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Pinball Is Dying Part 3 – Bally-Midway

Silverball Chronicles·podcast_episode·1h 57m·analyzed·Jan 16, 2023
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.038

TL;DR

Bally's 1981 peak to 1983 collapse: merging with Midway, GE mismanagement, and pinball's near-death.

Summary

Silver Ball Chronicles Part 3 explores Bally Manufacturing's decline in the early 1980s, covering the shift from their peak in 1981 (Centaur, 8-Ball Deluxe, Xenon) to the turbulent post-1982 era when the company merged with Midway video games. Hosts David Dennis and Ron Hallett discuss key games (Baby Pac-Man, BMX, Grand Slam, Centaur 2, Gold Ball) and management missteps, including wasteful M&A spending by new GE executives on yachts and theme parks while the video game war chest was squandered, leading to downsizing and near-abandonment of pinball.

Key Claims

  • Bally's class of 1981 (Centaur, 8-Ball Deluxe, Xenon) represented the absolute peak of the company

    high confidence · David Dennis and Ron Hallett discuss this as established fact; they reference earlier episodes covering this era

  • Video games' rise in the early 1980s directly caused pinball's decline due to cheaper cost, lower maintenance, and better reliability

    high confidence · David Dennis explains the market dynamics; corroborated by George Gomez quote about video dominance

  • Bally merged the pinball division with Midway video game division in late 1982, creating Bally Midway Manufacturing

    high confidence · David Dennis states this explicitly as corporate strategy to weather mid-1980s recession

  • In 1982, the Midway division was a $500 million company, bigger than the parent company, yet parent company held purse strings

    high confidence · George Gomez quote describing corporate structure and decision-making power

  • New GE management at Bally squandered Midway's $500M video game war chest on acquisitions: Lancer yachts, Six Flags over America, health clubs, and fitness equipment (Bally Fitness)

    high confidence · George Gomez describes these acquisitions as 'silly stuff' and ineffective diversification strategy

  • BMX (January 1983, 406 units) was the last Bally Manufacturing Corporation game; Ward Pemberton was laid off before it even went into production

    high confidence · David Dennis cites ward Pemberton's TopCast interview; Pemberton confirms he wasn't full-time so no severance loss

  • By 1983, Bally management seriously considered abandoning pinball entirely

    high confidence · Paul Ferris quote: 'There was actually talk at that point of not even doing pinball anymore'

  • Paul Ferris left Bally in 1983 as art department was gutted to skeleton crew of 2-3 people

    high confidence · Paul Ferris quote describing mass departure and downsizing of art staff

Notable Quotes

  • “We're in this horrible mode. We've been bought. Senior management of Bally has changed hands. They brought in a bunch of these GE management guys. They were all about acquisitions...The Midway division was a $500 million company. If you just looked at the Midway division without anything else, they were bigger than the mother company. Yet the mother company was holding the purse strings and calling the shots.”

    George Gomez @ N/A — Explains the corporate dysfunction and power imbalance that led to Midway's war chest being squandered on unrelated acquisitions

  • “The industry in about 1983 was at almost its lowest ebb. They started downsizing a lot of the Bally product. There was actually talk at that point of not even doing pinball anymore.”

    Paul Ferris @ N/A — Demonstrates how dire the situation was for Bally and the pinball industry in 1983; near-death of the pinball division

  • “Almost everybody had gone from the art department. That's when I knew that we could see that the end was coming. It was going to be very, very tough to keep doing the things we had done before...Things can go up, but they also can go down, even if you're doing all the right things. The market is what controls all that.”

    Paul Ferris @ N/A — Art director's perspective on the collapse; illustrates how market forces, not design quality, determined pinball's fate

  • “I got laid off before BMX even went into production...I wasn't under contract, so they weren't losing anything getting rid of me.”

    Ward Pemberton @ N/A — Shows how Bally was eliminating junior staff to cut costs during the downturn; Pemberton designed Bally's last game while being fired

  • “Bally not doing pinball seems almost like blasphemy, doesn't it? Bally is synonymous with pinball, especially back then when they were actually a manufacturer.”

    David Dennis @ N/A — Commentary on how existential the threat to pinball manufacturing was; Bally was the industry standard

Entities

Bally Manufacturing CorporationcompanyBally Midway Manufacturing CompanycompanyMidwaycompanyGeorge GomezpersonPaul FerrispersonWard PembertonpersonMargaret Hudsonperson

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Pinball industry faced existential crisis in 1983: Bally management seriously considered abandoning pinball entirely

    high · Paul Ferris quote: 'There was actually talk at that point of not even doing pinball anymore'

  • ?

    business_signal: GE parent company squandered Midway's $500M video game war chest on unrelated acquisitions (yachts, Six Flags, fitness clubs, Bally Fitness) under misguided diversification strategy

    high · George Gomez quote: 'they went out and bought all kinds of silly stuff' including specific acquisitions named

  • ?

    business_signal: Bally Manufacturing merged pinball and video game divisions in late 1982 to weather mid-1980s recession; consolidated operations in Franklin Park near Chicago

    high · David Dennis explicitly states this merger and its cost-cutting rationale

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Post-1982 games show dramatic creative decline: Grand Slam is stripped-down economy game; Centaur 2 uses repurposed Rapid Fire cabinet reducing backglass size; Gold Ball is gimmick-based rather than gameplay-focused

    high · David Dennis analysis of successive games showing budget constraints reflected in design and artwork quality

  • ?

    event_signal: Chicago Expo 2012 presentation featured Greg Ferris discussing BMX's origins as failed E.T. license that led to in-house artist collaboration

    high · David Dennis cites Chicago Expo 2012 as source for Ferris anecdote

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.354

0:00
Ever notice how ads always pop up at the worst moments when the killer's identity is about to be revealed? During that perfect meditation flow.
0:12
On Amazon Music, we believe in keeping you in the moment. That's why we've got millions of ad-free podcast episodes, so you can stay completely immersed in every story, every reveal, every breath. Download the Amazon Music app and start listening to your favorite podcasts ad-free, included with Prime.
0:33
Hey, y'all. As a growing family, my husband and I love game night, especially when it's Wayfair edition. Let's do it. You've got to name as many Wayfair furniture and decor categories as you can. Ready? Go. Soapboards, bar stools, beds, ottomans, outdoor seating, bookshelves, kitchen tables, garden sheds, mid-century modern lamps. Time. Nice. You got nine out of a lot. Not too bad. Keep practicing by visiting Wayfair.com, where you can shop every style for every home. Wayfair, every style, every home.
1:08
The Pinball Network is online. Launching Silver Ball Chronicles. Am I too loud? I feel like I'm too loud.
1:21
I don't know. It's fine to me. I mean, except for the snowblower. Yeah, that. I don't know if I can help. All right. I guess I'll just have to apologize for it. This is far more important than your snow. Sorry about the sound of the snowblower in the background.

  • Ward Pemberton tried out with the Chicago White Sox in spring training 1983 after being laid off; was released after ~3 weeks without making roster

    high confidence · Ward Pemberton's TopCast interview, quoted by David Dennis as verified source

  • AC/DC LE/Premium models (not Wizard of Oz) were the first production pinball games with RGB LEDs; AC/DC also established Stern's three-tier Pro/Premium/LE model still used today

    high confidence · Correction from listener Ian; David Dennis acknowledges error from previous episode; confirms AC/DC Pro eventually got LED variants too

    • Greg Ferris
    person
    Jim Patlaperson
    Centaurgame
    8-Ball Deluxegame
    Xenongame
    Baby Pac-Mangame
    BMXgame
    Spectrumgame
    Speakeasygame
    Satan's Hollowgame
    Grand Slamgame
    Centaur 2game
    Gold Ballgame
    Silver Ball Chroniclesorganization
    TopCastorganization
    IPDB (Internet Pinball Database)organization
    General Electric (GE)company
    Chicago White Soxorganization
    $

    market_signal: Video game market boom (1980-1983) directly caused pinball decline: cheaper cost, lower maintenance, better reliability, and overwhelming location operator preference drove capital away from pinball

    high · David Dennis describes market dynamics; George Gomez confirms video dominance; Paul Ferris acknowledges 'market controls all that'

