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Steve Ritchie Take 2 - Dutch Pinball Open Expo 2025 - Pinball News

Pinball News (Dutch Pinball Open Expo 2025)·video·58m 21s·analyzed·Nov 23, 2025
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.032

TL;DR

Steve Ritchie recounts 54 years in pinball design at Dutch Pinball Expo 2025.

Summary

Steve Ritchie, legendary pinball designer with 54 years in the industry, delivers a wide-ranging autobiographical presentation at Dutch Pinball Open Expo 2025, covering his early pinball experiences in San Francisco, his formative years at Atari and Williams Electronics, and anecdotes from designing iconic games like Flash, Firepower, Black Knight, High Speed, and Terminator. He discusses his design philosophy, key innovations (multiball, lane change, automatic percentages, self-healing targets), collaborations with Eugene Jarvis and Larry DeMar, and personal stories illustrating the intersection of his life and pinball history.

Key Claims

  • Flash sold almost 20,000 machines and took Williams a whole year to manufacture.

    high confidence · Direct statement by Ritchie about his best-selling game; corrects himself to 19,755 machines.

  • Firepower sold approximately 17,000 units and was a major hit during a downturn in the pinball business.

    high confidence · Ritchie states: 'I think we sold like 17,000 of those.'

  • Ritchie invented the word 'multiball' and obtained a trademark on it during Firepower development.

    high confidence · Direct statement: 'I invented the word multiball and uh we got a trademark on it.'

  • Williams lost $17 million on the Star Rider video disc game, leading to a halt in video game production.

    high confidence · Ritchie recounts: 'Williams lost $17 million. So Mike Stroll calls me up and he says, I can't pay you for the game because we have no money.'

  • Black Knight 2000 was the first pinball game to make $1,000 a week at Broadway Arcade in New York on 50-cent play.

    high confidence · Ritchie states: 'Black Knight 2000 was the first game to make $1,000 a week at the Broadway Arcade in New York.'

  • Ritchie and colleagues (Doug Watson, Dwight Sullivan) spent three hours with James Cameron at Lightstorm Studios discussing the Terminator film.

    high confidence · Direct narrative: 'We got to hang with him for three hours. Doug Watson, Dwight Sullivan, and myself.'

  • Terminator pinball machines were placed in theaters around the United States on July 4th when Terminator 2 was released.

    high confidence · Ritchie: 'It took us exactly one year. And when Terminator 2 came out on the 4th of July, we had machines in the theaters around the United States.'

Notable Quotes

  • “I think pinball people are the best people in the world. That's what I think. I want to make them happy.”

    Steve Ritchie @ Early in presentation — Core philosophy statement about Ritchie's motivation and love for the pinball community.

  • “I said, why can't we go to 20,000? And he goes, we want to leave the market wanting.”

    Steve Ritchie (quoting Jack Middle, Williams sales) @ Flash discussion — Illustrates early marketing strategy decision that limited Flash production to 19,755 units despite potential for 20,000+.

  • “Poof, you're a game designer.”

    Steve Ritchie (quoting Nolan Bushnell) @ Atari section — Iconic moment where Ritchie was promoted to designer role by Atari founder, bypassing degree requirement.

  • “Why did you do this? I said, I wanted to see how fast the car would go.”

    Steve Ritchie @ Porsche 928 speeding story — Anecdote about reckless driving incident in California that inspired 'Getaway' game design.

  • “Larry's drinking too much coffee. He's cranky. He's cranky every day. Banging the door. Go away.”

    Steve Ritchie (recounting Larry DeMar interaction) @ High Speed era — Humorous account of working relationship with legendary programmer Larry DeMar.

  • “I heard today that I was aggressive... She was right. I was young and stupid and crazy. And I wanted to make good games.”

    Steve Ritchie @ Mid-presentation reflection — Self-awareness about personal style and drive during game design career.

  • “He wrote the thing in his car. He was living in his car. He didn't have a house.”

    Steve Ritchie (discussing James Cameron) @ Terminator discussion — Context about Cameron's circumstances when writing original Terminator screenplay.

  • “The horse rears up, and all these people start applauding. And it scared the hell out of the horse, and the horse let go of everything.”

Entities

Steve RitchiepersonEugene JarvispersonLarry DeMarpersonNolan BushnellpersonJames CameronpersonDwight SullivanpersonDoug Watsonperson

Signals

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Ritchie reflects on personal growth; acknowledges being 'aggressive,' 'young and stupid and crazy' during his career but remained motivated by desire to make good games and work with best people.

    high · Ritchie: 'I heard today that I was aggressive... She was right. I was young and stupid and crazy. And I wanted to make good games.'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Williams prioritized limiting Flash production to 19,755 units despite capability for 20,000+ to 'leave the market wanting' — deliberate scarcity strategy.

    high · Ritchie recounts: 'I said, why can't we go to 20,000? And he goes, we want to leave the market wanting. Okay. So he stopped making them then.'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Ritchie's design approach centered on innovation, playability, and making players happy; willing to challenge established conventions (e.g., advocating for standard solenoids over Atari's rotary models).

    high · Throughout presentation: 'I think pinball people are the best people in the world... I want to make them happy.' Also his challenge to Atari management on solenoid choice and immediate redesign of Stellar Wars when it wasn't working.

  • ?

    event_signal: Black Knight 2000 product launch in France at Champs-Élysées venue featured live horse and knight presentation; incident with horse resulted in evacuation but event recovered successfully.

    high · Detailed anecdote about the horse-related incident during Didier Salmon's presentation of 'Chevalier Noir' followed by successful game reception.

  • $

    market_signal: Video game market crashed in early 1980s; Williams lost $17 million on Star Rider arcade game, forcing halt to video game division and reshaping company priorities.

