🎵 Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Wedgehead Pinball Podcast. My name is Alan. I'm your co-host of the Wedgehead Pinball Podcast and one of the owners of the Portland Pinball Bar Wedgehead. I'm joined by my co-host, Alex the Waterboy. Hey, howdy. And we have a very special guest this evening, one that needs no introduction, but I shall give one anyway. He is a legend of the pinball industry. He was a writer for GQ magazine, wrote an early article about pinball for them. This led him to researching and writing the first major published book about pinball. He interviewed all the titans of the industry right at the peak of pinball's cultural zenith, and he famously played pinball in front of the New York City Council to prove that it was in fact a game of skill and not merely a degenerate form of gambling, leading to the repeal of arcane laws and legalizing pinball not only in New York City, but in many other cities across the country as well. He founded the Professional Amateur Pinball Association, or PAPA, with his friend Steve Epstein, which was the predecessor to the IFBA that is run today by his son, Josh. He consulted with many different pinball manufacturers and even designed a handful of games in the late 1970s and early 1980s. On April 18th, 1988, he was hired as the director of marketing at Williams, a company founded all the way back in 1944 by the subject of our episode today, the incomparable Harry Williams. Allow me to introduce our guest today, who you might recognize as the subject of the 2022 movie based upon his life, the man who saved pinball, Mr. Roger Sharp. Welcome to the show. Thank you. I mean, that is somewhat of an introduction. I sit here, I am dumbfounded by all, not only the research that you've done, but the fact that I guess that somehow defines much of my life. So thanks for that. You are an absolute legend and a true jack of all trades in the pinball industry. And, you know, you're famous for many things in pinball, namely the famous shot in New York City, which I promised you I would not ask you to go into detail about. But there's a wonderful movie that you were an executive producer on about your life that I implore everyone to go watch because it's an awesome movie and a great story. We're delighted to have you. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's my pleasure. And thanks. I'd like to think that really my only impact enduringly has been my sons, Josh and Zach. But we'll let you go forward from there. Yeah. I mean, and they're both involved in the pinball industry. You know, Zach, is he sort of doing basically your job at Williams, but at Stern? Is that more or less similar? I guess it is somewhat more or less. He is the director of marketing. I don't know how directly he is influencing, involved in securing license themes for the company. I know that that seems to be the bailiwick for Gary and for Jody. But I know that Zachary gets involved, you know, somewhere along the way. So it seems to be somewhat strange in many ways and respects, even with Josh being the CFO at Raw Thrills, but also being somewhat heavily involved with play mechanics and their entry into pinball with Pulp Fiction. yeah which is extremely excited to get our pulp fiction i haven't been excited that excited about a new game in a long long time we can't wait but yeah we're i want to talk to you primarily about you did an interview with many people of the pinball industry and they focus on it in the movie about your time to go meet harry williams so i'm going to give a brief kind of overview of the timeline of his career really quickly and then i want to start asking you some questions about your conversation with him and any of your recollections of him. Okay? Sure. And I'm going to try to be better in terms of my long-windedness. So don't want to disappoint anybody hoping to hear, you know, hour-long sentences, but I'm trying to get better. So I'll defer and start with you. Go for it. Roger, you can talk forever, and I would listen to it. So, I mean, if you're talking about pinball, I'm listening. Just saying. I know your kids give you grief about it, but... Fair enough. They do. We're ready to listen. In 1932, Harry Williams begins operating games during the Great Depression. In 1933, Harry starts his first company, Automatic Amusements, in Los Angeles. Later that same year, he puts the first solenoid in a pinball machine, bringing electricity to pin games. In 1934, tired of people cheating his game, Harry designs the first anti-shake device he calls a stool pigeon, but later refines it and renames it to Tilt. after hearing some players calling it a tilt. Harry moves to Chicago in 1935 to work for Rockola, mainly known for jukeboxes. He mates fellow game designer Lynn Durant there. In 1937, Harry and Lynn move over to Bali to work on games. Proves to be short-lived. In 38, Harry and Lynn move again to exhibit supply company. Harry takes over their games division. In 1941, Harry and Lynn leave to found their own company, United Manufacturing, to get government contracts for World War II manufacturing. In 1942, so a year later, Harry sells his stake in United to Lynn and then starts his eponymous Williams Manufacturing Co. In 1944, Sam Stern, which is Gary's dad, joins Harry as a partner in Williams. In 1951, Harry Williams hires Harry Mabs, who is the inventor of the Flipper, away from Gottlieb to work with him at Williams. In 1959, Harry Williams leaves Williams after the company is bought by Consolidated Drug Co. And in 1971 through 76, he's back in California, but never stops designing games. He sends out drawings to Bally and Williams, and a few of them get produced. In 1978 through 81, Sam Stern, his old buddy and business partner, contracts him to design 10 new solid-state pinball machines for his new company, Stern Electronics. In 1983, he passes away from cancer. I went over a lot of coverage there, but I just want the listener who's unfamiliar with Harry to kind of understand the scope of what he did. And now I just want to ask you about your conversation with him. You flew out to California, to Palm Springs to interview him at his house. I just want to know what your impressions of him were in that interview. And what did you guys talk about? Well, I guess, first off, I am amazed that it's been 50 years since Harry's been gone. It doesn't seem that long. Obviously it is. And we had met prior to as the story goes. And again, this is going to be a long answer, I suppose. When I was doing research for my book, one of the people that I encountered, and you mentioned him in passing as part of Harry's career path, I met up with Gary Stern at a distributorship on the west side of Manhattan called Albert Simon, who was the distributor for Williams Games. and Gary happened to be visiting with Al Simon and Al D'Anzillo, one of the principal salesmen for the distributorship. The game that was, I guess, just on display was Big Ben. So for those who understand the history of pinball, Big Ben was their new game in 1975. I started doing some research. I think at that point in time, I had visited a trade show down in Florida where I met Nolan Bushnell for the first time and was starting to get a little bit more familiar with the business and with people who were involved in it. And my only comment to Gary was whether or not Big Ben, did he realize that it was somewhat like Starpool in terms of the layout? And I threw out some other games that I had encountered in some of my travels, some of my initial research at that point in time. And it's faltered a little bit with my old age. But I had a photographic memory and I started rattling off these different games and the way that the outside lane was and targets and so on. And Gary was just, I guess, dumbfounded at that point in time based on the somewhat earlier start of his career in the business and wound up traveling to what was then the MOA show in Chicago that September, encountered Gary, who wound up introducing me to all sorts of people, ask him anything about pinball, and he'll tell you where it came from or what the derivative is. So in some ways, Gary kind of paved the way for me to make my entry physically into the industry and meeting up with folks, setting up interviews and schedules. Some of that is played out in the movie with Sam Ginsberg, but as well being able to meet Harry, who happened to have been at the show. And in the movie, we kind of play it up as being kind of this Moby Dick situation of trying to find the great whale. Well, Harry I had met prior to, and we talked and visited, chatted, and during the course of events, and there's a great picture in my pinball book, for those who have seen it, of Harry standing in front of a couple of games that he was present with on display. But yes, to answer your question now more directly, Harry invited me out to his house in Palm Springs to meet up with him, met with Wanda, his wife