  • $

    market_signal: Dramatic production collapse: Centaur (1981) sold 3,000+ units; Centaur 2 (1983) sold 1 unit LE; BMX (1983) sold only 406 units; Grand Slam (1983) sold 1,000 units vs. Baby Pac-Man (1982) 7,000 units

    high · David Dennis provides specific unit sales figures from IPDB showing cliff-like decline

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Mass layoffs and downsizing in early 1983: Paul Ferris and nearly all art department staff departed; skeleton crew of 2-3 remained; junior designers like Ward Pemberton let go before games shipped

    high · Paul Ferris quote about exodus from art department; Ward Pemberton confirmation of pre-production layoff without severance

  • $

    market_signal: Economy game production (Grand Slam 1983) represented cost-cutting response to market downturn: minimal design investment, two-player converted to four-player mid-run to liquidate inventory

    high · Greg Kamik quote via IPDB confirming Grand Slam was deliberate economy production

  • ?

    product_strategy: Production pace slowed dramatically: 5-month gap between Centaur (Jan 1983) and Gold Ball (June 1983), indicating manufacturing slowdown and reduced pipeline

    medium · David Dennis notes unusual gap and connects to overall downturn

  • ?

    technology_signal: Gold Ball's gold-plated ball remained intact 40 years later despite modern plating failures, suggesting 1983 manufacturing standards were superior to contemporary production

    medium · David Dennis observation comparing 40-year durability to modern replating failures

