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Playing Catch Up: Gottlieb System 80

Silverball Chronicles·podcast_episode·3h 1m·analyzed·Sep 2, 2022
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.033

TL;DR

Silver Ball Chronicles explores Gottlieb System 80 genesis and early games through design analysis.

Summary

David Dennis and Ron Hallett discuss Gottlieb's System 80 platform (pre-1984), tracing the manufacturer's transition from their failed System 1 to System 80 after falling behind Bally and Williams in the late 1970s. They analyze the first two System 80 games—The Amazing Spider-Man (7,625 units) and Circus (1,700 units)—examining design philosophy, playfield layout, mechanical choices, and gameplay exploits that defined the era.

Key Claims

  • Gottlieb's sales dropped from 10,000 units (Sinbad/Cleopatra in mid-to-late 1970s) to 2,000 units by late 1970s, forcing platform change.

    high confidence · David Dennis states sales decline as justification for System 80 development; presented as factual industry trend.

  • Gottlieb again chose Rockwell Industries for System 80 electronics despite System 1 partnership problems.

    high confidence · Direct statement: 'Gottlieb, for their System 80 platform, they went with who, Ron? Rockwell Industries.' Confirmed by host.

  • The Amazing Spider-Man (System 80's first production game) sold 7,625 units and was designed by Ed Krinsky.

    high confidence · Stated as fact with specific unit count and designer credit from IPDB.

  • The Amazing Spider-Man has a software exploit allowing players to ignore most playfield by repeatedly shats up in lanes to build bonus/multiplier.

    high confidence · Detailed gameplay explanation of exploit mechanic and its competitive impact discussed by both hosts.

  • Circus (second System 80 game) sold 1,700 units, significantly lower than Spider-Man's 7,625.

    high confidence · Direct statement of sales figures presented as fact.

  • Gottlieb System 80 games used plastic spinners that spin only ~3 times, inferior to metal spinners used by competitors.

    high confidence · Detailed complaint about spinner design recurring throughout System 80 era; hosts confirm as persistent problem.

  • Ed Krinsky's Amazing Spider-Man was among the last original games he designed; later games credited to him were System 80 adaptations of previously released EM-era titles.

    medium confidence · David Dennis states: 'Most of the later games in the System 80 era that are attached to Ed Krinsky's names are actually solid-state System 80 adaptations of previously released games.'

  • Circus is 'one of the two' widest games ever made, three inches wider than standard Dimension 80 width.

    medium confidence · David Dennis claims Circus is among widest, noting it's 3 inches wider than standard Dimension 80; other ultra-wide comparisons made to Paragon, Pocahontas, Stellar Wars.

Notable Quotes

  • “The 80s were the future... The future.”

    Ron Hallett @ ~11:30 — Running joke emphasizing Gottlieb's marketing push and the era's aspirational language.

  • “They are all in on the marketing and branding here because they realize, hey, we're changing it up. Things are getting big, big deal, big changes.”

    David Dennis @ ~23:00 — Analysis of Gottlieb's Star Series 80 branding strategy and awareness of competitive pressure.

  • “If you put five pounds of crap in a three-pound bag, what do you get? ...You've got to wash your hands a lot. Because you've got poo everywhere.”

    David Dennis @ ~28:00 — Critique of wide-body design philosophy; argues more features don't necessarily improve games.

  • “Gottlieb makes the best drop targets in the industry. They feel good. They're reliable. They're super easy to clean, super easy to work on. They are quite literally the Cadillac when it comes to things like drop targets.”

    Ron Hallett @ ~38:00 — Praise for Gottlieb's mechanical engineering; establishes company reputation for quality hardware.

  • “The spinner is a web, which they will later reuse in other games. But it's just all this custom art and all these different parts. Yep. Looks great.”

    David Dennis / Ron Hallett @ ~42:00 — Recognition of Spider-Man's exceptional artwork quality and custom mechanical integration.

  • “Tournaments just ruin games. Tournaments ruin everything.”

    Ron Hallett @ ~52:00 — Humorous critique of how competitive play exploits game design flaws (shats mechanic).

  • “Basically, you plunge the ball into one of the two lanes on the top... and then you just shats back and forth and build your bonus... You just do that until you can't do it anymore, and you will max out the bonus.”

    David Dennis @ ~50:30 — Detailed explanation of Spider-Man's critical gameplay exploit that undermines playfield design.

Entities

David DennispersonRon HallettpersonSilver Ball ChroniclesorganizationGottliebcompanyThe Amazing Spider-MangameCircusgameEd KrinskypersonGordon Morrisonperson

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Gottlieb again partnered with Rockwell Industries for System 80 despite System 1 partnership producing inferior electronics platform; indicates leadership issues or limited alternatives.

    high · David Dennis speculates on leadership overconfidence ('We are the Cadillac of the industry') and reluctance to develop in-house; external dependency pattern repeated despite prior failure.

  • ?

    event_signal: Pintastic show successfully brought together pinball podcast/media community (Backbox, Pinball Players podcast, Silver Ball Chronicles hosts, Raymond Davidson); significant in-person networking event.

    high · Extended discussion of meeting community members in person; David Dennis: 'I met my hero, Raymond Davidson' and praised Backbox crew as 'really lovely.'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Gottlieb fell significantly behind Bally/Williams by late 1970s due to outsourced electronics (Rockwell) lacking in-house innovation capabilities; sales dropped from 10,000 to 2,000 units.

    high · David Dennis explains manufacturers developed own platforms in-house while Gottlieb outsourced; gap widened when Bally/Williams added speech/continuous sound to games like Flash and Gorgar.

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Amazing Spider-Man suffers from critical software exploit (shats mechanic) that allows players to max bonus by ignoring entire playfield; same flaw existed in System 1's Incredible Hulk.

    high · David Dennis detailed explanation: players can plunge into top lanes, repeatedly shats between in-lanes to build bonus/multiplier indefinitely, bypassing all drop targets/spinners/loops.

  • ?

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.547

0:00
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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 Pinball Network is online. Launching Silver Ball Chronicles. What's he crusty? Very good. Yes. See that? Yes. Very good. I got Crusty and I got... The DeLorean. Itchy. I got a DeLorean over there, yeah. I got... This is my... When I host my, like, digital meetings with clients. I got my Iron Man comic there. And I got the Death of the Green Goblin from Amazing Spider-Man right there.
1:25
Hello everyone, I'm David Dennis and this is episode 25 of Silver Ball Chronicles, a pinball history podcast. With me every month is my co-host Ron, the gracious Hallett. What's up, fella? Yo. Hey, hey. I wanted to say thank you for being a gracious host, for letting me and my wife hang out at level zero and completely dominate you in tournament play. It was wonderful. Thank you so much for being so gracious, Ron. No problem. It was an honor to lose to you if that had actually happened. Level Zero is an amazing arcade that you have in your basement, and it was loads of fun to meet finally in person that people can see that you and I are indeed different people. But the greatest part of that was the stream that we did with both yourself, me, and then eventually Stu showed up. The world-famous Stu McVicker, yes, the 1978 Playboy Launch Party champion, showed up. Banned from the IFBA. You beat him in a game. I did. Now, we did actually take a series of urine samples before this because it is a highly competitive arena. Those samples were sent away, Dennis Creasel for a taste test, and yours came back inconclusive. so we can't count yours as a win unfortunately I got nothing that's the rules now Pintastic was my first actual show my first real actual big show I did seriously enjoy myself I met some great people so I met a lot of really great podcasters the Backbox crew was there they were really lovely we, of course, would see a resurgence of the Pinball Players podcast with Jeff and Joe Lemire. It was really great to just see everybody and say hello finally to meet everybody in person. And I met my hero, Raymond Davidson.
Rockwell Industries
company
Columbia Picturescompany
Ballycompany
Williamscompany
Stern Electronicscompany
Level Zeroorganization
Pintasticevent
Stu McVickerperson
Raymond Davidsonperson
Backbox Pinball Podcastorganization
Pinball Players Podcastorganization
IPDBorganization
The Incredible Hulkgame
Countdowngame
Solar Ridegame

design_philosophy: Gottlieb's wide-body strategy ('Dimension 80' and ultra-wide Circus) based on assumption that more features improve games; hosts argue this philosophy is flawed.

high · David Dennis: 'If you put five pounds of crap in a three-pound bag, what do you get?' Critique of maximalist feature approach versus Williams/Bally's more measured innovation.

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Amazing Spider-Man licensed from Marvel Comics; artwork credited to Gordon Morrison but closely mimics original comic book art style (possibly Jack Kirby-influenced) to balance licensing appeal with design freedom.

    medium · David Dennis: 'I'm having a hard time telling the difference if it is, in fact, not Jack Kirby who provided the image.' Notes use of comic-book style vs. contemporary movie style as licensing strategy.

  • $

    market_signal: Circus sales (1,700 units) sharply declined from Amazing Spider-Man (7,625 units), suggesting theme change from licensed Marvel IP to original circus theme hurt sales despite innovative ultra-wide design.

    high · Direct sales comparison: 7,625 units → 1,700 units; significant drop attributed to theme pivot away from licensed property.

  • $

    market_signal: Gottlieb's 'Star Series 80' branding heavily emphasized '80' throughout marketing materials (System 80, Dimension 80, Star 80); aggressive rebranding to signal new era and technological leap.

    high · Analysis of flyer: 'No puns, but a hilarious amount of branding... They are the 80s of the future... beating it to death.' 'New decade of stars' tagline.

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Ed Krinsky's original game design essentially ended with System 80 transition; most later Krinsky-credited games were adaptations of EM-era classics rather than new designs.

    medium · David Dennis: 'Amazing Spider-Man... is among the last original games designed by ed krinsky... Most of the later games in the System 80 era... are actually solid-state System 80 adaptations.'

  • ?

    product_concern: Gottlieb's drop targets praised as industry-best, but plastic spinners consistently underperform; mixed quality across different mechanical systems.

    high · Ron: drop targets are 'Cadillac' quality; David: spinners are worst in industry. Tension between excellence in some areas and poor execution in others.

  • ?

    technology_signal: System 80 represented incremental improvement over System 1 rather than transformative leap; modular design was improvement but Gottlieb still fell short of Bally/Williams innovations.

    medium · David Dennis: 'I think they leapfrogged Bally and Williams at the time, but not for very long. And then they would have to sort of adapt the System 80 board set.'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Gottlieb's persistent use of poor-performing plastic spinners instead of metal spinners across System 80 era despite competitor success with metal versions.

    high · David Dennis: 'They still haven't made changes to this spinner... You hit it, it spins like three times.' Hosts confirm this was recurring problem across multiple games due to bulk ordering.