at that point in time, to interview him and talk about Pimble. So that was kind of our start together, if you will. We just really connected. I truly did admire him for what he had achieved and hearing all the stories related to the various successes that he had over the years and how his career started. But I think that there was also this just connection is the best way to describe it. I would call it a love of a fellow who at that point in time was old enough to be my father or even my grandfather. But somehow we were aligned in regard to the passion that we both had for pinball. Yeah. So the conversation really kind of took place. And there we were. And much of it, unfortunately, did not make it into print in the book. but a number of years back, Nate Shivers, who was doing Coast to Coast podcast at that point in time, did play the interview with Harry. So some people were able to hear that and actually hear his voice, what he sounded like for those who were not around prior to his passing. But just a wonderful, marvelous, creative genius. Yes. I mean, that's fascinating. I guess I never realized, I listened to a lot of your talks and interviews. I had never realized that Gary Stern was sort of the linchpin to get you, the person that put you in contact with these other people, right? Like, I guess I never really realized that. I was going to say prior to that, yes, I mean, I had reached out and had met people through Mondial and Tony Eula and others who were the distributors on the East Coast, at least for Gottlieb. I met with Irving Green, whose father was one of the trio of powerful, influential people in the coin-operated amusement game business back in the 30s and 40s and 50s. So, you know, I had a chance at least to somewhat evolve, if you will, in regard to being a researcher and kind of knowing, I won't necessarily say where the bodies were buried so much as it was, you know, who are all of these people as I tried to discover the roots of the industry and take it up to, again, that point in time and meet with everybody and hopefully have some intelligent conversations where I was able to absorb. whatever was historically significant, so that I knew who the players were and could sit down and, I guess, speak to them as equals. It was a trait that I had done really early on in regard to my career at GQ and writing articles and doing research and wanting at least to have some solid footing as I spoke to everyone. And with Gary, I just assumed that that's how games were designed. It was like, well, you must be influenced by this game or that game. And what I wound up discovering was in many ways, and it's probably different now, but in many ways, the history was just so disposable for designers like Steve Kordak and Norm Clark and Gordon Horlick and Wayne Neyens and so many others. Right. I don't think really ever went back to the well thinking, oh, yeah, I did that here and let me do it again. I think it just kind of happened as part of their design signature in much the same way that maybe we look at similarities between Steve Ritchie designs over the years or Pat Lawler's design approach or John Boer or now Keith Elwin. You know, where are those similarities? Where are those little touches and tweaks that they bring to their game designs? And with Harry, that was very much the case. So, you know, it was somewhat nice to get feedback from him when I had the chance to design my first game, Sharpshooter. And he wound up looking at it, seeing it, and making some comments about it, which I thought was somewhat endearing. Whoa. And even to the extent we came very, very close to working together. I don't know if you're familiar, and you must be, and hopefully some of your listeners are as well, to the five games that Harry designed for Brunswick for their home machine line of games. and at that point in time uh harry and i based on harry wanting to do so was going to bring me in the two of us were going to really work with brunswick do more games and unfortunately that effort kind of faltered uh at that point in time so we never had a chance to do so oh no that's too bad it's yeah you both got up into some uh some more interesting stuff anyway in that time frame Oh, man. That's impressive to hear that Harry got to see, you know, your design on Sharpshooter and got to play it and gave you notes on it. I mean, that's that's incredible. I mean, that's like that's like getting hitting tips from like Ken Griffey Jr. or something, you know, like you're a kid or, you know, it's just or help with your jump shot from Michael Jordan or something like that's just insane. It was a mutual admiration society because there were times with some of the games that Harry wanted designing where I'd find myself looking over a game or playing it on a show floor and Harry would come over. And this happened a few times. And it was just, I thought you'd like that. I was thinking of you when I put that into the game. Oh, that's so cool. And I think that it was those kinds of touches that just kind of strengthened the bond between the two of us. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, I will say that I did a lot of research on Harry for this episode. I've been fascinated with the man, especially over the last six months, just because I, you know, I watched your movie again and I saw the interview with Harry and I started getting on the Internet Pinball database and I started looking at pictures of his games and was just being dumbfounded by the layouts he was doing. and a lot of the things he was doing back from the jump in the 1930s. He was, you know, I just kind of want to go through some of these games and talk about some of his firsts. And I want, if you played any of these games, I want to hear a little bit about it. I personally haven't got to play many of these just because they're not around. A lot of this work that he did in the 40s and 50s, I mean, that stuff's just gone. You know, it's not even really in museums anymore. Outside of maybe the Pacific Pinball Museum, I've played some Harry Williams wood rail games, but... It's hard to find the wood rails pretty much anywhere in the public, even at shows. Yeah. And I haven't been able to crack that collector market that I know is out there of the guys that have wood rails and collect wood rails, because I would love... If anyone's listening to this podcast and you're one of those guys, invite me over. I would love to play some of these games. But in 1933, he creates a game called Contact, and that's famous that it's the first electromechanical game because it includes the first solenoid and pinball machine. Yep. And for listeners, this is before flippers were invented. So we're talking about real pinball, which is just pins and balls. You're just plunging a ball up, and then it's kind of falling down. You're bouncing, nudging the game a little bit or whatever, and trying to control where it's going. Not quite what we know as modern pinball. Right. This is pre-flipper. And then in 1938, he designs a game called Lightning, which, again, has no flippers, but it has a bunch of electromagnets under the playfield that influences the ball after you plunge it. I think a lot of people would be familiar with the Adams family in 1992 by Pat Lawler, where the power magnets move the ball around. But Harry Williams did that in 1938. You know, on a game in 1938, he had something like that, which is just crazy to think about. Right. And then there's Tornado. Tornado would be the first one with the ball, with an elevated ball path, the ball rail. Yeah, it's got a it's again, it has no flippers, but it has a hole that you fall into and it has like a wire guide elevated wire form later on, you know, all games from basically the 19 mid 1980s to today have some form of this, but this is 1947. And then, you know, in St. Louis in 1949, he introduces, in an EM era, he introduces a feature that it's a smart replay adjustment system where the replay would get higher when hit and then would lower itself back down if not hit for a few games in a row. This was advanced in the late 1980s by Bally Williams when you were working there, Roger, and is a feature of all pinball machines since then. I think that's like an interesting part about looking back. replay boost do you know anything about st louis and the way he did this did you ask him about this game or or do you have any recollection of this or why you guys brought it back during your time at williams no we didn't we didn't get into it oh interesting i know that larry demar was instrumental and uh working on uh not only adam's family obviously but also twilight zone with in quotes the Powerball and that mini play field. So I think that whatever those influences might have been whatever the familiarity might have been I mean I did have a chance to play Contact and thought it was just wonderful during my research days of games from that era And I have five