You're listening to Topcast, this old pinballs online radio. For more information visit them anytime, www.Marvin3M.com. Flash Topcast. Today on Topcast we've got a special interview with somebody that worked at Williams from 1954 up to the mid 1970s and then he worked at Balley from the mid 70s to the mid 80s and he has designed a total of 65 different games for Williams from 1962 to 1975. So he's a game designer and he was also president of the pinball department at Balley from 1975 to 1985. So I'd like to welcome Norm Clark of Williams and of Balley to Topcast today for an interview. Now Norm has a medical condition that makes him very hard to understand and very difficult to record on the telephone. I had some problems especially in the first two or three minutes of the interview. I ask you just to bear with me. It gets much better after that initial two or three minutes and the recording cleans up a lot. So I'd like to welcome Norm Clark to Topcast tonight and we're going to give him a call right now. Norm this is this is Joshua Clay how you feeling today you okay? Not bad. Okay. You're doing fine Norm I really appreciate you talking to us. So tell me about your first memories of pinball and how you got involved into the pinball industry. Well that was kind of a strange situation. I was in electronics and friend of mine also was in electronics and he's voice was for Williams and he used to go over there and Harry Williams asked him what he do come work for him and introduce electronics into pinball industry. So he went over there and he brought his assistant Michael over and that's how I got his assistant ball industry. There's nothing about this ball. So what year do you think that was? Okay and so did Williams Harry Williams hire you right then? Yes right right then he hired me and of course back in those days we weren't into the chips as we are today we waxed two and the idea of both controlling the game with the most prominent wasn't feasible. So my friend left one to go on how far the speed to go although I was in fast-quaking bar to pinball and I stayed and at that time I was in the engineering department as a technician doing putting the games together, watering them and doing some of the circuit games and at that time we had Harry meds as the designer and the Harry retired from Williams went to Florida left him left we have brought high and dry for his design. Sam Stern was the president and co-earned order of the of Williams so he hired Steve Corbyn and the horse that made Sam Stern a little nervous having only one designer and no backup. So he asked me to carve my hand at the designing. The first game I decided was Kingpin back in 1961 and it produced early 1962 and from that time on I was a designer at Williams. I stayed at Williams to 1975 and those all had been asked for me to go to Bally. So eventually I ran to the point to Bally. So on your first game the Kingpin in 1962 were you were you pretty happy with that design when it came out I mean were you were you pretty proud of that game? Yeah it was the first first game but I had to do it. I made a couple of whitewoods prior to Kingpin and they were too advanced in the way pins were growing at that time so I landed up making Kingpin which became pretty good game and that's really made me very happy. How did you get along well with Steve Cordack? I always feel outside by side at the end of the year. I got along very well with him and never had any problems. So how did you guys figure out like did you alternate like you do a game one month and he would do a game the next month? We both do it in the game. So he's his room with right next to mine. And we both were at the beginning games and if he would ask me to play his game and I would ask him to play my game and that's where it went. No problem we both worked together. So I'm going to start. Did you guys ever collaborate on a game you know where it was like both of you designed a game or did it not work that way? He designed his game and I designed one that's the way it went. When he started he had a good game that was produced and I was the same with me. The two kept playing games with games. Now the one game that you did that's really kind of famous from that era is Molen Rouge. Tell me about how you came up with that idea with like the painting in the background and how it's backlit. Actually the idea of the background with the back glass was actually Harry Williams. He just because he did the game for a couple years prior to that and he used that that type of meal. That actually was his. This idea is backlit. Now did you like doing single player or multiplayer or add-a-balls or did it not matter to you? I did both of them all of them and it did not matter to me as long as the game was accepted. Now when you designed a game did you have artwork in mind for it or was that always the artwork people that came up with that idea? Well first of all years ago add posters is all the artwork. We never had an art department. The art department came much later in the year. Add posters we treat our art posters basically over one score and do the artwork and they bring it in and show it to us. If there is something we want to change they will take it back and re-read the minute. But basically the artworks were blocked off the art poster. Now in 1966 you did a game called Full House and it had score reels on the play field. Was that your idea? Yes. That cost you another game. I put the score reels right in a slot machine on the play field. That was fine. That's a pretty neat idea. It is very much slot machine-ish. Well in Europe that was accepted in the United States I had a change to symbol away from a slot machine but keeping the score reels. There was a difference in the artwork on the tapes on the score and playing the state and different for you. Now you also did a pair of games the Magic City and the Magic City. That was a pretty well-received game. Do you have any stories associated with the design of that