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Yes… More Roger Sharpe

Silverball Chronicles·podcast_episode·1h 17m·analyzed·Apr 11, 2024
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.032

TL;DR

Silver Ball Chronicles explores Roger Sharpe's design and licensing career beyond his iconic 1970s courtroom victory.

Summary

Silver Ball Chronicles Episode 37 explores Roger Sharpe's career beyond his famous 1970s courtroom victory. The hosts discuss Sharpe's work as a game designer in the 1980s (notably Cyclops for Game Plan), his transition to Williams as a marketing director, and his pioneering role in pinball licensing deals from the late 1980s onward. Key early licensing efforts included Elvira and the Party Monsters and Roller Games, with discussion of Sharpe's philosophy of building collaborative relationships with licensors rather than simply slapping artwork onto generic games.

Key Claims

  • Cyclops (Game Plan, November 1985) sold 400 units and is Game Plan's best game

    high confidence · David Dennis and Ron Hallett discussing the Cyclops pinball machine specifications

  • Roger Sharpe discovered Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles at a toy fair in 1988 and approached Williams about licensing it, but Williams initially rejected it with 'blank stares' because nobody had heard of it

    high confidence · Direct quote from Roger Sharpe included in the episode transcript

  • Roger Sharpe was hired by Williams as director of marketing (not licensing) by Marty Glassman and Ken Fedesna

    high confidence · David Dennis explaining Sharpe's hiring at Williams

  • Williams heard about Batman (1989) being cast with Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson but declined to license it due to restrictions on character likenesses in merchandise

    high confidence · Hosts discussing Batman licensing complications; Data East ultimately secured the license

  • Elvira and the Party Monsters was Roger Sharpe's first successful license at Williams, with Cassandra Peterson willing to promote the machine but refusing to have her artwork on it

    high confidence · Direct quote from Roger Sharpe describing Elvira licensing negotiation

  • Roller Games was the first Williams-branded license after Williams purchased Bally Midway, and it sold well initially but the licensing did not help the company

    high confidence · Roger Sharpe quote and hosts' discussion of Roller Games licensing outcome

  • From 1985 to 1999, Williams Electronics entered a major licensing era under Roger Sharpe's direction

    high confidence · David Dennis framing the historical period of Williams licensing strategy

  • Neil Nicastro at Williams opposed licensing in 1989, arguing that it had not saved Bally (which was purchased by Williams six months after the Batman discussion)

    medium confidence · Hosts discussing Nicastro's position on licensing strategy

Notable Quotes

  • “Roger Sharp is hailed as the man who saved pinball, and you remember that from our previous episode. He did a thing one time in the 1970s in a courtroom, but he's so much more than that.”

    David Dennis @ Early episode — Sets up the episode's thesis that Sharpe's legacy extends far beyond the famous courtroom incident

  • “I went to Williams and said, I have access to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It was met with blank stares because nobody had heard of it. I said, this is going to be the next big thing.”

    Roger Sharpe (quoted) @ Mid-episode — Demonstrates Sharpe's foresight in identifying emerging pop culture trends at toy fairs

  • “I was talking to someone who represented Cassandra Peterson nice people who said she was really into pinball she was doing a lot of things back then. There was a movie coming out and she was going to be on The Tonight Show. They will publicize and promote the pinball machine.”

    Roger Sharpe (quoted) @ Mid-episode — Illustrates Sharpe's hand-in-glove licensing philosophy with cooperative licensors

  • “This is where Roger kind of stumbled into licensing... building relationships is one of the most important things you can do in life.”

    David Dennis @ Mid-episode — Frames Sharpe's licensing success as relationship-driven rather than purely transactional

  • “I could deliver numbers anywhere from 10, 15, or 20,000 units and get them visibility.”

    Roger Sharpe (quoted) @ Late-episode — Shows the mutual value proposition Sharpe offered to licensors in terms of market reach

  • “Roller games was very popular. For like a year... the company that made the show went bankrupt. That was the issue. It wasn't because the ratings were bad.”

    Ron Hallett and David Dennis @ Late-episode — Clarifies why a good game with a popular license still failed—external business factors

  • “It is Gameplan's best game... 400 units is pretty rare”

    Ron Hallett @ Early-mid episode — Establishes Cyclops as a high-quality design despite limited sales

Entities

Roger SharpepersonDavid DennispersonRon HallettpersonGame PlancompanyWilliams ElectronicscompanyData EastcompanyBally MidwaycompanyCassandra PetersonpersonSeamus McLaughlinperson

Signals

  • ?

    design_innovation: Roger Sharpe's Cyclops demonstrates a consistent design fingerprint with pop bumpers shaped as eyes, spinner-based orbit shots, three-flipper layout, and mini-flipper access to drop targets—establishing his recognizable design philosophy

    high · Hosts note: 'He's got a type, which is really, I think, cool... His fingerprint, if you will' and detail specific playfield features like eye-shaped pop bumpers and multiple spinners

  • ?

    product_strategy: Roger Sharpe pioneered a hand-in-glove licensing approach at Williams, seeking cooperative licensors willing to promote machines jointly rather than simply licensing artwork for generic games

    high · Sharpe quote: 'They will publicize and promote the pinball machine' and discussion of Cassandra Peterson's willingness to appear on The Tonight Show to promote Elvira machine

  • $

    market_signal: Data East adopted a quick-turnaround licensing strategy (Batman, Back to the Future) while Williams took a more selective, relationship-driven approach under Sharpe—establishing two competing models in industry

    high · Hosts discuss: 'Data East...just picked it up willy nilly' vs. Williams' more strategic selection of willing licensors

  • ?

    business_signal: Williams purchased Bally Midway in 1988, creating a consolidated licensing powerhouse with Roger Sharpe as marketing director—shift in competitive landscape

    high · Timeline: Batman licensing discussion occurred in 1989, 'six months after' Bally Midway was purchased by Williams

  • ?

    rumor_hype: Roger Sharpe identified Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as emerging IP at 1988 toy fair before mainstream recognition; subsequently proved prescient when Konami and Data East capitalized on the property

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.236

0:00
Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile, with a message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop. With Mint, you can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying, no judgments, but that's weird. Okay, one judgment.
0:17
Anyway, give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of $45 per three-month plan, equivalent to $15 per month required. Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See full terms at mintmobile.com. The Pinball Network is online. Launching Silver Ball Chronicles.
0:46
Hey, didn't play that bad? It doesn't matter that it plays well. It doesn't matter, The Rock! What is this, episode 37? Yes, it is. Looks like 37 here. Do you want me to share this? Yeah, I had to fix your title.
1:29
Hello everyone, I'm David Dennis and this is Silver Ball Chronicles and with me is Ron Ham Sandwich Hallett. How you doing my friend? I don't think I've ever had a ham sandwich. That's the best kind of sandwich.
1:46
Montreal smoked meat, very good sandwich, but ham sandwich, great go-to. Ah. Great go-to, a little mayo, some mustard. I like me a chicken parm sub. Oh, chicken parm, very good. That's very fancy. Mm-hmm. That's very fancy. So because you're Italian, right? Yep, Italian food is the best food that exists. Hey, I love the veal sandwich. Very good, very good. What's up, fella? What have you been doing? You been busy?
Raymond Merchant
person
Marty Glassmanperson
Ken Fedesnaperson
Neil Nicastroperson
Michael Keatonperson
Jack Nicholsonperson
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtlesproduct
Cyclopsgame
Elvira and the Party Monstersgame
Roller Gamesgame
Batman (1989 film)product
Sharpshootergame
Sharpshooter 2game
Silver Ball Chroniclesorganization

high · Sharpe quote: 'I said, this is going to be the next big thing. Subsequently, Konomi came out with the video game, and Data East came out with the pinball'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Hosts note generational difference in how Roger Sharpe is remembered: older cohort views him as 'the licensing guy,' while newer community knows him primarily as 'the man who saved pinball' (1970s courtroom victory)

    high · David Dennis: 'There's two distinctly different images of Roger...your generation remembers Roger from shows...that remember Roger as the guy that worked on licensing. Nowadays...much more exposed to Roger as the man who saved pinball'

  • ?

