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TOPCast 37: Joe Kaminkow

TOPCast - This Old Pinball·podcast_episode·1h 11m·analyzed·May 27, 2007
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.034

TL;DR

Joe Kaminkow recounts founding Data East Pinball and pioneering pinball design through 1999.

Summary

Joe Kaminkow, co-founder of Data East Pinball (1986) and legendary designer, discusses his career trajectory from Williams to Game Plan to Gottlieb, the founding of Data East with Gary Stern, major licensing deals (Star Wars, Jurassic Park, The Simpsons), technological innovations like dot-matrix displays and 13-ball multiball, and Data East's evolution through Sega ownership to become part of modern Stern. He reflects on design philosophy, patent litigation with Williams, and the company's 20+ year legacy as one of the few successful pinball startups.

Key Claims

  • Data East was founded in September 1986 and incorporated between November 1-10, 1986

    high confidence · Joe Kaminkow stated this directly in the interview

  • The Data East System (DCS) was based on Williams System 11 boards with compatible connectors

    high confidence · Joe Kaminkow explained: 'the Dede esport system, basically a clone of the System 11 boards... you can literally take a Dede esport system and plug it into a System 11 game'

  • Laser War was originally planned as a licensed Laser Tag game but Roles-A-Wonder declined the deal

    high confidence · Joe Kaminkow: 'the Laser War, you said that you bastardized a Williams-Rogue King... Originally it was going to be a license of Laser Tag... But Rolls-A-Wonder didn't want to do a deal'

  • Williams filed multiple lawsuits against Data East, including disputes over 'multi-ball' terminology

    high confidence · Joe Kaminkow: 'we had the great Tim Ball lawsuit to the 90s... the word multi-ball, which was only, you know, a copyright, not as multi-ball, but only as multi-ball in a particular bond'

  • The Simpsons was Data East's first game to exceed 50,000 units shipped, legitimizing the company

    high confidence · Joe Kaminkow: 'Simpson, was really an important product for us because it was the first time we got over like 50, 500 games'

  • Star Wars, Jurassic Park, and The Addams Family combined shipped approximately 30,000 units in a single year

    high confidence · Joe Kaminkow: 'Mawstone games are really collectible. Certainly Star Wars and Leaple and Jurassic Park, those three games combined. We did close to 30,000 games. I mean, I think we did 9,500, Jurassic's and 10,400 Star Wars and 10,350 Leaple'

  • Joe Kaminkow was involved in approximately 80 pinball machines during his tenure at Data East

    high confidence · Joe Kaminkow: 'I probably was involved with 80 pinball machines'

  • Sega's management strategy involved reducing expenses, bill of materials, and staff by 10% annually, which hurt product quality

Notable Quotes

  • “I mean, I like to joke nobody would hire either of us, so we had to start our own company.”

    Joe Kaminkow @ N/A — Explains the founding motivation of Data East with Gary Stern; reflects the entrepreneurial necessity that led to a major industry player

  • “If you're going to buy a doll, a doll of a mouth, you're going to buy a Mickey Mouse, a doll, or are you going to buy a generic rat? You know, licensing is a big player in all kinds of consumer products because people are comfortable with what they know.”

    Joe Kaminkow @ N/A — Articulates the strategic importance of IP licensing in pinball and consumer products; establishes Kaminkow's philosophy as a 'licensing God'

  • “Space Shuttle had speech... Eugene Jarvis was back at, I think Stanford at the time working on an MBA. And we convinced Eugene to go back and make some sounds.”

    Joe Kaminkow @ N/A — Details how early speech integration in pinball was achieved, highlighting collaboration with Eugene Jarvis

  • “One of the things about being a small company, not having a lot of layers of fat, you could do things really fast. And that was one of the things they [Williams] had a hard time comprehending or understanding.”

    Joe Kaminkow @ N/A — Explains Data East's competitive advantage over larger Williams despite legal threats

  • “If people are buying double bacon cheeseburgers, you probably don't want to make double bacon fishburgers. And, you know, we weren't in the business of art, we were in the business of selling machines.”

    Joe Kaminkow @ N/A — Frames pinball as a style/market-driven business rather than pure art, addressing criticisms of derivative design

  • “I'm very proud of the accomplishment of starting a football company from scratch. I don't think anybody ever made one that succeeded... I think that we're the only company left in really the world.”

    Joe Kaminkow @ N/A — Reflects on Data East's legacy as one of the few successful pinball startups to achieve sustained production

Entities

Joe KaminkowpersonGary SternpersonData East PinballcompanyWilliams ElectronicscompanyStern PinballcompanySegacompanyEugene Jarvisperson

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Data East Pinball founded September 1986 with sweat equity and minimal capital; achieved 20+ year operational success as one of the few pinball startups to sustain production and market viability

    high · Joe Kaminkow: 'I'm very proud of the accomplishment of starting a football company from scratch... I think that we're the only company left in really the world'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Data East aggressively pursued major IP licenses starting with Playboy 35th Anniversary and Monday Night Football, leveraging Kaminkow's Hollywood relationships to acquire Star Wars, Jurassic Park, and The Simpsons during competitive bidding against Williams

    high · Joe Kaminkow discussed securing Star Wars despite it being 'a dead property at the time' and building toy licensing partnerships; emphasized licensing as critical to consumer product appeal

  • ?

    design_innovation: Data East pioneered advanced multiball designs including 13-ball multiball on Apollo 13 with spinning discs and innovative magnet-based ball physics, representing technological advancement over competitors

    high · Joe Kaminkow: 'if you've played it and you've had off 13 balls at one time, I mean, it certainly was the most amazing, unique, multi-ball experience that there ever has been'

  • ?

    legal_conflict: Williams filed multiple lawsuits against Data East in 1990s over patents and trademarks, including disputes over 'multi-ball' terminology; lawsuits were settled but functioned primarily as harassment/competitive slowdown tactics rather than successful IP enforcement

    high · Joe Kaminkow: 'we had the great Tim Ball lawsuit to the 90s... if you can't slow your competition down by making better games, we'll throw bombs at them... No [it didn't go to court]. So you mean they would just threaten and do a little dance'

Topics

Data East Pinball founding and early history (1986)primaryIP licensing strategy and importance in pinball designprimaryWilliams-Data East legal disputes and patent issuesprimaryTechnological innovations: dot-matrix displays, speech synthesis, multiball mechanicsprimaryDesign philosophy: market-driven vs. artistic approachprimaryData East's acquisition by Sega and management impact on product qualityprimaryMajor licensed games (Star Wars, Jurassic Park, The Simpsons, South Park)primaryPinball career timeline: Williams, Game Plan, Gottlieb, Data EastsecondarySpace Shuttle (1984) design story and Eugene Jarvis collaborationsecondaryData East's transition to Stern Pinball and company legacysecondary

Sentiment

positive(0.78)— Joe Kaminkow speaks fondly of his tenure at Data East and the company's accomplishments despite competitive pressures and litigation from Williams. He is reflective and proud of the company's legacy, though frank about cost-cutting challenges during Sega ownership. Defensive but matter-of-fact when addressing accusations of derivative design. Overall tone is nostalgic, collaborative, and business-pragmatic.