    • 3:59
    Oh, and you got to see Rush. I got to see the... Limelight. Limelight, that's right. they were they were actually quite good i was impressed and as a canadian it played out well and their singer sounded more like getty lee than getty lee sounds like getty it was impressive i have to say very very impressive loads of fun played some toy story played a lot of games i haven't played before and um i'll be able to add some of those to my checklist of games that i have actually played so now i can get through it with all of this and i want to have a shout out to all of the great listeners who popped by and said hello. Everybody was incredibly friendly. You just said hello. We just chatted a little bit of pinball here and there. It was really great. And a big hi to Rodney, who is also in the financial industry. He is a much bigger deal than I, but it was just really cool to talk pinball with him and talk a little industry. What a great show. I had a lot of fun. How about you, Ron? Yeah, it's a good show. It's always a good show. I love Pintastic. I finished 90th out of 181. I'm incredibly impressed. And, David, thanks for the shirts. Yes, of course. I passed out a few shirts. A couple people bought some shirts while I was down there, and now they are very warm. Wait a minute. They bought shirts? That means you were in violation of, what's that thing that you're in violation of? The cross-border green yard stuff? Yeah, that thing. Yeah, no, no, no. What they did is they bought shirts, they paid on the website, and the website shipped it to them. Oh, okay, that's fine. Yes, I didn't sell any physical shirts. I wouldn't want you to get in trouble with NAFTA. That's what it is. Yes, that's, yeah, we don't want any NAFTA violations.
    5:49
    Certainly, that would be bad. Social media, you can connect with us a variety of ways. The best way is over at Facebook.com slash Silver Ball Chronicles. That's where we post up a lot of things. recently we started every now and then when I'll get ready to promote an episode or get ready to record I'll kind of ask hey what are your thoughts about you know this designer this era of game and then we take that information we try to toss it into the episode check us out on silverball chronicles.com if you want to see the archive I have a list of all of the episodes there so if you're like oh I really want to go back and and hear the Steve Ritchie episode or the Dwight Sullivan episode. Feel free to go to Silverball Chronicles or search for Silverball Chronicles in your podcatcher to get the direct feed and access the archive. You can always jump over to thisweekinpinball.com, give us a five-star review on their Pinball Promoters database. We don't have any new reviews up there yet, but come on, folks, toss in over and we'll read them out online, because I always enjoy feeding my ego.
    6:58
    This week, Ron, we're going to jump into a topic which is surprisingly always asked for over and over and over again. We get more comments. I have no idea why. We get more comments on, hey, when are you going to do a Gottlieb episode? Why don't you guys talk about Gottlieb a little more? It's like, my God, everybody just wants to hear Bally Williams, man. Nobody wants to hear about Gottlieb, but we get more messages about that. Isn't that right? The Cadillac of the industry. So I made sure that I wrote to our cronies online at facebook.com slash silverballchronicles, and I said, do you have any comments about pre-1984 Gottlieb, the System 80? And we got some serious, serious positive and oddly weird comments about some of the cool stuff in that era. So the late 70s were a boon for pinball manufacturing. Bally and Williams had transitioned to solid state early and had evolved their platform many, many times. Gottlieb, with their System 1, had struggled right out of the gate. But by early 1980, Gottlieb knew they needed a new solution, and they were preparing the new System 80 platform. Because, Ron, the 80s were the future. The future. And to be fair, even on their System 1 platform, some of their initial games did sell very well. They sold astronomically well. So if we just sort of recap System 1, we have a System 1 episode, which we titled Stepping on Rakes. I think we're talking like Episode 4 or 5 back in the archive. It's a good listen because it adds a lot of context as to kind of why they struggled through that time. To put it in a nutshell, the manufacturers like Bally and Williams, and to some extent Stern Electronics, what they had done is created their own platform in-house. They made their own boards, and they designed it around pinball, where Gottlieb outsourced the development of those electronics to an outside company. The Bally and Williams came up with their own sets and then Stern ripped off Bally's board set. Yeah, yeah, famously, which then again they would do again, which you can hear about in our last episode. That System 1 system, although it was very, very good. They basically took the EM formula and gave it to, what was that company called? Rockwell. Rockwell Industries. Thank you. They gave it to Rockwell Industries, and they said, hey, we need to make a board system, electronic solid-state system that does this. And Rockwell was known for making, like, board sets for fighter planes and, like, big-time tech industry. Like, they were a manufacturer. But you're in tech or in IT, Ron, and you know that when you're given a requirements document, You get exactly that. If you left something out of the requirements or you said you left out a part where, like, we want to be able to add on to the system or add more or make it easier to work on. If you left that out, you're not getting that. You're getting exactly what you asked for. And they got, and you can see in those first System 1 games, a fantastic EM-based, you know, solid System 1 system, didn't they? It was solid, all right. Now, by 77, this is kind of when that transition was happening, there was a significant change in the Gottlieb ownership. And that's when they were sold to Columbia Pictures, the Statue of Liberty lady holding the thing for the movies. Right. That was the big deal. They wanted to get into coin op because it was movies and movie theaters and entertainment. So that's when they acquired Gottlieb from the Gottlieb family, D. Gottlieb & Co.
    11:04
    So why did they need a new system? What was the big deal, Ron? They sold a boatload of countdowns. They sold just an absolute mega load of Sinbad at like 10,000 units. Everything seems to be working fine. Why did they need to transition to System 80 from somewhere around, like, the late 70s? What was happening? They got to keep up with Williams and Bally. Yeah, they started to fall behind. What was Williams and Bally doing in the late 70s to their board sets? Well, they're making games like Flash with continuous background sound, games like Gorgar that talk. Oh, man. That must have been something else. Instead of the dinging and the binging, it, like, talked to you. That must have been mind-boggling. That's why the 80s were the future, Ron. They were definitely the future. Flip-up headlights? You remember flip-up headlights, right? Don't they still exist? Well, in some cars, but man, oh man, they were like, if your car was aerodynamic and sleek, it was like a jet because it had flip-up headlights like a Corvette or a Miata or something.
    12:12
    What a stupid idea. Anywho, the new platform would provide more functionality. It would allow more solenoids. It would allow more lighting, more lamps, I guess. It would have more switches. There would be attract lighting. There would be light shows, you know, a strobing high score to date or a third coin slot. It would add more functionality. What Bally and Williams had been doing is slowly adding and tweaking that functionality to their board sets. In technology, you know, a year is like forever. So every so often, Bally and Williams would add a new board, or they would change something, or they would add a speech cable onto a daughter board or something, but Gottlieb was falling way behind. By the late 70s, those 10,000 sales numbers that they would receive on like Sinbad or Cleopatra had dropped to like 2,000 units, which was terrifying. Now originally, like we mentioned before, they went with Rockwell Industries with System 1, And that was, again, not the best decision because they were an outside company. They didn't know pinball. They didn't know where they wanted to take pinball. Williams and Bally, they did theirs in-house. So Gottlieb, for their System 80 platform, they went with who, Ron? Rockwell Industries. Oh, God. Why? It didn't work out the first time. Why would they go again? I guess it's because maybe the leadership at Gottlieb. Like, I love to speculate, so let's speculate a little. Let's get into speculation corner.
    13:48
    This is where I would put music if I had the editing skills for that. Do you think it's because the leadership at Gottlieb realized that they are not an electronics company, that they're a pinball manufacturer, and they just want an expert to do it? I could go with that. Do you think it's because the leadership at Gottlieb at the time were like EM engineers and they just didn't understand the technology? I think there was some degree of overconfidence there. We are the Cadillac of the industry. Our games are the best. And there was initial reluctance to do solid state. That's why a lot of, even amongst all the manufacturers, that's why a lot of the first ones would still have chimes in them, even though they were electronic, because they were worried if they didn't have chimes, people would be turned off by that. Yeah, they missed the dinghy, the Pavlov's dog. Some of them would literally have like a reel that would run in there. So if you hit a spinner or something, you can hear that sound. It is pretty awesome. I'm not going to lie. EM noises are pretty great, but it's a different, it's like a different breed of horse, right? It's still a horse. It's just different. It's different. Right. And it's okay being different and it's okay trying something new. I mean, I guess with System 80, their thought was probably something more along the lines of, let's add what people want. they want some speech or noises or more lamps or more switches, we're not going to deviate too far from System 1, even though it is a big leap in technology. I think they leapfrogged Bally and Williams at the time, but not for very long. And then they would have to sort of adapt the System 80 board set. We'll get into that a little further. But it's a little more modular this time. I think it's a little more easier to make changes to it, which is probably something that they put in the requirements. So the first System 80 game was The Incredible Hulk, but that was actually a System 1. So The Incredible Hulk was model 500, and according to IBDB, there are four known examples held by collectors out there somewhere of System 80 versions of The Incredible Hulk. There is an email exchange and a discussion around Hulk number 500 back from 2008 on IPDB, if you want to dive deeper into that. Hulk model 500. Makes it sound like it's the 500th game. Right, yes, the model 500. There's about probably four or fewer very fancy, super expensive, elite, really terrible games that might be worth a lot of money. Oh, they're green. The Hulk is beautiful to look at, but it is terrible. Terrible, terrible. We talk about that in our System 1 episode. I would put that back glass and I would put that play field on my wall.
    16:54
    I'm a big comic book fan and I would love to have one of those and just never play it because it's terrible. Which brings us to the actual first production System 80 game, The Amazing Spider-Man, which is the Marvel superhero comic license theme from May of 1980. This is a wide-body pin. It sells 7,625 units. It is designed by Ed Krinsky, the legend. Art by Gordon Morrison, who is from AdPosters. He was an outsourced. You know, him and Ed worked for years and years and years together. The sound and software is uncredited. So first things first, what is your initial impression of the amazing Spider-Man? It looks really cool and it's wide. It's gorgeous. Absolutely gorgeous. They went with the comic book art. The interesting thing about Hulk, I think at the time that game was released, the TV show was out. Yeah. But they went for the comic book style. Like if you look at other games, like when Superman was out, the movie was out, but they went for the comic book style. And that kind of goes to present day. Sometimes that happens. When you look at things like in Avengers Endgame. Oh, yeah, there's a movie, but we go for the comic book version. Yeah, you tie it in. Yeah, over like 30 years, this has been a thing that continues. It's loose enough that you're going to get the name recognition, you're going to get the emotional response, but you're not going to have to deal with all the issues, especially in the modern day of LCD animations and using video assets and rights for actors and voice. You're not getting into all that stuff. You're getting into enough of it that you get kind of the response you want. and the amazing Spider-Man based on the legendary comic book character, it is gorgeous. Immediately you look at it, you're like, man, that looks great. I'm going to play that game. And then you're disappointed. But we'll get into that in a moment.
    19:14
    What do you think of this flyer? So this is the first System 80 game. So now they're going to start out with new branding, right? They're going to start out on new branding on a new platform. Yep. You know that it's the number one in Gottlieb. It's a new decade of stars. The Star Series, Star 80. It's the Gottlieb Star Series 80. They are all in on the marketing and branding here because they realize, hey, we're changing it up. Things are getting big, big deal, big changes.
    19:49
    So on IPDB, one of the best parts are the flyers. Each manufacturer has a different way of spinning what they have. Williams is all about puns and gameplay and innovation. In the last episode during the Data East days, you could tell it's all about how different it is, how reliable it is, the new innovation, you know, cheap and easy to maintain.
    20:21
    Gottlieb is all about it's a tank. It's Gottlieb. You know what you're getting. No puns, but a hilarious amount of branding. And, man, they're branding the whole 80 thing. They are the 80s of the future. They know that. And, man, they are beating it to death. On the second page. Yeah, I never heard this one. So it says it's System 80, which it is, the board set, but it's also Dimension 80, which is the actual play field size. They're giving it a name.
    20:52
    We're changing it up. We're shaking it up. And it's a wide body. Augmented game with a brain memory. Game with a brain. Game with a brain memory. New play field size designed for ultimate in pinball action, which is the wide body. unique ear-level sound through Gottlieb's Sound Projector. Nice name for a speaker, but yeah. New attract sound and sight modes with sequenced flashing playfield lights. It's so exciting. Actually, sequented. I don't know if I've ever heard that term. Sequented flashing playfield lights. New high-powered, individually controlled pop bumpers. New lightbox design with easy access insert. Expanded 15-step bookkeeping system with automatic percentages and game time averaging. Very nice. I want to buy this now.
    21:50
    More appropriate theme for Gottlieb's first Star Series 80 game than Marvel Comics' universally recognized adventure character, Spider-Man. Trademark.
    22:03
    Wow. They're overselling it. You can never oversell anything. They're all in. Star Series 80, System 80, Dimension 80. The 80s, right? We're in a new decade. We're moving on. The 80s are here. Disco is dead. Let's roll. but it's going to be designed by somebody who got most of the accolades of the 60s and 70s in ed krinsky it sold 7 000 units though it did this was among the last original games uh designed by ed krinsky so he would design a couple of really quick games kind of around this era and then he would more or less bow out of game design. Most of the later games in the System 80 era that are attached to Ed Krinsky's names are actually solid-state System 80 adaptations of previously released games. His most recent bestsellers around this time were Countdown, which is an Awesome game. 9,900 units. And Solar Ride, if you're the kind of person like me who loves a good vary target, at 8,800 units. What do you think of Dimension 80? A lot of stuff on it. There's a lot of stuff on it. More does not usually mean better. And this might be an example of that. You remember Atari's wide bodies, right, Ron? That's all of them, because that's all they made were wide bodies. So Atari shows up in the late 70s, and they're like, hey, guys, we're giving you more stuff. We're going to change the game. We're going to jam-pack more quote-unquote toys into this game. We're going to have drop targets and spinners and extra flippers in all directions and all that stuff. And the industry had kind of freaked out and were concerned about that. Bally made wide bodies. Williams made wide bodies. Stern probably made the best version of wide bodies.
    24:16
    Gottlieb is now all in on wide bodies. They didn't just dip their toe and make three or four like Bally. We're going to see Dimension 80 really take over the Gottlieb portfolio. Ron, if you put five pounds of crap in a three-pound bag, what do you get? Eight pounds? No, you've got to wash your hands a lot. Okay. Because you've got poo everywhere. A fun game, yes, but if this was a narrow body, I think it would be better. The opinions expressed by David Dennis are his own. What do you think? Do you think this is the wide body is where it's at with this game? It's no genie. That's true. It's not terrible. I mean, it doesn't have anything egregiously weird or crazy in it. They did not. Yeah, Ed Kresge was not a try-and-weird-stuff guy. He had kind of his tried-and-true kind of things that he would do. Like, let's start top of the play field and work our way down. We'll talk about things that are odd but not crazy. So instead of having traditional rollovers on the top of your play field, like most traditional games where you shoot the ball up and it falls between some rollovers, this one has three sort of capture saucers. And then it has a piece of plastic, and then it has like a rollover, star rollover. And then it has your regular kind of top lane rollovers with an A and B on it. It's actually pretty cool because it makes it really difficult to get up to that top of the play field and get into all of the various points. That looks cool. The game suffers from more of a software exploit than anything else, which will make you ignore pretty much everything on this play field. Right. So you see this and you're like, okay, there's one, two, three capture holes, and there's A, B rollovers, and there's a light pop bumpers skill-ish shot to the rollover. You know, that's like, okay, yeah, this is cool. This is really great. Then it gets into the pop bumpers, right? It's got two just perfectly, perfectly placed pop bumpers in the middle of the play field. It's got a set of five drop banks on the right side, a set of three drop targets on the left, an orbit spinner, which is just, well, we'll get to that in a second. Five drop banks on the right. That's a lot of drop banks. Five targets. Five targets, not five banks. A five bank. Yes, a five bank, if you will. Gottlieb makes the best drop targets in the industry. They feel good. They're reliable. They're super easy to clean, super easy to work on. They are quite literally the Cadillac when it comes to things like drop targets. I don't know if they're the easiest to work on, but they are the best. I thought they were pretty easy.
    27:10
    It's just like one little plate. You pull it off. Well, the springs are kind of annoying. Yes. Compared to some of the other drop bags, they can be a pain to work on. But they're the best drop targets in the industry, right next to the worst spinner in the industry. All right, so we're getting pulled into the spinner here. So bad. The spinner.
    27:32