antiques as well from the 30s. But many of the games that you're talking about, I know where some of those features have reemerged. Some of them Harry himself has redone and reused. You know, we can get into those games at a later point probably. But in regard to some of these games from the 40s or even some of the refurbished games that he and Lynn worked on at United during World War II. Now, in passing, probably, but never anything that we ever really discussed, you know, specifically together, Harry and myself. You kind of mentioned it in there, but it's interesting to me because a lot of the things that Harry Williams invented back in the 30s or 40s or 50s, they would bring back in the 80s or 90s, and it was heralded as an innovation then, which kind of just goes to show how instrumental he was to creating a lot of the fun toys and just kind of the pinball magic that has hooked a lot of us in the games, I feel like. And I think his contributions are hidden, lost to time, which is why I wanted to do this episode. Exactly. It's kind of interesting because it's like a lot of the stuff, like the score indexing, I think that was introduced for High Speed, I'm pretty sure. Yeah, High Speed in 1986. The power that we see on Adam's Family and the disappearing pop bumper, I don't know if that's in this list. Yeah, that's on this list. Circus Holt Air, a lot of those things that John Papadiuk or Steve Ritchie or Lawler are using, and not to discredit them, but it's like they were just going back to the old designs and looking for inspiration there, which is cool. A lot of times they came up with Harry Williams over and over again, like over and over and over again. You see Harry Williams. It's hard not to when you see how much stuff he invented. Yeah, I'm like looking through his and I'm going to put these up on our website when this episode airs because I want people to see all these games because you're probably not going to get to play them anywhere soon. But I want you to see these cool games. I mean, we're in 1952 and he creates a game called Horse Feathers, which is a head to head pinball machine. if people are familiar with the game Joust that came out in the 80s, Harry did a head-to-head pinball machine in a single cabinet that's mechanical racing horses, and you're trying to hit bumpers to move your horse faster across the backbox than your opponent. And it was sort of a novelty game then, and it would still be today, but it's amazing to see it in 1952. And it looks awesome. And it looks awesome. like well and uh actually challenger from godly also came out as a head-to-head two-player and alvin g and company also introduced uh later on uh i think it was a soccer yeah they have a soccer one to head and to end the jousting thing so uh there's there's been a number of different uh attempts at doing that it's like yeah it's the gift that keeps on giving harry was very instrumental for many, many decades and really influencing game design, not only with his contemporaries, but I think to your guys' point, many of what we think of as being the veteran designers of this era over the past 20 or 30 years who either inadvertently or directly wound up looking at some of the accomplishments that was done years prior and updating them to the point where they name signature ingredients in specific games. Yeah. Yeah. I've seen here in 1953, he creates a game called Silver Skates. And what I found interesting about this, again, to get back to Pat Lawler, is it has four flippers. So we're in the flipper era because Harry Mabs invents the flipper in 1947 on a game called Humpty Dumpty for another company, Gottlieb. But a couple years later, by this time, Harry Williams hires Harry Mabs to come work for him at Williams. So there's twin Harrys. Some of the most influential early designers in pinball history are working for the same company, and they're both named Harry. But Harry Williams does a game called Silver Skates. I'm getting confused myself here. In 1953, but it has four flippers. and what's interesting is it has two flippers at the bottom like you would think in the normal orientation by this time the modern orientation that are controlled by flipper buttons on the cabinet but then there are two on the outside edges which would cover sort of like an out lane and those are not player controlled but they have little saucers in front of them and if the ball lands in that saucer it the ball is automatically flipped by those far edge flippers and i think oh, wow, this is basically Adam's Family Thing Flip, or it's Monster Bash's Phantom Flip, used later on in the 90s by Pat Lawler and George Gomez, and you see a rudimentary form of this in 1953. Have you played silver skates? I have not. I think that one of the challenges, in all honesty, you know, years ago, there used to be many wood rails that would be on display at a pinball expo, And I know that there are any number of different pinball hall of fames and museums and the like. But much of the games were, you know, with collectors, people like Russ Jensen, who was an avid restorer of older games. Joel Gilgoff back in California, I know, is featured in my pinball book. And there were so many others. And I think that much of that to the dismay of so many is that the games are just not as prevalent as they used to be. And whether or not the restorer market, collector market, I know that Mark Wehner prides himself, or at least used to, on refurbishing and restoring older games from the 1930s. So to your point, hopefully some of the listeners out there know some of these folks that may be a subset of the pinball community who are focused on games from the 30s, the 40s, the 50s. And maybe some of these will reemerge at some point in time at an event or in some locale. Yeah. And people will be able to, if not play them, at least see them. You know, I don't know if the Strong Museum has any number of these. So, yeah, I mean, I would absolutely encourage folks to try to track down any of the games, whether they're Harry's or anyone else's from that period of time. As I said, for many of them, it was somewhat disposable. I think that there were a number of designers who always made it very clear that they needed one of their games that they were designing as part of their collection. And whether or not that still exists, I remember going back and visiting a Pat Lawler's place, and there was this area, and there were Pat's games, one after another lined up, along with, admittedly, other machines from other designers and companies. but uh you know i felt the same way all the games that i've worked on i own that's cool that's just you know part of what i want so don't know if any of the current one that are out there designing games have that as part of their contracts where it's like yes and or part of their significant others lives and where they live whether or not they have the room to house all of their games. Yeah, I know some guys still do it. I think Jeremy Packer (Zombie Yeti)'s on Vietti. He does a lot of art packages for Stern. I think he makes sure he gets one game that every art package he does, he gets a copy of, which I think is great to see. Yeah, I think that's cool. Well, again, hopefully for some of the games from this era, any of your listeners can track them down and maybe it will become something that people will start to be much more motivated to retain so that the history isn't totally lost. That's my goal here is I hope that we don't lose this because I know that the people that were collectors and restorers are all getting older or unfortunately dying, and I don't want to see these games go away and that whole era being just totally gone from history. I mean, we're talking, we're still in 1953 here, and he comes out with a game called Army Navy, which is the first game to use score reels as a display. The story that I found from Russ Jensen, who you just mentioned, said that it was Harry's friend and former business partner, Lynn Durant, that invented and patented the real totalizers back in 1933. And they were just single number units that were used on a couple of games to track balls played, but they weren't used to track scores. and then in 1953 sounds like Harry Williams made them into score reels like line them up next to each other on this game and that's the first time we get score reels but much like Lynn didn't his invention and patent didn't take off in the 30s this is 1953 and Williams themselves even after this game made a lot of games where they still use light bulbs for points so it the it wasn't as groundbreaking or immediately seen as this the next evolution of pinball for another couple of years do you know much about the move to score reels in pinball machines and and why it took so long or why it wasn't immediately to me it seems like wow this is new display technology this is clearly way better i'm just surprised to see that it just didn't stick immediately