TOPCast 57: John Borg

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Flash Topcast.

Welcome to another edition of Topcast, the Internet Pinball Radio Show.

Tonight on Topcast we've got a game designer.

Somebody that worked for D.D. Slash, Sega, Slash, Stern,

and designed such games like Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Guns and Roses, Apollo 13,

Harley Davidson, Austin Powers, and the latest games from Stern, including Indiana Jones.

Special guest. Special guest. Special guest. Special guest.

So on Topcast tonight I'd like to welcome John Borg. John Borg, again, was a designer,

did some work for D.D. East, Sega, and Stern, including Star Wars, Jurassic Park,

last action hero, Tails from the Crypt, Guns and Roses, Frankenstein, Apollo 13,

Twister, Mini Viper, the Lost World Jurassic Park, Harley Davidson, Striker Extreme,

Sharky's Shootout, High Roller Casino, and Austin Powers, not to mention Indiana Jones 4.

He's also currently working on some other projects for Stern right now for some games

to be released in the future.

So we're going to get to hear from John Borg tonight on Topcast, and we're going to

give him a call right now on the phone.

Hello. John, can you hear me?

Yes, I have.

Okay, how you doing tonight?

Pretty good, not too bad.

Well, let's go back way in time. I mean, when you were a kid, did you play pinball,

or what steered you down this pinball path?

Well, actually, as far as being in the pinball business, that was just by luck.

I did play pinball quite a bit before I was in the industry.

I was hooked on an old Stern game, Flight 2000, which was quite a while ago, and I'm not

even exactly sure of the manufacturer data that came.

Yeah, it was like 1980, it's a great game.

I was hooked on it.

And then I saw a lot of pinball in the very early 80s.

When I was a teenager in high school, going to the arcades to play things like Pac-Man

and Space Invaders.

And that was where when I started to play probably a lot of pinball.

I saw a lot of old premier games like Genesis and a lot of early Williams games like Funhouse

and Big House and Big Guns and Cyclone and a lot of games like that from the early to

mid 80s.

Then in 87, I was in college and I was looking for a job as a dressman.

I found an ad that was in the Chicago Tribune where a company was looking for a mechanical

engineer.

The ad was very, very brief.

I went to Bensonville, Illinois and I walked into the lobby of this business and there

were pinball backlasses all over the walls in their front lobby.

I discovered that I was at premier technology and I ended up taking the job there when I

was offered another job that offered more money in the hydraulics business.

I just figured that pinball would be a lot more fun to work on than a hydraulic cylinder.

I'm sure anybody would have made that choice.

So you mean the whole thing was just basically lucked the way you got into it?

Absolutely.

Good luck or bad luck, who knows?

Well, I actually good luck.

It's been a lot of fun.

So now what was your first job at Kotlid?

I was a draftsman at Kotlid and let's see.

Ray Tanzer's game, Arena, had just gone offline and we were bringing up a game on the line

that John Trudeau had designed called Victory.

And I think the first game that I actually got to really sick my teeth into was John Norris'

Diamond Lady, which was a really interesting game and John was coming up with some pretty

interesting new innovative game rules at the time and I took a real big interest in it

at that point.

And what, this was 1987?

1987.

Okay.

Yeah, System 80B, yeah.

Uh-huh.

And so now what involvement did you have in Norris' game?

I was laying out ramps, roll under gates, making assembly drawings, working on the bill

materials, doing a little bit of building of the game and assemblies for the game.

Now did you have any college that gave you this experience or this educate?

Actually I was going to college for manufacturing, engineering, drafting and plastics engineering

and I originally wanted to design injection molds for injection molded piece parts.

And when I ended up in pinball, I got to use all of that actually.

Well, like when you make a plastic ramp for pinball, when you're doing this, you know,

like on a pre-production game, how do you actually go through and make the ramps?

Well, the designer at that time would generally lay out the path and say, I want to take the

ball from point A to point B and maybe even produce a rough sketch.

And then the mechanical engineer would turn around and take that drawing and make a nice

top view.

And this, at this time, we were still drawing on a drafting board.

So I would take that sketch, I would do a really nice clean top view and actually dimension

the whole thing.

So we knew what the elevations of the ramp were and then I would develop like a three-view

or a two-view drawing of that, you know, a top and a side view so that a mold maker could

start a tool on it.

And then we would actually go out and make a rough wood prototype tool for it, mold the

part, bring it in and then, you know, tweak it, change it, you know, move it, eliminate

it altogether and, you know, start from scratch or, you know, you know,

go into production.

Yeah, I kind of envisioned the way you made ramps is that, you know, you got to take

a big flat sheet of pet G and kind of cut out the bottom of the ramp.

Make the walls ourselves.

Yeah.

Yeah, we've done that too, you know, even before, sometimes we would do that before going

into tooling.

You know, sometimes we would make the ramps out of metal and then, you know, and then

go into a vacuum form from there.

I've seen ramps made numerous ways.

Right.

Right.

So that's what was basically the type of thing that the type of work that you were doing.

Yes.

And now how did you break into actual game design?

Um, actually I worked at Gottlieb for three years.

I patented a device.

I don't want to John Norris' games.

It was called Light's Camera Action.

It was a section of the play field that actually flipped over and revealed the different side

and took the ball to a different area.

And probably a couple years after that, it was probably about 1990 when Data East was running

in Simpsons.

I went over to talk to Joe Canaco and I was hired there as a mechanical engineer and in

a couple years following that, he promoted me to game design.