    They still haven't made changes to this spinner. This is the same spinner from the System 1s. Yeah, the plastic spinner. It just doesn't spin. No, it doesn't spin. That's the thing I don't get. Like, what was the point? Everyone else uses the metal spinners. They use this plastic spinner. You hit it, it spins like three times. Three times. They had those metal spinners in the EM era, and you'd hit those, you know, on an orbit or something like that. It would just, you know, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, like, oh, it was awesome. And to be fair, they will make up for this in the later era where they will go to the nice sparkly, I call it the sparkle, sparkle metal spinner that spins awesomely. But, man, they had this period in the middle. I don't get it. And it wasn't just like two or three games, and they're like, ooh, this is not fun. It was like they ordered like a million of these, and they're like, oh, I guess we can't just melt them down or throw them out. We've got to use them. The other thing about Spider-Man, not only is the art tremendous. If you look at the pop-upers are Spider-Man's face, like his mask. The spinner is a web, which they will later reuse in other games. But it's just all this custom art and all these different parts. Yep. Looks great. If you've got an old, late 70s, silver era, bronze era Spider-Man, like this looks spot on, right? I don't think the art was done by, you know, Jack Kirby, who was the, you know, one of the original sort of designers of Spider-Man. The credit is given to Gordon Morrison, but I'll tell you what, he was able to mimic that design like pretty much perfect. I'm having a hard time telling the difference if it is, in fact, not Jack Kirby who provided the image. And the one thing you're going to notice when we start getting into these games is at some point, Khalid must have thought people with two flippers are wussies. You've got to have more than two flippers. Two flippers is just, no, that's not where it's at. The more flippers, the better. Artist side, this is the best part about that game, and that is the lower play field. We're talking scissor flippers with no safety. So we are going to have to try to catch that ball. We can't trap on that right side quite as easily as we'd like. That adds a lot of fun. And all that being said, this game has a bad exploit. So you mentioned that a second ago. What is the downfall of this? So it's got all this cool, it's got drop targets, and it's got these cool capture holes at the top, and it's got loops to shoot around. It is very cool. And if your skill level is good enough, you don't have to play any of those. You don't have to play any of the play field. None of it. Basically, you plunge the ball into one of the two lanes on the top, the ones on the right, which lights the add bonus lights in the in lanes, and then you just shats back and forth and build your bonus. And it builds your bonus and your multiplier, and you just do that until you can't do it anymore, and you will max out the bonus. The shats being that you let the ball roll right to the tip of the flip, like way down to the tip of the flipper, like the absolute last second. And you just flip, and it rolls up the in lane. The opposite in lane, yep. Yep, the opposite in lane, and it just kisses that rollover switch, and it adds the bonus, and it adds to the multiplier. You catch it on the opposite side, and your shats together right at the tip of the flipper. just flip it, and it goes backwards up the in lane and touches that. It's just terrible because that's what tournament does. Tournaments just ruin games. Tournaments ruin everything. I mean, you need a certain amount of skill to be able to do that. It's not easy. I tried. You're not going to be able to do that, yes. If you can get into a groove with it, you can ignore the entire rest of the play field, which is a shame. So it's not like, oh, I've got to shoot the drop targets up on the corner, and then that's going to increase my multiplier, and then I've got to build my bonus by shooting it up to the top lanes and getting A, B, C, or 1, 2, 3. It really, really just is terrible this way. And that's the same problem, the exact same problem that the Incredible Hulk has. The System 1 is it's just once you know that rule, it kind of ruins the game because you're like, oh, if I really actually want to set a high score, I've got to keep getting it in the in lane some way. And it just sucks. But they sold over 7,000 of these, so this is a good start. What do you think that they thought right out of the gate? Just so many sales of such an awesome theme. It's a good start, and the Gottlieb construction is awesome. Like, have you ever worked on any of them? You lift the play field up, especially these wide bodies. They'll have, like, a bracket thing that comes up to hold the play field in place. And it's not like a little bracket. It's like a proper, like, you could beat a man to death with this thing. Yes, it is. Their games are like tanks. It's impressive. Impressive. So if we follow that up, we're like, okay, we've got this awesome licensed comic book theme. We're back. We're lighting it on fire again. What's going to draw in the next round of sales? And that, Ron, is a circus theme. An original theme, which is an ultra wide. It's one of the two, I think these are, if you exclude things like Hercules, this is one of the widest games ever made. This and Star Race, which is probably coming later. But, yeah, it is very, very wide. I actually played one of these a few weeks ago. It is so wide. And they would sell 1,700 units. Yeah. That is a far cry from what they just sold.
    33:19
    Designed, again, by Ed Krinsky, art by Gordon Morrison, And, again, the software and sound is uncredited. Now, that play field is three inches wider than the other System 80 wide box. We'll call it Dimension 80. We'll use their terminology. Yes. This is three inches wider than Dimension 80, which is already, like, among the widest of the wide. So this is like Dimension 83? Actually, to be fair, Dimension 80 is not one of, for example, Paragon, that era of Valleys, they're all wider than Dimension 80. Also, the Williams ones like Pocorino and the one that Steve Ritchie did that I can't think of right now. Stellar Wars? Stellar Wars. They're ultra wide. They're wider than Dimension 80. But they don't feel as wide. No, they feel as wide to me. Do they? Maybe I just don't have enough time on them. But when I've played those ones, they just don't, they don't, it just seems like the ball just rolls and rolls and rolls on these Gottliebs. Maybe it's the flippers. Maybe the flippers aren't as powerful on the Gottliebs. Eh, they're 50-ball flippers. I think a lot of people just don't set them up right. This is a really cool playfield design. I really enjoy this playfield because it has the spinner right up the center at the top lanes, which is a really cool placement for it. It has traditional rollover lanes on the top into two pop bumpers. But then it has a drop target bank, and that drop target bank has like four drop targets, but there's a space in between the four.
    34:56
    So you can miss the target and kind of shoot it up into the pop bumper, which is going to get you into trouble. What they used to do at Bally Williams when they started the wide bodies is the designers made a conscious decision to use a portion of the play field on the left or the right side and actually shrink the playfield so you don't actually shoot the orbits. You don't actually shoot the entire width of the playfield. And they've done that here on Circus, which they did on Genie as well, where they create like a mini playfield on the regular playfield. And it's got two mini flippers, so it's like a smaller playfield up in the top left corner. and it's got next to the greatest of all time very target. It has the roto target. What's a roto target, Ron? It's a target that rotates. Yes. It's like a fan, right? Yeah. Oh, roto targets are hilarious because they just go.
    36:01
    Like when you hit a switch, they'll spin around and it'll reveal a different target. Oh. So much fun. Wow, you are a big fan of roto targets. I don't know what it is. Roto targets and very targets. They're just so odd and unique. How many flippers does Circus have? We've got to have our flipper count. Yeah, flipper count. Is that what we're going to do this episode? We had four flippers on Spider-Man. We had one on the left. We had one on the bottom left. And then we had the two scissor flippers on the right. So how many do we have here with this one, Ron? We have five flippers. Five flippers. There's too many flippers, three standard flippers. So we're kind of – not every one is a standard-sized flipper. They're still flippers from a shop-out perspective. It's fun when you have that many flippers. Wait until we get to some of the later ones. Wait until we get to a particular title. I think that is the king of flippers. So Circus is still part of the Gottlieb System 80 mega branding here. And on the flyer, they kind of just abbreviated the stuff they said in the last one. The game with a brain, which they've quoted, also features new pop-up for power, ear-level sound projection, 15-step bookkeeping system, automatic replay percentaging, track sight and sound, automatic playing time averaging, and super accurate scoring. I love the super accurate scoring. Do you know why they put stuff like that in there? Sometimes you would shoot a target and you'd have to wait for it to catch up to do the math? More like in the EM era. If you hit, like, two targets, it would only give you the one.
    37:39
    That's the thing with solid state now. We count everything. Everything. Super accurate scoring. Featuring Gottlieb's exclusive roto targets and the popular game within a game concept. Oh, game within a game concept. That's cool. I like what the different manufacturers will call things, like a play field. They might have a different term for it. In the Gottlieb world, it looks like the huge spectacular action play board is loaded with play appealing features to generate high profits. So they call it a play board. The flippers on the bottom right are not scissor flippers. They're actually mounted. One is mounted directly to the sling. The other one is mounted on the in lane. So that could be quite tricky, I think, shooting that one. The spinner is terrible. the artwork, although creepy, you know, circus theme, is actually really, really, really good. Is it creepy because it has clowns? Yeah, and they're like the terrifying 70s clowns. The kind that are usually evil now, yes. But, I mean, clowns used to mean fun, you know? Yeah, they didn't always mean murder in your sleep. Yeah, I like they call the back box a light box, and they put the speaker on the light box So it's pointed directly at your head for better sound. Because it's, yeah, it's right there. You know, it's in your ear. What do you think of this back glass? I mean, it's. Gottlieb was never much for the bikini ladies. But there's a couple on here. Yep. There are. That is a new marketing strategy. And elephants, then the ringmaster. I guess, is that the ring? Yeah, that's what you call them. The ringmaster.
    39:20
    Clowns. Yeah, a unicorn. Unicorns are very in now. As a father of two daughters under seven, unicorns are very in. There you go. Yeah. I think this would get some play in my house, to be honest. It's a great play field. The theme is terrible. But I think the play field is very cool. The theme is terrible. Everyone loves the circus. Not everybody. Animal rights people don't like the circus. Well, they didn't exist in 1980.
    39:49
    Well, I guess I've said everything I want to say here. Is there anything else you want to just sum it up here? Gottlieb hopes the next one will sell better. And this is, we're going to need a game with a cool name, and that's Panthera. That is a cool name. It is a cool name. I don't know where they got it from. I don't know what it is, but this is like a fantasy mythic theme. This is June of 1980. It is a wide body again. Sells 5,220 units. Oh, thank goodness. A better seller. designed by Ed Krinsky. This is art by somebody who will become quite prominent in pinball, Doug Watson. Again, sound and software is uncredited. This has a little bit of controversy as to who the actual designer was. Now, we've given it to Ed Krinsky here on the show, but there's actually some talk that a John Buras may have actually done a lot of work on this with Ed, and maybe even more work than Ed. So when asked by IPDB, Buras couldn't actually remember who designed it, but he thought maybe Ed would. So that's like this weird, like, nobody remembers who worked on their games, which I find amazing. But Ron, they were slamming them out at this time, so... It's not like they're making a game every year or two years, so, yeah, they could get confused. So imagine being so busy manufacturing machines that you're not able to remember the actual games that you made. You don't have a list, you don't have it in a diary, you don't have the work orders, nothing, because it's all thrown in the garbage basically when you're done with it. And a lot of designers and artists, even to this day, have a difficult time remembering what they've worked on. And they will often say that at conventions, when people ask them what are their favorite games, or hey, I love this game, they'll actually not even remember any of the details of those games. I think it's more interesting that these are all uncredited software, like nobody knows who did the software on these games. The names that often pop up when we talk about the designing of System 80, the implementation of System 80, is John Burris, Alan Edwell, and Tom DeFotis.
    42:06
    They are sort of the three kind of big heads when it comes to doing that. So many people, in fact, say that a lot of these games were probably a collaboration of those team members. And some of those kind of crappy, exploitive code issues may have arisen because they're still learning the System 80 board set and what it can do, and they don't want to run too fast and put something out into the field that is not reliable, because that would be very not Gottlieb. Alan Edwall told IPDB that he and Tom DeFotis were troubleshooting this game a lot for a nasty bug in one of the hardware timer chips made by Rockwell. So there you go. We're running into a lot of the issues. And they're still learning some of those things, so they don't want to blow it. But one thing they don't blow is the marketing. Because this game, in a nutshell, a mystical lady and her panthers. Yes, Panthera, mystical princess goddess, born to royalty, kidnapped and abandoned in the forest, raised and nurtured by a fierce but maternalistic tribe of jungle denizens, ultimately returning to her queenship. Panthera, exciting, mysterious, unpredictable, a fitting name and theme for Gottlieb's newest Star Series 80 game. What? Whoa. What? It's like the Jungle Book. Wow. Sexy. that's like almost as crazy as the cheetah one for Stern, which was like a whole page. Yeah. Now we're adding some extra flair to this game as well. To say the same thing. Kahlil's unique new lightbox design carries a sequential cascade of sound to the player at ear level, creating an accelerating fever pitch of excitement. Wow.
    44:05
    This better sound incredible. They're literally saying the same things but making it sound even better. Right, they're going all in. It's an uninterrupted and dazzling array of playfield lights, simulates and enhances the player's feelings of emotion and competition. Wow. How about the total memory recall? Resetting drop targets, which duplicate the playfield condition from player to player, is just one of Panthera's superb new memory features. It's new for Gottlieb, but who invented that? Oh, that was a stern thing. That was a stern thing. Can you remember the game? Two years ago, right? I'm trying to remember. I think it was Trident. I think Trident did that first. But, yes, now Gottlieb has the memory targets. If you're wondering what that means, the targets can drop themselves and they can remember state from player to player. Gottlieb's new Dimension 80 cabinet and light box with over 30% more game area than the old standard add up to the perfect proportions for contemporary pinball. So they're wording this like this is the new normal. The new standard. This is the new standard. The other one is the old standard. The old games are old. Yep. The new wide 80 games are the new games. Which we saw with Williams when they had their bi-level games. Like this is the new standard. so we're going to this is the new game this is how it is now we're going to make four of them in a row and then do not make any more and then they discovered ramps were probably a better idea well no they needed ramps to get to the multiple levels Yeah but like just ramps Oh This 15 bookkeeping system that a big deal with self Yeah, they fail the last couple. They don't make it as flowery language in those. Yeah. It literally just says it has a 15-step bookkeeping system, self-testing, unparalleled accuracy, and an optional, what did that say, coin counter? Yeah, it's exciting. We've got some really, really cool, they really want to get you to buy in to the story of Panthera. It's more about that connection. The back last tells the story. You've got kind of a scantily clad, you know, aboriginal looking lady who's there next to these two just fearsome, muscular panthers. And is she wearing heels? She is, because in the jungle, totally, totally worth it. The play field art, and this is a critique that I have on multiple games over kind of pinball history. A lot of reds and oranges don't do it for me. It doesn't look as pleasing for some reason. And it's red and orange and purple and blue. It's just an odd palette. It doesn't look quite right. But art aside, this is a pretty great play field. I think I've only played this a few times.
    47:04
    How about our flipper count? I can't stop at our flipper count. Oh, let's go back to flipper count. I think this one has failed us. This is a letdown. Oh, my God. There's two flippers. Only two flippers, so it probably plays better than the other ones. It does, and that's why I would say that this is a great play field. The only major issue with Panthera when I played it is getting up to the top of the play field. You've got to have rebuilt flippers because they're way down at the bottom of the play field. The play field is wide, so you've got to shoot that left orbit spinner, which when you hit it, doesn't move, so it slows the ball down a lot, as well as shooting up to the right side orbit is really, really difficult. it's unique, it's fun and it has three separate four target drop banks so it is a drop fest for the eyes love it, great play field by Ed Krinsky so here's a comment from a Facebook post when we were asking people about what they thought it's just an 80 Chuck Word of Straight Down the Middle Pinball SDTM Pinball says horrible sounds Very early digital sounds, and they clearly were still figuring things out at this point. Interesting memory drop target rule set. You have to collect four colors. Once you do those, corresponding lights on the drops light, allowing you to hit three of one color for a bonus X. This progress holds ball to ball. Once you collect all four bonus X advances, all drops reset, and they are 5K each rest of the game. Very challenging and satisfying to get this set up. So we're getting into some pretty unique rule sets. The other thing that he loves about this is that the Gottlieb does the nicest knocker sound effects. Five loud knocks for the 50,000 points that you can get. And this is common for Gottliebs and one of the favorite features of Chuck Wirt and Panthera. He also has a comment about the spinner. Spinner on the left orbit is pretty lame. If lit, it will advance bonus and award 10k per spin. but it's capped at 50k points and five bonus advances per one rip. That's it. That's terrible. Well, it probably only spins three times anyway, so. Right. So, I mean, that's just how it goes. We can use that memory somewhere else. It's only going to spin three times. Terrible. You've played this? I've played it a few times. What's your initial impression? Kind of when you first shot it, you're like, eh, that's pretty good. I can't remember. Can't remember. So then it's kind of a bit, oh, my. I wasn't like, oh, my God. But, yeah, I know I've played it. Yeah, it's not one of those ones where you play it and you're like, oh, yeah, this is one of the good ones. It's just kind of fun. I get it. I like it. It's, again, kind of fun. Great play field layout, but I don't know. The artwork really is a bit of a turnoff. Now, Doug Watson is the guy who did that art, and this is his second game. His first game was Stern's big game, which I think is equally kind of ugly. No, wrong. I love big games art. Doug worked advertising posters, and they were a third-party company that would do, like, band posters or vinyl records. They would do the pinball machines. They would do a bunch of stuff. And he would eventually flip to Gottlieb and Stern and then would eventually end up at Bally Midway, and he would do his best work, in my opinion, at Bally Williams in the 90s.
    50:44
    Big games are horrible. The game is incredible. They look like animals. The back glass with the tiger looking at you. Awesome. Too much green. Awesome. Wrong. Too much green. Wrong. This one's got too much red, too much orange, too much blue, too much pink, purple. What can our listeners email you to tell you you're wrong about the art? They can email us at silverballchronicles at gmail.com to let us know that Dave is right. Cool art on both of those games. I'm not going to lie, but it's just not quite right. It's like there are certain rules that when you go to doing play fields and colors that is not totally apparent. And I don't know what it is. But those who do play fields, I think Zombie Yeti, Christopher Franchi in the modern day, John Yossi, they know what those rules are just instinctively. They could probably tell us what it is. Usually it's space themes that sell. One way that we can tell that space themes are what can sell is that recently American Pinball trademarked Galactic Tank Force for their upcoming game because space sells machines.
    51:56
    And I'll tell you what, Counterforce sounds like a fancy space theme from August of 1980. It is the Dimension 80 Widebody, sells 3,870 units, designed by Ed Krinsky, art by Gordon Morrison, and once again, the uncredited software. Counterforce has a killer marketing campaign here. It's a new kind of pinball. They'll fight to play because this one fights back. It's the pinball that fights back. That's literally the tagline. And that's the tagline. Yeah. And do you know what this rule base is based on, generally? No.
    52:37
    It's basically kind of like Space Invaders. Oh, okay. They come down, and you've got to hit them before they get down to the bottom.
    52:48
    Oh, I see. That's actually quite smart. Or you could say it's like Missile Command. You have to hit them before they blow up your cities. I think there might even be cult cities in this. so there's seven drop targets right kind of up in the middle of the play field in the back and in front of them there's seven lights and then there's another row of seven lights and another row of seven and another row of seven and then finally like your city lights at the bottom so you got to shoot those drop targets at the top over and over because the alien attack rockets descend at increasing speed their mission knock out the player's multiplier guns
    53:26