    product_concern: Game Plan games (Sharpshooter, Sharpshooter 2, Cyclops) despite high design quality sold only 300-500 units, suggesting manufacturer scale limitations or market positioning issues

    high · Hosts: 'These games are not selling gangbusters, right? They're selling three or four or 500' and 'It's one of his smallest sellers, which is sad'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Roger Sharpe's philosophy evolved from generic game designs to thematically integrated licensing where licensor engagement and machine promotion could drive sales and brand awareness

    high · Sharpe quote: 'I could deliver numbers anywhere from 10, 15, or 20,000 units and get them visibility' and discussion of cross-promotions, fundraisers, and celebrity involvement

  • ?

    historical_signal: Licensing in 1970s Bally (Playboy, Dolly Parton, Evel Knievel) was prolific but unsustainable; 1980s recession halted licensing; 1988-1989 marked Williams' strategic re-entry into licensing under Sharpe

    high · Hosts trace licensing history from Bally through recession, noting 1985-1999 as 'serious Williams Electronics era of licensing'

  • ?

    leak_detection: N/A - no unreleased machine leaks discussed

    N/A · N/A

  • ?

    content_signal: Silver Ball Chronicles experienced audio mastering issues in previous episode with commercial audio levels; hosts implementing additional quality control measures

    high · David Dennis: 'Sorry about the last episode's audio editing...the commercial being done...I had people messaging me like what the hell happened?'

  • ?

    community_signal: Silver Ball Chronicles maintains multi-tier Patreon structure with merchandise integration (silverballswag.com); reporting significant international audience, particularly Australia/New Zealand

    high · Hosts mention: 'We send more shirts down under than we do to the uh northeast' and describe Patreon tiers ($3, $6, $20) with varying perks