    • 1:36
    It's Canada in the winter, and I'm recording a podcast. You can barely hear it. Okay, yeah. But as soon as I enhance the audio, it'll come out. It'll be just terrible. Aww. Yeah. But that's how she rolls. More editing. Yeah, that's f***ing great.
    1:52
    Thank you. Hello, everyone. I'm David Dennis, and this is Silver Ball Chronicles. And with me is Ron. Got to shovel that snow. Hallett, what's up, fella? How's it going? You're shoveling too, I hear. I am. I apologize, everybody, in case you hear snowblowers in the background. Because we just went through a big snowstorm, and my neighbors are oot and boot blowing their snow. We're in the Northeast, though. We have snow. That's how it goes. So what have you been doing? I guess you hosted the bells and chimes at level zero. Yeah, yesterday. Yeah, how'd that go? Went well. Did Bruce Nightingale place really high on that? Well, he's not a bell, so no. He wasn't here, no. Oh, that's a shame. But, you know, you can listen to Bruce on my other podcast, the Slam Cell Podcast. Yeah, super good, great podcast. Great podcast. 50% of it better than the other 50%. Okay. Yeah. Scooby-Doo was also announced. Spooky pinball, Scooby-Doo. Killer license, that's what they know how to do. License in art. Dead silence.
    3:37
    Oh, I'm sorry. Scooby-Doo, where are you? Ruh-roh. Oh, I can't really do any Scooby characters, I'm sorry. I joined in on the Pinside Secret Santa this year, like I do every year. Are you in on that, Ron? What's that? No, so basically on the pinball website, the pinball website, Pinside, you can sign up for a Secret Santa gift giveaway, and there's like a $30 limit, and they'll pair you up with somebody else in your country or area, and you send them some Christmas gifts based around their pinball machines or their interests.
    4:20
    It always is very fun this year. I sent my package out to Upper Canada, which is over in the GTA, the Greater Toronto Area. Loads of fun. And I also got just a wonderful, heartwarming gift. I got a little Lego James Bond DB5 and some James Bond playing cards. This person really creeped me. They knew exactly what my interests were. So a great thank you. But you don't partake. I'm not typically on Pinside, so I was unaware of said thing. This is probably the best thing all year that Pinside does. The best thing Pinside. It's very heartwarming. It warms the cockles of my heart. So thank you to my Pinside Secret Santa, although you probably don't listen to this. I guess we should do a update. We have sold out over on Patreon. You can swing on over and say hello at patreon.com slash silverballcronkles. We want to say welcome to our new patrons. We've got William has joined us last month. But no one else can join because we're sold out. No, we have sold out. Oh, we have sold out. Oh, yeah, I got confused what you meant there. So we've got Brian D. Thank you for joining us, Brian, in Garrison T. And I don't know if I thanked Adam D. and Tony V. last month, but thank you so much for joining us over at patreon.com slash silverballchronicles. for $3 a month, no big commitment. You can become a pro-crony to say thank you to us. No major perks there, just a thank you. At $6 a month, this is the tier that matters, Ron, the big one, the premium cronies, where you get a free sticker after three months, access to our private Discord chat room with all the secret back channels and rumors, have your questions take priority on our podcast, and you may even vote on some upcoming. This is the big one. Early ad-free access to Silver Ball Chronicles. When the episode is ready to go, you are the first to get it without all of the annoying bits and pieces throughout the episode about a week early. Our top-tier cronies are the elitist cronies, and they get all of the same perks. But after three months, they get a Silver Ball Chronicles t-shirt. Just to let everyone know, even I don't get an ad-free version. You don't. And I'm on the show. You hate this show. You're on this show for the t-shirt, a free t-shirt that I gave you. That's all you needed in exchange. Quite frankly, you carry the show, so I kind of need you. Aw. I have a t-shirt? Or does my dad have the t-shirt? You gave the t-shirt to your dad? I think so. God, you hate me. Yeah, I don't think I have a Silver Ball Chronicles t-shirt. Actually, that brings me to the next thing, my friend. We have commissioned a very well-known pinball artist to do us a new logo and t-shirt design. We hopefully will get that out sometime in January because the artist is quite busy. Oh, this time of the year, wink wink. We're excited to bring that out for everybody. We have used our Patreon money and then some of my wife's money to pay for this artist. So thank you to all the patrons for helping us out on that. Swing on over to silverballswag.com, click on the Silverball Chronicles logo, and check out all of our hoodies, mugs, and design choices. If you're a Canadian and you don't want to pay all of the shipping and possible duty from the shirts, shoot us an email at silverballchronicles at gmail.com. Shout out to Mike from British Columbia who picked up a shirt last month. I shipped it out to him. And it smells of maple and leather-bound books because it came directly from me.
    8:33
    Ron, we've got some corrections from the last episode. I dropped the ball quite a few times here. Oh, fail. Some of them are actually quite embarrassing.
    8:42
    Where can people send corrections to? They can send that over to silverballchronicles at gmail.com. Ah. Yes, Ben M. did some follow-up. He sent over quite a few emails, some of them to do with the patent information on some of the older pinball stuff from that post-war era and solid-state era. Very Targus was one of the things that he sent over about that, as well as he pointed out that we didn't spend very much time on Gottlieb. Why is that, Ron? It's because you hate Gottlieb. Well, Gottlieb were the leaders in the industry, but they didn't necessarily do everything first, I guess so I mean they did things like you know flippers and they had the spinners and things like that but it wasn't specifically David Gottlieb that like sat up and came up with everything that being said we will have a deeper dive in the sort of Gottlieb wedgehead 1960s era stuff it's just a matter of time before we get around to that it's a lot harder to find my own content and primary sources so sources of the people that were there at that time as well as some of the sources that I was able to gleam from that area. They don't spend a whole lot of time on the content from the last episode. The pinball degenerate himself, Joe Cherovino, he pointed out in the last episode I made a joke about Vienna, like North Carolina or something, and I said it was in Italy. Well, he points out that Vienna is in Austria and not in Italy. which is actually quite embarrassing because I did actually know that so that's a bummer you can do this one if you want because this is embarrassing for you because you should have known this one oh this is embarrassing for me yes Ian points out that Wizard of Oz was not the first game with RGB LEDs that's what we said it was Wizard of Oz now they were the first one to show a pinball machine with RGB LEDs but they weren't the first production yeah because it took them like another year to actually come out with the game from the first time they showed it at a show. So ACDC was actually the first one. Yeah, specifically the LE Premium model in the new Stern Design Philosophy. Which you would think I'd know, being I have one. Oh, my. From that run, from the original Premium 2012 run. Yes. So I have failed. He also pointed out that there was a game called New Canesta, which was from some random European manufacturer that had a very low, small production run that actually had some RGB LEDs. But, you know, when we talked in our last episode, we were a little more, we tried to tighten up kind of, well, it had to be an actual, like, larger run production for us to sort of consider it. But granted, again, we are not the ultimate, you know, authority of pinball history, specifically with a co-host like me, Ron. But ACDC was the first game that they did their three models, the Pro, the Premium, and the LE, which Stern has been doing ever since. But the Pro just had regular incandescence. But the production run was so long, and they did so many different runs of ACDC, they eventually had a Pro run with LEDs. Really? Yeah, and a swinging bell. The original Pro just had the static bell. Yeah, there's so many. If you go to IPDB.org, great resource, you'll see there's at least six or seven different editions of ACDC. The topic today, this is a topic which we have revisited quite a few times. It is the Pinball is Dying series. Your favorite series. We're around the holidays. We're supposed to be in a good mood, and you're going to do this? That's right. I'm going to do a topic which is all about destroying something. Oh. And it's usually the hopes and dreams of anybody who wants anything slightly different from the status quo. So status quo, weren't they? They were the first band at Live Aid.
    12:48
    I'm pretty sure they were the first band. That's like their answer to a trivia question. Perfect. There you go, everybody.
    12:57
    This ongoing series is made to depress and delight all of our listeners. And what do I mean by that? Well, the pinball industry and the hobby around it has always been on fragile footing. It has ups and downs which during its history have swung violently. Brilliant minds have come and gone in pinball. Many have been crushed by the emotional weight of competition or tempted away by actual jobs with less stress from impending layoffs. But pinball has always endured. This is the happy part, Ron. It has carried on. Great designers held on. Some went away and some returned. With every death spiral, pinball kept chugging along. So join us again this month as we talk Pinball is Dying Part 3, Bally Midway in the 1980s. As David Dennis goes for an Academy Award. That was deep.
    14:03
    You know, the peak of Bally, and we talked about this way back in the archives in our original sort of earlier episodes. Bally's class of 1981 was really the absolute peak, 80-81. Isn't that right? Yes, that is right. What did they bring? What were some of the top sort of things that happened in 80-81?
    14:28
    Centaur, 8-Ball Deluxe. Frontier, if we want to go back to 1980, because I just love Frontier. Xenon, not an amazing player, but a stunning art package, a great sound package. Really cutting-edge stuff. Well, by 1981, the tumble had started, and this was due to the fact that all the money was rushing into video. Video was cheaper, it had less maintenance, it was easier to do, and the game just went on and on and on and on. where pinball had stuck balls, it had production issues, it had flippers that would stop working, all of that stuff. That tumble really started to pick up speed in 1982.
    15:16
