The traditional companies of the 60s, electromechanical manufacturers of Gotley, Bally, Williams, Chicago Coin, and and even Midway tried to make a few pinballs. But then at the end of the 60s along come these upstart companies thinking they can do better amusement. So this nutting, both nutting associates and nutting industries, that's a whole another story. Uh eventually air hockey comes along and one of the companies that really kind of shakes up the industry and in their way kind of competing more against Chicago Coin and Williams to some extent, Allied Leisure. And as they're having success with their their quiz games and their combat games and stuff, uh they had a pinball idea. Oh, we got to be different in pinball. We're going to do this thing. We know people like shaking the machine. So, we're going to make it so that the game facilitates shaking the machine. Allied Leisure Shaker Ball on Sea Hunt in Spooksville. Uh, and to flip the flippers, you had to push the thumb buttons. And I'll make this relevant, so stick with me here. Uh, and that was terrible, terrible idea, the shaker ball. Uh, and then while we're reacting to all that, that was like 197273 and then along comes Atari with Pong and now video games instead of being just one weird one which was that computer space. Now we have video games are a genre and it's starting to look like they're going to take over the whole business if it weren't for air hockey also challenging everything. But Atari was really setting the pace just when everybody else, including Allied Leisure and Williams and Chicago Coin, they're making paddle and ball games because there's enough of a market and they're they can make them in Chicago so they can do it the way we operators want them to be done.
Yes. Uh, well, you take all these factors that pinball is still hot and Atari is hot and Atari wants to innovate and get ahead of everybody. Uh, like even in the video games, you know, they they had the first rifle video game where the rifle knew what it was point Yeah. Yeah. And Quack. And they knew what the rifle was pointed at using a different technology than before. And they did some early drivers like that night driver which was just the
track 10.
Track 10. Yeah. I operated the key games equivalent formula K.
Y
um so you could see it coming. Atari was going to do pinball someday. Here's the news. I went to a focus group conducted by Atari for operators to talk about what Atari was going to do in pinball. This is like 76.
Yeah.
And I don't know if you were there. It might be a little early in your career at Atari, but Carol Caner was running the thing. And I don't remember the names.
No, I remember her focus groups. I I started at Atari in 1974.
Oh, okay. So, uh,
Andy Caps had the pong game that was at a bar and it quit working in late afternoon and they went out to fix it and they open up the coin door and quarters fall out the door. The cabinet is full from the floor all the way past the edge of the coin door. So,
yeah,
it seemed like it was going to be a hit. Yeah. But and and you have to remember that in the industry every few years there's a story of the cash box overflowed. But this time it probably really did happen. Some of those other stories I don't know.
It definitely really did happen.
Okay. So, so here I am in this focus group with some other operators. There's about a dozen of us seated around a conference table and a bunch of Atari people. And the main thing we seem to be wanting to tell Atari is don't innovate too much. Don't do what Allied Leisure did. Please give us regular slope of the playfield, regular flipper buttons, regular flipper positioning. You know, we want solid state to be better mainten.
Yeah, they didn't. Well, and and as we found out later, uh, when Nolan Bushnell finally gave his banquet speech at Expo, their consideration was they knew that manufacturing in California, the game was going to have to cost more. So, how could they justify to the operators that it ought to cost more? And their idea was, let's make it so wide
that you're going to hurt these muscles in here if you play it for an hour because it it's just not ergonomically correct. And I know you've been big on ergonomics and having the flippers be the same place at the bottom.
People should get at least that break. You know, it's a familiarity that you learn and you you know, I think you expect it. you know, you got to expect and and ask people to play your game with some kind of weirdness at the very control and the only control that you have over the game. So, I I just thought they needed to be where they were.
Yeah.
Should I continue?
Well, you What was your insider at Atari view of what was going on at that time?
We can get to that. Here we go. Are you finished?
I'm finished.
Okay. All right. All right. I walk into Atari in 1974. I'm broke. I'm trying to make money playing in bands and it's like I'm feeling guilty cuz my wife is working and um I just thought I have to get a real job. So I walked into Atari and uh it was at uh what's the name of that town? Loscatos, California, a big building. And it was like I was employee number 50. They had all these some of these things I'm going to say. I don't know. I'll try to keep it clean. Uh they had all these beautiful ladies everywhere, beautiful young ladies doing things almost like, "Wow, you're pretty, you're hired." You know, like that. And um they were playing stereo music everywhere in the building, even in the you know, in the foyer where you meet people where the, you know, the receptionist is. And uh I got an interview and I got the job because I had experience uh in electronics and electrical stuff that I did in the Coast Guard. I went to a bunch of schools and and learned these things and uh so they hired me as an electromechanical technician for $4.50 an hour. I remember, okay, uh I walk in and it's like, okay, here's what you got to do. Um I designed a a big test fixture, a big tall thing, orange it was, and uh it played all the games with programmable plugs. I had help from other people because I didn't know what all the inputs are. I didn't I didn't know a video game board. It's got an edge connector with just about always the same things laid out, you know. Uh so, uh what I mean by things is voltage, switches, all those lines were there. Uh so that's what I did. And then I did a burn-in for them. Um it was a while after that that uh Jean Lipkin walked up to me and he goes, "How would you like to be in the pinball division?" I go, "What pinball division?" He go, "Ours right here." And so, uh, I said, "Okay, sure. I like to play pinball when a kid and it's like, you know, I I played pinball all the way through. I I used to go to arcades, but and you know, I grew up in a bowling alley while my parents bowled and I got a dollar and I could play and games were uh I think they were like 10 cents each, three for a quarter, three games. And I try to get good, you know, and win some games and whatever. Um, but I did love pinball and uh anyway, Atari in this new division, uh, they said, "We want you to to build the playfields when they're designed." Okay, fine. So, a couple months later, after this guy named Bob Jonasy came in, uh, I started building up his whitewoods and I learned about how to assemble a pinball machine. Okay. Meanwhile, in Nolan Bushnell's office, and I swear I think they were far out, man. Let's make the back glass just be nothing but a back glass. A pretty picture. Light it up. And we'll have the displays down here where no one can ever see them except the player. And we're going to use rotary solenoids. Rotary solenoids aren't really even rotary. They're like a disc with a rod like this. And the disc rolls little balls on incline planes. So as it pulls in, it twists this thing. And it was used for channel changers on radios on ships and large boats where you had multiple decks and you wanted to tune the radio. It would, you know, it would also, you know, change the channel on the upper decks.
