Vaughn says can't wait to hear this you guys are ace legends I don't even know what that means I don't know what that means either sounds good the ace capitalized in ace so that's gotta be good now did you think you would ever be called an ace legend on any other podcast besides the slam till podcast no not at all Huh. Well, Chris, Garrett, and Thaddeus, if you're looking for a way to cover up your hairy chests, t-shirts is a great way. Swing on over to silverballswag.com, and you can click on our store. You can jump right in and purchase a Silver Ball Chronicles shirt. We get a kickback, ever so small, but a kickback nonetheless, And Ron gets to inflate his ego even more with having his name on your chest. Even if you don't have a hairy chest, feel free to get the shirt. As you know, we always take our corrections in our mailbag at silverballchronicles at gmail.com. You can also send us comments, feedback, other things that way. We'll also take that feedback and information from our Facebook page. Ian, a Canadian pinballer from Ontario, says, I was a little disappointed Jimmy Lippam was mostly reduced to some guy on Pinside in our last podcast, Ron. Although accurately that he is just some guy on Pinside, he has been involved in so much of the boutique and homebrew scene, yet I know almost nothing about him. I was hoping to learn more. Oh well, maybe when you do your boutique episode. Ron, do you know lots about Jimmy Lippam? I do not. I'm not really, I don't follow a lot of the boutique stuff. Now, as I was editing up the episode, I did uncover a little more information about Jimmy or some guy on Pinside who did the code for Magic Girl. But, you know, I can't uncover all the sources, everything, all the time. Yeah, that being said, though, we did sort of reduce Jimmy to a guy on Pinside, even though he is quite engaged in that homebrew and boutique scene where you and I don't spend any time and have never heard of this person. There are plenty of, but when we do a boutique episode or a smaller group homebrew episode maybe, we're going to leave that for when there's actually a larger scene and maybe some of those designers and programmers have actually worked at a bigger company or the company has become a big company. Perhaps then we'll go into a deeper dive. Yeah, what would that episode be like? You'd have, like, Predator, Magic Girl. I'm just thinking of boutique homebrew games. Oh, yeah, the Dutch Pinball Saga. Dutch Pinball. You could have things like Archer.
    8:37
    You know, it gets Keith Elwin his job. You could have Sonic. Yeah, there's some content that's there. It's just I want to give those individuals that have designed those things more breadth, right? I want to give them more content to talk about as opposed to, hey, here's one person with one machine, and then 12 years down the road, if you were to listen to this podcast again, you'd be like, oh, that one person that did that one thing once. Right? I'm looking for more breadth, where, I can tell when is a great example of that. Maybe we'll do, like, a Young Guns episode. How does that sound? Right? Like, sort of the new up-and-comers, and then I can jam them all together in an episode. Anyway, I'm just thinking out loud. We've got some content that we can build there. Anything else you want to add, Ron, before we get underway? I'm ready for some Data East, or Data East, depending on how you say it. I know some people, it's Data East, because Data is Data from Star Trek, so you don't say it that way. We don't want to look dumb here, Ron. I do it every day. Works for me. It is often through failure that we learn, and after the collapse of Stern Electronics, Gary Stern didn't give up. He collected himself over a year and then would work with Joe Kamenkow and Shelley Sachs on building Data East Pinball. Often the butt of jokes on quality, code depth, and its god-awful artwork, Data East would become the only survivor of the 1990s pinball collapse and is now known as Stern Pinball Inc. after a brief time as Sega Pinball. This month, we take some time to explore Data East Pinball in an episode that we call Fake It Till You Make It. And I want to say a big thanks to Mike Wynn for helping us out on this episode. He collected some of the quotes. He did some searching and emailing with some of these primary sources, and he was able to forward it off to us. So huge thanks to Mike. Let's add some of Mike's comments. Mike says on early Data East, great layouts, great sound and music, interesting themes, terribly shallow rules. And that is really the theme, I think, of Data East. They had a lot of really great bits to them, but it's always sort of the code that holds them back, right? It was always that piece that they really kind of suffered from. But we'll get deeper into that as we go through the podcast, Ron. A lot of that code is more exploitable stuff. If you're just playing the game to enjoy it, I don't think it's that big a deal, in my opinion. Yeah, the term is often overused. I mean, I guess you could call it a cliche. It's close to the start button, right? There's lots of things that you can do that give you a lot of positive feedback really quickly. But when you get into running up big scores in the tournament world, not going to happen. Well, let's rewind back to sort of the early 80s and the collapse of Stern Electronics, your favorite pinball manufacturer, isn't that correct? I'm shedding a tear right now as I read this.
    11:49
    Hello, darkness, my old friend. So in 1980, 81, sales in pinball began to slide as coins moved to video games. So rather than sort of the explosion we saw in that 1977 to 81 range where pinball was just a dominator, people had learned that video games could get a little more play and tend to be a little more interesting. And cheaper. And they made more money. Absolutely. Stern moved to make some video games like Berserk and others. and by 1983, Stern had become one of the many victims of the amusement industry economic shakeout. And that was mostly that all of a sudden, pinball was getting less coin, which meant that arcade owners bought less of the pinball machines. So that sort of started a downward spiral. One of the other things that would happen by 1983 was that so much money was being put into video that a lot of the product that was coming out of there was garbage. Isn't that right? Uh, there was a lot of video games. A lot of video games. And a lot of them, although easy to play, were just terrible. There was a large-scale recession by 1983 in the video game industry, and that came from oversaturation and quality issues, which we spoke about. And to tie that into dollar amount, in 1983, video games, particularly in the arcade industry, was a $3.2 billion industry, which is outrageously huge by the 1980s, but by 1985, only two years later, it was a $100 million industry. So that is an epic bubble burst if I have ever seen one. So we did a whole episode on Stern Electronics, which we were contractually obligated to do, so you could pump up the value of your Stern Electronics games in your basement. Well, I said I wouldn't join this podcast unless we did a Stern episode. That's right. So it was episode number two, which was right after our pilot episode. This one is a little bit rocky, but I think there's some pretty good work in there. It's called episode two, Stern Electronics, No, Not That Stern. Probably still your favorite episode? I don't listen to any of our episodes, so I can't tell you. That makes me sad. I listen to the bloopers at the end. I do all of this. I do this podcast for you and Bruce Nightingale. I don't do it for anybody else. I listen to the bloopers at the end. That's all I listen to. Yeah. In 1985, Stern Electronics left the amusement industry altogether. Gary Stern would declare bankruptcy over the whole deal. So the manufacturing machinery was all auctioned off, And Stern Electronics worked with the bank, the bank, quote, unquote, the bank, the man, to wind down its operations. One question that people always ask is what happened to Stern Electronics' intellectual property or its IP? Who owns the Stern Electronics stuff? That also comes up a lot because you see companies make play fields for old Stern games and back glasses, and they don't seem like they have to pay anyone, unlike Bally or Williams. So who the heck owns it? The other thing is that Stern Pinball Inc. today is a totally separate company, and they do not own any of the intellectual property from Stern Electronics. Well, Gary Stern can shed some light on this. Gary says, the bank foreclosed, and the bank was in worse shape than we were. If you remember, there was a banking crisis at the time. The interest rates had gone up to double digits at one point. So the assets were sold at a foreclosure sale. And I eventually bought the IP back from the buyer. So now my ex-wife and I own the old Stern IP. Gary Stern himself and his ex-wife, which sounds like a terrible arrangement, own the intellectual property to Stern Electronics. I have links in the show notes to all of our sources. This comes from Pinball News, Pinball Magazine, Pinball Podcast over at Pinball News and Pinball Magazine's website. You can hear their monthly updates. This is from Gary Stern's 75th birthday celebration, Pinball Podcast at Pinball Magazine, Pinball News. And it's a goldmine when it comes to Gary because you can tell that Gary loves to talk shop. And this is an amazing episode. Jonathan Joosten and Martin over on Pinball News, Pinball Magazine, Pinball Podcasts are very, very good at interviewing, and I think they've done a stand-up job to get some great content from Gary. So this is also why Stern Pinball Inc., or today's Stern, was able to do Beatles, which was based on the Sea Witch layout, because Gary personally owns the intellectual property and was allowing Stern Pinball Inc. to use the intellectual property from Stern Electronics. And they've also been able to do things like they put a Stargazer in the building on Ghostbusters because there was a Stargazer in the movie. If you play Deadpool in Deadpool's game room, there's a Sea Witch. I think there's a Quicksilver, a Flight 2000. There's a Berserk and a Frenzy next to each other. So, yeah. All IP that was owned by Stern Electronics. So there you go. So now you can ask Gary if you can borrow some of his IP for your own play field. Well, since everyone seems to just do the play fields without permission, I guess he doesn't care. So why after the failure of Stern Electronics would Gary even stick around? Right? Like, why would you, after you've put this much time into a company, you've purchased Chicago Coin, you've purchased a bunch of other smaller companies, amalgamated them in Stern Electronics, You've put your heart and your soul into it, and then it just all goes to crap because everything went to crap. Why would you stay? Why would you stick around?
    18:02
    Well, Gary says guys who love cars, manufactured cars, they love cars. They're not good to make one car and put it on a pedestal and look at it. They want to manufacture that car, sell it to people, sell it to somebody in New York so that it gets driven, used, and enjoyed, then make money so they can design the next car. We love pinball machines. First and foremost, we're manufacturers. We want to design pinballs so that we can make it, sell it to people who can use them. Then we can design the next one. It just comes down to Gary Stern has a passion for manufacturing and a passion for pinball. This comes from Recommended If You Like, or R-I-Y-L podcast, which is a roundabout way where I found this one. And I found that quote in there because I thought it was pretty cool. Because it comes down to his passion as being a manufacturer. having a manufacturing line, all the excitement that comes from that, but then you're also creating something fun to play with. You know what my favorite Gary's current quote is? What's that? This is in a recent interview. They asked him, what do you think your legacy is? He basically said, I don't care about legacy. I'm a businessman.
    19:10
    Yeah. Yeah, he loves it. And as a business person myself, I can totally understand why building and creating and getting excitement from boring things like business plans and what can I grow and build, I can totally understand what Gary's talking about. But a lot of the Stern Electronics personnel, sort of the big brains behind the scenes, would eventually move to Gary's next venture, which was Pinstar. This is something else. So what in a nutshell was Pinstar, Ron? It was Gary Stern's company, and they made conversion kits. He was a big-time manufacturer, and now he's moving into sort of small-time manufacturing. I've included some of the links to the Pinstar information in our show notes if you want to take a look at them. He was able to use a lot of the Harry Williams and Steve Kirk information on the IP that was used in his new venture. The idea was that you could take an old pin and convert it into a new pin by replacing the playfield and adding some decals. The most important one is Gamitron. Yeah, I think he only did two conversion kits, and Gamitron is the one that most people would remember. There was one called Walk the Ball, which was art only. It was never actually released. Gamitron is the only one that actually had any volume. Yeah, I have seen the other one, though, the other conversion kit. ball's eye. Yeah. In Gamitron, this is a space robot war theme. It is from December of 1985, which was then more or less manufactured in 86. It is a stern slash bally board set, standard body pin, so you would take your old bally and you would put this conversion kit in it. It sold 1,201 units. The design was Harry Williams and Steve Kirk. Art by Seamus McLaughlin and software by Bill Futzenruder. Before we get into the finer details, why would one use a conversion kit rather than just buying a new pin? Well, in theory, it's cheaper. That's the main thing. It's cheaper. You can repurpose a game just by replacing the playfield. It becomes a new game, and in theory, you can make money off this new game at minimal cost. Pinball is very much, and especially at this time, a commodity, right? The technology is changing. The layouts are getting, you know, more intricate. You're adding mechanics to it. You're adding sound to it. We're changing to a DMD, to a screen, you know, scoring relays to, you know, six digit, to eight digit, to million scores. Like, things are always evolving. So, it becomes a bit of a commodity where you just sort of throw it out or sell it off and buy another one. So, in this sort of tough time in the early and mid 80s, How do we reduce the cost to replace it? And that was kind of the idea. The manufacturing flyer actually says, fits most standard four-player Bally Manufacturing Corporation pinballs. A subsequent reporter told IPDB that this kit would not actually fit Stern games without a modification. So interestingly enough, it had to specifically be a Bally four-player game, And it couldn't just take a Stern game, even though they're, I mean, cousins, Pinstar and Stern Electronics. Yeah, the height of the replacement plexiglass back glass you would get with the kit was too tall to fit in a Stern back box. And the display placement was different. The Stern did not use a standard display location. Yeah. If you see a game like Stars or Memory Lane, where the displays are just in really bizarre positions. they just sort of move them around to fit the art as opposed to make the art fit the positions. Yeah, so it becomes a bit of an issue there. And, of course, this is the Bally slash Stern board set. You know, that is a whole other story where Gary Stern and the Stern Electronics team would take and clone the Bally board set and sort of make their own version. Now, Pinskar did have a daughter board, which is like an extra board on the side where you would kind of attach it to the existing board, and it would plug into the CPU socket, which would add some of the content. Now, if you actually compared the software for GammaTron and the software for Stern Electronics Flight 2000, you would notice it is 100% identical. And if you look at the... because the playfield is identical. It's basically a narrow-body version of Flight 2000. Yeah, so Flight 2000 was that stern, wide body. Wide body. It was thicker and wider. It wasn't quite as wide as the Bally Williams, but it was wider. Yeah, and the thing is, I know a lot of people who prefer GammaTron. They think it plays better than Flight 2000. So it plays faster, right? Not as, quote-unquote, floaty.