Transcript

whisper_import · $0.000

Music Pause here, here's some guys really f***ing rock, you know? I just can't remember who the hell they are. Oh yeah, it's something about Topcast and Pinball Machining for something. Shaggy and Norm on Topcast. Now where the hell is my guitar? You're listening to Topcast, this old Pinball's online radio. For more information visit them anytime, www.marvin3m.com Flash Topcast We've got a great Topcast tonight, we're going to be talking with one of the founders of Dede's Pinball back in 1986 that started today's current Stern company. It started out as Dede's Pinball, this gentleman co-founded Dede East along with Gary Stern and he's going to talk about how he co-designed most of the Dede East and Sega games from 1987 up to about 1998. A really interesting story on how Dede East, Gary Stern company got started in the Pinball business one of the few Pinball success stories of the last 20 years where a company started up from literally nothing to become, you know, today the only Pinball company left in the world. So I'd like to welcome Joe Camico to Topcast tonight. Joe is going to tell us about the origins of Dede East and you know some of the great stories about designing games from 1987 up to about 1999 when he left the company and he's got some great tales to tell and we're going to give him a call right now on the phone and talk to him. Hello, it's Joe. Joe, it's Joshua Clay. Can you hear me okay? Yeah, I can. Nice to talk to you. Yes, thank you very much for doing this. I really appreciate it. Come on, pleasure. Okay, so tell me how you got into how you first got into Pinball. I know you've got quite a history. You worked at Williams. It looks like you worked at Game Plan and maybe even a little bit of Gottlie before you did the Dede East thing. What's your history here? How did you get started? Well, my father was a distributor of Coin Operating Games. And in 1963 when I was five years old he went to work at a company called General Fending in Baltimore, Maryland, as a controller. And for about the time I was probably about five. I used to go down with him on Saturdays, hang out and play games and take brochures and fold him up and put him in envelopes and do all kinds of things like that. I think the first operator show I ever went to was the Virginia Music Operator Show in Rono, Virginia. I was probably seven or eight at the time. There are actually pictures of me pulling tickets out of a hat for the door prize. Did you win? Did you win the door prize? No, no. I was just a little lucky rabbit to draw the numbers. But I can just remember being around games almost as long as I remember being conscious. So did you start getting into the gaming business right out of high school or did you go to college? Well, when I was in high school I worked for my father's Distributorship. He went to work for Valley. And Valley had three distributorship people probably don't remember them. Advanced, which is run by guy named Chetnik Murdy in San Francisco, Joe Robbins ran Empire in Chicago and Valley bought a distributorship called Robert Jones International. So they turned it to the name Valley Northeast. Then my dad ran Valley Northeast. So all through probably about the time I was 16. I worked there summers and unloaded trucks and fixed games and clean games and worked in the parts department. Did whatever I had to do, whatever dad wanted me to do to make a living. And then when I was in college in Boston, I started operating games for some of my ever-owned with the Space Invaders. Actually, I used to have it up in the tree house tavern and around Poofe Heart remain. I used to drive about three hours every Saturday and would make my collection. And I paid off the machine, paid my taxes, and what was left I got to use the live on. What was that Space Invaders, the pinball or Space Invaders the video game? The cocktail table video game. And then I got really interested in pinball. I think I was 16 years old. I went to the opening of Tommy in New York, met Anne Margaret, Nalt and John. Valley was doing, of course, wizard at the time. And I just started getting really interested in pinball and video games. When I was in college, I ended up opening up a chain of arcades. And I was looking at the games that we were buying at the time for the arcade. And I said, you know, boy, I can make stuff as interesting as this. And there was a fellow named Tom Doe who was working for Westinghouse Middle Systems. He was a programmer and we started a little company called Logical High. And we sold the right of first refusal. We offered it to us, Stern, Midway, and Williams and Williams brought us under their wing. So at the time we designed a video game. I went to Williams and had an idea for a pinball machine and had crazy sounds. I sold Williams their own title. I sold them the right to make a game that they were doing a game based on the fender. And the fender pinball was born. It was probably the first game I had involved in it. And did you, what were you studying in college? Just general marketing, business, communication. Did you ever finish up or did this just get going? No, I finished my degree. And what school was that? Career college in Milton, Massachusetts. So then you started working at, the defender came out in 1982. So you're basically working at Williams. You moved to Chicago. Well, my company sailed. Our first video game was really a stinker. And Williams offered me a job in their marketing group. And really just kind of doing things that get games in the field and went to work there in Chicago in 1983. I tried to work on marketing in games. And then at that point in time, video games are starting to collapse. The video business imploded. Laser disc games were coming out, but they really remember particularly very good. Williams made one called the Star Rider, which was really pretty dreadful, actually. It was a nice ride to the park. It was graphically attractive, but not much of a game. And pinball had virtually shut down. I don't remember the name of the game. Maybe with space fantasy or fantasy. I was like, last game that Williams had made and then they shut the doors. And Luna Castro basically said, we need, you know, X number unit, Larry, tomorrow probably has a better memory than I do. But something like 3,500 or 4,000 to get the doors open again. It was pretty dismal. A lot of people have been laid off and I hadn't been. And Mark Ritchie was working in a game called Sorcerer at the time. And Barry Alzler was working in a game. And I got involved with it and named it Space Shuttle. And Mark Sprenger came down. This is his first game, I remember to do art on it. One to go back and do, you know, four color art process in the back glass. And Mark was having trouble drawing the space shuttle where the tail was looking right. And Larry, tomorrow and I went over to Coise-Rossum Ball, a foam space shuttle. And my back is Barry's office. And Mark was there and we said, here, you just for perspective and we kind of plotted right in the middle of the play field where the ramp was. And next thing you know the game had a toy. So that sort of how the little molded space shuttle toy happened. But, you know, we pretty much told Mike if he had to, that the future of his company on one game, Larry and I baked him to do space shuttle. And Space Shuttle had speech. Eugene Jarvis was back at, I think Stanford at the time working on an MBA. And we convinced Eugene to go back and make some sounds. Obviously Eugene stayed this for Defender. And made a new sound package for us. And we put speech in the game. And, you know, I guess the star was born. The game actually made a lot of money. Now, did you have to get a license for space shuttle? No, there wasn't. We contacted NASA and found out if it was pretty much public domain. So there was no issues there because your reputation as the licensing God is. I mean, it's, it's, you know, I thought this might have been the start of that. Well, I guess it was sort of an illegitimate start of it. Let's put it that way. And then Mike Stroll left Williams and I departed not too long after him. And spent a whole time over at Game Plan. It's a bull when I worked on the Loch Ness Monster, which unfortunately they ran out of money on the flyclops before they got to that game. But it had a ramp and it had speech and had a lot of things that, you know, games didn't have at the time. And then I went to work for a short distance at Gottlieb and for a premier or under Gil Paul, I can tell it's just something sort of a disaster. You know, I had to dramatically different perspectives on what was a modern Kimball machine. And Gary Stern and I ended up starting with Shelley Fax's assistant at the time. In his basement, we were pretty illegitimate. Our company was called Nuko. And we started what became Daddy East, Kimball. We hit both Daddy East and I believe it was Konami at the time looking to make an investment in us. And Daddy, the strategy was it would allow them to kind of smooth out the business when they had a strong video game that would help their strong video game and when they didn't, they would have an ongoing business. They looked at Williams and said, we can be that. So that was sort of how the company started. Now, how did you get, I mean, how did you meet