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.175

0:00
Multitasking, very difficult. So, if you were here yesterday, then you probably know who this man is. And if you were not, then you probably know as well.
0:24
He did a great presentation yesterday about his career in pinball, which spans over 54 years. Long time. Most of you in the room aren't even 54 years old. Well, I am, but so.
0:40
Without further ado, Mr. Steve Ritchie, legendary pimple designer. Thank you for having me. Thank you so much.
0:48
I'm going to sit down. Can you take your mic again? Sure. Okay. hang on use that one for a second all right this is called an awkward moment i'm i'm very good at them we passed it through everything you know what whenever you're ready um i've made pinballs for a very long time But first I would like to say this. I would like to say I always like coming to the Netherlands. People are very good to me. It's a great country. And pinball is so international. And, you know, when I come here, I feel loved. It's a nice thing.
1:45

Steve Ritchie @ Black Knight 2000 France event — Memorable anecdote about the Black Knight 2000 product launch event in Paris going awry.

Williams Electronics
company
Ataricompany
Flashgame
Firepowergame
Black Knightgame
Black Knight 2000game
High Speedgame
Getawaygame
Terminatorgame
Airborne Avengergame
Supermangame
Roger Sharpperson
Mike Strollperson
Dutch Pinball Open Expo 2025event

high · Ritchie: 'Williams lost $17 million. So Mike Stroll calls me up and he says, I can't pay you for the game because we have no money. It's over for the video games for now.'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Eugene Jarvis was recruited by Ritchie to Williams after working together at Atari; became legendary programmer; later founded Raw Thrills and Play Mechanics.

    high · Ritchie: 'I begged the president Mike Stroll can we hire Eugene... he's good he's great so he came and we made firepower together.'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Ritchie invented multiball concept and obtained trademark; also introduced automatic percentages and self-healing target mechanics that became industry standard.

    high · Multiball: 'I invented the word multiball and uh we got a trademark on it.' Automatic percentages: 'You get to open the door, put it in, that's all you have to do. What percentage you want...it automatically moved up the score.'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: James Cameron's involvement in Terminator pinball included daily VHS dailies of filming, physical props from the movie, and creative suggestions; Williams secured materials directly from production.

    high · Ritchie: 'Every day he would send us dailies, what they filmed that day on a VHS cassette... He sent us the hand inside a glass tube and the chip that they had in the movie... skulls all over the place.'