    24:15
    Flight 2000 is an old stern. It plays fast. All sterns play fast. But, yeah, a lot of people prefer this layout. Well, there's also rumors I've heard for years that the actual Flight 2000 play field was more of a Steve Kirk design than a Harry Williams design to begin with, which I've heard that from multiple places. So that's interesting to me. I'd like to know the, you know. Yeah. Through my research, Steve Kirk actually worked a lot to refine the Flight 2000 into the GammaTron. So that would say that he had some familiarity with the geometry already. Yeah, his name is on Gamma Tron. I mean, he's considered the designer based off of the Harry Williams playfield. When you look at this playfield, it is clearly Flight 2000. Yep. It has the stand-up targets. It has the stepper ball lock on the left side. It has the sweepable drop targets through the spinner on the right side. The single pop bumper. Where's the stand-up targets? I only see one. You mean drop targets? The drop targets, yes, of course. Actually, I think there is a stand-up on the left, too. There's one here and here. There's two. Yeah, there's two. Two on the left, just above the slingshots. So I'm wrong.
    25:33
    There you go. But, yeah, it plays exactly like Flight 2000, except there's no speech. One of the coolest parts of Flight 2000. No speech. Wow. Now, Bruce Nightingale from the Slam Tilt podcast, he also has one or two of these, right? One or one and a half, something like that. He's the person who owns more half pinball machines than I've ever seen. Also, another tie back to the Stern Electronics piece is it has the WOW, W-O-W, down at the bottom, which is basically the Stern Electronics version of a special.
    26:10
    It's obviously the same company. to the point of they're using pretty much the same play field layout and a lot of the same terminology. So you can tell that Gary just wants to continue making fun and continue manufacturing, regardless of his other company going bust. Do you remember Sonic? Not the hedgehog. The manufacturer? Yes. The Spanish company known for games like Prospector, Mars Trek. They were around into the 80s, and they made electronic games, And one of the games that they did, there was actually a conversion kit for Gamitron, like a Sonic version. So you, wait a second, so you would have a Bally, you'd convert it to Gamitron, and then you'd take Gamitron and convert it to the Sonic? No, there's a Sonic Gamitron version. Oh, very good. With much cooler art. The back glass is awesome. I don't know, the back glass on this one is pretty awesome. Look at the one for, it pales in comparison to the Sonic back glass. What was it called? It's called GammaTron. If you just look up GammaTron in IPDB, which is the Internet Pinball Database, we should mention that when we keep saying the initials, that people are like, what the hell does that mean? Yeah, the back glass is cooler. Oh. So the back glass of the original one is like a robot. He's like almost like a, he's standing there. He's shooting people on buildings. It looks very mushy. It's kind of clay looking. It's not quite right. The Sonic version is very detailed and really, really neat. It's similar, but it's just more detailed. And their cabin is completely different. They have the digital displays that are below the back glass.
    27:56
    I've actually played one of these. They had one at Expo one year. It's got one of those sweet square pop bumper. Yeah, and it's got its own custom board set and stuff, so if it broke, you'd probably be screwed. But, yeah. So this is the better Gamitron. It plays exactly the same. Okay. So if art is your thing. They only made 1,200 of these, so they're not really easy to find. So if you can find somebody who owns a half of one, you know, I would take advantage of that. We've got to get into the flyer. This is the saddest flyer I have ever seen. It is very sad. It's basically blue. There's no color to it at all. It's obviously done on the cheap. Yeah. It's just like a single page, white paper, crappy looking phone. Ho. Gamatron. Trademark. Designed to appeal to today's player by Harry Williams and Steve Kirk. Exciting multi-ball chain reaction launching chamber. So they've renamed the Ball Walker the multi-ball chain reaction launching chamber. It does sound cooler, doesn't it? It does sound pretty cool. It has high action components. I don't know what that means. I guess that means it's stuff is closer together. And cover your ears for this one. All parts made in America by current manufacturers of pinball machines and components. Kit includes wired play field ready to install, a prom change and sound board, which, I mean, it didn't have speech. Nope. New back glass and complete set of decals. All the necessary cables and hardware. It's comparative earnings at one half the investment. That was actually, that was all in capitals, by the way. Easy conversion. You don't even need a soldering iron. Although that appeals to me. Soldering iron, I'm okay at that stuff if I have to, like, fix a coil or something like that. But if I've got to get into something more serious than that, I can do it. It's terrible. It gives me a lot of stress. So that's a big deal. And honestly, this would be a great, like, if you had, say, a Lost World, like, why would you have that? But a Lost World, Old Valley, I hate that game. Somebody had to buy that piece of garbage. They sold a ton of them, though. But you can swap that play field out and put Gammatron in, and boom, you actually have a good game. There you go. And Gammatron, very good game, I've been told. I've never played one. It's tough to find them. Hopefully there's one at Pintastic.
    30:15
    Pretty second, Gale? After that, we get into their second game, Bullseye 301. And when you see Bullseye 301, what does that say to you, Ron? Darts. Darts, which I didn't know that until I looked it up. I'm like, that's a weird name for a game. This was actually managed by a company called Grand Electronics. So it wasn't actually built by Pinstar. It wasn't actually released by them. So this company, Grand Electronics, is still around in Illinois. They make go-karts and go-kart parts. That's so cool, but not pinball related. This would actually be the only pinball game that Grand would actually make. 301 Bullseye is a competitive darts-themed pinball game. Perfect for the bar, I think is what the idea behind darts was. It's from May of 86. Uses, again, the Stern and Bally board set with your conversion kit of a standard body Bally. They only manufactured 150 units. We don't know who designed it, we don't know who the art, and we don't know who did the software. This is like a get-it-done pinball machine. This was like rushed. This was like sell it, build it, get it done, and then just that's it. Break even. 150 units, right? Get out of the game. Very unusual. Why do you think that is? I know I've only seen one ever, and that was at Allentown, and it wasn't actually installed in a game. It was just like, oh, so Allentown is the pinball swap meet is basically what it is, right, where people have their crap laying on the outside of their SUV. Allentown, Pennsylvania, like every spring. and I actually saw one of these, the 301 Bullseye. Like, wow, it exists. Weird. You should have bought that. It'd be worth millions. I don't think so. It has a dartboard in the middle of the play field, as you would expect it to. Surprise. It has a glass of wine and a glass of beer on the plastics on the left and right side. Probably should have cigarettes in it if it wanted to be authentic. Yeah, that's right. And everything would have to look very, like, British-y and, like, haggard. Okay. Someone's been watching darts on TV, I see. Those are the ones that play in the darts. Yes. It's got four drop targets in the middle, kind of on an angle, and then a spinner in the middle, which looks actually kind of fun. But that's kind of it. Meh. It's pretty bad. Pretty bad game. My assumption. I like how you assume it's a bad game and you've never played it. You could play it and be like, oh, my God, I found my game. This is it. This could be it. You know, you could be on target. That's what the flyer says. Of course it does. Ben Ball Conversion Kit. 301 Bullseye. scores like today's most popular street location game, darts, and has all the play appeal of the ever-popular pinball game. Maximize the income of your older Bally Electronic pinballs by retrofitting them with a 301 Bullseye conversion kit from Grand Products, Inc. Wow. Also, black and white picture. Yeah, and when they put back glass as two words, which you normally don't see on a pinball flyer, Like, if you look at the Gametron one, I'm pretty sure it says, like, one word. That's like if you see, like, hey, John Papaduke is designing something. That's a big red flag. It's just, when you see certain words a certain way, you'd be like, eh, they're probably not really pinball people. I would guess that this game was started and developed by Pinstar, by Gary Stern and the team there. Then they moved on to another project and basically just got rid of this to somebody who could make some money. I think that's basically what it was. It's unusual. Check it out on the IPDB. But, I mean, it's probably not worth your time to look at it. Well, the question is, do these conversion kits work? Do they make any money? It seems like a super smart idea, doesn't it? You've got a pinball machine. You buy a play field, a back glass, and some stickers, and you've got a whole other pinball machine. You don't have to buy the cabinet. You don't have to buy the boards. You don't have to. It seems like a super smart idea. Except that Gary Stern says, I'm the guy that proved a conversion kit doesn't work. I was between companies, and I made a play field. I manufactured these, and I sell the play field as a kit with decals. The problem was the economics didn't work. You'd be better off training in your game and buying a high speed by Steve Ritchie than converting an old Bally game and putting my conversion play field in it. Now you have a worthless game. Exactly. You've got all the parts. You've got all the garbage.
    34:40
    And you've got another pin, which sort of has yesterday's technology. It's a new play field. It's a new game. But it's still based on the previous technology, the previous code, the previous board sets. And as we've seen, especially now when we get into System 11, you know, that hockey stick of development and complexity of pinball machines is on an upward swing. He makes a good argument.
    35:03
    Now, at the time, Gary was also working with a company called Video Vending, where he was developing a VHS tape rental machine. Oh, VHS. You remember VHS. Terrible. Hey. It was awesome. You could watch stuff on your TV, movies and stuff at your leisure. It's the first time you could do that. Yeah, you didn't even have to wear pants. A very important person that is really difficult to find information about is a person named Shelly Sachs. She's still at Stern to this day. Still at Stern today. She's been with Gary Stern since like 1980. I talked to her last year. She called me about my Jurassic Park. Why would she call you? The shippers can't get a hold of you. You need to answer your phone. Really? I find that awesome that you spoke to Shelly Stack. I did. She called you over something as mundane as answer your damn phone, Ron. Well, because when I see numbers I don't recognize, I don't answer the phone. And no one told me that it was ready or that FedEx would be calling me. So, yeah. That's the one that FedEx eventually just left the thing in my driveway. So what you're saying is this is your fault. So what I'm saying is it didn't matter anyway. they still screwed up. With Shelly, she is also known as a jack of all trades. She has had many hats, continues to wear many hats, and is one of the major factors in why Stern, Data East, Sega, and today's Stern have been as successful as they are. Gary's right-hand woman, is that correct? That is correct. I voted in the 2021 Pinball Industry Awards for the Legacy Award for Shelly Sachs. She is one of the most unknown, biggest deals in pinball ever. Everybody knows the designers. Everybody knows the coders. Everybody knows Gary and Joe Cam and Cow and all these guys who made a lot of money back in the day. But very few people know about the awesomeness of Shelly Sachs. She probably wants to remain unknown, so you should stop mentioning her. Yes. Gary and this unknown person would work in Gary's townhome, and they put together a business plan for a new pinball manufacturing company. This is about 1986.
    37:24
    So, probably had Don Johnson suit jacket on, right? Shelley probably had really big, super teased up hair. But they needed somebody else to tie the trio together. Philip Michael Thomas. Oh, I'm sorry. You can't have a stool with only two legs. Wow. Okay. You've got to bring in Joe Camencow. Now, Joe Camencow is one of the biggest names in pinball, and he's one of those right place, right time individuals in pinball. We've spoke about a few of those over the years. Eugene Jarvis is a great example of right place, right time all the time. Larry DeMar. He always knows where to go before anyone else does. Always in the right place at the right time. So they are where they are today because they were in the right place at the right time. But Joe Kamenkow specifically Joe has this amazing work ethic and he is a positive personality He is a straight shooter There's no BS with Joe, kind of. And his business acumen is almost second to none. That is what has propelled Joe to the heights that he is at now. Have you met him?
    38:42
    No. I've interacted with him several times, but I don't get him drunk. Because at the Gary Stern roast, he got drunk, and then he started yelling at people at the bar in the next room to shut up.
    38:56
    That's the story I remember. And he is very influential in pinball. Just ask him, he'll tell you. And it'll let you know how they beat Williams in the end, because Williams went out of business. So he is a very interesting person. He's humble. He's a humble guy. That's what you call humble. Joe Kamenkow grew up in Maryland. His father worked as a commercial distributor called General Vending, and he would eventually also work for Bally. Joe attended Curry College in Milton, Massachusetts. Where? Massachusetts. That's where Pentastic is, and you're saying it wrong. Massachusetts? Massachusetts. The spirit of Massachusetts is the spirit of America. Come on. Try again. He graduated with a business and political science degree. You didn't say it again. Joe started a game development business called Logical Highs, and he would join Williams Electronics, where he would learn the ropes of pinball. His first game was the smash hit, Defender. No, it wasn't a smash hit. It was the pinball.