    • 2:08
    Just working. Lots of work. You were just in Texas. You were back. You're flying all over the place. Oh, yeah, I forgot that. Yeah, yeah, I went to TPM. And it was brilliant. It was amazing. You won the tournament down there, I hear.
    2:22
    No, I didn't win the tournament. I didn't even qualify. Is it one of those hard ones? I mean, they're all hard tournaments. They're all hard. Everything's hard. Card format or whatever. But the cool thing is there was less people there and it had a different layout, so it just was less crowded, which made it more enjoyable. Great. That's wonderful. I've heard that a few times. I was on – I didn't need my earplugs this year. Cool. I was on the pinball show with Dennis Creasel a couple of weeks ago, and we spoke a lot about uh about tpf and the experience and the vibe as the kids call it today on uh the pinball show patreon exclusive section of the podcast if you wanted to get more exciting boring history which is a covid recap from a historical perspective that's your episode of the pinball show i like how you said a couple weeks ago when it was just this week so you're You're allowing for the editing time. Very smart. It's the magic of editing. Oh, wait a minute. I just blew that by saying that. I'm sorry. It was weeks ago. And speaking of editing, sorry about the last episode's audio editing. Yeah, your commercials. So if you don't want me to blow out your speakers in your car or your eardrums, subscribe to our Patreon over at patreon.com slash silverballchronicles, where there's no commercials. No commercials. So something happened there when I extracted the audio. It was weird. I went back to edit it really quick because everybody was sending emails in about the commercial being done. I had people messaging me like, what the hell happened? Yeah, it was pretty bad. It was really bad. So that won't happen this month. I'll be extra diligent. But when I extracted it from the audio software, the sound levels got all weird. But when I was editing it, it was perfectly fine. And I know that because I went back to fix it so I could fix it and re-upload it so new people didn't blow their eardrums out. It still did it. So hopefully it's not going to happen this month. I like how you said it won't happen this month. You didn't say it won't happen again. I like that. You're covering yourself.
    4:40
    I'm a hobbyist. I'm just doing this for the shits and giggles. For the love. For all of the love I get. And all that love I can get over on our social media channels. So you can join us at silverballchronicles.com. Check out the website where there's show notes, all of that stuff in our archives, as well as our Facebook page, facebook.com slash silverballchronicles if you want to chat with us there. Or as I mentioned before, our Patreon. We've had some people pop in for a month or two and leave just to say thanks, and they've supported us along the way. Nothing has changed. The podcast will always be free on our dedicated feed and the TPN feed. For $6 a month, you can get ad-free access to our episodes early. You get access to our private Discord chat room. You can talk about some of the upcoming themes. It's a really great place to be. But if you want to go one level up to our top-tier elitist cronies, you can get a t-shirt after three months just to say thanks to ron and i but if they don't want to sign up for patreon but still want to keep warm where should they go they should go to silver ball swag.com we are big down under did you know that we send more shirts down under than we do to the uh northeast so so nobody around us cares at all about our t-shirts it's just people who are way down under. I love saying that, don't you? Roger Sharp is hailed as the man who saved pinball, and you remember that from our previous episode. He did a thing one time in the 1970s in a courtroom, but he's so much more than that. In this episode, we're going to talk about the 1980s Roger Sharp, who had an awesome mustache. Then we're going to talk about the licensing 1990s Roger Sharp, who had an awesome mustache. And then we're going to talk about the 2000s Roger Sharp, also stunning mustache. And then we're going to talk about a movie about Roger Sharp with a guy with a terrible mustache. So let's summarize the last episode, Ron. So we began sort of talking about Roger Sharp, what he did to get into pinball, his early journalistic endeavors then he ended up designing some games for game plan and a couple in there at williams but what was the exciting bits about that last episode the exciting bits yeah where were that where were the peaks where did we peak in that episode i i don't know where did we peak in that episode it was a long time ago it's been a while since we recorded it's and you probably can't even remember because your ears are damaged. Around the 1980s, in the middle of the 1980s, Roger was working for a video game magazine. And I mean, if that's not the peak, I don't know what is. And he was casually working with Game Plan to do some designs.
    7:52
    Ron, you don't have a copy of the Pinball Compendium, do you? Is that the one with the pictures? Yes, Michael Schlub. Schlub? Shalhoub or something. I don't think it's Shlough. Man, you butcher names. I think I have all of his picture books somewhere in this house. Yeah, so I use that as a really great resource for us here. And in here, there is a section on game plan. I'm looking at 1982 to present, which is not actually present. That's like 2012 or something. It sort of talks about this sort of game plan revival. So Game Plan was a smaller manufacturer who did a lot of, like, novelty games and stuff, but they did dabble in some pinball machines, didn't they? We heard about it last episode. Sharpshooter. And you are a big Game Plan collector, isn't that right? I wouldn't mind. If I was going to have a Game Plan game, it would be the one we're about to talk about. Roger had designed Sharpshooter, and then he designed a follow-up to that Sharpshooter 2. But these games are not selling gangbusters, right? They're selling three or four or 500. Why all of a sudden do you think that they disappeared? Game Plan kind of stopped making pinballs kind of for a two-year period from like 82 to 84, 85. Video games. Ah, yeah, the crash that we always talk about. Video game crash. Everybody's out of there. There's a huge recession in the industry. They just can't make a whole lot of money. But it was around 1984 and the end of 84 and 85 where Game Plan had considered getting back into manufacturing a few pinball machines. And that's when they started making up a couple of cool machines. One of those machines is Captain Hook. Do you remember Captain Hook? I don't remember that one. Yeah, it was like a boat. Could there be a game I haven't played? Could be. And then there's Andromeda. Yeah, that I played. That one you played. That's like a space one. It's got a weird back glass. Their eyes are weird. Yeah.
    10:04
    And then we've got Roger Sharp, who stepped up to do a game called Cyclops. And Roger would say that he did some research, and he found that two cyclopses in old... Cyclopses? Cyclopsi. Cyclopses worked fine. Cyclopses. Okay. And he knew exactly how he wanted to present the game. He wanted it to be a village being taken over or ransacked by giant mythological cyclopses. Huh? Isn't that a cool theme? It is. And what's a cyclops for those who are unfamiliar?
    10:42
    It's a creature with one eye. Yeah. It's got one clops. Mm-hmm. Yeah. He's not cross-eyed. He's just got one. Just watch, what, The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, any of those Ray Harryhausen movies. You'll see what a Cyclops looks like.
    10:58
    Sinbad? Mm-hmm. Oh, right. Sinbad. Yeah, Seventh Voyage of Sinbad. You know, the stop-motion animation. Yeah, when was that? That was in the 50s. Oh, right. But it's not like Sinbad the actor. Oh, no. No, no, no.
    11:17
    I don't know. Did that land? No, not at all. All right. This is Cyclops. It's November of 1985. It sells 400 units, designed by Roger Sharp, art by Seamus McLaughlin, and software by Raymond Merchant.
    11:35
    And we've seen Raymond quite a few times pop up with his software design in these smaller groups. This is a fun theme, actually. I kind of like this game just by the looks of it I've never played it because it is quite rare 400 units is pretty rare Yeah, I've played it many, many times Really?
    11:59
    Bunch of times It is Gameplan's best game It's the best Gameplan game I've played Now is that because of the rules or the shots?
    12:10
    Yeah, shots Now when we look at the play field here we've got some Roger Sharp, like, consistencies, I guess, like things that Roger likes. He likes the pop bumper right by the flippers. The left flipper is not what they call that Italian bottom where it's the in lane and an out lane and then the slingshot. That is on the right. But on the left side, there's a pop bumper, and it's in the shape of an eye or a cyclops.
    12:40
    That's a cool idea. Yep, all the pop bumpers are eyes. Yeah, which is creepy. Very, very creepy. Spinners are eyes too. So when you – this is where I think it gets really exciting is Roger knows people love spinners. And there are two Orbit spinners. Yep. And they make cool sounds when you hit them. One of them is you come down the in lane on the right side, so not the pop bumper side at the bottom. And then you can like one-time it right up into that spinner up to the top lanes. that has got to be an awesome shot because it's super tight to that pop bumper. And if you're off and you hit that pop bumper, you're probably dead. But if not, you're into that spinner.
    13:22
    Three-flipper layout on this game. He's got that four set of drop targets. Again, you've got to shoot between the two upper midfield pop bumpers with a mini-flipper into those drop targets. Awesome shot. Like, he's really putting some thought into these now, isn't he? And the art is very interesting. It's wild, isn't it? How would you describe this art?
    13:46
    Ass. There's more ass in this game than any game ever made. And that's saying something. So it doesn't look like ass. It's just there's ass on it. There is lots of ass. Yeah, this is done by Seamus McLaughlin. Good job, Seamus. He was available and he was interested to work in the project because him and Roger had worked together before.
    14:12
    They had they have some relationship together. And of course, somebody asked you to do a pin. Go ahead. And and Seamus went for it here. So it's a village, as mentioned before. It's like a village being ransacked by these cyclopses. but this village has a lot of like ladies uh who don't have a lot of clothing on yep and butt cracks are visible there are some butt cracks in here the back glass has the two cyclops they're grabbing um you know these ladies and then there's like the the men villagers chasing after them to like save the ladies yep roger sharp with sunglasses on he's he's right he's he's riding in to save the day he's roger sharp is sitting on one of the horses with his fantastic mustache and sunglasses sunglasses because that's what they would have back in that those days of course and he's trying to save ellen his wife and we'll remember her from the art from his previous games of like sharpshooter uh and sharpshooter 2 i don't think she was in barracora but yeah if you Look at that playfield detail. You know, there's like a lady who's trying to slowly escape up some stairs, which is the orbit shot. Some butt crack there. And don't forget the side art. The side art? The cabinet art is. Oh, yes. Yes. The side art lady in a bikini crawling away secretly. So it's like she's hiding on the ground and sneaking away. That is not your traditional Bally side art where it just says Bally. Or the name of the game, it would probably say. Yeah, Bally did not go all out like Game Plan did, obviously, to attract the folk that may have been in arcades in the mid-80s. Yeah, teenage boys, they're basically their main clientele. Yeah, they call them the bread and butter. Yep. But the rules are pretty cool. I think that this is kind of a neat, you know, mixture of things that Roger has learned, right? He's got some elements of Barracora.
