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The Mechs That Made Us – 90s Bally-Williams

Silverball Chronicles·podcast_episode·2h 5m·analyzed·Oct 27, 2021
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.033

TL;DR

Deep dive into Doctor Who pinball's Time Expander mech and Zofia Ryan's groundbreaking career in 90s pinball engineering.

Summary

Silver Ball Chronicles explores the Doctor Who pinball machine (Williams, 1992) as a exemplar of 1990s Bally-Williams mechanical design. Hosts David Dennis and Ron Hallett discuss the iconic Time Expander toy—a three-level, state-changing mechanism designed by Zofia Ryan—and contextualize it within the era's design philosophy, Barry Ousler's signature long-sweeping ramps, and licensing challenges of featuring seven different Doctor actors. The episode highlights Zofia Ryan's pioneering career as Williams' first female mechanical engineer and her current role at American Pinball.

Key Claims

  • Doctor Who pinball sold 7,752 units on the WPC Fliptronics II system

    high confidence · Direct production specification stated by David Dennis during game technical overview

  • Zofia Ryan was the first female mechanical engineer hired by Williams Pinball and holds six U.S. patents on pinball and casino games

    high confidence · Stated by David Dennis citing interview/biographical sources

  • The Time Expander topper was removed from Doctor Who for cost savings reasons, though wiring and software features remain intact for reinstallation

    high confidence · David Dennis cites Zofia Ryan's comments from The Super Awesome Pinball Show Episode 24

  • The Time Expander was a three-toys-in-one change-state toy that consumed a significant portion of Doctor Who's design budget

    high confidence · Detailed mechanical description by both hosts during gameplay analysis

  • Tom Baker played the Doctor from 1974 to 1981, longer than any other actor in the role

    high confidence · Stated by Ron Hallett during Doctor Who television history discussion

  • Jodie Whittaker is the 13th actor to play the Doctor and the first female doctor since 2018

    high confidence · Stated by David Dennis during Doctor Who TV show background

  • Zofia Ryan (née Bill) worked on Pool Sharks, Pinbot, Party Zone, and Doctor Who at Williams before being promoted from designer to engineer

    high confidence · Career progression detailed by David Dennis citing Zofia's historical involvement

  • Dennis Nordman was stuck at Deep Root Pinball with no engineer for several years, leading to his departure, and was called 'the canary in the coal mine'

    medium confidence · David Dennis references this situation in context of Zofia Ryan's hire at American Pinball

  • Barry Ousler and Bill Futsenruder co-designed Doctor Who, with Futsenruder initially unable to get his ideas moving and handing the project to Ousler

Notable Quotes

  • “The Bally Williams era has often been considered the most mechanically exciting time in pinball...many of the games in the era still carry a hefty resale price on the secondary market because they still have the magic.”

    David Dennis @ early in episode — Sets up the historical framing for why 90s games remain desirable and expensive

  • “The promotional piece for it, their promo video they did for it said, the Supercharger has no moving parts. That is completely false. It has one moving part, which is the diverter on top of it.”

    Ron Hallett @ mid-episode — Illustrates marketing exaggeration vs. technical reality in pinball manufacturing claims

  • “I call it the meat slicer because it's super dangerous to work on...It has this rotating motor. It's got a picture of a person getting their fingers jammed in it. It's a big, dangerous frigging toy.”

    David Dennis @ mid-episode — Explains the colloquial 'meat slicer' nickname for the Time Expander and safety hazards of 90s mech design

  • “When you open the coin door, because in this era, they didn't have the high-power interlock switch on there to cut the high power when you open the coin door.”

    Ron Hallett @ during mech safety discussion — Highlights safety difference between 90s and modern pinball interlock standards

  • “I became friendly with everyone. We were working our first jobs...I wasn't even thinking about being a woman. I didn't even know it was a problem, a woman or a man. I felt very comfortable.”

    Zofia Ryan (quoted by David Dennis) @ biographical section — Zofia's perspective on gender dynamics in 90s pinball engineering teams

  • “Gary was a mechanical engineer, a manager. I have to say a real gentleman. I loved working with him. He was a great mentor, an advisor, and he was just very friendly.”

    Zofia Ryan (quoted by David Dennis) @ biographical section — Describes supportive mentorship environment within Williams engineering team

  • “He was stuck at Deep Root with no engineer for quite a few years and that led to his departure at Deep Root. Some people would call him the canary in the coal mine.”

Entities

Doctor Who (Williams, 1992)gameZofia RyanpersonBarry OuslerpersonBill FutsenruderpersonLinda DealpersonJohn HaypersonGary HendrickspersonDennis Nordmanperson

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Contemporary pinball market pricing has priced out long-time enthusiasts; David Dennis expresses having been 'priced out of the market' in recent months

    medium · David: 'And that has turned me a bit sour as of late in the last few months...being incredibly bitter because I've been priced out of the market'

  • ?

    business_signal: Williams' willingness to greenlight niche-appeal themes (Doctor Who) based on designer passion rather than mass-market analysis

    medium · Barry Ousler quoted: 'If you can show them that you truly believed in a project, they would usually give it a chance.' David notes 'this really big British show...is that going to work in the U.S., which is the major sort of market for pinball? Seems like a bit of a risk.'

  • ?

    community_signal: Silver Ball Chronicles actively soliciting historical corrections and clarifications from community; treating podcast as collaborative archive project

    high · Multiple correction segments included from listeners (Bruce Nightingale, Dennis Griesel, Ted at Pinball Prices, Edward) regarding technical details and factual accuracy

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Non-fan experiencing lasting appeal of Doctor Who machine due to Time Expander mech quality—evidence of mechanical design transcending theme licensing limitations

    high · Ron states: 'And this is a guy who cycles through a lot of machines, and he's not even a Doctor Who fan. That's how cool this thing is.'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Time Expander topper removed from Doctor Who production due to cost constraints, though software/wiring infrastructure retained for aftermarket reinstallation

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.379

0:00
Ever notice how ads always pop up at the worst moments when the killer's identity is about to be revealed? During that perfect meditation flow.
0:12
On Amazon Music, we believe in keeping you in the moment. That's why we've got millions of ad-free podcast episodes, so you can stay completely immersed in every story, every reveal, every breath. Download the Amazon Music app and start listening to your favorite podcasts ad-free, included with Prime.
0:37
The Blue Ball Network is online. Launching Silver Ball Chronicles. Nordman. Oh, God. Have you heard Nordman? Nordman has his own shirt. Yeah. Nordman, the silver ball protector. Yeah, I wonder if Dennis Nordman has any idea. Swear to me. Put some foam core on it. I have a throat problem. I'm sorry.
1:25
Hello everyone, I'm David Dennis and this is Silver Ball Chronicles. With me this month, like every month, is Ron Godzilla. Hallet, what's up fella? Uh, roar, as I hit you with my atomic breath. There you go, Godzilla. Holy moly, you are over the moon. You got your LE order in? Uh, no. I don't buy LEs. You in on the topper? I haven't seen a topper. You got the shooter rod all ordered and the art blades? I really haven't seen those either. All the things that used to come with pinball machines that we'll talk about this month. Plus, this game, Godzilla, has a really cool neck. Ties in very well this month, doesn't it? Yes, it does! Woo! Well, I'll tell you what. I've been doing a lot of stuff. I've been very busy. I was part of episode 72 of the Pinball Show where I covered Deep Root Pinball. And that's a whole thing. You can go back and listen to that summary if you'd like, but we want to move on from Deep Root. And that is Godzilla Ultraman Halloween. The wheels are sort of turning in pinball again. Yes, the wheels are turning in pinball. Golly gee. That's right. Finally, we have pinball machines, but you know what? You can't get them. They're there, but you can't get them. Oh. And if you can, you've got to pay a fortune for them. So that has turned me a bit sour as of late in the last few months, though, when I'm not really sort of busy doing TPN and Chronicle stuff, being incredibly bitter because I've been priced out of the market. And our listeners probably don't care. They don't care about you or me. They don't. Take care about pinball history. And joining us on social media over at facebook.com slash silverballchronicles, where you can engage with us in our musings, swing on over, and drop us a line. But also, when you find us on your regular podcatcher, we've updated our RSS. We're on most of the podcatchers except for Spotify because it is hell getting on Spotify. But if you do find us anywhere, leave us a five-star review so others can find us. We also get lots of wonderful feedback, some of it from This Week in Pinball's promoter database. This Week in Pinball is a sponsor of the podcast, giving us a $2 kickback every month to give them a little plug. But swing on over to This Week in Pinball for some of your news, as well as the Pinball promoter's database, where you can leave us a quick little review. A review? Yeah, Joe left us a review. Do you want to read that for the folks? The only pinball podcast worth your time. Unlike other pinball podcasts, which devote hours to discussing a single pinstripe thread, Silver Ball Chronicles is actually interesting. Yeah, there you go. We've also got Simon H. He emailed in to silverballchronicles at gmail.com. He was talking about our Steve Ritchie episode, our big three-hour finale for Steve Ritchie, which I would say is quite fitting. He said that, My friend forwarded me your last Steve Ritchie Part 3 podcast. I have to say it was such a good listen. I immediately listened to Parts 1 and 2. Seven hours later, few. Black Knight was the game in early 1981 that took this 14-year-old kid from playing video games to pinball. I used to play that game so much. I can remember when I finally cracked three million points. The memory still sits with me today. When Black Knight Sword of Rage came out, I had to get an LE. The only LE I have ever bought brand new, and I'm glad I did. Thanks for the great podcast, and I'll have a listen to some of your other episodes. Plus, I'll check out Ron's slam-tilt plug. Ooh, there you go. There's your slam-tilt plug. I like how you said, phew. But that, like, phew. That was supposed to be a sound effect there. And you've got to wipe your hand over your forehead. And he listened to part one of Steve Ritchie, which, by the way, was our pilot episode.

high confidence · Design workflow described by David Dennis

  • Williams management would greenlight themes if the designer showed genuine passion for the project

    medium confidence · Quote attributed to Barry Ousler by David Dennis discussing Doctor Who theme approval

    • David Dennis (on Dennis Nordman) @ late in episode — References industry personnel drama and Deep Root operational failures

  • “Steve Ritchie backhands everything. That's his thing. While a long sweeping ramp either on the left or the right is Barry Osler's thing.”

    David Dennis @ design analysis section — Identifies designer fingerprints/stylistic signatures in 90s Williams games

  • “And this is a guy who cycles through a lot of machines, and he's not even a Doctor Who fan. That's how cool this thing is.”

    Ron Hallett (on friend's Doctor Who ownership experience) @ mid-episode — Testifies to the universal appeal of the Time Expander mech beyond theme licensing

  • “Very well-designed, Barry Osler. You should be given the props for that. artwork is just gorgeous by Linda Deal, especially the back glass.”

    David Dennis @ near episode end — Credits designer excellence and collaborative artistry in 90s Bally-Williams titles

    • David Fix
    person
    David Dennisperson
    Ron Hallettperson
    Jodie Whittakerperson
    Tom Bakerperson
    Williams Pinball / Bally-Williamscompany
    American Pinballcompany
    Deep Root Pinballcompany
    High Speed 2: The Getawaygame
    Silver Ball Chroniclesorganization
    The Super Awesome Pinball Showorganization
    This Week in Pinball (TWIP)organization

    high · David Dennis cites Zofia Ryan noting topper was 'too expensive to keep in' and that 'they needed to keep the cost savings down'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Barry Ousler's long-sweeping ramp architecture identified as signature design element across multiple 90s titles, establishing consistent aesthetic/mechanical fingerprint

    high · Ron and David discuss how 'a long sweeping ramp either on the left or the right is Barry Osler's thing' and compare it to Steve Ritchie's backhanding style as designer signatures

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Doctor Who's multiple doctor likenesses (seven actors featured on playfield) would be licensing challenge in contemporary market with stricter IP controls

    medium · David speculates: 'I wonder if this game were made today if they would be able to even make something like this because it has the likenesses of all seven doctors on the game...especially with, like, video assets. The rights of everyone's likeness, yeah.'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Dennis Nordman's departure from Deep Root Pinball framed as industry bellwether ('canary in the coal mine'); connected to lack of engineering resources

    medium · David Dennis: 'he was stuck at Deep Root with no engineer for quite a few years and that led to his departure at Deep Root. Some people would call him the canary in the coal mine'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Zofia Ryan hired by American Pinball after extended period away from industry; represents talent acquisition strategy targeting experienced engineers

    high · David Fix brought Zofia to API on recommendation from Dennis Nordman; positioned to strengthen engineering department after Deep Root departure

  • ?

    technology_signal: 1990s pinball machines lacked high-power interlock switches on coin doors; operators could access moving mechanisms during play without power cutoff

    high · Ron Hallett explains: 'in this era, they didn't have the high-power interlock switch on there to cut the high power when you open the coin door'