    40:02
    In 1984, he would help out with Space Shuttle, and, according to Joe Kamenkow, saved pinball. More on that in the Barry Ousler Saves Pinball episode that you can see in our archives. Swing on over to silverballchronicles.com. All the episodes are listed there. And if you ever see a defender at a pinball show, play it. It's a super cool game. You hardly ever see him. Joe would leave Williams soon after Space Shuttle because of various conflicts with folk in there. He would briefly join a company called Game Plan, where he would meet Gary Stern. Joe Kamenkow was brought on board as the Senior Vice President of Game Design at Data East in October of 1986, where he would begin building relationships among some influential license holders. This would be Data East's differentiating factor and lead to amazing licensed games like Back to the Future, Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Hook, The Simpsons, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. There was also Batman and the NFL license, to name a few. After leaving Sega in 1999, Joe would join IGT, and he would make slot machines and gambling technology. He gave slots a massive shot in the arm by extensively using licensed themes, obviously something he learned from pinball. Of course, he could also leverage all of the relationships he had while working in licensing at Data East. He was inducted into the Pinball Hall of Fame at Expo in 2004. I was there. Was it exciting? Did you shed a tear? I was sitting at the same table as Steve Ritchie, so I was marking out over that. That's so cool. Now, did Joe tell everybody in the crowd how Data East beat Williams? You know, he probably did, but I don't remember. In 2007, Joe co-founded Spooky Cool Labs, a small part of Zynga, which pioneered mobile cell phone games. Have you ever heard of Farmville, Ron? No. That was a huge deal when it came to mobile gaming and Facebook gaming. They're the ones that popularized the idea of loot boxes and those stupid little diamonds you have to collect to keep playing. They did that. Zynga was recently acquired by Take-Two Interactive. They own Rockstar Games. Ron, you've played Grand Theft Auto. No. I know of it, but I know what it is. That is one of the properties that Rockstar Games owns. I would assume over these series of acquisitions, Joe Kamenkow was given a boatload of money and stock in some pretty big, high-profile companies. Joe is currently the chief innovation officer at Aristocrat Leisure Limited in Las Vegas, which is a gaming solutions company, which means they make gambling machines in Las Vegas. They are licensed in 300 jurisdictions, so that would be like provinces and countries and states, and have over 7,000 worldwide employees. This is a big company. But most importantly, Ron, Joe has a replica Batman 66 Batmobile and an Aston Martin DB5 like James Bond. Oh, like in Goldfinger. All right. I have also heard that he is having this DB-5 modified to have all of the electronics and toys seen in Goldfinger. And so that would be what? The bulletproof glass, the bulletproof thing that comes up, oil slick, machine guns, the ejector seat. At least the button for it. Joe Cam and Cal and I can be best friends if Joe is listening to this, which he is not. I would love to hang out with Joe. we could do cool things together we could talk James Bond because sitting right in front of me is a 1964 car and driver ad for an Aston Martin DB5. It says wings and propeller are optional. I think that if you really want a James Bond pinball machine you're probably going to get your wish sooner than later. Joe Kamenkow I'd like to be your best friend. So starting Data East let's wind it back now. Now we know who Joe Kamenkow is. Let's wind it back again to 1986. We're seeing a resurgence in pinball at this time, aren't we? We got high speed. It's out. It's kicking butt. We got pinbot. Let's see, would that have been out yet? Maybe not. Let's pretend it was. Yes, we're seeing pinballs coming back, maybe. Coming back. Speech is back. We got multiball. We got nice plastic ramps. Yeah, ramps are coming around now. That's pretty cool. By November of 1986, Joe and Gary would start their new company. But they would need financial backing, so they approached a few video game manufacturers like Konami. Is it Kunami or Konami? I thought it was Kunami. It could be Konami. Well, their proposal was rejected. Yeah, they didn't want to get into that game. They were more interested in making the Metal Gear Solid games. They were also interested now in, like, fitness spas and, like, weird day spas in Japan. They didn't want to do pinball. That would just be silly. Once your proposal is rejected, you often feel pretty bad, but man, you fake it till you make it, and you keep grinding, and you go to find somebody else. So they found a much more receptive audience in a company called Data East. and they were interested in expanding beyond video games. Oh, you're going to make me say this. Mr. Fukuda? Fukuda. Okay, hopefully I said this right. So this is from Gary Stern. I had a business plan with the help of Ed Pellegrini. I approached them, i.e. Data East. In fact, Mr. Fukuda, hopefully I said that right, Tetsuo Fukuda, founder of Data East, came to my townhouse. Cam and Cal, Shelly and I, we had two desks next to each other over there, and Cam and Cal and I made the presentation, and we intrigued them into investing in this pinball company. Oh, so there you go. You had a big, big-time influential person, Mr. Fukuda. That's a big-time meeting, but it's also kind of interesting that they're not in a fancy boardroom. They're not in a big office. They're literally in Gary's townhouse, which I'm sure is probably pretty nice. Well, what can you tell me about Data East? Ah, okay. So, I knew about Data East, but I didn't know about, with sort of air quotes, Data East. So, Data East is a Japanese video game maker and an electronic engineering company. The company operated from 1976 to 2003, and they released over 150 video game titles, including their first smash hit, Burger Time, in 1982. Really? Burger Time is Valley Midway. So maybe they designed it and Valley Midway manufactured it. Yes. That is the roundabout way. So when it comes to video games, video games are really weird as to who manufactures it, who designed the game, who actually made the game, who has the rights in North America to sell the game, who has the rights in Europe to sell the game. And typically in Japan, they would make the cabinets in Japan, but they were different than the ones they made here. I think they were generally smaller. Video games are a mess when you're trying to figure out who owns what and who manages what, unless you have a massive spider chart web tree to try to figure that stuff out. But they were also very well known for 1984's Karate Champ, Kung Fu Master, Commando from 1985. Now, those three titles pushed Data East to the forefront in the coin op industry in the mid-1980s. Did you know I'm the Karate Champ champ, or used to be? In what? I was a world record holder in Karate Champ for eight years. Like 2010 to a few years ago. Wow. I'm going to Chicago beat my score. Was that like a Guinness Book of World Records thing? That was the Twin Galaxies thing. That's so cool. Did you get like a little plaque? I still have a plaque. You'll be able to see the plaque when you're here at level zero. I'm going to take a picture with the plaque. That's a big deal. Those three games were also the highest grossing games of 1985, and they were also considered to be the first fighting games and still influence fighting game styles today. Now, on consoles, most people would remember 1988's RoboCop, 1990's Batman, and Lemmings from 1991. Those were Data East properties. You played those? Uh, no. No? You didn't play them? Oh, man, the RoboCop game was a big deal. And Batman as well. So Batman and RoboCop were basically the same game. They just sort of changed Batman for Robocop, and then they changed sort of the buildings for, you know, derelict sort of Detroit City stuff for more gothic-y Batman stuff from like Tim Burton's Batman. Super cool games. Really enjoyed those. Lemmings was also fun. Played that one on the Super Nintendo. By 1998, the parent company of Data East left arcades entirely as they were accumulating too much debt. And that's when the pinball part was spun off to Sega Pinball. By 1999, they stopped making video games entirely. By 2003, Data East filed for bankruptcy in Tokyo District Court, and their intellectual property and all that other stuff was purchased by a Japanese company called G-Mode. most of the items were then eventually spun off to a D4 Enterprises and Taktron Corporation, whoever those companies are so the intellectual property for Data East is owned somewhere by somebody but basically the entire company kind of went from its highs around the time that Gary Stern is meeting with them to basically being nothing but a name nowadays so why did they choose Data East? Hey, Pinheads. I just wanted to let you know, when I'm not making cheesy jokes to make Ron laugh, I'm David, the financial advice 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 seriously. A valuable financial advisor doesn't just provide investment and insurance advice. That's because an advisor takes the time to gather intimate knowledge about their primary client, understand their personal preferences, recognize their fears and hopes, and gain knowledge about their clients' errors before providing financial advice. 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 meetings to engage with clients who need advice but don't necessarily want to wear pants or leave their house. 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. Well, Data East USA in California was a subsidiary. Well, I think I said that right, subsidiary of Data East Japan in Tokyo. Data East USA was a separate company run mostly by Americans and promoting Japanese products in the U.S. Yeah, so they like to avoid taxes, to employ Americans, to get into the market. Usually you had to have some sort of presence in the United States. Well, Data East had their Data East USA, but they mostly just sort of pitched Japanese products. So this is where you start introducing some corporate politics, which are often pretty cutthroat when it came to the video game industry. Well, Gary Stern says Bob Lloyd was running Data East USA, and he was intrigued with the idea of a product that didn't come from Japan, that he had more control over, something he could sell worldwide instead of just in the U.S., because he was just selling Japanese video games here in the U.S. Yeah. Yeah, it's like a power control thing, right, where Bob Lloyd, this guy here in North America, was basically selling the Japanese stuff here. He didn't develop his own stuff. He didn't get to feed his own ego. It's very like, what's that show that everybody's watching now? Succession? I don't watch TV. Yeah, I know you don't. So why did Data East need Pinball?
    53:25
    And Gary Stern says, Data East is a coin-op company. It had fighting games and video. It had redemption, which often they got from Namco. So with Pinball, it became a full-line company. It was fully integrated. They could get more coins at the arcade. That's all that mattered, was that they had all of the lines of business. Full-line company. So the next step was really something of a big deal, is that when you're starting something new, it's really hard to do it without money. And we could see that, especially if you look at our last episode of Silver Ball Chronicles. It's tough to start a new company without funding. and we're not talking about funding from your clients who you would eventually not sell the product to, but we're talking about a big backer. It's tough to start designing mechanics and build a manufacturing line without that scale, but you're going to have to continue to build out a team to help scale up. Money is only part of it. You can have all the money in the world, but if you don't have the expertise, you're not going to be able to put the pieces in line. So they needed help. What did Joe Kamenkow say about that? Joe Kamenkow would say we needed desperate help. I convinced Gary to have Ed Sabula help clean us up. Part-time at first and then full-time. We were lucky and grateful to have his help and mentorship to make our games function and work. So who's Ed Sabula? I believe Joe probably met him at Game Plan, I would assume. Yes, he was a super mechanical engineer and pinball designer who would help out at multiple small companies. But he was another jack of all trades, like Shelly Sachs. Ed as a teenager started at Mill Jennings at Chicago repairing slot machines. Slot machines come up a lot in these pinball discussions. You ever notice that? He learned all the gearing and interworking of original slot machines and became a self-taught engineer. and spent years designing slot machines.
    55:33
    Eventually, the company... Oh, so Mills Jennings became Game... Oh, I didn't know that. Wow, I'm learning something. Eventually, Mills Jennings would become Game Plan, and he created both slot machines and later a variety of pinball machines and video game cabinets. Self-taught. That's a big thing to be self-taught about. Are you self-taught at anything, Ron? I guess pinball repair. I mean, other than checking out videos and looking at the Internet. Yeah, I mean, I would be sort of a self-taught solderer, and if you've ever seen my soldering, boy, you know I'm self-taught. Joe Kamenkow and Gary Stern helped induct Ed into the Pinball Hall of Fame in 2004. Did I mention I was there? That was my first expo. Yeah, that's right. You know what game was on the line? 2004? What game do you think was on the line? Now, folks, back then, Stern is the only game in town, so there's only one factory you were visiting. No, it wasn't Ripley's. That was two. No, that was before. Ripley's was ending. They gave us the shrunken heads that they had in stock because Ripley didn't really sell that much. So they had a lot of extra shrunken heads. Thank you very much. Thank you. I can't give you more of a clue here.
    56:45
    That was a pretty heavy-handed. Thank you very much. Thank you. Ed was a really big deal. He had helped and mentored and left a great impact among a lot of those in pinball, including John Borg. John says Ed was a master craftsman. He created most of our drawings back in the pencil and drafting boards days. That brings us to Roger Sharp, who said that Ed was a very soft-spoken and genuine fellow. Easy to converse with, open and honest to a fault, at least with me, and a formidable skill set as evidenced by his body of work. We worked together at Game Plan, even though I wasn't even an employee of the company. And we'll get into Game Plan in a whole other episode, because it was kind of a fun little experiment as well. But also at Game Plan was Joe Kamenkow. Joe says, Ed was incredibly kind, a true gentleman, never an unkind word. He loved his craft and pinball and could build anything with his hands and was incredibly dedicated and a hard worker. Smoked nonstop while he spoke and often had a cigarette in his mouth and mumbled a bit. He was respectful and quiet around others. A wonderful, incredible mentor and friend. He even drove sports cars late in life. Ed seems like a pretty cool dude. Now, of course, they needed the engineering help. Ed was very important in helping Data East build out that entire department. Shelley Sachs would say that Ed was a great person and was always trying to find a better way to design mechanisms for ease of use and could be the most cost effective. He had a great, subtle sense of humor that was unexpected, as he took his responsibilities very seriously. Well, you need a quarterback, right? When you're building out a manufacturing line, when you're building out an engineering team, you need somebody who's very, very serious and not joking around and having a time. You want somebody who is focused. But they can't be just a horrible person, either. You need that quarterback. A camera cow said, Horrible at best. Joe was not a mechanical engineer, right? He did a political science degree. You know what I mean? Like, it's not his background. He sort of had to figure out that stuff. Well, that's where he would lean on somebody like Ed, who, again, was integral to the engineering at the early years of Data East. They didn't just convince somebody to give them a pinball company, though, did they? Like, he didn't just go to Data East and be like, we need this billion-dollar company over here to give us a bunch of money, we'll figure it out, right? And then it didn't matter what they did. Nope. They're on a budget, man. Someone else's money. You've got to keep it on budget. Like, they're looking at that stuff, right? And if you're over budget, if you're spending money willy-nilly, if you're not bringing out a product, if you're not profitable, if you can't bring up a product line, a manufacturing line, you know, a marketing team, If you can't bring that up, the parent company is going to know. A prime example of that is Capcom when they started. You know, they were using somebody else's money, Capcom, the parent company, but, man, they were blowing money left and right. Well, that was not the case with Data East. Every time I listen to a podcast, most of which are in the show notes, And somebody mentioned Joe Kamenkow or Gary Stern around the time of Data East or the early Data East would often talk about how Joe and Gary could squeeze every penny out of a budget. And that doesn't sound like some of the startups today, where it seems like they are just blowing money left and right. These guys were penny pitchers. And that was probably why they were so successful. I have a quote here from Michael Gottlieb. You know who Michael Gottlieb is? Yes, because I have the show notes in front of me. Oh, very good. He's a grandson of David Gottlieb, son of Alvin Gottlieb, former president of Gottlieb Pinball. And he couldn't use his own name when he started Alvin G. That's why it was Alvin G. Yeah, Michael was sort of the principal behind Alvin G & Co., which was sort of a spinoff, if you will, of the Gottlieb family in pinball in the mid-'90s. Michael says, I worked as a summer intern, a coffee boy at Data East. I put stickers on Monday Night Football. Gary and Joe could work on a budget. They are resourceful. They knew what to do with the cost. Joe was a dreamer and always so enthusiastic and motivating. That's a typical quote that you would hear, right? They were super good on a budget, and they did everything on a budget, which is why they did it. They got the team together. We got money. We're penny-pinching. We're going to build a game. What do we got? What's the first game? Groundbreaking. Groundbreaking game here. Laser War. Yes, this is the fantasy sci-fi war theme. It is from May of 1987. It is a Data East version 1 board set. So they've built their own board set. They sell 2,569 units. This is designed by Joe Kamenkow. All the engineering again, Ed Sabula. Art by Margaret Hudson, who we would know from the Bally days back in the class of 1981. Music by David Thiel. Software by Lonnie Ropp and Richard Ditton. And rumor has it that Gary Stern still has a laser war in his office. So you groaned a moment ago. And they did the same thing. They did the same thing they did at Stern. Edward Partridge, listener of the show, would say, I always thought it was funny that Sam Stern's solid state ripped off Bally's board set. Then Gary followed suit with Dad East copying the Williams System 11 board set. Yep, pretty much. They copied the System 11 board set for the most part. But then through the years, they deviated off of it kind of into their own world. They started doing their own stuff. As opposed to at Stern, where literally you can use the same ballet board set in any Stern game, and it works. So there was some deviation.