    You remember Spectrum, right, Ron? I remember Spectrum. Margaret Hudson, the artist on that pinball machine, would say that it was her baby. She also did the art on 8-Ball Deluxe, but of course, Paul Ferris did most of the art direction of 8-Ball Deluxe. She just drew the art. This was the machine that she had total free reign on. A beautiful machine, but a terrible player. What do you think? Was it a good player?
    15:43
    You're saying it as fact. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I gotta say, when it comes to the class of 81, it doesn't stack up to those games. It's masterminds. Yeah. The code was where it was at. In an extremely complicated... Well, it has the saucer that you can just keep hitting over and over and getting clues, which kind of defeats the purpose. But the actual masterminds part is... It's going to go over most people's heads, I think, playing it. The rules. Yeah, I get you there. But beautiful pin.
    16:18
    Wonderful to look at. An absolute stunner. Looks good, I think, in any lineup. And very talkative. It talks a lot. One of the few major talkers sort of in this era when it started to go away. So after Spectrum's 994-unit sadness release here, we had Speakeasy, which had two different versions. There's the domestic version of Speakeasy with 3,000 units and Speakeasy 4, the export unit, with 1,000. So let's talk 4,000 units. So the turbulence is beginning. We haven't fallen off of a cliff here, Ron, but there is turbulence. Speakeasy 4 has got to be rare because even I haven't seen one. If you've got one of those in Europe, it's probably worth millions. The last great hit, the last greatest hit of Bally Manufacturing Corporation was, and this is an odd one, Baby Pac-Man from 1982, 7,000 units. so we're still holding it down here isn't that the combo video game pinball machine that was now we'll talk about this some other time but uh you know you've got a small play field with a with a pac-man sort of component in the video head part of it you know it's not quite pinball it's not quite video but it speaks to the brand that was pac-man in the 1980s it was just an absolute license to print money. But the last Bally Manufacturing Corporation game was BMX. You know BMX, Ron? Yes. The bike thing. Yes. It is a biking theme where today we would call it X Games. This is January of 1983. It sells 406 units. Designed by Ward Pemberton. We'll remember him, Ron, from fathom. Art by Greg Ferrer's Kevin O'Connor, Margaret Hudson, Pat McMahon, and uncredited software. So at the Chicago Expo 2012 presentation, Greg Ferrer stated that the game started out as E.T. Remember that movie? Yes. Phone home. But they couldn't get the license. So then the four in-house artists collaborated on the game. Greg Ferrer did the back glass. Kevin O'Connor did the Playfield, Margaret Hudson did the plastics, and Pat McMahon did the cabinet. Yeah, so this was an all-hands-on-deck, let's get this thing done. But it only sells 406 units. So again, this turbulence in the early 1980s, they had a hit of 7,000 units, and then they couldn't get 400 units out the door. 4,000 units, but they're hitting this. It's really kind of a rough bit. But, of course, we remember Ward Pemberton from Fathom fame. He designed Bally Manufacturing Company's last pin while he was still a junior associate designer. And this was under Jim Patla. He didn't even have a full-time contract. So at this time, they were kind of keeping people on junior roles, except for those senior team members like Jim Patla and Greg Freras and guys like that. So Ward says, I got laid off before BMX even went into production. It was just a very down time at Bally. I wasn't under contract, so they weren't losing anything getting rid of me. A couple of guys there felt really bad that I was laid off. Jim Patla was one of them. Yeah, so the cuts are starting, right? Things are in a bit of an upheaval, so you've got to find efficiencies. You have to cut the fat, right? And unfortunately, because Ward wasn't a full-time employee, they were able to sort of cut him out easily. And he is very aware of that. A lot of Ward's comments come from his really wonderful appearance on TopCast in the early 2000s. Well, where did Ward end up? This is an amazing story. Well, Ward says, you know what I did? I worked out for a while, and then I got a tryout with the White Sox, the Chicago White Sox, in 1983. They signed me up, and I went down to spring training and then got released. Never officially made the roster. I think I was only down there for about three weeks. It was another exciting time in my life, you know. I had a shot at the White Sox. That's amazing. Isn't that amazing? That's pretty cool. So don't play Ward Pemberton in the company softball game. You want him on your team. Exactly. Draft him first. Well, so from 1932 to 1983, Bally was considered the Bally Manufacturing Corporation. But no more. The end has come. This turbulence of the post-1981, class of 81 era has come to an end with a significant change in Bally Manufacturing Corporation. It is now known as Bally Midway Manufacturing Company. So what's Midway? The new era has begun. Well, I mean, from the late 1970s through the late 1980s, Midway was the leading producer in video games in the United States. At this time, Midway was licensing and distributing in the United States Pac-Man from 1980, and its sequel, which was huge, Miss Pac-Man in 1982. Arcade games were on a massive high through 1980 and 1983. You can see, when you look at all of the information on IPDB and through some Google searches, is that pinball really started to fall off a cliff, and Midway became Bally Midway Manufacturing when Bally merged the pinball division with the video game Midway division in late 82. This was a corporate strategy to save money and to weather the recession of the mid-1980s. Do you remember that time, Ron? Were you aware of these changes in pinball and arcade? I was like 10 years old. I don't remember these changes. And where I was, there wasn't that much pinball. It was mostly video games. So there were three major games that were released in that year, one of them including Satan's Hollow from George Gomez. I love that game. It was the first game to feature the new brand of Bally Midway. So George Gomez says, We're in this horrible mode. We've been bought. Senior management of Bally has changed hands. They brought in a bunch of these GE management guys. They were all about acquisitions. It was the buzzword of the 80s. They basically took and squandered the video game war chest. In 1982, the Midway division was a $500 million company. If you just looked at the Midway division without anything else, they were bigger than the mother company. Yet the mother company was holding the purse strings and calling the shots. These GE guys wanted to buy, and they went out and bought all kinds of silly stuff. Mergers and acquisitions, right? If you're not buying anything, you're dying. So they spent a lot of time there. Now, George Gomez was not in pinball at this time. You know, George Gomez was not in the higher echelon of Midway at the time, like he is now at Stern Pinball. He did have a lot of insight because he was in sort of a middle management design role. And that's where a lot of these quotes come from. What is GE? It's General Electric. It is GE, okay. So what did management buy with all of the Midway video game money? They bought Lancer yachts. They bought six flags over America. And health clubs and fitness health equipment. Now, Bally Fitness. This is terrible, terrible. So basically the idea was that Bally Midway was an entertainment company. So they tried to find all these different ways to be entertainment. Well, going with your family to Six Flags is entertainment. Working out is entertainment. You know, rich people are entertained by fancy yachts. And when you're a, you know, a big deal GE executive, you probably want to have a yacht because, you know, sometimes you get bored of your 1980s Porsche. So they basically had squandered that entire war chest on, as George Gomez says, all kinds of silly stuff. So Grand Slam was the first pinball game under the Bally Midway brand. It was a baseball theme, as the name would indicate, from January of 1983. It sells 1,000 units. Designed by Greg Kamik, art by Doug Watson, and software by Riemann Merchant. So Greg Kamik told IPDB that Grand Slam was made as an economy game, meaning there wasn't a lot of extra money put into the game, neither in design or promotion. Originally, a two-player was made, but they were not selling well, so Valley made the last part of the production run as a four-player. So let me bring this up for you, Ron, some of the images of this. Yeah, and I've seen all of these. I played all of these games. So you have spent a great deal of time playing some of these greatest hits of Valley Midway, so I think we're going to have a lot of fun with your insight here. Well, I mean, some of them were fun. It's interesting to see. We're looking at the Flyer because we love Flyers, and it's curious how they're going to sell this to us now with this new company.
    26:06
    So the Flyer basically has baseball trivia on it. Interesting. Everybody loves trivia. I'm a big trivia fan. You know, play ball. It's the bottom of the ninth and it heats on. You saunter up to the plate and get a tight grip on your flippers. Oh, God. Anything could happen. You could drive a single. Slug a man to second. Powerhouse a homer. Blow your way to a win. Oh, no, that's not what it says. Oh, God, it's even worse. Plow your way to a win. Here's the wind-up. Your hands are tightly clenched. Your face flushed in anticipation. I feel dirty reading this. You meet the ball with courage. Your swing is solid. It's a hit. The scoreboard shines. It's the bases light the path to victory. Whether you're a rookie or a pinball pro, all the Major League excitement of baseball comes alive in Grand Slam. Wow. And they have a picture of Hank Aaron on the flyer and Babe Ruth. I wonder if either of them gave their okay for that. What an odd thing.
    27:15
    There's nothing on this flyer about the gameplay, about the features, about it's just going to be at a bar. People like baseball, especially in the U.S., right? like America's pastime kind of thing. It's pulling on that and less to do with, hey, this game is good. I just think it's amazing they have Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron on it. Well, it's just sort of a chubby guy in old clothing. It's Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron.
    27:41
    So this has the flip-up targets that we saw on Speakeasy. So it's like a drop target, but instead of it dropping into the play field, it flips up horizontally.
    27:56