i think that uh part of the reason had to be the familiarity and popularity of having art display. Think of Roy Parker and so many others from that era who were combining the art motif with the various blocks of whatever the scores might be. The scores tended to jump from one light source to a next, if you remember, and for those who are familiar with it. I think the idea of bringing it down, and even with Army Navy where I guarantee you that the last three reels were just there as placeholders. Oh, yeah. They were definitely really were just four digit scoring. Yes. Rather than seven digit. Totally. And I think that no one was looking at individual play field components, a jet bumper being worth five points or 10 points incrementally. So I think that the idea of shifting over to scoring really fundamentally changed design You know, if Wayne Neyens is still alive today, I'm sure that he could comment on what that impact and influence was since he transcended both eras, as did the late Steve Kordak. Yes. And, you know, how do you make the adjustment to the point of, well, now we have scoring inflation that's become part and parcel. But, you know, there were points in time where all you were doing was, I call it, moving up the ladder for people who have played games that did not have scoring reels to a point where now it's like, all right, what is this now going to be worth? Is it worth 100 points? And then you have the challenge of prioritizing where is your scoring going to come from? So I think it became fundamental to a radical shift in design and their, I call it, programming. Yeah. To have the games be much more accessible, if you will, based on specific digital scoring. Not digital digital, but real scoring compared to just lights. That's interesting. I hadn't even really thought about how huge that is to affect the game objectives. Because you can also suddenly have repeatable stuff where instead of, I don't know, I feel like a lot of the wood reels I have played, it's like you kind of do one thing, you get the score lit for doing that one objective or hitting that one target, and that's kind of it. You move on. Whereas once you get into the indexing scores or score reels, it really changes the replayability, I guess. Yeah. I never really thought about how much that would change the design. everything it is uh dramatically different trust me yeah it's fascinating i want to talk about a little game here called skyway i think this is the most interesting visual design for me as i was researching harry of all of his crazy layouts i this game he it's got like eight lanes diagonal lanes that lead to like a separate shooter lane on the left hand side so he has the normal plunge on the right hand side he has this left lane and all these one through eight lanes lead into this automatic kicker lane so again something like pat lawler would do with funhouse by adding the extra plunge this isn't controllable like that it's automatic and it kicks it back up but then it throws it back in and he has another habit trail that seems like a reiteration on his earlier one you know yeah it's a habit trail that's you don't shoot into it like you would on a modern ramp it's kicked into by a solenoid and it leads to a right series of lanes with kick out holes and every time a new one goes in there it kicks him one more down the way back towards the end of the play field and it only has one flipper on it on the left hand side it's got a center post and then it's got a right sling and it's got two pop bumpers but it's just like it looks like a hoot like it just looks like awesome looks like so i would play this all day i i I love just seeing yeah seeing any of his single flipper designs I'm just like oh my god I want to play it yeah nine sisters is another design that I don't have on here that's just amazing and I know Jack Danger who's now working at Stern he posted a few years ago about nine sisters and getting to play one and how cool he thought it was and I just think it's funny because now he's a new modern pinball designer and he's still looking at Harry Williams stuff you know and it's just it's very interesting all the all seems like a lot of roads lead back to harry which is why we wanted to talk about him but there's this game skyway which i think is really cool there's a game called colors which again another just he's like bringing back bagatelle into pinball it's like it's half you know horizontally the top half is like a pinball machine with some bumpers and some flippers like you would expect by this time but then below that in the center drain there's like three lanes and you know there's some posts and they can bounce around and hit one of the three lanes and then on either side of those lanes it has a little mini bag of tell that automatically kicks the ball hits pins on the way down and then goes into these three lanes you can get specials on either side and i just that thing looks awesome too looks awesome all of these williams games from i mean a lot of what we've been talking about reminds you a little bit of jungle lord yes yeah yes it's just funny i don't know seeing he was on a tear here in the mid 50s oh he was cooking or big or big guns yes yes yeah it's just it's very interesting to see yeah then we go into 54 spitfire he's got captive balls on this one what's going on here alan yeah so behind pops so i don't know i don't know what's kind of like the ghostbusters it's like the Ghostbusters, the captive ball on the side where you're kicking it around, kicking it around. Kind of a loop. Or even you have them in games like, you know, Jack Danger's Foo Fighters has a captive ball like this. Yeah. It's been a lot. It's been happening a lot. This is the first time I could see it in this way. I hesitated to write that it was the first time it's done because I didn't look at all the few thousands of games on IPDB, but it's the first time I saw it and it immediately struck me because there's basically on the left and right side of the play field again for the listeners at home this will be up on our website when when this episode airs so you can look at these yourself but the balls are held behind pop bumpers and so when you hit the pops from the flippers it kicks the ball up and around a lane and the way you build the value of each of those lanes are their targets on the center of the play field on the left and right side that build the value of those shots when you do shoot them it's also got reverse flippers again he went back to flipping them back around and this is 1954 this is unusual at this time that he would go back and do that but it does make it look like man that just looks like fun to shoot and and play and what i realized is that there's really a magic trick to this game because even though those are those pops i was like how does that work like when it the ball sitting on it fire the pop on its own the captive ball does only have half a half a no it doesn't even have a it has regular like kind of slingshot kickers right above the pop oh and so it's not the pop itself that flings the ball around but you hit the pop on the lower play field sort of like a it's a magic trick and i think that's really cool yeah the guy just i don't know he just kept thinking up new stuff and it's wild to see it's like at this point this is kind of at the point of a career you know he's got his own company so i guess he's kind of trying to prove himself at this point because he's designing with his own name on it but it's also the point of your career where he could just be kind of coasting and he absolutely did not he just keeps going i think that's the beauty of his skills yeah and if you go back to look at that game the reason flippers are probably flopped number one was the fact that you really didn't have powerful flippers back then and if you look at the game the idea of going right to right to hit that bumper to move that ball versus left to left is probably better than it would have been if you had gone with the more traditional flipper configuration yeah that makes sense just looking at the geometry of it right yeah i think you're right you're i mean you're absolutely right like there's no way and he's got the angled rubber opposite of the flipper so it's almost like two mini playfields with a closer primary target that you're shooting for which just kind of makes sense given the hardware you got at the time. So cool. It's such a cool looking game. All the wood rails, man. The wood rails are beautiful works of art and furniture. Like, I mean, they're just unbelievable. And then you have people like Wayne Nyans and Steve Kordek, and you have obviously Harry Williams and plenty of others that were just, you know, the grandfathers of the industry and were really doing really innovative stuff. The next year in 1955, he makes a game called Race the Clock. And on the poster here they advertised this as the first game with a multi which