game? Well there was one big story on the back glass. I had a colored wheel turn around and changing the colors in the back. Somebody in the waves at that time wanted to hire and send it casting it towards to put the color wheel in and he got Harry off and he was the best. Yeah they were both very well received. Another kind of unusual game at least by artwork design would be Eager Beaver in 1965. Whose idea wasn't to come up with that theme? Well in most of the king games the designer came up with the name and basically the theme. The artwork of course was done by Ed Poser and the space of the artwork and we would take changes or rules. But we most of the games Steve Rhyde did, we named the game or else we had people in Williams in the artworks coming and playing the game and some of them suggested the same but by all the reason we named the game. Tell me about Apollo and Lunar Shot. Those were two games of course. Apollo was the replay and Lunar Shot was the Attable and those were again games that were very well designed and very well received with back glass animation and people to this day. I mean they loved those that pair of games. Of course, it was interesting that I believe we actually it was performed from first to work with them in 1993 exactly 6 minutes and and the bit is the magic series of artworks. Okay we smile we got the time to embrace the later picture, maybe Rickey Cr Azashari as a lot of time but this is before we started to thwart it because while these are game, but I forget along with stuff now anyway. Whose idea was it to use that back glass animation in those two games? It's far scoring and the animation, it was our idea. The artwork was done around the work we did at the game. In other words, if we have a scoring thing or a ball of thing in the artwork we're starting around with that. Now another game you did in 1969 was called Gridiron, which was a pitch and bat football game. Any information about that game you can tell us about? The game is already called a game by memory. Was that the game with the target? It was set up as a football field and you would basically, it was a pitch and bat where the ball would come out the center and you'd kick it with a baseball style bat to get so many yards to get touchdowns. That was done with the baseball team only in Gridiron, the football rather baseball. I did it and made a football game. How did you think that came out? Pretty well, so pretty good. I recall I think it was Louis Goldberg who was asking me for quite some time of the building a game on football. I think that was the reason why I did it. Now you started working with one of the artists at artworks, his name was Christian Marche. He did what's known as that pointy style artwork. What did you think of that style of artwork on your games? I think it is a point of view game by games and I was very pleased with the artwork. Spanish eyes for some other ones was done by first of all was done by Joe Vasek who used the work for ad poster. He finished the artwork for we were happy with it or something and something else you did it. Did you have a preference as far as the artwork on your game being the Christian Marche pointy style people or the more cartoonish style or the more realistic style or did you have a preference? Not really. As time went on we started going towards the abstract part of art and it seemed to take so I was happy with it all. I think that's the kind of artwork that pointy people are working either love it or you don't. Some people really like it and some people really don't. It doesn't seem to be much middle ground on that artwork. What did you think of the abstract or more realistic artwork? That was real popular during the 1970s that modernistic artwork. As you went back in the late 1950s it was more or less the kids' style artwork. Tell me about travel time and that was a single player machine that came out in 1973 and it was basically a time game. Tell me about your design philosophy and thinking that was going on for that game. I was looking for some other way of producing a game like the certain territories that would allow replays. In other words you can get those add-ons for easily for New York. There were several places that you couldn't sell a replay game. I got the idea of a game with time and it would be acceptable so that's why travel time was made. How was it received? It was a few more times. How was it received by your customers? It was a certain location, it was a two-bath. It was a certain area. It wasn't something that would have taken life like I had hoped. One game that to me is a true classic that you designed was OXO which is basically a tic-tac-toach style theme on the playboard. It's really a cool game to play. Tell me about designing that game. It was special, it was really easy. Was it a hard design electronically? It was not any harder than the other game. The whole package is really interesting with the bluish greenish colors and the artwork and the fluorescent colors. The whole game came together really, really well. At the time I bet you were pretty proud of that game. Yes, I thought it was a better game. Now how did you feel about Strato Flight and Super Flight? Nothing special, but it was a very tough game. Now when you designed a game, did you have to design the electronics circuit too? Yes, I thought when we built the entire game, not by the art, but by the art, we were doing today. We put the whole thing together. I did the circuit for the whitewood and we built the whole game ourselves. When I say a one wood, we built a snow without any artwork. We put together many changes and played this continuously until we were done for a few of them. Now how would you, when you were done with the game and its whitewood, how would you go about testing it? Would you have like, somebody play it like hundreds of times, seeing how many replays or high scores and stuff like that you would get? We have people in the artworks, so on and so forth. After we were