Now why did you leave Gottlieb?

Well I was, you know, I really, I was interested in Williams and I saw some of the Data East games

that were coming up and, you know, I wanted to work at Williams.

I actually applied at Williams and I actually, you know, applied at Data East and Williams

never called me and never did talk to them.

But I did get to talk to Joe and I just fed to make the move to Data East.

Now, at the time, I mean, you were, it sounds like you liked the Williams games better

than the Gottlieb games.

Yes.

Okay.

And now, did you play the Data East games?

How did you feel about those?

I liked them.

Actually, I liked all of them.

Laser War was really interesting.

Secret Service, I liked that game.

I even liked Torquillo Alley, which a lot of people thought was, you know, not one of

their stronger games.

And then the camera, what came after that time machine was unbelievable.

Yeah, great game.

You know, to this day, one of my, one of my favorite games.

Now when Williams came out with that Bride of Pinbot, with the face that rotated, was

that kind of reminiscent of what you did for Light's Camera Action?

The face on Bride of Pinbot.

Bride of Pinbot, yes.

And actually, Gil Pollock, who was the president of Gottlieb at the time, actually, you know,

when we saw it, we knew that the patent was infringed upon.

And Pollock was able to use Williams' replay boost or automatic percentages, which was

a Williams patent at the time that was their trade-off.

Oh, you mean they actually like traded?

Okay, you can use that if I can use this.

You can print down our patent.

We want this.

So you're going to let us have it or you're going to pay us money.

So that's pretty much what it came down to.

And were they pretty open to that?

Yes, I believe so.

I don't know all the legalities.

I didn't, you know, I was just drawing lines and circles and involved and, you know,

can vault the time so I didn't get too involved in that, but that was the result of it.

Now how was the company philosophy at Gottlieb compared to the DADEs when you went over?

I mean, was there a big social change in thinking on how games were designed?

Yeah, Gottlieb was a little more conservative.

You know, they had their ideas of what a good game was.

And I think, you know, Camel and the guys, they were a little more loose and a little

more daring, if you will.

Yeah, I can see that.

I can see the daring.

Uh-huh, sure.

Okay.

And now, was there anything at Gottlieb that you really didn't like?

I mean, that was really like, oh, you know, like dreaded?

The flippers.

You know, Williams and DADEs pretty much had the, you know, the same type of a flipper

unit.

And, you know, Gottlieb had those old bats when I first started there.

And they're, they're flipper units where I think at the time they were running on 24

vaults instead of 50, you know, they were never as strong.

We could never put his tall of a ramp on a game.

And then I actually designed the newer Gottlieb flipper unit and that that had the word

Gottlieb printed across it and it had a screw in the middle that actually held it to the

shaft.

It wasn't molded to a shaft.

Wait, wait.

So, you did not like what I call the fat boy flippers and you're the one that designed

the skinny boy flippers.

Yes.

Uh-huh.

And I remember, um, I can't remember his name.

He was a designer from Valley.

He has recently passed away.

His name escapes me at the moment, but I remember he teased me about that newer, skinnier bat

that I designed for Gottlieb.

He called him, he says, why'd you put the name of a company on him?

He goes, you know, and that was what I was told to do.

But, um, he called him, he didn't call him flippers, he called him, the Gottlieb's.

Huh.

Now, what, what was the advantage to these new skinny boy flippers?

They were styled a little closer to what the data east and Williams flipper was.

Uh, they eventually went to 50 volts with the, you know, with the system.

Right.

Um, they wanted to make them look a little more like a data east slash Williams flipper,

but they didn't want to carry them.

Right.

So, you mean it was mostly an aesthetic change?

Yes.

Uh-huh.

But the mechanics changed, too, right?

Yeah, the mechanics changed, too.

And you redesigned the mechanics, too?

Yes.

Okay, now what typo, I mean, because those Gottlieb flippers, they do have a different

feel than the Williams and the data east ones.

I mean, was that on purpose?

Uh, no, that's just the way it came out.

And, uh, you know, Gottlieb approved the unit and they liked it, you know, better than

the old one and just decided to go into production with it.

And they were happy with it at that point.

Okay.

So now you're over at data east and you're basically doing the similar type of work there?

Yes.

Same thing.

Mechanical engineer slash draftsman.

When I first started the work there, Joe Camichot, I worked in Joe Camichot's office

with him because they didn't have any room for me at the time.

We're in a pretty small facility.

So I sat in Joe Camichot's office and worked with him.

So that was pretty interesting.

Uh, the first thing that I worked on with, uh, with Joe, he was going to license a game,

uh, a theme called Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, which later became Jurassic Park.

So what I did was I was designing a, he just kind of let me run free.

He wanted me to design a dinosaur that, uh, that ate a pinball.

So I designed a dinosaur that moved back and forth and I put a magnet in the back of

its mouth.

I actually used a Godzilla model.

It was probably about a foot tall at the time, uh, cut it down and I made a little

sound. We actually still have it.

Um, I put a magnet in the back of its mouth so it could pick a ball up in its mouth.

Uh, it rotated back and forth and it bent over, picked up a ball with a magnet and

then it moved over and deposited into a different area.

And then another feature was I made the arms throw pinballs, which later came,

um, came out on the Frankenstein pinball.

It was like a feature that was, uh, from the Jurassic Park dinosaur originally.

And I used it in a later game.

Now, did Joe know at the time that he was getting Jurassic Park or is it just how it worked out?