Gary Stern? I mean, you said Gary, of course, of a teenager because my father is one of the biggest distributors of Stern in New Robert Englunds. But actually, Gary kind of came across. He was working on Penn Star at the time with Steve Kirk, who passed away last year. And had seen the product I was working on with Atabola and with his kids kind of talented, I think. So that's how Gary and I started. I mean, I like to joke nobody would hire either of us, so we had to start our own company. And was it, I mean, when you started your own company, did you guys have a lot of money invested or just mostly heart and soul? Well, it was sweat equity. Either of us had very much of the time. I know Gary had come out of his bankruptcy from Stern. I'm not quite sure how much he had, but Ed Pelligrini certainly helped us a lot and he put money up. Gary may have put some of his money and I don't know. I had nothing at the time. And we just worked our butts off and we both went to a little company. What year was this? 1986. At the end of September of 1986, we were incorporated around the somewhere between the first and 10th of November of 1986. We showed our first game. I designed the game Thanksgiving Day. Literally, I was working Thanksgiving Day through the play field or a good portion of it. It was up and playing a couple of weeks later. We bastardized or rape take Williams-Rogue King for parts while we were building our own stuff just to get it up and playing. We had our first game at the trade show that March, which was called Laser War. Originally it was going to be a license of Laser Tag, which of course was a hot toy at that time. But Rolls-A-Wonder didn't want to do a deal, so we just made Laser Tag. Now, the Laser War, you said that you bastardized a Williams-Rogue King to get it running. Is that how the Dede esport system, basically a clone of the System 11 boards that I mean, even the connector numbers are the same. You can literally take a Dede esport system and plug it into a System 11 game. It nearly works almost fine after you switch the game ropes. Obviously, we weren't looking to reinvent the wheel at the time. We were looking to do things that you could do, which is the basic Japanese style of creating them for us. We needed a pop-up, we needed rubbers, we just bought some games and took parts. And people have had protection. Gary and I were sure to stay clear where things were just go for it. We did. Looking back on that, where you kind of mimicked the Williams System 11 board system, was that a mistake or a good thing you think? I mean, I'd look at Stern. Stern was a mimic of the Valley boards. Right. Exactly. You know, look at it with our own original software, but you know, a triad to triad, you know, if you're going to go try and fire off a soul and you give it power and it goes boom. Obviously, we had to innovate and do things because they got stuff like a parallel-lown flip or coil. So we had to develop a solid state flip or coil, which was an improvement on the parallel-lown. And with that bit. So I mean, that's how the world works in business. Was it a mistake? You know, maybe we heard a few people feeling sorry, but you know, that's business. Did Williams, you can frame some things, or just out there in their fair game, they are fair game. Did Williams ever try any legal maneuvers on you? Of course, we had the great Tim Ball lawsuit to the 90s. You know, silly things like, you know, the word multiball, which was only, you know, a copyright, not as multiball, but only as multiball in a particular bond. But, you know, look, if you can't slow your competition down by making better games, we'll throw bombs at them. So we had our share of bombs. I mean, we even have things that, you know, we had vendors that were threatened not to do business with us. You know, certainly those are monopolisistic practices. But, you know, at the end of the day, you know, it's just a Tim Ball machine. And they didn't have the legs to go to distance. Right. So did any of that stuff ever make it to court? No. No, nothing. So you mean they would just threaten and do a little dance. The lawsuit, they were probably settled. But, you know, it was more of a nuisance. And honestly, when the lawsuit happened, we just worked twice as hard to make this mad. Maybe we're just a teeny little company. You got to remember that. One of the things about being a small company, not having a lot of layers of fat, you could do things really fast. And that was one of the things they had a hard time comprehending or understanding. You know, if you sat me in a bowl down, we could design a play field in the day and probably have it running into. You know, the William style of creation was a lot of pontification. You know, a tremendous amount of trial and error. And when you don't have that time, you don't take it. So, yeah, it's kind of interesting. You know, I look back on those days really fondly and I can actually laugh about them. They were an extraordinary time. Was there any particular pattern that was just that, you know, you couldn't live without or you did have to settle with Williams and actually pay them something? No, I think years later, Gary did do the automatic replay for sentencing patterns. But you live without it, sure. Does it really affect your business? Yeah, not too much. Was there anything that was, you know, if you didn't do this, you couldn't make a pinball, nothing. Interesting. I really like to think, you know, they've invented the best mouse trap, but that really was never a hindrance to us. I mean, that's the great thing about the patent system. Somebody comes up with something and they have a patent and they disclose their methods of creating whatever they're making. And if you're clever and if you're smart, you'll work hard and come up with ways to go around that and create the next better thing. So in this first series of games, you have the Laser War, the Secret Service, the Time Machine, the Playboy 35th anniversary. Was there any that was, was like you were really particularly proud of that, you know, that you really just worked your butt off at and in the end of the days said, man, this thing's awesome. Well, you know, I think we have lots of beautiful babies along the way. I would have to think my favorite games of the era is, I mean, certainly, laser works if they quintessentially wonderful pinball. And pretty, pretty simple roles. They were nice and deep, but not, you know, with the crazy depth that they have today. You know, it's a fun game to play. It was fun to lock up the balls and play multiball. I had a, you know, a really good hook to it. In terms of the game that I was particularly proud of, I think was the game that changed the company or saved the company or made a truly legitimate, had to be fansmody opera. I mean, that was a game we really needed. The solid, it worked well. The beautiful Paul Faris' art was stunning. The sound was great. I mean, that game was just a milestone for us. Other games that were really important, Simpson, was really an important product for us because it was the first time we got over like 50, 500 games, maybe the 50, 500 and one Simpson. And that game really legitimized the company. I mean, it really, really made us a true contender. And then, let's see what other games that I, you know, I loved Monday Night Football. I mean, it was a crazy apparatus of not going to ball through the goal post. I mean, I'm not sure it works so well, but there's a lot of fun when it worked. And then, other games that I have to say are, Mawstone games are really collectible. Certainly Star Wars and Leaple Leaple Leaple and Jurassic Park, those three games combined. We did close to 30,000 games. I mean, I think we did 9,500, Jurassic's and 10,400 Star Wars and 10,350 Leaple Leaple Leaple that one year the company made 20 or 29,000 machines. And then, certainly, you know, the era after that I was particularly proud of even my favorite games. I loved the Space Jam, it was just the terrific game to play and let's think what else. Well, I love Starship Troopers, and I was just probably the most the best rules that we ever made. And then, the game, they're really kind of cold-cocks the industry. I mean, Williams was coming out with the hair robot, Tim Baut 2000, and it didn't make nearly as much money as South Park. I mean, South Park showed what a really strong title, a toilet, a Mr. Hanky, and a great title could do. And that came out earned, you know, the Tim Baut 2000 probably by double. It's a lot of reports I recall seeing. And then, of course, Kerry's going to make some great products. I mean, Austin Powers was a good game and he's been great with pirates of the Caribbean, you know, for a little while he's straight away from licenses and then realizes routes and came back. Yeah, on the license thing. The glow balls and the black light, and that was kind of a funny gimmick. You mean on the Viper? Yeah. But, I mean, we made a lot of products. We made a lot of games. I mean, I probably was involved with 80 pinball machines. Now, back and up, your first three games, the Laser War, the Secret Service and the Time Machine were all unlicensed games. You know, they were all unlicensed. They were. And then you went to the Playboy 35th anniversary and that seemed like that really set you up for the