    • Wow. I guess I will start with, well, some I'm going to talk about. I talked about it yesterday also, but I don't know how many were here or not, so I'll tell some stories and we'll talk about it.
    1:59
    When I was five years old, my father liked to play pinball. In fact, he would cheat them in San Francisco in the 1930s.
    2:07
    They would drill a hole in the side of the game, get a wire out, and run up the points, and then they'd burn up replays, and then they would get candy and stuff for free. you know, they would pay out. He was a bad man. No, he wasn't.
    2:24
    He was a good man. He was kind of, you know, I don't think they had much money. The Depression affected the whole country.
    2:34
    Anyway, he took me to, I was born in San Francisco, so he took me to this place called Playland at the Beach. It was there for a long time, and they had wood rail pinballs there, and they were bolted down in the back to a big shelf.
    2:49
    They had front legs, but all bolted down. You couldn't shake them. You couldn't move them. You couldn't do anything with them. But I didn't know that. That's the first time I ever played pinball, five years old. And then my parents joined the bowling league. So do you know what bowling is? Okay.
    3:09
    And they would give me a dollar, okay, and I would play the machines they had there at the bowling alley. And I played them all, and I really liked it. I remember this one time the game was open. The play field was up like this, and it's all pretty. It's like chrome, chrome-plated stuff. And he goes, you know what? This is a Gottlieb. It's the Cadillac of the industry. He told me that. It was well made. I mean, better than other pinball machines. Most machines that were out were Gottlieb machines in California at the time, and always five ball. So anyway, I played pinball many times whenever they went bowling.
    3:51
    And after that, I'm going to school. I like to make gadgets. I like to mess with motors and other things. My desk kind of exploded when you open it up. Not with fire, but, you know, boom, the rulers are all rolled up with rubber bands. It's like an alarm, sort of. So when I was in eighth grade, they said, we think, these are my teachers, they say, we think you're going to grow up to be a mad scientist in a toy factory.
    4:20
    And that's about what it is. It's been a good life, though. I enjoy making pinballs, and I especially enjoy all the people. I think pinball people are the best people in the world. That's what I think.
    4:33
    I want to make them happy. I definitely do. and uh so i went to high school and then i uh i i didn't play much in high school because my parents weren't bowling and it was a long way to the bowling alley but uh i uh i got into motorcycles my father let me ride a motorcycle i was 10 years old i would go over the mountains i lived in a pacifica for 20 miles south right on the coast uh in california and uh i would ride this thing with a friend on the back and go over the mountains like 20 miles all the way to the ocean.
    5:10
    It was fun. Also, I joined the Coast Guard in 1968. I wanted to see the world. I wanted to be an adventure man. My father was in World War II. He was in the Navy. I come from a military family. My grandfather was in the U.S. Cavalry. He came over and he lied a lot, but he says he rounded up Indians and fed Sitting Bull ice cream in Yosemite.
    5:42
    Anyway, I got out of the Coast Guard and I was playing in bands and not making much money. And I decided to look for work. My wife was working, and I felt guilty because she was working and I was not. And this is kind of an archaic idea. People don't think like that all the time usually, but I did.
    6:07
    So I'm walking along in California looking for a place, and I come to the Atari building. And I don't even know what they are. I mean, I just saw the word, and nobody – I knew they made video games. I did know that. So I got a job at Atari. As an electromechanical technician, I had training in college in a little lot in the Coast Guard. So I started working there. And you walk in the place, and there's stereo everywhere in the building, and beautiful women. I'm already married, though. I look.
    6:44
    It was an amazing company. I had fun there. Here's a strange story that people don't know, I think. every Friday on a table, big table, where ladies were reworking PC boards. They had to take the parts out and put in new ones, things that died during burn-in. Every board is baked for 24 hours, and then they pull it out. And if they don't work, they fix the part. On that table is a tray of hashish brownies every Friday.
    7:18
    And everybody eats them. My boss wears a tie and a white shirt, you know. eaten away. It was insane. In Los Gatos, California, you could do anything pretty much. Nobody got arrested for marijuana or anything like that, even in the 70s. And there were crazy parties that Friday night or afternoon, big jugs of wine and cocaine and everything you can think of, you know, just, whoa, interesting life. So I was there for about a year. And then they said, we're going to start a pinball division. You want to be employee number one? I go, yeah, sure. And I knew nothing really about building a pinball machine. They hired a guy from Williams and he actually taught me how to make, you know, how to build a pinball machine. We built Whitewoods together. And then after about a couple months, I guess, I don't know, two or three games, I thought I could do this so I took home a blank panel of wood and put paper on it and I drew a game and I worked on it at home that's what I did and when it was done I brought it in and my boss said you can't design pinball machines you have to have a degree in industrial design ok I didn't like that answer So I went to Nolan Bushnell, the president, and I said, I made this at home. I would like to build this game.
    8:52
    I would like to be a game designer. And he goes, poof, you're a game designer. He really did. And so in a week, I had a big drafting table and, you know, an electric eraser. And you draw on mylar, mylar plastic. It's kind of foggy, you know, but that was how we did it then, drafting, draw the game. So I had to draw the real game, you know, correctly. It was Airborne Avenger. Airborne Avenger was a spell out on the game. Roger Sharp later, on his Critics Corner article in a magazine, he said, Airborne Avenger, what a mouthful. It's very hard to finish all the letters. The game was designed by a kid who knew nothing. That's about it. But I got some experience and then we had a contest to make Superman. We didn't know the title in the beginning but we found out like two or three months later. So another guy who did have an industrial design degree, he and I and our team, and My team was Eugene Jarvis, who became a – he was an incredible programmer even then. It was great. And also crazy ideas like me. We tried a lot of things. We were a good team. And, of course, Eugene now owns Raw Thrills and Play Mechanics and just building video games. I see him now and then. We have a good time still. Interesting. Anyway, after Superman, well, the first thing is the old Atari games had the scores on a little display on the lower arch in the apron.
    10:39
    And nobody could see them except for the player. I think they were going, I want a backlash with just lights, no scores, no nothing, you know, crazy stuff. And we're going to innovate and use rotary solenoids, which were terrible. They had no, they died quick.
    10:57
