From unsolved mysteries to unexplained phenomena, from comedy goal to relationship fails, Amazon Music's got the most ad-free top podcasts, included with Prime. Because the only thing that should interrupt your listening is, well, nothing. Download the Amazon Music app today. Shipping, billing, admin, payroll, marketing. You're managing all the things, so why waste time sending important documents the old-fashioned way? Mail and ship when you want, how you want, with Stamps.com. Print postage on demand 24-7 and schedule pickups from your office or home. Save up to 90% with automated rate shopping. That's why over 1 million small businesses trust Stamps.com. Go to Stamps.com and use code PODCAST to try Stamps.com risk-free for 60 days. The Pinball Network is online. Launching Silver Ball Chronicles. I miss Clippy. Clippy wouldn't have been there. Oh, God. You know, I hate little characters like that, but in the case of him, it was like, yeah, okay, a little paperclip. Named Clippy. Hello everyone, I'm David Dennis and this is Silver Ball Chronicles. with me this month is my co-host ron i picked up a new game hallet ron what's up fella this month is that to know like other months you're gonna have other co-hosts how do i not know this you are on thin ice my friend oh my so i just want to make sure that you're aware that at any time you could be wiped out of this anytime i don't know something i'm fired exactly exactly exactly exactly you picked up a new game yes i did do you care to share it's it's not done by our our subject of today's episode but it is a williams game from the era that he worked there oh and that would be attack for mars wow an original of course because you know i couldn't possibly get a remake i'm surprised that you didn't already have one that's sort of a top tier kind of bally williams and that's kind of your bag baby well it's been on my list for 15 years but it's just never presented itself that game seems to be right up my alley but anytime i've played it i've always been like i felt like i don't know it didn't it didn't get its claws in me medieval madness gets its claws in me not so much attack for mars and i don't know if it's because maybe i haven't had enough time on it or it doesn't have as much like in your face sort of flash as medieval madness but i know saying that will make some people freak out because they are die hard attack for mars well over medieval sounds like you need way more lights in that game yeah maybe way brighter lights which brings us to today's subject although we haven't good he hasn't got to that point yet though we uh we it's twippy season right where we didn't make it on the list this year and i'm going to take i'm going to take full uh responsibility for the fact that both silver ball chronicles and slam tilt didn't make it on the drop down list and the twippies this year because we split the vote everybody who loves ron either voted for one or the other in that split the vote costing either us or slam tilt the drop down list this year but you know that's how it goes when you are as uh outstanding as ron hallett so it's my fault yes that's basically what you said yeah okay yeah so be careful be careful but if you are out there remember uh twip is a sponsor of silver ball chronicles uh we're on the pinball promoters database swing on over to this weekend pinball and vote in the twippies also happening at this time are the pinball industry awards the new award shows started by tpn of which we're a member wait another award show do we need more award shows yes we need uh as many award shows as we can get and we need more shows called the pinball show if we can get as many of those as possible other than that things are pretty good so we're really excited about all of the happening in the in the industry we had a good 2020 considering uh you know the world the way it was and 2021 i think is going to be pretty great when i look forward of all the things that are coming i think it's gonna be pretty cool you've got a lot of new games coming out you've got you know a refreshed american pinball uh it's going to be pretty exciting in 2021 i hope godzilla is coming out that's what i'm looking forward to yeah so remember to check out our facebook page facebook.com slash silver ball chronicles uh that way you can engage with us chit chat and leave some comments and posts well i have a question i have a question do we have our own site yes we just launched our own website amazing i just popped in my head yeah silverballchronicles.com swing on over there that's your sort of one-stop shop we wanted to make sure that um all of the uh the banter and shenanigans that we're doing here doesn't disappear from the internet and the best way to do that is to start one of these web pages and it's been a while since i built a web page but i went looking for geo cities which doesn't exist anymore so i had to use wordpress so we built a little website there it's nothing too fancy no shenanigans but if you're looking to engage with us there's a couple of bits and pieces there as always be sure to check out the This Week in Pinball promoters database. That's where you can leave us a review. You can also check out some of the other podcasts, Twitch streams and YouTube channels, all pinball oriented. Please swing by there. Leave us a five star review. If you leave us less than five stars, you're dead to me. It looks like we got some reviews. Yeah, I've pulled a couple of them in here from a couple of different sources. Alright, we got Scott S. Says, maybe, just maybe my favorite. A detailed, fun walk through the history of pinball. You get the benefits of Ron with none of the Bruce-isms of that other podcast. Keep up the good work. Oh, wow. The Bruce-isms, I think, are the draw. That and your amazing special guests on Slam Tilt Podcast. Mm-hmm. Then we have Gonzo73 from Pinside says, Silver Ball Chronicles is just an amazing show. Thanks for doing such a well-researched, fun show. I could have listened for two more hours. Bring on the next episode. nobody's gonna listen to a podcast over an hour yeah we were thinking the same thing we should hook him up with that other guy well uh we've added two uh two new shirt designs to our shirts over at silverball swag.com slash silverball chronicles i had them switched this time to put you first yeah in the in your renegotiated contract for 2021 we had to make sure that there were some changes in there one of them was that your name had to come first on the next run of shirts. These shirts are a little more sort of classic shirts. They're less fancy graphics. So go ahead and take a look at those over at silverballswag.com. Very nice. Try the tri-blend because that is a quality shirt. Also, if you're a Canadian fan of the podcast here and you don't want to worry about cross-border shipping, you don't want to worry about duty or any of that stuff shoot us an email at silverball chronicles at gmail.com and i have some shirts that i printed locally that i can throw in the mail for you rather than through silver ball swag but if you're in the states you're gonna want to go to silver ball swag that's the spot to go the quality printing quality shipping really great so you have like canadian mail is like a mountie deliver to your house? No, it's a sled dog with an old lady from Saskatchewan. Gotcha. Yeah, Marge. We do have a couple of Oh, God. Here's our corrections. Yes, but before we read them, where can I send my corrections? You can send any of your corrections to silverballchronicles at gmail.com or you can bring them up on the website over at facebook.com slash silverball chronicles and here of course are the corrections from our previous episode from bruce nightingale from the slam tilt podcast oh never heard never heard of bruce reminds us that ripley's believe it or not has two magnets uh he reminds us that sam as an abbreviation has never been officially explained because i honestly don't think it stands for anything and that's that's been done a lot through time they've put you put periods on things like it's supposed to mean something when it doesn't i still think it's just sam stern is what it means uh he says monopoly little badge was a stick on what does that mean what's the monopoly little badge so there was a little badge on the special monopoly edition okay that it was stick on so my assumption is it's in the coin door and if you didn't stick it on it's that's why it wasn't underneath the trans light he also reminds us that nascar loops three times on the initial plunge there there that's the world wanted to know that that's pretty good that's pretty good and they were short this time they weren't you know massive novels were they really corrections i mean sam was just an explanation monopoly wasn't really a connection i don't know i ripley's i might have said it had magnets so he had to curve you know say it has two magnets anyway what are we talking about today today's topic pinball code has become more complex and captivating over the years it is a critical part of modern pinball we'd be amiss if we didn't have a podcast about one of the founders of modern pinball code captain complexity dwight sullivan now i know some people are probably upset that we did not call this blinded by dwight but there is a trademark on that from zach many and he wouldn't give us the rights even though we're on the same network okay i see how it is dwight Dwight is one of pinball programming's most important figures. Throughout the 1990s, Dwight worked on some of the best-selling games of all time, adding a level of polish which had not been seen before. He brought out a new level of fun and uniqueness that continue to influence today's modern programmers. Dwight's fresh ideas and new levels of complexity reinvigorated pinball code when it needed it the most, and the machines that he worked on benefited. He is one of the fathers of modern pinball code by writing some of the greatest pinball moments. There's a cliche. And today's podcast is about Dwight Sullivan. So what, Ron, is pinball code? It's the stuff that tells the game what to do in its most basic form. Yeah, this switch has this many points and you do these five switches and it equals this. It's a whole massive mess of stuff. And it's Dwight's job to give that some guidance and some structure. So what was like when we talk about code, what was sort of like the early EM code like? EM code? Well, it didn't really