Thanks for watching! I see many members of the pinball media here ready to record all the historic information that we're going to cover today. We've talked before with Roger Sharp and with a focused conversation, we got a lot of valuable historic information. and it did come to my attention somewhere in the past few years that there was a scenario that Roger Sharp was involved in for the Williams pinball business, or we will explore exactly what that means, but some kind of business entity to be taken out of Williams intact. now for the history of what actually happened you have the documentary film by Greg Miletic Tilt the Battle to Save Pinball and then there's coverage in RGP and Pinside of what happened with Gene Cunningham and Wayne Gilead from Australia trying to take parts of the business but not the whole thing and how they stumbled along. But we're going to look at another version of history where the business stayed intact. Roger, can you give us the general overview of what your plan was? Sure. Let me first say how disappointed I am that I'm not there in person. I'm hoping maybe at some point in time in the future, if Dave and the rest of the folks would like to have me back. I would love to be back, but travel arrangements just fell apart. So, again, very disappointed, but many thanks to James and the rest of the folks who I guess have pulled together this ability to do a Zoom. the one point I want to make before really directly answering Dave's question is how remarkable it is that Dave has come up with this as a subject by surprise but leave it to him to really find something that's unique and because nobody's ever asked me the specifics as Dave has and in all honesty over the past what 23 years. It's as if I had ever contemplated or thought about what would have happened had I been successful in my ability to purchase Williams Valley. So hats off to Dave for letting me scratch my head and think back to some of the basics. But I guess the best way to approach it and start, and Dave, feel free if I'm missing anything. I'll have a whole bunch of questions, but you go for the overview and then we'll dive in. Well, the overview very simply was a couple of years earlier, people were not aware of it, and I know I've talked about it, I had reached out to some folks in the financial community and had a proposal together to purchase Premier Technology. Everything was moving forward. We got all the books and looked at them, and there were some things that just did not add up. So that kind of got, it's a cliche phrase, it kind of got the ball rolling in regard to that little faded attempt. And then, lo and behold, a couple of years later, WMS decided to close down Pinball. And I reached back to the same financial people, still thought it was viable to enter into the marketplace. this time with a much better established, well-entrenched company as compared to what the situation had been with Premier, and put together at least a preliminary financial proposal, reached out to Scott Schweinfurth, Schweinworth, Schweinfurth, I think, the CFO to ask for what's the sale price? What are you selling? Because I had heard some rumors that there were some other folks that were interested and considering. I think it expressed some interest to maybe come in and pick up some of the assets that did exist. And unfortunately, Scott never really responded favorably. He said there was no interest in selling that part of the company at all. What I found out subsequently after a couple of other attempts was that the, and again, this is from memory and from what I've been told. So let me just preface everything as to whether or not what I am expressing to you is actually the real and true story. But what was relayed to me was that the company saw greater value in bankrupting and shutting down FIM than it did in selling it. They could do better as a tax write-off to do so. And understand a few years earlier, the company had split out electronics from Midway as two separate stock entities. So again, we were kind of left without an opportunity to do anything until subsequently, I think it was about a year and a half, two years later, the decision was made, determination was made. And I think because of some legal pressure and some other folks who stepped in saying that they were wrong in their assumption, and by then it was already too late to do anything when Gene and Wayne stepped in and put in their offers and ultimately purchased whatever assets that they were allowed to purchase. So that's like the top line about all of it. Let me, since David Fix is in the room, I'm going to ask him a simple yes or no question. David Fix, were you aware of, other than Gary Stern, there was another corporation that would have wanted to buy the pinball division if the price were right? You mean WMS? Yeah. Yes. Okay. He says yes. Okay. Who was that? Was it a company or was it an individual or a group? feel like you could disclose that? Or if you don't, that's fine. It's 23 years. It was Ralph Coppola. Ralph Coppola of ICE in Buffalo, New York. Oh, that's right. You know, thank you, David and Dave. OK. I had remembered that Ralph had expressed interest in pinball. He wants to elaborate. Let's hear what else. One more thing I want to point out, that Ralph did fly in to buy the Williams asset, but he also bought, flew in, and talked with Gary Stern about buying Sega before Gary got on board. Okay, so another alternate history. Yeah, he was going to do his double company and go totally into that. Oh, wow. Okay, so possible future seminar once enough of the guilty parties have died off that we can talk about them without conflicting stories. And also later this afternoon when Jim Patla comes in, I think we might explore yet some other ramifications. So let's get back to one timing question here. So you're saying that particularly the Wayne Gilliard deal, because he had some rights to manufacture, that was 2001-ish? Yes. Okay. If I remember correctly, he had the ability to manufacture Bally pinball machines as a name only. Right, so he had that Bally brand name, or with an approval by Bally of each and every game, I guess, same as they do. Correct. Yeah. If I were a finance guy looking to back something like this and knowing what I do about the game industry, the first question I would ask you is, who's your sales manager? Because I want to know how you're planning to get revenue for this venture. And did you have someone lined up to be the sales manager? Well, look, obviously, Joe Dillon was still around on staff. Oh, yeah. Looking at this alternate history, it gives me pause to think back to Philip K. Dick, science fiction writer who created an alternate universe with the man in the high castle. So I kind of think about that in the same context. But look, as a blanket overview, and we can get into the specifics, I would have hoped to keep the entire staff intact. All the salespeople, whether it was Leslie Ross and Bob Lentz, I believe, and maybe Dave Fix remembers differently, I believe that Steve Blatspieler is still alive. I believe that Joe Dillon was still alive. They had not passed away. If neither or either were gone, I truthfully would have reached into the coin-operated music game industry veterans. I probably would have reached first to Kenny Anderson. Right. I was just going to bring up that name. Well, I worked with a game plan, and I knew that Ken from Chicago Point, he recently passed away last year at the great age of 85. So I think that 20-some-odd years ago, he was still somewhat fit and vigored and whatever. I would have kept Marty Glazeman, who ultimately moved on. So to answer your question, I really looked at it from the standpoint of wanting to keep everything intact. That included the building and the assets. For those