He didn't, um, he didn't, but probably, maybe about a year after I started there,

he had been talking to Spielberg and he took the hook license to get the Jurassic Park

license.

Oh, you mean he didn't really want hook?

Uh, no, not necessarily.

Hmm.

I never really liked that game much.

He took hook to get, uh, to get to, uh, Jurassic Park and hook actually turned out to be a really good game.

I don't, I never really liked it, you know, no, uh, the hook, hook, hook thing irritates me.

Uh, you know, it's mostly the voice calls more than, than,

than any other, than, you know, than the gameplay or anything else, but the voice just gets to me after a little while.

Yeah, we didn't get license, we didn't get, uh, uh, likenesses of Robin Williams.

Um, you know, so it was kind of a, you know, a generic Peter Pan game, if you will, but, you know, had a, you know,

a nice big, squirrely ramp with the chaser lights on it and then had the ramp on the right side with the clock, the crack clock.

And, um, I was actually kind of surprised it turned out as well as it did and sold as well as it did.

Were you responsible for the chaser lights?

No, uh, Tim Seckle.

That was, that was his baby.

Yeah, because they use that in the Star Trek next gen or earn not next gen.

Star Trek, uh, 25 Star Trek, uh, huh?

Right, right, right.

Yes.

Now, why couldn't they get Robin Williams to do voiceovers for that?

Um, I don't know if they didn't get his light, his likeness either.

Um, I do not remember the story, the exact story behind that.

Um, and the name of those, the girl, which I should know what that escapes me to.

She was Tinkerbell and hook, uh, Julia Roberts.

Right.

They didn't have her likeness either.

Right.

Right.

So Paul pretty much painted a generic, uh, looking, you know, Peter Panish backlash.

Right.

Right.

Well, so now what was all of these games that you did in the mechanical, you know,

engineering and the dry, you know, the designs and the drawings on, what's the one that you're most proud of?

Um, I would have to say, uh, Star Wars.

Um, but you're the game designer for Star Wars, too, aren't you?

Yes.

Yes.

Uh, huh?

No, uh, that was probably my favorite game, um, you know, back in the day.

Well, you know, I got to say this that as far as game designers go, you have to be either the nicest guy in the world or the luckiest guy in the world because man, did, did you get all the good ones?

I mean, you got Star Wars, you got Jurassic Park, you got Tales from the Crip, you got Guns and Roses, you got a pile of 13.

I mean, I mean, you got Harley Davidson and Austin Powers and now you have your, your latest game.

Um, I mean, you're like, you got to have like Pat Lawler hitting his head against the desk.

You know, um, yeah, probably, probably.

Um, yeah, I really kind of lucked out, um, getting the Indie license and it's kind of ironic because my first game, which was Star Wars, you know, was a, you know, a Harrison Ford,

you know, Harrison Ford was in Star Wars, Harrison Ford's in Indiana Jones.

Um, so and then this is my first game in seven years.

So, you know, it's kind of ironic that I start out again with a, you know, with a Harrison Ford quote unquote license.

So, uh, pretty interesting.

I'm really, really happy about it.

I was really glad to get the title.

Well, now how did you get Star Wars?

I mean, how did you get that that?

I mean, that is very interesting.

When I started on my first game, which was Star Wars, it was actually Jurassic Park.

And in the place of where the death star is in the game was where I had my ball eating and ball tossing dinosaur.

So I had that laid out in the game.

Um, then I had a ramp laid out and, uh, some ball scoops and upkickers and whatnot.

And then I would think I had worked on it for probably three, three, four months.

And then Joe told me that I was going to trade off and the Jurassic Park license wasn't going to happen.

And I was going to do Star Wars instead.

So I turned my Jurassic Park layout into Star Wars.

Now, did you design on the apps that side of the play field?

And that's where I decided to put the R2D to model.

Yeah. And that's what I was going to say.

Did you, did you design it?

Are that bobbing turning RT?

Yeah, originally it tilted back and forth.

There were two coils that pulled the left side down and the right side down.

Okay.

We ended up cost cutting it and just pulled it down from the center.

Now, how, how perfect display effect of R2D to moving?

You know, he tilted left and right.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

And we ended up not changing that for production.

And we ended up changing the unit to just operate off of one coil.

Right.

So that would just, you know, bounce up and down from the center point.

Now, how much cost cutting was there and like, say, got leap compared to data ease when you, when you design something?

Um, the got leap games, they seem to, uh, they seem to, you know, design, uh, you know, allow their bill material.

Um, and they seem to always, you know, pretty much hit.

We didn't do a whole lot of cost cutting at Gallaudet.

They were, they were pretty much designed and built and a few things taken out here and there.

But, um, not quite as drastic as data east.

Um, you know, data east, we used to just go crazy and then we'd find out what the game cost.

And if it was just way over budget, we had to, you know, we were always scrambling at the last minute to try to, you know,

pull money out or do something here or there to, you know, get the game to our cost.

Well, when you say pull money out, the bill material was a little smaller at Gallaudet.

It was a data east.

Well, when you say pull money out, I mean, typically like if you were over budget on something, are we talking like $5, $10?

Are we talking like $50?

Oh, probably more like $50.

Yeah.

So you really did shoot high then.

13 is a good example.

Um, I designed a unit.

When you look at the middle of a pile, 13 play field, there is a picture of the moon and the earth.

Right.

And those were counter rotating plate spinning platters.