    They were weak and very difficult to make a game around. So after they made, I guess, three or four games, I said, why can't we make a game like everybody else? Put the displays in the back box, you know, use linear coil solenoids like Bally, like Stern had, what was called Chicago Coin then. Like everybody had, Williams, but not us. all these round things that didn't work and would break. So finally I got to make a game with solenoids, real solenoids, real pinball parts. And really not very many people at Atari knew how a pinball went together or played them or looked at the inside of other competitors.
    11:41
    Excuse me. And they have – so we got our games together, and they chose my game, and we put it out as a whitewood on the arcade. It said Rockstar in letters like Superman, where Superman letters are supposed to go. And we put it on test, and it made good money as a whitewood. So we built it. It was a pretty good success. Right about at the end of the game,
    12:06
    well, Eugene and I messed with a bunch of things. Like, okay, I had an echo machine for playing my guitar, and you'd start a sound and you could make it play forever, and it was crazy. It was like, you know, we connected up that to the pinball machine. It was a background sound, and it didn't increase in pitch or anything, but I thought, this is interesting. And I got an offer to go to Williams Electronics, and that was an exciting time. This is the only time that I ever made a little napkin drawing. You know what I mean? Just a sketch of the game. I had the name, Flash, and I knew what I wanted to do. I knew that pinball machines had 12 volts in them. When you step on the brake in your car, you get bright lights in the back. I wanted bright lights. It took them a long time to figure out how to do it, though, because come up too slow, go back down. You have to preheat the filament first with a low voltage, and then, boom, it comes on right when you want it. It took us a long time to figure that out. so I made Flash it turned out to be my best selling game almost 20,000 machines and we had a excuse me like a xenon flash tube in the top in a box and it pointed up to the ceiling so when things were going off in the play field it fooled people thinking oh my god it lights the whole room it really didn't but it was still fun after that I said, 19,755 machines. It took Williams a whole year to make them. And I was very happy and excited. And I go, what do you think? Jack Middle was the sales guy. And he goes, I said, why can't we go to 20,000? And he goes, we want to leave the market wanting.
    13:58
    Okay. So he stopped making them then. That was okay. After that, they had me do a wide body immediately. They wanted to make more money. Okay, so this is Widebody. It's huge. The name of it is Stellar Wars. The first play field I did for it was horrible. It didn't play well at all.
    14:21
    I had drop targets that spelled Stellar Wars. And one day I came in and they had little stickers everywhere that said, Pigs in Space. You don know what that is do you The Muppets Yeah the Muppets Anyway I picked up the whole thing threw it in the garbage and started over They were right It wasn a good game
    14:40
    And, wow, I have to say, it has some of the worst art of any pinball I ever saw. Terrible art. But I learned about this. We only had one artist, and he didn't know perspective. It was strange. Have you ever seen one?
    14:58
    Evert. Ladies and gentlemen, Everett Brochet is here. I have not seen him in many years, and he's here. Also, L.J. Green, this beautiful lady back here. And Gerard, of course, you know Gerard. anyway after this stellar wars thing I got to rolling and Eugene he didn't come to Williams until a year later I begged the president Mike Stroll can we hire Eugene he goes sure I mean if you think he's good he's good he's great so he came and we made firepower together that was a fun game one night we were playing the whitewood and we just thought we know this game is going to be a hit i invented the word multiball and uh we got a trademark on it and uh also a lane change uh it was fun but i was kind of dumb i i made the lights only move to the right because i thought it would be simpler for people and now you know you can change lanes anytime you want i don't i only use the right flipper buttons still today to play anybody's game that has lane change. I can't help it.
    16:10
    So Firepower was a big hit. The pinball business had gone a little bit down, but I think we sold like 17,000 of those. And it was a good time. And, well, the next game was Black Knight with Larry DeMar. Eugene wanted to make video games. And so I worked with him for a little bit on Defender, not pinball, Defender, the video game. And I didn't do much work, but I came up with some stuff. But Eugene made a great game out of it with, you know, the bad guys would come and they would change your people into bad guys, and so they would all come after you. It was a great game.
    16:50
    So Black Knight was the first two-level game, and this is a true story. I also brought a friend from Atari. His name was Claude Fernandez, and he was a mechanical engineer on Superman. And he was my friend. I let him stay at my house for a month while he looked for a house to live in when he came to Williams. And so I'm working on Black Knight. I have about half the game done.
    17:20
    And one day he doesn't come to work. And I didn't know this until we go to the show. and we see Flash Gordon, which also copied everything that I had on my game at the time, upper level, whole thing.
    17:35
    The president was furious. He wanted to kill. He wanted to kill Lovecraft. It was a bad scene. We got the lion's share of the money, and we sold more games, but still. I think it could have made a lot more for Williams if you hadn't done that. Larry DeMar and I both have very strong personalities I love him, he's my friend forever we argued a lot on Black Knight I invented Hurry Up he invented the jackpot and that was an interesting thing it was great it was a magnificent program, he still is today anyway after that Black Knight pinball started to go down again video games were huge Space Invaders a million games were sold and I wanted to make a video game too to produce one I'm not a programmer I'm not an artist but I have game ideas and I produced some video games and also slot machines because it's fun to make games and make them entertaining for people and addictive.
    18:50
    It's a bad word. Addict. Become addict. Anyway, so I made Hyperball, which is basically a video game. And it was the noisiest game I ever made. It makes a lot of noise. After that, I went to the president and asked him if I could go to California and start a video game company based on William's stuff. And he said, sure. So I got a house in the country, way in the country.
    19:22
    And it was a big shop in the back. So we started making this game. It was called Devastator. It was the first 68,000 microprocessor video game. And we had some great innovations. You could film with a video camera and create animations with them. But they were bad animations. I had to clean up every image myself of the ship flying. It was a very nice game. Right in the middle of that, Williams built Star Rider. I don't know. Maybe it was Star Rider. I think so. It was like a motorcycle game, a video disc game, and nobody bought it. Williams lost $17 million.
    20:04
    So Mike Stroll calls me up and he says, I can't pay you for the game because we have no money. It's over for the video games for now. I mean, video games fell through the floor at that point. And after that, I said, okay, can I come back to Williams? And he goes, sure.
    20:24