satisfied with the game, we have people coming in from the artworks and playing the game. Of course, we were always concerned with the time of it would take the play to game, so that the game did its play for half an hour, not making any money. So that was an important thing. And also that the balance of replays are accepted by things like that. So naturally we have played the game to the satisfaction of those conditions. Now, when did you have, get any influence from at this time, you know, you're at Williams, like did you see the valley and got-leab games that were being made at the time? And did they influence your design decisions at all? When the drop-leab would have a test game on location, well we would go and take a wheelchair, but basically we would see if there's anything different. We'd find out to copy anything that another non-facture did. So they didn't really have any influence, but you guys were just curious, huh? Yes, we'd go and see how the game was and what we wanted to do on the game. So that was the new feature, like a great feature, we would be tempted to do something about it. Normally, that's both the side, if somebody in San Francisco came over the game, we would go there to see it. Again, we basically would try and copy anything. When you started working at Williams in 1954, how old were you? About 32. What type of stuff did you do for a living before that? I was in the electronics. I worked for a housing faster radio to sit there working on single-sized-bound receivers and stuff like that. Now tell me about how you changed and went from Williams over to Valley. How did that happen? Well, Bill Dallow, who was chairman of the board, Valley, was interested in me and he had asked me several times about Jordan Dallow, and I had dinner with him and so on and so forth. In 1975, they called six of us into Seabird and retined contracts with Seabird to stay at Williams. I observed the apple part with Tam Sir. Bill finally made me a gig and another offer and I said, if I don't get called in to sign a contract with Williams, I said, such a date I would join him. That's what happens. He came to me and he said, not you, not you, not you, not you, not you, yes. That's it. Tam Sir was a great guy. I like him and he liked me but things didn't work out at the end. I joined the battle. When you went to Valley, was it a corporate shock? Was it a big difference in the corporate environment and the working environment or was it pretty much the same as Williams? When I went to Valley, I went to the head of the paintball department and I was made eventually a little walk over there on a paintball expressway, a president of the paintball division. I didn't actually sit down and design the gate there. I was head of the department. So who were the designers that were working for you at Valley at that time? Well, the gym path is great. Make George Christian actually George, I hired him at Williams and after I went to Valley, I hired him to cut the bow. Gary Geaton, great for making and the gym path at George Christian. Now at the time Valley had their own art department. Did that make things easier for your pinball people? Well, Valley had their own art department. Yes. It didn't make things any easier. I mean, you were working more closely with the artists I would think because they're all in the same building, right? That didn't make the games maybe, I don't know, maybe linked better to the artwork? Well, at Valley, you went in a lot with the personnel, the voice, evil, the QF, the stuff like that. And they had a big input on the artwork that was done. Now, when on some of the games like eight ball deluxe and kiss and space invaders and silver ball, Mania, did you have any involvement in those games? Because they have a very, the playfields kind of have a norm Clarkish feel to them as far as the shots and the layout. Well, as far as eight ball deluxe, I had quite a bit of input with George because I brought George over to Valley. And of course, I had done the eight ball the act Williams. And so I had, for the bit of input there, the other games, I had a little bit of input, there's a broken over with the design. The vice of some of the I did like a broken system, eight ball, once more for the games that had a course all the games that George would do I had input. But it became so much so very, a little more, because he was new in the design. Did you like working at at Valley more than you liked working at Williams? So I felt more home designing games that we had to tell the truth. What I liked about it, it really treated me well. So, the thing is, what I didn't design any of the games, I just always see the game. So you like to have your hand in the design, in the design aspect, it was more fun for you. Yeah, more rewarding in that sense. Now George Christian was the guy that you mentored. Now where did you get him from? Where did you bring him in to Valley? Well, when he was, well, I was at Williams. His name actually, I don't know, took a while I could say. His name was George Zazizza, if he changed his name. And he came into Williams as a technician, putting the games, putting the world together. After we designed the game, we did the circuitry. George and a couple other people looked together. When I left Williams to went to Valley, he called me and wanted to come to Valley with me. And I hired him. I hired him at Williams and I hired him at Valley. Why did he change his name? Well, people from Iran were one of those places. And I think that had something to do with it, but he changed his name. Now, how did you feel about the transition from electro-mechanical games to solid state games? Well, the solid state games were, the solid state was designed by, it was a different department. So, when we finished with the game, we reduced that department to put it into design together. And then, after that, we had the party department. When you were at Williams, were they starting to work on solid state games then? We were