    Pretty cool. It's like an orbit spinner, but that orbit spinner ends up into the pop bumpers, which is kind of a bit of a... Right? But it's clearly baseball. It has a baseball diamond in the middle. It's got your lanes on the top. It's got orbits. It seems like an okay game, but it is a stripped-down version of pinball because we are in this era now of survival. But we still have cabinet art. Beautiful cabinet art, in fact. It's a baseball player on the side. It's stenciled, but it is pretty. The play field, it's really difficult, I think, all the time when it comes to play fields. It's always been an issue with football or baseball or soccer or whatever is trying to get that world under glass. It always just looks unusual, which is a bit annoying. But, you know, it's still a nice-looking pin, right? It still seems fun, but it is stripped down. And you've played one, and you loved it every minute of it. It's all right. Greatest of all time, right? Again, it's also the era. I don't believe it has speech, so it would cost too much. This used the Bally 2518-35 board set, which is the same as Baby Pac-Man. I find that unusual because it's like they just have this stock laying around and they've got to get rid of it because it's surprising that Baby Pac-Man, which was the mix of pinball and video, would have a similar board to a stripped-down machine because Baby Pac-Man doesn't seem like it was stripped down. This brings us to Centaur 2 the sequel Not really It the same game Yeah this is the fantasy big motorcycle pigman theme It from June of 1983 It sells 1 units which is a far cry from the class of 1981 Centaur which sold 3 units These were technically considered LEs. You had Centaur II, and you had 8-Ball Deluxe. Designed by Jim Patla. Art by Paul Ferris. Probably his best art package. and Mechanics by Irv Grable. It was the exact same play field as Centaur 81. It had the Say It Again reverb board on the Squawk and Talk speech card, which I think is amazing. It's a separate board. That board makes it, like, reverberate, right? Which is what makes the... It's a reverb board. I just love that they called it Say It Again. Because it's reverberating. It is literally saying... Destroy Centaur. And then it had the ball launch thing underneath, basically an auto launcher before an auto launcher existed, which was based on the inspiration from 1956, Balls a-poppin', which you'll remember from our last episode. Which had an auto launcher in 1956. Yeah, this is where they were using their rapid fire cabinets. Yeah, so it's like all the best parts of Centaur, it just looks strange, which is kind of disappointing. Rapid Fire was the copy of Hyperball that they ripped off from Williams, and it bombed just like Hyperball did for Williams, so they were left with cabinets left over, just like Williams was. Yeah, they're trying to tap into video game nests at this time. All that money is flowing into video games. Well, they're trying to tap into that, and they just are struggling a lot. it's really kind of strange, but some of the really amazing stuff in here is like the pre-production artwork. If you look at IPDB, it's just beautiful. It still looks great. The disappointing fact is that the back glass, which is so amazing, is smaller in Centaur 2 because of the size of that rapid fire cabinet. I know people who prefer this version. Really? Yes. Is it because it's like easier to move or something? I don't know. I mean, I wouldn't. And the thing about the rapid fire, the The back glass is just the glass. There's no scoring displays. The scoring displays are actually below it. They have their own section. So I guess it's more art-focused, I guess, than function. The shit really hits the fan in 1982 and early 83. That's when both pinball and video games start to sort of spiral downward. There's an oversaturation in the market. The quality of video has started to just decline. the new management is looking to save money, and they do that by combining the pinball and arcade divisions in one facility in Franklin Park outside of Chicago. They're downsizing and trying to cut costs. Paul Ferris says, The industry in about 1983 was at almost its lowest ebb. They started downsizing a lot of the Bally product. There was actually talk at that point of not even doing pinball anymore. Bally not doing pinball seems almost like blasphemy, doesn't it? Bally is synonymous with pinball, especially back then when they were actually a manufacturer. It's just depressing to even think of that. The art in those times, and Paul Ferris is really, as the art director in that class of 1981, he was brought on because art sold pinball machines. Well, by 1983, they are looking at ways to cut costs. So Paul Ferris says, almost everybody had gone from the art department. That's when I knew that we could see that the end was coming. It was going to be very, very tough to keep doing the things we had done before. This was my first experience with this. Things can go up, but they also can go down, even if you're doing all the right things. The market is what controls all that. So then I did leave. And I think they kept maybe two or three people just to kind of run a skeleton crew in the art department. You can really start to see in the next games that we run through here, Ron, I guess the creative quality of those pinball machines has really started to fall off a cliff, which is really a bummer. So let me share Gold Ball with you, Ron. Ah, Gold Ball. Yes, the famous James Bond villain. No.
    34:14
    This is a, I want to say like a fantasy theme of some sort. It's from June of 83, so we've gone almost five months here between Pins and 83. So even the manufacturing of production has slowed down. This is designed by George Christian, art by Tony Ramuni, and software by Riemann Merchant. So let's take a look at this flyer, because I think this is peak gold ball. The time, now. The event, a fantastic adventure in futuristic pinball. The game, gold ball. And it's got a guy that kind of looks like the silver ball mania dude. Yeah, really sort of ripped and bald, and he's reaching out towards the player. A new age of pinball. It does have a cool gimmick. So what is the gimmick here? What is the thing that's supposed to catch you? The gimmick is it has two balls in it. It has a regular pinball, but then it also has a gold ball. Yes. And here's the funny thing about this. The gold ball does something special, right? I think it's three times play field when you get the gold ball, like triple play field values. And originally it was just a percentage. The operator would choose how often the gold ball would come out, And then they changed it and made it skill-based. So there's different ROM reversions for this game. The thing that's interesting is if you find one of these, the gold ball will still be gold 40 years later. Wow. Yet today, whenever anyone tries to make a gold-plated ball, the plating always comes off.
    35:54
    It's another one of those things. It's like, how did they make this gold ball? The thing lasts forever, and they can't make these now. The plating falls off of it. What was the secret? It's probably dangerous chemicals. Oh, dangerous chemicals.
    36:09
    But, yeah, it's a neat little gimmick. It has the ball, like, in a separate area below the apron that it just comes out. So all of a sudden it just goes in the shooter lane, and you've got a gold ball. But there's, yeah, it's no real rhyme or reason, which is kind of the bummer, right? Well, it's percentage. But then they changed the ROM so it actually is skill-based. So there's two versions of it. So we're in June of 83. The next game doesn't come out until 1984.
    36:42
    So we go basically six months, six and a few months, and we get 8-Ball Deluxe Limited Edition. No, this is not a Limited Edition. Limited Edition is the one in the Rapid Fire Cabinet. There's three versions of 8-Ball Deluxe. That's right. I'm sorry. I'm not ahead looking in my notes here, folks. This version of 8-Ball Deluxe is exactly like the original version, except there are a few minor differences. So take a look at your 8-Ball Deluxe cabinet, because you might think this is actually manufactured from the class of 81, but it might actually be from the, oh, my God, we need a good game that we know how to manufacture very cheaply in 1984 version. Some of the differences include the apron is black. And it says Bally Midway. I think the original one was like gold. The entire front of the cabinet is black. Side edges of the back box are beveled. Cabinet art is decals. Playfield lamps are mounted on PCB boards instead of individual light sockets. There's a slightly smaller hinged back last that swings out. And the coin door sticker says Bally Midway instead of Bally. Ah, so check your pin. You might actually find out. It's a little bit different. The light mounted. The PCP boards for the lights are actually a little better than the individual sockets. It's like the newer style that you would have saw in a Williams game in the 90s with the twisting. So some people, I've seen a person who had a project where they combined the best elements of the 81 8-Ball Deluxe with the 84 8-Ball Deluxe to get the ultimate 8-Ball Deluxe. Yes, the Frankenstein of 8-Ball Deluxe. I play a lot of 8-Ball Deluxe in my league. I really... There's something about the design of that game. I don't know what it is, but it's just so challenging and fun and interesting. It really is great. So the next thing we do is we have to innovate again, and we're playing Granny and the Gators. Yes, because we waited six months to get 8-Ball Deluxe again, so we need something new. This is the Geriatric Safari Wildlife theme. It is from January of 1984.
    39:01
    We're unsure how many units it sold, but it is designed by Claude Fernandez. Art by Pat McMahon and Margaret Hudson. Software is uncredited. What are we looking at here, Ron? I think I've only played Granny and the Gators maybe once. It is Baby Pack again with a TV monitor in the back glass and a shortened, odd-looking play field. down below. I haven't played it. I have seen it. The art is pretty great. I'm not going to lie. Margaret Hudson, tip of the hat to you. It is very, very neat. Again, it's not pinball. It's not video games. Isn't it like a two-player? Yeah. Check out this flyer. I love your geriatric, what did you call it? Geriatric Safari Wildlife. Yes, Bally, Midway's Granny and the Gators, trademarked. Are you spunky enough to keep up with Granny?
    40:03