have code. I guess the relays and steppers and such that told the game what to do when certain things occurred on the play field would be considered programming. I guess you could technically reprogram an EM by adding a relay, moving some wiring, etc. That's like the most basic of basic, right? When you think about, you know, you're hitting this target, you're scoring 500 points. You're hitting this target, you're scoring 5 points. You get it in the scoop, it counts down the bonus. Really, really rudimentary. But in its own right, it is, I guess, quote-unquote, code. so when we moved into solid state what was sort of that early solid state code how did it change a little bit well you didn't need relays and steppers you just had a circuit board and you had actual programming which i'm i'm thinking most of the early stuff was probably in like assembly ones and zeros and i guess at that point it also got to sort of you could start to get a little more complex with all of a sudden you hit these three things and you get a blinking light and then you get into like a Pavlov's dog sort of situation, right? It's getting a little more complex. Then we move into sort of the 80s. And then what happens to code? Well, you had an initial, in the 70s you had just get the thing working with solid-state technology, with, you know, computer boards. Just get the thing working. Then you get into the early 80s and it's more like, okay, what can we do with this that we couldn't do with EMs? What cool stuff can we do with all this? yeah now we've learned it won't burn the building down now you get light shows you get speech you get more more complicated things happening because you can do it and then unfortunately everything crashed in the around 83 or 82 83 or so so those kind of um those innovations yeah it kind of regressed in that you went from games that talk now they didn't talk anymore They had a bunch of multiballs. Now they either don't or they've only got one. It wasn't until the mid-'80s, you get around like high-speed era, that it starts to take off again. So then we get into the 90s code, which is a little bit mostly what we're talking about today when it comes to Dwight Sullivan. But what's like 90s code all of a sudden? The major innovation there is you now have the dot matrix display, or DMD. So now you can show the player things you could never show them before. You can do things you could never do before. like like video modes yeah super oh not really into video modes well then we're also getting into if you shoot this shot a bunch of times you get a special multiball and if you shoot this scoop and that scoop and then you shoot this target you get a super jackpot right like things are getting a lot more calm you gotta you know if you're thinking later on in the 90s all of a sudden you've got like a ring master that comes up out of the bottom and a magnet on top and it It gets really, really complicated and convoluted in different pathways. How do you think 90s code has evolved to a point today? So if we think about sort of the last few games that were released, like Ninja Turtles by Dwight Sullivan or Munsters, Star Wars or Game of Thrones, how do you think his philosophies from the 90s have sort of permeated through into today? I would say Dwight is a moments programmer. I know that gets used a lot, but Dwight has definitely been around about moments in his games, especially his later games. But you look at something like just a super jackpot on Terminator 2, and then he brings it to, you have Game of Thrones. And it's basically, it's the same exact concept, the same kind of moment in that game. And he redoes it for the new modern age. he's also ghostbusters has the super jackpot call outs if you play uh star wars it has moments like when you're about to blow up a death star all the lights go out like one thing flashes like gee i think i'm supposed to hit that he's definitely i would call him like a moments programmer there's like this extra level of sort of polish or story right it's it the code itself beyond the intellectual properties story itself tells a story which is pretty cool and we're going to kind of go through how that has evolved through dwight's early career if you'd like to do a little bit of extra research or you want to hear dwight talk about these things you can check out uh the old head-to-head pinball podcast by ryan c and martin robbins episode 73 that's in our show notes we've got special with when lit with ken cromwell and bill webb episode three that's in the show notes there's the pinball players podcast the latest one also in the show notes where he's talking about ninja turtles and loser kid pinball podcast episode 37 also just want to say scott where where's my hat man where's my hat anywho let's jump into the early life with pinball through a lot of these interviews, Dwight talks about that when he was younger, he always ended up playing Bally's Playboy. And a machine that comes to life a lot is Williams High Speed by Steve Ritchie. That machine comes up all the time as an influence for people who come into pinball in the mid to late 80s. I agree. That was a big moment, right? You're telling a story. You're chasing away. It's more video gamey as opposed to, oh, I'm shooting the ball at the targets. Yay. Plus you're the bad guy. And you're the bad guy. It's got great art. You can learn more about high speed back in episode one, our pilot episode with Steve Ritchie. Awesome. But that machine influenced a lot of people. So Dwight's education, he went to DeVry University, which is an Illinois-based university with satellite campuses throughout the U.S. It tends to be technology focused. at DeVry University. And in fact, I had a few of my friends who are from Toronto that actually have gone to DeVry University. So basically, I'm friends with Dwight Sullivan. Well, where I live, we used to be DeVry commercials all the time. I remember when I was a kid in the 90s, DeVry University, it was like, there's like the guy who like needs a job. And he's all of a sudden he's, you know, working on a computer with his like with his keyboard. And then all of a sudden he's wearing a tie and he's like, you know, a director at a corporation. Yeah. Thanks, DeVry. That's pretty much the same commercial as we saw. Yeah, live in the dream at DeVry University. There's nothing too good for Dwight Sullivan. One thing that's particularly funny is a term that some people call Dwight speak. Have you heard of this term? I have not heard of this term. So Dwight speak is sort of the way that Dwight talks. And Dwight is one of the funnest and most charming people to hear on podcasts because he's genuine. And he genuinely loves what he does so much that he gets so excited that it's difficult for him to talk about what's getting him so excited. Or he stumbles or he makes weird comments. He's just so funny the way Dwight is. And I got a great quote here from Chuck Ernst that I found. Chuck says he, meaning Dwight, can't get the things out of his head. They're in his head, but he can't get that out. So you have to show him a bunch of options and he'll pick one, which is what he was asking for. Yeah, so when you're working with Dwight, it's a very collaborative approach, tons of fun. Here's a prime example of kind of the world that is Dwight Sullivan, and it's how he actually got a job in pinball. And if this story is not quintessentially Dwight Sullivan, I don't know what is. During his time at DeVry University, there was a job fair, particularly important when you're kind of in college, you're getting out of college, you need that sort of first job. They have job fairs. You go to a hotel, you go to a high school gym somewhere. There's all these companies that need a cog in the wheel and they are, you know, you're giving them your resume and they're chit chatting and you're trying to find a job that you think you might fit into. Well, this is, of course, a technology based one because you're going to DeVry. So Dwight says, This is where we get the ultimate follow-up. So Dwight says, I was all dressed up, so what could it hurt? I went to some of the rooms and started talking to people. Yes, so he shows up, wrong day. Of course, Dwight went on the wrong day. And he says it was the counselor that gave him the wrong day. But I think if you asked Dwight's coworkers, they would probably say that maybe he went on the wrong day. You're already there. You shaved, right? You got your leather-bound book. You might as well just go in and do some random interviews, right? So, Dwight says, one interviewer told me that the fair was not for entry-level jobs, but knew a man named Ed Sajocki, hopefully I said that right, who often called her looking for people. She asked if I would like to program games. My eyes lit up. It was hard to maintain some composure. She told me that Eddie graduated from DeVry, too, and I should call him. Yeah, so you need to pitch to get a job, right? You got to go to get this job. You know, you got to sell yourself, right? When you're especially when you're in technology, you got to be personable. You got to be it's kind of an odd industry. Right. It tends to be sort of nerdy. And, you know, you got to put one hundred and ten percent in there. So, of course, Dwight would call Sajak. Sajak asked for a portfolio and that he come in for an interview. When Dwight hung up the phone, he didn't even know what a portfolio was. So what he did is he just gathered up what he could find. He gathered some logic diagrams and some schematics from school, some of the artwork that he had drawn on a program from his original Mac. And of course he had some source code for some real games that he wrote for his Commodore 64 So he sat down with Mark Panaccio and Bill Futsenruder for an interview You might recognize the name Bill Futsenruder from a lot of our other podcasts He comes up from time to time as a programmer in pinball. He also worked at Old Stern, believe it or not. Yeah, Stern Electronics. So we're giving you a hint where he's ended up by accident. So Dwight said, they took me to a small room off the reception area and we sat at a round table. I opened my briefcase and in my horror my leather-bound folder with my cool-looking resume was not there. I apologized to them and we started to go through all the other stuff I brought. Right. So here's where we tie this back into Chuck Ernst's quote, right? It's got to be pretty tough, right? Of course