So we ended up yanking that out of a pile, 13 to get the game at cost.

So there were actually, uh, and I have one of them.

There were actually five or six play fields where we had those openings cut out there.

We had those counter rotating units in place.

And we cost cut that at the last minute before production.

We sent those original five or six boards back had the holes plugged up and then had them re screened.

Huh.

And did you end up using them put the play field up and you look at the bottom.

You can see where they patched in the earth and the moon.

What would now that was like a fireball or what?

A whirlwind type thing, right?

Yes.

Right.

Right.

And how did that affect the gameplay?

Um, not too much really.

Not too much.

You know, the ball with the counter rotating moon, the moon was rather small.

So you got a lot of ball spin off of the earth, which was larger, but the moon really didn't do much because it was such a small diameter.

Right.

But really not too much.

Okay.

So now you after Star Wars, you ended up, or by the way, did you meet any of the the cast or characters of Star Wars?

Um, I get to meet George Lucas.

I passed up.

I'm going to my 10 year reunion for high school to go out to Skywalker Ranch and tour the ranch and meet George Lucas.

So that was a pretty, that was a pretty easy trade off.

So why did you go out even after meet anybody?

We went out to present the game to him.

So we, uh, we had the opportunity.

I think it was learning, uh, Neil Falconer, uh, who programmed Star Wars, Joel, myself and a couple other people.

Uh, Marcus Rothgren, the artist.

We all got to go out there and we got to actually present the game to George Lucas.

What was his reaction?

Oh, he really liked it.

And he's, uh, he was pretty nonchalant about it.

He walked in and we talked with him for a little while.

You know, we demonstrated the game and he walked off and I thought, well, you know, he wasn't jumping up and down or anything.

But when after he left, his people told us that that was a great reaction from George, that he was very pleased.

So,

I'm sure George Lucas has, uh, you know, every day he probably has, uh, you know, quite a few things to look at.

Um, but, you know, the Star Wars package was so good.

You know, there wasn't much to not like about it.

You know, the display effects were great, but, you know, the play field played nice.

Um, and it was a good looking game.

Yeah, it sold really well.

It sold over 10,000 units in ball with us.

Pardon me?

That was Marcus Rothkran's first art package with the data east.

Oh, okay.

And he did quite a few with us after that.

Now, after that, you did get Jurassic Park.

How did that come about?

Um, yeah, we did eventually get Jurassic Park.

And, uh, Ed Sibula.

Ed Sibula did the, you know, the main portion of a layout on that game.

And then, uh, Joe Balls are in myself, uh, helped him with mechanics on it.

Hmm.

Now, your dinosaur morphed.

You didn't weren't using the magnet or the throwing arms.

Oh, how, tell me about that.

Right.

Yeah, that would be unit then at that time.

Um, we were a little bit behind the gun at time.

And, uh, we were working with a company called Partech.

And they did most of the design for the dinosaur unit.

Hmm.

That came out pretty good, though.

Our mechanical assemblies at the time.

Right.

And, uh, and they actually did the mechanics for the dinosaur unit itself with, uh, you know, with Ed Sibula.

But that dinosaur came out really well.

Yeah, I did.

And, you know, the only problem that we had with it early on was, uh, the center switch that aligned it with the hole that it picked the ball about of.

Um, sometimes the unit would, uh, would tear off the actuator.

And there was a simple solution to that.

And, uh, I wish we would have, uh, discovered it a little sooner.

Hmm.

Now, what was the next game that you really got pulled people still talk about it a lot this day?

Yeah, great, great game.

Similar to it, you know, in the future.

Yeah, I mean, the whole Jurassic Park, I mean, you really nailed that theme great.

Oh, yeah.

And the multi ball was great in the chaos mode was great.

Uh, had a nice cast gun on the machine and the smart missile was, uh, that was, uh, uh, Joe Canico idea.

The smart missile would help you knock out one of the chaos letters while you were trying to get to your super jackpot.

And, uh, it was a all around great game.

Yeah, I agree.

Nice package.

So what was the next game that you got, you know, full control over?

Let's see.

Um, last action.

Star Wars tails from the crypt.

But what did you do on last action hero?

Um, I designed the crane unit.

Uh, and that was about it on that game.

So you were still doing a lot of mechanics, even though in not necessarily a lot of game design.

Everybody with their games in between my games.

Gotcha.

So, you know, I did all the mechanics with Timmy, uh, Tim Sekel on hook.

Um, I worked on Batman and I worked on Star Trek and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Um, Batman forever.

Uh, quite a few of them.

So I got my hand when I wasn't working on my own game.

I was helping somebody else with a ramp or a mechanical device or something on their game.

So I was, I was very busy.

Right.

Now what did tell me about tails from the crypt?

Um, tails from the crypt, uh, let's see.

Started out, um, with the 180 ramp on the right side was actually a lot longer.

Uh, didn't have such a small opening.

We ended up adding another shot to start multi-ball next to it, which shrunk it up a little bit.

And I just actually read something recently on the internet.

Some guy had come in and I shot the, uh, the 180 vertical ramp ten times in a row without it dropping into the little, uh,

what do they call it?

They called it the cow catcher or something like that.

If the, if the ball went around the 180 ramp it didn't quite make it.

It would drop down and feed into the other wire ramp.

Right.

And return it to the right flipper.

But I got ten shots in a row.

And the 180 ramp brought the ball to the right flipper.