    So I go back to Williams, and the building is dark. We're not selling any games. Not for like four months. The whole factory was dark. Engineering's still there. All the people in engineering were there. But pinballs were not selling. Videos weren't selling either. Nothing was selling. Pinballs always done this, always. I have to watch out for it. anyway um well i have this story to tell i'm sure you've heard of some of you heard it yesterday but uh when i was in california working there i bought a porsche 928 and um it was so beautiful and it was a company car you know i'm i'm charged to my company and uh so i've had it for like two or three months and and i just thought i want to try this out and where we were was in the middle of the country, and they just finished this huge highway, I-5, that went all the way from Washington to the bottom of California. Five lanes in each direction, okay? Beautiful pavement. Not a mark on it. California, no snow. The road stays good for a long time. So we start out. We're going to go to San Jose, which is 200 miles away, to buy electronic parts. Silicon Valley. And that's where you could get them. You couldn't get them anywhere else. I mean, there were some mail order companies where you never knew who made them and whether or not they were good. And these places in Silicon Valley tested them and made sure they were good parts. So I thought, OK, my partner and I are in the car and I go, I'm going to go fast. OK, he liked to go fast, too. OK, so I made the car go as fast as it could go. One hundred forty six miles an hour. And, you know, there was nothing but big tomato trucks in the right lane. We left early in the morning, and if I came to a tomato truck, I slowed down. But five lanes, he's way over there as far as a wall or more. And anyway, I slowed down for them and then speed back up 146 miles an hour. We don't know that it's going 146, but in the book, in the Porsche book that comes in the glove compartment, it says this car is guaranteed to go at least 146 miles an hour. and uh this is the funny part the speedometer only went to 85 but you could figure it out with the tachometer and uh we knew we were going 146 so i'm driving along and we go over a hill like this and i we start coming down and my partner says that's a highway patrolman you know a chp so i slow down to like 70 and he goes over the hill like this i go down the hill 146 again it's all flat too the Central Valley in California I mean there's huge mountains in California there's a coastal range along the ocean and they have the Sierras on the east side you can't see them you cannot see them from the Central Valley it's big and also flat and nowhere to hide nowhere to run so I'm driving along still at 146 miles an hour and a sheriff's car with his red light on comes towards me and he makes a u-turn okay i knew it was for me i i didn't want to run there was nowhere to run besides that i also knew that running would have been a felony a very serious crime and so i couldn't run so i pulled over he gets out of his car and he says wait here and just wait so we're waiting like four or five minutes and all of a sudden the highway patrolman comes and hits a brick. You can tell he's angry. I'm a little frightened, I'll tell you. He jumps out of the car and tries to pull me out the window of the car. And I go, wait officer, can I just open the door? Okay, he grabs me, throws me down the hood and puts handcuffs on me like this.
    24:20
    And then he takes me and puts me in his car in the passenger seat with the seatbelt on. But I could see in the mirror, it turns out nine cop cars came you know different you know Lodi the city of Lodi police county sheriff three more highway patrolmen and they're all they're all looking at the car and they're searching my car they I think they thought it was all we were running from a robbery or a murder who knows you know anyway they were they were looking for something and there was nothing though to look at and then they were all laughing at the speed number ha ha ha it only goes 85 So the ticket said 120 plus because that's as fast as the highway patrol car could go. That's why you had to wait a long time for him to catch up.
    25:05
    So the cop gets back in the car after about a half an hour, okay, and he goes, let me take the handcuffs off you. Okay, sure. You want a cigarette? Yeah, I'd like a cigarette, please.
    25:17
    And then he says, why did you do this? I said, I wanted to see how fast the car would go. and he goes I mean I said I don't know whether there's a racetrack or anywhere else I can go to ride out so I tried it out here I have good tires and brakes I slowed down if I got near traffic and he goes you know if the court was not in session right now I would have to take you straight to jail but it is he said it's in session and there's a commissioner there so he says to me I'm going to help you. The cop, you know, he was a nice guy. He really was. And OK, so we kind of told the story. We didn't find anything. You know, there's no there's no problem. He was just beating very fast. And so the commissioner, you know, he's like, why did you do this? And I said, well, I wanted to drive fast in the car. I wanted to know how fast I would go. and uh the people laughed and uh and then he said oh you're never gonna do this again right i lied and i said no never um anyway i walked out but i had to pay 250 dollars and i had uh restricted driving for business only but it was a company car so it didn't really amount or I could drive it. And it went on my record reckless driving, which is bad.
    26:46
    My insurance went up a little bit. Anyway, a few months after that is when it happened that Mike Stroll said, I can't pay you. You want to come back? So I said yes. And when I went to California, my record did not transfer to Illinois. That was good fortune for me. and I thought when I got back, factory's dark, we make a game called high speed.
    27:20
    Run the red light and get away. Of course, get away came from that story. Larry DeMar, again, a great programmer. I invented automatic percentages, which was the ability for the machine to set a replay score to a percentage. You get to open the door, put it in, that's all you have to do. What percentage you want, we would send it out at 30% replay. You beat the score. If people are beating it too much, it automatically moved up the score. And if it wasn't getting enough plays, it would move the score down automatically.
    27:54
    Normally they get settled. Once they're in a location, there's an average and it kind of stays there. It's not really hunting for the correct percentage. And I invented the business of self-healing. If a target is bad, 10 times, 10 games, if you never see the target, the target is eliminated and you don't get to need it. It takes it out of the rules. You don't have to complete it in order to finish the traffic light. If the green light is out, you only have to get the yellow and the red.
    28:26
    It was a nice idea, a good invention. This time, Larry is like, Larry's drinking too much coffee. He's cranky. He's cranky every day.
    28:41
    Banging the door. Go away. I hear him on the inside. It's me, Steve, Larry. Come on. I want to come in now. No. Use your key, stupid. No, I left my key inside. Oh, damn it. And he'd get up and open the door so I could get in and work on the game.
    28:57
    I was crazy, too. I'm not. I'm guilty of a lot of stuff also. So I mean when I designing a game I not the easiest guy to get along with I heard today that I was aggressive I heard that from L Green And she was right She right I was young and stupid and crazy. And I wanted to make good games. I really did. And I wanted all the best people on it, too.
    29:24