he forgot his resume is going to a job interview, right? So Dwight says Mark then stood up and left. He went to get Larry DeMar. Larry came in the room and I briefly went through all the stuff I brought again. When I was done talking about all the eclectic things I had brought, Larry didn't really say anything. Okay. That does not sound very good. That doesn't sound like it's going well. Of course, Larry DeMar, as we know, he was one of the first generation breakthrough programmers in the solid state era, right? So if you think Larry DeMar is probably like the grandfather of modern solid state pinball code, and he doesn't say anything after you're talking about it, it's probably not going well. So Larry DeMar asked Dwight, what are your favorite games? And Dwight told him, defender and high speed, not knowing at the time who Larry DeMar was. That is an awesome answer. That is an awesome answer. Seems like a tough interview, though, regardless of sort of sucking up to Larry DeMar. Well, unintentionally. The funny thing is, they still ask that question of interviews. I know people who work at Stern, and that's one of like, do you want any games? Or what are your favorite games? They still ask that to this day. Good question. It's like in my job in the financial industry, they always ask if you've ever gone bankrupt. And then if you say yes, they don't give you a job. So Dwight would say, on my way home, I was convinced that I did not get the job. What kind of idiot leaves his resumes at home? Less than a week later, I called Ed. He said he was glad that I called and that he was about to call me. He told me that apparently I made quite the impression and they wanted to hire me. and that's how dwight sullivan got a job as a programmer at williams i don't feel like those stories happen nowadays i think they do i think they still do of all of the sort of quote-unquote origin stories that's one of my favorites that one pat lawler one that we've got coming up in a few episodes down the road here that's a great origin story as well super funny i know when it comes to the interviews if if you have ideas if you have game ideas or that's what they look for more than resumes or you know like what if you come in there with all these ideas like you know i'm thinking you can do this you can do this you can do this they take more notice if they see that there's a bit of passion if if there's a teachability if there's if you understand sort of the basics of what they're talking about they're able to see that even though you might not be able to see that as the interviewee. Pretty cool. So, when Dwight started at Williams, the first project he was put on was doing some display effects. Alpha numeric display effects for mousing around. Oh! And I like to tell myself that he's the one who came up with the cool match animation, but I have no proof of that. I just always tell myself maybe that's the one thing Dwight did on this game. And if it is, it's the greatest thing ever. Yeah, the moment. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. So if anyone knows, maybe even Dwight doesn't remember which you know which effect he did but that's the first that was his getting his feet wet before he really got to be put full-time on a game yeah you got to learn how the computer works you know that they're using yeah whatever platform they're on yep you know you gotta you gotta figure that out and then the first game he's on after that which is a harvester of things to come riverboat gambler who the legend do you know how many action buttons riverboat gambler has four four buttons this is this is this is what happens this is what happens at least there's not four nowadays not yet now this is an old-timey gambling boat theme it's from august of 1990 this is a system 11c from williams sells 3200 units this was designed by Ward Pemberton. Of course, if you remember him from our Bally episode, he did Fathom. And of course, you just mentioned it, Mousin' Around. This had art by Linda Deal and Pat McMahon. Sound and music by Paul Hurcht, who did Black Rose, Creature from the Black Ragoon, Bram Stoker's Dracula, that sort of 90s Bally William artist that you can think of. And of course, software by Dwight Sullivan. This is an interesting game, and you had mentioned it before. It has four, count them, four action buttons on the apron. Four action buttons. I think they use membrane switches, just like a little ribbon cable thing that goes all the way across. I often wonder when they would do these games where you take a standard part like the lockdown bar and you do something like that to it, how much that raises the bill of materials. Yeah, you don't want to get messing with stuff like that, right? But they did. Yeah, if you want to get moving, you know, some drop targets around or, you know, that's one thing. But when you start like adding extra buttons on the flipper cabinet or that's that's getting that's some serious changes there. And I think I haven't played a riverboat gambler. I have actually only played it maybe twice, which is unusual for me to say that. But I think I've only played it a couple of times. The best part about this game is probably the fact that you don't see it very often. Oh, it's so mean. Yeah, I mean, it's okay. The four buttons, we should explain, the four buttons are basically, you can pick colors. Yeah, it's like gambling. You can bet, you can hold. That's what the buttons are for. Yeah, bet, hold, pass. It's kind of cool. To be totally honest, I'm being facetious. I mean, it's actually pretty cool. It's really kind of neat the way it works. Of course, sort of the stepbrother to pinball has always been gambling, right? It's always been slot machines, and it's like that pseudo middle-of-the-road kind of game. And themes like Riverboat Gambler really draw on the fact that they're trying to bring in that gambling-esque theme without sort of hiding it. It's pretty transparent. It, of course, was a sure bet winner. Oh, you're reading the flyer. Almost certainly you're reading the flyer. I don't think it was a sure bet winner. 3,200 units. I mean, at the time, I guess that's probably pretty good. 3,200 units today? Any company would take that. This is where we get into something called flipper codes. And what's particularly interesting about this game is that the flipper codes actually use those four buttons on the front. So when you start up a game, before you plunge, press and hold the red button and the black button. Then press the pass button three times, the black button three times, the red button three times, the green button three times. Then the display on the backboard, the alphanumeric display, will shimmer, whatever that means. And if you press the black and the red button at the same time, it says, hello, world. Wow, that's a lot of buttons to get it to say, hello, world. Dwight, as you will see throughout today's podcast, loves to kind of play with those things, which is neat. There's lots of flipper codes that he does and little hidden little gems. I don't know why he does that stuff, but I guess it's fun. And it's pretty cool now looking back at it that we can bring some of those things to light in today's pod. But it's I mean, it's kind of a neat game. It's like it's like a casino on a boat theme. It's got some really cool ramps, two sets of drop targets. How can you go wrong? It's got a diverter thing. It's the kind of quirky original game you probably wouldn't see being made now, unfortunately. Yeah, this was, I mean, nowadays, this would be quite the risk. This would be a risky type machine, and you wouldn't want to take that kind of risk nowadays. But back then, it was like, ah, go ahead, right, give her. and of course before licensing right in a in a parallel universe this would be maverick which of course would come up with sega in the future which is that mel gibson movie and like it's before licensing it's sort of ward pemberton kind of doing his thing and then bringing in dwight and saying dwight what could we do and he's like well we could add buttons and we can gamble and pass and it's kind of cool it's it's a risky type machine but it is very cool it is very very cool. Speaking of risky, Pat McMahon was on art, and he could be a bit risque when it came to his art style. Isn't that right? There's a significant amount of skin. Let's just put it that way. On the Internet Pinball Database, you can see some of the original sketches, and there's one specifically which is the hand-drawn sort of first sketch, and it's Very, hmm. Dave Christensen would approve of the art. Yeah, there you go. Dave Christensen would approve. The female character is scantily clad, let's call it. And the character in the background is also quite scantily clad. So then they go to the prototype, and the prototype covers up a little bit. And it's a little bit better. And then, of course, on the final product, it is significantly toned down and I would say much more appropriate. We sort of talked about Dwight being Captain Complexity. And you can see already within this game, the complexity is right out of the gate. If you open up the flyer and you look at the back of the flyer, there's like a diatribe of rules already there. Like before, it was sort of like shoot the scoops and the drop downs. And then all of a sudden now in this flyer, it's like, yeah, there is a ton of text on the flyer. It's insane. Scoring 21 at blackjack collects points and chips progressively for high scoring payout. If the player doesn't bust, consecutive winning streak loop shots give players the opportunity to play the slot machine and also begin two-ball, multiball action. It's like, wow, there's a lot going on here on this machine. Think that that was probably the draw. Wow, you could do a lot with this machine. It's not just shoot the drop targets and get a multiball. I think that can be safely said. That's the most anyone's talked about Riverboat Gambler. There you go. The definitive podcast on all things Riverboat Gambler is Silver Ball Chronicles. Be sure to go over to silverballswag.com to pick up your shirt. Oh, Mark Ritchie also did the music on this game. That's interesting. Yeah, it's got nothing else to do. Might as well just do a little bit of music because, of course, him, like his brother, Steve, a bit of a musician. Of course, the next game has been talked about a lot, usually not in a positive fashion. Oh, no, you got to be positive. Can't be