    16:26
    He's got some elements of Sharpshooter with, like, the drop targets and things. Like, he's finding his, like, design language, right? His fingerprint, if you will. So people talk about, like, John Borg or Steve Ritchie, and you can tell those games from other types of games. Well, it's the same thing with Roger. He's got a type, which is really, I think, cool. In a nutshell, what do you think?
    16:52
    His best game. His best game, yeah. And it's one of his smallest sellers, which is sad. So shortly after this, Roger fell into becoming what I will call the licensing guy, right? And this is what I think some people remember Roger as, but I don't think he gets a lot of credit. What do you think? Do you think Roger gets enough credit for being the licensing guy? I thought that was what most people saw him as, as the guy who gets your licenses. Right. So I think there's two distinctly different images of Roger, right? There's like your generation of pinball person who's been around since, you know, the mid-2010s, 2000s, right, that remember Roger from shows and he was the guy that worked on licensing.
    17:40
    Nowadays, I think anybody who's come on sort of just prior to the pandemic, during the pandemic, we're much more exposed to Roger as the man who saved pinball stuff, right? The 1970s in the courtroom thing. And the licensing guy stuff tends to be kind of the secondary component. That's why I posed the question. But it was in 1988 where Roger went to a toy fair. And the Toy Fair was a great place to see what was going to be hot in the upcoming years when it comes to toys or licensing. And it was the kind of content which may end up in, like, video games. So remember, Roger's full-time job is actually working at a video game magazine.
    18:27
    And this is where Roger kind of stumbled into licensing. What was one of the first things that Roger discovered? Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Turtles in a half shell. Turtle power. Yeah, that went well. Good job. Ninja Turtles is mounting a major campaign to see if they could get it off the ground. I met with a company representing the property and said, would you guys be interested if I could get a pinball company to want to do something? They said, sure. Not knowing anything about licensing at the time, I thought, all right. We kind of had a connection. I went to Williams and said, I have access to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It was met with blank stares because nobody had heard of it. I said, this is going to be the next big thing. Subsequently, Konomi came out with the video game, and Data East came out with the pinball. And the rest is history. Love it, right? So Roger goes to a toy fair. He's there with the video game background, and he's like, hey, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, that would be a great pinball machine. And he goes over to the fellows there at the booth and is like, would you guys like to have a pinball machine? And they like yeah that sounds like a great idea And then of course nobody wants to go with it But he discovering just kind of like building relationships I think And I talked about this many times in this podcast that building relationships is one of the most important things you can do in life. He's just kind of bumping into these people and he's seeing opportunities kind of by accident. So one day, Roger, out of the blue, got a call from a guy named Marty Glassman and Ken Fedesna and they asked Roger if he wanted to come to Williams as their director of marketing. So who was Ken Fedesna?
    20:06
    He's one of the main guys at Williams. Yeah, he's like the big wig at Williams and he wants to bring on Roger and say, hey, Roger, can you help us with marketing? Now, he isn't hired for licensing. He's hired for marketing. So like, as opposed to, hey, wouldn't it be great to play Ninja Turtles? His thing is more like, wouldn't you love to buy Funhaus? However, the marketing and licensing people often go to the same conventions. Now, we remember that licensing was really big with Bally in the 1970s. That's where we got games like what? Like Playboy and... Dolly Parton. Yeah, the stunt guy. Evel Knievel, the stunt guy.
    20:47
    Wizard. Yeah. Captain Fantastic. The ones they didn't pay for, like 8-Ball. Yeah, exactly. And even kind of in the late 70s and early 80s at Gottlieb, right? They're getting into things like Charlie's Angels, Sinbad, Not the Actor. Well, they were owned by Columbia Pictures too. Exactly. But it was the turmoil in the 1980s recession in that kind of 81, 82, 83 time frame that was really tough on pinball. And they just couldn't afford to spend that money on licensing. This was when Roger had heard through the grapevine as the marketing personnel at some of these conventions that Batman was going to get a new film in 1989.
    21:33
    They had reached out to Warner Brothers and heard that Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson had been cast. Now that is some serious casting. I'm Batman. You love this movie, don't you? Yeah, the original Batman's good. It's so good. I saw it in the theater and everything because I'm old. It's so good. Did you get the cups? The McDonald's cups? Remember those? I remember the cups. I also remember watching it in the theater, and I couldn't see the final fight scene at all because it was so dark. Yeah. We were very annoyed. Like, what the hell is going on? It was the right amount of great acting and, like, weird production. You know what I mean? Like, it was a good mixture. Before Heath Ledger had his performance, Jack Nicholson was kind of the best Joker in this one. So good. So good. But what they did find out, however, was that Keaton and Nicholson had prohibitions about their characters and how they could be licensed in the merchandise. Basically, it meant you can't have Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson. So Batman had to have his hood on. The Joker didn't really look like Nicholson on anything. It looked more like the Joker as opposed to Jack Nicholson playing the Joker. So that was a bit of a non-go, I would say, with the Williams team when they said, let's do a license. This is a big property. Well, we can't get the big pieces to that pie. Why would we pay the licensing fee? Neil Nicastro, who we remember from killing Williams fame, well, he didn't really believe in licensing at this time. And his comments were to look where it got Bally, who six months after this would be purchased by Williams. Licensing did not save Bally or Bally Midway. The years were a little. OK, so, yeah, 1989 was Batman. So I guess he heard about it in 88 because that's when Bally Midway was purchased. Yeah, exactly. Trying to get the timeline straight in my head. Of course, Batman got picked up by Data East anyway because they picked up every damn license. Yeah, they just picked it up willy nilly. and it turned out to be an amazing data east game didn't it i mean it sold well but as far as an amazing game the funny thing is remember police force was supposed to be batman but they didn't get the license yes oh police force it wouldn't have been very good either oh come on it had the batmobile because the car was supposed to be the batmobile and all the characters were supposed to be the different villains and stuff but roger says i don't want to pay money and get nothing in return For Data East, obviously, it wasn't a deal breaker not having the opportunity to be involved in any kind of crossover promotions. They just did it the way the industry had done it for years. They're going to give you the money, you're going to give us some artwork, and we're going to build a pinball machine. Thank you. Take care. So long. Yeah, so for them, it was just like a quick and dirty artwork, right? They didn't really so much, I think, care at a certain time in the industry what the game was. It was just a game with some artwork. and um i mean this is prior to that world under glass thing that we all talk about right like they had made games like black knight and things like that that were worlds under glass but when it came to i don't know like uh sin bad like that could have been any game you know what i mean they just put sin bad artwork on it black knight could have been any game they had they had the back glass before they had the play field yeah right exactly so that that's what roger is talking about here he's not really throwing shade data east's way he's just saying williams wanted to do licensing this time around differently they didn't just want to have a game slap some artwork on it and then throw in like a toy that sort of looked like something i think data east would evolve kind of into the 90s right when you get into like jurassic park and games like that where it's clearly designed around the theme where you can see right now like even back to the future that they did over at Data East. You can tell that that's just kind of a game that they were like, there we go. Perfect, some artwork. Roger's idea, because he's just the marketing guy, was how could we sell more machines? Well, he had an idea that every year or so, they could do a few licenses that could be sprinkled in amongst their original themes. This meant that they could be very selective in choosing winning properties. They wanted to find those properties that wanted to be willing to work with Williams and build awareness about pinball and their brand together, as opposed to just sort of red stamp a pinball machine. Do you think that that's a better method than kind of the slap on some artwork method, like where you work more hand in glove? I would say so, just if you have a better relationship with the licensor to do more future properties. I think Tanya Klais over at Stern, let's talk like maybe George Gomez and those guys, they've mentioned on podcasts from time to time that like when you work with a licensor who's like excited about the property and excited about you making a pinball machine which represents that licensed property, you get a better product. But when you work with a licensor who is just trying to, like, find another way to make $1,000 or $5,000, you tend to get a more lackluster product.
    27:10
    Okay. All right. Where do I start? The top here? Yes. Okay. Becoming a pro crony is the perfect way to say thanks, and it starts at $3 a month. Want to get early access to episodes before everyone else? Have a strange love for stickers? Do you know what a Discord is? Interested in having your comments and questions take priority on our episodes? Jump on. Wait a minute. This is on twice. Idiot. Oh, boy. You get what you pay for, I guess. All right. Hold on. Jump on. It's $6 a month premium crony. Want all the other perks and a shirt after three months? Join us at 20 bucks a month as an L.E. Lidus crony. Wow.