means that a tilt would only end the ball in play and not the end of the game because tilt for up until this point you know he invented in 1933 up until this point uh 1955 they just ended all your games right and even gottlieb after this kept using it for i don't even know how long but into the 60s we have games that we put on the floor old wedge heads that still you tilt ends game so but harry williams changed us to where it ends your ball and play which is what all modern pinball is it only ends your ball and play it doesn't end the whole game did you talk to harry about that at all or do you have anything to talk about the evolution of tilt roger no i mean other than you know what i think has become common knowledge as to his first attempt with nails um driven down in the bottom of the playful uh but uh no i mean i think if you take a look at something like this specifically since it's a multiplayer game it makes more sense to have the player only lose that ball rather than being done with the game yeah so everybody still gets a chance to play my balls if you will as opposed to just dropping it down if anything i would hazard a guess and i don't know this for a fact i'll leave it to you guys or to your audience whether or not this same multi-tilt feature existed on single-player games that's a good question be curious when they start versus two-player or four-player games that kind of gives me this is leaving the harry williams uh path here for a second but that just made me think seem like a multi-tilt in your time in the hobby roger was there anything that came out like a feature that was added to a game that you thought like, oh, this is a misstep, like seeing a multi tilt. I have to imagine if the guys that were really into pinball before saw that, they'd be like, well, that's cheating. You shouldn't be able to tilt on every ball. And I always wonder if people, when they started seeing like the dangers prior to, you know, modern games, you usually get two dangers and then a tilt. Is there anything that ever like in your time in the hobby stuck out to you like that, that you're like, that's cheesy, that's not pinball? Or have you just been happy to kind to see the evolution as it goes? It's a great question. I wish I had an answer ready off the top of my head. I will say that most of what we wind up taking for granted now because of the access via the internet or otherwise of specific features or technological advancements were invisible to us as players back in the 60s and 70s. So whether or not our game was tilted or we tilt it out and we're able to keep on playing, you just accept that as people not knowing any better or any different. I think if I think back to some games where maybe I didn't think that there was a particular geometric layout that made sense, taking nothing away from Ted Zale and his asymmetrical playfields that he designed for Valley for a period of time, I think that, Yes, there have been a number of different features that have been introduced over the years and the games that I've played over these many decades where it's like, God, this just really sucks. But having said that, my feeling has always been, and this is going to probably run counter to the majority of people in the hobby or players, no matter how bad a game might be for the masses, my sense is that it was designed and at least one person somewhere liked it. I don't think that there is 100% truly an aberration where somebody says, oh, God, and I'm not going to bring up games today that have been rediscovered through all of the tournaments and competitions taking place globally. But there are games that people have gravitated to where I shake my head saying, are you kidding me? That was an abysmal failure when it was introduced. but now people think of it as being this novelty and the fact that it is rare to find suddenly everybody starts running to it so again i think two points one whatever was taking place you just accepted it yeah you walked up to a game and if that game had a particular feature or functionality good bad or indifferent i don't think that it was ever a thought of cheating if you will so much as it was this is the feature of the game i mean play something like what was it police force two shots and i get to steal that other person's score i mean yeah what's that all about well yeah i mean that was that was part of the design and you wind up playing it that way or the same thing on uh the machine bride of pinbot you had a specific feature that kind of you know escalated things in proportion or unproportionately to everything else. Right. So I think that there are things that were like that over the years where, again, we're going back to the question specifically about multi-tilt. You just said, okay, great. I got a chance. I think when tilt warnings came out, that was kind of neat and cool. But then the question really became, how was the operator adjusting his games on location? and did you really get two warnings or was it one and done because of the way he set the machine? Set the tilt off, yeah. So again, not necessarily a direct answer. That's a good one. Sure, no, it was great. Do you remember when we got tilt warnings in games? Was that during, you know, that had to be in the 80s, right? Like the late 80s? Yeah, it was during Solid State. Yeah, I think. I would assume so, where there was a way to have it be part and parcel to the changeover from electromechanics to solid state. Because electromechanical games, you do not have that functionality. You wouldn't have a way to do that. As far as I remember. No, yeah, you don't have the way. I know it's in the solid state. I'm just wondering if anyone knows what game it was. I would imagine it would be in the Flyers or something, and I'm sure somebody might know that. First game with Tilt Warnings. Yeah, if a listener knows, let us know. Yeah, that'd be very interesting to hear. But yeah, Roger, to your point about every game has somebody that likes it, we do a segment on this show where we ask people to come on the show and defend a quote-unquote bad game, a game that is poorly rated by people on the internet, but we have somebody that comes on who unequivocally loves that game. And it's a fun segment, and it's very eye-opening. yeah and it gets it gets me to appreciate a lot of games that i might have walked past yeah because you hear somebody that's passionate about it and you're like huh people really like you know we did gilligan's island or we did you know popeye saves the earth or we did uh no fear and like alex owns a no fear we talked about no fear and how much we both love that game it's a very interesting thing because i found myself in that position a lot where i remember there's many times throughout my pinball playing days where i'm like oh i love i love this game i loved iron man when it came out by Stern, you know, 10 years ago or whatever, 11, 12 years ago. And I remember when that game came out, there was a lot of people I was playing on location with that just hated that game and I couldn't understand it. And now I feel like that game has gotten respect for being a great tournament game and for being a fun, fast, modern player. Well, like even the games we're talking about today, a lot of wood rails, a lot of modern players would just walk past. A lot of people dismiss EMs and it's like, these games are awesome. They're so much fun. I think a big part of why I like EMs and like going back into Woodrail specifically is it's like you can look at the game and within 30 seconds you have a pretty good idea of how to play it it's not that deep it's just challenging it's just physically challenging yeah like the game itself is physically challenging to control the ball or to aim your shots in modern pinball it's like the opposite where it's very controllable and it gets more controllable by the era as we get as we get games newer and newer I'm just you know ball returns feed to your flippers and you have consistent inlanes and slingshot placement and sizes and all that kind of stuff and it's um it's just interesting where the the challenge used to be just keeping the ball alive so when you have a new player and they come up to you and they're like oh i'm not even good at pinball i just can't i just always die so quickly you know i always lose the ball and you're like yeah that used to be i think true in the old days and i'm sure it's true for new players now but for pinheads it's like you know even a skilled pinball player you go back and play these ems and they are brutally hard. That's what makes me keep playing them. I think what you find over the eras is that the games today, currently, tend to be more populated. However the design might be, whether it is symmetrical or not, I think that some of the outliers, and I'm thinking of two games in particular that have become favorites in competitions, that when they came out, we just kind of ran away from them