negative on this podcast. Oh, Bugs Bunny's Birthday Ball. So Dwight was on a supporting role on Bugs Bunny Birthday Ball. He wasn't the lead programmer, but he was a support member led by Dan Lee, who was the lead. He did some minor things, he said on this, which were a little bit of code cleanup, a couple of light blinking bits. But he did do some work on Bugs Bunny's Birthday Ball. So you can blame Dwight for that game next time you see him. Dwight says when I arrived at Williams the average sale of a particular title for us was about 3k 5,000 of a unit was a good day for many reasons pinball popularity went through the roof in a few years I happened to work on three of the highest earning and best-selling pinball machines of that era and in 1990 Steve Ritchie started designing and drawing out a play field that would later become the getaway high speed 2 as we mentioned earlier high speed was the machine that really drew Dwight in to pinball. At an early stage in the development, Steve shelved what he had designed so far because he got the opportunity to do Terminator 2, and of course he took it. So Steve and some video game designers, including George Petro and others, went to California to meet with James Cameron, who of course is the movie director of Terminator 2. And of course, they took some others with them, and they needed to learn about the movie, because you can't make a pinball machine without knowing about the movie. Now, Dwight didn't go because he was not on the Getaway team, and therefore not on the Terminator 2 team. Yeah, and the other thing to explain is back then, the games would come out at the same time as the movie. So when they made the game, they would have advanced scripts and would know what was going to happen to the movie before it was released, which doesn't really happen anymore. Yeah, could you imagine having the script to Avatar 2? Just having it? No. That's dangerous, man. So this brings us to the game of my childhood, the game that I want to have in my collection, and I'm too cheap to actually buy. That's Terminator 2 Judgment Day. That's space, time travel, sci-fi, war theme. July of 91. It's a solid state machine. This is the WPC from Williams with the dot matrix display, or DMD. It's a standard body machine. It sells 15,202 units. Music and sound by the legend Chris Granner. Software by Dwight Sullivan. And art by Doug Watson. Now, we've talked about how much I love T2. In Steve Ritchie, The Mullet Years, if you want to go back into the archive and listen to those. But we're going to take a different perspective. We're going to take a look at it from Dwight's perspective today. And Dwight would say, I finished up Riverboat Gambler and went on vacation with my girlfriend. When I came back from vacation, I was told that I was going to be working with Steve on T2 and did not mess it up. I love how corporate's like that, right? Corporate folk, they're always like, hey, we're going to give you a big promotion. Don't mess it up. You're like, ugh, that's a lot of pressure. This is, of course, because Steve had a falling out with his current programmer on the team, Mark Panaccio. Steve has falling outs with many programmers, it seems. I don't know why. I don't know why. I knew very little of Steve at the time. Little did I know that I was about to grab the tail of a comet. That's a good way to describe that, eh? Dwight, you're such a wordsmith. So the DMD era. This is an exciting thing, okay? This is the first machine with a DMD, although, of course. Checkpoint, I think, had one before this. Yeah, there was Checkpoint at Data East as well as there was Gilligan's Island. But this is kind of the first. This is the one where you're like, whoa, this is really what it's supposed to do. Yeah, Gale Against Island was the first Williams game released with a DMD. So Dwight would say Terminator 2 was to be the first game with a dot matrix display. This new innovation did what we had hoped it would do. It gave pinball a shot in the arm in sales. New games with dot matrices made all the old games look old when they sat next to them. The dot matrix also enabled us to do video modes. This was something more we could do that was different from the recent games. For a while, most pins had video modes. Some had even more than one. And some were good. So this brings us to the video mode. So we have some comments here. We have Mike Wynn from our Facebook page. He says, I generally like video modes. I mean, you got the screen back there. Why not use it? I wish more newer Sterns had video modes. except for the bash the flippers as fast as you can ones video modes like those can die not a fan lethal weapon three uh why that's that's not bashing flippers as fast as you can the fighting one is the fighting ones that's one of them but it has the gun one and how about uh black rose that has the uh you escape from the shark that's super cool bashing the button as fast as you can i kind of like the video mode in terminator 2 to be totally honest right it's the the robots are going through and you're just using the buttons to go left and right yeah it was so good it was reused in terminator 3 in fact it was so good they made an entire video game around it called t2 the video game not really actually i lied i made that up but that was you know this was terminator 2 anything associated with terminator 2 made a crap ton of money did it ever the pinball machine the video game the um it was the guns and roses a song that was in it anything associated with it was a success and in fact they're still trying to revive that magic every couple of years they just try to destroy my one of my favorite movies of all time also you're not up for terminator 7 the rebirth or something like that oh okay anywho dwight dwight says one day near the very beginning of t2 development george petro stopped by me in the hall and told me he was concerned that t2 pinball can make his game t2 video look bad I don't think he was being funny at the time. I thought this was very rude, but I didn't say anything. In the end, T2 Pinball outsold the video game in an out-earned T2 Video at most test locations. In fact, Terminator 2 Pinball sold over 15,000 games as one of the all-time top-selling pinball machines. This machine was everywhere. It was everywhere all the time in all the places you could be. And always next to it was T2 Video. I would say the T2 pinball was the game of my childhood that I remember. But all I remember, I was, I don't know, like eight. All I did at that time was like double flip and drain and there was nothing to it. So I would gravitate to the video game of T2. And I played a lot of that because I could get more for my quarter. It was awesome, right? The T2 video game, it had the two guns that shook. it had like a rocket on the side you shot the terminators and then you worked your way through sort of from the battlefield to the factory to the time machine then you were in the future it was really really really cool and you could see that there was a lot of competition between the two the other thing about terminator 2 it's got that moment which would be the super jackpot everyone remembers the soup or or most people say the stupid jackpot because that's what it Sounds like Arnold says, but he does say super jackpot. And that's the thing you're trying to get on that game every time. Yeah, great little story about the stupid jackpot on the super awesome pinball show, episode 23. The Getaway High Speed 2 was the next hit in the hopper. And, of course, the driving police car theme. February of 92, it is a WPC. The standard body sells 13,259 units, which, of course, huge again. Sound and Music, Dan Forden. Software by Dwight Sullivan. Art by Doug Watson, who does the Translight. And Mark Sprenger, who does the Playfield and Cabinet. And they brought Mark back from the, he did the original High Speed. So there's some continuity with the Playfield. It's the same artist. You want the same look and feel, right? You want the callback to remind people of the awesome game that was high speed. And from the tech standpoint, I believe this was the first Williams game to have the service rails underneath, so you could pull the play field out, so you could work on that wonderful supercharger. Yes. Even though the thing really never has any issues. I own a getaway. I've never had an issue with that thing. It literally only has one moving part. So Dwight would say when T2 was done, Steve and I quickly went into the next game, which was the getaway high speed 2. It went really fast because Steve already had a good head start. Early in the development of the getaway, we went to Steve's house. He owned a high speed and we wanted to review what the game was like. The funny thing is we spent only a few minutes playing and talking about high speed. The rest of the evening we spent checking out Steve's new big screen home theater equipment. That's the funny thing about Dwight, right? is this you know you're you're you're inquiring about high speed and building those things and what sticks out in his mind is oh yeah we we totally were hanging out with steve's like home theater you know what i mean like it's so funny the way he sort of talks about things and remembers things and then Steve Ritchie would sell his copy of high speed to dwight oh man could you imagine having Steve Ritchie's new in box high speed that's cool man and dwight said he was thrilled because High Speed was a game that got me into pinball, and it was a jewel in my small collection. Lyman Sheets now owns Steve's High Speed, and Dwight has dibs on the machine if Lyman dies. I guess that's assuming that Lyman will never sell it. This is a great story. This is a wonderful story. One thing is that when I think we forget in pinball sort of you and I as quote unquote hobbyist media or, you know, just the regular, you know, everyday collector or the person who goes to tournaments or the person who goes to the pub and there a machine that there like this emotional attachment that people have with the projects that they work on And when you look back at people like Steve Ritchie you look back at Dwight Sullivan those guys, they were in some of just the biggest moments within this industry and within this hobby. So there's these fun, emotional, interesting stories. And here's a good one. Dwight says, Steve and I went to back-to-back trade shows with T2 and then with Getaway. Both were in Las Vegas. While