licensing. Right, that Monday night football and then we decided licensing heavily and it really helped our product sales. And that was just, it was that, was that something that you enjoyed? Was it getting the license? Oh, sure. You know, I have to the stage still wonderful relationships. I mean, if you look at the world of IGT before I left them back in August from a day to day standpoint, I mean, IGT heavily leveraged off of my relationships, you know, within the Hollywood community. And look, if you're going to buy a doll, a doll of a mouth, you're going to buy a Mickey Mouse, a doll, or are you going to buy a generic rat? You know, licensing is a big player and all kinds of consumer products because people are comfortable with what they know. Certainly from Gary Stampling, it's a very important part of his business today because a lot of the games he makes goes to people's homes. And that's why you don't see a lot of our product even on the street today. I mean, you see a lot of you look up Tim Ball stuff and a lot of our games goes to the titles and it up in people's basements. Now, was there any particular theme that was or license, I should say that was, you know, really had a good story behind it. It was really fun to get or interesting or difficult to get? Since we had a great time, I mean, we were there so far on the front edge of that title. And then a football was a lot of fun because I got to go to almost the money and a football game in every city for a year from a personal standpoint. In terms of, you know, we were very happy to get Jurassic Park. I mean, Williams wanted it desperately. And again, our relationships that we had with studios were more important than the size of our company. Star Wars was another one. Star Wars, we were like licensed ILM. It was going to be an industrial light and magic machine where it was going to have Willow and Indy and Star Wars. You know, Star Wars was a dead property at the time. People were not doing a lot of Star Wars trade and then top trading company, IGT or actually, what am I saying, IGT, a daddy east of the time. And then Lewis Jake Lube, which was a master toy license before Kenner, all of that hated to George. We think there's something here. Let's go back and try and reintroduce the brand. And in doing that, we really put Star Wars back on the map. Now, was there, you've also kind of got this reputation as a guy, the man of the paper David Hankin. Tell me about that. Oh, well, you know, I'm not the greatest using CAD or some of the other things that the guy said, but boy, you know, my creative times are normally never during 8 to 5 was late at night or coming out of the shower or whatever. There are a lot of games that are designed whether they be novelty games or slot machines or symbol machines that started as a Joe Doodle and went from there. You know, at any game I ever designed, there's a basic concept of what it should be and then it went from there. I mean, it was never just, you know, parts and a shoe box shaking around. The paper David Hankin certainly, you know, space shuttle was designed on the back of a menu from a place called Grover's Oyster House on Irving Park. And Larry Tomar, Eugene Jarvis and I went out to Dimit one night. That's where that idea came from. That's where it started. But yeah, there's probably, there's probably been more than my fair share of Doodles on napkins that became games. So guilty is charged. I think it's great. What's auto cad good for nothing? I wish we had had it when we started. I mean, everything we originally did was on Valumman. It was written with paper and, you know, it was amazing. Now, when, when you got the financing and went ahead and called the company Data East, how much control do they leverage over you guys? It's tremendous. No. Was it difficult? No. I mean, it was difficult at the beginning when we were succeeding. So why? Now, why did they pull out and say, come in? Well, I think they had, and again, I don't remember the story for Scythes like. And so part of this is here, say part of this is Foggy memory. I believe at the time, Mr. Fukueda had leveraged the company heavily from into the 8 or 16-bit market and as the consumer business changed. He kind of got himself caught with, well, you know, Owing Money to Sega. And I think we were part of the, what was put up as capital for the purchase of some of that home stuff. And when that didn't pan out, I think, you know, we were what was given as partial payments to that cad owed. Remember, we were a profitable company at that time. And was the management of Sega easier or harder to work for than did he? Oh, they were different. You know, the biggest problem with when Sega took over, you know, Sega was an interesting company that has a big large multinational Japanese company. You know, every year they start the business plan with we want to reduce our expenses by 10%. But I do the bill of material by 10% we want to reduce your staff by 10% well. That's good. The first year doesn't work so well the second year and it's really a bear by the third year. So they really weren't investing in the business. Though they were invested in the business, you know, our bill of material, if you go back and look at the game like Agile, I mean, there are just simply no parts in that product. I mean, it was a ramp of plastic head, a couple of pop-up numbers and a few things, but honestly, truly, it wasn't good. It wasn't where we really needed to be. But one game that you really did pull the rabbit out of the hat on that was a Sega brand name was Apollo 13. Now that game's got some money in it. Well, then that was right at the transition. That was right at the company was being purchased by Sega. You could see I think actually there may have been, you know, played there may have been two different back glasses. There was maybe a data east and a Sega version of it. And that game was, well, you know, I've made so many games. That game was simply a technological toward a force. I mean, if you've played it and you've had off 13 balls at one time, I mean, it certainly was the most amazing, unique, multiball experience that there ever has been. And the game originally had two spinning discs right in the middle of the playfields, not only to get the 13 balls, but those balls were just flying all over the place. So that was a very, very exciting product to make. It really was. It was really a thrill. Great game. I own that game and people come over and they say, what do you mean 13 ball, multiball and I set it up for them. And then the thing clicks off and they're like, oh my God. Yeah. It's a really exciting thing. And I think another game that we did which had a really fantastic device and I was designed by John Borg. And that was Twister. Twister had that spinning disc that had the magnet in the middle. And then it started to spin in the balls that go as a cluster and they kind of explode like a little neutron bomb and balls would go everywhere. You know, I'm very proud of the accomplishment of starting a football company from scratch. I don't think anybody ever made one that succeeded. The last of it as long as us could accept should maybe the Gottlieb's or Maloney with Valley. And I think that we're the only company left in really the world. 20 years strong. You know, it's just the, it's something that I really have a tremendous amount of pride in. Now, how much influence did Williams, you know, because at the time, Williams was pretty much the industry leader as far as sales go. Yet, how much influence did they have like on your design? Like I've heard people make comments like, you know, like last action Terminator, for example, where it's kind of a, you know, it looks a lot like Terminator 2 or Batman Forever looks a lot like Star Trek. You want to be general and go G.O. Walnut shot that makes an orbit, you know, in particular to any particular game. You know, we had a big bruja over lethal weapon and Terminator. Well, someone said, oh, well, you know, this shot goes and makes a loop and that shot goes and stops at the top corner. Okay, well, are they the same shot or are they different? You know, you know, there are only so many places you can put a loop shot. There are only so many places you can put the sweet shot of a ramp. But, you know, if, like any good company, you know, if people are buying double bacon cheeseburgers, you probably don't want to make double bacon fishburgers. And, you know, we weren't in the business. You know, some people go, oh my god, this is an art form and this is this and that and everything else. It's real simple. You know, if there's a timball, like, thought machines, like automobiles, like clothing, it became a style business. And if ramps are the style, then you make games with ramps. If some of these make any game that's got a long ramp shot, you know, certainly we all drafted on each other. I mean, certainly when Williams had a really successful game and they couldn't fill market. Everybody else was selling market behind them. Got lead did that with stuff like the Miami vice repotty two years ago. You know, it just depends where the market's going. Did we look at the market and go where things are? You betcha. You know, you'd have to be a moron, not to. You know, if Ford and Chrysler spent a little more time looking at what