Yeah.
Broadcasting for remotes also that
Yes.
you could change your thing here would match over there.
Yeah. And it was like they were never made to be operated like they were. And they were uh they made, you know, solenoids. And me, I'm I'm kind of naive and I'm thinking, okay, maybe that'll work. Uh but they were pretty terrible. Anyway, uh I really, you know, I I couldn't believe that that's what we were going to do, but I had to do it. So I built up the game. It was Atarians and uh there was five holes across the top and really uh we need that slide
please.
Now that's Airborne Avenger. We're close
with the Atarians.
Atarians. There's a listing there for the thing.
So you won't do it on the mic.
What happens when you hit it?
It doesn't make a sound through the mic.
Got it. Okay. Okay. All right. So, here's the Atarians. It's beautiful to look at. Um Atari, okay, it's just like the same thing at Andy Cap. You know, the money was rolling in. It's because they were they didn't know about collecting the money. You got to go visit the game and get the money out now and then. They didn't even think about that.
They just let it, you know, fill up and go. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was like a crazy place. It Atari was a crazy place to work because every Friday at the corner of the table where all these ladies were there fixing um PC boards, hash hashish brownies, and everyone in the company ate them. And my boss, he went coat and tie and everything. Every everyone is messed up, okay? Everyone. And and they didn't care, you know. And it wasn't just they didn't care. I mean, Friday Friday afternoon was out on the loading dock with Red Mountain wine. Everyone had different flavors of weed, uh, cocaine off the glasses of pinball machines. Uh, this is this was the heritage and, uh, uh, I don't know, it was interesting world, I'll tell you.
Team building exercises.
There were some days I'm I built some burn-in ovens, you know, and then these are really high current things. They had to power like 50 boards at once. They used the I I designed them along with a couple of other manufacturing engine bus bar to conduct all this current to the boards. And after I ate a brownie, I don't know if I want to go in there again. You know, it was a plywood box, a big plywood box. And that was their burn-in oven. So they burn in burn the box, burn everything. Uh finally somebody came in and uh they go if you don't fix this you're going to get in trouble for OSHA and uh so they bought a real vault thing with you know how or whatever to put out the fire if there was one. Okay so that is this is the this is actually how Atari is and I know no Bush now and a few other guys are in there. Yeah it's this wide and a white cabinet. Operators are going to love white cabinets. They get dirty. It looked like hell in a short time. I mean, it was a dumb thing to do. But there were some there were some amazingly talented people there. Mostly the artists. George Opperman was incredible. He's when you look at this brochure right here, he designed that whole brochure.
Everything he did, I mean, point of purchase, he did all the artwork for everything. Ex. And it's it was just amazing that uh you know, he he was a great guy. He died pretty young, too. And when you go to uh Steve Engel's booth over in the vendor hall and you look through the flyers, those Atari flyers, they all have that Atari look. Yep.
That was Oper
really had the corporate look. It It's one of the greatest examples of uniform corporate graphics that you know right away. It's Atari.
Also, uh so they built the Atarian. Uh you know, it was a horrible thing. It was like they nobody on the line knew how to build pinball machines. It was just two tracks where they pushed the board along and some people added parts and then the wiring and whatever. And uh while working there uh after a few months at was being built and sent out they they finally got like uh a hundred to send down to CA Robinson in Los Angeles, California. And um they wanted myself and a electronics guy named Dan Corona to go down there uh and you know make sure everything went good for a distributor show that was going to happen Saturday morning. And we went down there and we got there Friday uh pretty early. And we started going through games and horrible things happened like the balls would not kick out from the drain to the to the actual ball shooter groove. I I didn't know what to do at first, but then I thought, I got to fix this. So, I cut up 2x4s with a saber saw and made a new ramp so that the ball had to get up and over and then roll down, have a little gravity to roll the ball shooter. Okay. All of them needed that. We ended up opening 25 boxes to get 12 machines out. Uh because and the problems were incredible. So many electronic problems, so many mechanical problems. It took us 24 hours to get 12 of them working and into their showroom. And we documented everything. I had a, you know, everything mechanical that was wrong with the game. And Dan wrote up everything electronic that was wrong with the game. And we brought back, this is just a sample of how things were audiatory in those days. I came back, my boss was a guy named Jeff Herup. He was from Robert Englunds and uh he was kind of, I don't know, superior. And he's like, you know, I you know, we show him this list. And he goes, you don't show that to anyone here. What a shock. and uh he's our boss and he's telling us no one else can know about all the problems that were on Atarians. So Dan and I walked away from that little meeting and um we talked amongst ourselves and we said this is not right. It's not right. Um so we decided to talk to Nolan about it and we told him everything the whole thing.