    • 5:43
    Significantly more rocky than we were today. Podcast better. It was a good episode, but there was some formatting changes and stuff that we made, which were all the difference. I guess he mentioned Slam Tilt Podcast, which is my other podcast. So if this is far too professional for you and you want something really silly and stupid, give us a listen. And if you want to listen to somebody talk for 30 minutes about changing out a coil, that's your podcast. Or if you want to watch a Stern Army member literally tell one of the programmers to retire, then you can listen to our podcast.
    6:17
    It's well worth your time. Rob also emailed in. This one came in just before we started to record, so I made sure I included it. Rob says, I just wanted to drop a line and say that you have the best pinball podcast. Absolutely love listening to it. I think you were doing one on Pinball 2000 platform. I was there at Expo 99, and I was in the room in the video with George talking about it and Star Wars Episode I. I also took the factory tour. Ooh, the infamous factory tour. He got the last factory tour ever. And their newer location, they had actually moved to a newer state-of-the-art facility. It looked really cool. They all had, like, Pinball 2000 shirts on and stuff there. Well, little did they know, like, probably two or three days after they were at that factory, that was going to be it. Well, if you wanted a T-shirt from us here at Silverball Chronicles, which I'm actually wearing at this exact moment because I didn't have any other clean shirts, swing on over to silverballswag.com. That's where we have hoodies, mugs, and stickers and a bunch of other things. We sold two shirts last month. Oh, that's why the PayPal said we had money. That's right. We are in the money now. So next time you're at the Rochester Pinball Collective, you can buy yourself a bag of chips. You're welcome. Also, we've got corrections and comments. Because this is sort of a historical-esque podcast, we are spending some time driving in sources from multiple locations. Often we will have comments and corrections. We'd love for you to send those in to silverballchronicles at gmail.com. Last month, I was super confused with what those dynamite things were called in the last episode, like the ones that Wile E. Coyote used to use, and I called them a plunger. Bo Jimmy emailed in, and he said it was called a detonator, which does seem correct, but I did some Googling, and its actual official name is a TNT blasting machine or a shot exploder. That's a detonator. No, I'm telling you, man, plunger. It's not a plunger. Google it in, TNT plunger, and it comes up. But then it actually goes to the real article that says TNT blasting machine. I had a correction. Oh. I'll save this one. This is a correction from Bruce Nightingale of the Slam Tilt Podcast. And I don't even remember saying this. I certainly don't remember saying this in the last episode because it was the Steve Ritchie episode. But I guess I may mention that the factory where Stern was for years was like all through data East days up to Stern Pinball. And then a few years ago they moved to their new facility. I was told that was wrong, that they were in their original factory when they were Data East, and then sometime around where they became Sega, they moved into a new factory, and that's the factory they were in all the way up to a few years ago before they moved again. There, there. I've made a correction. There was also a correction that Dennis Griesel let me know that you indeed said something also incorrect. You're falling apart here, bud. Thank you. He asked me if he should e-mail it in, and he should have. Yeah, he should have. You can't tell me I'm wrong and then not tell me what it is. Right, and I forget things all the time. Maybe he's telling me my name isn't Ron Hallett. Somehow I screwed that up. It's possible. Ted at Pinball Prices, he also sent in some interesting bits about Pinball 2000 and video game pinball. He says, I recently came across a Chicago Coins super flipper game, a video game disguised as a pinball machine, up for auction. Have you guys ever talked about it on the show? So I did some looking up on the IPDB for the Chicago Coin Super Flipper game, and it is classified as a flipper, like not pinball. It says not pinball, which is why when we were kind of looking up stuff, it didn't come up on the list. Although when you look at it, it's pretty much pinball, and it's pretty neat. So if you're interested in checking that out, I would go and take a look.
    10:12
    It's really cool how we get some of this feedback stuff. In the last episode, I said that George Gomez was on just another pinball podcast with Joel Engelberth, where I used a couple of George Gomez quotes, and that was actually incorrect.
    10:29
    Edward sent in an email to let me know that George Gomez spoke on the super awesome pinball show's Fireside Chat No. 1, where you got some of that information, not just another pinball podcast. And Edward also says, I agree, Joel Engelberth is the worst. Wow. All right. So should we jump into today's topic now that we've tied a bow on all of the mistakes that you made, Ron? Yes, and now that your ad is probably played, that you'll stick in later. Yeah, I'm going to stick that in a little bit later. Yeah, if you're in Canada, Dennis Financial is for you. The Bally Williams era has often been considered the most mechanically exciting time in pinball. In fact, many of the games in the era still carry a hefty resale price on the secondary market because they still have the magic. Of course, the magic of pinball and the world under glass was truly brought to life by Bally Williams in the 1990s. When pinball all but died after the closure of Williams in 1999, many media personalities, book writers, and hobbyists spent the ten-plus years following that dreaming of what could have been if the glory years continued. Many pinball personalities who purchased assets from the major manufacturers spent years trying to finish incomplete games or bring back a new Bally Williams. Of course, they all failed because Bally Williams was unique. It was an industry powerhouse where creativity, competition, and magic were created. This month, Ron, we're talking about the mechs that made us. 90s Bally Williams. Of course, everybody loves the Bally Williams games in the 90s. Even the B, C, and D level titles are all sought after in today's market. Isn't that right? Except Gilligan's Island, probably.
    12:39
    I mean, yes, all of them. All of them are highly sought after. Because even Gilligan's Island has a super cool mech in it. Except for, well, except for Popeye. But even Popeye has super cool necks in it. Yeah, well, I mean, if you want to talk about, you know, Adam's family, fun house, you know, you can check out our Pat Lawler episode where we talk about that. We've got Steve Ritchie's games in the 90s, which are crazy. Star Trek, you know, even games like No Fear. Barry Ousler, Dwight Sullivan episodes. We've got all those in our archives. You can swing on over to silverballchronicles.com, and they are all listed there, and you can go back and listen to them, or you can go through, of course, your podcatcher and find those. But, Ron, the real question, the thing that drove everybody here today is, what is your favorite pinball mech from the 90s?
    13:28
    I actually love the Supercharger. From High Speed 2? Although it's not really a complicated mech, is it? The promotional piece for it, their promo video they did for it said, the Supercharger has no moving parts. That is completely false. It has one moving part, which is the diverter on top of it. And a massive magnet, although it doesn't move, it's still a big deal. That doesn't move. But the diverter does move and it does break. But they were trying to say it has no moving parts, meaning it'll never break.
    13:56
    But it's simple. It's just three magnets that make the ball go around a loop, but it goes around so fast. It literally moves the entire game back and forth as it's going around. It's a very simple mech, but I thought it was super cool. It's super, super fun to watch. Talk about kinetic satisfaction. Of course, I'm going to have to say my favorite mech in the 90s, although not my favorite game, is the Doctor Who meat slicer. And we'll talk about that right away. The Doctor Who meat slicer. Do you mean the time expander? Yeah, that's it. The time expander. That's it. Which this is to tie into, we mentioned Godzilla earlier, because there was a moving building on Godzilla. And the first thing people were saying is, hey, look, it's Doctor Who. But much cooler. So this is Doctor Who, of course. We're talking September of 1992. It's a sci-fi time travel theme. This is a Williams WPC Fliptronics II system. It sells 7,752 units. This has art by Linda Deal. It has music and sound by John Hay, and software by Bill Futsenruder. So, of course, Futsenruder, or as they called him, Futs, wanted to do a game and designed a play field, but, of course, he couldn't get it moving, so he just basically gave it to Barry Ousler. And this seems to be the theme at Williams, which was, I got these ideas and I need somebody to finish it. Let's give it to Barry and Barry will make a killer game out of it. So then it was considered a joint design between Bill Fusseruder and Barry Osler, who worked very closely together on all the ideas, including the idea of the meat slicer. I'm sorry, time expander. So what's Doctor Who? Are you a Doctor Who fan? You seem like a Doctor Who nerd. Wow. That is one of the requirements of nerddom, right? Like, you have to know Doctor Who, watch Star Trek, watch Monty Python. Am I getting them all here? But, no, I've never really watched Doctor Who. Doctor Who's not my thing either. I've got a friend of mine who likes a big Doctor Who fan. In fact, Mike from CPR has a TARDIS in his basement, which is awesome. It's not really my thing. You know, I love British culture. My history, of course, you know, seven generations ago was from Britain. But not, it's just Doctor Who doesn't do it for me. For those who don't know, a TARDIS is the time machine. Yes. And it's a, what, phone booth? Yeah, it's like a British police box. Oh. So I think that was like a phone booth back in the day where they would go into the phone booth and call the actual police. I don't know. So Doctor Who, of course, is the British science fiction television program. Did you notice how I spelled program? You spelled it wrong, yes. No, I spelled it very much correct. P-R-O-G-R-A-M-M. Mm-hmm. It was produced by BBC since 1963. The program, also spelled correctly, depicts the adventures of a Time Lord called the Doctor, an extraterrestrial being who looks human. The Doctor explores the universe in time-traveling spaceship called the TARDIS, which I guess is spelled in all capitals, so it must stand for something. Its exterior appears to be a British blue police box, which is a common sight in Britain in 1963, when the series first aired. Of course, he's accompanied by a number of companions. The doctor combats a variety of foes while working to save civilians, spelled with an S instead of a Z, and to help people in need. All kinds of misspellings here. Amazing. Mm-hmm. And the thing about the doctor that ties into the game is there's multiple doctors.
    17:30
    Yeah. The thing is, that wasn't originally planned. the original Doctor was an older dude and then when he had health issues and would have to leave the show, they wanted to continue the show, so they wrote in the whole thing where the Doctor can regenerate himself into a new form. But originally, wasn't it, he can only regenerate so many times? And they've already passed that number. Yeah, so one way or another, from 1963 to the present, with a small break between 89 and 2005, which is actually a long break, they've had multiple Doctors along the way. I believe they're currently on the 13th actor who's to play the doctor, who is Jodie Whittaker. She's also the first female doctor, and she's been portraying that since 2018. So they thought, this really big British show, which I hadn't even heard of until five years ago, which is kind of weird, is that going to work in the U.S., which is the major sort of market for pinball? Seems like a bit of a risk, doesn't it, Ron? It's definitely not. It's more of a geek theme, I guess you could say. Yeah, it's pretty niche. And even within sort of nerdy, spacey, nerdy stuff, it's particularly niche, even within that area. What Barry Osler said, I don't recall too much resistance from management over the theme. If you can show them that you truly believed in a project, they would usually give it a chance. Yeah, and that's sort of, I think that still reigns true at Stern today, right? If they come with a bunch of themes and nobody is passionate about the theme, they're going to pass on it. So it's, I mean, that must be a holdback from sort of some of the Williams executives too, right? They're not going to give you a theme you don't believe in, where in this time you could even come with a theme, and as long as you believed in it, they would go after it. Now, some of the coolest mechs on here, we're going to focus on mechs, but we'll also talk about a few other things. One of them is the topper that was removed from this game. Now, there's a thing that's called a Dalek, which is like a British robot.
    19:33
    Right? He's got like an arm thing, and it's a circle. It's a Dalek. Is it Dalek? Oh, that's bad. See? This is how much. How do you know this, and I don't? Actually, I'm going to look that up now to make sure I'm correct on that, but I'm pretty sure it's not Dalek.
    19:49
    Let's see. Dalek pronunciation. What does it say? It says G-A-A. L-U-H-K. I would assume that means da.
    20:02
    Dalek. Well, let's see. I think I can make it stay it. Yep, it's Dalek. Okay, good. Good. So, not only do I mispronounce names, I can also mispronounce this. Now, this mech was designed by a person named Zofia Ryan. And if you recognize the name Zofia Ryan, we mentioned her in the last episode. but she had appeared on the super awesome pinball show episode 24 with david fix she's currently over at american pinball american pinball so she because she had worked on a lot of these games a lot of her comments are in there and she spoke about how great it was to work on this topper but it was eventually removed for cost savings the wiring and the software features were all left intact in the back box and in the system. So that actually allows you to reinstall the missing components if you wanted to put them in there. But it was just too expensive to keep it in, and they needed to keep the cost savings down. So that's pretty cool that you can actually install it back in if you want to. I can remember seeing them. I know when I first got into the hobby a long time ago, you could get these, or at least someone was making them, at least a few of them. It was like a kit? It was some kind of kit. I just remember being at an Allentown pinball show, and they had three or four of these Doctor Who's with the topper all set way too loud. So all you heard were the Daleks saying, Exterminate! Exterminate! Exterminate! Yeah, I do know about that. Now, the other pit, which is really what I talk about here, is watch your fingers. Right? The Time Expander toy. Now, this thing is awesome. And it's funny because I wrote it this episode before, of course, Godzilla has popped up. But this seems like a really expensive main toy. And the budget of this game basically went right into this one specific mechanical device. And it was three toys in one. So this is what they call a change state toy, right? so it will change states or change the shots and things based on where it is positioned or what it is doing on the play field. Do you want to describe the time expander, Ron? Yeah, it has three levels. And the first level is reminiscent of Pinbot, actually. It's got two... Yeah, it's sort of like the capture in the eyes. It's the same thing. You put them, and then it raises up to a second level where you have these very unique-looking targets. They almost look like golf balls. Yeah, kind of like the eyeballs in... Oh, yeah. Eyeballs in Tales from the Crypt. Yeah. Yep. You pound on those, and then it lifts up to the third level where the Daleks are. And they're like little flip-up targets. Little flip-up targets. And you kind of shoot in, and they kind of flip up, and it goes into the subway underneath, which is pretty cool. So it goes under the playfield. It'll pop up through a vertical up-kicker into, I think it's the right side of the playfield. Kind of cool. It makes some awfully cool sound when you hit one of the Daleks. It just makes this explosion. The Terminator! It's a very unique toy, and it lowers below the playfield, and then it will expand up onto the next level,