And then I would pass it over to the left flipper and then shoot the right ramp, the 180 ramp again.

And I got ten shots in a row and somebody had sent me this email that somebody had written.

It was quite a few years ago.

They were, uh, digging on the internet and they found this, this article and they sent it to me.

And I actually remembered it.

So, and that was, uh, 1993, 1994 I think when, when, when Crypt came off.

Right.

Uh, John Casseur.

Uh, I had lived a lot of the speech for the game.

You know, the no-pay, no-game.

And, uh, the hack pot and he, uh, you know, he took our speech list and he took it to New Heights.

So that was a lot of fun.

And then I remember, uh, the door handle on the game, which was how you shot the ball into play.

Right.

I, uh, just had this idea.

I wanted to, I wanted to do a, a mystery door feature where you would, uh, see,

three doors come into the display and you, you pick a door with your flipper and then you would actually

activate it and open a door with a door handle and that ended up being the shooter for the game.

And so they have a plunger or a fire button.

It was a door handle and then we molded the crypt keepers head to go over it.

So, uh, the, uh, the lever where you pushed the door handle down was actually his tongue.

Started mucking it up, Camaco.

So, you are out of your mind.

What, what is the cost on that to get stuff like that done?

Um, you know, the door handle was actually purchased from a company called QuickSet,

which if you look at your own door handle on your own house, uh, the 50% chance of the QuickSet.

Right.

So that was actually purchased item.

Uh, I think the first one we got from, uh, you know, on the Nards or Home Depot.

And then we just molded the, uh, the head for it.

We casted the first bunch and then we did an injection mold for it.

It's the purpose of production.

So, for production, it isn't actually a QuickSet, is it?

Yes.

Really?

Yes.

If your door handle broke, you could go to a hardware store and you could replace it with another one.

Ha, ha.

Isn't that sound?

Yeah.

Now, how often does that happen in game design?

At game.

We were bringing in door handles from QuickSet and we were throwing up a knob that went on the opposite set.

And I'm sure our dumpster at the end of the day was full of them.

So, it was an actual, you know, genuine QuickSet door handle.

You know, we didn't manufacture it.

We didn't make it.

Uh, they did it for us.

How often did things like that happen?

Uh, once in a blue moon.

Not very often.

Generally, you know, if we do a custom part like that, it's, you know, like a gun, for instance.

You know, we worked with Hap controls on a lot of those assemblies and they were casted.

And some of them were, you know, made in China.

The die castings.

So, you know, generally, it was a custom part.

We went through, we worked with Hap to produce it.

But generally, you know, we didn't buy many parts from QuickSet.

Well, how many, like, yeah, how many parts would actually come from like, you know, little toy trinkets and stuff like that?

Back then, hardly any.

We didn't really put, you know, like, you know, in today's world, we're, you know, we're purchasing a lot of toys from companies.

And then in the, probably the mid-90s, I think it was like after Twister, we met Dave Link from Evolution Studios.

And he's here in the Chicago area.

And he did some really nice sculpting work for us.

And, and actually still does.

And he actually did the sculpture for the arc of the covenant that's on Indygame today.

So, we still work with Dave.

But we met Dave and, you know, we saw some of his work and, you know, we had to have him work with us.

So, like the RT...

We would have met him before we did Twister because we did that big canister on the Twister game that held the balls, that locked the balls from all to ball.

And it was just a really rough cast of things with some decals on it.

And if we would have had Dave do that part, it would have looked a lot more realistic.

Now, what about the RT-D2? Was that custom made for you guys?

That was injection molded.

And we just put a decal on it to make it look like RT-D2.

The original one that I did for that, Kurt Anderson, which was one of the artists, he made the...

He just gave me a flat of what RT-D2 looked like, you know, from the head down.

And I just took a piece of buteret and added some holes and heated it up with a heat gun into a half circle.

And that's where that came from.

And then we decided that we were doing pretty good numbers back then.

So we made up an injection molded part for the body itself.

And the head.

And the head was a two-piece mold.

The blue insert on the inside was one.

And then the chrome outer piece was a little separate tool.

Is that stuff pretty expensive?

Yes.

So you've got to have the numbers in production to do that.

Pardon me?

Especially if you do it in the States, it's more expensive.

Right.

But a lot of our injection molded pieces are coming out of China today.

And they're a little more economical.

So that's better for us right now.

Because the more we can put in the game, the merrier.

Right.

Now what was your involvement with guns and roses?

Slash actually contacted us for the guns and roses license.

Slash was really into pinball.

He has probably about 20, 25 games throughout his house.

And he actually contacted us about the license for guns.

And while we were working on the game, he came out to a date east

and spent a couple of evenings with us.

And we were sketching things together and talking

and trying to get a feel for what he wanted to see on the game.

I remember the second time Joe and I went out to his house in L.A.

and we got to see his house and his pinball machine collection.

And then there's an interesting story there, too.

It was right after the earthquake in 93 in L.A.

And Joe and I were at his house.

And the slash had a pet cougar named Curtis.

It was about, maybe about six, seven months old,

about the size of a German shepherd.

And he was just walking around the house, like a house cat.

And he walked alongside of me and rushed up against me like a house cat.

So I started to pet him.

And so I squat down next to him, that was pet him.

He laid down on the side and rolled over and was back like a dog.

So I started to pet his stomach.

Don't ever pet a cougar on his stomach.

Before I knew it, his paw came up around the back of my neck.