who don't remember, 3401 North California Avenue. The company had purchased an area on the south side of Roscoe. Roscoe was a crossing street along with California Avenue, where Georgia Nuts used to be and across the street. had been Diane's Tome and Palace, as we affectionately called it, which switched over to being a hot dog place with gourmet hot dogs. But the company had purchased that entire block and had opened it up, renovated it for all of video game development. Behind the main building, the factory, was a smaller building, which is where WMS Gaming first started. The plan in place, Ken Fidesna had acted as the, I guess, the overall architect and planner for the facility up in Gurnee, which became the factory to manufacture slot machines. But the plan ultimately was in place with the purchase of the back lot, which became what some of us called the glass tower, which is where everything relocated. So the plan would have been, and I'll share with you, it was a $7.5 million opening bid to purchase everything. Would have been for the building. Would have been, again, to keep everybody intact and go from there. Okay, I guess first I want to mention Joe Dillon. When I was operating, he was my sales guy at Seabird North Atlantic distributing in Randolph, Massachusetts. So I knew him way back. Now, he does have a little memorial embedded in Star Wars Episode I, I guess, in the attract mode. Yes. Oh, RFM. Okay. So he died in 1999, I guess. Right. it would have been around the same time so obviously thank you for getting me to remember back timeline wise so Marty I believe I would have stepped up and had him been the number one mark strews had come in at the time mark eventually wound up working with Eugene Jarvis and Andy Eloff at Raw Thrills had up their sales. As I said before, Ken Anderson, probably someone such as Paul Jacobs and others I would have looked at. Again, I'd been around the industry, admittedly, going back a prior 25 years or so. It wasn't as if there weren't a number of people that I had not worked with or been a part of back then. so I'm hopeful that they would have supported my efforts and filled in any of the holes for sales people I just remembered Mark Chan was West Coast so we had a fairly healthy group of sales people Rachel Davies oh yeah I remember her you have multiple games on location it is a good idea to have a spare play field back at the shop These names are just coming back to me. But I think we had about five or six people on board that were overseeing pinball and video, obviously. So I would have looked at those people as well as some of the key people at the distributor level to see if they would want to step up. because my plan was a fairly extensive plan as I laid it out with, and I'll share it, it was Banco Paribas, P-A-R-I-B-A-S. Basically, they were a company that backed motion pictures, Patriot Films, and others. I knew some of the key executives there who were on board to, I guess, support whatever my dream was going forward. In 1999, Pinball Expo, our factory tour was the Gurney factory. They were making the pinballs up there. Yes. So it seems like there would have been some transition time. and I'm a little curious about would you be raiding the WMS, the company that was living on for gaming, would you be raiding some of their factory people for the production? Not necessarily. I think much of that was established because of the technology with the monitors and all for Pinball 2000. You know, we still have an active factory somewhat for 3401. So I would have looked at those folks. God, I think Russell Landsberger comes to mind and others who were overseeing production materials. Jim Weinrock. Again, I would have gone back to the core people who had the experience, familiarity with all that had transpired the years prior and would have looked at them to either staff. You know, admittedly, there were a number of folks that we wound up losing on the manufacturing side who were local to 3401 North California Avenue and not local to Gurnee. They weren't able to commute, so we wound up losing a lot of people. if one remembers I don't think it was around the time of any of the expos there were a couple of large inflatable rats that had been put on display outside the building at the worst times who were striking and asking for better wages, conditions better pest control I'm sorry? better pest control yeah well that too but I'm just saying it wasn't as if we had a workforce that was totally dedicated to the company although admittedly the tenure of people the multiple generations working in manufacturing was remarkable I think that the average was of employment was over 20 years and that is something that you really don't find in most manufacturing companies. Sounding like they might want to stick with it then. Well, and I would have wanted them to stick with it, and again, with better conditions, to ensure that everybody was on board. Well, maybe it's time to turn to the fun stuff. First of all, was this company, in your mind, going to get as broad rights of game types as it could from Williams? Like, for example, would you want, in addition to pinball, to get whatever rights or non-compete that Williams WMS would not get into mechanical redemption pieces or some other type of game that you might need to make between pinball runs? no I mean I think that look on balance I knew that the company was geared up for slot machines that they weren't really looking at doing anything in quotes mechanically at all video as well and bringing in some of the new people after the acquisition of Atari so the focus really had been on pinball only if we had spun out any type of ancillary business. Sure, probably novelty redemption would have been something that would have been considered, but the primary focus or the purchase or potential purchase or the offer or the potential offer, unfortunately, that never really came to pass was truly just for the pinball business itself. Okay, but then again, on the optimistic side, it sounds like WMS would not have put great value on a non-compete for mechanical novelty redemption. So they say, yeah, we agree we won't do that. Yeah, and in fact, and I don't remember exactly, and maybe you guys have access to it or whatever. I think that they valued the shutting down of the company as a $3 or $4 million paper loss. They propped up the stock with. So I was coming in, admittedly, at a much higher valuation based on what we saw as being the market opportunity. And it funny in retrospect now over two decades later million is like a drop in the bucket You know where pinball profits are today are you know million is like a drop in the bucket Where pinball profits are today million is a loss Back then, just the bill of materials and the profit margins were much tighter and lower than they've become. Well, a good benchmark for that was the Medieval Madness remake, which when it was announced at a pinball expo that the remake was coming and they took those first orders for the limited edition. And in that one weekend, the gross bookings were like $10 million just for that one title from a company that had not proven itself to have manufacturing capabilities. Yeah. You know, Bay Area amusement. So they knew their parts, but manufacturing a pinball. Now, we will get to some audience questions a little later on. I want to build the general outlines of what this plan would be like. Well, I also felt it was important to, and thank you for filling in that gap, Dave. I wanted to just point out that back then, $7 million was $7 million. so you know I don't want anybody thinking well there was no way in hell that anything could have happened because they didn't offer enough you know the the the offer as I mentioned before for Premier was sitting at about four