Go straight to the top. And four days later, Jeff Herrap was fired. And good riddens, Jeff. Anyway, we began fixing everything on the on the thing. That's sort of a side story. What my my seminar is really about is designing uh narrow bodies versus widebody pinball machines. Uh my first one was Airborne Avenger. I think I'm probably the guy that made the most wide bodies. I It might be somebody that made I made four and I I don't know that anybody else did. I don't they didn't get the opportunity. They kind of died out at Williams after a short time.
Yeah. If someone can check uh Krinsky at Gotautle for widebody ultra wides.
Yeah. Anyway,
might be the only other one.
That's what this is about. But the history of Atari has to be spoken too. It's like uh could we have the next slide of uh Yeah. What is this?
2000.
Yeah. That's Atarians again. Oh.
Uh, notice the scissor flippers. I don't know. It's like sometimes I think Gotle hates me as a player. There's just too much drain area, too many square inches of ways for the ball to leave the playfield. Used to bug me, but I I realized that the games were different. Okay, this is the prize right here. Time 2000. This is possibly the worst pinball machine ever made
other than the art. And this was done by the same guy who made a 12PB drop target for Superman and was terminated shortly after. Okay. 12 for a five bank. It was dopey. Okay. This game time 2000. We have that back up again. You got anything on the inside there? Isn't there more than one picture?
There we go.
Well, the Yeah, that's good. Thank you. Okay. This game had they figured, oh, I don't know what we're thinking, but I think we should have a set of flippers over here that go like this and one over here that go like that. One set. And then uh the the main feature was a captured thumper bumper and it had rubber all around it and the ball stayed in there too long and they even destroyed that by changing all the rubber angles and it would go in and and it' be gone and be gone. Okay, there was no good way to play this game. No comfortable way to play it. They tried everything, too. And and Eugene and I were laughing because from the moment we first saw it, we thought, "This is a train wreck with an F in front of it." And uh it was just, you know, a terrible thing to look at and play. So they tried, okay, let's let's flip both of these flippers, you know, and both of those flippers, you know, left over here on the left button, right over here on the right button, and that didn't work because a ball would come over here and go to your I don't know, it was just a mess. You could not flip it. And then they tried, okay, now we're going to get both flippers over here and both flippers over there. And that was worse. There was no interaction. There was no play. There was no nothing you could do about saving or you know I can't think of the word what is it passing the ball from one flipper to another you know it just nothing nothing worked it was a terrible piece of garbage with beautiful artwork again great artwork so we have the next slide next game okay after watching these guys make that game I made uh one more
uh that's way past that's that's later. Um,
try Airborne Avenger.
Go straight to Airborne Avenger if you can.
All right. I I do want to thank
Oh, yeah. While we're on that interim here, uh, all the other manufacturers were so scared of Atari because Atari was like the leader in video games. So, they when they saw what Atari was doing in pinball, they say, "We have to make ultrawides also." Yep.
Which leads to all those disastrous games that we talked about, the Valley Paragon and Future Spa. And you saw a brief flash of Stella Wars. We'll get
We have the next slide, please.
Okay. Well, that's not not much good either. That's better.
Playfield's a little small. There we go. This is my first game. It was done by a kid who didn't know There's a hole you can't really shoot at. I mean, I tried to make a fun game out of it, but the thing that I did was that it made the games much easier and much more normal was to close up the flippers and the slingshots and the lanes. Have more lanes. At least then you could pass and play a normal game of pinball. And then we're, you know, and and relaxed. No scissors flippers with, you know, extra cubic miles of drain area. And uh I don't know. I I worked on it. I think I did two white woods and um it had rotary solenoids and they were they were horrible to work with and it's like you know they like the game. It did okay. It was pretty I don't know how it even survived. I mean with the rotary solenoids I just don't know. Um, anyway, while we were talking about this, I begged Nolan and everyone else, could we please use normal pinball components that operators know that actually work that have, you know, a a long service life and and jet bumpers, you know, and and just get rid of the rotary solenoids because they're crap. And and they finally said yes. And I go and you know let's go let's go to an arcade and look at all the pinballs. Look at Atari. Nothing on the back glass but a pretty picture that's all. And it's like we got to have scoring back there just like everybody else. That's where they go. And so they said yes. So I started there was a contest between uh Gary Slater and I and uh we won the the contest. The game was originally tested as a whitewood as Rockstar. I think that was what it was. I'm not sure though. Superman. I don't know.
Yeah, I think
it was Rockstar. Anyway,
but by the way, notice the
square displays down here on the older games. So that's what he's contrasting in first.