    63:14
    The Stern soundboard was a little different, though. They had kind of their own thing there. But, yeah, they somewhat reversed engineered System 11. But not quite. Well, they had a workaround. You know what Gary Stern said about it? He said, we reversed engineers parts of the printed circuit boards that would have been Data East. That's the one thing they did to help us. They had electrical engineers, and they, Data East, they worked with us doing that. Wait a second. So Gary Stern just blatantly says, oh, yeah, we totally copied it? The circuit boards, yes. Yeah. So isn't it illegal to steal a board set, like, you know, just to take it and copy it? You know, Gary Stern is a lawyer. Did you know this? He mentions it quite often. And Gary says, it's against the law, especially in Illinois at the time, to dump and copy the copyrighted code. Richard Denton, which later became Incredible Technologies, programmed from scratch the system he did not look at. He was very careful not to look at any of the code that was in a Williams game. Had he looked at it and used it somewhere, there would have been fingerprints. So he did it from the ground up. There are copyrights on drawings and code, but not the boards themselves. Ah, there is the key. The key is that you can't copy the code, the way the chips work, the chips within it, things like that. But the way the board looks, you can. And you can't just take the drawings of the boards and copy the drawings in the boards in like a photocopier or a Xerox machine. They just took the boards themselves and did them. And they did not look at the code. Well, what do you think Williams thought of that, right? Williams is always the big dominant player. Well, Kerry says, you know, over the years, Williams sued the company and me personally a number of times. It seems to always get settled. Well, no specifics, but you can probably figure out what happened. The same thing that happened with the Bally. They did have a number of lawsuits within the whole, not just between Daddy East and Williams. There was lawsuits between Capcom and Williams. and yeah. The big dog is always trying to defend their territory and if they got to bring in the lawyers, they will. Well, the funny thing about Laser War, it was built from parts from a Williams Road Kings. It was also designed on the Thanksgiving weekend of 1986. This is not the first time that I've heard that a Road Kings was cannibalized to build a machine. Which hurts me because I like Road Kings.
    65:40
    Let's jump into the flyer here because new company, right? Yeah. New designers, new marketing team. Let's see the fanciness that is Laser Wars. Same board set. Although they had stereo. Williams did not have stereo. So they can say, like, we have stereo. Did you know Data East presents Laser War? It's the new standard in pinball. The new standard. They have changed the game. They've changed the game. Now, the back of the flyer is the best part because it shows a lot of the marketing gimmicks, and some of them are pretty hilarious. Yeah, and I can't read any of them. Hold on. So I have these young, below-40s eyes, so I will read this. At the top, it says, new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new. So is it new? There's a lot of new stuff on here, right? It's a fully designed, brand new system. Happens to be a similar board set to System 11, but apparently there's some new stuff. One of them is the new Compact Disc Clarity. The first system specifically designed for digital stereo. It has 2.1 sound. Two speakers, left and right, and a sub, the .1. What do you think of that? Incredible. Compact discs were the big thing, right? Because we were moving from records and tapes to compact discs. So that was the trendy thing at the time to compare yourself to compact discs. And they have pictures of the speaker panel from the game with compact discs in front of it. Yes. I think that's awesome. Advanced speech and special effects, new chrome enclosure. What about the new Black Beast Unleashed, which was an advanced space-aged ABS material, compact pieces of modular design, and power, durability, and standard coils. Hmm? Wow. They're using more plastic. That doesn't sound very good. Does it? It doesn't sound like plastic. It sounds really cool the way they worded it. It's space-aged ABS plastic. ABS material. Space-aged. So there's also the hand of, like, holding one of the coil assemblies, and it looks like a, I don't know, like an ape's hand or something? Black beast? It is an ape's hand. Very weird. Compact, one-piece modular design. Power, durability, uses standard coils. Wow. It's got a picture of a crown. Yes, the crown is interesting. It says, new crown gems uncovered. New shapes and sizes, new colors, and advanced player appeal. Basically, they have different designs of inserts. I guess that's a big deal. This is my favorite one. A flipper so strong, It could crack walnuts. The early Data East games do have obscenely strong flippers. That is my favorite one. And there's a picture of a flipper with broken walnuts around it. I haven't played Laser War, but I hear it is actually kind of fun. It's a good little shooter. Actually, I am a big fan of a lot of the early Data East games. Yeah, and we'll get into those here, the early Data East games. It's got the physical kickback on the side, which kind of goes way up the play field as opposed to just sort of above the slings, which is really cool. It's got two spinners, one in the center, one on the left orbit. Everybody knows I love me some orbit spinners. Nice big wide open ramp in the center feeds back to the flipper on the right side. Stand-ups, a lot of stand-up targets. It's energy and information at your fingertips. 100% interactive with digital music and sounds. A light show so advanced it's patented. Whoa.
    69:31
    It's, wow. Damn, it's like, what are those lights called that everyone wants in their games? The mod? Penn Stadium. It's Penn Stadium before Penn Stadium. Yeah. Proven attention getter without glaring lights. Wait a minute. It's a light show so advanced it's patented, but it's without glaring lights. Weird. I found my site that has all the flyers at like 300 dpi so I could actually read it the other uh you know if we tie this back right flippers are always a contentious issue right there's always like when manufacturers come out they have a difficult time their their flippers are too squishy or they're not sharp enough or or they need to be rebuilt Gottlieb struggled with that with System 3. You know, some people critique JJP or Multimorphic about their flipper fields nowadays. Joe Kamenkow would say, we had to get to a point quickly and make our own flippers, slingshots, and other parts. Many of these parts Stern uses today. His work output and good design saved us. Without Ed's early involvement, the company would have vanished overnight. So we joke about this ABS plastic design and flippers and all of that stuff, but it's really that is what saved them, according to Joe Kamenkow. Another thing is that this machine was built from May of 1987 to February of 1988. Now, that is a really, really long run for only 2,500 machines. That's 10 months. But, again, it's that first game, they're getting it rolling, they're selling it, And they're selling 2,500 machines. I mean, it's taken Jersey Jack today almost 24 months to make 5,000 machines. For those at home, I believe May to February would be nine months, not ten months. Oh, well, details, details.
    71:33
    Let's leave that in and see if anyone corrects that. Let's jump over to the next game, which I think is a little more up my alley here. Speaking of James Bond, et cetera, et cetera. This is Secret Service. This is a Data East version 2. So we've made some changes to the board set after one game. Probably had to be made due to a lawsuit, my guess. May of 1988. 2,741 units designed by Joe Kamenkow. Art by Margaret Hudson. And everybody knows this name, Kevin O'Connor. Again, another one from the Bally days. Music by the legend David Thiel. and software by Lonnie Ropp and Richard Ditton. This was manufactured from March of 88 to July of 88. So their line has ramped up. This is only a five-month manufacturing period. That's four months. Four months. Well, no, I counted all of March.
    72:34
    Okay. So I'm counting it as the first March. All right. So I'm wrong. So four and a half months. Cut it in the middle. that's half the time Frasca? Mike Frasca over on Silverball Chronicles Facebook page would say that Secret Service is a I'll play the crap out of it once a year at a show kind of fun. Would you agree with that? I don't know if I'd own it but I'd like it a little more than that. Well if I see this game at Pintastic I'm going to play the crap out of it. It's right up my alley. This game is so cool for a couple of reasons. One of them is the back glass is pretty epic. It is of a car chase, which in what looks like Washington, D.C., there's a car in the back, one of those like old 1980s or 70s Mercedes-Benz that often bad guys are driving. It looks like it's from an embassy or something. There's people shooting at somebody in a Ferrari driving away, and there's a lady who's standing up out of the T-top shooting, which looks very dangerous. She's not wearing a seatbelt. But it is really, really cool. The best part about this are the details that you don't know, which is this was an eight-hour photo session in Madison, Wisconsin, because their state capitol building looks very similar to buildings in Washington, D.C. It looks very similar to the capitol in Washington, D.C. Yeah, the actual specific capitol. The Mercedes-Benz car in the background that's chasing the Ferrari in the front are the Data East employees, Richard Ditton, Elaine Hodgson, Lonnie Ropp, and David Thiel. How cool is that? I'd put myself in the game, too. Why not? Of course. And this is during that, like, remember Gottlieb was doing those photorealistic back glasses? They're kind of doing the same thing now. This would go out of vogue really quick. Did you know it's in digital stereo? It is. It's all over the flyer, man. Yep. The flyer. What do we got? at the flyer this time. It's total cliche. It's basically James Bond, but not James Bond. It says licensed to thrill. Yeah. They totally ripped it off. Wow. Data East brings you pinball the way it was always meant to be. Fast action, nonstop challenge, and super excitement. What do you think of the picture on here? It's like a Russian embassy car in behind them. There's the James Bond-esque fellow in a tuxedo. Yep. 80s lady in the gold dress with the high-heeled pumps. That was a big thing in the 80s. Man, these flyers are not very high quality. Quality on the, I'm not talking about the flyer itself, just the actual. The printing. Captivating action-filled light unit that looks great and fits in every location. For those at home, that's the topper. They called it the captivating action-filled light unit. Best just got better. through to our improved sound system, which also features the hit music from the television series Mission Impossible, Get Smart, Secret Agent Man, and The Spy Who Loves Me. Wait a minute. The Spy Who Loves Me? Loves Me. So not Loved Me. So was that a show? I don't know. Was it a movie? Maybe it's a typo. I got it for you. It's a typo. If you know the answer to that, please email us, silverballchronicles at gmail.com. It's faster than a speeding bullet. This is the first pinball to sport a standard secret service issued eight-cylinder, fuel-injected, 160-mile-per-hour, $85,000 Matchbox Ferrari on every playfield.
    76:18
    Wow. I want this game now. This has stole me. Instant multiball, instant fun. In our fast food microwave it, I want it now world, even in the 80s, You no longer will have to wait for multiball play. Instant two and three ball, instant fun, the Data East Pinball way. And as you can see they can still use the word multiball right now but that will change Yeah eventually they get sued and they won be able to use the term multiball Correct Yeah they have to change it to tri Do you know it a movie back glass filmed on location with 70mm special effects Oh my God! Yeah, it's like a big deal. Who wrote this flyer? I want more flyers like this. But the thing is, the funny part always about these Daddy East ones is that they're not as cheesy as the Williams flyers. Like, there's not a lot of puns, and there's not a lot of goofiness, right? It's just really over the top. Like, Joe Kamenkow is a car person. We spoke about that a little while ago. He's a bit like me, likes fast cars and cool stuff, which is, I think, why they would put such a huge description about the matchbox Ferrari in every car. Did you know that? Never before in the history of pinballs there have been a resettable, ball-eating target until now. Players will marvel to the thrills of our innovations. Remember those really strong flippers? Not even walnuts are safe from a Daddy's Flipper. The flipper that some call the best in the business now sports a reinforced flipper link arm. In other words, they must have had issues with them breaking on the previous game. Parallel wound flipper coil and better than ever ball control. Which is funny that they're plugging the parallel wound flipper coil when they would abandon that eventually. Could it actually break walnuts? Do you think they tested that? I'm sure if you hit a steel ball at a walnut from these flippers, you could break them. But would the flippers break the walnut? Sure, why not? Let's try that out. If somebody wants to try that out, they can email us at silverballchronicles at gmail.com. It would be interesting to know. This play field has had some comparisons, let's say, to it. It has a third flipper into a side ramp shot, which rotates over into a diverter on the left side, and then a ramp, which drops it off right in front of the slings. This is basically high speed, right? Everyone says that. I mean, it has some elements that are the same. Well, like, let's look at the top third. To me, it's different enough. You've got the left side ramp. You've got an orbit, which is actually quite kind of in the middle of the play field, which shoots into a spinner into the top lanes. Then you've got the Capitol House mold in front of three stand-up targets. Then you've got the pop-bombers behind that. What draws my attention is on the left side, there's what looks like a highway chase. You mean the right side? Yeah, I'm sorry. The right side is there's a highway chase of the people being chased by in a Ferrari into a spinner on that orbit on that side, which looks like a highway sign. But then there's also a capture hole just to the left of that, which looks like the high-speed capture saucer, which then feeds, like, you know what I mean? Like, there's a lot of little bits taken.