million but the losses that Premier had and what the valuation was was probably under a million and a half okay so another instance where they did not take the better compensation of selling the business and went for the tax loss. Yes. Well, continuing on the fun topic of what the products would be, can you tell us roughly when in 1999 you were making that offer? Or was it before the Black Monday or after? It was after. After. I got caught by surprise. I know that George Gomez had his talk at Expo. And then Monday came. You know, look, there was a sense of things. Neil Nicastro's impatience. The volatility of the stock. what was taking place with Williams Electronics, specifically home entertainment, and what John Rowe and Byron Cook were dealing with out of Corsicana, Texas, for the home product. The fact that we were getting our heads handed to us because we didn't really know how to be successful on what the investment was necessarily to be a company creating a consumer product at the retail level. That's a whole other story and has nothing to do with pinball necessarily. So I think that everything was somewhat fractured, if you will, by Neil and the rest of the board of directors, including his father. Louis Louis who had really kind of started it all but really the focus and the intent was to try to tap into gaming that was going to be the next great groundswell that's where they could really kind of blow out product and make a great return on investment specifically because you have shared revenue in gaming so you're not limited to a single price that you're getting on the sale of a particular product. The margins for the home cartridges and what have you were good but not as voluminous as they were with the aspect of where gaming was. So I want to say that when things came about and realized, all right, they're shutting it down, and I stayed. I mean, I was with the company for a period of time thereafter, full time until the summer of 2000. So I want to say absolutely sometime in the first or the second quarter of 2000 would have been when I would have started my outreach to my financial people to say, here, here's another play. this one's even better giving them an outline as to the history of the company how it was positioned what had been taking place in terms of volume of of product that had been manufactured and i know i've been off base my sons have pointed it out in regard to what i have basically stated in the past for the production numbers of episode one although it kind of aligns but i'm sure that jim Patla later on can get into more specifics that are much more focused and definitive than what my comments have been. But I saw a huge opportunity. I also saw a lot of missed opportunities that, unfortunately, not only Williams, but the rest of the industry weren't taking advantage of, where I thought that there could be a great upsurge. so one one detail that i haven't remembered and i've been trying to they announced on that monday right after the pinball expo in 1999 and i know they cut short what they could have sold for episode one but But how long did they run through the orders that they were taking? How much longer did production go after that announcement? I think we ran up until the end of the year, based on whatever the build rate was at that point in time. And admittedly, I think we were probably down to maybe, I think we might have been at about 100 games a week or so. Oh, okay. So we were way down from where we have been. Yeah, but still, from late October to the end of the year, that's still quite a few. Yeah, no, it would have been a couple thousand games. I have to believe. Now, in the documentary by Greg Miletic, at a couple points, I forget whether it's in the main film or the extras, but somewhere in there, Jim Patla and someone else at different times mentioned that the third game, Wizard Blocks, was not going to be ready in time for the end of production of Episode 1, even if Episode 1 had been allowed to run its course, its normal course of sales. So there was already a question there. And you're scrambling to see what you can do to try to purchase the company. What was your thought about getting Wizard Blocks ready? Like, is this a good thing that production was going to be off for a few months and Wizard Blocks would have time to get finished? Or what did you think? well I think part of the problem and maybe this has already been aired and revealed by folks and maybe Pat has addressed it as well the resources that Pat had were cut back there was no sense of urgency obviously this was not an overnight decision by Neil and Lou and everyone else they knew that it was coming they were timing it around a particular fiscal quarter end of the year to prop things up for the stock. So, you know, Pat did not have the full complement of folks working with him on Wizard Blocks. I remember playing the game and there were great developments and improvements ongoing. And I think that however Greg and his film or anybody else might have thought, I truly believe that the game would have been ready in time for AGE in London in January, in some form. So I don't think that it would have been a matter of months of not having product. I think that it would have been an opportunity to really, or EAG, sorry about that, the game show convention in the UK. And in fact the show which a year earlier had been the first showing of Pinball 2000. Yep, absolutely. So that would have been the plan all along, would have been to do another gala, if you will, comparable to what we wound up doing with Revenge from Mars but I think we would have been in decent shape and I know that Matt and Tom were working furiously on what was going to be Playboy specific to Hans Rosenzweig's request for a more adult theme Hans was at Nova Operati who was our largest distributor in the world supporting pinball in Germany and elsewhere so I think that we would have been in reasonable shape to kind of get us to mid-year of 2000? And you would have retained all the development teams? Okay, so that's the good question, Dave. That's the one that I have pondered when you hit me from the blind side on kind of revisiting history. my hope would have been that everybody would have wanted to stay. Sure and simple. I don't know if they would have. I know that Steve Ritchie, and I know that Steve is going to be a fantastic this weekend. He is, yes. I don't know if I can address this or not, but I know that Steve's heart was in doing video and moved back to California had come up with California Speed and was working on some other projects I don't know if he still had a desire to do pinball but God I would love to have had him stay and work on pinball I would have wanted Larry DeMar to stay Pat obviously Dennis the whole group and hopefully would have created a work environment that would have allowed them to feel number one more a part of the business talking about profit sharing and some other things that I had rolled out in my plan with the investors that included and I'll go back just to touch upon it that included all the factory workers not necessarily have it be an owned company but understand that buying into a company that had been publicly traded, suddenly you're in a company and that kind of changes the dynamics of what you can or cannot do legally. But I would have looked at, you know, healthcare plans, 401ks and all the rest of it in a totally different light to really treat whoever stayed as family, much more so. something comparable to what Mike Stroll created 20 years earlier when he became president at Williams and created an environment that really encouraged people to feel as if they were a part of something bigger than themselves. So yeah, my plan would have been to meet with everybody and say, here, this is