So they let me do that. And I'm like, okay, that this is cool. And I I ended up making four Whitewoods trying to refine Superman into a game. And I did, you know, I got my chops finally. It took me a while. um you know to make the ball flow nice, make the game play um like a normal pinball machine, even though it was miles wide. And I'm going to say this about them, making wide bodies is like I don't know, it's much harder than making a narrow body game. It's just hard. First of all, uh, when you're talking about a widebody, the ball, if you don't have everything where I mean, if you're just taking the same amount of components and stuffing them on there, wow, the playfield looks a little sparse. Yeah, I totally did. And uh, so what you'd end up with is excursions. That's how I call them, where the ball goes around this big playfield and you might get to flip it a week later, you know. So, here it comes. Oh god. All right, here we go. Anyway, there was that. And there was also like, you know, just a normal weakness. The normal pinball machines, you know, the shots good there. After you widen it out, that shot is now, you know, it's it's way out here. And it's it's harder to get the energy and the power and the accuracy to get up there. And I I didn't really enjoy that. I didn't love it. And uh anyway, it I tried to make them the best I could, but and my life wasn't over making uh um widebody pinball machines. So, the next one is Stellar Wars. Stellar Wars was I mean I made Flash and it you know it broke records there. Um
this is at Williams. So he he's moved on to Williams.
Yeah, I'm back at Williams. I got an offer in 1978 to go work at Williams. So, I went and uh there's a real pinball company. Oh my god. With real mechanical engineers and people that had eons of experience and I just I learned so much from them and a real production line. Wow, what a different life. And at that time, Williams was a manufacturing company. And the difference is now we buy ball guides, you know, we buy wires, we buy a lot of stuff made from the outside. Williams didn't do any of that. You know, some molded parts, not much. you want ball guides. They had these big rolls of stainless steel 1.1 inches high and they had four spot welder guys putting those tabs on there, you know, putting everything on by hand, which was really cool if you wanted to make a change, you know, it was quick. I could make a ball guide correctly, you know, in an hour, you know, with with their help. There's also a machinist there named Jack Sakai, and he taught me a lot about metals and plastics and all this other stuff. I went to school with him and he was like an awesome guy and and uh anyway, Williams was great and uh I made Flash and it's the only game I ever did a cocktail David Hankin drawing for. I just I never do that again. I I can't do it now. I don't want to. I don't know. But I had all these ideas and uh and I wanted flashlights cuz you know, okay, well, it's only 12 volts. Yeah, 12 volts on the car, too. Look at how bright that brake light is. You know, I want that. So we worked on that and it took a long time to refine them. So flash had flash lamps and it had another interesting feature that Eugene and I came with Eugene Jarvis who uh he became a great uh well he was a great software guy from the very beginning and a great gamer guy and it was fun so much. We used to talk for hours about games and we still do when we get a chance. Uh uh anyway the uh
so you and Eugene did you talking about the sound? Yeah, we I brought in I had, you know, I was a guitar player in the bands and stuff and I had an Echoplex and all I did was connect it up. It was an echo machine. It was had a tape and a movable head so I could change the delay and we just put that in the game with all the sounds that Superman made. And and the guys came down from the office and they go, "What are you doing?" And I we're just trying stuff out. Feels kind of good. I don't know. It's like it's kind of fun to have constant sound. And they said no. So I did have Williams.
Yeah. And if you were here last hour, you heard how it's historic that was that Flash had sound that was not correlated with achieving something in the game. It was just there to make you more nervous, intense.
It went progressively up in pitch and you knew when a good player was there cuz it was going really high pitched. So it was kind of a cool thing. And I don't know, I think in arcades, I don't know how much that happens now, but you know, people I think people like to express, see, I did that. I made that happen. And and that's that's a cool thing to um you know, to sell if you can, right? So anyway, it was a fun game. And they thought, well, it sold like 19,000 just short of 20,000. I go, can we get over 20,000? And Jack Middle, the guy that was in charge then of the sales, he goes, "We want to leave the market wanting." Okay. All right. Anyway, so they thought, "Okay, we're going to put Steve Ritchie on a on a nine-month plan to make a widebody game." Okay. I said, "Yeah, all right." So I start on Stellar Wars. We can't have Star Wars, but Stellar Wars is okay, I guess. So anyway, I laid out the game and it was like uh there's some drawings here. Yeah, I laid out this game and it was like uh it it just didn't play well at all. I hated it. I still hate the game. You have that's my worst I that I hate this game worse than any other game that I ever made anyway. I don't there's other games I hate too, but but this one was like, oh man, not another one. And I'm having to look, you know, I mean, I already had the experience of making a normal pinball machine 20 and a/4 in wide, you know, and that was so fun to have those shots and everything. It allowed me to be a smooth, you know, a smooth designer, somebody who made something that you could, you know, continue shots through. You make this shot, you get another one. Um, the upper right flipper was important. It's like that I would that that influence came from Captain Fantastic, which I have in my basement right now. And I look at it and all it was really good for is knocking down the five bank, which is cool,
which is a crosswise shot,
right? Right across it.