    Yep, and any rocket reaching a lit multiplier gun will cancel those points and reset the bank of targets, and it starts all over again, but this time with an accelerated attack rate. Who will be the winner, man or machine? Ooh. Your mission, arm your multiplier guns and destroy the alien attack rockets. I guess the multiplier guns are kind of like cities in Missile Command, but yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's cool. It's a cool, cool, cool concept. It's a little bit different. It's not like shoot here and get your multiplier or shats the inline. A very video game-y type concept. They're starting to get comfortable with that System 80 rule set that's built into the boards. So they're able to kind of come up with some really unique gameplay options. This is why I said earlier that they would seriously leapfrog Bally and Williams kind of in this beginning era. because, like, this is a really kind of cool, innovative way. I mean, it obviously didn't change the industry, but it is different and cool. Dimension 80, the new ideal playfield size. So now it's the ideal playfield size. Yeah. It's, you know, it's not the new standard. It's just ideal. It's pretty good. I can't wait to see when they go back to normal size, what they market that. Totally. Let's count some flippers. So we got two at the bottom, kind of in your standard spot. Yeah, I'm counting four here. You got one jammed into the right sling. So there is no sling. There's just a flipper on the right side. And then on the left, the flipper is all the way on the left playfield right above three in-lane, out-lane mixture. That's in a weird spot. My assumption is that they start putting a lot of these flippers farther up the playfield because they noticed that they're having a difficult time getting all the way around some of these play fields with the flippers so far down. What do you think? Do you think that sounds about right? Yeah, maybe. It just could be a better angle to attack those targets. So you shoot up. It's got a set of three rollover lanes on the left, a set of rollover lanes on the right. Now, the ones on the right you get from the plunge. The ones on the left you get from shooting the left orbit, which is kind of a neat kind of concept. You can't get to them normally. And then you've got that huge drop target bank in the middle. Well, Jordan from Hop Challenge, which is one of the TPN partner streamers, has some comments on this game, which they will stream quite regularly, and is one that he truly, truly loves. He says, you have to knock those targets down quick and collect your multipliers, or the game takes the multipliers back and resets your targets. And each time you don't knock all the targets down, and then decreases the time you have to knock the targets down and collect your special extra ball or bonus. It's, I believe, one of the earlier games to remember how many targets were down from your previous ball. I have a roller disc I'll produce the same year, and they reset completely each ball. I love Counterforce. It's a challenge. Yeah. So this is a unique, different, fun-shooting play field. It's wide open, but there's a couple of dangerous pop bumpers right up there on the top right. If you screw up on those drop targets or you shoot the drop targets and it deflects into the pops, you're in danger really quick. It's a cool game. I really like this game. I've played this a couple of times. Well worth your time. And you can tell. The sales numbers are there. I'm almost trying to remember if it makes some kind of buzzer sound or something when it gets to the bottom and blows up. Yeah, that's in my head for some reason. I'm probably wrong. Now, this is Gordon Morrison's last pin. I mean, technically he would do Asteroid Annie and the Aliens was his last pin, but this was the last full complete art package that he would do from start to finish in the process.
    57:21
    Gordon Morrison is an absolute legend when it comes to the early solid state and EM era of pinball art. He is the grandfather of pinball art. He was born April 27, 1930, and he died in 2000 from lung cancer. These guys used to just smoke like chimneys and draw and do all that stuff. That was the thing in the 70s, man. Just sitting in a room covered in smoke, drawing pinball stuff. Crazy. His first game was Gottlieb's 2001 in 1971, and he did about 140 games over his career. Isn't that nuts? He did 140 pinball games in like 10 years. Yeah. That's a lot. Christopher Franchi's done like three, and he's like an amazing artist that I think is probably one of the best ever. and he's done three and this guy did 140 they made way more games then during the wedgehead era he did all the classics that you love he did abracadabra with like the wizard and stuff he did rockstar he did 300 the really cool bowling game with those amazing spinners strange world and of course my favorite along with everybody else's Centigrade 37, which, I mean, the art package is probably the best part of that game. He is truly one of pinball's unsung heroes. And there was a really great article written by Voodoo, who defined Gordon's style. His style oscillates between a very deco sensibility, focusing on geometry and patterning, and psychedelic era maximalism. His pinball machines are almost always my top aesthetic choices. His work with Gottlieb produced the classic, perfect aesthetic for the pinball machine. Artwork for pinball machines coexisted and fed off of other producers of popular culture. Band flyers, posters, album covers, photography, film, etc. all entered into a feedback loop, refining a visual language that could define a generation. The article is titled, Pinball, Unsung Art Hero. The magazine Voodoo is really like an artist magazine. Like, it's speaking to artists. So we're getting all the artist themes and aesthetic and psychedelic era maximalism and all of that stuff, which I don't understand unless I looked it up on Wikipedia. He added a lot to art in general, not just pinball art. It was something very, very cool. after Gordon passed away Dr. Keith Egging hosted a seminar at Expo about Gordon Morrison and his pinball art Russ Jensen wrote a summary of the seminar and here are some of the comments from that seminar that I thought was really great do you know who those two people are? Russ was an enthusiast and if you look at IPDB a ton of the early pictures that were posted to IPDB were by Russ. Especially a lot of Rare games and stuff you don't see because he would go to the shows. Let's see. Dr. Egging commented that designers give pinball their personalities while artists give them their soul. Gordon gave the industry a soul. Gordon believed that his Art Deco style gave pin games soul.
    60:59
    Gordon never grew up and that he loved comic books, cartoons, and toys. He was incredibly witty, described himself as having flexible ethics, and his home was described as strange with various types of art all over it, including gargoyles. That explains why his Spider-Man art was so killer. Yeah, there you go. He probably was like, I want to do that. Give that to me now. Oh, and then he did the Hulk as well. So working at advertising posters was able to give a lot of flexibility in what Gordon worked on. If it was a vinyl record poster, a movie band poster, he really did a lot of that stuff. And they would borrow from pop culture and put it into his games. And you can see they're all very cool and trendy. I've included links to those articles in the show notes if you want to go back and take a look at them in detail. Gordon Morrison was inducted into the Expo Pinball Hall of Fame in 1998.
    62:07
    Allegedly, after putting in his time at Gottlieb, Morrison was still working up to 80 hours a week doing freelance art and advertising projects all the way up to his death in 2000. This guy loved what he did. I'll tell you what, Ron, you've got to do what you love to do because you'll never work a day in your life. Okay. You know, it's also important. It's important that you like yourself, you love yourself, but you have to be careful because too much self-love will just make you jealous of the people who envy you. Exactly.
    62:46
    Life moments with Ron. Let's get into the greatest System 80 game ever made. It's so great. It sold 3,625 units. This is James Bond. It's the spy movie license theme from October of 1980. It was designed by Alan Edwell, who also did Charlie's Angels. Everybody loves that. and he would do a bunch of the Gottlieb Premier Games in the late 80s. This is the art by Doug Watson. Sound and software, once again, uncredited. You know, Ron, I am a massive James Bond fan. Really? I just, I couldn't tell. I love pop culture. I love the old era. I love the 1980s comedy Bond, which we'll speak about in a minute. I love the 90s over the top James Bond through Goldeneye and all those eras and I mean Daniel Craig the best Bond no you haven't seen him you can't comment I saw like the first 15 minutes of Casino Royale no Casino Royale is like one of the best Bond movies Sean Connery all the way sorry before we get into why James Bond is awesome and all that other cool stuff the flyer, to set the mood. Let's use as many James Bond cliches as we can, okay? Yes, James Bond 007, the pinball licensed to thrill. Yes, nobody has ever used that before. Very good, Gottlieb. Here's another one. It's time for a thrilling new pinball concept, and Gottlieb introduces it now. Oh, God. When you think about it, how crazy it is. You get the James Bond license. Which is a big deal. It's huge. Huge license at the time. So you use that game to try a completely new, basically, rule set idea. Oh, you blow it. They absolutely blow it. Why would you do that? Which we'll talk about. They decided to make it a time-based game, which pinball has done on several occasions, and it has never, ever worked.
    65:04
    Pinball players are always looking for a new challenge. and James Bond has got these dramatic new breakthrough in pinball design. Each player is given 50 time units at the start of the game, so already you've lost most of your player base with that first line. Totally. I don't get it. They've taken the, hey, what can we do with this board set, and they've just gone a bit too far. The kind of idea is it's like you're James Bond, right, and time is counting down on the bomb, and it's like ticking away, And you've got to defuse the bomb. And it's just god-awful terrible. So then he dresses like a clown and then he disables the bomb. We'll talk about that in a second. You got that? Did you get my reference there? I did. Octopussy reference there. Yes.
    65:54
    Ben, one of the listeners of the show, sent me a couple of really cool links. They are of some of the patents that were filed by Gottlieb and the designers around this time. They patented the time-based pinball machine. So what I've got here are the readouts of what was filed for the patents for Gottlieb and the time unit-based pinball machine. I've included these in the show notes, but these are really nerdy and really interesting. So if you could help me out here, Ron, how would you best describe a time-based pinball machine? I almost feel a British accent would be needed to make it really. Ah.
    66:46
    A pinball machine is gameplay determined primarily by time rather than the number of ball plays. A specificable amount of time. Well, specificable? That's actually... I'm not misreading that. That literally is what it says. Yeah. A significable amount of gameplay time is originally accorded to a given player. The gameplay time is reduced at an instantaneous rate, which changes according to how actively he plays and scores. The more active the ball play, the slower the gameplay time is reduced. In another feature, the pinball game machine is controlled by a digital processor, which also participates as a contestant against the human player. Ooh. Wow. Sounds fancy.
    67:28
    As another feature upon certain playfield achievements, a given player is entitled to operate a mechanism which alters the playfield conditions of another player. Yet another feature includes the provision of multiple independent playfield areas on a common playfield. Each playfield area is self-contained, having its own captured ball, flipper mechanism, and scoring targets. Preferably, the areas having the captured balls are enabled for ballplay only for specified periods of time. Wow, that is the patent. I've included it again in the show notes. Holy crap. The interesting thing is they call it play field here, when they were calling it play board or whatever in the flyer. Yeah. Time units. You collect the time units. Ah, time units, yes. Instead of having like three balls and you try to get a high score and it drains out, or five balls, which was popular kind of around this time as well, we're going to reinvent pinball. We're trying to find something that's unique. And we're doing it with the biggest license we possibly could have, which is a terrible idea. That's the part that blows my mind. Why would you do that? This went over so badly. Unless you think this is so incredible you want to introduce it with your biggest license because that'll just guarantee buy-in. Right. Which, terrible, terrible decision. And we can see that in the sales numbers. It sells 3,000 units and is a huge license. Like, the license itself should have sold, like, 6,000 units. But people played it, and it was terrible. And those that got the game, the coin drop for, like, actual customers at an operator's arcade or a bar was so bad that they actually released an updated ROM to replace it, to put it to a regular three- and five-ball game. But it was too late. It was dead. As we know, Gottlieb never will come out with new software after the fact. Never. So when they're doing that, you know this did not work well. And they know that they blew their biggest license ever. You think they had to get permission from any of the actors back then? I doubt it. You know, I think the way James Bond works, and this is a total assumption on me, is the images of the actors that portray James Bond are then the property of Eon Productions or the movie ownership. I don't think, like most contracts, that the actors own their image. I think when they play James Bond, they give all that up because they are on lunchboxes and trading cards, and they are on movie posters left and right. They are on Omega Watch stuff. They are on Austin Martin commercials. They are everywhere, and I think that that is just part of the big dollar amount that they get when they sign a contract. Now, this game is pretty much based on Moonraker. It is. It has Roger Moore, it has James Bond, it has Richard Kiel, it has Jaws is in there. Gorgeous backlash. This is the artwork from Moonraker. Moonraker was released in 1979. It was the highest grossing and most profitable James Bond movie ever until 1995's Goldeneye, which is sad because it's not good. Goldeneye's a great movie. No, Goldeneye's a great movie. Moonraker ain't. I mean, no, it's not. One of the worst villains, Drax, that guy just made no impression on me. It's a fun movie. So at the time, right, it's post-Star Wars, 1977. everybody's doing space stuff James Bond in space it's fun for what it is but it's not great this was followed up by For Your Eyes Only in 1981 which is probably Roger Moore's best acted James Bond film and should have been his last if you look at the back glass the image of James Bond holding the gun with Jaws kind of jumping or falling behind him, the ladies in front. That is the Moonraker image. So if you Google James Bond Moonraker and you look at the movie or promotional film images, that exact image is basically the same one on the back glass, except he's not in his space suit. He's in the traditional tuxedo. God, do I want this game? I think I do. I want the three and five ball version. They're kind of hard to find because there's not very many of them. The play field looks loads of fun to play. It's got scissor flippers on the left and the right side, so we got four flippers on this game. Four flippers. It's got drop targets on the left. It's got some stellar art. Like, it's really, really good. Middle of the play field's got Roger Moore doing his Roger Moore standing with his hand up and the Walther in his hand. It's got kind of the blood running down. It's like that iconic gun barrel scene in the beginning of all James Bond movies.
    72:43
    Just, I love this game. Never played it. Terrible with the time bonus crap. But it reeks of James Bond. This is a James Bond game. They nailed it. Why don't you have this game, Ron?
    72:58
    I didn't really like it that much. It's pretty terrible. I'm sorry. Besides an art piece, it's pretty terrible. Yeah. It's like all of those people that have the original Back to the Future game. They have that game because it's Back to the Future and not because it's a great game.
    73:17
    Well, although compared to the next game, James Bond is going to seem like a big seller. Oh, my God. This is bad. So we go back to space. James Bond did the same thing, right? Space is where it's at when it comes to increasing numbers. Yeah, especially when Star Wars came out. This is Star Race. It is a sci-fi space racing theme from October of 1980. It sells, this is bad, 870 units. It's designed by John Burris. Art is uncredited. Sound and software by John Burris. This is another one of those ultra or extra wide bodies. It is also the last of those extra wide bodies. Circus and Star Race. What is Star Race?
    74:09
    It's wide-body pinball excitement. That's what it is. It's Gottlieb's race through space to pinball profits. Star Race grabs players and holds them with its exciting new wide-body playfield design. When has it become not new anymore? I mean, they had tons of – they even did another one this wide previously, so it's not new. Well, we're still in 1980. We haven't made it through 12 months yet. That's true. I'm not used to this many games in one year. Simple to understand, but devilishly challenging to play. Players return again and again to fly through the universe of Star Race scoring features. No, they did not return. That is a lie. Oh, man. Fiery graphics explode off the game and send the players racing through the galaxies. The sounds of space surround every Star Race player and complete the universal appeal of this wide-body wonder. All right, let's sum it up. So the game is kind of designed to be like racing through space. So the ball is kind of like your spaceship or space motorcycle, which makes no sense. and it's got all these really, I think, very cool loops and pathways to follow along.
    75:29
    It just doesn't quite work out for some reason. All right, let's start with a flipper count. What do we got here? Two at the bottom where they normally are. We got one on the left, which is there's no sling on the left, so it's just sitting on the left on the inside of one of the in-lane. Then it has one way up the play field in the middle on the right side kind of buried in a plastic. And that is designed to shoot kind of this really cool drop tank, drop target bank, and loop at the top. Have you played it?
    76:05
    Probably at least once or twice at a show. It was that memorable, right? I don't recall anything about it, but yes. Other than it's really wide. Four rollovers at the top. It's got two pop bumpers in the middle. very kind of Krinsky-esque. You can see that they are working together as a team, that John Burris and Ed Krinsky are, you know, John is absorbing some of those Krinsky footprints, if you will, fingerprints. We've got some very targets. Huh? Mm-hmm. Everybody loves very targets. And I will say, for those who complain about cookie-cutter layouts, that is not Gottlieb. There is something crazy and new every game, even things like the James Bond time thing that failed. But they are trying a lot of stuff. It's cool. You can't fault them for trying. I haven't seen one of these in the wild because there's only like 800 of them. So there's probably like 200 left.
    77:01
    You'd probably see one at a show, I would say. This is like one of those ones where somebody's like, oh, I got this random game I'm going to bring to a show. Again, if it was a standard body, it would probably flow better, right? We're not into using ramps back to the in-lane, out-lane flow stuff, but the ball movement and geometry, I think, would go much better if it was just a little tighter.
    77:28
    I would assume, like all of these wide bodies, especially the ultra-wide bodies, I bet you if those flippers are not new and strong, really struggle. But it has a very target, so you should be happy. That's all that matters. The art's great. It's got like these space motorcycles with these like ladies on them racing through space. They're not wearing helmets, which I find a bit concerning because how are they breathing in space? Oh, okay.
    77:56
    Right? So, I mean, that's completely unrealistic. Let's call this the era of experimentation. Is that maybe the best way to define this time when it comes to the 80s? They're trying out new things. They're trying out new scoring. That's originality, man. Yeah. Timeline. Now, I have played a timeline. Yes. This is actually really cool. I love timeline. This is where time-based interesting little bits here or there, this is where it shines. They really figured something out with this. And I think that's because Alan Edwell did a lot of work on this game. It is a fantasy time travel adventure theme. It's December of 1980, so we're at the end of the year. It's back to the regular kind of wide body, the Dimension 80. I love that it has a name. Now I'm going to say that and see how many people look at me funny. Oh, it's a Dimension 80. Like what? Yeah, don't you know? It's a big deal. Didn't you listen to the Silver Ball Chronicles? Shouldn't you? I mean, this is much more intelligent and highbrow than Slam Tilt Podcast with Bruce Nightingale. Oh, my other podcast, yes. Yes. www.slamtailpodcast.com. Got to get that in there. Or my co-host, he beats me severely if I don't mention the podcast.
    79:14