    79:34
    But, you know, high speed isn't in stereo. That's true. And flippers can't break walnuts, so clearly superior. It does have some really cool molds that look like Capitol buildings. Right? So, I mean, there's some innovation when it comes to play field immersion, if you will. It's kind of cool. These early Data East games are in-your-face, bright, loud games. Yeah, they wanted to get your attention. because the tension would draw quarters. That's what I like, so. Yeah. Well, this brings us to their next game. Probably the best of the three. Torpedo Alley. This is the Navy Combat theme from August of 1988. It is the Data East version 2. It sells 1,002 units. Not a very good seller. So we've been up in the mid-2000s sellers. Now this time we're down at 1,000. It's designed by Claude Fernandez, who you will remember from Williams Blackout. Bally Flash Gordon, Elektra, and oh god, Baby Pac-Man. And Skateball. Skateball's good. All of his designs are basically other people's playfields with slight changes. Oh, blackout, isn't it? Neither is Elektra. Neither is Baby Pac-Man. Take that back. We apologize to Claude. Any of his good games are somebody else's. Oh!
    80:54
    Art by Margaret Hudson and Kevin O'Connor. Now, they were actually, they had their own independent businesses. They were independent contractors, which is why they are popping up now on the Bally's as well as the Daddy's stuff. Music by David Thiel, sound by Kyle Johnson, software by Lonnie Robb, and Richard Ditton. So you can see on these three games, we basically have the same teams. But we've brought in somebody else, a third designer to help out. This is a three-month production from August to November of 88. The back glass. Let's talk about the back. I want to start there. I don't want to talk about anything else. I'm going to start with this back glass. Okay. What's going on here? I don't know what's going on. So they are on like the bridge of a ship, I would say. I guess it's a submarine, which is partially above water, which makes no sense because submarines are supposed to be below water. There are three ladies who are all very surprised. and they are wearing not very comfortable shoes for working on a submarine, I would say, and they're wearing like really tight spandex uniforms. Again, I don't think these are U.S. military standard issue uniforms, obviously designed to attract male pinballers, if you will, from the 1980s. But there's also a man to the left, and he's pointing at a ship, which they're, I guess, shooting at because they're torpedoing them. Look at his pants. Yeah. His pants look weird, don't they? They're airbrushed on. Originally, he was wearing the same standard-issue torpedo alley spandex pants as the ladies, but it was determined that that looked weird. Yeah, I'm sure it would. But if that's the military issue uniform, that's the way it is. So they airbrushed on pants.
    82:59
    The standout mech here is in the middle of the playfield, which is like a sinking ship looking through binoculars. So when you complete the thing, when you sink the ship, it sinks it in the middle of the playfield, which is kind of cool, eh? Mm-hmm. Yeah. It has your Claude Fernandez plunge across the playfield to start the game. Looks about as deadly as Star Wars from Stern. The latest Star Wars from Stern. Nah, you can plunge it into the lane there. Can you? Yeah, you're fine. It looks dangerous. Nah, it's fine. Well, something with a bunch of tight pants has to have a great flyer. Well, the flyer, they have a mascot character. Looks like a cat with a sailor outfit on. with a Data East tattoo. I don't think he's in the game anywhere, so I don't know why. Is he in the Torpedo? No, yeah, he's not. There's another weird cat in the O of Torpedo, but it's a different cat. And they got a mouse at the foot of the game. He's on the foot of the game. Oh, yeah. What's up with that? I don't know what they were going for there. Yeah, you could tell that maybe the direction was in all directions here. Let's see. You know, the proof is in the play field. That's right. A good play field makes a game, right? Data East commitment to quality shows up in every detail of game design and manufacturing. So this one is a little more business. It tells you the shots, the actual rules of the game. What you should be doing to get your points. Which is boring. Come on. I want ridiculous over the top. I want this to tell me how it's going to change the course of pinball forever. Claude Fernandez was known for having not bad play fields, but just different play fields. like odd things. And this one has a lot of vertical up-kickers and not a lot of standard kind of regular ramps. Here we go. We got an improved design. Control lamps and flash lamps on printed circuit boards for reliability and easy service. Gold contact micro switches on all rollover switches. Removable speaker housing with easy in and out design. Stronger legs. Stronger legs? Okay. All PCBs located in back box for easy service. That's a good idea. All plywood cabinet. Cleanest cable in the business.
    85:25
    Actual sinking mechanical ship designed for the thrill of the kill. I don't think that particular line will be used in any modern game. They have a really neat design around this time as well. They've got these mounted PCB boards under the playfield that you just rotate to take out the light bulbs. A lot of people know these from the Bally Williams games. But the cabling is pretty minimalist. I remember when I saw my Gottlieb System 80s and I opened that up, the amount of cabling under there was just terrifying. You can see now that this is different. They're flipper bats at the time. They had pulverizer written on them. Yeah. Yeah, that was the critique of the System 80s, right, from Gottlieb, was that they were like these weak, sauce flippers. They just couldn't make it up the cool ramps and stuff. Yeah, kind of like, you know, what was the one? Miami, not Miami Heat. That's a basketball team.
    86:24
    Hollywood Heat. Yeah, they have like these steep ramps in the back that you can't make them up the ramp ever. No problems making ramps on these down east, I'll tell you that. They're going to break stuff with these flippers. Now, this was Claude Fernandez's only data East game, and he only really made six games anyway. Why do you think that is? Do you think it was because it was just a bad seller, or do you think it was his personality? Yeah, well, he was inducted into the Hall of Fame. Yeah. I mean, I don't know much about Claude Fernandez. I think he got into other industries. I think you're probably right. A lot of people want stability, and we'll get into some of the other pinball designers. You know, there were guys like Ward Pemberton, who was actually a fighter. He was actually a firefighter, right? So a lot of these people realize that they can't make it all of them in pinball. So they pop up now and then, but they have other jobs or are going to other industries. A lot of people like Torpedo Alley. You're one of them, right? Yep. Corey Hughes would say over on our Facebook page that a favorite memory of Torpedo Alley was playing the final round of Pinberg. and the convention center roof was leaking onto the game that we were playing. That is great theme immersion. Ah, yes.
    87:44
    I wonder if that was in the convention center or was that in the warehouse? Because the warehouse used to have leaking. I remember that. There'd be like water on some of the games. Ugh. Poor Pinberg. Ah, now one of my favorites. Yeah, we're getting ready to peak here when it comes to original themes. Original themes, of course, are cheaper You don't have to pay a licensor You don't have to deal with licensing You just build what you want to build And when it comes to personal favorite unlicensed themes It's got to be a time travel theme In the game Time Machine It's December of 1988 Data East version 2 sells 2,896 units So almost 2,900 units So we're seeing, after that sort of really low-end torpedo alley, we're way back up again in sales. This is designed by Joe Kamenkow, Margaret Hudson, Kevin O'Connor on the art, music and sound by David Thiel, Kyle Johnson, software by Lonnie Ropp and Jerry Coraganis.
    88:52
    Yeah. So this is another five-month production run, but in this five months, they're doing almost 3,000 units. The back glass on this one is a lot of fun, because what it's done is it's jammed together a bunch of different eras because you're traveling through time. You've got kind of the 1980s disco driver. You've got the 1980s sort of mom next to him. Behind her in the rear side passenger seat is a hippie from the 1970s. And then behind the driver, almost falling out of this cosmic time-traveling car, is a 1950s sort of leather jacket jock guy. Yeah, I would think the hippie would be 60s piece, man. Yeah. Oh, yeah, you're right, probably. The driver is like a disco dude, so he's got to be in the 70s. Yeah, yeah, turn of the 1980s. Yeah, of course. So there's some pretty cool thing here. They're in space around Earth. there's like TVs floating around and it looks like bongos in space floating around, it's really kind of weird it's very cool, this is designed by Kevin O'Connor the hippie in the back is actually Margaret Hudson she's the one who modeled for that go back to the 1950's with Data East Pinball, they are hanging out in a 1950's diner playing Time Machine. And it has Ding written all over the flyer here. Why is that? Because the game has chimes. The game has chimes. We haven't had chimes in a pinball machine for years. Long time, yeah. So cool. The back of the flyer has a picture is worth a thousand words. What picture are they showing here? They're showing the play field. Yeah, the top side and the underside of the play field. and they've gone all out with these PCB boards underneath here. We're not talking like one or two. We're talking a couple of really massive PCB boards. Yeah, massive light boards. Beam me up, Scotty. The ball stops here and ring any bells. Star warp to a new dimension as your ball enters the center ramp transporter. Beam to another location on the play field for a million points when lit. Ooh, new ball lock mechanism fed by the left and right ramp engages time machines, powerful engines, as you travel through the 80s, 70s, 60s to your destination in the 50s. And it has a chime unit. It shows a picture of a chime unit. Remember when pinballs were fun? Relive the golden age of pinball again with chimes and a special clicker noise unit that's sure to keep you going back in time. That's nice. That's something unusual and neat. Like, this is a cool game because they're thinking, how can we be different? And they've done just that. It also has a really cool subway mechanism, which is basically a wire form ramp under the playfield. And basically you keep hitting those ramps, you go back in time, and when you get to the 50s, you start hearing the chimes. What do you think of the playfield layout? It's got two ramps on the left side, one on the right. One of the ramps on the left side is actually a dead end that ends up kind of dropping back onto the playfield, right? Yeah, there's no dead ends here, man. It's Flow City. It's a fun game, eh? And imagine all these plastic ramps with the flippers that can destroy walnuts, i.e. they will destroy the plastic ramps. Yeah. A lot of these I've seen, the ramps are just trashed. Yeah. It's black. It's very, like, space. So if you've seen, like, a Rick and Morty where the playfield is black and the art is on top of it. I don't know if I like it. It's cool. It looks good. It's kind of Rick and Morty-y. Yeah. It's just, I don't know. There are certain things when it comes to play field art that you can do and you can't do. One of them I feel is like a lot of black. The other one is like a lot of green. This is all in your opinion, of course. Of course. Well, I mean, there is no other opinion that matters. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I look forward to playing one of these. I don't see a lot of these early data-ese. I see a lot of the bigger seller numbers. We'll get to those in another Data East podcast. Ryan Kuiper over at TurboGrafx-7, one of the streamers that you'll often see, says the Data East time machine is greater than Zachariah's time machine. Would you agree? Yes.
    93:29
    Although the Zachariah's time machine has an insane, like the entire upper part of the play field raises and lowers. Cool. Would you buy one of these Data East time machines? If the price was right. Sure. I would. Yeah. There you go. Look at this flyer here, Ron. What do you see down here on the bottom? I see an Easter egg for the upcoming game. Yes. It is a Playboy bunny with a question mark. Should we jump into the next one?
    94:01
    Playboy's 35th anniversary was the next game from May of 1989. This sells 2,338 units. I'm a little bit down in production numbers. This is the adult and lifestyle entertainment theme, if you will. Joe Kamenkow with another playfield.
    94:20
    And it should be noted that Ed Sabula actually had a lot to do with a lot of these playfield designs as well. Art by Kevin O'Connor, music and sound by Kyle Johnson, and software, Lonnie Ropp and Jerry Corriganis. Close enough. This is a four-month production run. and we have to start thinking about building out a bench of designers, but it doesn't look like they actually have done that. We're back again to another Joe Kamenkow design. It's also notable because this is the first license by Data East. It is the Playboy theme. Playboy was an American lifestyle and entertainment magazine founded by Hugh Hefner, first in Chicago in 1953. The brand was first financed by a $1,000 loan from Hugh Hefner's mother. Playboy was known for nude and semi-nude centerfolds, or Playmate models, bunnies, and published many short stories by novelists such as Ian Fleming of James Bond, Margaret Atwood, Handmaid's Tale, and Roald Dahl, who actually did Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. We spoke a lot about Bally's Playboy from December of 1979, which sold almost 20,000 units. By 1989, Playboy was a lot less cool than it was in the early 80s and late 70s.