But I wanted to go up and around so you could loop and do it, you know, a number of times. And then then the flash lamp thing happened and we sold this box about this big with xenon flash tubes and they were on top of flash. I bet no one has one. I think we made three or 4 thousand. I haven't seen one since um since the day. And when we took it to the show, you know, those lights, the big ones up in the air, lit up the whole place. It was like, whoa. And so really, when you play the game, you didn't get that kind of action unless you bought the box.
Yeah. I'm seeing a lot of white space on this.
White space. And it's like it's a mess. It just And the artwork was horrible. the artwork. The guy didn't even understand perspective, but I'm not going to go into it. He also did Firepower and uh that was better.
Connie Mitchell.
Yeah. I didn't want to say his name, but you did. So,
all right.
Anyway, uh the game I I I came in one day, they everybody knew in in engineering that I hated it and I I I tried to rework it. I did a bunch of other This is an early version. Can we have the next slide? I We're looking for the one that begins with P. My dear, I came in one day and uh on all the drop targets, somebody put tape that said pigs in space on all all of them. And uh it's like uh that was like the last throw. I picked up the whole thing and threw it in the dumpster and started over and uh had a lot of trouble with the programmer. The programmer that originally programmed Flash uh I don't know what he was up to, but he started on this game and he ended up leaving in a big huff with Mike Stroll, the president, in the room and he said, "You're all trash." Well, thanks. Thanks, Randy. Anyway, he left and I got Paul the Salt who did a very nice job on the code and um anyway,
what's this big round thing in Stellar Woods?
Big round thing was supposed to be like, you know, like a radar screen, but I couldn't we didn't have the money to do it or the I or the time. I mean, they wanted out in 9 months. So, uh we put it out and by some miracle or stupidity, we sell 7,000 machines. I I don't know why. Does anybody own a Stellar Wars? Ah. Oh, there's one. Anyway, so that's that story. And after that, I did a whole string of uh of narrow body games. Uh and uh I was very happy with that. But then uh basically we came up with a a version that was you know in between super pin and um Pat did what wasn't Twilight Zone on that?
Yeah.
And we always used to joke with each other just telling you you know we if we wanted to get on Pat's nerves we would call his game Toilet Zone. Rude. They called high speed high cost. Everybody everybody had nasty names for everybody else's games. And uh anyway, that that that width was at least semiappealing to me because I could see that I could work with it. And uh and we made Star Trek the Next Generation on that format. And uh so many good people on this game and what happened on this game is impossible. The first thing that happened is we go down to Paramount Studios and we meet with these people and there's like three ladies in charge of licensing. They gave us a small tour of the place and we met uh a lot of the principles. Uh Michael Okuda, I'm thinking something Curry, I forgot his last name, but what was it?
Dan.
Yes. Anyway, we met those guys. It was really fun. and Wesmore, I forgot his first name, but he was he had to do the masks and everything and he only got a week to do it and that was it. Anything any any characters, he had to make them all up that fast in a week and he he was magic and his son helped him. Anyway, we get there and we're talking about it and we're in the commissary and right behind me is sitting Patrick Stewart and the rule is if you go to Paramount, uh, you can't talk to the stars unless they talk to you. Well, he was talking to his manager and I heard those pipes. God, he has such a voice. It It blew my mind. Anyway, it's like we're sitting there talking and uh the ladies bring this up. You know, we don't want any violence. We don't want you to fire photon torpedoes or phasers. We don't want any of that. My jaw dropped. It's like, okay, I don't know if you know this, but I was born knowing the prime directive. I was okay. And um it didn't matter. They they weren't going to go there. And eventually I just said, "Look, I can't make an inauthentic game." And and it's like I, you know, I can't make a Nambi Pami version. I'm just not going to do that. And with that, who was there? Roger Sharp, uh, Greg Freres, Doug Watson, and me. I think that was it. And, uh, we packed it up, got on the plane, went home. Couple weeks later, a guy calls Roger and he goes, "What can we do about this? How can we get this together? Come back down." So, we all went back out and there was this one lady, her name was Susie Dominic, and they were totally committed to making, you know, a Star Trek game that was true to the, you know, to the mythos. You know, it's like we it was crazy to think that anybody would want to do that or you know, just nuts. Anyway, she was in charge. She gave us everything we wanted. Unbelievable. Also a great person. It's like um everybody in the cast was pulled into the game. This is never ever going to happen again. Everyone. And John Delansancy is Q. I just it was an amazing thing that they let us do that. I wish I could have that opportunity again, but it won't happen. Anyway, the game turned out great. We had such fun with it. Dan Fordon, you creating music and speech and doing the recording. Uh I recorded some speech for Patrick Stewart to say and you know I started on the space the final frontier. These are the voyages of Starship Enterprise. And then I screwed up the next line and it was on the recording and Patrick Stewart heard it and he goes, "Oh, a grave error." It was I was ashamed of myself for not knowing or just saying it wrong. Anyway, he added so many things to the game exactly like the captain would say it, you know. Uh he was awesome. Just awesome. And uh they all were. Jonathan Franks didn't do much. You know, number one, he he didn't take it seriously. We tried to do there's very little of his speech because it was trash. You got the feeling like I'm here cuz I have to be. Oh god, it's lunchtime. Bye. That's that's how we felt about it. Uh but making the game was tremendous. We would all sit around a table and build scenarios, you know, around how they could talk to each other, what they could say. And uh I don't know it was uh an incredible opportunity. Definitely
awesome game.