    23:31
    and then onto the next level. It'll come right up almost to the glass, and it's really, really impressive to see it in person. I have played some Doctor Who. A friend of mine has them, showed out to Evan, And this is the one machine that has outlasted all of his other machines, and he says it will probably never leave. And this is a guy who cycles through a lot of machines, and he's not even a Doctor Who fan. That's how cool this thing is. Now, I call it the meat slicer because it's super dangerous to work on. So there's actually a warning when you open up the play field and when you're testing it that says watch your fingers. Yeah, when you open the coin door, because in this era, they didn't have the high-power interlock switch on there to cut the high power when you open the coin door. So when you open the coin door, I mean, you can move the thing up and down. So it's just like warning, warning. Yeah, big time, big time. And this mech is so big, and, of course, it goes under the play field. It has this massive mechanical harness to kind of hold it in place so it doesn't jiggle around. and then the subway underneath as well. But it has this rotating motor. It's got a picture of a person getting their fingers jammed in it. It's a big, dangerous frigging toy. So, Ron, who was Sophia Ryan, who at the time was Sophia Bill? She was the first female mechanical engineer hired by Williams Pinball. She holds six U.S. patents on pinball and casino games. Right out of college, her first American job was at Williams. She was interviewed by Gary Hendricks. As a female in pinball, specifically as an engineer, it must have been pretty difficult. We had talked at the time about, like, Linda Diehl and Margaret Hudson and sort of how they had to kind of change their demeanor to work in a male-dominated industry. Zofia is actually pretty unique because she's Eastern European, so she kind of has this tough, gruff exterior, which is really kind of interesting and I think pretty cool. So she was able to kind of put up with that as well. So do you know anything about Gary Hendricks? Jimi Hendricks' brother? I don't know. So Zofia would say that Gary was a mechanical engineer, a manager. I have to say a real gentleman. I loved working with him. He was a great mentor, an advisor, and he was just very friendly. So you can see that the engineering team at Williams at the time, of course, was a very close-knit group. Even though there were multiple design teams, there were designers that had wars and fights, that engineering team all shared a collective language and stuff, and they built a lot of really great relationships. Sophia said, I didn't have a lot of experience. I was a nervous wreck, but I managed. I began my work without designing, helping out with engineering work. Yeah, so she would work with pool sharks. She would work with the team on pool sharks at Midway. She worked on the machine, brought a pinbot under Python Angelo, the Party Zone team under Dennis Nordman. And then quickly, Zofia was promoted after every single project, from designer to eventually engineer. That's pretty cool. Zofia would say, I wasn't even thinking about being a woman. I didn't even know it was a problem, a woman or a man. I felt very comfortable. I became friendly with everyone. We were working our first jobs.
    27:03
    So there you go. It was not an issue for her. She just did her job and did it well, and she was promoted left and right, so good for her. And she's currently the senior mechanical engineer at American Pinball. Yeah, that's really cool. Of course, she would leave pinball. She's come back to pinball. And when David Fix, he moved to American Pinball, or API, as their director of operations and marketing, he made some internal moves by switching up some of the design groups. One of those moves was to bring in Dennis Nordman. and of course he was stuck at Deep Root with no engineer for quite a few years and that led to his departure at Deep Root. Some people would call him the canary in the coal mine and he was speaking to David Fix about those who could help out in the engineering department and he suggested that API hire Zofia. Zofia had worked briefly on Houdini with API before the artwork and everything was completed and she is somewhat familiar with American pinball. So it was a great fit. So if we go back to really one of the first games that Sophia worked on, Doctor Who, we could talk about some of the different perks that are available on Doctor Who. So you choose a different doctor. Each doctor gives you a different perk when you're playing, isn't that right? That is correct. Which is the doctor you want to choose every time you get the business? I have no idea. I'm trying to remember how many doctors there are. I think it's like seven. Yeah, there was seven at the time. So, yes, they each have different abilities, different perks, which is amazing. I wonder if this game were made today if they would be able to even make something like this because it has the likenesses of all seven doctors on the game. Would you think something like that made in today's market would be difficult to get? Oh, especially with, like, video assets. The rights of everyone's likeness, yeah. That's one of the things that makes it cool. You can pick your doctor. You've got the cool time expander. It's got the video mode, which is pretty cool. You jump over things. I think it's short jumps are one flipper button. Long jumps are both flipper buttons. And you try to jump over objects and get into the TARDIS. Now, this also has the Barry Ousler, you know, right or left sweeping, long sweeping ramp, which tends to be, some people call it a bit of a designing crutch, But you know what? It's a fingerprint, right? Steve Ritchie backhands everything. That's his thing. While a long sweeping ramp either on the left or the right is Barry Osler's thing. Of course, this also has an awesome, awesome drop target bank on the left side of the field. I think they're stand-ups.
    29:47
    Are they stand-ups? They wouldn't have paid for that many drop targets. No way. Those are stand-ups. Could have been drop targets. Yeah, I think with the time expander cost, there was no way they were putting drop targets on the side. And the side ramp has the cool sonic boom. You can repeat the thing over and over, and you get to the sonic boom stage. Yeah, it's got this really cool, like, diverter on the ramp where it'll lift up, and then the ball will go off that left side ramp and then down into the left side lower flipper, middle flipper. This is a three-flipper game. The third flipper is actually positioned really uniquely. It's very, very low on the play field on the left side. It's basically in the left-out lane. Yeah, compared to where they usually are. I found it really difficult when I played this game to get that side ramp shot because I didn't have the timing down. It was very weird. It's a very flowy game. I really like this game. Very well-designed, Barry Osler. You should be given the props for that. artwork is just gorgeous by Linda Deal, especially the back glass. Like I said, I'm not a Doctor Who fanatic, but when I look at that and I see all the different Doctors and they're in this, it's not cartoony, but they have taken some liberties. It's not photorealism like you would expect nowadays, but it is really, really well done. I know the guy with the scarf is the most famous one. Yeah, the guy with the afro? Tom Baker. I believe he was Doctor the longest.
    31:22
    Yeah, from 1974 to 1981. Longer than anybody else. When it comes to the flyer for this game, it's about time.
    31:33
    Yeah And of course the doctor is in Of course The Time Expander Players activate the Time Expander by locking two balls on level one of this time-distorting mini-playfield. Level two will then be exposed in the challenge of restoring Earth time back to normal factor zero by lighting all 15 control panel lamps. That is a super, super nerdy sentence that only Dr. Who would know. Shooting into a door on level three starts multiball trademark, and the chance for Dalek jackpots and Davros super jackpots to 300 million points. Ooh. The time expander itself is new, but they did use some pinbot stuff in this, the two locks, and when you hit the second level targets, it completes a grid, very pinbody, I would say. Yeah, it's cool. I like this game. Like I said, I'm not a Doctor Who fan. This is a great game. Now, this game you couldn't give away when people were trying to get rid of their Bally Williams games, right? Everybody wanted Theaters of Magic. They wanted the Ritchie games. This one was not one of the ones that was greatly sought after. But in the years recently, it is expensive. It wasn't fast break either. It was middle tier, I would say. Would you say B-level? Yeah, I'd say B-level. So, of course, this featured the new Opto Flipper Button switches as Fliptronics 2. What the heck does that mean? It means they don't have leaf switches on the side. They use optos instead, which, to be honest, I prefer the leaf switches. You have less issues. Oh, so now you're getting into another board. Well, again, it's a boring tech talk, but that's what Stern uses. That's what Stern uses to this day. They use the leaf switches. Yeah. Tried and true. It's got a different and unique feel. It's tons of fun. And, of course, that is Doctor Who. You know what you should do? is when we go over all these mechs, you should do like a Facebook thing, like on our page, and our listeners can vote on what the best mech was. Oh, super good. So what I will do is I will toss up a post about what you think was the best mech. Swing on over there and type in what you think the best mech that we spoke about is in today's podcast. And, of course, you can choose anything, even drop targets, because those are the best mech ever created. And Mr. David Dennis has prepared for this podcast for some time, as we have been specifically skipping over certain games, if you've noticed on the previous episodes, just because of the mechs. It's almost like a super intricate storyline Marvel thing or something. It's all coming together. It is. It is all coercing. Actually, this episode is the I didn't have enough content for everybody else's episode, so I jammed them all into one. You're not supposed to say that. You've just ruined the whole thing there.
    34:28
    S***. Okay. Twilight Zone. Yeah. Wide bodies make this big return. So somehow, somebody at Williams talked management into building wide bodies again. I don't like wide bodies, Ron. They're fine. They're too floaty. Duh. I would say hardly any of the Williams wide bodies from this era are floaty. Steve Ritchie's got these horrible slings. Twilight Zone is not floaty. Star Trek Next Gen is not floaty. Demoman is not floaty. Do I need to continue? Do I need to go through all of them?
    35:08
    Popeye is not floaty. Okay, we'll skip that one. Roadshow is not floaty. Twilight Zone, of course, is the sci-fi, also time travel, also weird hitchhiker piano theme. This is from April of 93. This is also a WPC Fliptronics 2. It sells, are you sitting down, Ron? 15,235 units. The concept and design by Pat Lawler, Larry DeMar, and Ted Estes. Artwork, like all Pat Lawler games, is done by John Yossi. Dots by Scott Slomany and Eugene Greer. and Music and Software by Chris Granner, Rich Karstens, and Software, Larry DeMar, Ted Essies. This is a pretty special, special game. Especially if you're talking about mechs because there is a lot of them. This is the peak here on how much crap can we jam into a game. Literally, literally. Even Pat Lawler has said they put too much in this game. They let him go too crazy. Coming off of Adam's family, he was basically told, go for it, whatever you want. Yeah, and in fact, Jerry Thompson, who's now Stern's epic sound person, saw Twilight Zone pinball in 1994. He fell in love with it, and in 1998, he finally bought a Twilight Zone off of eBay, which was his first pinball machine. So you can see that this machine has inspired the people of today to design and build bits and pieces of pinball. Jerry Thompson, sound designer at Stern. This is his machine. It's quite the machine. And it's designed on the Twilight Zone television series. Of course, Twilight Zone is an American media franchise based on an anthology television series. There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition. And it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area in which we call the Twilight Zone. Ooh, very well done. And, of course, it was hosted by Rod Serling. And the episodes are in various genres. They go from sci-fi to fantasy, horror, thriller. and they often conclude with an unexpected twist and some sort of unusual moral.
    37:44
    The first series was shot entirely in black and white, probably the most famous, and ran on CBS for five seasons from 1959 to 1964. They also had a movie in 1983, which I remember seeing, a new series in 1985, and in 2019-2020, there's also been a series reboot on CBS. Now, I probably mentioned this in the other episode, but we'll see if you remember what I said, if I said this. Twilight Zone, they actually had to get three separate licenses for this game. Can you name them? Ooh, no, I can't. So they have to get, they have to get Ron. Right, he was a separate license. So they got that from his wife, the user's likeness. That's one. They have to get the song. Okay, you got the two harder ones first. Yes, they got the golden earring song, Twilight Zone. So the third one should be easy. So it's just the license in general. Yes, from Viacom. Twilight Zone. Only license for Twilight Zone. Wow. I was much better at this. Yeah, you got the two harder ones first. Usually most people would just get the Twilight Zone. This is a great game. I haven't played enough of this game. Every time I've ever been able to find it, it's always had crappy flippers or issues, and it's really tainted the experience. And because of that, I haven't given it a fair enough shake. But enter a new age of pinball where the flyer is all about the mechs. They even expand the mechs so you can see them, like, separately. They're enlarged to show texture. We show the power, the power play field.
    39:21