what the ground rules are going to be. Yes, I am heading up the company. I knew that I was going to be, in quotes, the president, that we were well-funded, and that I had a vision of where I wanted to go. I mean, I will touch upon the fact that, and maybe this is sacrosanct, I don't believe that all of the games going forward needed to be Pinball 2000. That was a question I had, of course. I saw the opportunity as doing a dual line and not necessarily saying alright pinball 2000 will only be Bally and conventional pinball will be Williams probably would have gone a little bit back and forth but I saw there being a unique opportunity comparable to the arguments that I had with Mike Stroll that directly impacted me personally with the success of Black Knight and the need for Barry Osler, may he rest in peace, to jump in with Jungle Lord and take the place of what was Barracora and pushing Barracora back by two years because Mike believed that everything had to be a double level, which I admittedly did not believe that there was a single solution for pinball. And I still believe that today. I don't think that there is a single solution, although we've gone so far past where things were again over 20 years ago. But yes, my idea, if you will, would have been to embrace a couple of different approaches to the continued evolution of pinball back then. So you would have, you think, two titles a year as a steady pace? God no we weren't at two back then well we ultimately were when everything kind of fell apart let's face it Cactus Canyon got shorted so did Medieval Madness in terms of production and where the demand was no I mean I think that look my attitude on licensing had always been maybe four a year spring, summer fall, winter so if that were to be the case and I would not suggest right now nor back then that everything needed to be a license I didn't believe it then I have been brought around to understanding and believing it now much more so just given the dynamics of a marketplace that has significantly changed from where it had been. But I want to say that there was enough design teams and enough people working where I think that easily we could have gone with probably four to six games per year. I think the indisputable fact where other than Harley Davidson, which I pushed on, as well as what Larry and Pat did with Adam's Family Gold, the company never went back in to do shorter runs, if you will, for any of the pinball titles. I would have taken an approach that would have been diametrically opposed to that and what has now become the standard for all of the companies in the business, which is I would have gone back to distribution and would have said, look, who's willing to step up? The only reason we did 1,000 for Adams Family Gold was when the question was asked, that's how many orders people were willing to commit to. Not financially, just saying, if you build it, yes, we'll take 50, we'll take 40, we'll take 23. Whatever the numbers were, when all of those were tabulated, it came out to, I think it's like about 996 or whatever, and the company decided to build the full thousand and not go any further. I will say, and maybe Pat, Larry, or anybody else remembers it differently, maybe even Jim, I will say that about two-thirds of the way through, there was an opportunity to sell even more, but Neil decided, no, screw it. We don't need the extra couple of hundred or whatever the numbers might be. We need to move on from it. So I think to recognize that the marketplace had absolutely an influence and an impact on the decisions that you make as a manufacturer. And unfortunately, under the leadership that existed, the marketplace was secondary in terms of what the company wanted to do based on financials, financial quarters and whatever else. so it wasn't ideal but again as a publicly held company you have certain standards that you have to abide by in terms of the volatility of your stock price so I don't know if that totally answers the question well but you did bring up some some very interesting angles there in particular one of the things you could even tell your backers is you knew about more demand for Medieval Madness and Cactus Canyon. So there were a couple things fully designed that you could do a rerun on as a filler, you know, if needed, and maybe even just as an out-and-out campaign. And it wasn't very long after that that Gary Stern, having the luxury of operating as the only manufacturer in pinball was able to really cash in on that idea first with their harley davidson and then uh south park and uh you know in throughout the aughts they just got more and more of a sense that hey we can we can capture the upside we can do those reruns if yes there's more demand. So how do you... I've often thought, you know, look, people have said that I'm the man who saved pinball. I've actually thought of it in the context of, I might have saved pinball, but the one who kept it alive was Gary. So between the two of us, we have a shared place in history. Yeah, and there's proof now, and Gary Stern was was the one who recognized it. And if you look at any of the manufacturers, now that competition is back, it's still the case that American and Chicago Gaming and Stern Pinball and Jersey Jack sell back catalog titles and are willing to do reruns. And that was like an old jinx, or at least a perception that, oh we can't do a rerun at the time that our competition has a new title because new is so important and that's totally been proven wrong now so from well 20 truthfully yeah and if back then look the marketplace was totally different about 95 commercial five percent uh home you could get away with going back in and doing reruns a couple of hundred machines here or there or whatever else wasn't going to hurt the apple cart depending on the markets that you were penetrating and supporting you know you wind up doing what a trilogy of Pinbot right and Bride of Pinbot you wind up doing Cyclone and Hurricane and Comet But, you know, all of those, you know, not suggesting that they could have stayed as cyclones, if you will, or Pimbod and Jackbod and Bride under one banner, one name. But, you know, the concept was there to do so. Yeah. Even further back. And do some limited numbers. You know, and I think that that was the missed opportunity that all the companies felt back then. And even back in the day when it was the original Stern you just did not go back in and do anything that was going to be in quotes a remake a rehash of something that was older even if it had you know yeah so you had to do similar games and a good example i think from my operating days uh gottlieb did soccer and super soccer and then uh like a year later its top score in 300, very similar gameplay. Or in the case of Gottlieb, specifically, single-player, two-player, and four-player electromechanicals. Yep. Let's talk specifically about that home market then. So if we can project back to 1999, yes, there were some outliers, and some of them were pretty visible, so to speak, on rgprec.games.pinball. I bought a new in-box game. But they were going to the classic operator-centric distributors and going through that column in the chart of the operator, and they're coming in as an individual buyer buying for their home, trying to convince like a Betson, And don't worry, I'm just buying this. You know, it's money for you. And some people were managing to do that. But it was so rare that they were bragging about it. But it wasn't too long before that started to become more prominent as a thing. And, of course, just growing to where we are now. but if you can project back to your state of mind at the time of this possible buy of the Williams pinball assets what did you think you could grow the home market to like market share percent one of the