The sculpting is uh was that uh fun too.
The sculpting for the
sculpting. Yeah. I mean I don't know. They pulled out all the stops to do it. They really did. Here's an interesting thing. The Borg ship in the back. They said this is going to be the Borg ship that we're going to use in all the episodes. And it wasn't a cube. It was this weird trapezoidal thing with kind of a pyramid top and a big, you know, like a the west wing. I don't know what you'd call it. Anyway, and they never used it again. So, it's never went back to cube cube board ships and uh but uh somebody made a a board ship you could replace it with, which was kind of cool. But again, excursions was what it was about. And uh this game this game didn't have so many excursions. The ball came back to you quickly and having the cannons on the game and everything. You always had a ball on the playfield and some of the shots were just direct and quick and um I don't know. It was a lot of fun to make. No doubt. Maybe my favorite game. People ask me that. Okay, this is it. Star Trek Next Gen. Anyway, the difference between my bodies and her bodies is like um night and day for me anyway. I I don't know anybody that uh that that really loved making them, you know, like I talked to Greg Kmiec before and uh
yeah,
who else who else made them at Bali? I'm trying to remember.
I think Greg did the the two
Yeah, I think so, too.
that we all know Future Spine Paradise,
you know, and actually great games. I didn't hate them, but still Excursion City, right? The ball goes out, it takes off. It's I I don't know.
Yeah. And eight outlanes or they can gates can move to cut it down to six outlanes or Yes. Whatever it is,
right? So that's what I have to say about wide balls, wide bodies versus narrow. And um I'm happy to answer any questions you might have.
Oh, could anyone here possibly have any questions? Now you can either go to the mic there or Oh,
hey, Mr. Guaneri from New Jersey has a question.
Did you work for Steve Jobs?
Did you work?
Yeah, I worked with Steve Jobs.
He stunk. He never took a shower.
He worked with Steve Waznjak. They were working on Breakout like 50 feet from where Eugene and I were developing uh Superman. And uh the game was cool. I thought they that maybe they invented it, but they didn't. Al Alorn, the design uh the uh head of engineering designed it uh created the game and uh
well, even so, Breakout was an adaptation of clean sweep from Ramch,
which is the first play the bottom to
knock off all the
I have to say I never saw that.
Yeah,
I never saw Ramch. I mean, I I knew of their games. Well, here in the Northeast, Ram Techch was one of the really important at the distribution level. That's exactly why
they were based in California, but their distribution here was strong and really pushed they made
they made the best quality imaging on the paddle and ball games and then they turned that into clean sweep.
Anyway, the pictures you see of Steve Jobs sitting in his chair with his feet kicked up. That's how he was all day. He didn't do jack. He told Steve Waznjak what to do. And Steve Waznjak is the nicest guy in the world. When Steve Jobs wasn't there, we'd go, "Hey, can we play the prototype?" And he'd say, "Sure." You know, you could play it for an hour. He didn't care. He was writing code or or making hardware. Uh and uh I I did not like him at all. Every morning I would say good morning to Steve Jobs and he would say nothing back. and uh walk past the stench and be thankful there's good fresh air on the other side and then uh I never bought any Apple stuff. I do not own Apple stuff. Apple nothing. No phone, no nothing because I don't know, you know, it just and he is proof. Well, first of all, he never owned up to having a daughter. He didn't love her. He bailed on his wife. He did terrible things. He had no furniture in his house and expected them to live there at some point. And I don't know, mass firings at Apple, just terrible things. And I got to say, he was a thief. There was somebody somebody uh from Microsoft made the first mouse, not Steve Jobs. And so many things were like that. He was he was kind of a thief. He'd find this guy who loved to make things that are white. He sucked him up and made him design it and then took all the credit for it. Uh, so I got nothing for Steve Jobs.
Yeah. And Bill Gates didn't make sto Gates did not make DOSs. And
he didn't make DOSs
the operating system. And even the mouse, that mouse was originally prototyped at Xerox PaloAlto,
right? Some other guy did it. I didn't know his name. I didn't know all the facts.
Yeah.
So anyway, that's that. And that man back there has a question. What did you think of your brother Mark's effort on Indiana Jones?
Pile of junk.
Hey, suddenly he could hear very well. How about that?
If he was here, if he was here, he would laugh, too. It's not a pile of junk. It was a great game. No question. I loved it. He was making that before I was making NextGen. So once in a while I would go in his room and I would go d and then he would come in my room and go d some terrible things.
Just having fun. Got to have a sense of humor. Yes, sir.
What made you think of Magnuses?
Magnusave?
What I What made me think of it?
Yeah. What did you think of it?
Necessity is a mother invention. I just wanted to make the ball, you know, give give a a chance for a player to save a ball with skill and uh worked out pretty good.
It's at first we were burning playfields till we got the the magnet thing down, you know. It's like uh because we wanted to grab it quickly, you know, and there was no exposed armature. When you have a piece of metal that's an exposed arbiter, it's much stronger than going through an eighth of an inch of plywood. So, we had to crank up the power. If you hit the button, it would it would definitely come on strong, but then begin to taper off immediately just to the point of holding it. And by the way, the magic of playing it is to rock the game this way back and forth because the ball's going like this. If you make it go that way, it goes down the lane and goes to the flipper. Um, I don't know.