we were at the second show selling the getaway, Larry DeMar noticed that on one of the large Las Vegas Strip signs that faced the road, it said the following, Enjoy our new arcade featuring T2 Pinball. T2 Pinball filled their entire display. I think it was the Silver Dollar Casino. Larry DeMar drove me to see it, and I have a picture of it. We sold over 13,000 copies of the getaway at the trade show, almost sight unseen. Imagine the hard work and the passion and the fun and the arguments and all of that stuff bundled up into that T2 project. And it's blasted all over a casino sign on the Las Vegas Strip. And you're able to say that you have a piece of that. Isn't that amazing? Like that story makes me feel like excited for some reason. I don't know. It has one of the best super jackpot call outs ever. Well, it's not even a call-out, just the Super Jackpot itself. Oh, it's such a great game. It's so good, Dwight reused it two or three times, but it's worth it. It's that good. If you want to sell your T2 for 25% less than market value, please send me an email, silverballchronicles at gmail.com. It has to be in Canada. You have to be able to deliver. Good luck with that. Good luck with that. So this brings us into the next massive license after the getaway. that's star trek the next generation of course space sci-fi star trek theme november of 93 this is the dcs uh williams system in the backbox prove sound yes the wide body 11,728 units music and sound by Dan Forden and software dwight sullivan art by greg freres and i may be right I believe that was the last Williams to be in the 10K club. That's a prestigious place to be, because I doubt there are very few games nowadays that are in the 10,000 club. I doubt there are any. Dwight says for a while the game was actually going to be under siege, based on the upcoming movie. Steve had ideas of putting two cannons on the right side of the playfield and dress it up to look like half of the ship. The two cannons would look like cannons of the Destroyer, the ship that's used in the setting of the movie. Yeah, do you remember Under Siege? I saw that in a theater. That's Steven Seagal, but the real star of that is... The Cake Lady. No, oh, God. No, not The Cake Lady. Tommy Lee Jones. Oh. He was a bad guy in that one. It's his movie. I remember that movie, and I'm going to have to say, American Pinball, you should go after Under Siege. It's a good one. If you can get help from any of the actors. Steven Seagal is usually not very cooperative with anything, so... It's a, I don't, you know, I think at the time that was quite, that was actually quite the action kind of movie. Like that was a big deal, that movie actually. As much as we joke and kid about it nowadays, because we've seen what's happened to Steven Seagal and all his other movies. Well, it was one of the diehards. Yeah, basically. That's the, that's the, that's diehard on a boat. Yeah, it's that sort of genre, that era, right? You got Arnold Schwarzenegger doing action movies. You've got Jean-Claude Van Damme doing action movies. You still have Bruce Willis. For some reason, he's the only one of that generation that has survived. And you had Steven Seagal. And this was that sort of 80s kind of violent explosion, interesting story, but not very good characters kind of movie. And it was it was kind of fun. It's a fun kind of popcorn flick. So it was 80s and the 90s? I'm sorry, in the 90s, yeah. So Dwight would say, then the opportunity came to do Star Trek, The Next Generation. Steve and I were both huge fans of the show, and we switched tracks from Under Siege fast. You know, Dwight being a nerd, of course he liked Star Trek. Like, come on, Star Trek was huge. In this time, you're able to, again, see the scripts. You know, they're going to locations. They're spending time on those locations, seeing where they're doing the movie and the sets and all that stuff. Well, Steve Ritchie, Roger Sharp, Greg Freres and Dwight all went to Hollywood. They went to the Paramount Studios to talk about the licensing with the licensing department. Actually, the licensing folk took them on a tour of the Enterprise set and Dwight walked on the Enterprise D. And for somebody like Dwight, I bet you this is probably one of the greatest times of his entire life. And here is one of my favorite Dwight Sullivan quotes. Dwight says, I saw the holodeck in 10 forward. I was on the bridge. They had the chairs covered in plastic. You could walk right through the view screen. We saw them setting up the lighting for a scene. And on our way from there, Gates McFadden, who's Dr. Crusher, walked right past us on our way to that scene. She was very tall. After our tour of the Enterprise, we had lunch in the Paramount commissary. This commissary was huge. many other celebrity sightings were to be had the coolest was patrick stewart he sat at the table directly behind steve and he said make it so oh no he didn't why is this one of my favorite quotes well it's because throughout the tour you get a glimpse of what's going on in dwight sullivan's head so he says i was on the bridge and the chairs were covered in plastic like that sticks out in his head so much that he has to that he wrote this down in this interview or in this in this blog post that I pulled from. Then he also said, we got to see Gates McFadgen, and she was very tall. And then we got to eat, and the commissary was big. Like, it's so funny, just what goes on in his head. And this quote is so perfectly him. You know, it was in our Steve Ritchie episode, The Mullet Years, when we talked about Star Trek, the negotiations with Paramount were very difficult and of course dwight would say they wanted to make it clear that the enterprise would never fire first and never before some negotiating there's a uh hidden brick game have you seen the hidden brick game it's breakout i have seen breakout no breakout is trademarked this is a brick like game okay it's breakout so you got to do this with a flipper code right yeah and we were talking about flipper codes with riverboat gambler i'm trying to remember i just without reading the notes. You put a code in and then when you get to the Rikers poker or something, you have to hold a button down and hit a trigger or something. Yeah, there's a whole... I'll break it out for you here. When it comes to complexity and silliness, Dwight just goes nuts for some reason. Most of the time you'd be like, oh, you want to have a secret little mode, you put in a flipper code and that's kind of it. Well, no, not with Dwight. So the way it starts, and I've got this it's in the show notes here. So you put in the code at the beginning, and then the DMD will flicker. Then you have to play the game and get to Riker's Poker Night, which is a video mode. And instead of getting into Riker's Poker Night, it goes to the Brick Breaker game instead. So what's Riker's Poker Night, just to sort of add some context to that? It's a video mode where you play cards and you try the wind of hands. Yeah, so it's like a hidden video mode. Riker's Poker Night is not like the regular mode, right? It itself is a hidden mode. Isn't that right? It's in the settings of the game. You can either turn it off or on. So by default, it's always off. You go to the tunnel. Isn't that right? Isn't that the default one? It's an actual setting in this offer. It's like hidden video mode or something, yes or no, or something like that. I always had it off on mine because of tournaments and stuff, so I honestly forget. Yeah. So to recap, you put the code in. You have to play the game and get to the video mode. You have to play the video mode. Then you hold the plunger. You pull the trigger. You pull the trigger. There's no plunger. We'll get another correction. And then it says, you know, points or game, and you choose points. And instead of giving you the points, it goes into the Brick Breaker game. And we've completely lost everybody. Nobody really understands what we just said. And ladies and gentlemen, Dwight Sullivan. Another really fun story is the Star Trek The Next Generation door. Have you heard this story? No. What about the Star Trek door? So Bill Grupp, who he worked on Congo with John Trudeau and that team, on his door at Williams, he's one of the programmers, at his door, he took one of the decals from the Congo backbox and he stuck it very nicely in the center of his door, which, I mean, you know, Congo, not a good movie, but that side art, it's kind of cool. Dwight knew that he had a whole bunch of Star Trek The Next Generation decals, and he decided to one-up Bill. So to do this, Dwight covered his entire door with Patrick Stewart's face, and this is how the Star Trek door was created. So if you went to Dwight Sullivan's door at Bally Williams, it was top to bottom, left to right, completely filled with Patrick Stewart's side art from Star Trek The Next Generation. More useless info. I think, if I remember, it's Star Trek The Next Gen. The cabinet is silkscreen, but the backbox is a decal. But I think the Protos, it was also silkscreen, the backbox, and then they switched it to a decal. Hence all the decals available. Well, Ron, it's a new year, and we have a new podcast sponsor. It's time to put on my professional voice. If 2020 has shown us anything, it's that sound financial advice should be a key part of your insurance and investment plan. Did you know that individuals who received financial advice for 10 years have two times the financial assets than unadvised individuals? 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. When it comes to retirement planning, insurance for family and income replacement, mortgage coverage, or key person business protection, you can count on Dennis Financial Inc. to help you customize a risk management solution. Contact me at david at dennisfinancial.net for a free rate quote and a copy of our Value of Advice eBook, or check out dennisfinancial.ca. Insurance solutions provided by Dennis Financial Inc. Now, back to the podcast. Uh, then Dwight would work with Pat Lawler on the Red and Ted Roadshow. We're going to cover that under the Pat Lawler episode because that's a whole thing. So I don't want to get into that today, but he worked on that project. And then we get into something really, really original. And that is Whodunit. I love Whodunit. People either love it or they hate it. Yeah, they just don't understand it. They don't understand the brilliance that is Whodunit. So this is a murder mystery kind of game. It's September of 1995. It's a WPC-S standard body, so they're back to the standard body layouts. 