    So after many other games, Black Knight 2000 was especially fun. I got everybody in the crew. Like we're all singing the song, you know, you got the power and all that. What I love about that game is that sound you can hear anywhere in the arcade, no matter how loud everything else is. Oh, you could hear it. And that was interesting. Anyway, Larry and I had many arguments, but we remained good friends. We just said we're not going to work together anymore so we can still be friends. And I said, that's a good idea. It was.
    30:00
    And, of course, he's a dear friend now. Black Knight 2000 was an interesting game many people were involved in it in the music I wrote the chords for the music but I did not have a bass line I didn't have that so this guy Brian Schmidt wrote the bass line it really pulled the room together it did it just made it a special song at that point and another guy Dan Forden who was a magnificent sound man and my coach for speech not for the original Black Knight I put for Black Knight 2000, Shao Kahn, Sonia, Johnny Cage, fight, fatality.
    30:50
    It was fun to do. He coached me. He said, you're Asian, and you're old, and you're breathy. And they lowered the pitch on my voice. So it was fun doing that. I did it for two Mortal Kombat. That's Mortal Kombat 2 and 3.
    31:06
    I did speech in other people's games because they wanted it, so I do it. Black Knight 2000 was an interesting game. Black Knight 2000 was the first game to make $1,000 a week at the Broadway Arcade in New York. It was on 50 Cent Play.
    31:23
    I don't know. It was cool. It was cool to have that happen. And beyond that, there were many games. Terminator interesting stories Terminator was like we got to go to Lightstorm Studios and James Cameron was he had written I didn't know this until I talked to him he had written Terminator the original Terminator movie which I loved I thought it was the best B movie ever made you could not kill this guy it's like relentless and he told me that he wrote the thing in his car He was living in his car. He didn't have a house. He had nothing. Just, you know, I got some money from the county or something just to eat. And so he was broke. Anyway, we got to hang with him for three hours.
    32:15
    Doug Watson, Dwight Sullivan, and myself. It was a great experience. It was fun. And we were playing with the Terminator stop-action models this big on his desk. And he had done Aliens also. So Sigourney Weaver and that thing he fought, the female alien, the big one, the queen.
    32:38
    And anyway, it was great. He was also a gamer. He liked to play games. He made some suggestions, you know. But the best part was when we got back, we started building it. And every day he would send us dailies, what they filmed that day on a VHS cassette every day. So it was amazing. You know, we got to see everything. Also, we had read the script, but we couldn't read the last pages. They wouldn't let us because they wanted to keep the end a secret.
    33:08
    Anyway, it was a great experience. It was fun. He would send us the hand inside a glass tube and the chip that they had in the movie. All these are real things used in the movie.
    33:26
    Also, skulls all over the place. He sent us five of them, you know, put them in a pile. It was just a great experience. And I got to meet Arnold Schwarzenegger much later.
    33:40
    Anyway, it took us exactly one year. And when Terminator 2 came out on the 4th of July, we had machines in the theaters around the United States. I don't think we had any anywhere else, but definitely they were in theaters on the day. It was a great experience. It was fun. I like Terminator. Terminator 3 wasn't so good because it wasn't directed by James Cameron. It was directed by, what's his name? I can't think of it. I don't want to know anyway.
    34:11
    It was okay. Beyond that, let's see. I have another story. This is about Black Knight 2000 again. and we bring it to France.
    34:30
    There's just a salesman in me. What was his name? No, that DDS Elan was PSD, yes. He was there. He set up this show. But who was the vice president of sales? Marty Glazeman. Yeah, Marty Glazeman and I, just us two, went to France with nine Black Knight 2000s. And we were in this big cafe. I wouldn't call it a cafe. I would call it a theater, okay? It was huge on the Champs-Élysées. And it was like, you know, this guy threw giant parties to spend a lot of money because he could sell a lot of pinball machines too. So it was a big place. They were pouring champagne. People were eating hors d'oeuvres. And just kind of exciting. And neither Marty or I spoke French except for to say please and thank you and a few other things.
    35:29
    So everything quiets down, and Didier Salmon goes to the stage. And he says, and now I present Chevalier Noir. Okay. And the curtain opens.
    35:44
    And there's this giant war horse. You know, war horse is so big, huge, and not like horses that cowboys ride. They're gigantic. They have heads this big. It's like, whoa. And this knight in black armor, he goes out like this. The people over here, he comes marching out like this. He turns the horse, and the horse rears up, and all these people start applauding. And it scared the hell out of the horse, and the horse let go of everything.
    36:12
    Okay? Of a garden hose diameter of pee hitting the stage and splashing. It smelled awful. It was terrible. and then a big pile on the floor, real steam coming off it.
    36:26
    People were running out of the building. They ran out. They just didn't want to stay in there. Oh, they were disgusted. Everyone was. I'm in total shock, and Didier Salmon is crying.
    36:37
    He's very sad. Anyway, some guys came out in, like, white lab coats with shovels and brooms and antiseptic, you know, and they cleaned the whole stage, and they opened the doors in the front and the back and the air went through and got rid of all the smell and people started coming back in. And then everybody started laughing, which was a good thing.
    37:00
    After that, it went great. We unveiled the Black Knight game and everybody played it. It worked out good in the end. But kind of a shocking story, a bad thing.
    37:14
    Other experiences that you might like to know. I really don't know. I have many stories. And the coin machine business is a strange business. It's interesting. I mean, some of you probably operate pinball machines. And you know what it's like to fix them and everything else. But it's even crazier to design them, what you have to do. It's like sometimes devices we make at Williams, we build a test fixture just to try that device and run it for one million times. and if it breaks we got to fix it keep fixing it until it will run for one million times now that number is not so good nobody wants to spend that much time anymore maybe 500,000 cycles something like that chances are though at 500,000 cycles it's probably going to work pretty good for the life of the game uh yeah testing for all different things i'm testing a bunch of stuff for my new game now uh they all require software most of them are built on a pinball play field and put in a cabinet in this room where it's so noisy you can't hear yourself think. It's just bang, bang, bang, everything's going off. But it's a traditional and a very good thing that we do. We try to test everything.
    38:29
    I'm going to jump ahead a little bit and then talk about Elton John. Elton John was a – I didn't want to do it in the beginning.
    38:37
    I wasn't really – I mean, I was a fan. I loved some of his songs. I did. but he wrote all his good songs in the 70s. They're all old. There's no new ones. The newest one is Candle in the Wind. That's the newest one he wrote.
    38:52