It's a fun thing. Yes, sir.
I had heard that high speed was semi-autobiographical.
Oh, the you want to tell the highspeed story.
Okay, I'll tell a short version. Okay. Uh I I formed a video game company in California called King Video Design. King. Anyway, dumbass. My wife My wife I I didn't make up the word King. Okay. Um, I had a 928 Porsche and it was a gorgeous car and it was like it's very unlike a 911. It had a aluminum V8 up front and uh 50/50 handling right under your butt. And it was just an awesome car to drive. Anybody that drove it was a great driver. And um no matter how fast it you went, it was just super stable. And um now I do things that other people don't do. I have a history of that. Sometimes it's hurt me. Anyway, I had the car for about a month and my partner and I in Lumis, California near Sacramento. Uh left to go buy electronic parts in San Jose because that's where all the parts were. So uh I got in the car and he did too and I go, "Dude, I want to try this out." So, we got on I5 and there was like nothing but potato tomato trucks in the in the there was five lanes, okay, in each direction. So, in perfect Carl Weathers, of course, and uh got in the car and opened it up. It went 146 miles an hour, but we could only tell uh with math because the speedometer only went up to 85. That that's when the speed limits were 55 and it was a horrible time. I I don't like low speeds. I like high speed.
Anyway, the uh uh the car was great. It handled perfect. It had new tires. Um and we go over a hill like this and way out there, my partner goes, "That's a high patrolman." Okay. So, I slow way down and I'm going down the hill. He goes over the hill. I don't see him again. I take off 146. fast we could go for about maybe 20 miles. And uh in the central valley there, there's nothing on either side and it's flat. You might as well be in Illinois. In the middle of Central Valley, you can't see the Sierras or the Cascades. There's no mountains visible because it's it's too far away. So, there was no place to run. Anyway, the cop uh I didn't know it, but he turned around and came after me. And the way I knew that I was in trouble was a sheriff's car with a red light like a spotlight thing on the side of the car came out came around this way and turned around in the median. The medium was a bunch of bushes with a dirt track in the middle. So he turned around in that and he followed me and I pulled over. And at that point, as soon as I saw the red light, I wasn't going 146 anymore. I slowed down and I pulled into this this gravel place and the cop gets out of the car and he comes over to my car and he goes, "Just wait here for a second." So, we're waiting and about 2 minutes later, Highway Patrol comes in. He's he's driving a Mustang and it wasn't fast enough though. His ticket said 120 plus. That's what it said on it. So anyway, he caught up. He does this big sliding thing in the gravel, big cloud of dust, jumps out of the car, runs over to my side, and tries to pull me out the window of the car. And I go, "Wait, officer. I'll just get out." And so I got out and he throws me down the hood, puts handcuffs on me. And then he takes me over to his car, puts me in the passenger side, uh, with the handcuffs on and a seat belt. Okay. And the car now is behind me. So is my partner. And I can see in the mirror though what they're doing. And they're like they're searching the car for anything and everything. I think they thought we were running from maybe a robbery or something. Excuse me. Anyway, we weren't. And uh you know they first my partner and all this other stuff and they were all standing around laughing at the 85 mph speedometer. And it's like okay. Um, the cop gets back in the car and he takes the handcuffs off me and he goes, "You want a cigarette?" "Sure. Sure, I'll have a cigarette." So, he goes, "Why'd you do that?" And I go, "Because I had the car for a long time and I just wanted to try it out. I don't have access to a racetrack, so i-5 had to do." And it wasn't crowded at all. It was like spars sparsely driven. I did slow down if we were near, you know, other cars and most of the time it was just empty. And uh so he goes, "All right, I don't think you were running from me." And I goes, "I wasn't. I didn't even know you were behind me. I thought you went over the hill and that's it. Goodbye." And so he goes, "I'll help you in court." And we go to court and the court's in session. And there's like a a commissioner there. And uh uh nine cop cars showed up to where my car was. Luckily, my partner was there to drive my car to the courthouse in Loi, California. So, we went to the courthouse and the cop tried to help me. I don't think he was running. And the commissioner said, "Sir, what? Why were you going so fast?" And I said, "I wanted to see how fast the car would go." And the audience and people in the courtroom had that exact reaction. So, he said, "Are you ever going to do this again?" And I lied and I said, "Never." And uh he goes, "All right, I'm going to let you go today. You you could be thrown in jail." It's like uh I said, "Thank you, your honor." He goes, "I'm going to find you $250 and restricted driving uh for business only." And car was a company car, so I could drive it all I wanted. And uh I got reckless driving on my record though. That's catastrophic. So uh he let me go and I went home and about what a year later I was gone from California and the record did not transfer to Illinois which was
So that's that.
What's that?
How did you do the math to know the 146?
So how'd you know it was 146? doing the math. But you can look at the tachometer. Once you're in one gear and you see how fast you're going in that gear, you can project, okay, the next 5 miles an hour says this. Next, that's how you project. Plus, I was I was going fullon and you could every Porsche you bought 911 or whatever would have a guarantee in the back that it would go at least 146 miles an hour. In the case of 911s, a different number less. They were faster. My last 911, I took Chris Granner on a ride in a very remote place in California. I'm not going to tell you where, but it's like seven miles of this. You can see people coming straight line, deer fences, 12t high fences on both sides. And we went 176 miles an hour. And he slugged me in the arm when it was over. But he wanted it
and he got it.