first things I did and it taught me an invaluable lesson one of the first games I worked on when I started the company in 1988 was Banzai Run and I remember working out a deal and now it's been done numerous times but worked out a deal with Hamacher Schlemmer oh yeah that I run in their catalog in their stores for I think it's going to sound so strange I think for the unheard price of like $7,500 you could get a Banzai Run. And I remember Ira Bettelman being one of the most vocal distributors that we had out of C.A. Robinson in California just coming down on Marty and Joe Dillon. What's Roger doing? You know, oh my God, he's selling games. He's taking market away from us. And it's like, if you guys think that you can sell a Banzai Run for $7,000, I mean, it's double. come on it's going to be fine you're not going to lose any market i think we wound up selling maybe a half a dozen games and and and i had to come up with some things to justify what i wanted to do which was so outside the box for the industry look you know my background wasn't a traditional coin op background as i think everybody knows i came in from a totally different world with a totally different mindset and a totally different approach to everything that I touched. And that was from all the marketing that I was doing, whether it was licensing, whether it was public relations, whether it was all of it down the line. And the thing that I realized with Hamacher Schlemmer and one of the problems, to answer your question, Dave, because we weren't really set up at that point in time was I needed to know that, number one, on the front end, I had a sales network that could work directly at retail. Whether it was, and understand, over 20 some odd years ago, you had any number of brick and mortar stores out there that don't exist anymore. so it wasn't as if I was at a loss of available outlets potentially one of the key ingredients was the cost admittedly there needed to be margins those margins made by $7,500 for Banzai Run we knew that at retail we needed to be under $2,000 and that wasn't possible even what the bill of materials were so even if I go into a Brookstone or a Hamacher Schlummer or others of that ilk the problem is that I'm dealing in a very finite market the old joke was that I used to hear the only difference between men and boys is the price of their toys well that's great and for people back then the expenditure for a pinball machine wasn't viable for a used game because most distributors would run ads the fourth quarter of every year around the holidays trying to get rid of old equipment. Yeah, I mean, you could sell games for $1,000. Yeah, to empty out the bottom so they'd buy more new ones. Exactly. But I think the problem was I did not give any thought to what now has become Stearns the pin. I did not give any thought at all to what Tiger Electronics did way back when with Roger Schiffman when they created a home pin. I did work with Harry Williams way back when, when Brunswick was making a big push for a home pinball. Mattel had come up with a game called Las Vegas that never went into full production. There were a number of companies that were looking at opportunities following what Valley had done with their home game versions. So I think that for full-size pinball, I wasn't looking at that as being a primary market. My focus was on other areas, in all honesty. And more importantly, supporting more activities, more interactivity, more investment on the local operator level. And I say that with, I'll use one example, Diversions was a test location in the north side of Chicago. Python Anghelo, Bill Futzer-Ruder, Barry Osler all appeared for a designer team autograph signing when we introduced Jokers. I knew the operator there. In fact, it was the first place where I staged a Papa tournament when I moved back to Chicago. And it became a way for me to do thank you people came, which was nice. Not an overflowing crowd by any stretch of imagination. But I had come up with a questionnaire that I asked if they wouldn't mind just answering some questions and get some feedback. I wanted to do more touch points like that, which is why I was so heavily involved in all of the leagues that wound up emerging. Galaxy Games, the place in Streamwood, Gala Bowl. There was about five or six. We had one where we unveiled the first Revenge from Mars that was near where I lived in Arlington Heights. just for fun. So I wanted to do more of that. And obviously, for people who know me, the core person that I saw heading all of that up was going to be Steve Epstein. Oh, yeah. He's come on board to work with Gary on a basis of trying to work with local operators. And they never really... of what Steve was trying to do with the TAPS system, to support it when it was introduced. I saw Steve's role to be comparable to what he and I did by hand, individually, to help give birth to Papa. Well, maybe we should take a minute then to ask about the distribution then. You would be acquiring a company with its distribution deals, with the coin-op-centric, operator-centric distributors. And one of the most notorious things in the competitive viewpoint is that if they distributed the WMS product, they could not also distribute Sega Pinball slash Stern Pinball. Right. So you would have continued that. You would have had the same distributors with that same kind of an exclusivity deal. Absolutely. And did you have any concerns about those distributors not wanting you to do direct interface with the operators or even the locations? Of course. They came down on me hard when I first started with the company and helped create not only a distributor group, words fail me from time to time, but key distributors would come in and we would talk to them. I did the same for operators. they were concerned that a lot of the outreach that I was doing through some of my media was detracting from them losing control that we were suddenly somehow going to be selling direct something that Allied Leisure had done that destroyed them after they went direct Arnold Kamenkow thought that he could do so after the success of Track and Field and he wound up cutting off all of his distributors. Now, I valued the distributors. I knew that they were going to be integral. But I also knew that there needed to be ways to reach operators. And one of the things that I wound up doing was I opened up the door for the entire industry, not just Williams at the time, to participate at the nightclub and bar show. Oh, right. Bowl Expo, which is taking place now and beginning of the week. Pizza show. There were about eight to ten different allied industries that had trade shows that the industry itself, coin-op industry, never took advantage of. And I felt that these are places that have games. If you guys don't want to do it, Williams is going to do it. If I could get, you know, Joe and Marty at the time, Steve and Neil and Kenny to agree to the investment. But instead it wound up becoming an AMOA or AMA event. So Manufacturers Association would kind of agree among themselves to represent the whole industry. If it was Konami as the video game company for one show, then it was Atari for the next. If it was Williams for one show, yes, it was Bally for the next because we would separate out. But then it could be Stern. It could be Premiere. You know, whatever it would be, it would be rotating, working, God, back then with Bob Fay. Yeah. working with the folks just to expose us you know to have somebody there present to answer questions and i remember one nightclub and bar just as an example and bear with me and if this is boring to people then just stop me at any time but i think the audience is really absorbing all this great historical information okay good thank you i know how long winded i am my