    Well, his buddy, Barry. Anyway, I didn't want to do it but I'm with the billionaire here. The billionaire owns a Jersey Jack pinball and he's a nice guy. He's a good person. I like him a lot. His name is Leonard and we started walking around the factory and he goes, I want you to do Elton John. And I go, I don't know. Plus, a lot of America is homophobic. I was born in San Francisco. I live with gay people. It's, you know, it's just some people in America go, I won't have that game in my house, which is bad, stupid. Everyone deserves a good life, everyone.
    39:36
    So I was thinking about that also, you know. How would that affect the game? It doesn't affect anything in Europe.
    39:44
    And I thought about other stuff. But then Leonard brought up, well, you know, he has a billion fans. A billion, really, a billion. So I thought, okay, I'll do it. But he was yelling at me, do it, do it, do it. You know, I'm walking around. I say, okay, all right.
    40:01
    It was a friendly conversation even though, you know, I mean, we were arguing but friendly. I mean, he could just say you're fired and be done, but no. so I made the game and I thought the coolest thing about Elton John is the flamboyance so many colors, the glasses his costumes, everything he's very entertaining, he's a great entertainer and so that's how we built the game, with the 1600 LEDs and we wanted to make it light up like magic and a topper that lit up the whole ceiling and that kind of stuff it was a fun project for us It took like two years to do that. Games are getting more and more complex, and also things move slower at Jersey Jack than they do at Stern.
    40:48
    At Stern they go, hurry up, hurry up, hurry up, take out money, take out money. Okay, that's one reason why I left. You have to be creative. I want to be creative. I'm an artist like any other artist. My media is kinetic. That's it. And I very much enjoy it still. It's a great challenge to make a pinball machine, and it's a great pleasure to see people enjoying the pinball machine. That's how I feel about it. That's the best part. People like the game.
    41:19
    I've had a lot of good times. There's another guy in here. Tony Ramone is back there behind you. We made the Black Knight, the original one. He did the art on the game, and it's beautiful. He spoke yesterday also, and I haven't seen him in a million years. or his wife Barbara. And so it's like a very good time for me here. And LJ shows up and Gerard, Gerard and Evert.
    41:48
    I think it's time for questions if you have them. If you have any questions, raise your hand. I'll be happy to answer them. Yes, ma'am.
    42:00
    I'm going to need this translator. I'm sorry. Would you? That's okay. What is the greatest challenge for a designer to keep them fun? Okay. I cheat. I get involved in the software somewhat, but it's all about the rules. And an important thing to do for a game designer is, like some game designers, draw the whole game and then give it to the programmer. I don't do that. I work with Lyman before I even draw the game. I work with Dwight before I draw the game. I don't even want to draw it until we have a chance to talk about it and have ideas back and forth. Everything I know is not perfect. Everything anybody knows is not perfect, okay? So you let other people create, and you're going to come up with a better machine, no doubt. I love people to participate. There's a young guy right now. He's out of college maybe a year. he's a mechanical engineer he's very good and i am teaching him about the business but he's very good mechanical engineer and uh he's he's also very creative he came up with a very nice device now we test it soon we'll find out if it really is a very good device that'll last a long time i think it will anyway having people with talent uh contributing to the game is very important i I don't say, do it my way. Do it my way or no way.
    43:31
    I don't do that. In the beginning, I kind of did sometimes. I was too aggressive. LJ said it. She's right, though. She right I was I hardly remember those days you know It like that was a long time ago I glad you remember Anyway anybody else have any questions
    43:54
    Come on, we've got ten minutes left to burn. What is it? Did you get to read the Star Trek crew? Okay, that's an interesting story. We went to Paramount to get it. I wanted this. I don't think anybody else cared about the Star Trek to the Next Generation. I mean, Great for Us watched it a little bit and some other people, but I loved it. And Dwight Sullivan loved the show. It was so cool.
    44:20
    So we went to get it. I think they were in their third season and went to Paramount. We met everybody on the crew, many people.
    44:31
    I think his name was Mike Westmore. He was the guy that did the masks for everybody in one week. He had to do it in one week. and his son helped him work and Michael Okuda a very good Star Trek historian to make sure everything is fits in the story correct, the timeline is correct and everything else also he and his wife create sets and stuff like that anyway I got to meet all these people and they had the rule at Paramount, they go don't talk to any stars unless they talk to you so we didn't OK, but we we walked around. They gave us a tour and Kelsey Grammer from Cheers pulled over. How are you guys doing? So we got to talk to him for a while. He's a great guy. And we also got to watch one of the last episodes of Cheers being filmed.
    45:21
    It was interesting. And we saw Gates McFadden, Dr. Crusher, you know, do a scene in sickbay. And it was interesting. she didn't say anything to us but she smiled and we all smiled back yeah anyway we're sitting in the what do they call it it's like a cafe in the company where you eat lunch and Kirstie Alley is sitting right there and I looked at her and I smiled and she smiled back that was cool I couldn't say hi but you know and then we're sitting down and we're talking And while we're talking, Patrick Stewart comes in and sits at the table right behind us. And his manager is there. And I don't remember what they said, but he had such good pipes.
    46:13
    He just had an incredible voice. I mean, it was awesome to be there. Patrick Stewart's a great actor, I think, you know, in so many movies and things he's done. And he's a thespian. Who knows what a thespian is? Everyone? She does. a thespian is someone who acts Shakespeare plays thespian anyway so these three ladies were talking about the game and at the table after we eat and they're like kind of all I mean they're all I guess equal in licensing okay and they were sort of arguing amongst themselves lightly okay nothing too embarrassing but they were talking back and forth you know and uh one of them says well you know we're not going to let you use phasers or photon torpedoes in the game and i go you can't be serious um i i live with the prime directive still today okay we don't fire any weapons and the captain doesn't fire any weapons unless he's provoked there has to be a reason okay no you can't have it can't have phasers And I'm saying, well, look, I'm not going to make a namby-pamby fake game. I'm not going to do that. And we got up and left. We left. We went back to Chicago.
    47:41
    Two weeks later, this guy calls up Roger Sharp, who was our licensing manager then. And he goes, how can we salvage this? And he talked to Roger. And anyway, I didn't know what the arrangement was, but we all went back again. and I met this lady named Susie Dominick, and she was absolutely great about everything. She understood that we understood, and we weren't going to do anything that they didn't like, but we wanted to be realistic about Star Trek The Next Generation. This game is never going to happen again. There is no way you're going to get everybody in the crew to do speech.
    48:20