the Japanese were doing, they probably make better cars today. So, you know, if someone wants to go cheese, some of our things could have been derivative because somebody had a long ramp shot and we had a long ramp shot. Well, guilty is charged. We're in business and the company's still in business and still making good fresh unique product today. But to say, you know, something is tried as this game has a loop shot and that game has a loop shot. You know, give your 50 games to have a loop shot. It's at least not. Let's really talk. We'll be back after this message with Joe Kimmichol from DVE slash Sega slash Stern to tell us some more about his pinball stories. Hey, George, I just had to call and tell you about this really great magazine I got. It's called the Ping-Gang Journal and it's the only magazine dedicated to a pinball. It's got great articles and interviews with designers and everything. No, George, I won't lend you my copy. Who knows where you'll take it to. You're going to have to go to PingGangGenerg.com and get your own subscription. But George, the guy says that each issue will give mail whenever he feels like it. What's the deal with that? All right, George, I got to go. Got to call Elaine and tell her, I can't believe how good this magazine is. Okay, we're back with Joe Kimmichol from DVE slash Sega slash Stern. Now, another thing that you guys really innovate it was the Dot Matrix display. I mean, you were way ahead of the curve, way ahead of Williams. That's for sure. We've done the bigger one early on. Again, it was, and actually the Dot Matrix display almost made its premiere on Simpson, which was the game before Checkpoint. We almost did that. We just, you know, the management of data each of the time had said to me in Gary, you better be right about this and a better work because your feet are in concrete. And, you know, if you're wrong, it's going to hurt and we're going to throw you in the river, so you know, they told us. So to be a little more cautionary, Gary and I, or say a little more caution, Gary and I, tell back another game to make sure it really, really, really worked. And, you know, eventually we had to go to the larger displays because everybody else went there, but we did it first. And we were pretty excited about it. And Checkpoint, you know, it's another, you know, again, your jogging, my memory of all this different product. You made so many games. Checkpoint was a fantastic game. And where Checkpoint was unique, Checkpoint was the first game that had the plunger and the auto shooter. Checkpoint was a bunch of on-to-play. But when multiball happened because you didn't have to worry about reloading balls and re-locking balls, and everybody's state stayed the same. When it was time to have multiball play, you know, the game got excited, screamed the red line, and kicked all those balls into the play field. That was a feature we innovated, got patented that actually I think we licensed to Williams. And a lot of people used for a long time. And that one feature truly changed as a game designer and for all game designers how they came up with rules and how games worked and behaved. No. Did the dot matrix display thing really expand the time that you needed to bring a game to market? A little bit. I mean, we had to create art for that, but we were doing stupid art in 16 segments anyway. It made more programming evolve certainly. I did expand it, not that much. I mean, if somebody says it did, I don't know. It wasn't that dramatic. I mean, we sometimes got a little carried away or did video loads or stuff like that. What dot matrix did it do two things? It obsolete it. Everything before it. And that there were several growth cycles in the history of pinball. You know, you went to from lights on the back glass to score drums. From score drums to a numeric display, from numeric displays to out the numerics. And in each one of these opportunities, a couple of things happened. First off, the score expanded. Right? You know, all of a sudden you went from six to seven digits. All those other games you couldn't score a million on. So they were really obsolete almost overnight. The dot matrix display did that too. It really took all the combauser in the market at that point in time. Made them obsolete. Now, tell me about some of these one off games. Like you did an Aaron Spelling's game and you did some other one off. What was the history behind those? Well, the one off game we did for Joel Silver was a favorite to Dick Donner because we were doing a tale from the crypt. And we ended up getting the lethal weapon licenses. Nobody ever thought Mel Gibson would give us likeness to a game and Dick Donner kind of well sort of twisted his arm. Aaron Spelling's thing was probably something we should have never done. It was after the Joel Silver game was in the variety magazine or premier magazine. Candy Spelling said she really wanted it done for her husband. And we came up with a ridiculous number like a quarter of a million dollars to base the game. And she came back and said, where should I send the check? So, should we have done it at the time? Nah, which was a waste of our resources and our energy and our time. My wife ended up with a part of Melrose Place, which was kind of fun. And you know, one of those things just sort of happened as life went along. And it was the right thing at the time that came back at it now was probably a stupid thing to do. Now, what about the mad and the richy rich? Richy richy again was part of that whole Joel Silver relationship. But we made that for the movie and it was while we were doing lethal weapon and other things with them. Man magazine, we were going to do a mad machine. We had started to develop it. It was going to have sort of like a Rudy face on it. I actually have the backlash for it still. And Gary got very afraid that it wouldn't have any appeal in Europe. And we killed the product. So that's the history behind that. Now, what about mini-vipers and irons and woods? Well, many vipers started out as a product again to go, you know, is there any validity to pinballs or too big or too heavy? And obviously, after we made it, we realized now it wasn't worth doing. And irons and woods was again another concept of something I was screwed around with to try and come up with another way to have a different type of role set that plates sort of the skin's golf game, you know, with the strains of all the stuff like golden teagoth. We were trying to see if we can come up with something that worked. It was an interesting concept. I mean, it's an interesting game, it was very attractive. But at the end of the day, it really wasn't the right thing for us. But, you know, we were trying. There's going to be a little R&D in the, you know, the goes with the D. There's the need to be some R every now and then. Now, was mini-viper any sort of reaction to William's safe cracker? Sure was. So we didn't think that cracker was done right. We thought it was a little too stubby and everything else. But at the end of the day, when we created it and we took it out into the field, the operator didn't care and the player didn't care. And, you know, Williams was off base and we realized it quickly. So what we did, we actually used it as a test for the viper theme to see if the viper theme would carry. And, viper was one of the first games we tried to take to the home marketplace because there were, you know, a lot of viper owners, they had viper inventions and we figured, well, maybe we can try and expand our market down. We know Williams had had some success selling some of the Corvette games, Corvette owners. So, and the viper owners were a little more loyal and had a little more money. So, it worked a little bit. Kind of open-carries eyes after the home development. On last action here all, did you have to work with Arnold Schwarzenegger at all? We did. And was it easier hard to work with? It was very nice. The tape kept getting bigger and bigger in the back glass. But, you know, that was one of those things. The script was great, but the director was great. Everything looked great. The movie just sucked. But, those are the risks you take. We thought we had the two big movies of the summer. And we have one. Well, the Jurassic Park, I mean, that's actually, I mean, not only a great theme, but that game came out really well. It was a great game. And the dinosaur that ate the pinball was, again, another real marvel. You know, we had a few technical problems early on with the real version of it. And to go back and have a spring to it because the motors could not handle how much use it did. But it was a really fun game to play. Graphics are great. The movie ever played where you got down to the meltdown mode. The game kind of just has this crazy nutty. And that was the first game that had a six ball draw. Again, you know, we were innovating ahead of everybody. Now, Ed, Ed, no, I don't know if I could say his name right. Ed, so Bula, what was, I mean, he came from game plan, but he had been around me in pinball a long time, right? Sure, he was at Chicago coin and Ed just passed away back in November. And it was just a wonderful friend and a great mentor. And, you know, if it wasn't for Ed, I don't think Stern pinball would be in business today. I mean, he saved us. Was he like