And that cat flipped me upside down and was on top of me with his jaw on my neck within seconds.

I just froze.

I didn't try to fight it or pull away or push him off or anything.

I just laid there because I knew that if I did anything, I'd probably have been over.

So if you ever get a chance to pet a cougar, don't pet him on the belly.

Okay, so the slash has a pet cougar and is the thing full grown now?

I don't think he has it anymore.

I would be pretty certain that he probably had given it to a zoo

or something like that.

Because I'm sure that as he got to be about a year old, you know,

instincts take over and I'm sure that by that time he had gotten pretty big.

So my best guess would be that he probably doesn't have him anymore.

And what was Joe Camaco's reaction and Slash's reaction when the cougar did this to you?

I think Joe just about had a heart attack

and Slash just yelled at Curtis and said, get off.

Like he was a dog or something.

And he did.

He just told me to go get off Curtis.

And then that was the end of it.

I got up and I caught my breath and I was like, okay, that just happened.

So that'll be something that I will never forget for the rest of my life.

That was an interesting deal.

Did he say after the fact that's a bad idea?

Don't pet their stomach.

He really didn't say anything after that.

And even if he did, I probably wouldn't have remembered it

because that was kind of a little bit of a shock at the time.

But definitely a memorable experience.

And I'll never pet a cougar on this belly again.

Yeah, I would think maybe you should never pet a cougar again.

What involvement did you have on the Guns and Roses design?

What involvement did you have in Guns and Roses?

Pretty much everything.

I laid out the G&E R ramps and the whole play field.

I left out a little sketch of different things that he wanted on the game.

And one of them, which ended up in the game, was one of the snake pit.

And then Guns and Roses, actually the first layout was a narrow game.

Standard play field.

And we ended up turning it into a wide body.

And when I did that, instead of stretching out the whole game,

I just added the snake pit ramp, the green ramp to the left side with a little bowl up at the top.

And then I added the rose plunger to the left side of a cabinet.

So I actually lucked out.

There were a couple of games that one of them went from a wide to a narrow.

And then mine was one of the games that went from a narrow starting out on paper to a wide body game.

So I lucked out.

I just added the extra lane to the one side and the little bowl ramp and made it feed into the orbit shot.

Now what was the thinking behind Guns and Ramp?

What was the thinking to go from a narrow to a wide body game?

At the time, Williams had come out with, I think it was Twilight Zone.

I believe.

And so we wanted to try a wide body game as well.

So I guess, more or less, you could say we followed our competition.

You know, Zenith makes a 36-inch tube or a 50-inch wide screen.

You know, Sony's got to go that way or what not.

So we were just kind of, I guess we were following our competition.

And so I was in the middle of the layout with Guns and Roses and they said,

we're going to make a wide body game out of it.

And I was like, all right, you know, the more room the merrier, you know, as far as I'm concerned.

How much did a wide body cost for billi-materials compared to a standard?

Our bond really didn't increase.

We just had to kind of spread out our money a little better.

You know, the cabinet was probably just a little bit more expensive.

The back box was the same, you know, the same size as a standard.

And then I guess, you know, we more or less had to spread the parts over a larger area.

But I don't think our cost was any different.

I think it stayed the same.

Now, on the shooter lane ramp, what was the reasoning for not putting a switch at the very top end of that ramp?

You know, sometimes where you get that problem, where you get multiple balls stacking up,

and they can't get the balls all the way up the ramp?

Yes, we actually made a different ramp that delivered the ball and stood into the top lanes,

just went up and over and fed it into the orbit lane.

Because we had problems getting balls out of that ramp.

Originally, there was a lock ball unit all the way up into the area where the ball fed into the top lanes.

And I was actually locking six balls up there.

The up kicker that was over on the right, it was another shot where you collected your band members.

That area was going to be...

You were going to make that same shot to collect your band members,

but the ball was shooting up and feeding into the other wire ramp.

And they were actually locking up there in a mechanism.

But we ended up pulling that out at the end.

That was a cost cut.

So that unit ended up coming out.

Why would they just put a switch at the top of that lane, though,

so it didn't have like two balls in the shooter lane trying to get them up?

That would have been a good idea.

But it was like Guns and Roses.

I think I did Guns and Roses in four months,

where generally a designer would have six, eight, and months, a year to do a game.

Guns and Roses came up and it was in production pretty quick.

But yes, the second switch in the shooter lane would have been a great idea.

Or maybe even a software change, where if a ball got into the shooter lane

and kicked up the ramp and didn't make it, you'd wait a little while

and initialize multiple a little slower.

But if you got a ball in the ramp and it didn't make it,

don't send a second ball into the shooter lane.

Or a third or a fourth.

That could have been controlled with software, too.

Yeah, because they stack up in there and then the game's hopelessly.

Yeah, and that's a really strong coil kicking those balls through that ramp.

What would have been even better is that that wire ramp was a vacuum form ramp.

So there wasn't so much drag on the ball itself.

And we were kicking that ball up pretty high all the way to the back of the game.

So that was kind of risky.

Now why did you go with a wire form versus a vacuum form?

You know what? I can't even answer that question.

I don't know.

But it started out as a wire and by the time we had a problem with it,

we were at production.

So instead of going and redesigning and making a big tool for a vacuum form ramp there,

we just ended up making a shorter ramp.

So the ball didn't have to travel as far.

Change the plating, too, right?

Yeah, it was powder coated.

So you changed it to chrome to make it smoother.