saying they got to be kidding. Argosy being one. Just because of the layout. We have one of those on the floor at Wedgehead right now, Roger. We have Argosy on the floor right now at my bar. Okay. Go on. Sorry. I just want to say, I mean, it has become a favorite of many of the players in the tournament world, as well as Dolly Parton, which is also seen as an abysmal design layout. George Christian. that really didn't have a lot going for it. So I think that, well, I think that that has become part of the world today where average players, to your point, can walk up and just have fun batting the ball around. I think that if you go back in time, specifically even to the late 50s and throughout the 60s with small flippers, it became much more of a daunting challenge for players to, again, become more accomplished. Yeah. I think it thrived in a time where there was less distractions and less entertainment in general. Nowadays, we still struggle to get new people to play pinball, even with ball saves and longer flippers and more controllable games. And so everyone's trying to do something to get people hooked and to play. I want to cover a few more of his games real quick, and then I want to talk about his work for Sam Stern and his solid state machines. So in 1955, he makes a game called Can-Can, which comes in a new console cabinet. It's not a regular pinball cabinet. It's got an animated back glass full of Can-Can dancers. And as you hit the different bumpers, they flip over corresponding to their numbers. And they sort of have the numbers on their butts. But it's just a cool animated back glass feature that some of the coolest EMs all have these animated mechanical back glass features. and I just thought this was a cool game in a cool cabinet. And then in 1956, he made a game called Funhaus for Williams, which in 1990, Pat Lawler makes a game called Funhaus for Williams. But this was designed by Harry Williams, and it's Funhaus-themed, and it has three trap doors in the center of the playfield. And Pat Lawler, I think, was paying a direct homage by putting a trap door in his version of Funhaus that came out in 1990. Yeah, I would say so. After seeing all of the inspiration Pat pulled from Harry Williams, there's no way that's a coincidence. If we ever get to talk to Pat, we're going to ask him that for sure. And then in 1956, he makes a game called Shamrock, where he puts a pop bumper below the flippers in the center drain hole. It's kind of a Norm Clark thing. I thought Norm Clark was the first to do that. See, that's the thing. I thought so too. And then I see it here in 1956. Norm Clark designed a game called Spanish Eyes in 1972. that's one of my favorite games of all time i am obsessed with that game and i could just play it for hours i don't know what there's something magical center pop games are awesome the center pop below the flipper games are awesome and then in 1957 back to harry williams he designs a game called arrowhead which as we were talking about point inflation it's the first game that has a million point shot and again talking about Python Anghelo in the 80s him and barry oustler do a game together called Comet. It's Python's first pinball machine. And they bring, to hear him talk about it, he pushed to have a million point shot on the game. And it's just funny. I was like, oh, I thought that was the first million point shot. And then you go look back. Nope. It was Arrowhead by Harry Williams again, back in the EM days, you know, and then there's more, there's a great back glass hidden mirror feature on a game called Jigsaw in 1957, where you hit different stuff on the play field. And it just looks like a mirror at first, but every time you hit a different shot, it lights up more of the puzzle. So different puzzle pieces become illuminated and clear on the back glass. Yeah, that's a really cool animated one. Yeah. And then Gusher in 1958 has a pop bumper that raises and lowers into the play field, which anyone that's played Circus Voltaire by John Papadiuk in 1997 will recognize this feature. And it sort of hides this lane in the center where you can get a special and you can score big points, but it guards it when it's up. Then you have to hit, you have to fall into these different kickout holes to raise or lower it. Just a wild use. I also have that. I didn't put it on this slideshow here, but in 1948, he released a game called Saratoga. And that was the first time a pop bumper was energized. Oh. So he really did the first true pop bumper. Because there were spring bumpers that came out in 38 on a manufacturer named Stoner made a game. called super zeta that had these bumpers that we now kind of look at as dead bumpers they're not truly dead but they have little springs in them these are the first ones that are mechanically actuated just like what we think of now interesting so he did that in 48 and in 58 10 years later he's making one rise and lower from the playfield which is again 1958 1958 he's doing that but And that's just kind of what I wanted to talk about, like his EM games, the showcase of his creativity and the way he's always pushing the envelope and trying new things and always relentlessly trying to reinvent the wheel and do something different. And how many of those ideas maybe didn't take off immediately but became staples later on and to the point where we don't even know that he did it. Yeah. A lot of people in the pinball hobby don't even know that. So I wanted to highlight that, but I want to move on to the next. Before we leave the EM state or entirely the EM era entirely, Roger, do you have, are there any big innovations that we're forgetting or we didn't mention? And I know we kind of threw a lot at you quick. And do you have any standout Harry Williams designed EMS that you just absolutely love or maybe that you own? I know you mentioned you own a few wood rails. Just anything to talk about before we kind of leave this era? No, I mean, not really. Look, there were so many different innovations, so many things that were, I guess, crossing over from one company, one designer to the next, whether it was Genco or Williams or Bally or Gottlieb. Gottlieb. I think that, you know, going back in time and looking at many of those games and just the intricacies of the designs are the things that really kind of stand out. Are there some personal favorites? Sure. Depending on who the designers were at the time and whether or not I remember who specifically designed what, that always becomes a challenge. Sure. I'll leave it to everybody else to kind of discover whatever it is that they would find to be fascinating and appealing for each game, whether it is captive balls, whether it is roto targets, so many other features that became either part of many games or maybe only came on a couple of different ones. Which brings up a question I wanted to ask you, which is, it seems like during this time frame and i found an anecdote about when the world war broke out and lynn durant and harry williams when they were partners went to washington to try to secure some government manufacturing contracts and dave gottlieb was there and they ran into him and the exchange that harry remembers was very friendly and they just hung out together as they were both trying to get manufacturing contests for the war effort and then david gottlieb said to him supposedly like all right harry let's go back and make some good games you know like let's go back to chicago make some games and i think you like what you just said was there's so many features from the beginning of pinball you know from flippers pops spinners drop targets roto you know like there's so many features that are you know kick out hold whatever we're talking about every advancement in pinball and then immediately all the other companies were doing the same thing and i know that they got patents on their work. But it seems like they didn't seem to mind that their direct competition was doing the same thing as them, which I think made pinball richer and is wonderful for all of us who are into pinball now, that these are all standard parts and not owned by one company. I was just going to say everything was somewhat interchangeable. I will share at least an anecdote, if you will, that highlights what it is that you were saying during my interview with Sam Ginsberg, among other things that we discussed, he had a part shortage. And whoever came in to tell him about it, it was like, we'll call up Bally and see if they can get us a truckload of whatever it was over here so we can continue to build. And I think that, you know, back in the day where I was fortunate enough to become much more involved with the industry, it was really very much closed-knit. Everybody was competitive, obviously, but it was shared. And I think it was only when the companies became larger, some of them became stocks on the New York Stock Exchange or owned by larger corporations, that