the guy that turned, you know, your paper placemats into reality? Most of the time. I worked with Joe Buster once or twice and John Bork once or twice. And I worked with the guys to tweak their games too. But Ed and I were sort of a gang, you know, I draw something up and you go, okay, here's what we can make out of it. So we went back and forth a lot. We had a great relationship. He was one of the greatest men I ever knew. When you were working at Williams and then you went to D.D. East and you started this company and you were, you know, basically, you're working in their back. You're working in their backyard and in their product line. I mean, did that stress relationship with any friends that you had over there? All of a sudden. Yeah, we put it in again and every now and then you know, you call somebody up and go, hey, I need a rubber for the flippers because we don't have any restarting the company and you know, the bag would find their way to you. You know, look, we were all just trying to make Tim Balls. You know, the big guys at the top of the companies, you know, got their underwear in a bundle. And then, you know, I mean, you know, really long before Pat Waller had a relationship with Williams. He was helping me and Gary build our first game. When Larry had had taken a hiatus from Williams, he was helping. You know, and it's funny you look at all the guys today like Steve Ritchie and Pat Waller and all the ex-Williams and Gottlie people that are all employed by this company. It didn't turn out so bad for any of them, I guess. You know, again, you know, being young, being excited at the time, I guess there were a lot of emotions from a lot of people. Most of it pretty much unfounded. Now, how did you find, you said Pat Waller was helping you? How did you find him because his first game at Williams was like 1988? So this was prior to that? Yeah, Pat, Larry and I were all in a bowling team. So we knew Pat from there. It was Pat. It was Larry on a game in his basement. It was Pat, always in the pinball? Creative game designer, I have immense respect for his skill. Was he always in the pinball or you guys kind of dragged him into it? Well, I think he was always in the pinball, but he had done video games and other things before. But Pat's a really, really brilliantly talented guy. I mean, his new game, Family Guy, I think is probably the best thing he ever did. I think it's really outstanding. Yeah, I agree. I think that's an amazing game. And it's very funny. I think most people haven't realized how good this game is. It really is one of Pat's best pieces of work. Yeah, it's a friend of mine says this and he really, he says it with a totally straight face and he's probably right. He says it's the funniest pinball machine ever made. Yeah, it is. I would think South Park is right there with it, but I think their speech is so expanded with their new hardware system. There's just so much speech and it's just, it's just terrific all the way around. If I could back up back the time machine, what was the thinking behind that game? I mean, I, that game is, I think it's a really cool game. How you've got the chime unit inside in a solid state game, you got the chime unit when you go back to the 50s. You know, the only problem we have with the game, the guy that made our ramp, we couldn't afford to do an injection mold at ramp. So the little ramp on the left, some of them got a little stuck at it some time to time, but that was just a really fun game. And going back to the whole 50s mode, you know, we were playing to the pinball key, which, you know, there are a lot of them at the time. And it was just, it was just like, you know, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I got myself on the back, it was just a clever concept and it was nicely executed as, you know, we, we played the different music from the arrows and gave it a different feel. And you felt like you were accomplishing something as you went back. Now, did you have to license any of that music? Oh, this is all original stuff. Just, you know, you know, in a, in a style. Right. Right. Right. Now, when you say that Monday night football that you went to a bunch of Monday night games for like a year, Uh-huh. I mean, it was the 20th anniversary of Monday night football. So in every city, they had a big press release and a big press party and the pinball machine was it every one of the press parties. And you got to, you got to tag along for that? Yeah. That's one of the little perks of the time. And did you meet the, you know, the, the talent to Monday night? Oh, we did. You know, we met Frank and Alan Dan and, uh, got a chance to meet Pete Rosell. He was the book commissioner of the NFL. Went to the ABC affiliate meeting. It was just, it was just a fun, magical time. Now, did those guys play pinball at all? Well, they all got one, I think. So hopefully they're playing it still. Now, were you pretty, were you pretty liberal about passing out machines to celebrities? Ever. No. You know, Gary's the cheapest guy you'll ever meet. I mean, so it was, it had to have a, a, a reason we had to be getting something for it. I mean, certainly, you know, everyone knows it's a real hoot to be on your own pinball machine. So it was just, uh, you know, how could we best leverage that? Hmm. Hmm. Now, how about you? Did you amass any collection during this time? Well, you know, one point time I had probably about 60 or 70. But when I moved from Chicago to a smaller home in Reno, I donated, I either gave them to friends or I donated most of them to, um, charity. Hmm. I probably have about 10 games left now out of my collection. So what 10 did you keep? Let's see, what do I have? I have a space jam and south park and twister and lost in space and, uh, worship troopers and vipers. You know, you know, a lot of the games close to the end. Um, you know, I love to look, if I look with one of the best ramps, to me, seconded that. That was a great game. But, you know, the problem with timball, unlike posted stamps, you know, it's just really hard to collect a lot of them if you're going to have any room for anything. Right. So, uh, you know, at that point in time, a lot of, there are a lot of nice charities in Chicago that benefit it. And probably, I don't know if you were aware of this. One of the other great things we did with Mike Tuller, we call him Duffy Duffy Tuller and Neil Southkiner, you may not be aware, we created a Sippantuff timball machine. When we had our pinball machines and we had the solid safe flipper, we adapted a Sippantuff apparatus. We had actually made one for Christopher Reeve so he could play pinball by blowing and sucking air on the tube. So, I mean, we did that for the Cincinnati Shriner's Hospital and a bunch of other level things. Those are things people probably aren't aware of. Stuff we did. And how many of those did you make? Hi, three or four. Now, on the solid state flipper, what brought that whole thing about? That was brought about by the loss by, you know, William is giving us notice that they had gotten a parallel wound flipper coil. Right. Everything was series wound before that and then round F-14, they converted to this parallel wound system. And then they got it hadn't on it and we had to invent a better mouth strap and we did. Now, before it happened, if you remember, indistrokes, which is wood brake, and then your coil would burn up. You know, we heard ourselves and helped the operator at the same point. We stopped someone part and we stopped someone coils because we literally stopped burning out. And when the second saw burned out flipper coil in the pit ball machine. You had a recent flipper coil that was ever burned out with the indistroke broke. The 50 volts would go on and it would fry the flipper. Doesn't matter if the indistroke breaks anymore. You never ever have fried flippers. Think about that. When the second saw, we saw fried flipper. Yeah, and a solid state flipper, yeah, it's like next to never. Right. Now, one thing that happened right before the, your solid state flipper was the de-yager flipper. Tell me about that. Well, that was really the same thing. It is the exact same thing. Yeah, it was just done without circuitry. I mean off the board, but that was really the solid state flipper. Right, because it was a single-wound coil. Yeah, single-wound coil, but instead of using a board, you were still kind of using a mechanical method. Right, but the indistroke played hardly any part in it. It was just the indistroke was there just to protect and give you a second way to cut the power off. It was all done with timing with a little circuit board. And that was the advent of the solid state flipper. Now, when Williams went to their solid state flipper, did you guys try and sue them? Pardon me? When Williams went to their solid state flipper system, did you try and sue them? I don't think so. You know, you know, it's not worth what we're going to put in out of business. I don't think so. I don't believe we did anything. We made a license to them. Yeah, I know we call, but you know, at some point in time an agent, Tom started to occur. Now, what brought that about? Well, when we can have enough lawsuits to start to have the thoughts. Or when businesses don't become as important to the core business of a company. Now, why