And how fast were the deer running away from you?
I don't know. Okay.
Any questions?
Other driving tip questions.
One way back there.
So, does this mean that 504 suspect ran a red light over?
Can you make me recite that?
So, I don't have a radio here because that's what would make an authentic
dispatch. This is 504. I don't remember the next line. What does it remind me?
Suspect render.
Suspect got away. The other guy uh he got away. Yeah, Joe Dylan. Do you I don't know if you guys know who he was, but he was a very famous
vice president of Williams, a sales guy.
He came from here. He was sales guy. He was my salesman when I was an operator.
He did the other voice and uh it was just fun. It was something we could do.
He what?
I always enjoy doing voice for games. It's fun. I don't know. I I enjoy it.
Questions?
Yes, sir. Why were the uh drop targets cut from firepower and which version of the game do you feel as contrary to your design?
Well, I'll tell you the drop targets at Williams that time were garbage. They had horseshoe contacts that rode on printed circuit metal, okay, on a PC board and they just didn't work well at all. Uh I loved them. I thought, "Oh, cool." Uh this is, you know, I only made one other game with drop targets. I think it was Superman at the time. And so firepower played great with the drop targets, but they also broke a lot. And the president came to see me, Mike Stroll. He was a great guy. And, you know, charismatic. Um, I don't know. He was he was just a great president of a game company. No doubt. He let us do what we needed to do to make games that sell. You know, that's it right there. Sometimes you get management to just looking at money too much. maybe not looking at, you know, what should go in a game to make it fun and sell, you know, um sometimes that backfires. It has many times actually. Um yeah, it's like he told me, you know, these targets are so bad that you're not going to sell as many games and I know you like royalties. And as a matter of fact, I did. So I said, "All right, I'll put on standups." And I did. It was a smart move. He I mean, you know, I'm like, "What? I don't know how old I am. I 26 or 27 maybe." And uh you don't know everything at 26 or 27. You don't even know everything at 43 or 75. So I learned
Neilie, you have a question.
Yes, sir.
You mentioned guitar and being in bands. I I've heard that you came up with the music for Black Knight 2000.
I did. I wrote the tune, but it it didn't have a baseline and it was, you know, it was all guitar work. I I just, you know, I played the song and but I I did the whole thing including, you know, all the parts and some leads and um uh Dan Foron helped out and then Brian Schmidt, this guy uh he wrote the baseline and changed everything. It was really awesome and I I loved it. And uh I don't know the song evolved into a you know a singing thing. When I wrote it I didn't have the words but once we got the you know the game together it was like you know and I sang on the game uh Dan Fordon and uh two ladies and uh what I loved about that was when that played in the arcade no matter what was going on you could hear it. You could hear that singing. It was just like a pitch that was awesome. I I had one other experience on Star Trek at Stern. There was a weird sound when you got a bonus multiplayer up there was I don't know what it was, but you could hear that all over the arcade also. And um I don't know, those kinds of sounds and things attract people and that's what you want if you're a game designer, right?
Okay.
Any other questions?
Got a minute or two more. So, last call. I'll I'll ask the last one. Um, anything else about uh working on Superman for Atari that uh stands out? Cuz you you filled up the space pretty well on that one.
Well, yeah. And it was like uh four whitewoods. Okay. Because I didn't know what I was doing, but then I discovered what I wanted to do. And that, you know, and uh that whole that whole feel I I think it was a new style of pinball machine. And there wasn't much of it there, but there was some. And then I continued on that same track with my style.
Yeah. Well, like the the top lanes were very much like the top lanes on Flash, for example.
They were. But but the curve that brought them around, that was that was the beginning of say, I don't know, some geometry that I really liked and wanted to do, whatever I could do.
Yeah.
All right. Well, we've
He's good. He's got one minute. I love F14. To me personally, it feels like a little bit like Black Knight 2.0. That upper play field, but it's on the same level. You have the single pop. You have a couple, you know, the threes, the three, the targets, but they're not drops or stand ups and a couple flippers and has that loop that kind of the angle is almost the same. And I love that. It's like one of my favorite games ever.
I look at that game thinking
I have one I look at my game and I wonder where the hell did that even come from? It's like it's such a weird a weird design that worked out.
It was like I I don't know where it came from.
Maybe it's your favorite geometry is just uh
hidden in there somewhere.
I don't know. It was fun, you know, banging targets at, you know, with flippers at point blank range kind of and having to get all of them and my nose was running.
All right. Well, we've come to the end of our hour and of course Steve has millions more stories that he could tell. millions in in future events. Uh but let's let's thank him for all the wonderful information we got today. It's fun. It's always fun to come here. Thank you. Thank you. I do love Fantastic. I got to say it's a good show and uh I don't know. Gabe does a good job. It's a whole different group of people, you know. I mean, they're all over the place and they're all a little different. Like Australian pinball players, they like to get cops to throw me down on a high-speed glass and put handcuffs on me while I'm playing the game. They're nuts. Anyway, thank you very much.