that dynamic changed. But otherwise, it was friendly rivalry. It's fascinating to hear that. I've heard you say that before, and that's why I wanted to ask you about it because I think I was dumbfounded the first time I heard you tell that story. And I think the listeners would be as well, just knowing kind of the changes in corporate America and corporate structure nowadays. And just not that the pinball manufacturers aren't cordial to each other, but they're definitely not helping you secure parts to build your next game. I just think it fascinating And I think there so many things that I know that Harry Williams also said that he sold the rights to manufacture some of his early games like when he still had Automatic Amusements his first company like games like Contact to Bally and Exhibit on the East Coast and Midwest markets And all he said was, in your marketing's material, I have to be credited as the designer, which I think is also very interesting. He's willing to work with other companies making his games, and he's probably the first – I assume he's the first guy that was like, but these games are going to be – they're going to have my name on them. So whether you manufacture them at Bally, they're going to still say Harry Williams. That's very interesting because nowadays we all know designers and their names. Yeah. But I think Harry Williams, he knew that back then. He knew that it'd be better for him to share his designs because his games will have more reach, and all he asked for was recognition in return. And I just think that it led to a really cool era of pinball. The other part to that, sorry, I won't. Understand that back in the 30s, shipping and transportation was far different than it is today. And having designs coming from the West Coast needing to go across the country, more often than not, those would be knocked off before they ever made it to the East Coast. by some rival company. Oh, wow. That's interesting. The idea that Harry was able to maintain his presence and in some ways his dominance, he was smart and shrewd enough to understand that before moving to Chicago, where you're centrally located at better shipping lines, have the ability to really kind of reach and span from coast to coast, that let me make sure at least that people know that this is a Harry Williams game. And I think that that's why you found more often than not the companies coalescing in the Midwest, in Chicago specifically, rather than staying on the East Coast, being east of the Mississippi versus being on the West Coast. and you'll see that in other areas of entertainment as well, whether it's the movie industry, whether it is software development over the years. Yeah, it's somewhat a fascinating aspect of Harry taking advantage of a disadvantage in regard to where he was located. Yeah, that's very cool. It's just, it's endlessly fascinating to me. I do want to move us on to the late 70s And I want to cover this period of probably the only Harry Williams games that most people will ever get to play. This is the solid state era we're in. And this is Sam Stern, his old business partner at Williams, now has his own company called Stern Electronics. And he contracted Harry to do 10 different machine designs for his company. So he did, I'll read them in order, I guess. There's Wildfire in 1978, Dracula in 1979. hot hand in 1979 galaxy in 1980 ali 1980 big game 1980 cheetah 1980 flight 2000 1980 free fall 1981 and split second was the last game also in 1981 well i just want to give a quick story to the listeners is i love old games we own a bar called wedgehead my business partner and i have a passion for old solid state games and ems and the game that got me into it which we still have on the floor and alex owns one in his own personal collection is 1980s big game i think that this game is a special game to me personally it changed how i play pinball i've heard you say that harry has famously said the ball is wild and that's what it feels like on big game there's swooping lane guides, spinners, drop target. It just feels dynamic and energetic. And I want to talk, anything you know about any of these games, Roger, I just want to talk to you about this era of Sterns, because these are the games that if anyone's listening, they could reasonably play in a location near them, a buddy will have them at their house, or they'll be able to play at a show. A lot of the games we talked about earlier are super cool, but you're probably not ever going to get to play. So I don't know if you know anything about if you have a favorite or if you want to talk about any one of these in particular. Yeah, or any stories of Williams returning to Stern to make these or anything. Oh, I also want to tell the listener that you also designed a game for Stern Electronics, Stingray as well. You designed a game, right? Is that correct? Yep, it is. Very correct. And I guess one of my all-time favorites actually is Big Game. Yes. I thought it was wonderful. Yes. Obviously, seven-digit scoring, which was the first game to do that. Yep. But just the layout, the dynamics of it. Yeah, I mean, I absolutely, totally enjoyed that game. Still do if I find it somewhere at one of the conventions. I'll gravitate to go play it. But I think that, you know, if you take a look at all of these games from this era, you will find some of the aspects of what Harry had done prior to. We talk about a wire form and you look at split second. Yes. Just from whatever I remember about it. Having that ball guy doing that, the idea, and it was vexing, but in a nice way of playing hot hand with the large, I'll call it a large flipper for lack of a better way to describe it, where a ball would fall into a pouring cup and suddenly it would be either held out or nudged along. You see a junior version of that on Pat Lawler's Monopoly, which is another callback from Pat, I feel like. God, we've got to talk to Pat. Yeah. Well, and Galaxy always loved the shot over to the left side where he could collect letters. Yeah. And that center spinner that he did so well. So, I mean, a lot of this is just the overall balance of the games and the design. Some of the geometry and some of the angles will look very, very similar and familiar if you start stacking them up next to each other. Yeah. But some of the other aspects, I know that I was influenced at least on a game that most people have never seen or played, Global Warfare. I was influenced by the Atarians with the top set of kick-out holes and also influenced, obviously, by Harry and the setup that he had not only on Wildfire, but he brought it back again on Ali if memory serves. Yeah, you're right. I liked the idea of doing that. The way that I did it, though, was I wanted the ball to go from the left hole to the center and to the right. Oh, like sing-alongs. It was set up a little bit differently. like got leave sing-along have you played got leave sing-along it was just a little bit yeah yes and some of the other got leave games from that era as well i think there was a hearts hearts of something or whatever hearts and spades or yeah uh some game from the 60s which had that set up with the various ace king queen jack 10 i love those landing in the left and going to the right landing in the middle and going to the right so i like those kinds of sequences Yep. Chicago coin did Hollywood where the center area and a kickoff hole set up that was going from the bottom up to the top. So, yeah, I mean, there's lots of little touches. I think that I really enjoyed with Harry. I think in some ways not wanting to speak out of turn in terms of some people and what they think. I think that some of these little idiosyncratic touches from a design standpoint are what has made Keith Elwin's game so compelling for so many people. Sure. Just because there's small little touches in terms of where the ball is guided to or where you get to. And one of my personal favorites, again, Flight 2000. Oh, yeah. So cool. Actually, and I know that Gary may have a different memory of this, but when he was starting up a company with Steve Kaufman and asked how Flight 2000 may be changed by Pinstar, I think was the company. I think Steve Kirk wound up actually doing it, but I wound up sending back a suggestion and a drawing probably that was a terrible drawing to Gary saying this is what I would do to eliminate one of the areas on the left side to make it two so it would fit into a standard game design. Yeah. And lo and behold, you know, that Flight 2000 was remade. But always liked that game. Loved the spinner on the right, targets. Yeah. Just that left spinner on the left, which was very well-designed game. Yes. Yeah. 100%. Yeah, sorry? And I was just going to say, what's the standard body version? Is it Gamitron? I'm getting mixed up. I can't remember. Gamitron, thank you. Yeah, Gamitron. I played that on a show recently, and it's awesome. Not to take away from Flight 2000, but it's