did you leave Sega in the late 90s? Well, you know, I've been there for 16 years at that point in time. And the business was showing, you know, a decline. Gary was talking about buying the company. The company really wasn't big enough for both of us to, you know, take the kind of salary out that we had been drawing up to that point in time. And, you know, I had an offer that was made to me, you know, in the blockchain industry from IGT. And it seemed really interesting to me and intriguing at the time. And I thought, boy, what an interesting opportunity. And sometimes you just got it, just go, you know, I thought my skills would serve me well in a different industry that had a lot of similarities. And that's what I did. So that was a smart move for you? It was a great move. It was a great move. You know, IGT isn't an extraordinary company. It was a great experience for me. It was a great experience for me. And, you know, to this day, Gary and I are very close. And we talk a lot about the Tim Bob business. And I do things I can to help him. And it's just, you know, it was just a wonderful, wonderful experience. Now, are you still at IGT? I am, but I'm in a role as a Chief Creative Officer. I really don't do any day-to-day things any longer. And are you still having fun with it? Yeah, very much. I mean, again, it was a great business. And you know, the company's gone through tremendous growth during my tenure. A lot of good reasons for that. And I like to hope I was part of that growth. And, you know, at this point in time, you know, there are other things I'm looking to do in my career. I'm actually currently writing a Broadway musical. So I guess that's what's next for me. Yeah, because you kind of took the whole licensing theme of the pinball stuff and kind of applied it to slot machines. And that really hit a home run, right? Sure did. And it was the tremendous success in that arena. And then everybody started, you know, following suit. So obviously, you know, it lost some of its luster. But, you know, I had a great run at IGT. It's a terrific company, well-managed. And, you know, can't say no great things about them. Now, when you were at IGT, now you had Williams again as your competition wants more. Except that was the big company this time. Right. But I mean, how did this feel where you were basically deja vu? Oh, it was a hoop. I mean, it was just, you know, we got quite a few chuckles out of it. And, you know, this time I was the 800 pound gorilla. But the great thing about the 800 pound gorilla working with me was, you know, we worked like a very small nimble fast company. So, I mean, it was a pretty lethal combination. I mean, IGT's growth under my tenure was really quite expensive. Yeah, it's kind of interesting because IGT was bringing a lot of lawsuits in the early to mid-90s against Williams for their real slots. And one, better back. You have it in a lot of ways that almost screwed them up because it forced Williams into the like the video's slot stuff. Yeah. And then IGT had trouble in that arena. You know, somehow by Williams doing all of that and them doing William Heck ended up with IGT because they needed me. So, I mean, it's very serendipitous and pretty funny. But at the end of the day, you know, I think there's Daytona in that business these days. And I know Williams and IGT enjoy a really nice relationship as competitors and friends. And for me, it was really kind of fun to be able to go back and, you know, take a few swings at the plate against my old company. And I love Williams. I mean, make no doubt about it. Williams gave me my first real job. I will always be proud to say I'm a Williams alumnus. I learned and I look at Steve Ritchie and Larry Demar and Eugene Jarvis and a real expanded, you know, gang of people that really did so well at Williams under the mic stroll era. And we all learned in this amazing environment. And all of us have gone on to a great level of success. So, what can I say? You know, I'll sing the Willie Fight song. It was a great company. Yeah, yeah. It's really comfortable, circle, because like in 1999, when Larry Demar left Williams and opened LED, then they're basically now working with you at IGT selling their ideas to you guys. Yeah, that wasn't my accident. And Eugene was there for a period of time. You know, look, the talented people in the industry have always kind of clung together. We all recognized the E&A talent that we had at Williams. I mean, the amount of talent that was in that building at one point in time could have been anything, could have been the biggest video game company in the world, could have been the biggest lot company in the world. I don't think the management recognized what was there and drove a lot of the talented people away. But, yeah, it's kind of funny how that happened, isn't it? Yeah, I think it's incredible how it's just like full circle. Yeah. Now, when Williams came out with the pinball 2000, did that catch you guys at DataEast or Sega at the time by surprise? Not at all. I mean, we knew something was coming like that. And we just felt that we would prefer to make a mechanical action pinball. And honestly, the first time I saw it in about 2000, I was pretty sure it was going to fail. You mean it was just too much money? No, too heavy to move. Too heavy to move. It was too heavy to move. I mean, I've never tried to carry one or move one. Oh, yeah, yeah. They're monsters. Impossible. Now, maybe their concept was at the time. You won't have to move it. You'll replace the side and you'll do all these other things. You know, then again, it was dark. It was hard to follow the ball. So, you know, we were pretty happy to put South Park up against it. And at the end of the day, I think our decision was right. I think the other Achilles heel was based on a TC system that was constantly going to be outdated. And it was really an Achilles heel. But, boy, it was a heck of a try. I give them credit for that. It was really a great novelty. I know it was too damn expensive, too. So, you weren't impressed by the system at all? Oh, I was phenomenally impressed. I'm not sure if I had tried it, I could even have made something like that. But, you know, I just don't think it was the right thing to do much of the place. Do you think that... Well, there are eggs in the one basket and unfortunately, in doing that, they killed the rest of the... It should have been an extension to the product line as opposed to all or nothing. And it became all or nothing. You know, Williams never tried to operate on an economy of scale. Williams probably could have been in business. They had called Gary Stern and said, look, we're going to shut down our manufacturing. Let's all use the same parts. You build our games. We'll keep our brand. We'll keep a couple designers. And there could have been a Williams product. But, it was all or nothing. A lot of it goes there. Do you think that Gary's current path is the right path? So, he's doing the right things. Chemical action can buzz where it's at. So, you don't see him changing the display or changing anything, really. Well, I think, you know, he'll eventually, one day, freshen up the cabinet or do something. You know, Gary's problem is copper goes up every year in price. You know, at some point in time, there's nothing left you can take out. You know, there are no slam switches anymore. Okay, you can put one in if you want. But at the end of the day, you run out of place as the cost reduced. And the basic factors are, you know, next time there's a spotted owl that, you know, poops in the woods, you know, wood prices may go up 15%. Or, when there's a hurricane and all of the cost post gets wiped out, also you can't get plywood. And wood prices go up 40%. You know, these are the, the reality is that Gary has to fight with to keep his business intact. You know, he's working on smaller margins all the time. And, you know, he doesn't do it for fun. He does it to make a living as do all the people to work there. Even though they love it in instant art form and everything else you may care to call it. Do you think he can keep it up? Well, as he wants to, you know, I hope at some point in time somebody would keep pockets that truly loves pinball comes in and buys a company from him because, you know, Gary at some point in time is going to want to retire and enjoy his life. I mean, does this take a lot of heart and soul out of Gary? I mean, this whole process. Oh, Gary loves it. I mean, Gary, Gary is Mr. Pinball. He has been his whole life and he will be his whole life. Have you thought of coming back to back to pinball? Well, I'm actually designing a game that's a bull and a few others have all participated in. Kind of a last-to-raw game. That is, was actually designed for the 20th anniversary of the company. It will probably come out for the 21st based on timing and licensing and other things. But no, I wouldn't consider it. My life is somewhere else. It's a chapter so I look fondly back on, but it's just a chapter now. I will always be a founder of the company and I always look fondly on that. But there are other things in my life that I need to do. I've climbed that mountain. Were there any processes during the 90s, like when we were selling these machines, anything that you wish you had done a little differently?