    95:48
    Hef was getting old. Adult entertainment, if you want to call it that, had changed considerably in the late 80s. There wasn't the same sort of sense of sexual revolution of the 1970s. It became a lot more like smutty, if you will, in the late 80s and 90s. It really was changing, and it's an odd choice of theme, especially for their first theme. Had they do it again. They would, and at that time it was even worse. This is the 35th anniversary of Playboy, which I guess would make some sense. The flyer, pretty straightforward, actually. It just shows the game. Talks about the under-playfield-mounted PCB boards, which are an industry leader in technology. Our cabling technology is so clean that it eliminates 70% of the wires of a standard game. Yet all the years later, Gary Stern would say how many miles of wire were in every game. Yeah. Interesting thing is this one line here. Let's see. Super smart software has what no one else can give you. even our toll-free number, 1-800-KICKERS. I believe that's Phil Stern's number to this day. Yeah, that's Phil Stern's number to today. Yeah, it's still on their documentation. Yeah. The game itself, so if we go away from the license for a moment and just talk about the game itself, is it a good game? Is it a decent player? I've probably only played it a couple times ever, and there's nothing about it I remember off the top of my head. It's got diverters, right? Daddy East was a big fan of diverters. It has two ramps which are fairly similar to one another that feed into a diverter, feed to the left side. Data East did a lot of these things in the 90s where you shoot into a dead end into a vertical up kicker onto a ramp. They were like really, really known for that. An example of that now would be Rush's premium LE model where you shoot into the dead end, it goes into a scoop, and then that goes up into a vertical up kicker. So it hits the ball from underneath and shoots it up a wire form, a ramp made of wire, and goes back to a flipper. They do a lot of that. That was like a bit of a crutch that they had. The art on it, I think, is actually pretty cool. It's not as iconic, I think, as the original ballet art that they had on the play field of the ballet game, which I thought was sexy but classy, if you will, where this one is obviously a little more trying to really emphasize a lot of ladies. It's less classy and more... Because in the original one, if you look, if you remove the pop bumpers, if you just look at the play field art, there's a picture of you like looking out the window, and there's a woman there, and she is in a certain position. Yeah, she's dropped a contact lens. Yes, yes. Yeah, the pop bumper area on this game is designed to look like an arcade inside the mansion. It's got a game of Bandit. It's got the original sort of, it's got a Playboy game there as well. Some of the bunnies are playing it. Hugh Hefner is standing out front. It's sort of like you're in the mansion. I guess it's kind of the quote-unquote world under glass theme that they've built here. I mean, I don't know. I couldn't have this in my house. Not because it's Playboy, but because I just I don't know. It just isn't cool. The ramps are a little bit fun because those ramps are part of the pool, I guess, of the Playboy Mansion. That's kind of neat. The data sheet is interesting. This is over here on IPDB. It is the features of the game. But in Playboy Magazine, it used to have, like, the Playmates, birthplace, their ambitions, their turn-ons, their turn-offs. What they've done is they've taken that and flipped it to be what is the pinball machines, turn-ons and turn-offs, and favorite movies and things. It's pretty cool. Its favorite movies apparently are Tommy, Tilt, Tron, and Joysticks, which are all arcade movies. I like games I would like to meet. It's got Laser War and Robocop. Yeah. So there is another Easter egg for something that's coming.
    100:06
    Favorite food and drinks. quarters, because it's a pinball machine that likes to eat quarters, play field cleaner. But it's kind of fun. It's a fun way to do it. The marketing is very good of it. It's just, I don't know. It also came with a centerfold of Kimberly Conrad in the flyer for this pinball machine. She's standing in front of the machine, very 1980s, late 80s, early 90s model thing. Again, the weird 1980s pump high heels, which were the thing. This is the same Playboy Playmate who is seen on the back glass. So I guess we'll talk about the back glass, because it's probably the most interesting part of this pinball machine. We have Hugh Hefner in the front. Again, he's getting old, right? It's not the half of the 70s. He is with Kimberly Conrad, who was Playmate of the Month in 1988 and Playboy of the Year in 1988. This is Hef's second wife and the mother of his two children. Their marriage drew worldwide attention and is often referred to as the belated end to the 1970s. So Hef's thing before was that he had all these girlfriends and he dated and he was a quote-unquote playboy. Now he's more or less settled down and having kids because he's old. And that's what this pinball machine sort of embodies. His playboy was kind of like no longer cool. After nine years of marriage, Kimberly Conrad and Hugh Hefner would separate for 11 years when they remained married because of their children. They were officially divorced in 2009 when their children turned 18. The youngest of the children turned 18. If you look at this, it's the back glass. It's got a lot of Easter eggs in it, which is, again, the only reason why this is a fun back glass. One of them is Joe Cam and Cow is in the pool with some of the ladies. Kevin O'Connor is sitting at the table on the left. And I think Gary Stern is in the back talking to one of the playmates. Not entirely sure. I have to get confirmation on that one. There's also some original cartoons amongst the actual photorealistic people in the background. Those are cartoons from the Playboy comic strips. Have you seen these characters before, Ron? The granny. I remember her from the original Playboy. The old lady, the old granny, we spoke about her in our old Bally Moving Units Part 1 from way back in our archives. She's in the pool behind Joe Camencow, kind of getting all handsy. She is naughty granny. She relentlessly attempts to seduce men. She is a take on the dirty old man, but they flip that to a dirty old lady stereotype, and it's often used to sort of satirize the dirty old man. This was created by Robert Buck Brown, who was one of the original cartoonists from that 1970s era who is African American, a real trailblazer. She is going after Joe Kamenkow down there. The other one who I didn't know is under Kevin O'Connor's arm on his right side. That is Little Annie Fanny, and I had to look this up because I didn't know who it was, and now my internet search history just looks horrible. So from 1962 to 1988, Little Annie Fanny was a humorous satire of contemporary American society and its sexual norms. Annie Fanny, the title character, was a statuesque blonde woman who would often find herself nude in various social situations. Why is it important? Well, Harvey Kruseman, a cartoonist, created the series. Cruiseman is best known for launching Mad Magazine. Also on the little table is a Playboy little character lady over by the pineapple here. I don't know who that is. She must be a symbol for Playboy because she pops up from time to time, but through my Googling I couldn't find who that is. I thought that was, what's his name? Was it Leroy Neiman? Yeah. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, Ron has seen Playboy. I thought we did that on our previous episode. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. See, ladies and gentlemen, Ron has listened to our previous episodes. I was there for it, so I just remembered it. You know, Playboy's cool, I guess, at a certain point. But it became less about rebellion and more about, you know, boobs. You know what I mean? Yeah. Monday Night Football, or actually ABC's Monday Night Football.
    104:58
    Okay. Okay, we're getting into it here in a second here, Ron. This is the NFL Sports Theme, September of 1989, Data East Version 2. It sells 1,492 units. I can probably see why there's a groan just in the sales numbers alone. Designed by Joe Camencow, art by Kevin O'Connor, music and sound by David Thiel, software by Lonnie Ropp. Now, this was a license. And it's the ABC Monday Night Football, which was a – this is going to show my lack of NFL knowledge, because that's not my thing. Surprise. But ABC's Monday Night Football was a huge brand itself, right? Correct. Is it still a thing? It's not on ABC anymore. But it's still Monday Night Football. It's still Monday Night Football, but it's not ABC's Monday Night Football. I can't remember what network it's on now. Yeah, it has Dan Dirdorf, Frank Guilford, and Al Michaels on the game. So those are three separate individuals that were the... Frank Gifford.
    106:04
    Right, Gifford. So he's... Oh, God, I sound like I have no idea what I'm talking about, which, in fact, I don't. You don't. I have no clue. I'm not a football person. I don't know any of these people from the 90s. Those were like the announcer talking heads on ABC Monday Night Football? Okay. And you can hear them in the game in stereo. In stereo sound? And the game has a topper, which is just the ref giving the touchdown sign. Yeah, the hands in the air. Yeah. Terrible backlash. Guy's throwing a football, guy catching a football. They're too close together. That doesn't make any sense. It's the 20th anniversary special edition of ABC's Monday Night Football. Yep. One of the things that I said was very bad for pinball art was black playfields, and now we've got green playfields. This is made to look like a world under glass, and it is a football field, right? Mm-hmm. Why did you groan when I said that this was the next game we were talking about?
    107:03
    Not a fan. Is there a specific reason? I just don't like the way it plays. But do you know it actually has an actual disappearing goal post and ramp for extra points in field goals, just like the one seen on TV. Yeah, we're talking playfield immersion here, right? So in the front, part of the playfield pops up to a ramp, and you shoot up that ramp into a field goal, which ends up kind of like a jump ramp, if you will. It doesn't look like it is fun. It's not. Yeah, it looks like it was supposed to be fun. But I don't think it is. Again, this is just my opinion. Your experience may vary. You may think this is the greatest game of all time. Like, it's designed to be in a bar where people are watching the football game. Look at this skill shot, though. Yeah, so the skill shot on the right side, you shoot up this little ramp thing into, like, a kickoff, and it goes into $10 million, $20 million, $30,000, $40,000. So it's like the, what do they call those, the baskets? It's in Tales of the Arabian Nights, but it's longer and bigger, where you shoot it into the little baskets. It's sort of the same thing. Well, it is the same thing. Do you think Data East got royalties from John Papaduke? But he basically ripped that off. A spinner into a vertical upkicker onto the ramp. Again, sort of a dead-end shot. It does have an orbit spinner, so it can't be too bad. Do you know recently over 10,000 operators and 43 million players have switched to Data East pinball? It seems like a lot. They're really plugging themselves, not necessarily the game, on this flyer. Yeah, Data East is growing, right? You can trust us. We're not going to disappear, right? Because when something new starts up, which we've seen a million times in pinball, and we'll see another million, you can't really trust them because, oh, you can't trust them because you won't be able to get coils. Fact, Data East pinball is the only true digital stereo sound system and is the most advanced system ever in a pinball. Data East is also the first to have highly choreographed light, sound, and display effects. Fact, not fiction. Data East has the most extensive celebrity licensing program in process with games like Playboy's 35th anniversary, ABC's Monday Night Football, and others to be revealed at a later date. They offer instant name recognition to the player, higher earnings, and resale, which is 100% true. They have noticed that if they slap a license on a game, it sells more and earns more. They weren't the first to figure that out, for goodness sakes, right? I think Bally did it in the 1980s, late 70s, but they've been able to sort of reinvigorate that again. I like they plug their superior light board technology. I mean, Bally used light boards in the mid 80s. I mean, before daddy's even existed. It's just kind of funny. Go give one a flip. I'm sure if you're a big football fan, this is a cool thing to have in your basement. Now, this is the one for me. Uh-oh. This is RoboCop. Oh, yes, RoboCop. November 1989. Sells 1,500 units. It is a licensed movie cops and robbers theme. Data East version 2. Joe Kamenkow on design. Kevin O'Connor on art. Sound and music by Scott Stevenson and Mark Cross. And software by Rob Quinn. So we can see some staples of Data East that have been around forever, Joe and Kevin. But we've got some other individuals, Scott Stevenson, Mark Cross, Rob Quinn. We're kind of bringing in some people to help it because they're starting to ramp up production, aren't they, Ron? And they need people to help out to keep up that schedule. There's only so much Ed Sabula and Joe Kamenkow can do. You are a fan of RoboCop. The theme, the license. I am a fan of the first movie. I am also a fan of the first movie. Robocop was the 1987 ultra-violence science fiction action film directed by Paul Verhoeven. Yeah, he also did Basic Instinct. And Total Recall and Starship Troopers. He has a very weird movie style. All of those movies are all very weird. This stars Peter Weller. A lot of people will remember him as the bad guy in Star Trek Into Darkness. pretty much on the Star Trek game. Every time I see him, I'm like, oh, it's Robocop. Exactly. Other than that, I don't think Peter Weller's really done much, right? He was in Buckaroo Banzai, I thought. I don't even know what that is. You don't know what that is? No. Oh, God. It stars Nancy Allen, who I thought was great, and Kirkwood Smith, who most people will recognize as the father Red from that 70s show. Yep. I love this movie, Rob. I honestly, when I first saw the 70s show, I'm there like, hey, it's Clarence from RoboCop. It's the drug dealer guy. Yeah.
    112:09
    Yes, I love this movie. See, I... Most of the people in this movie basically did, they couldn't, it's like they couldn't get anything after this. Except for, except for Kirkwood Smith. I, yeah, Ronnie Cox was in Total Recall. And Beverly Hills Cop 2, and he was in other stuff. Yeah, you love this movie. I saw this, I mean, I saw it when it came out. Yeah. So I was much younger. This was not a movie for young folk. I saw this when I was, I don't know, 12. Totally shouldn't have seen it at that age. I was 13. Yeah, I would have been 13. See, but I saw the VHS recorded version from, like, Sunday's movie marathon, where TV, especially American TV, would cut out a lot of the violent stuff. So it was a highly edited version of it. And since then, I've seen it as an adult, quite recently, in fact. and it is an awesome movie. So set in the future of a crime-ridden Detroit city, police officer Alex Murphy is brutally murdered and brought back to life as a cybernetic police officer called Robocop. Unaware of his former life, Robocop executes a brutal campaign against a crime city while coming to terms with lingering fragments of his memory and his humanity. This movie is an awesome movie, Not because of that part, but because of the world that it is held within, which is a critique on the power of megacorporations, which has become quite topical nowadays, TV media propaganda, death and resurrection, mass uncontrolled consumerism, and Reagan-era drug politics. Netflix did a Movies That Made Us episode about RoboCop, and it talks about the production and all of the craziness that happened on the set of RoboCop, it is totally worth a watch. Have you ever seen that? I have not seen that. It's well worth it if you're looking for some more content. I will say, if you're going to watch it, watch the director's cut. It's a great movie. Yeah. As mentioned, Data East also did a RoboCop video game for arcades and consoles, which was really, really good. Mike Castleman from The Pinballers. He says, Robocop, Back to the Future, and The Simpsons were better than most System 11s. Data East had the best licenses in the late 80s and early 90s. I don't know about Back to the Future. Well, but it was better than most System 11s. Of that era?
    114:38
    Would you rather play Mousin Around or The Simpsons? I know which one I'd rather play. But that's not most.
    114:46
    Swords of Fury, would you rather play Robocop or Swords of Fury? Ah, RoboCop. Yeah. You're treading on some thin ice there, Mike Castleman, although I appreciate it. I agree, but I also disagree. We're really close together. We're close together on that. But you know RoboCop was the big deal It has a new feature Something that Daddy actually beat Williams to Okay It came there an extra little it on the flyer It got Gary Stern on the flyer. It says a revolutionary development in flipper design. A new solid state electronic flipper. So revolutionary that I will guarantee, this is Gary Stern, I will guarantee no flipper coil burnout for one year, or I will replace it free. Why did they redesign their flippers? I thought their flippers were fine. They could crack walnuts. They went from parallel wound to a single wound coil, and basically solid state, meaning the game can actually control it. So you hit the flipper button. There's actually an extra board in the game, which, of course, they mounted in the cabinet along the side. So if you're putting the play field down and it falls in the cabinet, it'll just destroy the board.