    I think it's called, what, the power field? Actually, yeah. The Powerfield, which is literally just a mini play field, but it's got two magnets on it that you control instead of flippers, which I never can do that good. It has a gumball machine that you actually load. It actually loads balls into the gumball machine. Super cool Mac. I mean, you could see it. You could see the balls in there. They pop out. They go into a subway. Then it has the clock. The infamous clock. Which actually keeps time. Well, if it's not broke, which it is on most Twilight Zones. Because the issue with the clock is this was pre-LED, so all the lights in the clock are incandescent, and the whole thing is enclosed in plastic, and it would just burn horribly, just burn everything up. So that's why the clock almost never works. That was one of the... It's got a bunch of diverters. A bunch of diverters. It had magnets. It had, what, the third magnet that was cut before production. Super, super cool. lots of stacked and loaded gimmicks. Yeah, it's all about mechs. Even the simple things like the way you shoot the piano shot, but you hit a ramp, it comes up to like a wire form, and then there's a diverter thing that just drops the ball down on the play field, and then you shoot it into the piano. It catches it and then pulls it off of the ramp. If there's ever a mech game, this is it. It's all about mechs. Mechs, mechs, mechs. It's also, and we mentioned, it's a wide body. They convinced them to go to wide body. If you had this in a narrow body, you couldn't cram all the crap in it. There wouldn't be enough room. But what is also kind of interesting is Pat Lawler has said time and time again that he despises wide bodies. There's just too much space, and it incentivizes you to fill that space with stuff, even though that that stuff may not enhance the game itself. But what's neat about this game is he's put this upper play field and gumball mech and everything up in the top left, And what that has done is it's actually created a narrow-body shooter, which is quite interesting. And from a tech standpoint, I think this was the last Williams game that didn't have the high-power interlock switch.
    41:38
    So on Twilight Zone, if you open the coin door, it doesn't cut the high voltage, like the 50 volts. That's the one that stops your heart, right? No, that would actually be the display voltage, like 100-plus voltage. Oh, okay, so that's the voltage that just makes you pee yourself. Yes. No, this is just, it turns off all the coils and everything, so you can't short stuff into stuff and break your game. That's why they added the interlock switch. But I think this was the last Williams game that didn't have it. It was also the last Williams game to use the shorter coil stops. They went to longer coil stops after this. More useless tech info. Yeah. Now, this also has the famed Pat Lawler five-lane bottom. Of course, Pat Lawler's favorite thing that he does, he's described it as though musicians have a sound, painters have a similar design. Well, the multiple flipper, five-lane bottom geometry, repeatable loops, and some sort of side flipper shot is very much Pat Lawler's thing. But he loves that five-lane bottom, doesn't he? He does. Pat says, I try to shake up my style, except for my five-lane bottom. I love it. I'll just try it, but it doesn't work the same. I smile because I like doing things that make people uneasy. My favorite part of this is the art. I mean, the mechs are cool. It's interactive. It's fun. It's got some deep code, which we'll get into in a minute. But, man, the artwork that John Yousey did here is so perfectly reminiscent of the theme, Twilight Zone, including that back glass, which I think is just stunning. And the funny thing is, some of the mechs in the game really don't, like, I don't think there was an episode with a gumball machine, but it's in the game. If you know if there was a gumball machine episode, shoot us an email. I'm pretty sure there wasn't. But it has Talking Tina, so I like Talking Tina. She kills people. She kills Telly Stavalis, who, if you've ever seen the episode, he's a complete asshole in the episode and deserves to die. My favorite episode, and I think this is a bit cliche because most people's favorite Twilight Zone episode, is the one where the guy is the only survivor in the world so he can read all the books in the library. Yeah, Burgess Meredith, and he breaks his glasses so then he can't read anything. They're not all like that. They have some lighthearted episodes. I'll do this one quick. One of my favorite Twilight Zone episodes, there's this dude like out in the swamps, Swampland, like a redneck dude with his dog, and he comes home and everyone's crying. and like, why are they all crying? But no one can hear him or see him or his dog. And he looks and he sees himself. He's like dead. It's one of those deals where he's dead. Super cool. Right? So he's walking around the wilderness there, and he comes up on this guy who can see him. It's like, hi, I'm St. Peter or whatever. Come to heaven. I'm here to lead you to heaven. And he's there like, oh, cool. So all right. And he starts, oh, I'm sorry. You can't take your dog with you. It's like, excuse me? I can't take my dog?
    44:44
    If heaven doesn't allow dogs, then I guess I don't want to be in heaven. Tells the guy, screw you. So then he walks around a while, and then he runs into this other guy who says, hi, I'm St. Peter. Wait a minute. That other guy said he was St. Peter. Like, oh, I'm afraid that was the devil.
    45:02
    It's like, oh. And he's there like, I'm here to lead you to heaven. Can I take my dog with me? Oh, certainly. Everyone is welcome. Oh, he's got him. He goes to heaven. And the whole moral is like, if you die, make sure you have man's best friend with you to lead you the right way. I love that episode.
    45:19
    This was really where they had all those stories, which have very much become cliche now in movie making, where the guy is dead and realizes he's dead, and we all know that. Or, you know, the spy who turns out to be a double-crossed. Back in this time in the 60s, in the early 60s, people were experiencing those plot twists on a visual medium for the first time. So it must have been pretty epic at the time. And they still hold up today. And looking at the back glass, you can see things like the little spaceship that's from an episode, the little walking guy that is from an episode. You see Maple Street. The airplane with the gremlin dude on it. Maple Street. I like that. That was an episode. Mm-hmm. The little television where the creepy kid and family are watching that episode, and the little kid, they're scared of the little kid. You know what the weirdest thing is, though? Rod Serling is not smoking. So in the original Backglass, Rod Serling was smoking. And, of course, it was a bit of a calling card for him because he was a chain smoker. Big time. His widow actually requested that the cigarette be removed from the final production unit after she observed the back glass art. Rod would usually smoke three or four packs a day. In May of 1975, Rod had three heart attacks, one on the operating table while undergoing open-heart surgery, and he actually died two days later. Smoking was the cause of his heart disease, and his widow did not want that to be part of his legacy. So it was removed from the art. Don't smoke, kids. Now it's the vaping. Get off the vaping. Hmm. You look dumb. Oh, yeah, and I forgot. This was the last game Williams did without DCS sound. What was DCS sound? Digital Compression System. It was their much-improved sound system, especially with voice samples like games Twilight Zone and before, when you would hear a voice in a game, it would not sound very high quality. It would sound pretty bad. Yeah, it was very compressed, right? And it sounded like an AM radio. Games after this, like, I think the next game was Indiana Jones, Pinball Adventures, and after, way better. Way, way better. And that was used across all of Williams' platforms, too, and even their video games. So it was the WPC system was coded in MIDI sounds, which was very much like ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, stuff. and behind all of the coding, that was basically what it was in the 80s and early 90s. Now, Chris Granner would say that we pressed the Yamaha synthesizer's limitations to produce a masking strategy. It was two or $300 system at the time and it was like milking every last cycle from that system. I was disappointed on bailing on DCS on Twilight Zone because it wasn't quite ready. We had to move from DCS back to the Yamaha system. DCS had a varied and rich world with its sounds. They were truer to the genre than any of the other games. It was originally designed to be the new fancy DCS system, but they had to go back to the Yamaha WPC system because they just didn't have the time to finish all the experimentation. Technically, it's all WPC system. Yeah, whatever the system was called before. Yeah, so whatever the sound part of that was before DCS, the chip set. Now, Ted Estes, who was one of the original designers and team members who designed a lot of the coding, actually spoke about some of the bits that were removed. So there were two actual magnets in the orbit loop shot, weren't there? Yep, and the one was removed, and then modders kept putting them back. There's probably a ton of twilight zones out there where they have drilled a hole and put the magnet back in. Yeah, the reason, I think that's a bit silly to put it back in, but the reason Ted Estes, and I've got a link to this article that he wrote, one of them was that they had a concern that when the ball went around the orbit, it was going too fast for the magnet to catch it. So they actually had one magnet that was used to slow the ball down so that the second magnet could catch it. So drilling it and putting it back in isn't adding any extra functionality. I don't know if that's true. I think I remember somewhere, like, the multi-ball intro sequence, it would actually, the two magnets would each catch a ball or something. It had something to do with the multi-ball intro sequence. But you wouldn't see that, right? Because it's basically behind a bunch of frames. No, you wouldn't see it because you can't see anything on the right side. But you'll know it's there. But you'll know it's there if you're a modder. Yeah, now there was also door panel flashers, and of course those flashers were removed because they were way too distracting when the balls were locked. So underneath the artwork on the play field, there's a door lock, right? And underneath that were actually flashers rather than just lights. It's kind of neat. I can see how it could be distracting. Wow, and they thought that was distracting, and they were just incandescent. Not yet they were LEDs. Oh, wow. Now, they also made some changes to that mini playfield. The screen text and switch covers were added to the mini playfield during production. There's also a leveling mechanism that was added, and the words flip here, so that people would kind of understand that they had to flip when the ball was in there, because without physical flippers on that upper playfield, you kind of don't know when to go. I guarantee you, and if you have no idea, you'll see it pop up there. okay, am I supposed to do something, and it'll just drop right off, and the game laughs at you. The other bit, so this machine has the pop bumpers from death on the left side, don't they? Yep. You don't want it in the pop bumpers ever. Ever. You do not want to be in the pop bumpers ever. It is the worst. And a lot of that comes from the pop bumpers being really down low on the play field because the upper play field is up in the top left with the other mechanical bits, well, they moved those pop bumpers down lower and to the left, which are right over the left out lane and in lane. And, man, when that ball gets in there, it's power draining out the left side. Well, Ted Espy says that Pat wanted to try something a bit radical and place the jet bumpers. Again, notice they're Williams, so they're jet bumpers. That's what they call them at Williams. Very close to the bottom of the play field. After experimenting with the jet bumper placement on the Whitewoods, Pat decided that they weren't too bad down there. Something changed between the Whitewoods and prototypes, however. The ball kept flying down the left drain any time it went into the bumpers. After a few weeks of listening to complaints, Pat came in to work one morning, grabbed the drills, some T-nuts, posts, and rubbers, and installed the posts. The complaints died down after several thousand games into the production run. Yeah, so when you're playing in big, high-level tournaments, they'll remove some of these posts, isn't that right? They remove lots of posts, yeah. So the biggest issue when you start modifying on the fly is that then issues will pop up from the fixes. So Ted has another quote. Then people were complaining that the ball would fly out of the bumpers and straight between the flippers. Something else had changed. Pat decided to take out the post but leave the holes and put the post in the coin box for the operator to decide to use. Yeah, so I mean, come on. People complain about tweaks to play fields nowadays too, right? So this is already in production. And they're like, all right, screw it. We'll just put them in the coin box. If they want to make it harder or easier, they can put it in. And, wow, people complain about sending in a new post for Sword of Rage's upper play field. Well, you know, it's pinball. That has always happened and will probably always happen. Now, you talked about the clock a little bit, right? Mm-hmm. Now, there was a whole meeting about the clock when they were designing this game. They actually sat down specifically to chat about the clock. They needed some way to let people know that they had a certain amount of time to complete a task. Well, I have a Simpsons pinball party, and on the upper play field, there is a countdown clock, right? That countdown clock is designed to tell you how much time you have to complete a task. Nowadays, it's on the LCD screen. Well, this was the way that they did it back in the day. It was a physical, actual, analog clock. And it kept time. It actually kept time. If it's working, it will actually have the correct time on it, assuming your CPU has the right time. You know how much it cost? It was the most expensive tooling budget ever at Williams. That's the cost to build the mech, like all the bits and pieces that they had to, like all the stuff that they had to order, all the tools they had to order, and then the manufacturing. That's what the tooling budget is. The plastics had to be made. It was $200,000 for all the tooling to build the clock. Yeah, that broke the budget big time. And then the clocks themselves broke as they all fried. And then they just didn't stop working. So one of the big secondary market toys to buy is the updated, you know, LED clock mech. Those are all over the place. One of the longest running mods ever. I mean, 17 years ago when I got it, that was one of the main, like, we have new clock boards. you'd get a new clock board and it would have LEDs on it and send incandescence and you'd put it in your clock so it would actually work. So when they put Twilight Zone out on test, oh. Then there's a couple other things, right? So there's the gumball machine and the Powerball and how that ties into the Twilight Zone code. Was the code too much? The idea was that you had lights, camera, action at Gottlieb, which kind of created mode-based games. Shortly after that, you had the Addams Family, which had modes, and it was thought to be too crazy. And then this thing went way over when it came to code, right?
    55:42
    I don't know if I'd say that. Is it hard? It's not. Well, okay. It depends how you want to play this. If you're playing Twilight Zone in a tournament, it's one of the easiest games in the world to play. You hit the two ramps, you lock a ball.
    55:55
    You lock a ball. You start multi-ball. You get jackpots. When it's over, you hit two ramps. You lock a ball. Also, any time the right orbit is lit, to load the gumball machine, you hit it. And eventually you'll get Powerball Mania, and you play that. That's it. That's what you do. From a tournament strategy, it's one of the easiest games to learn. Now, if you actually want to play all the modes in the game, which nobody does, you hit, I can't remember if it's both ramps or one ramp, but you hit a ramp. I think it's both. And then you hit the scoop. I think it's either scoop. I think there's the scoop up front, but I think you can hit the piano shot and it starts a mode too. I don't remember. Because no one plays the modes. Because the only time I play it is in tournaments. But it has all these different modes. They're the panels, they're called. They didn't call them modes. Which are down in the middle of the play field. They're like all these things. It looks like a doorway. Yeah, and you get through them all, which you don't have to finish any of them. You just have to start them. then you can get a lost in the zone, which is the wizard vote. But the thing is, it's not really rule complexity. It was more like, what's the word?