    He's very violent. This sells 3,167 units. It's designed, as I mentioned, Alan Edwell. He did Bone Busters. He did Cactus Jacks. He did Stargate, System 3s. Art by Jerry Simekas. Simkas. He did a lot of work with Dan Forden. And he did a short time. He worked with Flight 2000 and Stargazer back in the Stern days. But he didn't really stick around for very long. This has the new attract mode feature, which was the big sales point here on this game. Did you know it has the dazzling new attract feature? the atomic symbol of timeline flashes around and around with a speeding strobe light pattern. The effect is mesmerizing. It is cool. It is mesmerizing.
    80:11
    It is cool. It's just a pattern, right? But these are the things that they're able to do with System 80 now that they've spent a year kind of playing with it, and they've figured out. Now, this is a game in a game again. So it has the upper play field on the top left. Yeah. Two small flippers into a five-bank. Upper part of the play field doesn't actually have an upper play field. That's right. It has a section of the upper left that you actually plunge into it at the beginning. And Gottlieb did this a lot. They did this on, I'm trying to remember, the boxing one. I think it's the System 80 title fight. It has something like this. Yeah, it's almost in the same spot, too. This is like a Gottlieb thing. Out of all the games I've played that Gottlieb did this, I like this one the best. This is very cool. This is actually a really good game. Too many flippers. You have five drop targets. When you plunge, it goes in there, and it's timed. You have so many seconds to try to get all the targets down, and then a buzzer will go off. In the top play field. Not the regular play field. It'll go, errrr. There's like a buzzer that goes off, and then flippers die, and the ball drops out. And you can hit it back in there during regular play. It's not something that you can only hit in the plunge. Exactly. So you get it up there, you can plunge all the way around into that area, then the flippers die, it rolls back into the play field, then you can shoot it back up around if you're fairly skilled.
    81:35
    Yeah, I know multiple people have this game, including one who doesn't even like Gottliebs, and he has this game. They didn't blow it like James Bond. James Bond was like your regular flippers die. So if you don't know what you're doing or you just want to flip the ball around, you're not getting anywhere. It's terrible. Flipper count is four on this game. Four flippers. Too regular, too many. We've got two sets, three sets of drop target bags, a four and two fives.
    82:04
    Three pop bumpers, very dangerous in the middle of the play field. Because to get back up into that little play field on the top left, you have to squeeze it right by a pop bumper and into like a lane that circles back around the top kind of orbit. and it falls back into the shooter lane, and that's how you get back up to that timed area. When you're in the timed area, you're trying to add to your multiplier and your bonus, which is calculated on a really neat tic-tac-toe board. I love what they call it, atomic tic-tac-toe. Yeah, because it'll explode if you don't do it right. Player versus machine in this contemporized classic game. To win three X's in a row, player tries the many skill shots positioned all over a timeline's play field. So it's a play field now. It's no longer a play field. For each X he earns, again, it's always a he. Come on, Gottlieb. Bad. Brutal. Actually, to be fair, Gottlieb was the first for seeing to have the non-gender specific, it would say, machine broken, call service person on your system threes. For each X he earns, the game counters with an O. Every win or draw advances the multiplier. This fun feature is the centerpiece of Timeline's action. Yeah, so if you just want to get the ball and shoot it at some drop targets and flip around, you can do that. But if you want to play the metagame, it's got that in spades. Very, very, very cool. And amazing art. Let's dive into that right now. The theme is like time travel, as you can tell by timeline.
    83:45
    But what's really cool is it's like jammed a bunch of different times and timelines together. At the bottom, they're like female gladiators of some sort, like fighting against a futuristic robot with like lasers and stuff, which is super cool. It looks awesome. It is so much fun. And that atomic sign that's in the center of the play field is also in the back glass, which is kind of like that's the opening in space-time that this robot is coming through, the atomic thing. The play field itself has really cool art, too. It's a very similar image to what's on the back glass. There's mountains on the side. There's, like, a fight going in the middle. It's neat. This is a great game. If you could play one of these, play it to death because it is unique and it is cool. I love Timeline. But we've got to follow that up with another space theme. That is February 1981, Force 2.
    84:53
    It is space combat adventure theme. Sells 2,000 units even. This is designed by John Osborne. There's a new name. Art by David Moore. So why is it Force 2? So was there a Force 1? There was not a Force 1. So then why would there be a Force 2? I don't know. This is like an Xbox One when there was already an Xbox One, like the first one. It was terrible. Multiball alert. The crew of the alien Star Cruiser is preparing for space combat. Get ready for adventure. Yeah. And I'm wondering, it says Multiball right on the flyer, which was trademarked by Williams. I'm wondering how they even were allowed to use that or if they had to pay because it's literally formatted the same way multi with a dash and then ball Gottlieb head and head multi ball that wasn't their thing but this game has four flippers and you know four flippers mean vertical and horizontal action all over the board ok it's a board again it's a play board it's a play field and four flippers horizontal movement is the worst thing you could possibly have in pinball. You know that. This gameplay is all right. It's more known for a couple things. Let's start with the back glass. Yes. The art leaves a lot to be desired. The aliens' heads look like phallic symbols.
    86:23
    They do. I've never noticed that. There's no way. That's what everyone I know calls this game. It's very helmet-like, if you will. Yeah. That's what they look like. I was going to say that it's like they have a jockstrap on their face, but it's on their eyebrows instead of, like, down low. It's very odd. And one of the – I might have mentioned this in a previous episode, but in the movie Rocky III, at the beginning of the movie, Paulie goes into an arcade and he sees a Rocky machine, and he throws his liquor bottle through the back glass. It's not a rocky machine because it didn't exist yet. It wasn't made yet, as we'll see. It was a Force II. Well, it probably deserved it. It was a Force II with a prop back glass in it. So where are the flippers in this game? All over the place. We got two at the bottom. We got one in the middle right and one all the way at the top in the upper left to hit the foreback. Like a way at the top. Yep. So this doesn't have your traditional Italian bottom, in-lane, out-lane, sling. It has, on the left side, in-lane, out-lane, sling, and then a flipper on the left. On the right side, it has a flipper, which is attached to, like, just a rubber, and then there's a kicker, basically. It falls into the kicker and kicks it up the playfield into the drop target bank on the left side, just below the upper left flipper. Kind of like Incredible Hulk. You know how it's got those flippers? Instead of it being vertical, pointing up the play field, it's kind of pointing to the left.
    88:04
    This game looks okay, but the art is terrible. There's rarely times where I'm like, this art is bad. This is terrible. You're not going to get any disagreements. if the art is supposed to make you want to play the game this makes you more look at like huh? What is going on? And there's like one alien who's like clearly the female who's trying to like draw you in and she's got like the same odd shaped head but they put hair on her. They put ladies hair she's got more chest stuff. It's just in general It's embarrassing. I feel so bad for you, David Moore.
    88:54
    He did the art for that. Now, David Moore is quite famous. He would do a lot of those System 80 games, 80B games. He worked at Gottlieb Premier. He did Cactus Jacks. He did Class of 1812. But this, you can tell, was obviously his first kick at the can, and he course-corrected very quickly on his next game. Oh, it must be one you like. This is... It's not that I like it. It's just better. Hey, Pinheads. I just wanted to let you know that when I'm not making cheesy jokes to make Ron laugh, I'm David, the financial advice guy. At Dennis Financial, our advisors strive to provide a return on life for our clients, not just a return on investment. The value of advice is something that we take seriously. A valuable financial advisor doesn't just provide investment and insurance advice. That's because an advisor takes the time to gather intimate knowledge about their primary client, understand their personal preferences, recognize their fears and hopes, and gain knowledge about their client's errors before providing financial advice. If you're looking for a more human dimension to your financial advice, Dennis Financial Inc. has you covered with advisors licensed in most Canadian provinces. We're also doing secure online meetings to engage with clients who need advice but don't necessarily want to wear pants or leave their house. Contact me via email at david at dennisfinancial.net for a free rate quote and a copy of our value of advice e-book or check out dennisfinancial.ca. Insurance solutions provided by Dennis Financial Inc., Canadian residents only. Mars God of War. This is a combat theme. March of 81, 5,240 units. John Burris Design, David Moore on Art and Software by John Burris. Very common for everybody at Gottlieb to wear multiple hats. And this is their Gorgar, their first game with speech. It would have the Voltrax SC01.
    91:01
    That sounds fancy, huh? Voltrax SC01, that does sound cool. It sounds cool. How do they promote that on this thing? They must have some fancy marketing for this The mighty warrior of the gods challenges you You think they would advertise the talking more but probably since other companies that already had the talking for like a year and a half they were probably a little behind on that when you think about it. You don't want to sort of point out the fact that you're two years behind. I mean think about you have your first what's your first talking game for Williams you have Gorgar from 1979 for Bally it's uh Xenon 1980 and then even Stern they have Flight 2000 1980. Yeah, which is basically mid to early 80's as well. And we're now in 1981 before Gottlieb finally has some speech going on. But here in Mars God of War you enter the battlefield of Mars overlooking his home planet. The God of War supervises battle on this fantastic new pinball playfield. We're back to playfield again. Great features such as Hyper Force, selectable pop bumpers and lanes, the Stargate ramp. I think the first appearance of the famous Stargate ramp. It is. Last Chance Ball and many others. Entertain and thrill all brave warriors who enter here. So gaze closely upon Mars. One scene he has never forgotten. And again, the Stargate ramp is basically, it's an up-down ramp. It's a ramp that raises and lowers so you can shoot underneath it. Exactly. So you shoot under it, it goes through the orbit. When the ramp drops, when the coil energizes, it drops. Then you can shoot up it, and it basically shoots through a similar tube as Xenon and drops into basically a ball lock. And they're advertising the selectable lanes and pop bumpers. Now, the selectable lanes thing had been around since Williams did it with firepower. Yeah, that's where you're moving the lit lane at the top of the play field. I'm just looking at it somewhere on the flyer where they mention, it talks, but nothing. It doesn't really promote that, does it? It does not. Oh, here it is, on the very last page. Oh, yeah. Mars Voice commands you. It speaks to each player, challenging and instructing them through their battle. Gottlieb's sophisticated new voice system delivers a fuller vocabulary than ever possible before in talking games. Okay. Okay, so it's there. It's just they didn't hit you in the head with a hammer about it, which is nice. Now, this has the back box infinity glass.
    93:43
    Yeah, infinity lighting. It's so cool. Multiple back glasses. Yeah, it kind of got like a tint to it, and it looks like it kind of goes through a tube, through the hole all the way down. Infinity lights that go around the perimeter. That's like a black hole xenon.
    94:00
    The Stranger Things topper does that. Very neat. This is a pretty good game. I only ever flipped it once, and it was broken, so I didn't really actually play it. It's a very cool layout because it's got your traditional flippers at the bottom. It's got no slings, but it's got two flippers a little bit higher up. It's got the drop targets. It's got the Stargate ramp and the appearance of the new spinner. Yep. the new metal, heavy-weighted, sparkly-looking... Yeah, I call it the sparkly spinner, yeah. It's amazing. The last I looked, it's still not available to parts suppliers. I don't get it. They use them, like, on every game from here on out, pretty much, in 80, they use this spinner. The artwork's pretty cool. It's like you're in a space battle, right, on the play field. In the back glass, it's like a Roman god of war thing, which is weird. But then the play field is like space because Mars is a planet, and I guess you have to fight against a planet.
    95:07
    The funny part about the art is that if you look at the ships on the play field, they are remarkably similar to the early snow speeder examples from the Empire Strikes Back film. drawn by a Star Wars concept artist, Joe Johnson, from February of 78. The image of the drawing was produced in a book called The Empire Strikes Back Sketchbook and was released in June of 1980, which was shortly after the movie's release. So the following year, those images of the snow speeders that weren't quite like the ones in the movies ended up on this play field. Don't tell George Lucas. I'm sure he doesn't care. I'm sure he wouldn't have noticed.
    95:57
    But, yeah, yeah, they are snowspeeders. They are indeed snowspeeders. Pretty close to what the original images were. So it's a good game. It's a good game. But is it as good as the next one, Ron? Dun-dun, dun-dun, dun-dun, dun-dun, dun-dun, dun-dun. We have a license again. Yeah, it's the fictional license character, the Pink Panther. March of 81, 2,840 units. Oh, that's a bummer. Designed by John Burris. Art, once again, by Jerry Simkus. And software by the man of many hats, John Burris. So the Pink Panther franchise.
    96:38
    I remember Pink Panther from when I was a kid from the classic Hanna-Barbera cartoon. Is it Hanna-Barbera? No, no. Oh, it's Frizz Freeling and his company. Yeah. What is it called? DePatty or something? DePatty Freeling? It must say here. Yeah, it's right there. So it is the DePatty Freeling Art House Pink Panther. I remember this show on Saturday morning cartoons for some reason. It's very weird because when I was a kid, I would always watch these old rerun TV shows instead of, like, the newer ones until, you know, the real Ghostbusters and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and all those appeared. I always ended up watching a lot of Hanna-Barbera, a lot of Pink Panther, Looney Tunes for some reason. Very weird. The original franchise of the Pink Panther is basically an American comedy series of comedy mystery films, which follow an inept French police detective named Inspector Jacques Clouseau. The franchise began with the release of the classic Pink Panther film in 1963. Then a movie was released every five years or so, including in the early 1980s. It was once again rebooted in 2006. See, the original Pink Panther movie, Inspector Clouseau is just another character. He literally was just the, he wasn't the main character, but he was still over in the movie. They just decided to immediately make a sequel with him as the main character. They had to spin him off. Yep. Yeah, so the movie started out with a 90% Rotten Tomatoes and then a 93% respectively. Then it dropped with every movie, including the new rebooted 2006 Steve Martin versions, which received a 21% and a follow-up receiving a 12% rating. Not worth your time, folks, even if you like Steve Martin. Yeah, I would say this license, though, is based more on the actual Pink Panther show, the TV cartoons. Yeah, so the TV cartoons, the animated TV show, which was called the Pink Panther show, had various reiterations, and it ran almost consecutively from 1969 to 1980. It was produced by David H. DePatte and Fritz Furlong. No, no. Frizz Freeling. Frizz. You spelled it wrong there. It's not Fritz. It's Frizz Freeling, and his real name was Isidore Freeling. He is a – you're into animation like I am. Warner Brothers. He was one of their main directors. Guys like Chuck Jones, Frizz Freeling, Robert McKimpson. Frizz was a big deal with the Looney Tunes. Yes. because I remember seeing his name all the time. Yeah. And, of course, the Marvel TV shows from the 1980s. And Yosemite Sam is based on Fritz Frehley. No way. Because he was a really short guy who supposedly had a temper. He could get pissed off. So they literally made the character to kind of make fun of him. Yep. Let's go to this machine. It's very blue. The back glass is a bit of a letdown because it's like a feet. Well, I don't know about that. It's more of a, do we put a big pink panther on the back glass, or do we put a woman on the back glass? Okay. They decided a woman was better than a big pink panther. And the pink panther is kind of just off to the left. Yeah, he's on there. He's almost hard to find at times. Like, where's the big panther? Oh, there he is. So she's, like, stealing stuff? Yep. Because in the original movie, I think it was, well, it was David Niven was the thief, but he was with the other woman who was also in it with him or whatever. What's the secret of our new pinball game, Ron? The secret? It doesn't really tell you what the secret is, I guess. No, it says the secret's out. Pink Panther is the best multiball game ever.
    100:41
    Wow. Whoa. That's like you're releasing the game and it's already the best ever. You just know. That's like telling somebody that you had the theme that everybody wanted of the first three movies of a beloved franchise and then saying you passed on that to do the worst entry of that franchise. That's a big disappointment to set up for people. Super fast action. Twice the ball velocity off the flippers. Pop-bumpers and kicking rubbers. Twice the velocity. Easy to follow strategy. Designed for all players to enjoy fabulous features. Multi-ball. Multi-ball special. Hidden captive holes and more. Okay. All right. I'm in. They got me. We need a flipper count. All right. Let's bring up the play field here on IPDB, the Internet Pinball Database, IPDB.org. Whoa, only three? Wow. It sounded like there was like a dozen with the kickers and the... This looks kind of fun. It's okay. It's got a pop bumper on the left side right on the in lane, a little Rick and Morty-esque. It is literally in the Rick and Morty position. It's dangerous. It looks cool. It adds some flair and something different. It's got a capture hole on the right and on the left. It's got the drop targets, drop targets in the middle. No orbit shot, no spinner, so that's a bit of a womp womp. Looks fun. Haven't played it. Can't really make any comments. Yeah, I played it a few times. I can't remember much about it. And it's multiple ball play. Wow. Cool. I guess if you're a big Pig Panther fan, right, this would be a really cool thing to have in your basement. You'd be, you know. Yeah. There's got to be big Pig Panther fans out there, right? There's James Bond fans. There's Pez people. I bet you there's someone who got this game, then rethemed it to be the Inspector Clouseau Pig Panther. Yeah, yeah. Somebody who just loves Steve Martin's new reboot, 2006. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You put Peter Sellers on there. Come on. Yeah, that's right. Come on. That's right. Let's go into Volcano.
    102:47
    This is a caveman dinosaur natural disaster. Okay. For a second, I thought you were telling me to go into a volcano. No, no, that would just be dangerous. We're all about safety here. This is September of 81, 3,655 units, designed by John Burris, Jerry Simkus on Art Again, and software by John Burris. While the domestic games had speech, there are export games to the European market and to Australia that did not have speech. An owner from France actually told IPDB that his game has an NA55, which is an early System 80 soundboard with no speech. Apparently, they don't know if all the games intended for export had a lack of speech, or if it was just this one-off. I made a comment a moment ago about the colors of playfields and pinball machines that I just despise. orange and red are on the top of that list, and this machine is all orange and all red. So you don't like Deadpool, then? Hmm. Oh, I got him there. I don't really like Deadpool, to be honest. I'm trying to find a way, because it's not offensively bad. Let's put it that way. But it is a bit red.
    104:08
    Yeah, I'm not a fan. But Volcano, you are basically pinball with pow. I don't know what that means. Interesting picture for the... On the flyer. Yeah, there's a lady with a caveman bikini. An actual photo. It's not art. Yeah. I guess this pin needed all the help it could get. Explosive action.
    104:35
    Explosive profits. Pow. I guess that's the sound an eruption makes. It has an amazing spinner on the left side. It is wide open. This is John Burris again who did Mars, God of War. So he put the spinner in a very similar place. He knows how satisfying that that can be.