playing around with it. Yes, but they weren't producing solid state. Now, when you went over to Valley, though, did they pretty much have their system already kind of designed? Pretty much so, they were just starting to come up with it. It was in the system. How did you feel about the whole solid state thing compared to the electro-mechanical? Did you like electro-mechanical better or did you like solid state better? Well, you can do a lot more with solid state. It's easier to change things and you can do a lot more with solid state. For instance, with the 8 ball games, well, first of all, the 8th, first 8 ball games were 2 players. We helped with that because I designed the, I came up with the, the split banks. So, we had never, between first and second players, which was the only way we could do it with this. But I came up with the split banks. We'd have a reset for the first player, the reset for the second player. So, the really bank worked for both of us. Whereas prior to that, he had one, one reset for the bank. You couldn't, you couldn't do what the school were doing. And there was the use of the split banks for 2 players. But on the top, they keep about 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 players, but they're not. They didn't need a bank. The artwork on 8 ball kind of had a, a happy day's faunzy type character on the back glass. Was there any legal ramifications from the TV show? So, the, the part that looked similar was a cousin and something else, one of the artists. So, we got away with it. Did they try and, did anybody try and sue you over that artwork? No, to write, no. I don't think we have any problem. The artist didn't really, it wasn't intended to have a kind of happy days of, what kind of license looked to it. It's just kind of how it worked out. Well, like I say, the guy was a cousin and something. It wasn't known, tried to call for calls and something like that. So, legally, he could prove what he did, but I never heard of any repercussions. Now, how long did you stay at Valley for? From 75 to 85, 10 years. In what major decided to get out of Valley in 1985? Well, the prior of ours had come to me and asked me about starting up with Timville department at this class. There were certain reasons why I was tempted. So, we set up a group, set up a slip of the loop. And of course, the Timville company, which at that time was for you, Scott Lee and Valley. They had their own design department, so they worked to, it tempted to boil sweat. And we were tempted to go to company in Europe to design games where they want to get into design. But our price and what they want to pay, it won't go. And what was the name of this company? Oh, okay. Okay. So, how did you feel about the video games? Because when you were at Valley, you had a lot of competition with video games at the time in the early 80s. How did you feel about that? The Timville industry was going a little bit too far, a little bit over producing, over kind of stuff. The games that were put in everything in both the kitchen and things. And my thought was that they were forcing them to end up the market. And I think they actually did. The video games were taking hold pretty well. And what about the Chimville games? Apparently we tried putting 50 cents of playing. But that was the working tool. And we were putting so much in into the games that did almost... We were going to pay a split for the Timvigames for the video games that they played. So, personally, I think they pushed themselves out of the market by putting too much junk in the Timvigames. So, at the time you're saying that video games sold brand new for more money than pinball machines? What we came over with Timville machines with ramps all over the place, built some special features. That's the point. What we used to do is we had to keep so many realies that go over so much. To keep the price down. But eventually they ran the ramps with the price going sky high of the Timvigames. And you could make good people wouldn't take that much surprising games. Was there any particular game in your history at Williams or Valley that you were associated with that you were really, really proud of? Like, you know, the pinnacle as far as your concern of your pinball work? Well, April was one of them. The Valley or Williams, April? Well, at Williams, at Valley, April the last did very well. It was a game for the year, a couple of years ago. April was one of them. A go-go was one of them. It did very, very well in Europe as well as in the States. And that's when I built the game with the experience in the play-gun. That did very well. Off-road was a good game. Well, undergain. Was there anybody at either of the two companies that you especially like to work with in regards to design or any aspect of pinball? Normally, at Williams where I was designing, either Steve or I, we never went to other people. And that's to help us with ideas and design. We design the game. We have people in the office coming up to play. Take notice of their family. How specific we have how the games came to be. Was there any particular feature that you really liked in the game? Like, a lot of your games had a really tight nest, especially your Williams games. Well, basically, a lot of your Williams games had a really tight nest of like five pop bumpers. Where the ball would get in there and I mean it would just kick all around all over the place. That was kind of a norm Clark signature feature. Was there anything else that you really liked to put in your games? Well, one of the features that I used about several games was putting the pop bumpers down at the fifth. The ball went and worked around this before easy go back on the point here, or go up. Which works out. Right. Also, are there features that I used that were where the temperature was a chunk up to the top of the point. Through an hour. Yeah, like fantastic. The Williams fantastic. I think that would have came out in 1972. That one had that pop bumper down