    57:01
    Confusion? Like people would get a Powerball and it would say, put it back. And they'd be like, what do you mean put it back? What am I supposed to do with this? They had no clue what they were supposed to do. Or like we said on the power, you hit it up there and it's like, okay, am I supposed to do something? I'm supposed to hit buttons?
    57:17
    So Pat Lawler said, we went and drove it off a cliff. We carefully integrated the theme. It didn't do that well. It was not understandable. Pinheads knew, but you end up playing to a smaller audience that wants more and more and more. Adam's family delivered on what regular people wanted to do. Twilight Zone didn't. Yeah, so there was a lot of concerns about the complexity and the Twilight Zone code. So when they put Twilight Zone out on test, and back in the day, They would have a secret location or a couple of locations somewhere in Chicago where they would put a machine, and then they'd kind of sit there and have some beers and watch people play it and look for stuck balls, and they'd watch for people's reactions. And that's when Pat said that he came in on a Monday, and somebody told him one of the most horrible things that he had ever heard. Oh, he must have just heard my story. Yeah, they had it on test, and some kid got the Powerball and didn't know what to do with it. Then he just screamed, I hate this game, threw up his hands, and walked away. Ouch. Pat would say, when you hear that, it's like putting a gun to your head. You know you're done.
    58:28
    So that's not good. Although it sold 15,000 units. So you put a whole lot of shenanigans in there. You're excited, and you got this game. It's going to be so much fun. And then you got, Powerball's pretty cool. I have to agree. It's kind of a neat concept. Let's explain that a little bit more. The Powerball is a ceramic ball instead of a steel ball. So it's like white, milky white color. And it's super fast. It's much lighter. And the game has a sensor. I think it's around where it comes out into the shooter lane, where it can detect if the ball's metal or not. If it's not metal, it knows it's the Powerball. And the game will tell you, Powerball. So if you drain the Powerball, how does it know to get it back up into? It just fits in the trough. So then eventually we'll have to play with it in regular play? Eventually, if you lock enough balls, then it'll come out. Ooh, that doesn't sound very good. It's not necessarily fair. You could walk up. If you're playing someone, you could walk up, and it just so happens you get the Powerball, and they don't. But it is cool. If you lock the Powerball in the right orbit, it goes into the gumball machine, and then you get the Powerball and you get a multiball where you're supposed to shoot it up into the power field and hit the magnets and try to get it. You have to hit it, like, forward into the, like, off the play field, and then you get Powerball jackpots, which is hard to do because you've got to still be a multiball while you're doing all this and coordinate it and not lose the ball. It is not easy. It's just too hard. That sounds horrible. That sounds way too hard. For an average person, probably. And I would say I'm an average pinball player. Like, I'm decent, right? I'm not a beginner. I'm not you. You know, I'm not even, you know, somebody who's got a very regularly turned over collection that's pretty experienced in a bunch of games. I'm a little bit better than the person that comes up to play. And it sounds way too hard. I didn't even describe the regular multi-ball.
    60:38
    Say you hit a jackpot, which is the piano shot. So normally you'd hit the right ramp. It comes around to the diverter thing. He puts it in front of the flipper. You hit it. And you've got to do all this while you still have multiple balls in play. Then if you get good, you can coordinate it where you get the jackpot, but then you have to relight the jackpot, which is the shot under the upper left flipper that's through the pop-upers or kind of above the pop-upers. So you actually have to hit the right orbit. That's why the magnet's there. It'll stop it. It'll feed it to that upright flipper. You hit it in there to relight the jackpot, and then you've got to get it back up to that diverter thingy again and then hit it in the side again. You've got to coordinate all this with multiple balls and not three. Super fun when you can do it. I bet. You had mentioned that they sold 15,000 units, and they had anticipated selling a buttload of Twilight Zones. They gave Pat Lawler and the team just a massive amount of leeway to come over things. But with big sales of machines and the release of amazing machines like Twilight Zone, you start getting into some sales issues with your sales team, which are independent business owners and distributors. And they needed to control some of the sales with this era's massive boom in sales. many distributors had exclusive rights to sell machines in a given territory. So, for example, you were given, you know, upstate New York was your territory, and you couldn't sell machines down in New York City. Or you could only sell machines in the Midwest. You couldn't send machines to California.
    62:21
    But, of course, some distributors would sell a lot of their units outside of their areas. But of course, this was difficult to prove and to track. So on Twilight Zone, because they expected this to be a massive hit, they knew that people would be tempted to sell outside of their territories. So what they did is they printed a secret serial number on all of the playfields right above the door image. And you can only see with a black light. Wow, it's like Stranger Things, but before Stranger Things. Next.
    62:57
    Pat says, if the game turned up outside the territory, it was assumed that the distributor had bootlegged the game outside of his territory. Then it was up to management to decide what penalty to incur on the offender. Remember this was during a time when it was profitable to sell and operate pinball machines This practice would be laughable today because any sale of a pinball machine is a good sale Ouch
    63:19
    So, now, Pat Lawler's quote a couple of minutes ago, he had said that it didn't do well. The sales didn't do well. But 15,000 units is pretty nuts. Yeah. Anyone would want to sell 15,000. So Clay Harrell, of course, was the co-host and host of TopCast, which is one of the locations where we get a lot of the content for this podcast.
    63:46
    Now, in that episode with Pat Lawler, Pat's talking about Twilight Zone. He's like, oh, we sold a ton of them. We sold like 17,000 units. Then Clay Harrell says something which I found kind of interesting. Clay points out that a lot of those sales were on what he calls closeout. Do you know what closeout is, Ron? I don't know. What's a closeout, Dave? I don't know either. So I went and I kind of like did a little bit of looking. Basically what it means is the inventory that was built up at Williams was sold at a significant discount to the distributors to get them out of the factory and get them done. So they anticipated to sell so much of these machines. And Pat was very proud of how much they sold. And then sort of Clay kind of brings him down a peg. I don't know if he did that by accident, but he just says, oh, a lot of those were by closeout, right? Which basically means they were trying to get rid of them because they had built too many. So they sold them at a significant discount. I like how you say distributor.
    64:51
    Hey, Pinheads. I just wanted to let you know that when I'm not doing this podcast and making bad jokes, I'm Dave the Financial Guy. At Dennis Financial, our advisors strive to provide a return on life for our clients, not just a return on investment. The value of advice is something that we take very seriously. A valuable advisor doesn't just provide investment advice. They share wisdom, and this is where the true value of an advisor emerges. Don't take my word for it. Just listen to Ron Sterling, an average Canadian. Yay. If you're in Canada, Dennis Financial is for you. If you're looking for a more human dimension to your financial advice, Dennis Financial, Inc. has you covered with advisors licensed in most Canadian provinces. We're also doing secure online video meetings. Contact me via email at david at dennisfinancial.net for a free rate quote and a copy of our value of advice e-book or check out dennisfinancial.ca. Insurance solutions provided by Dennis Financial, Inc., Canadian residents only. So that's when we're going to get into something really cool. And this is a game that I haven't played, but everybody that does play it basically talks about how amazing it is. And that's The Shadow. It's, of course, a movie-licensed theme from November of 1994. This is a WPCS system. It sells 4,247 units. Ooh, that is quite the difference in a year when it comes to sales. The designer is one Brian Eddy. Art by the legend Doug Watson. Dots by Scott Slomany and Eugene Greer again. Music and sound by Dan Forden. Additional software provided by Mike Boone and Brian Eddy. So, what is The Shadow?
    66:38
    Uh, it was like a radio show, I believe, back in the day. Of course, this is based on the 1994 American superhero, obviously used loosely, film starring Alec Baldwin. who's not Billy Baldwin and not Stephen Baldwin. Nope. But they all look the same. He's Eric Bowen. Based on the 1930s pulp novels, which I had to look up what that means, it's basically like a before comic book sort of sci-fi thing. Of course, radio dramas and in the future, actual comics. I know the radio show was just like they would do the line, who knows, the shadow knows. It was a big deal, I guess, because back in those days, nowadays, we're having these radio dramas, which are actually now just like podcasts. But back in the day, the radio drama was very much what the family would listen to on Wednesday nights instead of watching what we now see as The Bachelor.
    67:46
    So radio dramas were the television of its time. Now, this film was released in theaters in July 1st, 1994. It received mixed reviews, which I think is actually quite kind, and was a commercial failure. It had a $40 million budget, made $48 million at the box office. It made a million dollars. How is that a failure? It holds a 35% Rotten Tomatoes rating. Have you seen The Shadow, 1994? I have not. I'm very proud of you, because if you would have said, oh yeah, I've seen The Shadow, and I'd be like, you've seen The Shadow, but you haven't seen any of the Daniel Craig, James Bond movies, I would have driven down to upstate New York, and I would have burned your house down. I'm sorry. It doesn't have Tim Curry in it, though, so that makes me kind of want to see it. Tim Curry has a pinball connection.
    68:37
    He was in this. He was also in Congo. Wait a second. Tim Curry the basketball player? No. No, that's Stephon Curry.
    68:45
    Oh. So this is designed by Brian Eddy. This is his first designed game. And, of course, Brian Eddy would become, you know, a mythical creature within pinball. He was a programmer previously, wasn't he? Yeah, did games like Bride of Pinbot, Black Rose. He's the guy that came up with the whole cow thing. I guess he was really into cows. So he started putting cows into all his games. So then everyone else at Williams followed suit and started putting cows in all their games. That's original. Kind of is. It's not like a goat. A goat. Of course, Adam Ryan has a really close relationship with Brian. They're good buddies. And he would say in his TopCast interview that Brian was a very team-focused guy. Whatever the theme was that he was working on, he wanted to hear everyone's opinion, no matter how diverse or odd they were. As a team, we would sit down and decide what was suitable for the game. and if you had a good idea, it would go into the game. I was just thrilled to have my dots or my ideas and even some of my speech that I wrote in the game. Is this a good game, Ron? Yes. Why is it a good game? Because it shoots good. It's fun. And it has cool mechs. Specifically, it's got the Battlefield, which is, it's not new in that games like Swords of Fury had a very similar little mini play field where you hit targets in the back. But this one has, instead of a flipper, it's got like a kicker thing you slide back and forth. So it makes it unique. And then it also has the diverters, the pervas, where you can – everyone loves diverters. But wouldn't it be great if you could control the diverters? Well, Shadow lets you control two diverters. So you have two ramps, but in effect you have four shots, and you can control them, the diverters. Yes, so you shoot up a ramp, and you can click an extra button on the left side or the right side of the cabinet, and it will flick the diverter, and then that ramp will go either left or right. And you are in full control of these diverters. You can do cool things like create massive air balls by hitting the ramp and then flicking the diverter as it's going up the ramp so it knocks the ball off everything. And you can just sit there and click the diverters nonstop, just back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, the back and forth, which is awesome if you've got young children. Then you have the, in the back it has a magnet, which almost certainly will have caused some discoloring of the paint over it. So they call this the sanctum? The sanctum. The sanctum is just a huge drop target, custom drop target, much taller, but is basically a drop target. In front of it, there's a magnet that stops the ball, and then it pulses the magnet to throw the ball into the sanctum. Now, a sanctum, of course, is a sacred place, especially a shrine within a temple or a church. But most people make this as a butthole joke. Okay. You've got to make sure you don't have a dirty sanctum. All right. Canadian, ladies and gentlemen, just if you didn't know. So, Ron, why does the sanctum get dirty? Because there's a magnet in front of it, and it just burns the play field. I've seen, other than a restored shadow, I've never seen just a regular shadow that didn't have burn marks in front. So they even just sell stickers. You can buy Mylar stickers that people just stick on too. Very cool. Now the art, the art is, it leaves a little bit to be desired. The quality of the art is actually very good. Of course, that art, you know, would you expect anything else from Doug Watson on the art there? But it's got a lot of Alec Baldwin. Yep. He's front and center. He's Alec Baldwin. And this is like early 90s Alec Baldwin where he was just gorgeous, as opposed to now where he's sort of like, I'm Alec Baldwin. I can be whatever the hell I want, Alec Baldwin. This was like big time peak Alec Baldwin. I mean, the shadow himself is kind of in the background.
    73:00
    He's not even. Which is the better designed art part. And then Khan. Khan is the bad guy. Not Star Trek Khan, but this Khan. You mean Benedict Cumberbatch? No, no, no, no, no, no. I mean real con Star Trek. That would not be. That would be Ricardo Montalman. But we're talking about the shadow. Let's not start this again. We don't need to have a marital here on the podcast. There's no debate. I'm right. So why was Alex so big, do you think? Why was his head so big on the back class, so much bigger than everyone else? Adam Ryan speculates it could have been based on heavy-handed license. Doug Watson did the painting for that. might have been responding to some sort of demand where Alec Baldwin had to take up, you know, 50% of the backlash and the other actors would take up 25%. That's sort of like the Sandra Bullock getting the shaft in Demoman. No, she didn't. She's the same size as all of them. She didn't get a game. Oh. No, yeah. If you look at Demoman, they did the opposite. Okay, everyone has to be exactly the same size. Yeah, interesting. There's some complexity in this pin. But we're not talking crazy Twilight Zone complexity, right? We're not talking about things moving and changing and adjusting and 12 or 13 things. You've got the big battlefield. You've got these really cool diverters. But that's kind of it, right? Well, you know what you don't have? What's not in this game that's in most games? An auto launcher. No, it has an auto launcher. A subway.