    27:48
    Can I have my money now? uh led zeppelin as opposed to as opposed to kiss yeah i mean with kiss i i still think they they just made the big gene simmons head and showed that to him and he was like okay whatever you want to do after that i'm good with yeah some gene simmons of kiss and you've made a big head of me with my tongue sticking out so clearly the game is going to be awesome proceed ahead all you need to do is get the artwork from the previous guy who did it in the 70s and if he's dead we'll have to just go kissonline.com slash raise the dead but seriously gene simmons did say in interviews i i just let those those guys are the pinball people they know what they're doing i just let them do that we just let them do what they wanted yeah where you can see it's been a bit of a slog with other things like led zeppelin who are really tight or you know even james bond one of the greatest games george gomez has ever made there has been more licensing struggles and a game you own i have no idea no idea what you're talking yes and the premium the best version clearly Exactly. The premium is the best version of that, for sure. Roger was, again, in the marketing department. His job was to sell the machines. His job wasn't necessarily to schmooze and get licenses. But Rogers was kind of backing into these opportunities because you can sell more pinball machines, in his opinion, if you could hammer out some of those licenses. What was the first license that Roger landed? it well roger went to a licensing show and made some relationships he made connections with companies such as lucasfilm which would result in the indiana jones pinball machine oh well he's clearly lining up star wars for his first major license so roger's first license was actually elvira and the party monsters and roger says i was talking to someone who represented cassandra peterson nice people who said she was really into pinball she was doing a lot of things back then There was a movie coming out and she was going to be on The Tonight Show. They will publicize and promote the pinball machine. There's that hand-in-glove relationship that we wanted, that we were just talking about. Cassandra Peterson, who is Elvira, it was like this late-night West Coast comedy show that would talk about film, right? There'd be these old cheesy films, and then between the commercials and the film, there would be gags with Cassandra Peterson as Elvira. Isn't that how that worked? That's how that worked. Yeah, and they had silly characters, and it was like a weekly thing. But she was becoming like this pop culture icon around that time. She was funny. She didn't take herself too serious. But she was willing to promote the pinball machine and work with Williams. She just didn't want to put her artwork on the machine. That is exciting. What could a licensor, so a Cassandra Peterson, what could they give Williams? What is Williams getting out of this? Red carpet, celebrities, branding promotions. Yeah, you get to like, you know, they used to talk about going to releases of the films and having pinball machines in the lobby or being on a late night show and having it in the background. You know, that's cool stuff. Like it's pop culture-y. It's exciting. is different. But what could Williams give the licensor? That seems like Williams is getting a lot of the opportunities there. Well, Roger says, I could deliver numbers anywhere from 10, 15, or 20,000 units and get them visibility. Cross promotions, whether it's being involved in Broadway Cares Fights AIDS, where we provided pinball machines in New York City for Pete Townsend and others that were doing a benefit. Again, the local rock radio station with celebrities tied to pinball machines and people doing pledges and so on. Yeah, it was like we could give you a bunch of these machines and you could auction them off. You can give them away. You know, it's exciting for these fundraisers, but we can also have them just visibly in the background everywhere because you're selling 10 or 15,000 units.
    31:54
    You know, people go to the movie theater to see the movie and they're like, wow, look, there's a pinball machine of the movie we're about to see. Top of mind stuff. So I think it's a win-win. From 1985 to 1999, this is where we get into the serious Williams Electronics era of licensing. This is like we're getting into some big deal stuff. The first game with a license was a Bally under the new sort of Bally Williams umbrella, right after Williams had purchased a Bally Midway. What was the first Williams license that Roger was able to nail down? Rock, rock, rock and roller games. Yeah, the smash hit license of roller games. Roller games was very popular.
    32:46
    For like a year. Well, to be fair, the company that made the show went bankrupt. That was the issue. It wasn't because the ratings were bad. Oh, very good. I think we spoke about that. Yeah, that was on our Steve Ritchie episode. Go and check that one out in the archives. Because he had a choice. He could have done roller games or American Gladiators, and they picked the wrong one.
    33:11
    But Roger says, roller games. Well, that was my thing because the American Gladiators are roller games. Which one? Well, roller games like roller derby. I remember that growing up. That's going to be huge. It's going to be like professional wrestling. And there's girls and there's guys and there's costumes and teams. Let's do it. We got Steve into it, and you know, unfortunately, it was a good game, but the license did not help us in any way, shape, or form. So we're kind of off to a bit of a stumble, right? Like, Roger's like, oh, we've got to do licensing. We've got to bring them in, hand in glove, collaboration, you know, promotion. And they do Elvira, which went probably better than expected. And then they bring in roller games, and it's like, uh. And I do believe Roger was into pro wrestling, because I remember at least one story where he mentioned how he was sitting there in the living room watching pro wrestling from florida wow it's a roger roger sharpe's a brother so so i'm thinking roller games is basically pro wrestling but on roller skates so that's probably why he'd like that license very yeah pro wrestling on roller skates sounds amazing pretty much what it is yeah but what it ended up being is a coffin on roller skates oh well it does have the wall of death yeah well how about how about the other amazing themes that he was able to hammer down huh bugs bunny bugs bunny that's a big theme even despite what you think of the game bugs bunny's birthday ball harley davidson yes gilligan's island again just despite what you think of the game actually gilligan's island might have been a little dated by that time yeah that was like that weird resurgence part of yeah the last two are huge though yeah terminator 2 and adam's family yeah adam's family's just what a stellar stellar game and terminator 2 or 2 what didn't make money with that soundtrack made money movie made money the video game with the gun made money the pinball machine made money everything made money christian bale is even made money on terminator because of the success of Terminator 2. You know what I mean? Like he got a movie in the 2000s that was terrible because Terminator 2 was so good. Oh, what was he? Terminator 4? Is that the one he was in? Yeah, I think so. Is that the one where he goes off on the lighting guy? That clip that made its way around? Yeah. That is the one. Yeah, exactly. Where they're in the future? They're in the future. They're like in the future. It's not just like present day. Oh, man, what a terrible. But that's how good that was. But what about some of the awesome ones that they passed on? Oh, some of these hurt me, especially the second one. Universal Soldier. Yeah, that was a good one. Who was in that? Van Damme. Oh, okay. Oh, man. Jean-Claude Van Damme. He could have had a movie. Bummer.
    35:52
    Highlander. Oh. I've never seen that. Oh, they failed on that one. They could have had a Highlander. Just think of the decapitations he could have had. Decapitation mech. Decapitation multiball. Oh, my God. That would have been awesome. You already have... There can be only one. That's the wizard mode. You have to be the last one. Yeah. That would be so good. Jurassic Park. Which we know ended up at Data East. And Total Recall, which ended up at Data East, but they ended up not making it. I recently watched Total Recall.
    36:22
    And I've discovered that... That's awesome. Get your ass to Mars. With great lines like, But honey, we're married. Consider that the divorce. I mean, come on. Oh, man. Come on. It's so... What was the director of that? Van Hoven? The guy who did Basic Instinct and Showgirls and... Yeah, Paul Vanhoeven? Paul Verhoeven, yeah, Dutch guy. Yeah, terrible. He did Robocop, which was awesome. God, I love Robocop. But then he just rode that craziness for too long. Oh, come on, he did Starship Troopers. Yeah, so bad. Come on! It's worse now than I remember it. Oh, yeah. We'll agree to disagree on that one. And the game's not bad either. But then there's Adam's family. Da-na-na-na. When they launched this movie, I remember thinking, oh, man, that's cool, right? Because I used to watch a lot of old sitcoms for some reason, like Get Smart, The Adams Family, like Lassie, all that black and white stuff. I don't get it. Wait a minute. Lassie was a sitcom? That was a comedy? It wasn't. Not a sitcom, I guess, but it was.
    37:33
    Hey, look, Lassie took a dump again. Ha, ha, ha, ha. Ha ha ha ha. Yeah, I don't think so. So my mother watches TV on a 20 year delay. At present day, she's watching films from 10 or 20 years ago or she's watching TV from 10 or 20 years ago. So in the 1980s, when I was a child, she was watching shows from from the previous like 1960s era. So for some reason, I watched a lot of those shows. And then by the time we get to like the mid 2000s, she's watching like shows from the mid 2000s, from the mid 90s. It's very weird. Very weird. I don't know what she's watching now. It's probably like home renovation shows on HGTV or something. She's retired now. Adams family was one of those ones where I'm like, Oh, I love Adams family. And I love the Munsters. I was like, Oh, I wish they made a Munsters movie, but they made the Adams family film. And I went to see that film in the theater and it was awesome. Did you see that? Never seen the movie. You didn't see the original Adams family. It's really good. The acting is phenomenal. Right. It's got a, who was the guy that did Gomez? Raul Julia. Raul Julia. I just remember he was in Overdrawn at the Memory Bank, which was like a PBS movie that they made fun of on Mystery Science Theater. Yeah. Christopher Lloyd as Uncle Fester was brilliant. And Angelica Houston.
    38:55