2,416 units, so not very many. And, of course, this is sort of like after that first initial boom in the 90s. It's kind of on its way down again, the industry. Music and sound by Paul Heisch. Heisch. Heisch. Sounds good. Heisch. software by Dwight Sullivan and art by Linda Deal and Paul Barker. It's funny. We're going through all these games. I'm thinking, with the exception of Riverboat Gambler, I've owned a Terminator 2. I own a Getaway. I've owned a Star Trek Next Generation. And I own a whodunit. I guess I'm a Dwight guy. Sounds like it. You like your moments. I love moments. You're like, stop and start. That's not true. Well, we've got a comment here. from pinside why don't you read the it's from law oh the law the law i guess that's his name so wait a minute so he's the law so is he um what's his face isn't um judge dread the law yeah probably yeah that's right so long as okay why don't you read what the law has to say whodunit is a fantastic idea but in reality it's a bit of a mess if you don't lock in a high jackpot value during multiball it's a waste it has a bunch of seemingly role-playing game elements which sounds great but it's just jackpots all day and you need a ton of them tom mcarthur who is actually the guru here in my province who does all of the IFPA tournaments. He's the IFPA provincial director. He says on Facebook that whodunit is perhaps his least favorite pinball machine of all time. Definitely in the bottom five. And then Billy YJ, who's a frequenter of the pinball hobby, replied to that and said, I was just about to type that. Tom and Billy are dead to me. Just, just, you know, there's more to the game. And he didn't even, about getting the jackpots than the regular multiball, that's not even how you get the huge scores in the game. And I'm not talking about using the bug. That's another thing. Dwight Sullivan games, at least in the tournament crowd, are kind of known for being the bug games that you end up not using. Would you say it's a bug or it's an exploit? They're bugs. Terminator 2 has bugs where you just, I think it's like it doesn't count the Super Jackpot. Terminator Getaway has bugs, so they don't typically use it. Whodunit has the really bad bug where the motorized three bank will just stay down and you can just hit the ramp into infinity forever and just play the game for hours on end. So sometimes there's a price to complexity, I guess is the... Yeah, well said, well said. But on Whodunit, honestly, the main strategy I use on Whodunit, just to do a quick, because I like Whodunit so much. Basically, you want to get the revolver because it makes the pop bumpers increase the value of the jackpot into infinity land. I don't know if there's a cap. Get into the basement multiball. Get some, you know, trap up your multiple balls and just hit the left orbit. Get into the pops. Get the jackpots to ridiculous levels and then start collecting. And you will blow up the game in a huge way. Super fun. the design of this game. This is co-designed by Dwight and Barry Ousler. So that's interesting. So Dwight is actually kind of, he has a hand in designing this machine. And this looks like Dwight is sort of branching out a little bit here and partnering with Barry Ousler for the design and the software. So Dwight would say, by 1995, with the help of many talented people, I helped design some very successful games. While up to this point, I had a great deal of input into those games, I wanted more control over the design of the game. Now, Barry Ousler... For example, on Star Trek The Next Generation, for those of you who hate the subway system, that was actually Dwight's idea. Yeah, that's all on Dwight. He wanted the balls, you know, have the balls come, just be staged and ready to come out at various places on the play field. Very cool. it's one thing that's interesting and we'll get into this i've got a Barry Oursler episode all ready to go Barry Oursler is always like the guy that would work with somebody to finalize their design and and really button it up and tighten it up and that i think is why he was paired with dwight on this because you got somebody like barry who was always ended up dealing with somebody like Python Anghelo and was able to sort of corral a game out of out of that or somebody would bring a design and they'd be like, Barry, can you put a bow on this and spit shine it a little bit? And then all of a sudden he would make Barracora. He would always sort of get everything nice and tight and together. And I think that's why he was paired with Dwight in this case. And Dwight says, through attrition of one sort or another, Barry Osler, a game designer of almost three decades, was left with a short design team. He often worked in later years with Mark Ritchie, Bill Fultz and Reuter, or Python Anghelo. I approached my bosses and Barry and suggested that I start co-designing games with him. They all agreed that that made sense. And the reason a lot of those guys weren't there anymore is because they all went to Capcom. Yeah, that's sort of the, you know, that group of individuals, they all sort of pulled that chute. That's a whole episode in itself. They got a bunch of people from Williams to go over to Capcom. Yeah, that's a whole other thing. Dwight, he said, I told Barry about my idea that I had been cooking. It was an idea to do a game about a murder mystery. He liked it and showed me a playfield that he had drawn. And we started talking about how we could marry this playfield idea to my murder mystery game. Since it was my idea to do all of the theme, since it was my idea to do the theme, we agreed that the buck would stop with me on the theme related stuff and Barry would handle everything else. there you go the the playfield master can do his into his thing and just make the shots nice and i'm going to do my thing which is bring in the theme you know uh you know bring in the code all of that stuff and be sort of the lead which is very cool can i just say the call outs and music are also awesome on whodunit i hate to keep uh you know saying how awesome whodunit is but yeah a friend of mine uh trevor he rebuilt a whodunit and he's like i'm i'm shocked at how much i enjoy this game and he downsized his home he he he didn't have as much room this was one of the machines that he moved on and he said it was difficult for him to do that so it's like a casino theme right it's it's it's clue with a casino barry and dwight still have a very good relationship they played uh poker all the time there was a sort of there's like a a williams poker group back in the 90s card games and things like that i guess flow very well dwight would say at this point in history gambling machines in general were being blamed for the decline in coin op and pinball it was decided that our pinball machines needed to have more gambling themes this changed the theme of our game a little bit we wrote into the story that it took place in a casino tony's palace we also then added a slot machine toy to the game so we'll get into this slot machine toy in a second but there's also the phone toy the phone toy is literally It's just a phone that flashes, has a flasher in it, and it just flashes. It's not really a toy. It's literally just a static piece of plastic. That's why I think toy is in exclamation marks, because it's not really a toy. Ah. So I think it was Barry, Dwight would say, that came up with the phone, quote-unquote, toy. I thought of how to use it, and it was one of my favorite features in the pinball. When the phone rings, it's clear what's going on. you have to answer it and the call outs tell you that too well someone answer the phone the other thing is the slot machine in the game right under the play field i love the slot machine if it works consider yourself lucky if it works if it does work don't screw with it it's literally a shot it's a slot machine and it's coordinated with the play field and when you hit certain shots it's like you pull the lever on the slot machine so the little things those little barrels underneath spin and you want to line them up and it's physical it's not a digital it's a physical slot machine that seems dangerous to work on uh i would if let's put this way mine was totally rebuilt by the previous owner so when i shopped it out i removed the entire slot machine and put it aside and never touched it and you may want to put leds in it too because it can get hot in there with the lights that's one place i would recommend led the promo poster uh flyer for this super super fun because it's done like it's like a again a murder mystery clue-esque thing but it's almost like a a newspaper or an article piece with the bally inquisitor of whodunit and then it sort of outlines the Casey Butler and victoria and bruno and trixie of course and and tony and for some reason why are they all italian that's that's not right one is british victoria victoria has a british accent yeah but i bet i bet she wasn't the one that did it though they all did it at one point oh yeah someone who does it every every time every every case not only that there's an entire backstory that was written for this that's i don't know where that is somewhere but i mean more than just a flyer there's like a whole backstory about this game the story if you will Yeah, there's like you take the road up the railway into the subway with a diverter. There's the thing in the middle called Elevator Madness, which is like a 360 kind of ramp where it'll go to three different directions when you're shooting in the middle. The phone up the left side, pop bumpers in the middle. There's a lot going on in this machine, and I think it's a lot of fun. I would love to play this game just because it's so different and unusual, and we'll get into that in a minute. One thing that's also super, super cool is that you can choose between expert and novice. Oh, new feature. New feature. And this brings me to an interesting point here in pinball in general, which is patents in pinball. And we haven't talked about this in any of our other previous engagements, but patents are a big thing in pinball, especially in something that's so physical and interesting. Choosing expert or novice actually was a patent that was filed by Dwight Sullivan and Ken Fedesna on behalf of Williams Electronics Game Incorporated