very cool in a narrow body. It's even faster, and Harry Williams wide bodies weren't slow in the first place. You get nice snappy flippers. You get solid state power. These are some of, I would say, Harry Williams stern electronics wide bodies are my favorite wide bodies. For sure. 100%. I don't think that's too controversial of an opinion. A lot of people really like these things. Probably the only one would be Free Fall that I had a problem with because one of the key shots you can't get to. directly and that is uh the kick won't go over so that you can lock balls it's funny because that get kicker into the ball rail made it to be accessible that's exactly copied from one of the one of the ems that he designed in 53 or whatever that we mentioned earlier yeah yeah and it's just like it's funny to see that come back and it's like oh i'm sure it haunted people back then and then when you put it on a game with flippers or two flippers now i guess it's still like that's an impossible shot you can't give me that yeah i think it's interesting that um it's just a totally by this point like that design philosophy has been long gone so it's like people expect to be able to hit shots from their flippers so he gives you this where it's like it has to bounce in there and then it'll kick itself automatically it's not a true ramp or it's not anything that you would expect that you can hit from a player controlled flipper it becomes incidental as a multiball game yeah That's not really the objective. Right. It has a direct objective. What you're trying to do is fill out the big book card. Yeah. And you think that, you know, multiball was obviously an integral part of pinball during that era. And, you know, he has it in there. But it's not something that is a specific end-all, do-all goal. I just want to get this out. You said something about Keith Elwin and the little touches, which I think is interesting. I just want to share that I remember Keith has spoken about his love for big game and how it's one of his favorite games as well. And I do know that he said on a different podcast that I listened to that he used to have a Galaxy that he sold and that that's the game he regrets selling. So I thought that was very interesting that they were both Harry Williams games from this era and that you had brought it up because I do feel the same way about his games. There's something about his games that feel like a fingerprint, that feel idiosyncratic. They're not all, not all the little gimmicks are the best, like you mentioned in Freefall. I love Cheetah. I love Flight 2000. I love Big Game. I just, I love a Harry Williams game. Yeah. Dude, Ali is awesome. And a lot of everyone's favorite pinball designers also love Harry Williams games. I think that's what's becoming more evident is that it's like every designer, he's like the designer's favorite designer, it seems. Well, and the point I'll make, Harry was not a multiball type of game designer. The majority of the games that he ever did, and the ones that are most memorable, are single ball games. Yeah. And the end-all, do-all, at least for Flight 2000, where he took it up a notch to say, all right, this is where you want to go, this is what you want to do, at least with, as I said, a game like Split Second or Freefall, specifically, you know, I want you to play the game. He created a universe thematically where everything worked together so that you understood what you were needing to do for any of the games from this era. Filling out bingo cards, getting particular shots in sequence for drop targets and the like. Everything has a tied-in theme on balance with everything else on the play field. and I think that that was the beauty of Harry during this later part of his career. I feel grateful to Sam Stern for bringing Harry back into the fold because I knew that Harry supposedly never stopped drawing games and Bally made a couple and Williams made one in the early 70s but I guess he kept sending them to these companies and a lot of these designs never got made and then of course his old buddy Sam starts a company and then he actually gets to make a bunch of these games. But I want to talk a little bit. I'm sure you've seen some of these, but there was a bunch of lost playfield drawings of Harry Williams that got found. And I want to know if you know much about that story. I guess apparently Steve Kordek, who was working at Williams, had every drawing that Harry ever sent him that they never made, but that he kept them. And that when Williams the factory closed, closed the pinball division, somebody found them and retrieved them and scan them and all that stuff. Do you know much about that story, and can you enlighten the listeners about any of that? I can on some levels, and on others, I don't want to besmirch the memory of anybody, but there was a heck of a lot of competition. Games like Black Gold. I think Wild Card was one of the last games that Williams did that was Harry's design. Yeah, Steve Kordak had all of the designs. Some of them found the light of day. most did not for whatever the reasons might have been Duncan Brown I think now has everything and actually built up one of Harry's games that he brought to pinball expo a number of years back so I think Duncan is the keeper of that flame for a creative person here or he never lost that desire to want to still plug away at it and you know Williams being Williams it seemed to be a natural and whatever the competition and egos might have been. You know, fortunately, Sam was there and then Gary was there to encourage Harry to keep on going. Yeah. That he still had enough gas in the tank to have an impact and an influence on games for a particular era. Yeah. So we are absolutely, to your point, an almost fortunate that Sam brought him out of, in quotes, retirement. And as I said, the only other activity that he was involved with directly was Brunswick. Yeah. And, you know, to try to get them on track. So whatever the designs are and whoever gets a chance to actually see them, either in the flesh being built up or maybe there'll be some compilation that will be done that will show all of the designs, the layouts, the sketches. We'll see what happens. Yeah, it's very cool. Like I saw that Duncan Brown had written an article, a great article, which I'll link to in our show notes when this episode goes live. There's a great story about him saving these lost playfield designs of Harry Williams. And again, you're looking at just drawings and they're really cool. Again, really, really cool. I don't know how many designers that I can just look at a game and go, man, I want to play that game. It looks like so much fun. And Harry Williams does that to me. Doing all the research for this episode just got me more and more excited. And it's just been a pleasure to be able to talk about Harry Williams with you, Roger. And I just wanted to have something that maybe shone some more light on this industry giant that I don't think is talked about nearly enough. and uh you know it's it's been great to talk to you about harry and i i just am really grateful that you would agree to come on the show and i would hope to have you back on the show at some time in the future because you lived a lot of lives that i want to talk about i just didn't know how to focus a single episode on you know i was just like how man we could talk to roger about anything like we're probably the only podcast dumb enough to land roger sharp and not talk about anything Roger Sharp did, which is great. So hopefully you've enjoyed it. That's the smart way of going in. And it's been my pleasure to do this. And I look forward, hopefully everybody enjoying that as well. And please feel free to reach out. Maybe it'll be another time that we can all get together. Oh, yeah. We would love to talk to you about your time working at Williams because your kind of like history there dovetails with the rise again of pinball in the early 90s and then you know the pinball 2000 and the closing and you just i'm sure you have so many great stories and we'd love to pick your brain in a future episode about all that sounds like a plan awesome that's what i was hoping you'd say roger i appreciate it thank you guys but i want to say for everyone listening thanks once again for listening to an episode of the wedgehead pinball podcast uh we appreciate you listening. I'll end this story like I, or I'll end this episode like I end every episode, which is a plea for everyone to go out and play some pinball. Find some pinball on location. Find some of these Harry Williams games. If you live in the Portland area, you know where to find them. We have them at Wedgehead. We have Big Game on the floor. And by the time this episode airs, we'll have Cheetah back on the floor, and I'm working on getting some of the other ones on the floor too. So, and for everyone else, thanks once again for listening. Until next time. Thank you.