by the flippers and it would sometimes it would get in there and it would just really, really kick around. Right. That was something like that. It would go down and actually go around from back and forth and go back to the place. That was a lot of time. That was over. Tell me about Doodlebog, the 1971 Williams game Doodlebog. That had to go back and forth on the playfield. That feature was used by Harry Wilson. That was Harry Williams idea. In that game it worked out well. It was kind of a cool feature. It was a little area. It was like a elongated slot in the playfield with a plastic window. And the ball would move back and forth between two magnet poles. The ball would only travel to two and a half inches. But it was very. Yeah. Sorry about that. Yeah. It was really neat in that it. It was very. Almost like a second hand on a clock going back and forth almost. That was a Harry Williams feature that I. I was really happy to see that. I know the game of yours that was really well accepted. What we talked a little bit about was the Spanish eyes. The really kind of cool artwork on that game. Were you pretty proud of that game? I think the artwork was helpful. It was a very good game. The artwork was well accepted. Now another pair of games that was real popular was Swinger and Funfest. And it had kind of a score reel in the back glass that would give you kind of like a bonus score. That was kind of a unique feature. Where did that idea come from? I would go blind. I don't think anybody ever did it. I thought it was kind of a neat feature. Was that just something you just came up with one day? Well, whether I was just as home-taker, whatever, some of these ideas just come to you. But just out there, I was in corporate in the game. But like the others, games like the Roulette Wheel, I thought that idea was toy store. You mean the Roulette Wheel like that was used in Fantastic? That's all with the play-pull. I don't remember if it was used in Fantastic or not. But I used to know several games. It's a matter of fact. I had mentioned we never tried to copy anything from a very manufacture. But that's the first one. So like that, take part in the game. I don't remember the game. But they call for this. Yeah, Fantastic used. It had that pop-up between the flippers and it also had that rule at wheel in the play field too, which was kind of cool. But the Roulette Wheel, I think, came to me in a toy store. And was that an expensive feature to implement? I took a water at every spot. It was a few bucks to flip. Like I say, then we were limited to price. So were you constantly trying to push the dollar envelope to get more things in your games that came under the cost envelope that you guys needed to hit? So we were basically aware of what we could do or how many we really could do. It cost sometimes when we run over but the feature was worth it. So if we ran over by a dollar to the technical of the feature. Overall, did you really like working in the pinball industry? I mean, was it a fun job? Oh, yes. I got the electronic industry into the pinball industry and stayed there. I was fact-infatuated with the pinball industry after I got in and I enjoyed working there. Were you a very good pinball player? To tell you the truth before I went to Williams and got the job there, I never played a pinball. After you started designing, did you get pretty good? Well, I had to get fairly good because after I put the game together, I played pinball all great. To more growth of the books and the time that takes the play and everything. Basically, after I designed the game and put it together, at that time I did and steamed and everything. We didn't have somebody put the wires together to put the whole thing together, put the relay and everything in the wire to all games. We designed the cable that you put together. It was all done by us. Not like the way it was designed the game and it turned it over to somebody else to put together. We did it all by ourselves. Besides designing games, I used to go on the road teaching school. Did you have any particular theme that you like to have your games, like a sports theme or a music theme or a current events theme or anything like that? It was all up to us. I had already seen the games and the books and themes. Everything we wanted, as long as the game was a half-way dish, a good game. Do you have any pinball games today or did you not keep any of these games when you designed them? I never owned a pinball game at home. I was born to my daughter in son of a, actually Rob's game with the music he gave to him. That's when he gave my every hand. I never kept the game. I started with the book. That's pretty funny. At the end of the day you had enough of pinball, huh? I was in a lot of places, but not to take home, not to play. I played them at home at work. This is the build. I used to play play some, but I was a kid at work all the weekend and played play the games. Is there any particular stories or anything that I might have left out or need to ask you? Anything you remember that was a good story or something that you'd like to add? I can say Steve Cordick and I worked together for years, time for his side. We got along fine and we are doing good work today. I enjoyed most of the people. I worked with Cordick for when you were going to plant this. There's always one or two that came out in the earth, but over the 30-some years I worked in the industry. I enjoyed people including the boss. I can say Sam Stern was a great guy and even with the belly of Bill Dahlens was a terrific guy. I enjoyed all of them. Thank you very much. I really appreciate you having some time and let me talk to you about this stuff. I don't want to. I enjoy talking to you. All right, well hey, thank you very much, Norman. You take care. You too. Okay. Bye, son. All right, I'd like to thank Noan Clark for joining us here on Topcast. We really, really do appreciate his time. I hope you can join us again for another episode of Topcast.