    74:27
    Actually, I don't know if it has a subway, but that's not the answer. Just look at the pipe. What is it missing? What play field element is it missing?
    74:36
    I'll give you a clue. There's only one of them on Godzilla. Pop bumpers. There's no pop bumpers. Oh, since it's Williams, I'm sorry. There are no jet bumpers on the play field. Wow. There wasn't. Even in this era of Williams, where they pretty much let the designers do what they wanted, very few games would have no pop bumpers at all. This is one of two of them I can remember. I know No Fear doesn't have one either. So less pops, more mechs. And, of course, on the flyer, where the shadow falls, earnings rise. Wow. Very good reading there. No one can resist the power of the shadow. It has the cool, I think it's a .45, the gun launcher.
    75:22
    The ones that Williams made that were not plastic, they were like metal. Yeah, you could just grab it and you could slam tilt that thing. You could lift the whole game up. You could hurt people with the thing. The worst part about that is catching it, like, in your leg when you're moving, like, left to right. You have to move it in a vehicle, and that's the part that sticks out, so you can't close a door or something, and you have to take it off. So what's interesting about this game, this is a really flowy game, right? It's got that repeatable loop that everybody loves to shoot. It has a couple of orbit shots. It's got that really neat sort of center looping return shot thing. It's got these diverters with left to right. One of them, particularly the left side ramp and the diverter, are really close to the player. So there's lots of, like, action going on there. Yep, and two stand-ups. So if you miss the ramp, you can hit them and drain. It's a dangerous, dangerous game. And what blows my mind about this era, when they're designing high-flow, really precise shots, they're doing all of this stuff with paper on a drafting table. What's a drafting table, Ron? It's a big table that you draw on. You draft on it. I would think by the 90s they did have CAD. I'm pretty sure they didn't have SolidWorks yet, but I know they had CAD by the 90s. That's what they were using.
    76:46
    But even crazier about this stuff is not just the designer doing the shots, but the engineer who has designed the ramps that have to be manufactured and bent and welded and screwed together, they're using drafting tables to do all of these designs as well. Zovia says, right now in 3D, you just design it and it just calculates all the information for you. But at the time, I had to do projection on every radius, every corner entry level. I had like a thousand lines, horizontal and vertical, and I had to connect them all to create a bottom view or side view. Yeah, we're talking some serious, serious work. And, of course, speaking of the drafting table, eventually Williams would begin using a program called AutoCAD. Do you know what AutoCAD is? I know what it is, but I don't know what it is. Like it's a drawing software, right? Yes. Is that basically it? It's pretty much, yeah. instead of writing it up on a drafting table, you do it on a computer. And I believe they still use some iteration of CAD, even at Stern. I know they use SolidWorks for, like, the 3D stuff. I think there is still some CAD, though, that gets used. Dennis Nordman would say that his first game in AutoCAD was Indy 500. Before, it was pencil, paper, and Mylar. We drew on big Mylar sheets. It was a big learning curve for sure going to AutoCAD, so it probably took longer. And that brings us into Dennis Nordman's crazy mech game, Indianapolis 500. I love Indy 500. This is a sports racing theme from June of 1995. It's the Williams WPC Fliptronics II. It sells, ooh, 2,249 units. Yeah, hard to get one, and they're usually very expensive. They, of course, designed by Dennis Nordman, art by Dan Hughes. Now, he did Corvette, as well as he did all the Alvin G. Gottlieb machines, as well as Paul Barker did a little bit of work on this, and he's known for Junkyard Whodunit, but he didn't really do much art either. Dots, Adam Ryan and Brian Morris. Music and sound by the legend Chris Graner. Software, Mike Boone and Craig Scyla. C-C-S-Y-L-A. Scyla? Scyla. Doesn't our shirt say, like, mispronouncing names for something like that? It's perfect. Swing on over to silverballswag.com. And make sure you say Alvin G, not Gottlieb. It's not Gottlieb. He couldn't use the name Gottlieb, even though that's his name. Yes, Alvin G and co. So Indianapolis 500, this is the annual motor race, which is billed as the greatest spectacle in racing. Of course, it is traditionally held on Memorial Day weekend in May. It is best known for being part of the IndyCar Series and an integral piece in the coveted Triple Crown in motor racing. Ron, that is when you win the Le Mans 24 Hours, the Monaco Grand Prix from the Formula One, and the Indy 500. That is the Triple Crown. Wow, you learn something new every day. The art done by Dan Hughes, you can see on IPDB, the sketch before it was determined it was a Bally or a Williams game. This back glass for a person, I'm a big motorsports fan. I love motorsports. I'm a big F1 fan. Actually, while we're recording this, qualifying is happening. And the back glass on this is awesome.
    80:21
    It's got, like, a bunch of cars at Indy. They've got that really cool 1990s IndyCar-looking thing. Open-wheel racing. It is an awesome, awesome back glass for a motorsports fan. This also has the cabin artwork uses a lot of red. So this is another game that is very difficult to find a non-faded example of. Super faded. Super faded usually every time you find one of these. Ron, probably one of the most cliche things that you could put onto the marketing operators, start your engine. Yes, the flyer. Well, what else are you going to put on there? What is it? Racing to higher profits maybe could be one. We built this one to move fast, which is actually the one that's written there. Damn, I'd like mine better. Racing to higher profits. Hear the engines roar. See the lights flash. Feel the excitement when Bally straps you into the fastest game around, Indianapolis 500.
    81:31
    Hit the turbo, Bobby. It's a cool game. I really like Indy 500. So the toys on this one, we've got a little turntable thing for the model race car. It spins around the track. Then you have the turbo, or I'm sorry, the turbo lock unit, trademarked, captures the ball in its fitting chamber for two to four ball multi-ball, then fires it simultaneously onto the play field. It's kind of a neat little mech. Now, the problem with the turbo mech is the entryway is difficult to get in without it clunking around, right? Eh, enough, you're good. Oh, I'm sorry. God, I hate you. When I watch good players play this, I see they, like, never miss that shot. I do like... It also has a really neat left side diverter, which is like a little race car coming down the left side. And every time the ball goes by, it kind of changes its movement. It's almost like a diverter thing. Other thing I like about this game is it tells you if you're not using the third flipper. It's a three flipper game, and it's got the upper right flipper, which is pretty much to hit that turbo shot. And if you let the ball just pass by there enough without using it, it'll give you a line. Like, he hasn't taken one shot at that. I don't know if he knows the flipper's there. Yeah. I love that little, like, I wonder if he knows the flipper's even there. It's like the call-out commentary on it. Like, this game is so perfectly a racing car game. And we've talked about NASCAR and Grand Prix at the Stern Days with Pat Lawler. But it just doesn't have the same fun feeling as this machine does. This is when Dennis Dorman was in his, I call it the flow phase.
    83:16
    He did like Whitewater, and then he did Demoman, and he did this one. He was all about the flow. This one has the payback time repeatable ramps left and right, where you could just smash left to right to left to right, and it is awesome. because they're like these plastic ramps with this awesome sort of bend in the ramps, and the way that it comes back to your flippers is so smooth and fun. You just get so much excitement from shooting ramps on this game, and that's what Dennis Nordman is known for is his killer ramps. That's what we're talking about, Max. It has those bizarre custom targets, doesn't it, like on the top? Mm-hmm. I've never seen in any other game. They have these four LED lights on the stand-ups, and you shoot the stand-ups, and it gets rid of one of the lights, and there's four lights on each ramp, or each thing. This was the only game where they used those targets. That's the only thing that scares me about owning certain games, when you hear, yeah, this is the only game they use these targets. Ooh, what happens if they break? But when you look underneath the playfield, it's not scary at all. No, because it's all above the playfield. It's very modern stern looking under there. It's like Devilman. There's not much under the play field, believe it or not. It's all above the play field. You can actually get some of these machines that have slightly different color, and it's not from the fact that the color has been bleached by the sun, but they had actually started to produce some of the play fields and some of the side art. and the German distributor came out and basically said that the color looked like baby colors and that scared them so much that they actually decided to make some changes to the colors. Because it was their German distributor who bought more of their games. Yeah, he's the guy that we've popped up a few times throughout. I don't know who it is, but they always talk about a German distributor came in and scared the crap out of us. Their name of the company and we really should know that since we're doing history.
    85:27
    Yeah, go ahead and e-mail that in to silverboyfans.com. Yeah, if I think hard enough, I might be able to remember what they were called. But if they wanted something, they got it. You know, if they want, like, we want lightning flippers on this, they're just going to have lightning flippers on it. They didn't like the colors, though, so they had to change the colors. Of course, this is the Indy 500, Indianapolis 500. This is, you know, kart racing. That's got to be an easy license to work with, right? Well, Adam Ryan says Indy 500 was challenging because the licensor didn't want to show pretty much anything fun. It was driving the cars going left to right, cars going right to left, cars coming at you, cars going away from you. As a dots guy, that's very limiting. We have one car accident on the display, and then the announcer comes in and says, but he's okay. Kind of the excitement of motorsports is crashes, right? For the average person, yes. And around this time, right, this is after the death of Ayrton Senna, who was probably one of the greatest F1 drivers of all time in 1994. Motorsports was particularly sensitive about people dying because they've been changing rules and regulations. I would assume that they didn't want to show much of that. But as a dot guy, Adam Ryan, I think, killed it when it comes to the match sequence of this game because it shows all the different generations of Indy cars. with numbers on the side, which is your matching number, and it's class. But you know what's not tip-top class? What's that? Red and Ted. Oh, road show. Red and Ted's road show. Oh, you talk about mechs. This game has to weigh 400 pounds of stuff in this game. So you like Funhaus? You like a talking head? We're going to have two of them. Exactly. This is construction, country music theme. This is from June of 95. It's a Williams WPC Fliptronics II. It is a wide body, 6,249 units designed by Pat Lawler. Art, like all Pat Lawler games, John Yossi. Dots, Adam Rine, Scott Shalomany, and Eugene Greer. Music and sound by Chris Graner. Software, Dwight Sullivan and Ted Eskimo. And then they sold another 10, so it was 6,259.
    87:51
    You said 49. I did. I love it. Two talking heads. Pat Lawler says that he wanted to bring Rudy's family along, and they had to retire Rudy because he was too popular. But yet they still wanted talking heads, and that this time instead of yelling at you, they could yell at each other. When we talk about the talking heads, what are we talking about here? They're animatronic heads that literally move. Their eyes follow you around, and their mouths move up and down, and they talk. And they call it pinmation. That's what Williams called it. I'm sorry, pinmation trademark. It's now you've got a wide body. Pat Lawler has once again given a wide body, which he doesn't like, but he can jam two heads instead of one. And they do a pretty darn good job, actually. Yeah, and jam is right, because from people I've talked to through my 17 years in this hobby, a lot of people have told me the biggest pains in the butt to work on are the two heads on Roadshow. So one of the heads is Ted. One of the heads is Red. It's a male-female combo. Ted's the dude. Red's the woman. He's driving like a little bulldozer. So in front of his face, he's got two stand-up targets on like a rising mech. So you hit the... which is sort of like the blade of a bulldozer. It looked more like the blade of a bulldozer, but they had to change it. Yeah, because his balls are going to go crazy. So it's kind of cool, and it pops up, and then you can smack him in the face just like you could Rudy. And then Red on the other side, she has the open mouth with the side shot from the flipper just like Rudy. So we're kind of doing the same thing, but we're doing a little twist on it. And, I mean, Rudy sold units, right? They sold like, what, 10,000 of those things? 10,000 plus, yes. It was a draw. So they're like, okay, well, if they can make one, well, surely this one can, you know, Pat Lawler in the magic and after Twilight Zone and after Adam's Family and, you know, he can do it again. This struggled a bit, this bit. Ted, Tim Kittsrow again. They're all around MVP of voice acting. Did so many voices. And then they had Carlene Carter, who did the voice and the music of the song. Every little thing that you get when you. So she was the country singer. Have a little thing I'll make about you.
    90:22
    You get to hear country music when you get in a multiball. Who doesn't want that? I'm not a country music fan.
    90:29
    I don't despise it. It's just not my genre of music. But I can see how that can wear on you. Pat Lawler said, say what you want about the music, but we weren't out there on a limb. There's a whole part of the country that likes country music.
    90:45
    Yeah. Is this a turd? Is this game a turd? Hell no. No, no, no. Nope. It just doesn't get a lot of love. The thing about Roadshow, Williams was kind of trying a philosophy of they wanted you to do buy-ins. They wanted you to keep buying in. They actually have an extra button on there, and you can buy in. You can continue your game. And this was one of the games they really pushed that hard, even in the promotional materials. So if you drain out after three balls, you can buy back in. Yes, and they made it. It's extremely linear, and you try to cross the country, and they specifically made it so the average person is not going to be able to get across the country. They're going to have to buy in to get all the way across the country. That was the philosophy. But since we're talking about MEX, it has the two heads. It also has like a radio thing that actually doesn't do anything, But it also has this small little thing-flip slipper in the same spot on the left side. And you hit across, instead of the swamp, it's a bunch of stand-up targets.