high confidence · Joe Kaminkow: 'every year they start the business plan with we want to reduce our expenses by 10%. But I do the bill of material by 10% we want to reduce your staff by 10%'

  • Space Shuttle (1984, Williams) was designed on the back of a menu from Grover's Oyster House on Irving Park in Chicago

    high confidence · Joe Kaminkow: 'space shuttle was designed on the back of a menu from a place called Grover's Oyster House on Irving Park'

  • Joe Kaminkow's father was a coin-op games distributor who worked for General Fending in Baltimore starting in 1963

    high confidence · Joe Kaminkow: 'my father was a distributor of Coin Operating Games. And in 1963 when I was five years old he went to work at a company called General Fending in Baltimore, Maryland'

  • Mark Ritchie
    person
    Larry DeMarperson
    Barry Ouslerperson
    Pat Lawlorperson
    The Simpsonsgame
    Space Shuttlegame
    Star Warsgame
    Jurassic Parkgame
    The Addams Familygame
    Apollo 13game
    South Parkgame
    Twistergame
    Laser Wargame
    Ed Pelligriniperson
    Clayperson
  • ?

    business_signal: Sega's acquisition of Data East led to cost-cutting cost-reduction strategy (10% annual cuts in expenses, BOM, and staff) that degraded product quality; shift was noticeable in reduced parts count in games like Agile despite continued financial success

    high · Joe Kaminkow: 'every year they start the business plan with we want to reduce our expenses by 10%... they really weren't investing in the business... our bill of material, if you go back and look at the game like Agile, I mean, there are just simply no parts in that product'

  • ?

    product_launch: The Simpsons pinball was Data East's breakthrough commercial success, first game to exceed 50,000 units and legitimize the company as a true market contender

    high · Joe Kaminkow: 'Simpson, was really an important product for us because it was the first time we got over like 50, 500 games, maybe the 50, 500 and one Simpson. And that game really legitimized the company'

  • $

    market_signal: Data East's three major licensed games (Star Wars, Jurassic Park, The Addams Family) shipped approximately 30,000 units in a single year, representing significant market penetration and establishing Data East as viable alternative to Williams

    high · Joe Kaminkow: 'Mawstone games are really collectible... those three games combined. We did close to 30,000 games. I mean, I think we did 9,500, Jurassic's and 10,400 Star Wars and 10,350 Leaple that one year'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Kaminkow articulated pinball design as business/market-driven rather than pure art form; companies follow successful design trends (ramps, loop shots) established by market leaders; game design is derivative by necessity in competitive market

    high · Joe Kaminkow: 'It became a style business. And if ramps are the style, then you make games with ramps... you'd have to be a moron, not to [look at competitor trends]'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Data East pioneered dot-matrix display implementation in pinball (near-premiere on The Simpsons); represented significant technological leap over Williams' mechanical display approach

    medium · Interviewer: 'you guys really innovate it was the Dot Matrix display. I mean, you were way ahead of the curve, way ahead of Williams'; Kaminkow: 'the Dot Matrix display almost made its premiere on Simpson, which was the game before Checkpoint'

  • ?

    manufacturing_signal: Data East System (DCS) boards were reverse-engineered clones of Williams System 11 with identical connectors, allowing cross-compatibility; design choice reduced R&D burden for small startup but drew criticism for lack of originality

    high · Kaminkow: 'the Dede esport system, basically a clone of the System 11 boards... you can literally take a Dede esport system and plug it into a System 11 game... if you're going to go try and fire off a soul and you give it power and it goes boom [you innovate from there]'

  • ?

    design_innovation: Kaminkow employed 'paper napkin' design philosophy with rapid prototyping; Space Shuttle concept designed on menu from Grover's Oyster House; creative ideation occurred outside formal 8-5 work hours, enabling fast iteration and agility vs. Williams' more bureaucratic approach

    high · Kaminkow: 'space shuttle was designed on the back of a menu from a place called Grover's Oyster House on Irving Park... my creative times are normally never during 8 to 5 was late at night'