Now that was filed in December of 1995 and it was actually granted in January of 1998 I've pulled that patent information, and it says, A pinball game is provided with a control system, which enables a game player to choose between a novice mode of play and a normal mode of play. In novice mode, the gameplay proceeds in a predetermined time, regardless of the number of game balls played and selected game features, such as a tilt sensor, may be disabled. Game bonuses and free play games may be made unavailable in novice mode to encourage experienced players to play the normal mode. And interestingly enough, this was used, well, kind of used again on Game of Thrones. There was like a novice mode in that also. And I believe it was used in Goldeneye at Sega, where you could choose between sort of a predetermined amount of time so you get a little extra ball saver than you did the other way around. Also a fun way to cheat in tournaments. So you can review some of Dwight's other patents. He's in quite a few of the different patents, and I'll include a link to that. And it's funny because he's actually determined to be an inventor, which is kind of fun. it was junkyard which was the next game up for dwight sullivan and Barry Oursler this time barry would take the lead followed by dwight and of course shortly into development barry was let go by williams along with a bunch of other people yeah so there's a whole really cool story about junkyard and the backstory and the interesting bits and pieces we'll get into that in our barry Ousler episode. This is that time again, you know, we're moving into like 96, 97, 98, where we're on that rollercoaster ride down the bottom. Williams is cost-cutting, and they cut a bunch of their designers. It wasn't just Barry Ousler, who had been there for 25 years. Dennis Nordman, they cut him. By this point, I believe, they just had, it was John Papadiuk, George Gomez, like Brian Eddy, I'm trying to think who else, Steve Ritchie moved on to video games. So, yeah, he had a management position, and then he moved on to the video games, doing California Speed, games like that. This is where they're trying to watch, you know, their costs, right? Like, the other thing is, right, when you look at these new individuals, you know, John Papadiuk, Gomez, Dwight Sullivan, these kind of, they're working a lot cheaper than sort of the old establishment, right? So, they're probably sticking around. It's kind of like they were like the millennials of their generation. Well, yeah, the designers were the newer designers. I mean, Brian Eddy had been there as a programmer for years, but yeah. So the next game, this is Champion Pub. It's a whole thing. So it's like a boxer, fighter, novelty sports thing. It's a WPC 95. It's from April of 1998. It is a solid state, of course. It sells 1,369 units. The concept is done by Pete Prowowski, art by Paul Barker, Linda Deal, got sound and music by Rich Carle, and software by Dwight Sullivan. And we can see on this game, who are these people? You know what I mean? Like we'll get a deeper dive into these folks some other time when we bump into them. But this is very much the symptom of the time at Williams where you're like, oh, my God, it's 1998. And there's these people that we've never heard of that are making games. One of the greatest quotes of all time is from Zach Many of the Pinball Show and straight down the middle of Pinball Show. He called this a novelty game in which Dwight Sullivan's brain exploded. Can you explain why some people call this a novelty game? Well, it has the boxer that you can actually hit, and it has little mini ramps in front of it so you can hit him in the face, which is cool. It has a lot of cool. It has a super cool jump rope toy so you can just jump rope. You hit the flipper buttons and jump up as the rope goes around. It has a speed bag toy. There's a lot of toys. It's very repetitive, though. You basically train and then you fight, and then you train and then you fight. And each boxer is a different character. At least one of them is not allowed anymore. He's censored out of most versions of it. So, like, it's kind of unique and different. And Mike M. from Facebook would say, As shallow as Champion Pub is, I love the game. Definitely a little too gimmicky at times with the training mechs, but the call-outs and music are just incredible. Bally Williams really went out of their way to try something different. Could this be the greatest bash toy of all time? Speaking, of course, of the boxer in the middle. So the idea is that you shoot up to the boxer who's turned around, and you shoot up the ramps, and you hit the bag, right? So it's like you're training to fight, so you're hitting the speed bag. Then the guy turns around, and then you fight him, right? It's kind of cool. It is cool. It's one of the most mispronounced game names ever. Most people call it Championship Pub. It's like, no, it's The Champion Pub. No one ever says the name of the game right. The jackpot call-outs are hilarious because it just doesn't have jackpots. It has double, triple, quintuple, sextuple, cow-a-va. There's like at least ten different jackpot call-outs of different terms. Yeah, it's got the Dwight Sullivan complexity. And it's one of the two games that Williams did at the end where they used real back glasses for whatever reason instead of a Translight. This and no good gophers have real back glasses for whatever reason. It's got this mech, a jump rope mech, in the back left of the game. So you kind of go up, and the ball gets diverted in there, and it sits like a plunger or something, right? Yeah, that's a magnet. It gets caught right on the magnet, and it pulses the magnet as the little rope spins. Which is like a little metal thing. And you are doing the magnet pulsing. So every time the rope comes around, you want to hit the button, the flipper button, So the ball goes up in the air, just like your jumping rope. And then it's got a speed bag mech in the right back corner. So think of Congo, but way smaller, and you hit a bag. So you get the ball up there, and it's got little hands, and the left and right hand hits the ball into the bag. Is that right? Yep. And the jump rope one is super cool because it gets faster and faster, and the game will do call-outs. It'll just start going. It starts counting. Three, four, five, six, seven. It gets more excited the more times you can jump. So, like, I mean, in a nutshell, it's kind of a neat kind of concept, fun game. But like you said, it gets kind of. It gets repetitive. It's the ultimate gimmick game that gets repetitive. Okay. But you would say its gimmick in comparison to most gimmicks, pretty darn good. All their gimmicks, their toys are awesome. Yeah. If you don't want awesome, you know, stern code, this is what you get. You get a bunch of necks and nothing. Yeah. It's cool. I haven't played a champion pub. I have played it in the pinball arcade, the digital version, which isn't real pinball. And it's kind of fun. There is some pretty cool stuff here on the back glass. So if you go to the Internet pinball database, you go to the champion pub page, you can look at the pictures. And you can bring up a picture of the back glass. And then you can look at it. And it's super fun because everybody in there is somebody at Williams. And this is the kind of stuff that I love with pinball is all of this silly stuff. And I'll go through a couple of the names that are on there. So there's a man with a goatee and a bowler hat second to the left. That's Dwight Sullivan. He's watching the fight here, the old timey fight. There's a person with eyeglasses next to him. That is a person, but I couldn't find out who that is. That's somebody from there. There's a shorter man in suspenders and a cap who's in front of Dwight. That person is Pete Pirowski. The blonde lady with her arm raised, that's the person next to the person in the glasses with her arm raised. That's Linda Deal, who did the art on the game. And don't forget, there's Steve Kordick right in the front. That's who I always see. Yeah, Steve Kordick is the older gentleman with the money in his hand, turning around and looking at the player. That's Steve Kordick, and of course the legend that is Steve Kordick. We've got Brad Cornell, who is an individual that worked there, and he's right above the blonde boxer's arm on the right side. Rich Carle, who was the sound engineer, he's the person with the black hair, who's kind of profile next to the server. it's kind of fun that they had some of this stuff. The funniest part is that there is a fly on the bar next to the individual taking the photo on the left side. That bar fly is said to be Jim Patla. There you go. Now you know. So this brings us into the dark days at Williams, right? We were already there at that point for the last few years. Yeah, once you get to Champion Pub, that's kind of it, right? We were there a few years before. For years, about every three months, there would be layoffs at William. You know, usually when you're coming up on the quarter, the suits and the accountants are looking at the numbers and they're saying, all right, what are we doing here? And of course, every three months there were layoffs. And of course, the whole industry started to decline in 94, 95. You know, that would be pretty stressful. I had friends that worked in Blackberry in Kitchener, Waterloo here in Canada, and they went through the same thing for a three-year period where that sort of post-iPhone, you know, collapse of BlackBerry, who was like a crown jewel in Canadian technology, and every three months there'd be rounds of cuts. And the stress on my friend's face was not something that I envied. Dwight says the layoffs were like vomiting. It's so gut-wrenchingly painful as it's happening, but afterwards you feel better. You think that sucked, but maybe it's over now. Maybe things will get better from here you force yourself to have faith in the leadership of the company that's what kind of brings us into that pinball 2000 time and dwight had some work on pinball 2000 but this was really more or less the brainchild of the design team there which was was pat lawler and george gomez and then of the peripheral of the design teams working off of the platform but dwight says while i had very little to do with pinball 2000 designer it's os i worked harder in Revenge from Mars than any other game previous. Revenge from Mars sold well, two to