    Find out when she takes on the Gators in a splashy new video pinball voyage. Navigate Granny past rough waters to steer clear of danger. Oh, my. Yeah, oh, my God. But the art on this flyer is amazing, isn't it? Oh, yeah. It's like Granny in combat boots with a bunch of money and an alligator, and there's like a smoking, what is that, a bird of some sort with a cigar. It's pretty great here. It's pretty great. But, like, what is it? Is it pinball? Is it a video game? What is it? It's both. Help Granny paddle towards a pinball detour. As Granny globetrotts towards various points across the river, she will approach pinball entrances. Once she canoes into the entrance, she'll leave the video world behind and encounter the pinball playfield. Here, Granny can accumulate a few souvenirs, including ammunition, gold, and additional points. There you go. So, in a nutshell, you're playing a bit of a video game. You're canoeing up a river. you end up in a spot and then the ball pops out on the play field, you play a little pinball, and then you're back on the screen. It's all the power to you. I think it's pretty cool. I think it's fun that they tried it again. But this game and Baby Pac-Man are often referenced in what not to do. George Gomez, Pat Lawler, all those individuals, when they're talking about pinball 2000, you know, 20 years after this, are basically saying, like, we couldn't make it like Granny and the Gators. We couldn't make it like Baby Pac-Man because it did not go over well. But the sales were okay on these machines, which is unusual. Let's continue on our journey down the river, which is Valley Midway. And that brings us to X's and O's, which is a board game, I think, time travel theme. It is January, later January of 84, sells 3,300 units. So we got something here, right? Something hit with this machine. It is George Christian on design, Pat McMahon and Margaret Hudson on art, and again, software by Riemann Merchant. You can see the cost cutting here, the skeleton crew of the art team, the same software designer, the same senior game designer for years and years. Margaret Hudson, this would be her last Bally game. She would disappear from the industry for years until 1987 at Data East, and then again she'd disappear and return to Stern in the 2000s. X's and O's, this is a game that people actually really, really enjoy. They do? I think so. It's Tic-Tac-Toe. It's another grid game, and it has the skill shot that if you're in a multi-person game, you have to run up when it's your turn because it times out within like five seconds or something. You have five to ten seconds. I think it's five seconds. But it goes over well, right? The code is the thing that sort of sets this game apart as being like original and neat. Isn't that right? I like it. Yeah, and for some reason this game just kind of hits like, oh, this is kind of fun. This is different. But it's like a caveman back glass, which is really cool, but, like, unusual. It's very cartoony. It's like the invention of tic-tac-toe across different eras. There's, like, Greek gentlemen in there. There's cowboys in there. There's, like, a spaceman. I don't know what is going on, but it is fun. It's a fun-looking game. What do you think about this play field? We're looking at the play field now. Right directly in the middle is a tic-tac-toe grid. Yep. It's like Mystic. It's got the same grid. It's the same targets, except instead of drop targets, they're now stand-ups. Again, less money. Yep. More challenging gameplay, though. And to me, it's like an updated Mystic with a cool skill shot. It's got a flipper up on top with actual drops. Like I said, the skill set is extremely difficult, and you have five seconds to attempt it before the timer runs out. Yeah, it's got a beautiful left side into like a really kind of unusual end of the pops, but it's got three sort of different exits you can take into the pops or into the air. It's a really fun-looking play field, really fun-looking play field. The left has the out lane is the in lane, the in lane is the out lane thing that Bally loved to do. And then the bump on the other side, you can nudge the out lane back into the in lane. So it's a really creative play field by George Christian. And I think that's why it's sold well. It's quirky. It's original. It's not Granny and the Gators. It's not stripped down, or at least it doesn't look stripped down. It's cool. I'd play one. I'd play one 100% if I could see it. Just beautiful. But it doesn't have multiball. It doesn't. You're going to find a lot of these are not going to have multi-ball. Because, again, saving money. I've mentioned George Christian a couple of times. And he was the designer behind the greatest selling pinball machine of all time. Adam's Family? Till Adam's Family. And that was Bally's 8-Ball from 1977. It sold a billion units. That's the one with the bonds on it. We might get a correction on that one, I'm thinking. Yeah. And they're just using him to bang out quick, cheap, and interesting designs. Because he's a pro. He knows how to do this. He knows how to get a playfield out. And that is the one thing that those designers from the 70s and 60s, they just banged out playfields like you would not believe. It was absolutely amazing. What about Kings of Steel?
    46:11
    Kings of Steel. This is a card game theme. It's for March of 84, so we can see that at least now our releases are coming together a little bit quicker. It sells 2,900 units, so again, we're popping a number. That's a good number to see. This is the design by Greg Kamek. You'll remember him from Xenon. Art by Doug Watson and software by Riemann Merchant. I like the art. It's got the dueling kings on the back glass. It is not Greg Ferris. It is not Paul Ferris. But at the same time, it is unusual and interesting and kind of fun, but we're in a different era of art in these times. They've got, like, two knights face-to-face on the back. They're kings. They're not knights. They're kings of steel. Yes, because it's card games, right? The king of hearts and the king of spades or something, and they're facing off. It's a very busy backlash, but it comes together really well. I really like this. Beautiful, just beautiful. It's not centaur craziness. It's not Xenon space weirdness, but it is cool. Where I think it goes awry are the playfields in this era. They use a lot of oranges, a lot of blues and things.
    47:28
    It's a bit muddled on the playfield, but it's not the end of the world. Right? It's not the end of the world. This one also has the unusual outlanes. It has a gate on the right side. So it has two in lanes unless the gate is disengaged, and then you lose your ball out the out lane. What do we want to call that left side out lane where the out lane is the in lane and it comes through a gate? What do we want to call that? I call it the valley out lane, in lane. And it also has the valley saucer up top. They love that too. Everybody. Everybody loves a saucer. And, I mean, that's Greg Kamek, right? Craig Kamek, almost all of his games have a f***ing saucer at the top. Now, this game for the tournament crowd, this is one of the worst games you could have because you hit the stand-up target on the right, and that's it. That's all you hit. Yeah, it's like a dead-end stand-up target shot. You ignore everything else in the game, and if you hit that enough times, you will win. Drop targets on the left, ignore them. Stand-up targets with the small flipper on the top. Oddly enough, every time there is a top saucer, the object is to shoot that saucer. Not in this game. They've had multiple games, too, with that upper left flipper with the targets up there. Fireball 2 has the exact same thing. And it has a swinging target, a sucker target in the center that swings, right? That's like, shoot me in the middle. No. Shoot me. Super dangerous. I don't think that swings. Yeah, no, I'm sorry. I mean a stand up target. Yeah, that should also be a valley thing. the stand-up target directly in the center in front of you that's like, hit me. And if you do, it probably won't register, and you'll drain anyway. How are they trying to sell this to me? How are they selling Kings of Steel? Enjoy a test of champions on the play field of combat in Bally Midway's exciting new four-player pinball, Kings of Steel. Oh, exciting. It actually does sound pretty, pretty, pretty good. But now, Ron, does Kings of Steel still have the old school cabinet? When did they move to the new crappy cabinet? Oh, you mean the one that's made out of... Cardboard.
    49:41
    Well, we haven't got to the 6803s yet, I don't think. So basically what I'm leading us to here is eventually they go from the sort of the old school solid kind of birch or wood cabinets to like a fiberboard melamine kind of weird cabinets, again, to cut costs. Yep, and even on Kings of Steel, it doesn't use the squawk and talk board. It uses the cheap squawk board. Which is the seller I've ever heard of. Cheap squawk.
    50:12
    Or cheap squeak. Is it cheap squeak or cheap squawk? I don't know. It must be cheap squeak because that sounds more fun. Yeah. The next game in 1984 is in July. So the production is quicker all of a sudden, right? We're at least trying to bang out some games here on a more regular basis. We're less in cost-cutting survival mode like we were about a year ago or two years ago. And now we're just sort of like, okay, let's just be consistent with quality here. George Christensen with another play field. This is Black Pyramid. it is like a what is what is this theme like a it's an adventurer theme yeah it's like adventure amazon pyramid thing like you know the guy in jungle hunt yeah it's like he's he's in pyramids now that's what it is there you go it sells 2500 units art by greg freres so he's sticking around software by uh reeman merchant again he's just doing all the software which is why some of the games are better than others. Now, this game comes out in July of 84. Do you remember what came out in May of 1984? Well, if I wasn't looking at your notes, no. But looking at your notes, Temple of Doom. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. So I think we are trying to piggyback on that sort of adventure kind of mystery, fun theme. And Indiana Jones is pretty awesome. Not going to lie. Except for which we don't talk about, but they're all pretty good movies. This is The Legend of the Black Pyramid. It all began thousands of miles beyond the mouth of the Nile River in a fertile region known today as Bally Midway. Oh, God. That's terrible. I can't read this. I'll get to the end. At least it wasn't a pun. The majesty of its flashing lights, the gleaming opulence of its regal flippers, Now, from the far corners of Bally Midway, the legend known as Black Pyramid lives again. I mean, I guess. Wow. Yeah. That's the fun thing about Bally, eh? Is they go all in on the emotional connection. All in on the fiction. Yeah. It's not the gameplay that gets you. It's the fan fiction. Oh, definitely not in this game. Basically, Black Pyramid, it has the swinging target in the center that goes back and forth that you never hit. It has the saucer up top, of course. and this is the orbit game. If it's on the right flipper, you hit the left orbit. Left flipper, you hit the right orbit. That's it. Don't hit anything else. Don't do anything else. It's got the stand-up in-line drop targets on the right orbit. Which we love those. Two times, three times, five times. They know people. They know people love it. They know it. We love in-line drop targets. You knock them all down, and then you just go up top. Playfield's very Egyptian-themed. Yep. It's got some snakes. It's got a black pyramid in the middle. As it should. It's the name of the game. Yep. Gotta be literal. I never mind playing this game because I just want to see how many orbits I can hit. How about 1984, October of 84, Spy Hunter. The video game spy car theme. I love Spy Hunter. Sells 2,300 units. Another decent seller. Greg Kimmick, Tony Ramune on art. Software by Riemann Merchant. Bally used the same name and the same design of the video game, which was released in 1983. Spy Hunter is the driving game designed by the George Gomez at Midway in the video game department. But they added an interesting piece to the pinball machine, which was crazy playfield layout. Yeah. You know, wouldn't they bring in a George Gomez to work on this? Wouldn't they? They had a certified hit in 1983 with Spy Hunter. Well, George said, with the success of Spy Hunter, the company wanted to leverage the property. And he said, you know, let's make 500 pinballs. The pinball guys didn't know who I was or cared. They were basically the first rock star designers in our business. Which is interesting coming from a modern rock star legend in the industry. They're going to bring in Greg Kinnick. who did Xenon, right, who did a lot of those big sort of smash hit games in 80, 81. It's been around forever, and they're going to pair him up with George Gomez, right? George Gomez is going to come in and help design this because, I mean, it's his property. He literally invented it. So George says, so I walk into Greg's office, and I may have said two words to the guy. I got the chilliest reception I've ever gotten. So I walked out of there going, okay, this isn't going to happen. You know, this guy's not going to let me do anything relative to pinball. I regret that to this day. I would love to do a Spy Hunter pinball. There, there. Here's an Easter egg. There's an Agent GK on some of the targets there, which refers to the game designer Greg Kamek. Let's dive into Spy Hunter, the design of this game, because it is something else.