sons have pointed it out to me so i tend to flinch a little bit but uh it was a nightclub and bar show uh there was a fellow there who had uh asked me a question i i actually flew out for that one and was manning the booth along with a couple other people and he had asked specifically about a jukebox and whether or not he could buy the jukebox directly and it was like i don't know here go talk to whoever it would have been go talk to joe over there i don't know what his Ryan Policky might be because again these are people and i'll share the story which was emblematic so some fellow comes over he has a location god only knows where we had hurricane on uh on display so it gives you the time frame as to where we were at and uh i was standing by the game and he came over he saw my badge and it was like Yes, AMO or whatever it was, Ann Williams. And he's like, oh, I have your new game that we just got in. We got the Cyclone, which is just fantastic. We love it. And I tried to break the news to him that that was not the new game. That was the game from 1987. Hurricane is actually the new game. Oh, so how do I get this? And we had a long conversation in terms of the operator that he was working with and the fact that the operator was making all the decisions and whatever else. And I think that, you know, all I said was, you know, if there is a way to work with him, it's on his. It's his best interest to provide you with the best possible games so that the revenue being generated is a good one. and I immediately went into a totally different direction, which probably is one of my defining points in my career. So explain to me what kind of location you have. And I don't remember the specifics, but my thing admittedly was. So let me ask you a question. What are you doing promotional? Are you running any tournaments? Are you doing any leagues? You know, forgetting about darts or anything else that you may or may not. What are you doing to promote your business? If Tuesday nights are slow, are you putting your games on half price? Are you offering a free slice of pizza if somebody gets a certain score? What are you doing to help build up your coin-operated coins going in and build up more player loyalty? So immediately, I'm not looking at trying to sell direct to the location. I'm not looking at wanting to disrupt the relationship between the operator and the location owner. What I am attempting to do is to get that location owner to understand that he's in the retail business. I don't care what it is. It could be a bar, a bowling alley, whatever, a game room. it's a retail business you are opening up your door and people are coming in to buy what it is that you have on display whatever it is that you are selling so that was my approach when it came to dealing with distributors who thought i was trying to do something that was going to be and i think to further put an exclamation point on it because my role with the ifpa which came about because operators in Wisconsin, primarily Wisconsin but also in the Midwest, wanted to hold on to their locations. They had dart leagues and everything else. They knew what Steve Epstein and I had already created with Papa, which was starting to grow and really take hold, and decided to start the, there was the international pinball association and i said nope it can't be because internationally in some places uh flipper is the defining part so it became the ifpa each of the companies put in twenty thousand dollars we put in 40 obviously for williams and bally to help fund it and league started, which grew into the very first tournaments for the IFPA. First one held at O'Hare Airport at the Hilton. The second one up in Milwaukee at the airport. So, again, that was the premise of how I wanted to hopefully approach operators and location owners and distributors to work more in concert. and to develop an audience. So again, if that totally answers the question or went off the rails, Dave, you can tell me. The answer is a good portion of it. I think also we discovered during the aughts, and I at least had a hint in 1998-99, but during the aughts it became pretty clear that even the players brought together through online forums could be a resource to be harnessed so that you could have the players take the lead. You know, if that location you talked to at the nightclub and bar expo told you that they had a slow Tuesday night but had no idea about leagues, there would be some way to post something out on rec.games.pinball to say, here's a location that needs help with the league for Tuesday nights. Can the players in this city go make a little committee to do something there? So let me jump in for a minute. Sure. As what you've just said is really important. so my son Josh who people may know he was at the University of Illinois as a freshman and had already been around with Steve and myself and Papa Leagues along with his brother Zach and so on wanted to start a pinball league and we went to the University of Illinois we went to some of the main on campus bars. I think it was like the Illini Inn or something was one. They had about four games. I remember going in with Josh to ask the manager, the owner, if he would be okay if they ran a pinball league. You tell us whatever night is a slow night. No, no, no, we don't want... Well, no, no, no, they'll run it. Just wondering. They're going to come in. They're going to drink beer. They're going to buy food. They're going to come in for some period of time. Think of a bowling league. It's going to be something similar. Well, no, we just don't want the games to be tied up, and we don't want this. And it's like, wow, really? Okay. And we went to about four other places, and then finally we went to the student union. and the fellow who had the operations, there was a game room outside of the food court, and then there was like a lineup of about four or five games in absolutely horrendous state of operation in the bowling alley, and asked him if he would mind, now again, this is in a bowling alley, they're doing some leagues, would he mind, if they were to do a pinball league? And he said, no. And I said, you know, and they'll fix the games. You know, if you give them access to the keys or whatever else. And Josh can, I think, maybe has talked about it. Brian Woodard, who I guess is still the commissioner of IFPA after all these many years, still runs the league. The league has been ongoing for, what, the past 20 years since Josh has been away and out of school? The earnings went from, I don't know, maybe if he was lucky, he was getting about $5 or $10 per machine. It became a test location. Started bringing in close to $300 per week per machine. There was, you know, a league that was ongoing with trophies and all the rest of it. And it was just a question of showing somebody you know look early on everything that was done at the Broadway Arcade it was easy because Steve was there and I was there We needed to make sure that we could do a test A fellow by the name of Ron Colucci had a game room in Willowbrook, New Jersey. I want to say it was Willowbrook. New Jersey people are nodding that they know the place. He had bought a new place. it was a converted church he had opened up there was a mall over there or whatever else and then Pinebrook I guess it was Pinebrook New Jersey he had opened up his game room in the church with pinball machines in his big room video games and whatever else and I knew Ronnie and I went in along with Steve, Steve's living in New Jersey I'm still living I think I'm either in New York, I'm actually now in Connecticut, and asked Ron if we could start a pinball league. Huh? No, no, no, no, no, no. Steve and I will run it. We'd like to do it Sunday mornings, because that's a slow time for you. And I remember moving all of