    Oh, it was such a good, it was so well cast. It was fun. And the second one I thought was also kind of fun, but it wasn't quite the same excitement. Adam's Family Values. Yeah, which was good, but it wasn't. Was it Christina Ricci? She killed it. Christina Ricci Yes Yeah She killed it She still going So it was really T2 and Adam family that opened the floodgates right It was like all of a sudden it was like oh my God Now we have licenses. We have sold so many of these units. So now we got Doctor Who, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Twilight Zone, Judge Dredd, based on the comic book, not the movie, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Indiana Jones, The Pinball Adventures, Star Trek, The Next Generation, Demoman, Indianapolis 500. Judge Dredd. Oh, you put that twice. World Cup Soccer. It's so good. Corvette. The Flintstones. Dirty Harry. Popeye. No Fear. Yes, No Fear is actually a license. It was a clothing line, something like that. Yeah. Johnny Mnemonic. NBA. Fast Break. Scared Stiff. And Congo. So when we go through this list, what happens when you start on the first line and then by the time you get to the second line of these themes? They're selling less. And they start getting a lot worse. Oh, come on. Come on. Doctor Who, Twilight Zone, Indiana Jones, Star Trek, and then Johnny Mnemonic, No Fear, and Congo.
    40:25
    Like, as the years progressed, the quality of the theme, I think, started to go down. Star Wars would like to have a talk with you.
    40:36
    Star Wars? Yeah. Pinball 2000. Star Wars. I mean, come on, that's humongous. I got you on that one. But that was like the last kick at the can, and we all know that that went really well. But it was like you could tell that I think Price had to have something to do here, right? I mean, I'm saying that, but at the same time, like Corvette, which is a decent theme, that was a specific request from George Gomez. He wanted to do Corvette. And the thing is, everyone's doing licenses at this point. yeah in fact at east of course because they they did them more than anyone else even gotley with stargate you know and in a shack attack and there's a lot more competition frank thomas i mean barbed wire barbed wire and they're the game that was going to be after barbed wire brooks and don they're taking all the good themes away from the other companies but you can see there's more competition right more competition you know more more fighting there but we're also getting out of like the 90s were filled with all of these like really cool over the top action films yeah before it all went downhill uh give me the 90s back so there's a lot less of that in the late 90s but the theming here at this time is is some of the best well you did have matrix like 99 I think. Yeah, that's true. Let's kind of go back mid-90s, right? So let's not get to 2000 just yet. Roger was also working with the IFPA, which is the International Flipper Pinball Association. So we spoke about this in brief during our original Roger Sharp episode that was last month. We're talking about IFPA basically being dormant for years and years and years and not running any tournaments and events prior to 1995. Prior? You mean post-1995? Yes, that's right. I assume that the AMOA, of course, stood for Amusement and Music Operators Association, and they, back in the 80s, worked with Roger to develop a league-like system. They had been seeing a decline in the arcades through the 90s, and they didn't really see any value in spending and promoting pinball as they had prior to 1995. They just saw that the industry had peaked, and now the declines were beginning. You know, they had been running sporadic tournaments kind of through the late 80s into the 90s, and Roger was involved in that with Steve Epstein, but that was all kind of going away. But then there was the death of licensing, right between like 96 and 99 some pretty lean years in there you know yeah you had star wars but that was at the end right that was the kickoff at pinball 2000 but like you've got so you start getting like attack from mars you start getting uh medieval madness although phenomenal amazing games and in our uh in our member berries that we remember they are fantastic games but those were like kind of the the lean years of licensing right we're getting into more of that stuff well at williams exactly he's last sega they kept going with licenses they're getting into like uh starship troopers yeah a lot of promise twister that's the prequel to twisters right ah yes there's another twister movie that's yeah it's another coming attraction i saw where I'm like, is this Twister?
    44:12
    No, it's Twisters. I bet you there's going to be a climate change story. Oh, God. Okay. Pinball 2000. You know what Roger says about that? He says, I was, in fact, the first person that they showed it to. I thought it was great. I got it immediately. HoloPin could work. I was like, wow, okay. I can see it. You can take out a Pinball 2000, put it on location today, and I guarantee you that the average person would be like, wow, that's new. Well, no, it's not. Yeah, remember, we had a whole episode on Pinball 2000. We did? Wow, we've had a lot of episodes. Back in the archive. That was a great episode, right? It was like they had this brilliant gold of an idea. They are cool. It's cool. I think it's overrated. I think if they allowed it to go further, the stuff they could have done with it. Yeah. What if you wear one of those stupid Apple things? I know nothing of Apple. You know those – the goggles, the goofy goggle thing with the spatial computing crap? I bet you if you wore that over a regular pinball machine, it would be cool. But we've had to wait like 30 years for that.
    45:26
    This is where we get into the death of Williams. Or Williams. Will Iams. I thought I corrected all your misspelling. You had at least 10 of these that were spelled wrong.
    45:38
    Quality is not my focus here. It's quantity. But we can see when we look at this, like this is where the hollow pin, you know, the idea of Pinball 2000 and sort of that spiral kind of around the toilet bowl that would become Williams. When Williams wasn't allowed to move forward with conventional slot machines, all the effort and manpower went into developing a different kind of slot machine, and those were like video slot machines. So because they had to get around patents and a bunch of other things, Williams had to spend R&D money that they would normally spend in the pinball division, and they moved that money over into their slot business. This was all spoke about, about the death of Williams and her pinball is dying episode, as well as the hollow pin episode, Millennium Moment back in the archives. This is where they made these stellar games for slot machines in casinos called Reel Em In and Jackpot Party. You remember those? not really but i i have seen a lot of the williams the video slots and they are top notch because it's all of your your top tier pinball talent making them so they looked way better than with the other company what was the other company the ones that did everything else i'm trying to remember what they were called western digital no no no no i'll know it if i hear it but they they had the they had the almost whole market share like everything yeah so that so these video slot machines because you've learned all of this stuff in in gaming through uh through pinball with all these brilliant minds and all this licensing idea and all like you've brought all that smarts and you've moved it into the gaming division or the slot gaming division you immediately set a new standard and Williams jumped in with a 30% market share, which from zero to 30% is a ridiculous amount of market share. However, because of this, WMS or the slot machine division really started to starve out Williams. You know, gaming is not making shareholders money. and inevitably that was the sort of the the straw that broke the camel's back well pinball is not making a money gaming is definitely making the money yeah yeah the slots versus traditional you know video games and stuff and roger says i think if you ask neil necastro today one of the things he would say to you is that he probably made a mistake pulling the plug when he did neil really had his heart out there that's what he grew up around i think the issue became one of you have a publicly traded stock that is in the leisure time entertainment industry. You have ups and downs and the ups and downs radically altered stock price and expectations. Yeah, this this is this is something we spoke about, I think, in our Columbia Gottlieb episode. This is something we've talked is is corporately owned pinball. Right. So the object of a corporation is to make money for its shareholders. right that is its primary objective and you know whatever you want to talk about late stage capitalism or whatever you know the idea is if i'm investing in a company it should be making money and if the leadership team of that company so in in this example neil nicastro if he's not doing everything in his power to make more money for the shareholders he is not doing his duty and he is actually in conflict to what his expectations should be as a leader. So he's actually legally on the line if he's not able to make decisions in the company that will make the shareholders more money. This brings us into a whole other kind of conversation. Roger gets into this conversation just briefly in the episode of TopCast, which is in the show notes. and he spoke about publicly owned pinball. Privately owned means that it's a company of individual shareholders, like if you and I started a pinball machine company, and you know what, if it doesn't make money or it makes only a little bit of money, that's no big deal because you and I own the company. Maple syrup pinball. Exactly.
    50:12
    Sticky flipper buttons. At least they're not sharp like home pins. Poutine pinball. publicly owned company has all of these shareholder requirements and this is where i pulled i think probably one of the coolest quotes that i have ever heard roger say he says i think you need to be a privately held company you can't be public you're going to have your up and down quarters that's why stern is able to survive if you ever took the company public they would be screwed they would be over in a matter of two to three years max before the shareholders would say hey time's up sorry that's the nature of the beast roger is clearly saying here that a publicly shareholder driven example of pinball will not survive because the way the entertainment industry around coin op works is you've got boom and you've got bust types of scenarios and it's been repeated over and over and over again. So if you go back to our, you know, when we spoke about the 1930s and 40s and we spoke about the 70s, the boom in the 70s and the bust in the 80s and the boom in the 90s and the bust in the 2000s and now we're going through another boom period. Shareholders aren't going to put up with that. They're going to say, you know what, if we just sell everything to some other company, we can at least make some money as opposed to sitting around for three years waiting for the economy to rebound. And of the like 10 current companies that are around doing pinball, I think they're all private. Every one of them is private. They all have big billionaire backers in one way or another. Well, not all of them, but yes. So for them, it becomes a different thing, right? So for example, let's say a company like JGP doesn't make any money, right? Let's say that they are constantly running into deficit. it? Well, the public would say, well, we got to sell this off to Stern and at least get some return of our money here. Or on a private base, they might say, well, you know what, this is my company and I can take this capital loss and I can move it to another part of my portfolio, if you will, and offset a capital gain somewhere else. So there's like some shenanigans that you You can play with tax codes and things like that if you're a privately owned company. But what did Roger do after Williams? So Williams is kind of gone.
    52:37