    116:01
    Whoops. And they did away with the end of stroke switch because who needs that? It's controlled. It's computer controlled now. We don't need that, except they ended up needing that later. They put it back in. But it didn't burn out. Yeah. I mean, if it did, Gary Stern would replace it for free. And in this image is Gary Stern wearing his white shirt and suspenders and tie, which is like basically Gary Stern's uniform. And he's holding a flipper back, which they probably gave him right before they took the picture. He's probably like, what's this? Do you know that RoboCop is a new must-have for every location? Aggressive, thrilling pinball chase with digital stereo sound and authentic digitized voice track and everything that attracts continued play. Designed for fast action and built to take it. With color-coded, easy-to-understand rules. So cool. It has a jump ramp, a daring high-speed, high-flying ramp. So good. jump to capture fugitives and one million points. So you shoot up the right ramp and then there's a gap in the ramp and then it literally jumps over. And if it doesn't make it, it falls down into the top lanes and then into the pop-up bars. You start multiballing the guys and the rookie crew is here! The rookie crew is here! I've seen this played on stream. I haven't played it personally. Like I said, there's low sales numbers pins for some reason.
    117:24
    Like, cool ones like this I've never played, but really crappy low number ones I have. It is a really neat design. It's got lots of interesting bits and features. It's very different than most Cam and Cal games, right? Like, it's very unusual. The flippers are ridiculously strong. It does the annoying thing, though, that Swords of Fury does, too. Whenever you hit the flipper button, it makes a sound. I hate that. Although, that's the only negative I have against it. Oh, and the back glass is just poor. Yeah, it's not that great. It's basically Robocop shooting the gun. It's just the lady behind. When you see it up close, it looks even worse. Yeah, it's interesting, but it's not to the standard you'd expect. But it is hand-drawn. It's not a photo one all of a sudden. Yep. Come with me or there will be trouble. This had to sell a lot. It's a huge license. It's kind of a fun game. Yeah, they were a little late with the license, though. It's like two years after the movie. Yeah, it sells 1,500 units, which is pretty disappointing, considering they were almost up to 3,000 units on their previous games. Well, the team has expanded, I said before. Scott Stevenson, Mark Cross, but they only did this one game. And Joe Kamenkao said it didn't sell, but they liked the playfield layout, so they used it again on Checkpoint.
    118:38
    Yeah, we'll just use the same thing. We'll just mix it up a little bit. But there's only Joe Kamenkao that's doing the designing, really, right? Like, there's only one person making playfields with Ed Sabula.
    118:49
    Rob Quinn, he only did Galaxy and Nineball. He was the programmer. Like, so, again, we're bringing in teams to basically, instead of expanding the team permanently and building a bigger company, it's like we need people to parachute in to drop in and help us out. The next one was Total Recall. It's a licensed movie theme from 1990. It was an unproduced prototype. It was designed by Tim Seckle, art by Paul Ferris, who you will know from the Bally 81, Class of 81, and software by Riemann Merchant. It was a head-to-head or like a side-to-side pinball machine. They only ever actually made one. There's a picture of it. I have also included in the show notes a link to a YouTube walkthrough of an old, you know, early 90s pinball show where somebody has uploaded it, and you can see the game that's there and sort of being played. They only ever really made the one, though. But these fast designs, they're just banging them out, banging them out, banging them out. Joe Kamenkow would say, Ed and I worked hand in hand on many of the games. I would do the drawing with the curves and the game idea, and Ed would clean up my mess and redraw the game and build a fast sample. We could crank out a drawing and have a working white wood if we needed it in a few days, often less than a week. He could do anything, build anything, wire or draw anything. They don't have many men like Ed in the business. They don't need to expand the team. They've got Ed Sabula just killing it with everything. But this guy was, like, close to retirement anyway. What about Phantom of the Opera? It looks great.
    120:31
    Licensed stage musical theme from January of 1990. Daddy's version 2 sells $2,750. Designed by Joe Kamenkow. Art by Paul Ferris. This is his first sort of pinball machine back since, you know, I don't know. Vector? Did he do Vector? I know that they definitely plugged that. Did you know that he's back? The guy whose work you've loved? The guy who's fascinated the entire industry for years with his super art and dynamic style? Recognizes the greatest artist who ever put Socko, come on and play with me on any piece he touched a brush to? I have no idea what that means.
    121:09
    That's what literally it says. Recognizes the greatest artist who ever put Socko, come on and play me.
    121:15
    That must be from a game. or a song? He's done our latest and greatest phantom pin game, Backglass, Playfield, and all, and it's killer. Paul Ferris, the man with the golden touch. There you go. His last game was Grand Lizard in 1986 at Williams. And that was just, that didn't get, the Backglass, his version didn't get released. Right. His full actual, like, actual game that he did all of the everything was Centaur back in 1981. And Gary's on the flyer again. Saying how great they're going to flip her back. He hasn't changed. He's still wearing the same suspenders and shirts. Future games will have this feature as well as Kryptonite Playfield Hard Coat, the world's hardest surface, harder than a diamond tough, strong scratch proof and easy to clean. You'll never need Mylar ever. You can rely on us for the latest in quality and innovations. I've never heard of that.
    122:16
    So it's basically their version of Diamond Coast. I guess, but I like the name, Kryptonite. They trademarked it. They did. I don't know how they managed this. Now, Phantom of the Opera was the French novel by Gaston Leroy, first published in 1910. Many film and stage productions have been adapted from that over the years, including the 1986 musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber. It had won a Tony Award and is one of the greatest musicals of all time. It still tours today. The latest showing was in 2021 in London's West End, which is basically Europe's Broadway. This is a heck of a theme for pinball, isn't it, Ron? Sure. We're not exactly talking about Iron Maiden or High Speed here, are we? We're talking about Phantom of the Opera. See the Phantom unmasked and true face revealed. Ugh. Ball vanishes into Magic Mirror and advances Bonus Multiplier. Activate Organ Door. Organ Door? Yeah, to uncover Phantom's hiding place for multi-ball action. The game itself looks phenomenal. And this is a testament to Paul Ferris. It looks brilliant. It looks creepy and sexy and scary and unusually interesting. It is really, really a piece of art. And we wouldn't expect anything from Paul Ferris that is not like that, right? It is great. You've got the phantom in the middle of the play field. You've got the female character in front. You've got, like, archways around it. You've got other characters. just the intricate designs around the flippers, this very Baroque style of flavors of different colors and stuff, but it's very red and eerie and white and dark. It's cool. Very, very cool. This is a statement piece more than it is a great pinball machine, though, isn't it? It's not the best. Not the best. Yeah, the woman is actually Paul Ferris' daughter. She modeled for the image. So to be able to get the proportions and the directions right in the back glass and the play field, you have somebody model for you and you design around it. That's Paul Ferris' daughter. Paul Ferris says, Joe was over my shoulder nonstop. When the back glass painting was unveiled at the Data East office, Joe and Gary applauded. They loved it. Phantom of the Opera, both Gary and Ed's pictures, are in the game. I don't know which one they are. I haven't gotten close enough to it, and the images on IPTV are not clear enough. But at the time, Phantom of Opera was actually public domain. Though it was popular on Broadway, they were able to use the license. His son actually modeled for the Phantom. So it's a whole family affair there. Most of Paul Ferris' designs, like if you go back all of his art years ago, you know, there's like his brother or his uncle or his cousin or a lady he used to know in high school when he was a teacher. There's his wife. His wife. Hey. Right? So there's like a lot of stuff there. It's kind of fun when you work with the Paul Ferris because there's always little Easter eggs in there. When it comes to playing this game, you've played it. What are your critiques?
    125:41
    Not the best. Is it because it's not flowy or it's just the code? It just doesn't shoot that great. It looks. It looks great. Stunning. Again, these are all opinions. The opinions expressed are ones of my own and no one else's. That's right. And your opinion is never wrong.
    126:01
    Unless it's contrary to my opinion. They also did a King Kong machine. This is the classic fictional character of King Kong. They did nine units. This is designed by Jerry Armstrong. Art by Kevin O'Connor. Brian Schmidt did the sound and music. And I don't know who did the software.
    126:20
    I assume it's Lonnie. Interesting of Brian Schmidt. He is defected from Williams and is now at Data East. Big time sound engineer.
    126:29
    He was very, very integral, I would say, to this time at Data East. He really brought them to another level.
    126:41
    King Kong is one of these... They're all prototypes. High level, grail, super high expensive pins, right? I don't see much about King Kong now. They're all prototypes. When I first joined the hobby, it was like, oh my god, it's a King Kong. Did you see it? Did you play it? Does it deserve that, or is it just that there was only nine? I've never got to play it. It's very wide open. It is fan-ish, which means that all the shots are ranged left to right, but there is an upper play field on the top left side where you spell ape that goes into a wire form down to your right flipper. Left side or right side? Right side. You have left and right issues. Because, yeah. In Canada, it's different. In Canada, we do it the other way. The ramp on the left side, you shoot up the ramp, and it goes almost vertical and then to the left and down to the bottom left flipper. That is very reminiscent of Keith Elwin's Captain Marvel ramp in Avengers Infinity Quest. There's also versions of King Kong with, like, a huge flipper. Neat. The art is really cool. It's got King Kong at the bottom. Art is excellent. Going for the lady.
    127:59
    Very neat, unique design. They just didn't release it. It was too expensive, or they didn't have enough time, or whatever the thing was. But it's one of those grail pins that people freak out about. Similar to, like, what, Mafia by Capcom? Mafia? What? Kingpin. Mafia was an actual, another game by another company. Back to the Future was the next big knockout licensed movie theme. That was June of 1990. We're into the Data East version 3. Do you know the difference between the versions? It's probably just the board sets. They're just adding like little bits or more flashers or something? It's just the boards change over time. There's like different MPU versions or different power board versions. There's different sound board iterations. go to pinwiki.com to find out more information. Exactly. There's 3,000 units of this sold, so we finally broke the 3,000-unit threshold. Designed by Joe Kamenkow, art by Paul Ferris, music by Brian Schmidt, software by Riemann Merchant. Now, the theme is based on Back to the Future, which was the 1985 pop culture phenomenon film directed by Robert Zemeckis and written by Bob Gale. stars Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Leah Thompson, and a time-traveling DeLorean. Marty McFly accidentally travels back in time to 1955, where he meets his parents and works to correct the timeline before he disappears or something. That's not really how time travel works, but I guess he didn't know that in the 80s. Are you an expert on time travel? Yeah, so you go back in time, and you accidentally kiss your mother, and then your photo fades away in the future because you don't exist. Is that right? Well, because your parents didn't get together, so you can't exist now. Yeah, no, when you go back in time, you create an alternate timeline. Your timeline still remains, but now you've gone back. You can't go back to where you originally were because you're in a totally different line. If you go back ahead, you're going back ahead of the new line that you've created, not the existing line that was there before. If you would like to describe how time travel works, please send us an email at silverballchronicles at gmail.com. This movie had a $19 million budget. That is $31 million adjusted for inflation, which is, you know, a decent budget. Not outrageous, but a decent budget. It grossed $388 million, which is almost a billion dollars adjusted for inflation. $929 million. A huge hit, and it is a 96% Rotten Tomatoes. Ron, this is one of your favorite movies. It's a good movie. It's a great movie. The second one, eh. The third one, pretty bad. I've never seen the other two. Yeah, the second one's kind of fun, because they go into the future, which was 2018, I think. And there's flying cars and all of that stuff. And then the movie kind of intersects with the other movie, the old movie. so he sees events from the first movie from a different perspective which I think is really cool also not how time travel works but I kind of like the second one the third one is not grace so don't waste your time or waste your time and feel bad about you know kind of half ruining one of your favorite movies according to Paul Ferris Bob Gale who is the writer of Back to the Future Well, him and Joe Kamenkow would meet about the license, and the two of them hit it right off. In fact, Bob Gale and Joe Kamenkow are still friends today. Bob Gale wrote a lot of popular 1980s movies. Building strong relationships is always key. This is one thing I think that Joe has always been very good at and excelled at and why he is where he is today. So for many years, he continued to build that relationship with Bob Gale. In fact, Joe introduced Back to the Future as a theme for slot machines when he worked at IGT. Today, Joe Kamenkow is working as an executive producer for Back to the Future the musical, along with Bob Gale. This musical, Back to the Future, has won a Laurence Olivier Award and a What on Stage Award for Best Musical. It was nominated for several other awards and won for Best Set Design and Sound Design. There are also unconfirmed rumblings that Joe holds the right to develop a pinball machine based on Back to the Future. today with Kapow Pinball, who you'll know from The Beatles as well as Batman 66. Some say Stern might be developing one, but that's, again, unconfirmed. Would you buy an original Data East Back to the Future? That's not a good game. It's not a good game. Like, not at all. I'm not a fan. Code bad. Did you know, though, that game introduced Data East's new Quick Lock Backbox locking system? No. It's probably one of the best innovations they ever came up with. They had this over Williams. Definitely. Of course, then they abandoned it when they changed their cabinet design when they went to Spike System 20 years later. But it's the thing where you just stick this huge, like, Allen key in there, and you just turn it. Boom. Oh, yes. Beautiful, beautiful system. Huge Allen key. Yep. I think somebody is using that now. They kind of took their system. Probably American. Something like that. Somebody took that technology. But I was disappointed when they did away with it. It's like the coolest thing you ever came up with, and you just abandoned it. The game itself was built in, like, weeks. So they were able to get the license, but I guess part of the thing was they had to get it done quick. So they just slapped together a game in, like, less than a month. And you can really tell because it is a bit clunky, and it's not really that fun, right? Like, it looks kind of nice sitting on a, you know, with its lights on. But other than that, it's kind of crap, right? Not a huge fan. That's very political of you, Ron. The back glass. This is the most controversial part of this pinball machine, and it's because Michael J. Fox did not allow his likeness to appear on the game. No, he's not on it. The Marty McFly on the back glass is actually an image of Paul Ferris' son wearing the glasses, if you look. Paul Farah says, Yeah, so, I mean, at that time, Michael J. Fox is really busted out. He's really kind of becoming a well-known sort of household name. And the worst thing that you can do at that time, I guess, is get typecast being, you know, Marty McFly. Hey, look, it's Marty McFly! Right, that would just, that would not be cool. Bob Gale, actually, the writer of the movie, was very bummed out that there was no Michael J. Fox in the pinball machine. Some say that Gary and Joe were drawn in as Marty and Doc. But Paul Ferris says that Marty McFly on the back laugh is his son. So where does that controversy or misconception come from? Well, if you look at the flyer on IPDB, the two people in the flyer playing Doc Brown and Marty McFly are Joe Kamenkow and Gary Stern. So that is where that confusion comes from. Yeah, I'd say that Backglass, it definitely looks like Christopher Lloyd, though. It definitely looks like Christopher Lloyd. But yeah, that ain't Michael J. Fox. It's got all the other characters. Yeah, it does. Biff. It even has DMC, DeLorean, on the back there. This has the DeLorean with the tilted futuristic wheels as well. Doc Brown is wearing his futuristic clothing. You got Old Biff. So this is, like, not the original Back to the Future. This is, like, the next, this is like the trilogy. Yeah, it's a combination. You got the train. You got the clock. You got the train. You got the clock. Yeah. It features the hit music double pack of Back in Time and Power of Love by Huey Lewis and the News. Huey Lewis and the News, man. He milked that song. Power of Love.