    104:53
    It's also got a very unique – it's not a skill shot because you don't do it off the plunge, but it's like you get up to this little inverted raised area in the top left. It's known as the crater. and you go up into that area and you can kind of fall into crater one, two, three, or four when the ball gets up in there. And I don't get it. It must be neat. You've got to kind of shoot it up like a jump ramp, sort of. Have you played it? Do you know how that works? I mean, I've played it. Yeah, you hit it up there and it goes in whichever hole it's going to go in.
    105:36
    And it just kind of comes out and that's it, right? It's like, I mean, if you got some more details on that, I'd love to know. Silverballchronicles at gmail.com. But let's do a flipper count. So we got one away up there by the crater on the top right side.
    105:53
    And we've got two on the bottom. So not crazy, but it is unique. The flipper placement of the top one is very cool. It's like way up there. and pop bumpers on the left and right side on the top of the slings. Very dangerous.
    106:11
    I'm trying to remember if this was the one that has the millionaire-style moving shooter guide that moves back and forth. Oh. I'm trying to find somewhere where it mentions if it has that feature, because it was either this or Mars Got a War that has it, and I always get confused at which one has it. Okay. What do you think about the caveman art there? So it's like cavemen running away from a volcano, and there's, like, pterodactyls and fire. Fire. It's very red.
    106:45
    Yeah. Man, you have this hatred of red. It's just, it's, it's, and the art is just, it's the, I don't know. Go look it up. IPDB. Show notes are, have a lot of that stuff.
    107:01
    Yeah, I think, I think it's Volcano. If you look at the shooter lane and you see the guy the way it curves around, I believe that moves back and forth. If you think of Millionaire, the one cool feature of Millionaire, it does the same thing. Very neat. And if I'm completely wrong, you can email us at silverballchronicles at gmail.com and tell me I screwed up again. So if you really want to cause trouble, you can send that to slamtalepodcast at gmail.com. Please don't. Yeah, that's Ron's other podcast. But let's get into where it matters. Oh, where it matters? This game doesn't matter? Oh. Well, compared to the sales of the next game, it doesn't matter. This is Black Hole, October of 81. So we're towards the end of 81. This sells 8,774 units. This is a home run into a slam dunk championship winner. This is a big deal. We're in the low threes, high twos, and then we just smash it. This is a co-design by John Burris in Shing Lam, who I couldn't find a whole lot of information on. I really searched. So if you have any information on Shing Lam, please send it over to silverballchronicles at gmail.com. Art by Terry Dozaff, who also did Haunted House. And the software by John Burris. Now, the legend goes, Ron, that this two-level playfield design was written on a napkin in a bar after hours. And then a prototype was made.
    108:45
    Black Hole was a Hollywood movie, sci-fi movie, produced by Disney. And it was directed by Gary Nelson. That this was not based on. This was not based on that movie. It just happened to come out around a similar time. It had a similar theme. Yeah, but it's not. I think Disney would have had an issue with that. Now, the production budget of the movie was $20 million, plus another $6 million in advertising. It was a massive flop for Disney. It had 38% Rotten Tomatoes. Neil deGrasse Tyson, who is the astrophysicist, deemed the film to be the least scientifically accurate movie of all time. But it had a cool robot. It did have a cool robot. I haven't seen this. When I was a kid, I'm trying to remember. Maximilian, I think, was the name of the robot. He had like a, his arm came out and spun or something. I was a kid. I thought it was cool. Yeah, of course it was cool. This is not based on that at all. Not at all. There's no similarities to this. It just happens to be a black hole around the time of a movie called The Black Hole. Yeah, it could have been an inspiration, but, I mean, they couldn't use any assets from the movie, obviously. It's Disney. And Gottlieb's owned by Columbia Pictures, so I don't think that would have worked out. But apparently Disney Plus is looking to reboot this. I mean, and even then, Disney was very apt to sue you. I mean, they sued Williams for Robotron because it had Tron in the title of the game. They're pretty protective.
    110:14
    Discover the magnetic attraction of Black Hole. That's the thing. It's not the Black Hole like the movie. It's just Black Hole. Black Hole features a hidden playfield inside the cabinet, visible to the player through the upper playfield window. Multiple ball play is achieved when both captive balls are filled and player enters the Black Hole.
    110:38
    Yeah. And if you want a game that shows your Gottlieb engineering, this is it. This game is awesome. I would own this game in a heartbeat. I've played it a couple of times. I played it at Modern Pinball in New York. in Manhattan a couple of times before they closed. I really love this game. It just has kind of one critical error. How many flippers? Okay, let's count them up. Four. Oh, my goodness, there's two in the lower playfields. Six. Six flippers. Six coils running all of those. Six brackets holding all of them up. This is a, what do they call it? High-maintenance machine. Six flippers. Six pop-pump. Three slings. One five-bank drop target. Two four-bank drop targets. One three-bank drop target. Two kick-out holes. Two play fields. One control gate. One spinning back-box disc. The motor will die on your spinning disc, and you will have to fix it. The back glass. Let's start at the top, work our way down. The back glass is, again, the infinity back glass with the chasing lights. Yep, two-piece back glass. It's got the art of dudes being sucked into a play field or into a black hole. It rotates. So not only do the lights rotate, the image in the background rotates that creates like this falling effect. And it works to perfection. It is really smart. Then we get into the play field, and you've got like a standard wide-body Gottlieb System 80. I'm sorry, Dimension 80. But the play field in the middle has a hole in it with a piece of plastic or a Lexan over it, and there's another play field underneath it. But it's not in the same direction. The flippers are on the other side, and the play field goes up the other way. That's so awesome. And it's got drop targets on that lower play field. We're not talking like the Munsters down there. This is like an actual play field. Did we mention multiball and speech? Oh, the sound package. The speech package. Except the sound of wind, which you wouldn't hear in space anyway. It literally sounds like someone got in front of the mic and just went.
    113:09
    That's what it sounds like someone did. But then when it hits slings and stuff, it goes like. No one escapes the black hole. Oh, the voice, the robotic voice. It's like Flight 2000, right? It's like, it's just, it's so good. So good. They have a patent on method and apparatus of mounting a playfield window. A pinball machine having multi-level playfields. Oh, we've got to use the British guy. Oh.
    113:38
    A pinball machine having multi-level playfields with a transparent window. mounted in at least an upper-level playfield to allow observation there through to a lower-level playfield. The window is mounted on a ledge in an opening in the upper-level playfield with compressible rings and screws extending through the window, rings, and ledge to compress that rings until the window is in the same plane as said playfield. In other words, an adjustable, the plexiglass, whatever they're using, it's adjustable. Yeah, and it's got, you know, the screws won't back out because they're in there nice and tight. and it's flat with the play field. So if you wanted to make a lower play field with a piece of removable and replaceable plastic, you've got to pay Gottlieb. They've got the patent on this. The lower play field is very cool. It's lots of fun, but it has a massive critical error, which I'm very sad about. So you want to play on the upper play field as much as you can until you open the re-entry gate. So you know what I'm talking about here, right, Ron? So basically, if you get on the lower play field and you don't complete at least one bank of drop targets down there,
    114:54
    it's the same as losing the ball. It will eject the ball out directly into the out lane, and you lose. So that's really hard. It's tricky. It's the black hole. You will get sucked into the out lane. Yeah. So when you get down there, you're down there, and unless you knock down that drop target bank, before you get back up, that's it, you're out. Yep. I feel like if it was open once on the first go through, and then it closed,
    115:23
    and then you were out, if you didn't shoot it down, I think it would have been much better. Because what you do is you're like, I want to get on that bottom play field. You get down there, you flip it twice, and the ball comes back up and out the out lane. It doesn't give you enough fun. On the flip side of that, it is pretty challenging, and it is kind of exciting when you can get that to work. You're going into the black hole. You have to do something or you die. Take a look at the under play field image of this thing. It's wonderful, isn't it? Holy ****, there's a lot of stuff under there. Yep, and that's only one play field. Yeah, there's a whole other play field. And it's got that big tube that goes all the way across with that mech that has multiple ball positions and stuff. It's insane. God, this thing must be heavy. Great engineering. When it works. It has two transformers that's so big. It's got a massive fuse holder on the right side because there's so much that's going to explode. These System 80s had a bit of a grounding issue. Are you aware of that, Ron?
    116:22
    Yeah, they're known to have grounding issues. Did you know, though, the pop bumpers on Black Hole, they are so powerful. They're like the pop bumper in TNA-type power. Like insane. Whoa. Absolutely insane. They have pop bumper boards on the System 80. So on most of the games from a Valley or a Williams, the pop bumpers were controlled by the driver board in the back. These had a driver board, but the actual IC chips and things like that to run the boards were actually mounted under the play field. So if you had four pop bumpers, you had four independent pop bumper boards, which would often cause trouble. A lot of it was they didn't have enough transistors. So they had the pop bumper boards. But the one thing about the pop bumper boards is also they would prevent the thing from getting locked on. Yes. So the board would burn out before it would burn out your entire back box. Unlike a Williams where if you, at that era, if you hit the pop bumper and you just let the thing down, the pop bumper engaged, it would just stay engaged until it burned up. Yeah, it would literally melt. This, I think, is the biggest departure away from the System 1 system, was that when they were designing System 80, they were at least smart enough from what they learned, Gottlieb, that they would be able to create modules and add on to System 80. And that's inevitably how all of these sound boards and pop bumper boards and things like that came about, because they were able to sort of be much more modular. So you could add a dozen pop bumpers if you wanted to, because you just had to add another pop bumper board. They also made a single level version of this game called Eclipse. Oh, yeah. And this was manufactured in 82. It was, get this, a modular design kit, which was sent to anybody who wanted to convert their James Bond 007 cabinets into a new game. It had a new back glass, play field, and game ROM. Steve Young from Pinball Resource told IPDB that the bill of materials on the kit indicate the model 671, which was the name of this, the full games were 671A, which is where you got the cabinet and everything else. They don't know from him what components actually made up the kit version, but there are a few of these out there, and it's basically the upper play field, of Black Hole with no under play field. That is cool. It actually looks like a lot of fun. I have played it. Is it cool? It looks cool. It's not as good as Black Hole. Oh, well, yeah, I guess. But it is better than James Bond. Because when you hit it up in the area where it would go to the lower play field, obviously it doesn't. It just comes out. Boo. I think it might just have a kicker to come back out the same way, if I remember. Tons of fun. So you can check that out. I've got that in the show notes. Trying to save James Bond. They also did another game around this time, which was unreleased, called Critical Mass. There's the Whitewood version of that IPDB, which looked pretty close to being finished. And according to a gentleman named Eric Selleck, one of the creators of the game, Jim Capp, Joe Sickack, and Jerry Yinkst worked on the game in 1981. and this was their second pinball machine prototype. The prototype was built and it was never produced. There are some pretty cool images of IPDB. So at the bottom, the under play field or the lower play field has, again, two other flippers and it's got a bunch of kickers. So there's like a lot of chaos under there. It looks like a lot of fun and a bunch of drop targets. I believe there was a crew. This was the same crew of people, the Critical Mass here, that actually did the original Black Hole idea and sold it to Gottlieb. With the multiple play fields. Even though it has the other, the Gottlieb employees' names on IPDB as the designers, I think it was originally, I thought it was their idea. And then that got picked up, so they were working on another idea to get picked up, which was Critical Mass, which didn't get picked up because Gottlieb eventually did their own haunted house. That's the way I heard it. I could be wrong. Very famous haunted house was from June of 82. It sells 6,835 units. Designed by John Osborne. Art by Terry Dozerf. Dozef. Here's a better way to address all of the maintenance concerns on Black Hole. Let's make even more stuff that can break on this machine. Also, this is the Flipper King. Let's count the flippers here, Ron. There are eight. Eight flippers. In this game. So if you have to do a flipper rebuild in this, you will be hating your life. And you will have to spend a fortune on flipper kits. Because if you've ever worked on Gottlieb, the flipper kits, you get them from Pinball Resource. They're the only ones that have them because they're exclusive Gottlieb parts suppliers. And what he gives you, you have to knock a pin out of the existing mechs in the game to get the one piece off because you use it with the new stuff from the kit. So you've got to do that for eight flippers. Yes. Not only that, there are four pop bumpers, one five-bank drop target, one four-bank drop target, two up kickers, and three play fields, a lower play field, a main play field, and then basically the bi-level top play field. The crazy thing, no speech, no multi-ball. No multiball. That is a crying shame.
    122:21
    Yeah, multiball on three levels, that could have been something. I don't know. I wonder why they did that. Was it just too expensive? It must have been, right? It had to be that there wasn't enough time or the budget was too high. So John Osborne did the design of this one, and he was not a programmer like John Burris. John Burris, if he did both, you know, he could kind of do it. And so the programming for this was done either by John or somebody else. So their time is much more valuable because it's not just the designer who's kind of splitting their time, if you will. The best part about this game, though, is the art. The art is tremendous. And the lightning effects in the back box. It's got like this haunted house, which is very Addams Family-esque, scary house-looking thing with three or four levels. It's got a headless ghost in the window. It has this amazing, you said, lighting effect on the back glass. It's got orange and red, but it's not offensive. It's broken up in a way because it's got that playfield glass for the lower playfield in the middle. It's not every, there's not yellow and orange everywhere. They break it up into various rooms. There's like an attic. There's the basement. There's the main floor. I have played it a few times. It's a lot more difficult than you can imagine. I'll say. I don't understand how it can be so difficult. It's no black hole. But it looks so good. And that's the cool stand-up target that looks like a stand-up target, but when you hit it, it actually collapses and goes down to the lower play field. That's pretty cool. They've got underneath the ramp that goes to the upper play field, There's like a secret entrance into the basement, which is really neat. And that's where that target is. It's so cool. And they got to reuse a part from Amazing Spider-Man. Oh. Do you know what that is? The spinner. No. Remember, Amazing Spider-Man had the crappy plastic spinner. Oh, yeah. No, I don't. Look at the drop targets on the upper play field. Oh, it's got the spider web drop targets. Yeah. They got to reuse some parts. There. So what does Robert Mooney have to say about Haunted House, Ron? Well, from our Facebook, Robert says, Have always loved Haunted House. Could never shake the feeling that it could have been the perfect Batman 66 layout. The upper playfield is the Villain's Lair, main playfield is Gotham City, and, of course, the lower playfield is the Batcave. Oh, there's a man after my own heart. Batman 66. He knows. Robert knows. I'm Batman. Very, very, very cool. Well, I'll tell you what, Ron. 1981 was quite the year for pinball in general. We've seen a bit of a resurgence here with some innovation with Gottlieb. They've really improved things with the System 80 software. But what was Bally doing at this time? The Class of 81. Oh, my goodness. A whole podcast. We did a whole podcast on the Class of 81, Ron. We did. But that was when they just smashed sales numbers and gave you some of the greatest, most revered games before the inevitable collapse of pinball. By 1982, Coca-Cola would buy Columbia Pictures because, I guess, they want to sell more snacks? And you do that in entertainment?
    125:51
    And Gottlieb owns entertainment stuff? I don't know. Anyhoo, we spoke about this a couple of times in our 80s episodes around this time, that mergers and acquisitions was like the thing in the 80s. That's where we are now. There have been a few changes in ownership with Gottlieb, but this is a big one. Coca-Cola is very different than Columbia Pictures. There are a lot of games in the pipeline that are already under development, So it usually takes, you know, like three or four months to really turn around a machine. But as you can see with the amount of machines they're releasing in 81 and 1980, they have a huge lead time. But they're going to make a big jump, and that's with the System 80A. We're moving into a new era, Ron, new era.
    126:44
    New era. We're moving from six-digit displays from scoring and bonus values and timers, and we're now moving into the seven-digit displays.
    126:58
    Exciting. Seven digits. What does that mean? Well, I'm trying to think when the other manufacturers started that.
    127:08
    Let's see. Williams, it would have been Algar and Alien Poker using it in 1980. Stern was big game in 1980.
    127:19
    And Bally, when did they start it? That one's escaping me. But the other ones are in 1980. And here we're in 1982.
    127:30
    So, again, a little behind. Yeah, we're talking August of 1982. We're selling 3,832 units of Devil's Dare. Yeah. This is a satanic, worshiping, hellfire fantasy theme. Satan, baby. Yeah, it's not a good theme. Oh, come on. August of 82, it's the first System 80A. It sells 3,832. Did I say that twice? It will only not sell in the South. The rest of the country, it'll be fine. Yeah. Tom Zafransky. He would do this, and he would do punk. which will come up later, art by Doug Watson and David Moore. We need more Satan in pinball because Gorgar was not a proof of that. And Satan's Gate, Satan's Hollow, the George Gomez arcade game. That didn't sell in the South either. We just keep making the same mistake, man. But holy moly, the art on this thing. It's great. Satan on the back last there is very. Yeah, we're looking at Satan. He's welcoming you like, come to me. Yeah, he's like scaly. He's like very lizard-esque, which is, I assume, how Satan would be. He's either that or he's like a British man in a suit. Well, it's got Doug Watson's original picture in there somewhere. Yes. So what you're talking about is the original backlash.
    129:00
    The pre-production backlash can be seen on IPDB, and it's not so much the image of Satan that is the problem. it's the ladies on the score windows yeah topless green devil ladies on top of the score windows yeah so this would fly at stern because they're it's not skin colored it's not they're not human bally definitely would have lied no problem at bally totally here it's a bit risque and i have to say, even though they are green and they have wings, it's a bit much. So that changed, as well as the design of Satan become a little, um, hmm. Less evil? Less demonic? Yeah, less terribly creepy and more humanoid? I don't know. I don't want to say that, you know. They wanted to make Satan look a little less like Satan and a little more like a little iguana. Great game. I played this at Fun Spot in New Hampshire. Oh, goodness. Shout out to Fun Spot. Yes, I played the one at Fun Spot also. Yes. If it wasn't incredibly cheap, I would be very disappointed in Fun Spot. Well, it's Fun Spot, so the speech probably didn't work, I'm assuming. It did not. Yes. No. Yes. It's a cool game. It has probably the most useless upper flipper I have ever seen. Oh, not at all. You need that to hit those three drop targets. I couldn't hit anything with it. I couldn't get the ball up there. If you can't hit them, it doesn't mean they're useless. They're there. It's totally useless. They're there to hit those targets and the stand-ups. Great flip replacement. And it has a player-controlled kickback. One of the few games with that. That has it. I think, like, Defender had that. But bring that back. I love that. Extra button on the left side of the cabinet. If you light the kickback, that's not enough. You actually have to hit it when the ball's draining. You control the kickback. It's got speech, which really isn't necessary and doesn't fit the theme at all, which is funny, because it'll say things like, shoot, captive, cave. That's how I would picture Satan. The robotic voice, that is not how I picture Satan talking.