    91:51
    There's a lot of elements. You've got your Addams Family. Obviously, you've got your Funhaus. It's got a ton of habit trails in it. One of the bits that's kind of neat is that it has a physical ball lock on the left side. And it also has the extra plunger on the left, just like Funhaus. Right. And then that actually goes all the way up, and it hits Ted in the side of the head, which is kind of fun. And he'll tell you he got hit. The major issue is, like, when you're playing in the code, you can go East Coast or West Coast, right? No, there's different paths. Right, but if you get the wrong path in the beginning, you're screwed, right? You get the path where you go to Miami, you're good. If you get the other path, you're screwed as far as score, something like that. I mean, yes, it's linear. But, again, I like goofy games, and this is very goofy. Why don't you own a road show? I don't like it that much. But when we had this league, everyone hated it, and I was just like, what, it's all right. But you and I both like dialed in, right? I love Ted. I'm all tired. I'm all worn out. I'm shutting down. Then he goes to sleep, and then you hit it in his mouth, and then multiball starts. It's got lots of road signs. Yep. And it's one of the Williams games where they use custom colored legs. Oh, yes, they're blue legs instead of the silver. Yeah, that bothers me. I don't like powder coating. That's not my thing. Wow. A lot of people will be upset with that, Con. Yeah, I just don't. I just like. Not even ACDC where it's all red and it looks cool? No, I think, like, that's okay. Like, if it comes factory, but I just like the pro black, matte black. I like just the regular sort of silver. I don't know what it is. And, of course, the flyer. It's a big country. Someone's got to tear it up. Why did you say it like that? That's offensive. Because it's road show. That's how they talk in the game. See, in the game, you're part of a demolition crew, red and tan. You're destroying things across the country. If you want to talk about offensive accents, they are definitely in the game. Just get the taxi driver mode, and you'll be offended. It's literally California or bust. Well, it's literally California or bust when this road crew from hell takes on the highways in a runaway bulldozer. And with two pinmation characters, dual plungers, and Carlene Carter as the voice of Red, who wouldn't want to go along for the ride? Isn't Carlene Carter just the most country name you've ever heard? Every little thing I think about you, heaven. I mean, it doesn't get more mecky than two animatronic heads. And these heads are the ones that have the parts that break inside for the eyes that are, like, impossible to get, right? And you can hit them. Again, that's another cool thing about these toys. It one thing to have a cool toy but when you have a cool toy that you can hit and it reacts to you hitting it like ow You know what I love here is you can tell that this is a Pat Lawler game because it very wholesome Oh yeah It is 100 Right And the way that it written is Carleen Carter is the voice of Red a brassy country girl with a heart of gold and a freewheeling way with a bulldozer. Like, what is going on here? Tedders are two-stepping partner. A good guy with a bad roadside manner. There you go. Ten Nation is back. Thank God this is the new Williams DCS sound system. Oh, you get to hear the awesome country music and the best possible sound. I think that that music would just drive me insane. I haven't played enough of this, but I hear it during multi-ball. It's not that bad. Doesn't multi-ball happen like every game? Well, if you're decent, probably. Wow. Thank you for that. You're suggesting that I'm not. I didn't say that. I said if you're decent. Actually, go back. I want to see what the weight is of the machine. It actually has the weight there. 300 pounds. Yeah, 300 pounds. Thank you, Y-Bodies. This is a time when things get to a significant downturn. This is a peak in a series of valleys when it comes to sales numbers. And this is when they start to get into some experimentation. And that brings us into a game called Safecracker. This is a cops and robbers theme. It is from March of 1996. This is the WPC-95. It's kind of like a novelty game. It's a little less pinball, I think. It sells 1,148 units. There's so many custom things on this. I think even the flippers are custom. I don't think they're standard 2-inch flippers, if I recall. They're specific to Safecracker. It's got a smaller cabinet. The play field is massively heavy. This was designed by Pat Lawler, John Yossi on art, Adam Ryan on dots, Dan Forden on music and sound and Dean Grover on software.
    96:43
    Pinball was in a clear decline, and Pat Lawler would say that people were screaming that they wanted machines that made more money. And European distros, of course, wanted something that was more gambling-like to help drive more revenue. So, for example, you could get a score, you could get something and you could get a beer for it, or you could trade in your tokens. We're getting kind of close to gambling here. Now, this machine was specifically designed for that. And by and large, the game mystified people, and they just didn't get it.
    97:21
    Safecracker has, of course, the play field, which is noticeably narrower, shorter, and it's not quite a standard pinball machine. The back box doors actually swing open like a bank safe vault. It reveals the back glass that's behind that. The back glass image has lights and colors that combine into more of an interactive board game than a traditional sort of DMD back glass, and you're supposed to act like a bank robber. Apparently, the back box also has a token launcher, which is used to dispense 20 different tokens for certain achievements. Not apparently, it does. And it's cool. When it gives you a token, the way it shoots out, it literally rolls along the glass to you. It's pretty damn cool. Wow. I've never seen one of these in person. Oh, you've never seen one of these in person? No. The play fields are exceedingly heavy to the point where they start to bow. So one of the mods or one of the things they would sell for it is like a statecracker play field reinforcement rails that you would put in. Because it literally was that heavy. It had so much stuff on it. Also, a lot of operators were complaining that a lot of these big games, these wide bodies and other games, were taking up so much space that they would have like a section in their bar that was really small and they could just sort of cram something in there. So they needed something smaller to put in there. This is smaller. This is kind of another sort of take on the street level games that they had experimented with at Gottlieb, as well as the other style of game that Williams-Bally had tried with Harley. Well, Pat Lawler says that Safecracker was going to be Monopoly originally, which is funny because he would eventually do a Monopoly. The big German distro, the one we can't remember the name of that has all the power, came in and said that it was stupid and an old person game and he wouldn't buy it. We did all the trouble to get the license and he killed it. Yeah, he thought Monopoly was a stupid theme, But Safecracker, an original theme, was a great idea. And judging by the sales numbers of less than 2,000 units, this did not go well. That did not. Now, why do you think the sales flopped for this machine? It's too different. Way too different. It's radically different. Another thing Pat Lawler would say was that at the same time, Attack from Mars happened, and the sales of Attack from Mars ate the sales of Safecracker. I actually don't think that's true. I think that this game is kind of crappy, and that's why it didn't sell. I mean, Brian Eddy did an amazing job. I mean, come on. Attack from Mars is, like, all-time. Pat Lawler would say that Williams was its own competition. Yeah, so I'm looking at the play field here, and the flippers are, they're, like, longer than two inches, but they're not three inches. So, like, I think they're custom for just Safecracker. And then it has the thing flips thing on the side again. Yeah, it's a Pat Lawler game. It's got to have a weird side shot. But it's a new vision, a new standard, a new game. It gives you token. Not only did it give you tokens, it was a token gesture. It has a cool mode called Assault on the Vault. I mean, it's a well-made game. I mean, it's a Williams game. So it's a very professional, high-quality, well-made game. I mean, like, you know, software and call-outs and all that stuff. But it just was too different for most people, and it just didn't sell. But I do like the token because there's a little slit right in the center. And when the token comes out, it will roll all along the glass and roll right to you. It's pretty damn cool. That's such a smart marketing gimmick. I guess that would be your toy. It also has a scoop. Of course. It's Pat Waller. It needs to have a scoop. Now, this brings us into something that's got a pretty serious mech. This is Circus Voltaire. It is a circus carnival theme from October of 1997. It is a Williams WPC95, 2,704 units. This is designed by John Papaduke, commonly known as J-Pop, and Cameron Silver. Art by Linda Deal. Dots by Adam Ryan and Brian Morris. Software and sound by Rob Berry and Dave Zabriskie. And software by Cameron Silver. this is the legendary John Papaduke game. Oh yeah, this is the one you love, right? I love this game. I don't love it for the gameplay. I don't necessarily love it for the pinball. I love it for everything but the pinball, which I think is a very common thing for this game. You want to talk mechs? We got a mech for you. This game is all about mechanical stuff. We have the Ringmaster, which the Ringmaster toy, if you've never seen the Ringmaster toy, you don't even know, well, actually, I think in a track mode it's up to show you it's there. I think it would be cooler if it didn't show you it was there, and the first time you saw it was when you played. But you hit in the area, the Ringmaster will start the game below the play field. You hit an area where there's three targets. You hit it enough times, you spell wow, and then there's a magnet that will stop the ball, and the ringmaster will actually lift up, and the magnet will be stuck on his hat. The ball. The ball, sorry. I guess it's not really his hat, is it? Now that I'm looking at him. It's like the top of his hat. Now, originally the ringmaster was, he looked a little different. He was skinnier, but they kept having balls get stuck, so they made him a little, his cheeks a little fatter. And I think if you go to IPDB and you were just there, it shows the original ringmaster. Like that's, we're looking at it now. Now, that's the production. If you scroll down, there it is, sample version. See, he's got like a skinnier chin.
    103:09
    He looks mean, too. He looks more like a more evil ringmaster, but the ball's kept getting stuck. He's green. He's got blue hair. He's got like ruffles. He's purple. This game is an artistic masterpiece, and it has some amazingly stunning mechanical pieces to it. He releases the ball, like pulse the magnet, the ball fly off him, and then you hit him. If you hit him enough times, he rises up even more, and he's got like a coily spring neck, and you hit it in there, and you defeat him. And it goes into a subway underneath. Yeah. That's just one mech. Probably the deepest mech as far as underneath the play field that I can think of. Yeah, very similar. A lot of people said that this is very similar to the Avengers Infinity Quest spinning disc mech that rises up and you shoot under the subway in the premium LE version. But this is something else. It's a bash toy, it's a magnet, and it's a subway entrance. It is cool. Then they have the boom balloon, which is basically a pop-upper that rises up from the play field, which is not a new concept. That was in, I think, some EM in the 60s had that. Oh, there it is. I was wrong. 50s. A disappearing pop bumper. It was also in a Williams game called Gusher. So this boom pop bumper. So there's like these weird, there's these little rollover switches on the play field in various places. And when you roll over all of those, there's one in each in lane, and there's a couple kind of up on the wings. Probably the glasses rollovers. Then it raises up in this very precarious place. So there's two pop-upers on the right side, and the third one is, like, hidden under the play field, and then it's like a balloon that rises up. And then it causes some serious issues. The boom balloon. Then on the left he just has, like, kind of a plastic ball that just floats there and you can hit it. Like a ball pit ball.
    105:12
    Like in a kid's ball pit. Then even the locks are complicated. When you hit the left orbit and you get a lock. Oh, I love it. It will put it in a saucer and it throws it to another saucer. The jugglers. So then it locks two balls up there. But wait, it has this ramp in the center. You shoot it up this ramp and there's a magnet on the top. There's like this little play field up there. And usually it'll just kind of go around and down what's called the neon tube. And it is neon, an actual neon light. but a magnet will catch it and then it will roll it down into a physical ball lock which is like the trapeze thing and it is so awesome. And that's just the play feel. Now the ringmaster will actually steal the ball with the magnet on his head off of that habit trail as well. I sort of started that I love this game for everything but the pinball. There's a couple of reasons for that. One of them is the in lanes and out lanes. They don't have sort of traditional in lanes and out lanes. They've got those pins, and you've got to kind of like nudge it to get it down in there. The other thing is that the return ramps are very, very far down the play field to the flippers that you've got to be like on the ball when it comes down there. It's a very dangerous game on the lower play field, and that's mostly my own skill level as opposed to the actual game itself. And we have Max in the back box. Oh, another one. Another one. It's like a bell toy. Yeah, so in the back box you have the cannon, which is just, it's got a picture of a cannon and a ball, and it fires it and it goes up and it hits a bell, which isn't really a bell. I don't even know what it actually is, but it makes the bell sound affect the game. Wait a second. There's something missing from the back box. Yeah. The DMD, the dot matrix display is not in the back box. He moved it down. What is that doing under the glass? He moved it under the glass. It's under the glass in the back of the play field. Could you imagine going up to Gary's here and being like, hey, I want to move that LCD screen off the back box? Yeah, you're kind of changing a very basic thing that now you're going to have to design differently. Yes. This game, when somebody has, like, a pretty great collection, this is always, like, the crown jewel piece. Isn't that right? Like, if you've got a really nice Bally Williams collection, like your the one piece that you always put out so everybody can see each side of it, you don't put it in the row you always put it in its own space you want to make sure everybody sees it and then everybody plays it and goes I like theater magic better I would prefer Circus Voltaire Jpop says on the Ringmaster we chose to use microswitches instead of optos I think that was a fatal error it was costing We will keep the microswitches instead of adding seven more dollars for the opto set. That hurt operators.
    108:10