    136:38
    Two hits from that. Oh, yeah. And he got to be in the movie. Terrible game. Tons of fun when it comes to looking at it sitting in the corner of a house. It's got a DeLorean. That's kind of cool. So if we tie it up here, I would say the pinnacle of early Data East, the peak of early Data East, has to be The Simpsons, which is the licensed cartoon theme from September of 1990. The version 3 Data East sells 5,502 units.
    137:11
    Massive seller. We went from everything being sub-3,000 to almost 6,000 units. Wow. Big, big deal. Designed by Cam and Cal. Art by Margaret Hudson and Kevin O'Connor. Brian Schmidt on music and sound. Software by Riemann Merchant. Why did they sell so many of these games? It's the Simpsons, man. It's the Simpsons. I'm an underachiever and proud of it. Yeah. Play pinball, man. That's what the toppers said. This is the third game they've made in 1990. So they've only ever made two games a year. This is the third game they've made. And Simpsons is relevant at this point. It's new. And huge. Huge. It beat Cosby. The Simpsons is the American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening, which airs on Fox. The series is a satirical look at common American life embodied in the Simpson family. The shorts would appear on the Tracy Ullman Show in 1987. The first TV season began airing in December of 1989. It quickly became the first show Fox had ever had in the top 30 TV ratings and dominated Sunday night television ratings for almost a decade. It has 728 episodes as of this recording and over 33 seasons. It is the longest-running American sitcom, the longest-running American animated series, and I have no idea why, because it has been crap since season eight. Wow. How big was The Simpsons in its first five seasons, Ron? I would say through the 90s it was big. Massive. I remember 1991, you know, watching The Simpsons, and it was like, it was a bit risque. Bart was really rude and mean. It was like, this was before Rick and Morty and before South Park. Like, this was really edgy cartoon.
    139:19
    Like, that was a big deal. Don't have a count, man. Every kid on the playground every Monday morning was talking about The Simpsons the day before. You want to talk about the water cooler talk around, like, Seinfeld or whatever? Kids on Monday morning were all about The Simpsons. Don't forget about Krusty.
    139:39
    It was a gangbuster license, and you can see that they sold 2,000 extra units just because it was The Simpsons. Pat Lawler would famously say that if Funhaus had bid The Simpsons, they would have sold 20,000 units. Yeah, if it was like Bart was the talking head.
    140:00
    Six months of production and 5,000 units. I also remember this pin from my childhood because they sold so many. I used to take the boat, the ferry, from New Brunswick to Prince Edward Island in eastern Canada. If you ever have a chance to come to Canada, you've got to go to Prince Edward Island because it is an awesome vacation world over there. On the boat was always this arcade, and The Simpsons was one of those pins. I don't remember how it played. I don't remember anything. I just remember seeing it. And the pop bumpers were the power plant, nuclear power plant pop bumpers. Compared to the future Stern, The Simpsons, which I owned, this game is garbage. Nope. I'd rather play this one than the... Really? I'd rather play this one than the Stern one. Yep. Controversial. This was about the time that the DMD would become a thing, almost. Joe Kamenkow would tell IPDB that The Simpsons was supposed to be the first game to have a dot matrix display. However, the president and CEO, Joe Keenan, of the company that supplied the DMDs, was worried that the development of the DMD wasn't ready for gaming, because problems would occur if they rushed it into production. And if that happened, the company would likely be out of business because it would fail. So they decided to wait. We'll get into the DMD stuff in another episode. That's cool. Things are changing. Data East is looking to innovate again. Simpsons Mania has rocked the country. Now Data East brings you the hottest license around and the wildest pinball game you've ever seen. The Simpsons Pinball is charting record-breaking collections everywhere it goes. And like Bart himself, it's one of a kind. The art. It looks a bit off on what The Simpsons look like. The first season, and really maybe season and a half, The Simpsons' animation style was a little more unrefined than it would be sort of in later seasons, and now that we're into this digital era, they're totally different. But the art style on The Simpsons pinball game was reminiscent of the art style of The Simpsons of the time. Is it a good player? I've had people tell me it's terrible I don't want it at all Really? It has phenomenal record-breaking collections at all test locations It has double the speech capability with mega sound technology trademarked delivers actual digitized speech from the Simpsons Come on It's got the wide open ramp on the left side that goes in behind the back box does the zigzag thing It's got three parts and maintenance kit inside every machine to extend the life of your investment i.e. the goodie bag Yes, stuff will probably break. There's stuff to fix it in there. It has not one but two of those really annoying vertical up-kickers into a wire form onto a ramp. Why create a nice, fun ramp to shoot when you can shoot it into a hole that pops it up? Don't have a cow, man. Come on. Oh, jeez. Come on. That's bad. It had a topper. Yeah, I said that.
    143:08
    Oh, did you? I think you should play pinball, man, if I remember. Yeah. Yeah, play pinball, man. I have in my possession promotional shirts from Data East from the original run of The Simpsons that's so cool I got them from Tim Arnold the Pinball Hall of Fame was selling them like 15 years ago I don't know if I've ever actually worn it to a show when this game was made Bart was the star when the Stern game was made Homer was the star at that point so he's more prominently featured yeah it became more of a Homer show than a Bart show at this time The social satire and critique of sort of the poor American family growing out of a sort of a big recession in the late 80s, playing on, you know, the way a family dynamic is, making jokes about all of the other sitcoms like Family Ties and how all the families were all happy and leave it to Beaver. And then you got Homer literally choking his children. Yeah. Well, remember Fox before this show had Married with Children, which did all that. Yeah, exactly. Why couldn't it be that crusty? Totally. Crusty. Crusty would be a great game. I don't know why they don't do another Simpsons game, like little horror shop, little, what is that called? Treehouse of Terror. Oh, can you get that wrong? You've lost your Simpsons card. I have. Here it is. You're going to have it here. Joe Kamenkow, right? He's doing another design. He's like designed basically every game, right? And Ed Sabula. So Kamenkow would say, when Ed came to work with us, he was near or at retirement age, and he never wanted a long-term commitment. I would think he stayed a year or two longer than he wanted to. Ed would actually stick around until 1994. But the design and engineering bench had started to begin to expand at that time. More on that in a later Data East episode. So what do you think, Ron, about final thoughts on The Simpsons? I like it better than the newer one. Like it better. I do. That's a hot take.
    145:23
    It's got all the voices in there. Yeah. Gary Stern was smart enough in the early days of Data East to identify great people like Joe Kamenkow and Shelley Sachs and eventually Ed Sabula who were all around to add a great deal to Data East. in their own way, they were the reason pinball is still here today. Even though Daddy East may have had shallow rules and kind of some questionable art,
    145:57
    and maybe the flippers were weird, maybe they're not as cool as the Bally Williams of the time, pinball is still here because of those four people. They all loved what they did, and when it came to pinball, they changed a lot of things. Did Joe Kamikow write that script for you?
    146:19
    He didn't. By the way, we won. We're still around. You can't deny that he did. They're still around.
    146:30
    Sure, they went through ownership changes and whatever, but until, what, like four years ago, they were literally in the same factory they had been since Data East. Now, the factory they were in before they were in when they were Sega, they were in two different factories during the Daddy's Sega years. I think they've been in three total factories since 86. Someone can correct me on that, but I think they're on factory number three. I think the most important person beyond Joe Camencawn saving Pinball multiple times and basically my best friend is Ed Sabula. Without him, Daddy's wouldn't have survived. They wouldn't have been able to get the engineering ramped up. They wouldn't have been able to get the production line going. They wouldn't have had walnut-cracking flippers. They wouldn't have had really cool light boards.
    147:17
    He was the biggest deal. Sure, Roger says, there are many unsung heroes in the annals of pinball. With Ed and others of that generation, no one looked for the limelight. It was a career, and there was pure talent. But it was also a team mentality far different from the celebrity atmosphere which pervades pinball today. Shelley Sachs is another great example of that, right? She's not there for the limelight. She's just there because she enjoys and loves what she does. Yes, that celebrity from Roger Sharp, who will literally be in a movie coming out about him. I'm sorry. Now, one of the quoted comments that Mike Wynn provided me, I've left the name off of this person. It says, the modern pinball enthusiast doesn't care about the history or notable folks who helped shape our pinball hobby. They are only interested in the next new game. If you're listening to this podcast, you likely disagree with that quote. So please share Silver Ball Chronicles, a pinball history podcast with your hobbyist friends, so we can show this person that we actually do care about the Ed Saboulas and Shelley Sachs of pinball. We do care. It's just been years since somebody has been able to tell their stories in a medium in which people can actually absorb. What do you think, Ron? Anything else to add? Play the early Daddy East games. They're fun. They're great. They're loud. They're obnoxious. They're fun. And they're in stereo. Take that, Williams. There are no Stern Electronics games, though. They're different levels. There's different eras. But Williams just didn't have stereo. So he's got them right there. And that is why they're still around today. Yes, they are. Good job, Joe Camacow. Good job, Gary Stern.
    149:11
    Good job, next to the wall. Do you want to read this? That's Stu. Stu, you want to read this again? Okay. He doesn't want to read it. He wants me to pay him this time. Pay him in like what? I don't know. Baby formula? Is that enough? That's enough. Okay. You guys don't have any baby formula. Oh.
    149:40
    What do we got here? As always, you can send your comments, questions, corrections, and concerns to silverballprotocols at gmail.com. We look forward to all your messages, and we read every one. Please subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or your favorite podcatcher. Except Spotify, they hate David. And they hate his spelling, too. Remember to turn on automatic downloads so you don't miss a single episode. Remember to leave us a five-star review wherever you found us, or on this week in Pinball Promoters database. That way more people can find us. Do you need a new shirt? Sure, we all do. Head on over to civilballswag.com, ignore the other content provider stores, and pick up a Civil Ball Chronicles t-shirt. I like what you did right there.
    150:41
    Are you ready for level zero? I am so excited. I'm really, really excited. We'll have to put you on stream playing games just so people can, like, laugh at you. Yes. Oh, my God. Putting me next to you is going to be bad. Oh, there's plenty of games here you can beat me on.
    150:59
    What's on the top? I can't make this thing bigger. Why can't I make that bigger? Oh, here we go. I got to grab it and extend it. Okay, yeah, there we go. Oh, my. and Pellegrini. How do you not know that one? That's Italian. I'm sorry.
    151:17
    There you go. But, yeah, even... Go ahead. You go. It plays exactly like Flight 2000, except there's no speech.
    151:28
    Kevin Costner's Waterworld. Oh, what a great game and movie. And the NFL, to name a few. Wait a minute. Waterworld was Gottlieb. Was it? Yes. Oh, why do I have that there? I don't know. Not Waterworld. What's the one?
    151:43
    You know what? All Street? They did... No, that was Godly 2. That was Godly 2. They did Stripe Fighter. What was the one after Hook that was so bad?
    151:53
    No, that... I am thinking of... I am thinking of Waterworld. Oh, Batman. You don't have Batman. Oh, Batman. I'm Batman.
    152:03
    Or Alone from Hugh Hefner's Mother. You want to go get that? Yeah, who the hell set my door? I hope it's Girl Guides. Oh, God, I want those Girl Guide cookies. I miss those.
    152:21
    What'd you get delivered? The Amazon guy? No, I just ignored it. I don't answer my door. You just hid? Yep, pretty much.
    152:30
    So they go away. Oh, what is it? Was it Girl Guides? Thank you. Oh, yeah, I definitely have an accent there. Oh, yeah. What am I, from Wisconsin? Oh, yeah. We got to get in there. We got to play multi-ball. Multi-ball, you know, multi-ball. I just want to beat them to death every time I hear that. Oh.