    55:30
    I don't think it plays the Peter Gunn music. Of course it wouldn't, right? Like, that would be just too nice. The Peter Gunn music that they had to use because they couldn't get the Bond theme music. And all those years later, Gomez got the Dubon. Spy Hunter. Hot on the heels of Bally Midway's popular video game Spy Hunter comes its supercharged pinball counterpart. Spy Hunter pinball provides twice the espionage excitement with a terrible arsenal of two built-in game options. Top Secret's Spy Hunter Code lets you switch style play from random bonus feature to skill. With a flick of a switch, you can add suspense and heighten the challenge of Spy Hunter's basic gameplay to extend player interest. Whether players track down bonus points with a random or skill play feature, the challenge is thrilling. The stakes are high. The pace is deadly. I'm going to go out on a limb here, Ron. I'm going to say I don't think Riemann Merchant is going to revolutionize the code here. He's banging out a new pinball machine every, like, three months. I think they are overpromising on the excitement of this pinball code. I like on this game how the back glass and the side art are the same. It is cool art on the back glass, though. It's like a jet and a car and a motorcycle and a boat and a rocket and a gorgeous spy man and a beautiful woman. It's a cool backlash. The play field falls apart.
    57:04
    It's interesting. I'll say that. They really threw a lot at it. You could tell, I think, that they had a hot property, and they said, let's give it a little extra. It reminds me of Gold Wings. It does remind me of Gold Wings. The main flippers are way over to the right. Yeah, Gottlieb Gold Wing. from the 80B era in the late 80s, it is really unusual. It's got the flippers are offset. It's got a whole almost like mini game on the left side with the out lanes and everything. They do try to tie things to the video game. It's got smoke screens, oil slicks, that stuff. I haven't played one. Have you played one? Yes. Thumbs up, thumbs down, thumbs in the middle? It plays as weird as it looks. Okay. And you're all about gameplay, right? That is your first tier. It's got to pass the gameplay tier before it goes anywhere else. This is too weird. Too weird. It's almost got like a bag of towel on the left side. And I actually don't. I like Gold Wings. Oh. And that's weird. But this is like too weird. It's tough to describe. You've got to look it up. Yeah. There ain't no other games like this one. Let's put it that way. Yeah. The closest is Gold Wings. But, you know, it's pretty bad when an ADB with an unusual layout is the better design.
    58:18
    Ugh. The stress at Bally Midway was starting to add up. During this time, the young George Gomez was not happy at Midway. He was over in the arcade and video game division, but he was calling around looking for work in other places, and we would know that he would end up at Marvin Glass, which is a think tank in the Chicago area, where they came up with legendary board games and children's toys. Gomez would say, every 30 days my boss would call me into his office and say, listen, you've got to find X amount of dollars in your budget, which basically meant I had to lay off some people. Then the layoff would happen and we have a pizza party Let rally everybody and we back in it After you do that three or four times it starts getting old So the stress adds up You can keep doing that You can There only so many pieces that you can give people to rally the troops And people are like you used that quote already. Yes, we did in the George Gomez episode. I think we've used it probably like a bunch of times. But it's very telling about the atmosphere at Bali at that time. The next game was Hot Shots. Now, this only had six units. It was not actually released. It was a billiard game. This is in 1985. But the reason I bring it up is that it was designed by a new individual called Dan Langlois. It had the concept art done by Greg Freres and unknown software. Basically, it was an experiment to try to maybe boost sales, strip it down, make it a bit different and unusual. It was almost in a rapid-fire cabinet without the back glass. It was a really small, wide-open play field, and it had these unusual full-size billiard balls that you would hit with the pinball, which would then fall into a pocket and then pop. It was really weird. It looked almost exactly like a small billiard table. The game did terrible in test locations. It was later brought back because cue ball was there. Yeah, it did so bad on those test locations. They just didn't even go any further than that. So this is a game I have played a lot of. Fireball Classic. Ah, my guilty pleasure game. It is a guilty pleasure game. This is the fantasy fire demon theme. This is February of 1985, sells 2,000 units. Designed by George Christensen. It's basically the exact same design as his original EM 1972 Fireball. It just has added a couple of minor rule changes, some sound, a digital board set instead of the EM boards underneath. And it didn't have zipper flippers, which are the flippers that move in and out. Yeah, the original one had two-inch zipper flippers. This just has three-inch flippers. Yeah. It's got great sound. I think it's fun. It's got great weird sound. Very weird. It's a wonderful game, not because it's like an epic all-time shooter, not because it's like the greatest game of all time, but it's just fun and unusual. I love the lock stealing. The lock stealing is great, right? So you lock balls back in this era for multiball. It doesn't auto-launch in most games. You've got to lock it in a thing. You drain out while the next person can release them. What about the marketing on this? This is a good one. It's got the game on the bottom, really small, really tiny, beautiful art, but it has a gentleman in a tuxedo with a flaming ball on a silver platter. It is a silver platter. Fireball Classic. What's new and improved on the Bally Midway menu? Just the thing to satisfy those pinball cravings. Fireball combines all the award-winning ingredients that have made it an authentic classic with a few tasty new touches that spice up the action. From fresh graphics to a subtle spark of playfield garnishes. Once again, Bally Midway is serving up excitement with its most sizzling pinball creation. Get them while they're hot. Man, these are weird. They are weird. There's really weird ways to, uh... It's red hot. It's red hot, Ron. It's red hot. And, you know, look this one up. It's got a beautiful skill shot, an interesting skill shot. mechanic in the back. Same as the original fireball. Same as the original. No in-lanes. So it is, you've got your flippers are more or less mounted directly to the slingshot so to cradle up that ball and to stop the ball movement is really hard. But in addition, it has a really grippy, spinny pad in the middle of the playfield, which makes playing this game hell. Spinning disc. It's great. Great game. Well worth your quarters if you ever see it. Tons of fun. And hopefully you don't play it in a tournament against a really good player because they won't lock anything. They're no fun. Yeah, they're the devil. It has been reported, this is on IPDB, that there was a mixture of a bunch of different board sets with this game. So there's the 6800 and the 6802 board set. Instead of the normal slash 35, sounds like they ran out of them. Yeah. So here's a great quote from Alan Resman, who is the engineer lab supervisor in Valley from 1977 to 83. Alan says, I remember discussing this with Doug McDonald when the 35 board was revised. That was like the dash 35 board was what they used through most of the early 80s, late 70s. The original 6800-based MPU was developed in the mid-70s. After 10 years, some of the key components, including the MC6800 chip itself, were becoming hard to obtain or discontinued. I had left Bali at the time, but over coffee one morning, Doug told me they went to place orders for upcoming production and were surprised when some chips were no longer available. They wound up starting production with the Dash 35 boards until the components were exhausted, then put the 6802 board into production as a direct replacement as needed. So we're running into parts issues here. The slowdown in the coin op industry started to have a lot of far-reaching issues. Well, plus the fact that this stuff was old. It was old at that time. If you're cutting costs, you are not going to want to build a new board set and to continue to innovate. Over at Williams, that's inevitably what they would do, is they kept reiterating and updating their board sets until they got to the System 11 system, which really was a rocket ship, but they were making minor changes. Over at Bally, they didn't want to make any changes at all to these boards, but the chips were now being produced at a lower rate, and the stockpiles that they had built up were starting to dwindle. That huge expansion in the 80s wasn't happening anymore. Alan Reisman says, When pinball production was in its heyday in the late 70s, Midway placed a huge order for components like displays and chips. After production died down in the early 80s, it was thought they had a lifetime supply of some things, like six-inch displays. It was thought the new technology platform would replace the original board set before the chips ran out, but apparently not all the chips were available by the end. Now, there's no design credit on the remake of Fireball, but they've remade a few games now, and they've given zero design credit to guys like George Christian, which, if you're cracking out an all-time classic amazing design, don't you want to, you know, throw them a bone? They were doing that over at Stern. Well, George Gomez, well, CERN was out of business by this point.