    Number two, what's his name? Riker. He wasn't very – he didn't take it seriously, you know? he didn't take it seriously so we didn't use very much speech room but you know he's using the poker game um but everybody else prince minor who was so good as data and we built stories before we got there to make scripts but we didn't we didn't start just then but we did get everybody including q and uh john delancey who was also a great guy and uh it was it was fantastic to sit there and build this game and uh you know i i poured my heart and soul into it everybody else did too we'd have big script meetings with greg ferris and dwight sullivan and uh the sound guys you know talking about speech and what we could say how we would say it and then we submitted the script and uh dan ford and went down and recorded them all and uh i made a mistake i i don't remember it was it was like space the final frontier these are the voyages there's a starship i don't know what i did but i made a mistake so so patrick stewart is reading this and he goes space the final frontier these are the world a grave era that's what so that's recorded on the tape also and then he said it then he said it how i was supposed to go I don't know how I can blow that. You know what I mean? I know it by heart, but I don't right now.
    49:49
    Anyway, he also changed many of the things we say, we wrote, into things in the way that he would say it. You know? Engage. No, we knew that one, but there were many other things. He'd bend the sentence to be more like, you know, Captain Picard. it was great a great experience and they we also did custom speech for them that they could put in each of their games and each one of them got a game brenspiner got two one for his manager and one for him but brenspiner was a huge performer he was great um that's never going to happen again in any game they get a whole quote so you're lucky to get one person from them from a movie uh to do speech it's difficult and uh everybody wants money money oh my friend is here How are you, Olaf? Olaf, a great artist from a long time, but especially on Elton John. What you see on the video screen, that's the man.
    50:53
    I say thank you. Yeah, making that game was great, and it was fun, and it sold very well. It was the last five-digit pinball machine for a long time. we sold 10,000 something ACDCs and finally got 5 digits again but we didn't sell 12,500 the reason that happened is because we were going big guns with Williams everybody wanted our machines until we made Popeye and we had contracts, you have to buy 60 machines every game we make, sign up And they did. They didn't want to buy that game. So they said, contract is off. And when you have all distributors doing this, one thing, you're not going to prosecute a distributor because if you do, you'll ruin whatever relationship you have in the future. You can't burn bridges like that.
    51:56
    So does anybody else have another question? Yes, sir. The one I'm working on right now, it is a bitch, a bad word, but yeah, it's very hard right now. I have quite a bit of work to do, more work, no doubt.
    52:30
    Yeah, it is the most complex. I don't mind doing that it's fun if you have the good ideas and good mechanical engineering help and all that it takes a little longer at Jersey Jack anyone else have a question?
    52:46
    yes I did the choice was roller games or American Gladiator this is how you do it two, two we chose roller games Roger Sharp was steering us towards roller games because he liked watching roller derby. Roller derby was a big thing in the 50s and 60s on TV.
    53:11
    And, okay, it was kind of cool. They had that big wall. They were crossing back and forth. It was kind of a physical thing, you know. They were fighting each other. I went off the air three months before we finished the game. So we just went, how could that happen?
    53:29
    But we kept working on it. And it turned out to be a fun game. For a while, we were calling it Roller Pile, which is nice.
    53:43
    But, you know, people liked it, so it was okay. I don't know how many we sold. I don't remember. So is that a sad story for you, Evert? Why?
    53:58
    Any more questions, folks? Yes, sir, but you've got to come up here. I'm deaf. What is your opinion on Pinball 2000? What is my opinion of peanut butter? Is that what you said?
    54:12
    Pinball 2000. Okay, I have four minutes, but... Okay, moving up towards 1996, our boss, Neil Nicastro, he took the place of his father. He was the chairman of the board, and he wanted to make slot machines for good reason. Slot machines just make so much more money than pinball machines if you're building them. He wanted to build slot machines, and I think he let people go, hoping that maybe something would be a hit in 1996, but people didn't want pinballs at that time, not as much. It was like we had our good heydays with, you know, everybody that worked there, Pat Lawler, my brother. We sold many, many games. But it was definitely dying down. So I just thought, and I felt like a traitor, I felt like I should stay here and suffer. But I also thought, eh, I want to go back to California because it doesn't look good for pinball. I want to produce video games while this is happening. Maybe come back to pinball. later. So they let my contract expire also. And I had a one year non-compete agreement. Nobody does that anymore. But I couldn't work for another pinball company for one year. Well, they forgot all about it. I made a couple of slot machines, Mermaid's Treasure. I don't remember the name of the other one. And I did that while I was waiting. I didn't make any more pinball machines because it was just dead. What they wanted to focus on was slot machines. And so when my contract ran out, I went back to California for a week, you know, a week just to visit. My parents still live there. And I visited them. And I went to Atari, new Atari. And a lot of old people that I knew there, you know, were still there. Some new ones. And I asked if I could have a job there. What do you think? And this guy, Mark Pierce, the character. Anyway, he goes, sure, no problem.
    56:21
    All right, I go back to Williams, and I go to work on Monday, and I get a call from the president, Ken Fedesna, and he says, you went to Atari, didn't you? And I go, yeah. And he goes, we bought them on Friday.
    56:39
    Wow, okay. That's good because I didn't want to hurt anything or stop anything, but I would like to work there. I want to make video games while we wait for this. For me, Pinball 2000 at the time was kind of cool, but I didn't like how you shot at a black spot that you couldn't see. The first one had that. I also didn't like adding $600 to the price of a product that we couldn't sell at our regular price. And I could feel that Neil DiCastro was not committed to it anymore either. But he was still very committed to video games because they made money, a lot of money. The markup on a video game is typically 100%. So I produced California Speed. We made $60 million on that game. Many, many units were sold. They're linkable, you know, up to four drivers. I didn't get all the best programmers, though. San Francisco Rush got all the best programmers. But that's okay. It made a game for kids, you know, kids and parents to play together. and another game called Mean Streak. And you know what? I'm out of time.
    57:50
    Anyway, I thank you very much for having me. I've enjoyed being here very much. I want to thank Marcel, Jonathan Houston, and Martin Ayub who's over there recording everything. Jonathan Houston put this whole thing together for us. He's the reason I'm here, he and Marcel. So I want to say thank you very much. Great talking to you.
    58:12
    Thank you very much.