his pinball machines. They were all facing perpendicularly, I guess would be the best way to describe it. So on either wall, right and left, when you walked in and all you could see was kind of like the sides. I opened them all up. I fanned them out so you could kind of see what they looked like when he was in the back doing whatever he came up. What did you do? Oh, wow. That looks really nice. I said, well, you want people to be able to see the games. It's inviting them in. And he broke down. Steve would travel up from Watson, New Jersey, Sunday mornings. We put a sign up for people. I think we had like six or eight to start with just to see. And it was twofold. One, would they understand my scoring system? Ten, five, three, and one. Would they understand that? Would they understand the whole premise of what we were doing? And ultimately, we wound up bringing in bagels and bringing in donuts on a Sunday. and Steve and I would schlep in every Sunday. I want to say about three or four weeks in, Ron actually showed up because earnings were up on the pinballs. He wanted to see what was going on in his location since he was making more money now. And we wound up, I think it was, there was a couple of people who were like really, really into it and asked if they could bring in more people. And we said, sure. And it was like, you know what, you guys have the scoring sheets. Do you know how to, do you want to try to run this? And we let them do, I think Steve and I bit our lips for like a couple of weeks where we decided not to go. We probably went and played golf or something. But where we finally went back to see everything posted because we were getting the results somehow. I forget however it was done because computers back then were whatever. but I was posting standings and who was doing what or whatever so we would get like the raw scores and I would type everything out and put up the sheets when I got there and they took over the league and it was like okay let's try it at the Broadway arcade and see if one of the leagues whether it's a mixed league or whatever else if you can designate in quotes a captain who will take in the money or do whatever and whatever. And that's how it all started. So I think that the key, Dave, to your point, and not necessarily being totally immersed in rec doc games or any of the other stuff was to empower the players and doing it on the basis of can they bring in their own games? I did it as a test. Jesus, I just thought of this. even before college I did it as a test outside of Buffalo Grove High School when Josh was in high school there was a pizza place and went and talked to the guy and said hi are you willing to do any kind of promotions he had a pinball machine whatever it might have been I think it was around the time I was able to get him a taxi so again it gives you a time frame but he had a game that wasn't really earning anything or whatever you want to become a test location for us. And I said, give away a free piece of pizza. Jesus, you know, set up a high score. Give away a soda. Do something. I think you want to expand the business through an operator. I put him in touch with an operator where there was three pinball machines in the location. So I think that, you know, I believe very strongly in empowering people. And, look, IFPA has taken it to, you know, the next levels of what I would have done starting in 1999, 2000. There's country directors. There's regional and state directors. There's all of that. That was all part and parcel of what I dreamed of and what Steve shared that dream of with me. All right. So that's a pretty good idea of how you would take the new company. Did you have a name for this spinoff of Williams Pinball? No, I mean, I actually just thought of it as being Williams Electronics, but I'm sure that that would not have been possible. Yeah. I don't think that I have the same level of vanity to have it be Sharp Pinball. but would have come up with something that hopefully would have made some sense I want to ask one more thing about the new company versus another model that kind of emerged I would say what Jack Guarnieri was doing in the aughts was more like he would sell direct to people who had lots of money, particularly rock stars, and kind of do a radiate out from the celebrities, you know, this celebrity has pinball games at home, and this rich person has pinball games at home. And you seem to be thinking more of like the grassroots and staying with the coins going in the coin slot as opposed to trying to increase sales to the home. You didn't actually say what your percentage was, but it sounds like you would have stayed under 10% of sales to the home in your plan. I think that that's probably accurate. Concern was twofold. And Jack's business is predicated on home sales to begin with. Technical support. Yeah. who's going to go out and fix the game? Who's going to go out that I can trust to fix the game? Look, most of us, any of us, probably have encountered, unless we are technically adept ourselves, I am not, nor have I ever been, although I have done my share of little minor things. I've had situations where somebody has come to, in quotes, fix my game, and the game is not really fixed, or it's fixed for some short period of time. And then I am left trying to see, well, is there somebody else that I can trust? You know, that network didn't exist. For somebody like Jack, it was easy. He had home sales. So whoever he was selling to, I needed to ensure that my distributors who had technicians that could deliver and set up a game in somebody's home could sign service contracts. I need it to be like an electronics store. It's a room network. So whether it's Aft Electronics or Best Buy or some others, if I'm getting some appliance, I need to stand behind it if I'm a manor or a frigidaire as much as I do if I am ex-pinball company to stand behind my product. and I think that that would have been something that, and to your point, Dave, maybe it would have evolved, but if I'm looking at 1999 and the amount of home sales that were happening back then, which were negligible for new equipment just based on the price. Used equipment, absolutely. And were there independent small little dealers that were out there, sub-distributors selling? Yes. I know many of them that existed that I had worked with and dealt with over the years. So that's not to suggest that I would not have encouraged them, that I would not have worked with them in some way, shape or form. But I think that by and large, I would have needed the community to catch up. and by catching up I would have been forced and I'm using the word not necessarily as something that I would have been against but I would have been forced to make the necessary adjustment and to acknowledge and recognize that the world was changing I needed to change with it as well and potentially I would have if all my plans had come into play and borne fruit I probably would have sped up the process of home purchase okay that's interesting incredible technologies sped up the purchase of golden tee golf for the home yeah I think we have some interest the people have stayed longer than we advertised to hear this I'm sorry. So if you have a question that has still not been answered after this pretty comprehensive review of what that alternate scenario would be like, please walk up to the question microphone there. Okay, we'll do a wireless walk around. Raise your hand if okay. Is it Brendan? Yes. Pinball designer himself. and I will interject before we get to his question that Jim Patla is in Boston so he will be here live so we are going to have a guy from the Pinball 2000 project here live and so questions about Pinball 2000 can also be directed to Jim at his seminar later this afternoon so Brendan what's