And then we ended up going, we changed it to chrome because it seemed like the ball,

instead of the ball seemed to be able to skid and slide better on the chrome plated ramp

than the powder coated ramp.

Right. So that actually helped, too.

Cool game, though. I mean, I think that was a really well done.

Yeah, it is a good game.

And actually their resale value is really good right now.

Yeah.

And I wish I would have had a little more time to play with all my games.

They all seemed to star wars.

I had a lot of time on in the very beginning.

And it seemed like after that, it was four months, five months.

Twister came up really fast, too.

And I got lucky that Twister came out as well as it did.

But that game came up really fast, too.

I think I spent four months on that game.

Well, now the next one you did after this looks like was Frankenstein, right?

Yeah.

Okay, tell me about that game a little.

Frankenstein, I got a script for Frankenstein and read it.

And I was having a little bit of a problem,

picturing Robert De Niro as the monster, as the creature.

Yeah.

And I liked the story.

I thought it was really good.

And I was looking for, you know, I was trying to think of a really good mechanism to put in the game.

And then the creature itself.

And then I brought back that old ball tossing feature from Jurassic Park,

the Jurassic Park dinosaur that I originally designed when I started there.

And that worked out pretty well.

And actually that was another unit that had a little cost going,

because it originally, I made the head rotate back and forth with a servo motor,

like on a remote control car.

And the unit had a DC motor that actually turned the whole unit.

So the whole creature, you know, arms body had an all with turn to the left,

and then you could turn the head all over the right.

And it was, you know, a little bit more animated.

But we ended up removing that prior to production as a cost savings.

And then it was kind of like a safety too,

because we were worried about registering the arms with the little shoots that fed the ball into the hands.

So it was probably a, you know, a little safer thing to do.

And, you know, we had to find a little money in the game too.

And then, you know, following that,

the dot matrix was costing us probably about $60 a game more than the standard size one that we used today.

So, you know, head, we had the small dot matrix at that time.

We might have had that part of the mechanical unit in for the creature.

Now, how did you feel about the large dot matrix?

I love it.

The, you know, the display, you know, when you digitize, especially now,

if we, you know, digitize a scene from a movie,

you just get to see so much more of it.

You know, really large images will show up better.

You know, you don't have to worry about, remember the really early dot matrix?

The really small one.

Right.

The size of the standard one.

Yeah, like, look, we would show a face and we would have to, you know, scroll the image down.

So you could see exactly what you were looking at.

Right.

You could see like the eyes and the top of the head and then you'd scroll it up and you, you know,

oh, that was a face, you know.

So, but I really like the large dot matrix.

I, you know, I wish we could get it back, but it's expensive.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, a lot of money.

Yeah.

And I probably drove the probe.

The D screen would be nice and, you know, who knows, maybe in the future, you know,

if they start to come down a little bit, you know, that may be the next generation.

Yeah, but then you got a lot more programming, right?

A lot more programming, yes.

Right.

Right.

Which means more time, which means more money.

Yep.

More employees.

Yeah.

So, you never know.

All right, we're going to take a little break from talking with John Borg, the game designer,

and we'll be right back after this message.

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All right, we're back with John Borg and more of his design stories.

Were you pretty happy with the Frankenstein and how he turned out?

Yeah, yeah.

Now, the next part was Apollo 13.

Now, that is a killer game.

Yes, yes, and I still have mine.

And I really love that game.

I actually got to meet Jim Levol.

And we actually presented him.

We took his game to his house set up in his basement and demonstrated it for him.

He signed backlasses and rockets for a few of us.

So I did, Joe Pauls were handled the main layout for the game.

Robert Toddle assisted him with it.

And then I did all the toys.

I designed the rocket and the moon unit.

And then the double spinning disc that I talked about earlier.

The counter rotating earth and moon, which ended up getting me inked out at the end.

In the ball load for the 13 ball, multi ball, it's in the upper left hand corner that's your design too.

No, that ball is your design.

Okay.

Yeah, I was going to ask you why they used those membrane switches for that.

You know, I think it was a real estate problem.

And it would have been nice if we would have had aptos up there.

But we weren't really using them very much if at all, at that point.

Right.

I think the only place at that time we used an apto was maybe in the...

the trough, the out-hole trough.

Yeah, the first state of East Game with aptos was that western game, I...

with all the drop targets, forget the name.

Maverick.

Yeah, Maverick.

Yes, uh-huh.

Yeah.

Which was probably only a couple games before Apollo 13.

Yeah, you know, the membrane switches, they're actually in twist or two.

And, you know, like in my home games, I've never had any problems with them.

But I hear that they do wear out and eventually have to be replaced.

And when you have to replace them, you know, they're, they have an adhesive on the bottom.

Right.

You have to, you know, it's probably quite a job to get them off.

You know, you probably have to tear them off.

And then we've got to take mineral spirits and clean all the, you know, all the adhesive off.

Yeah.

And then we place them.

Yeah, I had to replace them on my game.

Yeah.

Yeah, you can replace them, uh-huh.

Yeah, because a couple of the switches, um, couple of switches didn't work.

And it kind of, it confuses the game if a couple of, you know, you'll have, you know, whatever it's ball, you know, uh-7 through 13.

And if ball number 9 and 10 don't work, the game kind of gets whacked out.

Uh-huh.

Yeah, sure.

So.

Yeah, I worked on somebody else's game recently that they had a similar problem.