    131:18
    You know, the Satan robot. The drop target bank on the left side is very, very cool. because you shoot down the drop target bag to light the captive ball area behind it, but you can also shoot through the middle drop targets once they're down. It's got an amazing spinner right above those drop targets, so you can almost sweep it into the spinner if you can get it just right.
    131:46
    Two ball and three ball multi-ball. Yes. It is yellow and red. Flames. Yes, but they're flames. Yes, it's fire. And that's broken up by another Satan character and the green gargoyle dudes in the middle.
    132:05
    Very cool. It's a cool game. I played a lot of it. I thought it was a really, really, really good game. Satan worship aside, it's a cool game. It's called Bonus Ball. It says it right on the back glass. you can get some extra time at the end of the game.
    132:23
    Yeah, you can build up that bonus and play a little extra. It's cool. It's a good game. Worth the flip. Oh, yeah. Worth the flip. That would be one of the – I would consider that as a purchase, possibly. Really? If I had to pick a System 80 game, I already have it, and that's Alien Star, but that one's up there. The other System 80 I'd love to have is just too expensive, and I would never, I mean, I know where one is, like 20 minutes from, well, actually, no, 40 minutes from where I'm sitting right now.
    132:56
    But we'll get to that one. This brings us to one of the most innovative games of all time. That's a good name for it. Caveman. This is a System 80A game. It sells 1,800 units, which was too many. There's obviously some suckers that had to buy this game because they had to keep a contract with Gottlieb or something. And to get a background, this is what we're getting into the era. Video games are king. So they're trying to make video game pinball tie-ins. You have, like, Williams had Joust and Defender, and they did Hyperball, which was supposed to be, like, combination video game type play with a mechanical pinball thing. Yeah, Bally with, what was it, Baby Pac-Man? Yes. Or Mr. and Mrs. Pat. I always forget what's on his plate. Granny Gators. Everyone was trying this. And Gottlieb was no exception. They went all in. They didn't goof around. This was the future. Because it was the 80s, Ron. But you're right. We're on that downward. We're at the end of 82. Things are on a downward spiral to begin with. So I guess if you tack on the craziness that is Caveman with the downward death spiral of pinball and arcade in general, this did not turn things around. Well, what does the flyer say? I mean, they've really got to be pushing this. Mm-hmm. Oh, by the way, how many flippers did Devil's Bear have?
    134:32
    Three. Only three. No, four. Four? No, three. Three. Yes, the two on the bottom and the one way up the top. That's right. Okay, so we've got Caveman. It will amaze you. It's the world's first pinball video game. It is the worst of both worlds. It says the best of both worlds. Caveman's intriguing combination of video and pinball appeals to all game players. Video fans can discover the challenging fun of pinball, and pinball lovers can discover the electronic excitement of video. and larger player appeal means larger collections.
    135:10
    It's the worst. It's like, how do you make a video game terrible for video game players? And how do you make pinball terrible for pinball players? That's basically what this game is. Let me paint you a word picture. You have a pinball machine and in the upper middle, so all the way in the back of the back box, you have like a 13-inch color CRT tube television. And on that is a video game. So at the bottom, you're shooting the ball around, you're playing pinball, and then you shoot up an orbit into a capture hole, and then all of a sudden you're playing some sort of Pac-Man-like game where you control a caveman, and there's a joystick in the apron right where the Teolas button usually is. So you move that stick around, and you get chased by pterodactyls or caveman animal things like a T-Rex. And then you get eaten, and then your ball comes out, and you play some pinball again. Well, you can also escape. It's terrible. I played one of these in Montreal. No, in Quebec City on a vacation. if you see one of these games don't put money in it because you're the problem if you put money in it the person who's operating that game is going to be like oh look it made $3 this week I'm going to keep this on location how many flippers does it have? it's got 4 flippers it's got 2 sets of drop target banks which is weird to have 4 flippers because you could hit all the targets from the 2 bottom ones yeah the Yeah The in out is very unique It all over the place there It comes straight down. There's no kickers. There's no slings, if you will. It's terrible. Wow. It is the worst thing I have ever played. Okay, folks, it's not that bad, but it's not a great game. It's so bad. You want to read the patent?
    137:18
    Yes, there's a patent on this. An electronic game apparatus comprising both video game play and pinball game play. Operation of video game play is enabled by gameplay conditions of the pinball game play and vice versa.
    137:31
    Video game play is implemented using a CRT supported by a housing common to the pinball game. So Jeff Lee was Gottlieb's first video game artist. And he told IPDB that Caveman was his first project. Now, eventually, Jeff Lee would go on to work on some pretty famous games. Jeff Lee would go on to create one of the most famous video game characters for Gottlieb, and that is Q-Bert. Oh, Q-Bert is a cute little voice.
    138:03
    Oh, yeah. Yeah. There is a pinball element of the Q-Bert video game. What is it? No idea. There's a pinball mech in the actual Q-Bert arcade game. What happens if you fall off the cube? Oh, you get picked up and put back in. No. If you fall away off and die, what happens? I don't know. A knocker goes off. Oh, because I've never played an actual arcade game. Oh.
    138:33
    Yeah. But, yeah. If you go off, it literally, it's to simulate you hitting, like you're in the cabinet, which I thought was super cool. That is so smart. So they repurposed the, you know, a pinball knocker. Joel Krieger, who did most of the video game programming for Caveman, Joel would eventually leave the company before the game was released, probably because he knew it was a turd. So Frank Star-sack. That sounds like a space porno.
    139:06
    Frank Starshak, he would finish off the video game programming. John Burris would then program the pinball portion of the game. Was Baby Pac-Man any good?
    139:19
    Baby Pac-Man is more of a video game than the pinball machine, honestly. The pinball part is smaller, and you're playing like Pac-Man. I think it's more important for you to play the video game well as opposed to Caveman. It's not like that. They tried. God bless them. Speaking of trying. What do we do? Let's keep on trying, right? Sales, the industry is in a dire strait. Let's bring on a new designer, John Trudeau. He would design Rocky, which is a licensed movie boxing theme, September of 82. It sells 1,504 units. Art by David Moore. Software is uncredited. Now, Rocky is the 1976 American sports drama film directed by John G. Alvinson, written by and starring Sylvester Stallone. This is what made Sylvester Stallone. It tells the rags-to-riches American dream story of Rocky Balboa, an uneducated, kind-hearted, working-class Italian-American boxer working as a debt collector for a loan shark in the slums of Philadelphia. Rocky, a small-time club boxer, gets a shot at the World Heavyweight Championship. This is like your life story, eh, Ron? Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah. budget of $960,000 or $4.37 million in 2020 dollars and it grossed $225 million or $1.05 billion in 2020 dollars. That is insane. It was nominated for nine Academy Awards. It won Best picture, best director, and best film editing. It has spawned eight sequels, and I can't remember really any of them, but I think I can remember Rocky III with the Russian guy. No, that's four. Is that four? Yes, Rocky III is Clubber Lang. Come on. Good lord. They're so bad, those sequels. They're great. I love them. The pinball machine was being made around the time of Rocky III, because once you find a really great movie franchise, you've got to beat it to death. This can sort of be seen in the movie, right, Ron? You told that story a few moments ago. Oh, look. Yeah, look at this. See, Krinsky had a design and back glass, but a new designer was hired who took over the project. They used the original back glass in the movie because they didn't have time to do another one. Only three of the prop back glasses were made, and one destroyed in the film. and one was destroyed in the film when Paulie, Rocky's brother-in-law, threw a bottle of scotch through it.
    142:06
    Let's see, one's with a designer and the other one's with a collector. So there are two unknown extras. Now, I did some searching. And one of those extra fancy back glasses from the movie Rocky III was with John Trudeau and it was destroyed in a flood in his basement. There is only one, maybe, around in the hands of some sort of collector in the United States. The funny thing is it's completely useless as an actual pinball back glass because it has no space for the scoring.
    142:45
    Yeah, David Moore, he hand-painted the back glass twice before it was approved by the licensor. Yeah, Sylvester Stallone didn't like his face or something. He got into that again, Sylvester Stallone, with Demoman. It's very particular with how he is depicted. That was more of an issue with what's-his-face. Wesley Snipes? Yeah. I look too crazy. Turns out, if you look at Wesley Snipes' IPDB, he is. Enter the ring with the champ, Rocky III. Which is featured in Rocky III.
    143:17
    As we know, it's actually Force II. Yeah. That's something. The crowd cheers, the music plays, the fun begins. Ten drop targets represent ten rounds. To win a round, drop the target that matches the round you're in. If that target is not dropped before the round ends, the round is lost. Winning seven rounds and one ball lights special.
    143:39
    Interesting. After completing ten rounds, extra ball target is lit, dropping the target awards extra ball when lit. See, popular Rocky theme is featured in the exciting sound program. Cheering Crowd, salute player for each round won.
    143:53
    Oh, they missed an opportunity. Could I have a tiger in the game? Totally. Four flippers. Actually, no, five flippers. Four of them in just the weirdest configuration that will screw with your brain. Instead of having a left and right flipper, they're moved to the left. So there's a left jab and a right hook on the right side, which is like a smaller play field, I guess. And then there's a center drain that collects your bonus where you're on the ropes, which is like a kicker that kicks it back up the center of the play field. And then on the right side of where the regular flippers would be, there's another set of two flippers, a left hook and a right jab. It's really weird. Yeah, and I'm trying to remember if when you flip the flipper buttons, if it – so there's an Atari game called Time 2000, which has the same flipper arrangement at the bottom. but on Time 2000 I believe it does the thing where when you hit the left flipper button it will flip both flippers on the left side and then if you hit the right it will do both on the right I think even the left set and the right set I think on the Rocky one it's more like your brain would think it is like you hit the left one and it will both of the left side no the flippers on the left of the two pairs will go up you know what I mean and then the right. I think that's how it works. I've only played this like maybe once or twice. When it compares to the movie Backglass and the actual Backglass, the actual Backglass is really good.
    145:27
    Doug Watson killed it on this Backglass. And in fact, he is depicted in the Backglass. If you look at the Backglass, on the right side there is a gentleman standing next to a bunch of people cheering with his arms crossed. That is a little Easter egg. That is Doug Watson.
    145:47
    How could this sell less than Caveman? The market wasn't good, and the flippers were just, it's just weird. It just looks so weird.
    145:56
    It's so weird. But a game which is widely revered comes up next, which is Spirit from November of 82. 1,230 units. It is designed by John Trudeau, art by Terry Dozath, and it's uncredited software. Another maintenance hog.
    146:20
    It is another big machine with a upper plate. Dimension 80. Let's do a flipper count here. We've got one and two on the out lane, so you can flip a ball back in from the out lane. Three and four. Three and four in the center, which is just like your regular, thank God, flippers. and then you've got another one on the upper play field. So we've got five. Oh, no. Oh, no, you've got six. Where's the sixth one? It's right by the left pop-upper. Oh, yeah, there's one by the left pop-upper. There's six. It has a cool, like, flip-safe feature. So Spirit, the artwork is killer. It's got this weird mask face thing. It has the rotating disc in the back glass that actually works better than Black Hole. It looks cooler than black holes does. Yeah, it's like stars behind this disembodied electric-looking face. And just like black hole, it's almost always not working. But an actual upper play field in the upper right has the Stargate ramp that's up and down. It's like a bi-level design, basically. It's one of the best games ever made. It has a display in the center.
    147:30
    When you start multi-ball on this thing, you know it. there is a whole presentation there is a whole thing that occurs when you start so the playfield is broken out into into sections and those sections have different colors so it's all black like space but then on the left side it's got like orange smoke and then on the right side it's got blue smoke on the upper playfield of the top it's got like red smoke and then there's like the silhouettes of humans falling circled in that color on the left side there's green on these rollovers it looks like a trip it's got some stunning art it's just really unusual you've played one of these quite a few times i think um yes um zach who's on our featured on the slam tail podcast he grew up like 40 minutes from me here and he had a spirit in his bedroom as a kid growing up it's still there his dad bought it from like an arcade for god knows probably a couple hundred bucks whatever and literally had in his living room in his bedroom no idea until he got older how rare it was the unique thing about this pin you know besides like the art and stuff are the kind of unusual shots that are throughout the play field there's there's zigs and zags of the way the ball gets around in areas which is really unique and that would become a staple of John Trudeau's style around this time of odd, bent ball guides circling the ball around, coming out in a different direction than it comes in. It's very neat. When I talked about system 80s I would get, this is it. This is the pinnacle, is it? But it's also extremely rare. Most of them were actually, I believe, exported. And when they are available, they sell for just obscene prices. Is it really difficult to play? No. It seems like a really tight mower place. It's quite easy. Okay. And I think at the Allentown show one year, they had one of these in the first day at some, like, obscene price for sale, and it didn't last a few hours. It was gone. Well, after space, let's go to soccer. Let's get striker. When it comes to offensive colors, there's nothing more offensive than green. You have just color hatred. Wait a minute. It was fine on Haunted House. Now it's bad? But it's the way that it's utilized. It's all over the place. It's not broken up with figures or images or things in the middle. So Striker is soccer-themed or football everywhere else in the world because that actually makes sense because you kick the ball with your foot. I'm not getting into that argument. But anyway, it sells 910 units, which is terrible. Six flippers.
    150:16
    Six flippers. So we're still putting a lot in the games. We're not taking stuff out of the games. And this is very Rocky-esque with the left and right set of flippers and a left and right. A left set of flippers and a right set of flippers. You know what I was thinking about is there's no other pinball manufacturer, I think, that went this many years of just all wide bodies. Yeah, still doing wide bodies. Except maybe Atari, but they were only, what were they around for, two or three years?
    150:49
    So Atari might have them, but, I mean, just the amount of games definitely got lead. Let's Stryker score big profits for you. Oh, man, Stryker. Wait a minute. It doesn't look like a dog.
    151:03
    No, it looks okay, doesn't it? Stryker was the dog from World Cup Soccer. Oh, yes. Now, it's got two orbit spinners, so you can't go wrong with that. Realistic soccer play and the thrill of hands-on pinball combined. Wait a minute. Hands-on pinball. What other kind of pinball is there?
    151:23
    And you're not allowed to touch the soccer ball with your hands. Or maybe they're talking about caveman. Like, this is actual hands-on pinball. This is clearly designed for the expert. To make an exciting entertainment event. Striker. Extra features. Arena-like sound program. I don't even know what that means. And beautiful graphics add to Striker's popular appeal. Big profits are waiting to be scored with Striker. call or contact your local Gottlieb distributor.
    151:51
    So, yeah, it's like soccer. You can score goals and stuff. Shoot drop targets. And it's green. Same old, same old. Oh. You know, it's a bit rough. But it's also John Trudeau again.
    152:06
    We're getting to the point. There will be a point where he pretty much is the sole designer. He's like the only one there. He's like, he showed up. He put some food in the fridge at the Gottlieb place, and he just hasn't left. So it is a Dimension 80.
    152:23
    After I said it was not a Dimension 80, we've edited that out. But because it just didn't look like a wide body to me. I remembered it not being a wide body, but I'm wrong. This is designed by Tom Zafransky, art by David Moore and Terry Dovzaf again. Tom would leave the company, and the design was put into production. So it wasn't really finished. It was sort of like, what do you have left? And they just sort of did it. It has an unconventional Italian bottom, I call it. The unconventional part is that it's got pop bumpers on top of the slings, and the slings themselves don't have kickers. So that seems kind of dangerous. Which we saw in a previous game when it was on the left. Yes. You're right. Now it's on both sides. More symmetrical.
    153:09
    Music is something that Gottlieb really got so well in this era, especially when we get into the more trendier system, 80s. When we get into the mid to late 80s at some point. Yeah. They really do a heck of a job there. Or did we do those already? I'm losing track of how many episodes we've done. Yeah, we did the 80s already. Okay, there you go. Living the dream.
    153:32
    Going nuts. Ron, there's one thing that I know you love, and it's nuts. We are going nuts. It's funny. It says 10 total units never placed into production, yet I played this game. You've played this. I didn't even know this existed. This is from February of 83. This is Squirrel Theme. This is designed by Shing Lam. So this is the individual that I have no information about. I believe Lam is a Vietnamese name. So that would be really interesting to know what it was like for an Asian American to be working in pinball in the 80s. Like, that is Italian white man's industry, if I've ever heard of it. This thing's got seven pop bumpers, Ron. Seven. Yeah, it does. What is going on? Three flippers and seven pop bumpers. So there's a pop bumper in the top and the center. There's two on the left clustered together. Then there's two on the right, which are, like, jammed into the plastic. Then there's two above each sling at the bottom. It's really got these cute little squirrels collecting nuts on the top. There's a chubby one. There's one wearing a scarf. Man, oh, man, this looks like fun. Pops. Yeah, and they pop a lot. So you're going to get the ball popping all over the place. I guess it's probably because, like, squirrels are in trees, and they're causing trouble, and they're bumping around. I think that's what the symbolism is there. It's got a really neat plunge. Yeah, if you plunge it hard enough, you can go right into the pop-up. It's for instant drain action. It does have multiball, though. We're still there. We're still into lots of pops. We're still into a bunch of flippers. So Gottlieb hasn't really totally destroyed, you know, cutting back on everything. I'm still wondering how these – because even when Valley did multiball, I don't think they ever called it multiball. And here's Gottlieb actually using not only multiball, but with the dash in the center just like Williams. And Williams trademarked that. I'd be curious if they have to pay them. They probably did. There's no outlanes in this game. It's all right down the middle. That it is. Looking for Facebook quotes here. David, please stop advertising your company on the show. What? Will Ron ever actually listen to an episode? Stuart Burns says, going nuts should be remade. Wow. That's a gutsy thing over there on our Facebook page. Facebook.com slash Silverball Chronicles. I wonder how much pop-up for mechs cost. Oh, man, now put us over budget. And not only that, look at all the drop target banks it has in it. That's even worse. One, two, three, four. Ouch. This is probably one bank. Yeah, it's true. One missing in the middle. Still. Come on, Ron. Oh, I'm sorry. Steve Ritchie couldn't get two drop target banks in a stern, so I can only imagine what it would be like nowadays. Did you ever play World Poker Tour? You got a lot of drop targets in a stern. That was like 20 years ago. Oh, one of my Holy Grail games. This is a holy grail for you. But to play. Because when you go to as many shows as I go to, you played all these super rare, you know, 10 exist in the world games. This one eluded me for a long time.