your question for Roger? Roger, you mentioned Barry Osler a couple times. It was such a bummer to hear that he passed away earlier this year. My question is if you could share some of your most fond memories with Barry and if you feel he would have been someone that you would have brought back to the design team had this purchase of Williams gone through. Let me answer the last question first. Absolutely. Barry was wonderful, a unique individual what I remember was feeling so bad for him because he had to put aside his project to work on Las Vegas which became Barracora but Barry had just a bright side to him he was kind of like, and I'm going to say this and I don't mean anything to be offensive to anybody but But he always seemed to be, and this is for me as an outsider before I began working full time at the company, always seemed to be outside of the main group of folks that were hanging out. And I say that principally in terms of Eugene and Larry and Steve with their mutual backgrounds from Atari and Larry coming in as the new kid, the shining star. and Barry being really on the old school side with Steve Kordak and Dick Vlasic and some of the other folks back then. But he was just a sweet, sweet man with an incredible gift for understanding geometry and layout of games and obviously having the fortitude enough to be able to work with Python so often. And so, yeah, you know, I miss him. And absolutely I would have wanted him to be there because Barry was taking nothing away from any of the other guys. He was always dependable. Never was running late on projects. Again, not casting any aspersions on anybody. But he was fundamental to the core. That's what we've always heard about Barry. Other questions? One up here. Roger, would you have kept Steve Kordek? Oh God, yes Just wanted to get that on the record Yeah, no, no, no I would have actually put Steve into a totally different position of influence Everybody used to go to Steve just to ask questions I think everybody's been somewhat vocal about that all the designers over the years and how influential he was I would have actually set up regular meetings whether they would have been on-site or off-site for Steve to kind of give primers and talk about things on a general basis rather than just one-on-ones. That's not to disregard the one-on-ones, but yeah. In fact, I would like to have had Steve do another game. Not just the tic-tac-toe type of The last game was that he did, which was the novelty redemption game. Yeah. You had a question? So, Roger, you talked about the premier deal that didn't work. Yes. What year was that approximately? Would have been a couple of years before, and the point that I will make, and something that Dave mentioned about the distributors and what have you for the Williams purchase, one of the big issues and I believe Gil Pollack is still alive so I don't want to say anything that's going to be untoward but the amount of money that was being owed of the company by distributors was enormous which made it not feasible. There was also a facility that they had developed or built I want to say somewhere in the Dakotas or whatever where they were starting to work on some gaming product? Yeah, I think they had a cabling division up in the Dakotas. Thank you. Well, they were looking at trying to do some building of slots and whatever I believe, but that was just a sinkhole financially. So the problem was that the numbers didn't add up because of the accounts receivable. We looked and under the best case scenario if memory serves, it was going to be five years before we could see profitability. And even then we weren't certain if we could get all of the vendors that still owed money, all of the distributors that still owed money, to actually pay back on some reasonable percentage amount. Yeah, so you'd be starting out as a bad guy collecting back debts. Yes. The reason I went there is because I wondered if that deal did work out, what would Valley Williams look like in two years? Oh, wow. Interesting question. Truthfully, God, I would have gone full bore. And, you know, again, John Trudeau and others were still there. Tim Skelly was still there at the time. And Adolph, God. Adolph Seitz, Jr. I probably would have poached a lot of people from Williams. to come over. It's comparable to what Capcom did with Foots and Python and Mark Ritchie and the like and the fact that I came about this close to actually going to work at Capcom when Mike Stroll was getting ready to renew his contract with them. But that's another story for another time that I've never really talked about. But yeah, I mean wow. I would have gone back in to absolutely use the Gottlieb name. Alvin and I had spoken when he started AG. I was supposed to go to work there. There's another story with that with Michael. But yeah, I think that I would have played off of the incredible legacy and heritage of what D. Gottlieb meant to pinball. And yeah, that would have been exciting as hell. to really bring something back up on its bootstraps. I saw the Williams opportunity as just continuing success, if you will. The Gottlieb opportunity I saw as something to really build on, having been instrumental in getting them Stargate and a couple of other licenses. Wow, there's so many more. Uh-oh, David Fix wants to ask a question. We're getting the camera focused on him so you can see him. Go ahead with your question, Mo. Male Speaker 1 Hey, buddy. How you doing? Quick question for you, Roger. Roger Ebert All right. Now, you got my – you piqued my interest. So did you even think about going after Capcom when they were closing the doors? Were you thinking about buying them? Because – Roger Ebert No, there was really nothing to buy. I met with the three Japanese principals. I mean, just very quickly. I had agreed in essence to going over there as the vice president of marketing and licensing. Mike Stroll was renewing his contract and he said, let's just hold off until everything is locked in before you actually make the move. kind of hit a wall with Mike. He was not renewed. The Japanese still had a desire for me to come and join them. And I'll just leave it at that I did not join them, despite what the offer was. But you didn't go after trying to buy them when Capcom closed? No. I mean, there was nothing really to buy at that point in time. I mean, not taking anything away from, I guess, what was it, flipper pinball or something that they had come up with? Flipper football. Flipper football, Big Bang Bar, Kingpin. Yeah, Big Bang Bar, yeah. Right, Break Shot or Break Out. Now, I mean, the people, yes. The equipment, the technology that they had, there was nothing that was relatively important to me. I couldn't have access and resourced all those parts otherwise so I didn't view it as a real pinball company I saw it as something that Capcom it kind of dipped its toe into I'll share with you if Mike had come back and I had gone over there I think eventually whether it had been called Stroll pinball or whatever else, I think that the two of us would have probably taken the company over. And at that point in time, yes, there would have been an interest to take on ownership as opposed to just being employees. Very interesting. All right. I think we need to take our lunch hour. Seminars are over. I am so sorry for being so long. No, this is going to be a great historical document. Well, thank you, everybody, for indulging me. And as I said, hopefully if things work out and I'm ever invited back and the travel works where pilots are actually now employed and flight actually get from point A to point B without going to C, D, and E, I'd love to be there in person with you all. So have a wonderful time. And again, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for putting up with me. Okay.