    Well, gone as a pinball entity. WMS Industries is around as a slot machine making industry. Right. So he stuck around. He did licensing for the slot machine division, right? Again, you take those relationships that he's built. You take the intelligence that he's developed over years and years and years. He's working in that slot machine division. Well, he also left and he did some consulting. So he kind of went off and did his own thing. And he was working with companies to do their licensing and their product design and development. He worked in advertising and marketing. He worked in promotion. Roger is a social person. He's like electric. You just love to talk to him. He just tells great stories. He's a friendly person. He just oozes salesperson. And as a salesperson myself, the more that you can just be a dude and not sell anything, the more you can sell. You know what I mean? And Roger is a wonderful person. But he also went on to make probably one of the greatest themes of all time. Hey, Pinheads. I just wanted to let you know that when I'm not making cheesy jokes to make Ron laugh, I'm David, the financial advice guy. At Dennis Financial, our advisors strive to provide a return on life for our clients, not just a return on investment. The value of advice is something that we take seriously. A valuable financial advisor doesn't just provide investment and insurance advice. That's because an advisor takes the time to gather intimate knowledge about their primary client, understand their personal preferences, recognize their fears and hopes, and gain knowledge about their client's errors before providing financial advice. If you're looking for a more human dimension to your financial advice, Dennis Financial Inc. has you covered with advisors licensed in most Canadian provinces. We're also doing secure online meetings to engage with clients who need advice but don't necessarily want to wear pants or leave their house. Contact me via email at david at dennisfinancial.net for a free rate quote and a copy of our value of advice e-book or check out dennisfinancial.ca. Insurance solutions provided by Dennis Financial Inc., Canadian residents only.
    55:15
    stuff. This is a ticket dispensing game, and it can kind of be set up in three different ways, a couple of different ways. So one of them is a three ball pinball game, and then the more points you get, the more tickets you get. Then it's kind of also, it's more like a bingo game, right? Like it has these holes that the pinball drops through, and then that has a number on it, and then it will dispense that amount of tickets based on that. So there's a couple of different bits and pieces there but uh there's some awesome pictures in our show notes of this pinball machine and it has some amazing art it's like you mean the art done by paul ferris does that sound familiar yeah everybody remembers paul ferris right he did uh uh he did tons of valley stuff paragon that's the one i was looking yes that's the one i would always bring up first beautiful like so fun and it's so fun because it's like a it's like a haunted mansion kind of thing going on and it's like that Frankenstein, Frankenstein's bride. It's so cute. And then, in fact, Roger is hiding in the artwork in the back, behind the castle, kind of in the rocks around the steps. He's very tiny back there.
    56:30
    So much fun. It's a great theme. The Muppets is a great theme. I can't believe Stern has not made a Muppets pinball machine. I would have my money in on that so fast. Roger also, while he was doing this, was consulting with Stern. And Roger says, I've had a long, long friendship and relationship with Gary and previously his dad. I helped a little bit on Terminator 3, NASCAR, and Pirates of the Caribbean. I'm there when possible. But I've also worked with Eugene Jarvis and his crew at Raw Thrills for Fast and Furious. Yeah, so Roger's kind of doing his own thing. He gets to work with who he gets to work with. He gets to choose his clients. He gets to swing in, which is really Roger's M.O., right? Even way back during his journalism days. I think he really enjoys his freedom, right? Being able to choose who he's working with, where he's coming from, constantly learning, being dynamic. And there are some amazing themes in there. Pirates of the Caribbean was stunningly huge when those films were coming out. They made a lot of those. That was one of Stern's bigger sellers back in the day. And it's a bit clunky, but it's still fun. It's different. It has a ship that sinks. Come on. If it had an orbit shot, it would have been perfect. Anyway, we get into that in one of our other episodes, our Nordman episode, I recall. But this is where we get into the rebirth of the IFPA. On February the 27th of 2006, Roger Sharp's son, Josh Sharp, my second favorite Sharp, He actually went with Roger and formed an LLC, which I guess in the United States is like a corporation or a company. And they purchased the rights to the IFPA from the previous owners. A committee was formed and a new structure was developed. This structure, in fact, continues to today where they even developed a player ranking system, which changes slightly every year. And that is the creation of the Whopper. That's right. I like the committee that was formed. The committee is Josh Sharp is the king, basically. The Whopper is a world pinball player ranking point. Yeah, WPPR. Whopper points. Whoppers. And according to the IFPA website it says the IFPA has created the World Pinball Player Rankings Whopper to establish the first official ranking system of pinball players throughout the world Through these endorsed tournaments and leagues the IFPA crowns the world's greatest pinball player at the end of each calendar year and organizes championships at state, national, and international levels. IFPA endorsed tournaments will give players a chance to increase their whopper rankings so this is like we're drawing a direct line from that original am o a kind of promotional device also papa and the ifpa all of these kind of bits and pieces that kind of went dormant during the downward spiral from about 95 let's call it 2006 we're bringing it back, baby. We're bringing it back better than ever. But what about the other key piece in there? That was Steve Epstein. He was another one of those individuals that was super important to tournament pinball. Well, he ran the Broadway Arcade, right, in Manhattan? New York City. New York City, where you wear your tie to go into town, right? When you go to New York City, you'd put your tie and your suit on? Sure, yeah. Well, the Broadway arcade, it was an institution, right? It was a big deal. Well, it would close in the early 2000s during a landlord dispute over a series of violent events, which happened in the same building, but not necessarily the arcade. But because of that, there were some significant changes with the landlord. Steve would later return to arcades with Modern Pinball in Manhattan on 3rd Avenue around 26th. East 26th Street. Exactly. And I had been to Modern Pinball. Oh, really? I was there once also. I was there, and I was thoroughly impressed. It technically wasn't an arcade. They skirted rules there. It was a showroom where you could buy the games. All the games that were there were available for sale. Yeah, okay. I believe that way they could get away with – they charged a fee to get in, I believe. You didn't have to pay per machine. And they didn't have to pay per machine or whatever. Yeah, it was like a flat entry. They skirted around stuff by doing it that way. And it was co-owned by Steve Epstein and Steve Zahler. Now, by the time I was there, it was 2019, I believe. And that was kind of when Steve Epstein was out of the picture. Yeah, he sold his share to Steve Zahler. It would eventually close due to the 2020 pandemic, which we don't talk about anymore. But it was sad to see that go. I still have my modern pinball t-shirt, actually. I still have a, I got a, what is it? Free play for a day thing for modern somewhere. Nice. Yeah. Nice. It's like my $100 gift card to the Silver Ball. I got it at a tournament somewhere. And it's like, yeah, I'm probably never going to make it there, but sure. Yeah, you don't go to the New York City. I don't go to New York City. Don't want to deal with those people. You got to wear your Sunday best to go down to the city. I don't get it. Don't get the Sunday best. Now, unfortunately, Steve would pass away in 2020 with a battle, after a battle with cancer.
    62:14
    I think Steve got a lot of credit throughout his career, but I don't think he got enough credit throughout his career about all of the things that he added, the cultural influence and touch that Steve had, not just with tournament pinball, but imagine all of the people that went to the Broadway arcade through the 80s and the 90s who are still excited about the hobby today. His cultural influence, not only to pinball, but to Americana in general, I think is a big deal and something that Steve and his family should be happy and proud about. Now, have you met Steve Epstein before he had passed? Oh, yeah, many times. What was he like? He was just an outgoing dude. He was definitely Roger Sharp's friend. Roger Sharp-like, yes. Charismatic and exciting and legitimately happy about his life. Yeah, I went to a couple of his tournaments. He ran a tournament at, oh, what is it called? It won in Asbury Park, the Silver Ball Museum. Cool. Okay. And another one at, I'm trying to think of all these games, the Morristown Game Vault. I think he ran a tournament there that I played in. Yeah, I think I got those right. He just loves evangelizing pinball. And I want to give a nice tip of the hat to Steve Epstein. And I know it being involved in the Roger Sharp episode is just one extra little sprinkle, a little cherry on top of this already phenomenal life and career of Roger Sharp. But Roger didn't stop at all. He kept on plugging away. One of those things was helping a company called Dutch Pinball with the Big Lebowski. Do you remember that? Yeah, I remember. They got the license for the Big Lebowski, and they brought it to Expo. And I remember seeing it and had all this music in it. And I was thinking, wow, they got the licensing for all this music? Well, no, they didn't. They actually didn't at all.
    64:19