three times more than any recent game. I've never played Revenge from Mars. I've played Star Wars, which is Star Wars Episode 1, which is just god-awful. Revenge from Mars. You shoot up the middle. Yeah, so it's okay. So it's not that great either. It's funner to shoot, I think. That's an opinion. At Pinball Expo 99, Pinball 2000 had been released it was going fairly well for the most part i think probably better than people had expected it was october 21st through the 24th in chicago and what is pinball expo for those who don't know it is the yearly big pinball show for years it was the main pinball show because it's actually in chicago so you are in the heart of pinball they've been having it every year since 1985. Last year they had a virtual Pinball Expo. This year, hopefully, we'll be able to get back to sort of in the fall here, we'll be able to get back to things that are normal. But Pinball Expo has really had a massive resurgence. A lot of that has to do with the investment of the team. You can check them out at pinballexpo.net, bring up some of their information of all of the individuals that are involved in Pinball Expo. But it's because of their investment and their growth, It's really grown and become something very, very cool. But back then, it was a sad time around 99, right? It was about to be a very sad time. It seems like whenever some major thing happens in pinball, it's like right after Expo. And even more like in 2008, right after that Expo, Stern fired a bunch of people. Well, 1999 was the big one. Pinball Expo 99, that was held on a weekend, October the 21st through the 24th. And that's when Dwight would say, when I arrived to work on October the 25th, the Monday following Expo, I learned that Williams laid off the entire pinball department. This was over 400 people, including 45 engineers. I was devastated. And at that Expo, which was right before, they had a whole presentation on Pinball 2000, and George Gomez did. So it's like nobody, I think there were inklings that something was going to happen. Gomez kind of knew, but it was that next day right after Expo. You could actually see the presentation on Pinball Expo by George Gomez on YouTube. Yep. So you remember that Star Trek door, right, we were talking about? The one where he put Picard's face all over it? Exactly. So Dwight would say, many of us were still gathering and boxing up our stuff. Ken Fedezna, in passing, and I'm sure half-jokingly, said, Dwight, I'm surprised that you didn't take your door with you. Well, I took that to mean I had permission. So I told the story to Jim Patla, who also agreed it must mean that I had permission. And Jim gave me a property pass so I could go get the door out of the building. So Dwight Sullivan went back to his office, took the door off the hinges, his Star Trek door, and took it home. And this door is still in Dwight's basement today. I've got a picture of that door in the show notes if you want to see it. Actually, yeah, let's see the door. There's the high speed that he sold. Yeah, so in the background you can see his games. There's his whodunit. He's got all his games, yeah. Super cool. So that's in the show notes. It's kind of weird, but cool, I guess. Also, by the way, which I think is pretty funny, in this picture you can see Dwight's basement. And through 2020, Dwight did a lot of basement sort of Zoom or Skype calls on reveals of video games or reveals of pinball machines like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I don't think he's finished his basement. I think he still has an unfinished basement down there with the same look. So if you know if Dwight has finished his basement since this picture was taken, send us an email at silverballchronicles at gmail.com. I know my basement isn't finished. Are you going to look down on me for my unfinished basement? The thing that really sucked is after they fired everyone, they made everyone interview if they wanted to stay at Williams and Midway, which was their video game department. God, that's horrible, isn't it? That's pretty rude. So the staff, if you wanted to stay at Midway, you said you had to do an interview. And Dwight wasn't sure if he wanted to make games anymore, right? At that point, you're pretty defeated. Every three months, you feel like you're going to just be slaughtered. And then all of a sudden, one day you come in and they let us all go and they didn't tell us. And we went to Expo and pitched the product and seemed like a bunch of idiots. And especially for William's sister company, right? Like do you really want to still work for the people that just freaking pulled the rug out from underneath you? so headhunters they would start calling and get a couple of interviews here or there for dwight and several of the teams are all competing for the same positions right so you've got all those all those like 450 people and let's assume you know most of the design teams are all sort of looking for the same jobs at basically sega stern or you know some of the other novelty games at the time so several of the teams actually heard of a fellow uh fairly well-known uh gene cunningham who was planning to start his new pinball company from the ashes of williams and who was gene cunningham he's the guy that bought all the rights to williams yeah he bought all the he bought the he bought he was he bought the scraps he was he was the vulture yeah warehouse is full of all their parts the diagrams pictures all the cads everything everything he was there's there's a whole whole episode behind the end of williams i mean you had uh roger sharp tried to get a group together to buy the rights uh you had um with their german distributor who i can never remember their name it's like a one-word name there was talks about them maybe buying hickle gruber you know buying well you know buying the williams you know pinball division so there was a there's a whole thing there that could be talked about that's an episode in itself yeah dwight would say for a short while, this prospect seemed very interesting and yet scary. So through a good friend who was Cameron Silver, Dwight learned that Lonnie D. Ropp, who was working at Stern, was looking for individuals to do some programming. So of course, there's this huge influx of talent looking for jobs, and Stern really can have the pick of the best of the best, right? If they could pick from anybody there, they could pick the only ones that they really wanted. So Dwight called Lonnie and he interviewed over the phone. And he had a lot to say and a lot to talk about. Lonnie asked Dwight to come in for an interview, for a formal interview, the following week. So after that phone interview on Sunday, Dwight says he drove down to meet with Gene, Gene Cunningham. On the way back, I was torn about how I felt. It seemed too good with lots of unanswered questions. On Monday, I put on my one suit and gathered my letters of recommendations from Larry DeMar and Ted Estes. and I went in for an interview with Lonnie and Gary Stern. It went really well. I was confident that they would make me an offer. The Gene Cunningham plan turned south. I think I dodged a bullet there. He did. In the end, my only real choice was to work for Midway and learn how to do video games or work for Stern doing what I've been doing for 10 years. So Dwight began working for Stern Pinball at the end of November 1999. So during this sort of Gene Cunningham starting up his company thing, Pat Lawler Designs had conversations with Gene Cunningham. I believe in the car ride that Sunday with Dwight was also Keith P. Johnson, who, of course, would be a programmer at Stern later on as well. And, you know, there was a lot of flux going on at the time, but Stern picked up who they thought was the best of the best, and I guess Dwight was considered to be one of those. So the industry was on shaky ground, but Dwight was able to find a foothold at Stern Pinball Incorporated. His early career was loaded with some of the highest pinball sellers of all time. and the most complex rules ever and some of the most beloved themes. This was a great start to a legendary career. And I'm excited to get on to our next bit with Dwight Sullivan, which is when he moves into Stern. Well, he moves into Stern, and then he leaves Stern, and then he comes back to Stern. And then he goes on the upswing. As Dwight said, he thought this was quite humorous, Humorous, the fact that since 1989, he's worked for the same two companies. It's either been Williams WMS Industries or Stern. Yeah, Dwight is one of my favorite programmers. And like you, I enjoy the quote-unquote cliche moments, but I enjoy the way that he does things. Wonderful, wonderful beginning to a start of a career. A lot of fun, little interesting stories with the creation of Complexity, Dwight Sullivan. Do you have anything else you want to add before we zip out here? I can't wait to see what he's got next. He's still going strong. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, last year. Yeah, there's going to be a lot of fun, I think, coming up. And should we tell them what we're going to do on the next episode, Ron? What are we doing? You can tell me. How about we dive into Barry O'Sullivan? So it's time for me to do the outro? Yes, please, by all means. Hold on, let me get Stewie in here. Anyways, anyways, you can send your comments, questions, corrections, and concerns to silverballchronicles at gmail.com. We look forward to all your messages and we read every one. Please subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or your favorite podcatcher. Turn on automatic downloads so you don't miss a single episode. And I've heard we have our own feed. Yes, if you search for Silverball Chronicles, we'll pop right up. Oh, yes, indeed. And remember to leave us a five-star review wherever you found us on this week in Timbal Promoted Database. That way more people can find us. Oh, hey, Steve, pitch the shirts. Shirts are super important. Oh, the shirts are super important. Look for us on silverballswag.com. And also don't forget our new website, silverballchronicles.com. If you want to send us any emails and say how great we are or how bad we are, it is okay. You can send us silverballchronicles at gmail.com. Thank you. While we were at the second show selling the getaway, Larry DeMar noticed one of the large Las Vegas strip signs. Strip signs. Las Vegas. Okay, let me try that again. Sounds like a stripper sign.