    The game sort of struggled a little bit, and it really has issues with stuck balls. It really has issues with sort of the ball going kind of in all directions where you don't necessarily want it. Like it will go up a ramp and fall off the ramp, for example.
    108:27
    You get a lot of flipper hop if you're not really careful as well in the in lanes and out lanes. The game is not a very polished, finished work. So Papaduke says, at some point you have to stop working. I think Circus had the most ball hang-ups out of any prototype with ramps. Everything wasn't linear, and the ball would get stuck everywhere. So even the designer himself acknowledges the fact that this was not polished. And I said it, I think the game is a lot of fizzle and not a whole lot of steak. Because the code also struggles a little bit, right? I would say that. I think it had one of the better wizard modes, multi-stage wizard modes that would be used in, again, like, say, Super Hero and Spider-Man would use it. You know, this stage, do this, this stage, do this, this stage, do this. It might have been one of the first ones that did that. I'm trying to think of anyone before that that did a multi-stage wizard mode.
    109:25
    Someone's shouting at the radio right now. I want to talk about why I love this game a lot, and I think it comes down to the artistic direction and design of the game. No, it's the mechs. As opposed to the game itself. It's the mechs. You've got to keep with the show. I mean, the mechs are amazing. The problem is that it doesn't necessarily – it has the mechs, it has the art, but I feel like it's lacking in the refinement of the design. Like, it's just missing something. It has some flow, but it's got some clunk. It's just when I play it, I feel like, oh, God, I just wish this was better. And I don't know why, because it's got all the things that I want it to have. Well, Adam says, John Papaduke, especially Circus Voltaire, wanted to live his creative flow. He wanted to push the boundaries and the edge of what is known as pinball. To that point, it was all no fear and NBA fast break. It was very hard driving, sort of one-dimensional. He wanted to have more of an artistic flair to the whole package. So he really tried to have fun and push the dots into places they've never been before. Yeah, like, I can see that in the pin, right? I can see that there's something unique and different and artistic. That's what John Papaduke is really great with. but it seems to be missing sort of the very basic essence of pinball for some reason. It's so intangible and hard to describe. It's very weird.
    111:04
    I think most people would agree with me. For some reason, it's just missing something. I don't know what it's missing. If you know what Circus Voltaire is missing, send us an email, silverballchronicles at gmail.com. The other thing with J-Pop, and he gets this criticism as of late, and I'll work on a J-Pop episode for the future, is that this game really shines because of the mechanical engineering of those that worked on the game, and it really shines on the artistic package.
    111:37
    It's like John is an ideas guy, and somebody else has to execute. Bally Williams was so magical and amazing, boy, did they ever execute on this game. And the part that J-Pop was most in charge of is the intangible piece that seems to be missing.
    111:58
    The pinball shooting and shots and, I don't know. Do you know what I mean? Sure. All right, let's talk about gophers. Oh, good, gophers. This is a sports or golf theme from December of 1997. It's evidently Williams WPC95, sells 2,711 units. This is a Pat Lawler game. It's, of course, artwork John Yosey, Adam Ryan on dots, and, of course, music and sound by Vince Pantarelli. He did Judge Dredd, Dirty Harry, and Monster Bash Software by Louis Causeris. I'm also very sorry for stealing Bruce Nightingale's Italian. Now, this is an interesting game because Pat Lawler came up with the idea of doing a backyard mayhem theme where gophers were destroying your lawn. And the idea was that there's a mechanical wheel in the middle of the play field, which is like a weed whacker. You're chasing these animals. They're ruining your garden party kind of thing. Pat Lawler says that sales told him that the Japanese don't have yards and they wouldn't understand a backyard mayhem theme. So what they told Pat was that they wouldn't be able to sell one container to Japan. They lobbied and lobbied, and eventually Pat relented, and he changed the theme to golf, which is very big in Japan. The interesting thing about making it a golf theme is Gottlieb already did Teed Off, which was a golf theme with gophers. So for once, Gottlieb was ahead of Williams. Yeah, it's pretty cool that way. The other thing is that, I mean, everybody loves Caddyshack, but this is not. It was not meant to be a Caddyshack ripoff, nor was it meant to be a Gottlieb ripoff. It was just, hey, marketing nagged him enough that he just couldn't deal with it. Now, this is a very underrated Pat Lawler game. It's had a long burn. It was not popular at the time, but I think today it's much cooler than it was then. Would you agree? Eh. I'm sure they sell for a lot. Again, it has more cool necks. We have gophers that pop up that you can hit, and they react, buzz and bud. And we have the Slam Ramp. Ooh, that sounds fancy. I love that name. And it's very appropriate because it would slam into the play field and damage it pretty much on every single no-good gopher. Yeah, it's basically a ramp that hovers above the play field, and then it goes down and touches the play field, and then you shoot the ball into the ramp, and it literally launches the ball across the playfield to an upper playfield area, as opposed to having a ramp that smoothly goes up. It literally launches the ball. You're trying to get in the hole for a hole-in-one. You're golfing. And, I mean, it made people uncomfortable, and Pat Lawler loved it, because that's what the ramp did. Now, of course, Pat was a people playing pinball at the time, took a look at it and said, golf? Golf sucks. I'm not playing that. But as time went on, it came around. So this came, we were talking about Louis, the programmer. Now, what Pat loved the most about Louis was his off-center sense of humor, and that he can really let loose with his humor. And that fit right in with Pat Lawler and his type of games, where he likes to make them lighthearted and fun. But around this time, the downturn in pinball went even deeper, and things started to go down slowly, but now they started to really pick up speed. This is where everybody started moving over into Williams' new slot machine division. So Pat Lawler would say that they saved gaming but killed pinball with these slots. At that point, they had become a real gaming company. Williams had stock analysts come in and they looked at the company and they wanted to value the stock as a gaming company, but they had this pinball on the side. So in that quote, Pat Lawler is basically saying that they had sort of the corporate people come in and look at profits, and they couldn't figure out what pinball was. It wasn't gambling like the gaming division. It wasn't video games like the video game division. It was like this weird relic of pinball, and they very much looked down on it, and they couldn't value it in the stock. The part about Noga Gophers that I can never understand is it has a real back glass for no apparent reason. Instead of a trans light. I would think that would have costed more. Like, why would they use that? It's always weird. That and Champion Pub had real back glasses. I don't know why. One of my favorite parts about this pinball machine are the gophers. The gophers, of course, being Buzz and Bud. and they hide kind of underneath the ramps on the right and left side. So the ramps will pop up like those Gottlieb Stargate ramps, and then these gophers come up underneath. Now, nowadays, the ramp would pop up and there'd be like a stand-up target or there would be a drop target if it was fancy. Well, I mean, then there's actually like a 3D plastic molded bash toy that these two gophers pop up. It's not just one, there's two. Like, this machine did not suffer from modern-day costing issues. Walking Dead as Bicycle Girl. But then again, she doesn't move. Yeah, it's sort of the same thing. These move. These you can actually... Yeah, they bounce up and down and giggle and talk to each other and taunt you. Super cool. Yeah, then you hit them, and then you hit the hole where they are, and it locks the ball. Yeah, and then there's a ball locked behind them. Brilliant. It's a great little game. I love this. And it has, like, a spinning disc, which is, like, the shape of... It's meant to be a golf ball. But on it, it's sort of like a roulette wheel with a bunch of mystery awards. And it's grippy. So it's very much like Whirlwind where it'll play chaos with your ball. It's got the Pat Lawler standard five layout in lane, out lane bottom, which is kind of off center a little bit. Wonderfully smooth ramps.
    118:07
    Two spinners. Come on. Game with two spinners. Captive ball. It's got the whole thing here. But the mechs on there, not particularly complicated, like a Doctor Who or a Twilight Zone, but numerous and effective. So much fun. Do you play this? Do you play this a lot in tournaments? Not a lot, but I have played a lot of No Good Gophers. Would you own a No Good Gophers? No. Why not? I don't like it that much. Oh, hey, look on the flyer here. They have one of those TNT plungers. You mean a detonator? And it says the pin everyone will go-fer. Get it? No, I don't. Oh, I see. And the L is smashed out of golfers. No good golfer. No good golfers.
    118:53
    Oh. Very good. Very well done. You know that from hackers to seasoned pros, this game scores big. With the innovative Slam Ramp trademark. God, they trademark everything. The spinning whirlwheel trademark. from Whirlwind. I guess that makes sense. Why didn't they trademark Buzz and Bud? Because of their names.
    119:15
    I don't know. Isn't it also neat that Buzz and Bud basically look like Chip and Dale? There's the one with the red nose that's kind of weird and the one that's not kind of weird looking. It's a fun game. I'd own one of these, but they're so pricey now. I don't understand why. Everything is just picked up steam. So this is when we get into the shutdown. For some reason, every time we go through some sort of chronological order of the 90s, we end up talking about the Williams shutdown. I like to depress everybody before we finish the podcast.
    119:49
    So why did Williams close down the pinball division? Because slots makes way more money. Well, here was the thing. When the analysts came in, they did all their nerding, they crunched all their numbers, they came up with a couple of options. Pat Lawler would say that they could sell the pinball division outright to somebody who would buy it, or they could write down $12 million.
    120:11
    And a lot of people will say that's also called writing off money. So the idea is, if I can find somebody that will buy the division, which is what everybody I think would have preferred, right? All the pinheads in the world would have been like, oh, if only somebody else had purchased Williams, it would have been just the clouds would have parted and at least we would have kept pinball. But the analysts are looking at it saying, If they could write off or write down $12 million, that means that they could count it as a loss, and they could use that loss somewhere in their corporation to offset a gain, lowering taxation and a bunch of other things. That's my nerdy financial advisor hat being played there. Well, that would mean that they would have had to sell Williams Pinball to somebody for $12 million, and there is no way somebody would pay $12 million for a pinball company in 1999. Pat Lawler in 2010 said, today no one would pay $12 million for a pinball company. No one would pay $2 million for a pinball company. So, I mean, the post-2008 era when Pat Lawler did this interview with TopCast, there's no way anybody would pay $2 million at that time for a pinball company, let alone $12 million. So Pat Lawler is kind of right. I mean, if they could take that $12 million and write it down or write it off, that is the corporate decision. It's not the right decision. It's not the decision that any of us wanted. Pretty sad, actually.
    121:45
    Well, you remember Rob from earlier who said some great things about our podcast, but he said he was also at the 99 Expo and he took the factory tour. He says, I was working for Cleveland Coin, a distributor at the time, And when I heard that Williams closed that Monday, it felt like I just lost my best friend. I still stayed in the hobby but kept my distance from the shows because without Williams, there was nothing left in my mind but the old stuff. I still wish Williams was a pinball company, and could you imagine the great pins they would have come out with? Gee whiz, eh? I thought that was such a really great piece from the email that Rob sent in to silverballchronicles.gmail.com. I had to include that at the end of our show. So what do you think, Ron? What do you think of the mechs that made us Williams Valley in the 90s? Mechs are awesome, especially when they're interactive and you can hit them. Hitting them is always good. And you want it to change. The same mech that can do different things is ten times better than a mech that you just bump into or a magnet that you catch a ball on. They help accentuate. Accentuate? Yeah, accentuate the pinball experience. Yeah. So what was your favorite mech, Ron, of all the ones that we reviewed today? All the ones we reviewed? Time Expander. It just does the most things. Yep, Time Expander is definitely my favorite of the ones that we did, although in this episode you also have to talk about the Ringmaster and how awesome and versatile. He is versatile. He's more versatile than just hitting them. He does, what, at least three different things. Catches the ball. And he's a character himself. He raises up. Then he raises up again. Then you hit into him. He catches balls off of a ramp. Drops them on him. I am the ringmaster.
    123:29
    Nowadays, the ringmaster would be a piece of PTEG plastic and a magnet in front. I'm the pro. On the premium, it would be a molded piece.
    123:45
    Stewie, you got this one? And as always, you can send your comments, questions, corrections, and concerns to silverballchronicles at gmail.com. We look forward to all those messages, and we read every one. Please subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or your favorite podcatcher. Turn on automatic downloads so you don't miss a single episode. Remember to leave us a five-star review. That way, more people can find us. Want to support the podcast and need a new shirt? Of course you do. Swing on over to silverballswag.com and pick up a Silver Ball Chronicles t-shirt. I partial to the one that says one first.
    124:46
    You know what's missing from those Bond movies? Sean Connery. Thank you. Connery had the swagger, right? Like, he had the sort of the brutish fighting and the swagger, too. But it's, I don't know, man. I would put Daniel Craig, you know, I might put him above him. I really would. I know that might be slightly controversial, but.
    125:28
    Created by Ron Sterling. Try again. Ron Sterling. Oh, you got to have that in the blooper reel. It's Rod Serling. Ron. Rod Serling. From upstate New York, I may add. Oh, you wrote it wrong. Ha! Ron.
    125:46
    Submitted for your approval, a man who can't spell. The program, also spelled correctly, Despix. Despix? You might have heard that.
    125:56
    There's a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is the Dennis Zone. A zone where spelling, it doesn't work.
    126:06
    Ah, so here's the thing. In the original Backlass, Ron Serling was smoking. Ron Serling. I think you should just call this episode Ron Sterling.
    126:20
    Before it was pencil, paper, paper.