    156:48
    I literally went to a party where a guy had a crawl and it broke 10 minutes before I arrived. So I got to just look at it broken sitting there and not being able to play it. So this is from February of 1983. It is the licensed fantasy movie theme. It is the System 80A. Again, 10 units as mentioned just a moment ago. Designed by John Trudeau. Art by Keith Parkinson. And software is uncredited.
    157:16
    I've seen, as a child, I had seen Krull quite a few times. I haven't seen it in 30 years, but I remember seeing it a couple times when I was younger. Did you see Krull? I did see it once. I just remember the cool spinny thing. I don't know what it's called. But, yeah, and Liam Neeson's in it.
    157:37
    Yeah, so Krull is the 1983 science fiction swashbuckler film directed by Peter Yates. He directed Bullet in 1986, which is a frigging awesome movie, and it was written by Stanford Sherman. This starred Ken Marshall, Lasset, Lysette, Anthony, Trevor Martin, and Freddie Martin. And if you're asking who they are, then you're not alone. It had an early career appearance of Liam Neeson and Robbie Coltrane, who appeared as bandits. He was showing his particular set of skills. You know.
    158:22
    Basically, it follows the journey of Prince Colwyn and his group of outlaws on the planet Krull to save a future Princess Lessa from a beast in his constantly teleporting black fortress. Yep, and there was a video game, which did actually get made in production. It had a budget of $27 to $30 million, which is $73 million today. and it grossed $16.9 million or $41.4 million in today's dollars. So it was a massive flop. It is a terrible movie. It's more of a cult film now, though. Dennis Creasel and I often reference it in jokes to each other from time to time about Krull, but it's just weird. it's like princess bride uh star wars dungeons and dragons mixed with like just it's just terrible ed krinsky would make the original game with a transparent playfield but it was deemed too expensive then the project was given to john trudeau who redid the playfield into what we know and made it even more expensive and somehow they still made 10 of them so the back glass by Keith Parkinson. He did Stern Electronics, Iron Maiden, and The Viper. Which is awesome. Wow, so he was three for three. Not sure who did the play field, but Margaret Hudson and Larry Day say it isn't them, and they did some of the work back around this time. The original back glass, if you look at this thing, is really, really good. It looks exactly like the movie. It is super cool, probably better than the movie itself. The play field is quite original. It's bi-level, so it has the upper play field, two sectioned off areas. It's tri-level. But then it has a third lower play field, similar to Black Hole or Haunted House. But what's interesting about this lower play field, Ron? Well, the interesting thing isn't the play field necessarily itself. It's the glass that you look through. It's like special refractive whatever the hell it is. It makes everything look small. So the play field underneath is like a full-size play field. But when you look through the window, it looks tiny. Which begs the question, why didn't they just make a tiny play field? I don't know. It's got, yeah, it's a full upper play field. Well, I finally got to play this at Expo, Pinball Expo in Chicago. As I was in line to play it, it broke. I'm like, oh, my God, I'm never going to get to play it. But luckily, I'll do a shout-out. Chris Hibbler was in the booth right next to the guy who had this game. So he came over and fixed it. And he had to keep fixing it throughout the show. And you got to see why they kind of abandoned ship on this. It is a maintenance nightmare. And this was a completely redone. This was a HEP restoration crawl. and it still kept breaking over and over, yet he still was able to sell it by the end of the show.
    161:34
    Of course. How could you not? Let's count some flippers here again, Ron. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Seven. Seven flippers. Two on the upper play field with a drop target bank and a pop bumper. That's the spider's nest, which is probably the most memorable part of the entire movie. it has a vertical up kicker bit to get up there it's got two ramps to get up there there's two pop bumpers on the lower play field with two flippers um in the center one on the left side of the of the main play field it is there is so much going on here it is impressive that it even yeah they even made 10 of them do you know what i said about spirit this ain't spirit This is a clunky maintenance nightmare. It looks like it shoots terrible. It's a wide open play field with a couple of pop bumpers. And then you've got an upper play field which has a drop target. It looks like it's just shoot it up to the spider's web area, shoot the drop targets, back again. I played it a couple times. I got to experience all the gimmicks, and that was enough. That was good. And that was enough, which is why you can see they probably only made ten. But I accomplished my goal. I finally got to play that thing.
    162:51
    Three play fields, again. Yes, and when they had it, it was broken so often you got to see it. Like, the main play field lifted up, and I'm looking at the lower play field, and it's, like, as big as, like, the black hole one. It's huge. But it looks tiny. Holy crap. Why did they do that? It's just everybody else is freaking out, and they're cutting everything out of their games, right? If you look at Valley Midway at this time, you know, 83, There's like nothing in there. Aster, Vector, yes, they're cutting out everything. Yeah. Same thing with Williams, right? They're panicking too. Yep. Not Gottlieb. They're still throwing as much at it as they can. That is true. Think about it. We're still doing Y-Body. We still got multi-level play fields. They only have one designer. Well, we're getting it, yeah, because the next game is Q-Bert's Quest.
    163:42
    Oh. This is also played. And if I remember, I think it has another bizarre flipper thing going on. It does. It's a licensed video game theme from March of 83. We're still in this wide-body era. It sells 884 units, designed by John Trudeau, art by David Moore and Terry Dozaff, sound by David Thiel, and Craig Bierwaltz. Software is uncredited. This thing, and what you're talking about with crazy flippers, is the flipper layout on the bottom here. Can you describe this? I'll describe this as John Trudeau as a designer. He would do anything on a plate field. There was zero fear of trying anything. The flippers are, how would you even explain what it looks like? It looks like a letter X. Yeah, so the flippers are regular in the middle. There's a left and right flipper, but they're up, I would say, I want to say 10 centimeters. Yeah, and then underneath them you have two flippers that are facing down. But they're not mounted top up. They're mounted top down. Just like they remind me of Q, another super rare game you probably never play. But that's exactly how they're mounted. So when they flip, they don't flip north-south. They flip east-west. And the ball goes up orbits. and it goes up orbits that are at the bottom. And the entire play field is basically a large figure eight. Yeah, it's like a large figure eight. And the center drain is right down the middle. And it plays as good as it looks.
    165:21
    Follow me to rephrase that. It plays as good as you would think it would play for something that looks this crazy. Yeah, if you're having a hard time picturing what we're saying, it basically tells you what the gameplay is like. Yeah, there's not very many of these. I think there's one of these in the Dutch Pinball Museum. I still recommend you play it, though. You've got to experience it. No matter what a game is. Yeah, you've got to make up your own mind, except for Caveman. Don't play Caveman. No, you need to play Caveman. Don't listen to Dave. Maybe it'll turn out you're the best ever at that video game portion of Caveman. Benjamin Madison from our Facebook page says, Qbert has a not-seen-in-pinball-flipper arrangement. Much as Python Angelo gave so much flack to the pinball industry for not having any creativity, he certainly joined a company that stifled it. If you could do anything you want at Gottlieb, they're putting the reins a little bit tighter over at Williams because they know making a game and spending all the time to sell 800 units is not. Again, I would argue in the end the idea is to sell games. And when you make something that weird. I mean, it's sold 884 units. That's more Legends of Valhalla than it is. But I think we've reached the end of Dimension 80. Thank God Why? Wide bodies are cool You gotta have strong flippers If you're gonna have a wide body You're gonna get one of these System 80s Don't be like Oh the flippers are pretty good No Build the flippers again I think the issue with most of them is The Gottlieb flipper mechs of that era Are indestructible So they keep working So no one feels the need to have to rebuild them That's why I don't think they get rebuilt For long periods of time But if you do rebuild them You should have no problems. Yeah. So David Thiel was on sound here. Do you know why? Why? Well, he did the sound design for Q-Bert, the arcade game. So they stole all of that work and put it in this machine. But, man, Q-Bert does have amazing sound. Jersey Jack, you've got to hire David Thiel back. Pat Lawler's gone now. Just let him. David will come back. Wow. We're in survival mode, right? We've had a couple of really tight sales numbers here. If you're making crazy original play fields that don't sell, why not just repeat old play fields, and maybe they will sell. Yeah. So let's take an old, super popular EM play field, and let's just update it with seven-digit scoring and new fancy sound. And that's where we're going to get super orbit, which is like orbit, but super. Super orbit. And it's not a wide body. It is not. We're going back to the standard body. We are in survival mode. We have to cut expenses. No more a dozen frigging flippers in a machine, man. We can't be doing that. It's like three years. Three years of wide bodies finally ended? Yeah. Imagine. Dennis Creasel was a super orbit owner. Did you know that? I did know that. It's all right. It's a cool game. At the Pinberg Tournament Finals one year, they had a super orbit there. Probably some of the highest-staked games of Super Orbit ever played. Absolutely. Very target. Hello. Yep, we know you're in love. Yes, it's got the amazing spinner. The only issue with this spinner is, though, that when you go through the spinner on the right side, it bounces into the pop bumpers, which often pop the ball back into the spinner.
    168:46
    So it doesn't quite go as much as you'd like. No fancy flyer lingo here. It's pretty straightforward. Blast off on a pinball journey through space. Advance your ship through a ten-step sequence to complete each orbit.
    169:06
    Increase your bonus level with every orbit you complete. Six-level vary target also advances your bonus and scores special when lit.
    169:14
    Yeah, it's interesting how if you look at the flyers now, and it's good to look at how these develop over time, they no longer are mentioning, you know, the sound pointed at your head. Dimension 80. Yeah. They're no longer mentioning any of these cool features anymore. It's all about the story now. Well, let's see what it says. If it mentions, oh, it does mention that. It's a narrow body. Okay. Gottlieb Super Orbit offers your players a classic narrow-bodied playfield enhanced with power and style of today's best games. It almost is worded like this is kind of a one-off. We're just giving you a classic feel for this one. We're going to give you the classic Orbit. So, you know, I would assume that distributors would have come to Gottlieb and said, hey, why don't you give us some of the games that were like back in the day, but just with the new technology?
    170:05
    And that's what they did with Super Orbit. They took Orbit and just made it super. How about that? So this is, and how many units do they sell?
    170:14
    2,100. This is designed by Ed Krinsky. Now, he has not come out of retirement to design this game. They've just taken his play field. Art by David Moore, uncredited. Well, pinball retirement. He was still working. Pinball retirement. That's right. So it's the modernized version of Gottlieb's 1971 four-player Orbit and the 72's two-player Outer Space. Orbit and Outer Space backglasses, by the way, are amazing. Super good. That was obviously a good idea. We popped a number, right? We're selling 2,000 units all of a sudden. So let's do it again. So we crack out Royal Flush Deluxe.
    170:58
    From June of 83, we're at a standard body again. It sells 2,044 units. This is another repurposed Ed Krinsky design with art by David Moore. This is a remake of 1976's Royal Flush. Yeah, I think I had to play this at Pembroke. I did not. Royal Flush Deluxe. Nothing beats it. I didn't beat it. I'll tell you that. There's just lots and lots of drop targets.
    171:26
    Huge. Yeah, this one looks, yeah. You hit it up top. You get it through one of the lanes, which lights a shot, and then you can try to straps it over and over.
    171:37
    And it has the big rope target. You've got to shoot the two kings and then the two queens. Yeah. It looks so easy. Just knock down the card targets to complete the poker hands, especially the Royal Flush. But it's not. What makes Royal Flush Deluxe so challenging is as timeless as poker itself. It twice as fun. That looks awesome. Looks good. Looks like a fun game. Not going to lie. It's got good artwork. But again, how many do they sell? 2,000.
    172:08
    So not bad. All right. So what do we do? We got to do it again. Amazon Hunt. This is the fantasy jungle theme.
    172:20
    September of 1983, another repurposed Ed Krinsky design, art by Larry Day. It sells 1,515 units. I've not played it. So it dropped a little bit. It did. What is this one based on? This one's based on 1975's Fast Drop. Okay. I'm sure I've played this at some point. This might even have been in a tournament. A jungle of fun. Roaring lions and trumpeting elephants welcome players to Amazon Hunt. The ladies in Gottlieb's series of economically priced convertible pinball games. So this is literally starting their trend there. It's like we're going to remake old games. That's what we're doing. A dirt sheet, super quick design, update the software, runs a new cable, out the door. Which is kind of funny. We've almost come full circle. We did system one where we went, like, make our EMs be solid states.
    173:14
    Then we went through a stage where we're innovating, we're trying all kinds of crazy stuff, and now at the end we're back to let's bring back the EM play fields and just make them work like a solid state game. It's like what's old is new again. Yeah, it's literally like they just did 360 there. Well, they're in survival mode. You know, they're just trying to keep it along. They're limping, and they're doing what best they can, And they're pulling out some pretty solid classics. I would own a Super Orbit. Absolutely. And they're still around. So what were Bally and Williams doing at this time? At Williams, they're suffering probably almost as bad as anyone. Barry Osler is the only one that's left, and he's keeping the lights on. They're doing Defender in 1982 with 369 units. They did Time Fantasy in 1983 with 608 units. Joust with 402 units. Firepower 2 sells 3,400 units. Which that one was Mark Ritchie. 1984 is Laser Q. Sells 2,800 units. Starlight sells 100 units. You've never even heard of that pin. And by the end of 1984, Space Shuttle sells 7,000. And the last three releases, Gottlieb has actually done a pretty good number in comparison to Williams. But what about Bally? Well, in 1982, Bally was just dying. Vector was their last sort of major kick at the put-everything-in-it can. That sells 3,500 units. Mr. and Mrs. Pac-Man, a huge hit at 10K. Yes, they banked on the Pac-Man license, and it paid off. Spectrum, where they literally said, we don't care if this game sells, we need to get rid of these parts. So they just went crazy and did Spectrum. Speakeasy sells 3,000 units. 8-Ball Deluxe Limited Edition, which was 8-Ball Deluxe re-released in the Rapid. Yeah, not the game they ripped off, which was Hyperball.
    175:14
    Yeah. And Baby Pac-Man sells 7,000 units. So Williams is really suffering with sales here. The 1983 Valley was folded into the Midway Division to form Valley Midway. So no more classic Valley. Yeah. So then we get into the real mess of it in 83. that's BMX of 406 units Grand Slam with 1000 units Centaur II which was the rapid fire cabinet Centaur playfield repurposed so even Bally is kind of doing the same thing take an old layout put it in a new cabinet and sell it again 1550 units and Gold Ball which I've never heard of Oh, gold ball is pretty cool. It has a gold ball. Now, Coca-Cola, who had acquired Gottlieb kind of at the peak in 1981,
    176:11
    well, they start to see a death spiral. They had spun off the Gottlieb assets into a company called Milestar, and that will be the topic of another podcast. But they would quickly lose patience with Milestar's inability to stabilize the company and turn a profit. Gottlieb was not the reason behind Coca-Cola's acquisition from Columbia Pictures, and it was certainly a low priority. They had to get rid of this dead weight. Eventually, Coca-Cola would sell off Milestar, which was, of course, Gottlieb, to another company. But that's another story. Ron, starting on the back foot, Gottlieb looked to add more and more into their games to draw in new players. They tried to reinvent their boards to give them more power, more programming, and more pizzazz than their System 1. But their System 1 missteps had them running this race on a sprained ankle as they continued through 80 and 81 to fall behind Williams and Bally in sales numbers. However, the System 80 era gave us some of the coolest Gottliebs of all time with some of the most innovative features. Some of those exciting concepts are still beloved today, and they've given us some pretty cool themes as well. Any last thoughts, Ron?
    177:45
    From people I know on the tech side, they'll tell you that System 80 had a lot of – there was a lot of power to the System 80 system that wasn't always used. Yeah, it was like there. It was in the box. They just didn't have the resources to really spend the time to do the innovation and research on the programming side. Because Gottlieb was always like a company run by engineers of the mechanical sort. And they didn't bring in the programmers like Ballier Williams did with these new, young, upstart software people. And it shows. I'll tell you, though, I do enjoy playing a lot of those System 80s. My first two games were System 80s. besides the grounding modifications that you have to do which are quite simple they were rock solid for a game to learn to do stuff on i wouldn't have thought of anything better go play some system 80s the early system 80 series the star series dimension 80 baby dimension 80 for life when you get your tattoo never
    178:57
    Thank you. That way more people can find us. Need a new shirt? Of course you do. Head over to silverballstwag.com or silverballchronicles.com and pick up a Silver Ball Chronicles t-shirt.
    179:57
    player versus machine in this contemporary Contemporized. I'm sucking at reading. Contemporized classical. That's weird. That's a weird word.
    180:33
    Do you know, what does a patent clerk sound like? What kind of voice do they have? I don't. Is it like a 1930s guy in a window? Maybe nasally?
    180:44
    A pinball game. A pinball game has gameplay determined primarily by time rather than the number of ball plays. I don't know if that works. Oh, I know. Wait a minute. Hold on. I know.
    180:58
    Do you want to read this one? How did we say the names again? New attract sound and slight modes. Sight. No. Sight modes.
    181:12
    There will be lots of pee breaks today, by the way. Thank you. I got a bunch of water on board because I was very thirsty when I woke up this morning. Hmm.
    181:27
    We have some comments from our social media, should I say? Yeah. Let me do that again. I like that came out all weird. The window is mounted on a ledge, an opening in the upper level. Oh, that didn't sound British. Upper. Oh.
    181:45
    Because, you know, John Burris is the programmer, or John Osborne is the designer. If it were John Beer, if it were, if it were.
    181:56
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