I mean, the game will still work, but it just, it gets, um,

takes longer for it to load that mechanism and understand that all the balls are there.

Uh-huh.

Uh-huh.

It figures it out eventually because, you know, if, if seven isn't working in, in six and eight are, you know, it kind of guesstimate.

Yeah.

Yeah, it figures that if, you know, two are there and then two are missing and then the next one's there that, you know, that the two switches that aren't working, there has to be a ball there.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So how was it to replace that?

Did you have to, you know, was it easy to tear off or, it was, paint scraper to it or, yeah, I think I actually used a razor blade to be honest with you.

Um, yeah, and you're right, you gotta get it off and you gotta get all the heats of off and then you gotta stick the new one down and make sure you stick it in the right place.

And, uh, yeah, it's a, it's a little stressful.

Really good for getting that glue off.

Right, right.

Yeah.

Yeah, but I mean it worked out on the end, but those switches are expensive now.

Yeah.

I don't know what the replacement cost is on those, but, um, I know that they, you know, like if we go back and have to make them for, you know, part sales, you know, we buy in a small quantity, they are pretty expensive.

Right.

So, yeah.

All right, so then you did the twister.

What, what was your involvement in the twister?

Um, twister, um, that was another game that came up quick.

I didn't have any time to change it, um, but it came out pretty well, shot pretty well.

And then I received a pen on the, uh, the magnetic spinning disc.

Um, I wanted to do something different with, uh, you know, with a spinning platter.

And I came up with the, you know, the idea of, you know, putting a magnet as a, as a center core.

Right.

Um, but of course, you know, I remember the, uh, the old days, the old got-lived days when they did Monte Carlo and they had the, uh, the roulette wheel and they had the little wiper board.

Right.

They had problems with, so I couldn't do anything like that with the magnet.

Um, so I ended up keeping the magnet stationary and just running the core up through the center.

So the magnet didn't have to spin with the unit.

Right.

And, uh, we actually got a patent on that.

Huh.

And that, that unit, uh, you know, worked pretty well.

It was, it was pretty, pretty cool to watch.

Especially when you got five balls on the platter.

Now, how long would it take to get a patent?

Um, now it takes probably a year and a half, two years before you actually receive it.

After you send it out, um, I think back then it was probably about a year.

Huh.

Before it was actually, uh, before you actually receive word, you know, and, uh, you don't got to see how many claims, uh, you know, that you filed that were accepted.

Right.

Right.

Now, you, you also had some involvement with Mini Viper, right?

Yes.

So what was, uh, what made out Mini Viper?

They, uh, we built the game, uh, or in day program, we took it to a show and a couple of customers says,

why didn't you guys make it, uh, a normal size game?

We were just trying to, uh, make a smaller footprint for, uh, you know, a tavern owner.

And, uh, they, you know, our customers, distributors, you know, were like, how can you didn't make it a normal size game?

So, uh, it, you know, it ended up, you know, it ended up, uh, you know, being canned and, uh, a couple years later, uh, Robert Tato designed a full size Liper game.

Now, was this, how much, uh, one that, uh, we made is, I think, the only one that we ever built.

And, uh, I don't know who, I can, I can't think of the name of the person who bought it.

But, cool, uh, but he did a few modifications to it and, uh, uh, and still has it.

It's gonna, uh, in a stainless collection, I believe.

Now, what, what was the, did Safe Cracker have a big influence on this?

Uh, no, actually not.

No? Did you guys even, you know, I mean, this came out of, I remember, I remember Safe Cracker.

Uh, that was, that was, that was pretty interesting little project.

Uh, that, that pet designed.

Right.

But it was about the same size as Mini Viper.

Um, you know what? I, I actually, I don't remember.

I don't remember what the dimensions of that play field where I thought that was a, I know it was smaller, but I thought Mini Viper was quite a bit smaller than it.

Hm. Got it.

And that was the only one that they ever made of that style, I believe.

Right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I didn't, you know, for whatever reason though it is really a cool game like you said, but yeah, they didn't take that any further.

They were going to that was gonna be like a platform, but they just never progressed with it.

Uh-huh.

You know, but, all right, so then it looks like you did the, the lost world, you know, the second Jurassic Park game, right?

Yes.

Yeah.

Tell me a little bit about that one.

Back for a second to, uh, to Twister.

Oh, sure.

I was lucky enough to be able to go down and I got to go on a couple of the Twister sets.

Um, I was able to meet Bill Paxon and they, uh, they, they, someone we got there, they sent us to a, they sent us to, um,

a cafeteria that was, I could, they had purchased a, uh, a school or they were renting an old abandoned school or something like that.

And, uh, they said, go to this building and, you know, Bill will meet you there at such and such a time.

And Bill came walking into the cafeteria while Joe and I and Brian Schmidt were there singing pinball wizard.

And then he grabbed us and took us out and we were walking around on a couple of the sets and we went over to Helen Hunt's trailer and they'll walked up to the trailer and he pounded on the door and she goes, who is it?

And he goes, it's me Bill.

He goes, the pinball guys are here and she opened up the door and she was in curlers getting ready for a set, getting ready for a take.

So, uh, that was pretty, pretty exciting.

So, I was able to, you know, I was able to meet Bill and, uh, and Helen.

Were they, were they pretty, uh, pretty friendly?

Oh, very. Yeah, both of them were.

And were they into the pinball thing?

It's your average run of them. They'll, you know, happy go lucky guy. He was, he was really nice.

And were they into the pinball?