    All the artwork? Well, that too. So they misunderstood what they actually bought with the license. Yeah, I think there was some misunderstanding there because I was like, wow, they got all these songs and the license for the movie? This is impressive. Well, they didn't. Yeah, so they got a cease and desist from a few people, which basically said, you haven't paid for any of this license. And Roger Sharp was basically brought in as the fixer. Please help us fix this. In a nutshell, they get the license to make Big Lebowski from, what is it, Fox? And they get ready to make that, and they put the pinball machine together, which, by the way, is a pretty cool pinball machine. They get it all together, and they're super excited. And then all of a sudden, it's like, no, no, no, you didn't pay for a bunch of this stuff. You bought the movie. You didn't buy this stuff. Well, in 2015, Dutch released its newsletter. We are very happy to announce that with the tremendous help of Roger Sharp, we now have the approvals for all the artwork. We are very proud to present you the final play field of the Big Lebowski Pinball. What do they mean, all the approvals on the pinball machine artwork? Well, Dutch had released its original artwork prototype, and it was traveling around to a lot of these licensing shows and pinball shows and stuff. But they had to make some changes because there were a few things in the artwork that were not approved by Universal Studios licensing. So it wasn't Fox, it was Universal. For example, the use of a cannabis leaf, a gun appearing next to John Goodman, the use of the brand name Kahlua as an ingredient for the right Russian cocktail, which is like a it's like a coffee liqueur that's used in right. White Russians. Yeah, not right. Russians. The white Russians. Right. Right. Right. yeah but i i was there at the time and yeah they they had this at expo there was no way they had licensing for a lot of stuff that was in there and roger was bought brought in to fix everything yeah because he had the relationships with universal studios and he can say these guys are pretty good they're just dumb and they don't get it and it's their first game and whatever and he smoothed all that out for them and as we know from 2015 everything ran perfectly smooth for dutch pinball uh nine years later they made the last one they finally made the last person whole that ordered their game which i find amazing now i'm going to do a whole other episode sometime on like dutch pinball i'm going to do another episode like you could do one on the big lebowski itself that with that odyssey exactly so we'll take care of that i don't want to do a deep dive into the big lebowski but i just wanted to bring up the fact that roger sharp is a savior and in fact He also was roped in with American Pinball and Hot Wheels. Yeah, because after Houdini and Oktoberfest, Joe Balser of American Pinball wanted to do a licensed theme to boost sales. So he reached out to Roger Sharp, who gave him a list of themes, and they picked Hot Wheels. Hey, here are some licenses you can get. They wanted to have this pin Hot Wheels to be on location. They wanted it to be a location game. They wanted less stuff to break. They wanted more people to learn about American pinball, and they wanted to get more sales. And the way you sell more of something is you put a familiar IP on it. And I think Hot Wheels was actually a pretty good theme. What do you think? I really like – I love the robot chicken animation stuff. Oh, it was good. Now, I think what let Hot Wheels down was the play field. No, I think what let Hot Wheels down was COVID. That killed the whole reveal for that thing, unfortunately. Yeah, yeah. And there were a couple of things with like, for example, it didn't have any loop-de-loops and it didn't have like a specific toy. And we'll get into that maybe some other episode. But I thought it was a very cool theme in general. I thought the animations were great. I thought the rules were pretty much there. I got a friend who has one and I love playing it every time I play it. It just isn't, it's just kind of missing that one thing. And it's tough to put that on. Now, through the pandemic, that's when we got into something that nobody has ever heard of. And that's called Pinball, the man who saved the game. And what is that? It's a movie. Roger Sharp has a movie based on himself. Does any like pinball, like normie, somebody who knows you play pinball and stuff like that, have they ever come up to you and been like, hey, have you heard of this film? No. Come on. No, actually, I've never seen this film. So I have had, I would say, 10, 12 people come up to me and they're like, hey, you play pinball, right? I'm like, have you seen this pinball movie? Like I haven't seen it, right? They're like, you should see this pinball movie. Or have you seen this pinball movie? It's on my app. Or I've seen it on Google.
    69:18
    And it's so funny how this has brought in people who not necessarily know anything about pinball and they find it particularly interesting. And one of the reasons why they find it interesting is that this film is like a legit film. It has a 95% Rotten Tomatoes review number. It's like a good film. And you haven't seen it. Well, isn't it? It's like a romance film just with pinball elements. That was the key to make people actually want to watch it. Because if you made it just about pinball, no one would watch the thing at all. Yeah, no, that would not probably fly. But this has a little bit less to do with Roger Sharp saving pinball, and it has more to do with the relationship of Roger Sharp and his wife, Ellen, as Roger struggles to rebuild his life as a journalist in New York City. And this stars Michael Faced as Roger Sharp. He has a terrible fake mustache in this movie, which is itself kind of funny and adds to it, I guess. And it has Crystal Reed, who plays Ellen, who I think is phenomenal in this film. The directors did an amazing job. The cast did an amazing job. And it was done on a fairly small budget. The Bragg brothers. They did a great job. Great job. Now, the film debuted in the Hamptons, which is a thing I only know because of Seinfeld, at the Hamptons Film Festival to mostly positive reviews. It was then released in a wide variety of on-demand video services such as Google Video, etc., etc. in early 2023. I've purchased this film on Google Video, watched it with my wife, and she loved this film, and I loved this film as well. The only downside to it was that there's a scene where they bring in Roger and his two sons at the end to kind of sum it up. Oh, aren't the actors that play the sons don't look anything like them? And it's not that they have to look like them, but they definitely made made Zack look better looking in the film than he is in real life. The funny thing is his sons. You have Josh Sharp, who is the CFO of Raw Thrills, who we mentioned earlier. And Zack, his other son, who is the head of marketing for Stern Pinball. How cool would it be to just be like a weird side character in a film about your father's life? although how icky is it that they're talking about your father and mother like you know doing the bad thing so just to tie it up you haven't seen the film are you ever gonna see the film probably someday it's it's on my media center it's sitting there it's just if i it's like hmm hong kong action movie from the 80s or a pinball movie i know which one i'm choosing and it ain't the pinball movie Maybe sometime we should do an episode after you see the film. You can watch the film. And then what we'll do is we'll do a watch-along episode. Oh, God, no. No, no. You don't want to do a watch-along? Maybe Bruce will do a watch-along with me. Well, it's kind of like Jurassic Park. I had never seen Jurassic Park. The original Jurassic Park? How have you not seen Jurassic Park? Yes. So I did finally watch it. It was good. Okay. I mean, the creature effects were good. Still good. Still hold up. Still good to this day. Mind-boggling. But a lot of it was just kind of dumb.
    72:55
    I don't know. I'm a child of Spielberg's best work, let's put it that way. And Raiders of the Lost Ark, this was not. Yeah, totally. You know what I mean? This was not Jaws level.
    73:10
    Roger did so much more in pinball. than save pinball in the 1970s. The marketing, you know, being involved in tournament play, his relationship with Steve Epstein and evangelizing pinball throughout New York City and the Midwest. Like, he's done so much more, and I don't think people give him enough credit for what he's actually done. They just kind of distill it down into two things. He got the T2 license, and he had a movie made about himself. But he's so much more than that, don't you think? well roger says i never thought that what i've been able to achieve over the past 30 years would have been my i guess either my destiny or my legacy in life i have no second thoughts about the way it's gone the fact that both joshua and zachary have taken the mantle is really something special i'm appreciating the fact that they enjoy the industry and come to it with absolute passion and dedication and an earnest belief in not only what it is today currently but what the potential reality is for it in the future that's something that's great roger is a quote machine what's your favorite roger sharp game i said cyclops i like stingray no wrong answer what's your favorite roger sharp license oh i mean t2 yeah totally everything would see that williams made so much money not just in the pinball game but the and that was the days where they actually got the license before the movie came out so they had access to the script so they knew the liquid metal thing was going to happen for the movie came and it was released at the same time the movie was released which never happens anymore that's another thing that's really changed with the licensing they would get the scripts ahead of time and the movies the games could be released at the same time as the movie thank you roger for everything you've done and a tip of the hat to Steve Epstein.
    75:06
    Um, Stewie? Stewie, get over here. We need you. Alright, hold on. Is he sitting on your lap? No comment. I want to shift that over a little bit. As always, you can send your comments, questions, corrections, and concerns to civilworldchronicles at gmail.com We look forward to all your messages and we read every one. What?
    75:31
    Will you say it then? Yes, I will, Stewie. Don't forget, I also have a podcast. It's called Slamtail Podcast. You can check us out. I have to say that or my podcast mate Bruce gets really mad at me. It's okay. Stewie, you can continue. Please subscribe to us on your favorite podcatcher. Turn on automatic downloads so you don't miss a single episode. Remember to leave us a five-star review. That way more people can find us.
    75:58
    Join us on Patreon to support the show. becoming a pro crony is a perfect way to say thanks and it starts at three dollars a month or to get early access to episodes before everyone else have a strange love for stickers do you know what discord is jump on as a six dollar a month premium crony what all the other perks and a shirt after three months join us at twenty dollars a month as an elite crony maybe you just want a t-shirt i understand swing on over to silverwall swag.com and pick up a silverwall chronicles t-shirt roger sharp is hailed it as the man who saved pinball hailed it i did it again I did it last month, too. The first one was Elvira and the Perry Monsters. Oh, oops.
    77:13
    Patchery Monsters. Oh. There. I once saw him without his mustache. What? Yeah, he shaved it briefly. I remember going to, I think it was Florida. Like a Movember thing? And he was there, and he had no mustache. and it was just like, it affected me. It just wasn't right.
    77:35
    And the next time I saw him, it was back again. Like, oh, thank God. That was scary. Do not do that again. I wonder if his family was like, they were probably telling him like, shave your mustache off, we dare you. And then he did. And then they were like, I'll grow that back immediately.
    77:51
    Marketing is hard. But I'll tell you a little secret. It doesn't have to be. Let me point something out. You're listening to a podcast right now, and it's great. You love the host. You seek it out and download it. You listen to it while driving, working out, cooking, even going to the bathroom. Podcasts are a pretty close companion. And this is a podcast ad. Did I get your attention? You can reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre-produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience in their favorite podcasts with Libsyn Ads. Go to LibsynAds.com. That's L-I-B-S-Y-N-Ads.com today.