    66:03
    Which is the reason they are out of business is because they put design credits on them. That's the reason. George Gomez said Midway in the 80s was run by manufacturing guys, guys that came from the factory side of the world. They were not real keen on giving designers credit. I think they were very concerned that we would become rock stars or something. They were very touchy about design credit. So you do what Gomez did. When you design a joystick, you just have your initials put in the artwork on the joystick. You just secretly hide it for later on. GG. So people who are doing podcasts in the future can tell those amazing secret stories. That's the whole reason they did it. Didn't even know it was coming. That's how good George Gomez is. Or you're really tight with the artist, and he just puts initials in the back, hides them somewhere for you. Exactly.
    66:51
    Cybernaut was the next theme. This is a sci-fi theme of May of 1985. So we've got a bit of a delay here when it comes to releasing games. It sells 900 units. This is not good. Designed by Greg Kimmick and art by Doug Watson. No software credit on this one. When I look at this pinball machine called Cybernaut, I see a reverse Xenon. Do you? With a third flipper. Let me see if I get a better picture of the entire play field. It's got that weird thing in the upper right, if I remember. Yeah. But it's got the shot into the tube, down the ramp, into the capture hole. Yes. That part is a reverse xenon. Nothing else is xenon. But it's got the top there. It's got the little rollovers. But it's got a whole different section with a grid that goes up. That goes up, by the way. That's not flat. Oh, very cool. Yeah. Think, what's the Daddy's game? Is it Phantom of the Opera? Yes. where you kind of go up. That's what this reminds me of. Super cool. It's a neat-looking design. We haven't got quite into the whole, quote-unquote, flow era, right, where you're shooting and the ball is smoothly coming back to the flippers. We're still in the era of you're shooting it up there and doing stuff. The art is neat. You know I'm a sucker for sci-fi stuff, so it's pretty cool. It's not Xenon, though. Let's put it that way, right? Have you seen one of these? Of course I have. Oh, really? What do you think of that back glass? It's a good back glass. Describe what you see there. Paint us a word picture. It's a woman who obviously partners with some robot. Yeah, and they both got guns. Yep. She's got her protective space thigh highs on. Yep. The robot's cool.
    68:42
    It's got a really neat design. It's very fish-like. It's got abs. It's got lots of abs. It's cool. It's weird, but it's cool. Yeah. But they only sold 900 units. It doesn't play particularly well. That's probably why. Not a huge fan. Now, this had three different board sets. It had the 6800, the 6802, and the 6803. They only have 900 units, and they used three different board sets. This game was also produced by a company called Ballywolf. W-U-L-F-F. Wolf. I think that's how you say it with the German accent. Yeah, it sounds German to me. This is a German wolf. Und Balliwolf.
    69:24
    And Balliwolf was, it was a whole other thing. So I've got some interesting information on Balliwolf. Try to read this one. You can read this one. Oh, God. Gunterwolf. I have no idea what that last word is. Apparatau, which I think is apparatus in German. Ah, so I'll just say Gunterwolf. Company was founded in 1950 in Berlin, Germany as a manufacturer. In 1972, the U.S. slot machine and pinball manufacturer Bally took over the company, which from then on operated under the name of Bally Wulf as the German office for Bally. By 1985, they began manufacturing Bally games in Europe to reduce costs. Bally separated from the company in 1991, and Bally Wulf, well, it's probably not Bally Wulf, it's just Wulf, is still in operation today. It actually is Phil Ballywolf. It is still using that name today, which is super unusual. And they're like a small-time manufacturer there. I think they are about to be bought out or in the midst of something. I was able to find an interesting quote from Norm Clark from his original conversation with Clay Harrell over on TopCast. Now, Norm Clark in the early 2000s was suffering after a stroke. So his speech was very much impacted in this conversation. It was tough to pull the quote, but the knowledge that this man still had at that time and the insight that he had was wonderful. Who was Norm Clark? He was president of Valley from 1975 to 1985. And Norm says, well, a supplier of ours had come to me and said they were considering starting up a pinball department. Of course, pinball companies have their own designers. We were tempted to help a company in Europe to design games they wanted to get over there, but our price wasn't what they wanted to pay. Yeah, they were trying to find ways to make their dollar go further, and they were still, at this time, deep in the German market. With all the cutting and all the corporate changes, the pressure, Norm Clark would leave Bally in 1985. But not before But it was this game A game that Ron I can't believe you don't have in your collection 8 Ball Champ Which lit the world on fire It has one of those really bad cabinets There so now we're finally getting into The cardboard cabinets Yeah this is 8 Ball Champ The third of the 8 Ball series You have 8 Ball, 8 Ball Deluxe And 8 Ball Champ In my opinion the best of the 8 Ball series which no one agrees with, but I don't care. Wow. This is August of 85. It sells 1,500 units. George Christensen on design. Art by Tony Ramuni. Software, again, by Riemann Merchant. The back last looks like he had a day to do it. It's bad. He's done much better. He has done much better, but you can tell they're going for a really, like, old-timey billiards game. Yeah, old-timey, single ball. Tight pants. But has lots of speech. The eight-ball guy is back. Chalk up. And I think he gets on your case, too, if you just don't plunge for a while. He starts yelling at you. Perfect. Chalk up excitement in a game of pinball pool. Well, actually, pinball pool is another game. Gottlieb's going to sue you where the stakes are high and winner takes all. He's shrewd, scheming, a master at his game. He's the cunning pinball hustler taunting anyone who crosses his flashing path. He crosses his flashing path. That's literally what it says. That's so weird. There's only one way to find out if he's bluffing. take on eight ball champ at his own game. Valley Midway's newest pinball edition features a challenging play field and enhanced sound system sure to chalk up points with players. So do you agree with that? Well, by enhanced, it sounds like an older Valley when they sounded good. I mean, if that's what they mean by enhanced. So why is this game the best, in your opinion, of the eight ball games? Eight ball deluxe, all the balls are on one side in one bank. This forces you to go all over the play field, and you have to hit stand-up targets behind the drop target to bring it back up again so you can hit it down again. It rips off the whole top is ripped off from Fathom, so they reuse that on a much better game.
    73:45
    Literally, the entire top is Fathom. It has the same. The left orbit goes around into a lock, down into a gate into the lane. It's got the spares. It's in the exact same spot. Like, literally, it is taken directly from Fathom, except it doesn't have the inline drops up there. It just goes directly to a saucer. It's got five single drop targets with a stand-up behind it around in basically mimicking the five of the six pockets in a pool table. I said before creating the world under glass when it came to sports was difficult, but for some reason, this one is beautiful. It's got this old-timey kind of look of billiards, and it nails it. It's gorgeous. It's just a shame it was made out of cardboard. I'm a fan. Big fan. Why don't you have one of these, though? It just hasn't happened. But if I was going to get an 8-ball game, this is the one I would get over 8-ball deluxe. This is the one. And it generally is cheaper because everyone wants 8-ball deluxe, class of 81, etc. But hardly anyone wants this one. The next game was Beat the Clock. Ah, yes. November of 85. So we're closer together in production here. It only sells 500 units. George Christensen again. Tony Ramuni again. Software by Riemann Merchant again. This game is, I think, cooler than it deserves to be. It's got a really cool backlash. It's got like a Formula One car and a motorcycle and a stopwatch and a guy skiing and a football player and a biker. You know who's a fan of this game? I'm pretty sure. I think Stern designer Keith Elwin is a big fan of this game. Of Beat the Clock? Beat the Clock. Wow. I think he said once they had this in their office at Stern. Weird. Yeah. The stopwatch never lies, my friend. And they go all out. The thing that will set people off on it is the fact that it doesn't have a standard rule set. It's time-based. It's literally what it says. Beat the clock. You add time units. And when you run out of time, you know, you run out of time. You've got to beat the clock. People generally don't like time-based games or anything that does stuff like that. I mean, we talked about the James Bond game back in our ADB episode, which had a very similar issue. Ah, you mean the time-based game where Gottlieb, who never ever would have a revised ROM, had a revised ROM to remove that and make it a three-ball game? It was that bad. It went over that bad. But they're trying to do something different. All the manufacturers are trying to do something different, with the exception of Williams, who just doubles down on doing what works. I'm trying to remember. I don't think it kills the flippers or anything when you run out of time, if I remember. I think it's just like when you drain after you've run out of time, that's it. But as long as you have time units, you can just keep playing. What about Lady Luck? This is the next one in March of 86. So we've gone from November of 85 with 500 units all the way till March with a game that does another 500 units. George Christensen, art by Greg Ferris, software by Riemann Merchant. Lady Luck. This one I had never heard of until I had done this research. Oh, really? I don't know why. The backlash seems familiar, but I don't remember this game at all.
    77:10
    We're getting to the point now where the cabinet's just a bally midway on them. We're saving money there. Same cabinet, we're just throwing different play field in. Yes. This one, this is a do-the-thing game, if I remember. It has like a 10X scoring thing, I think. Yeah, it's got the insert in the middle of the play field. You've got to do a series of things to get the 10X scoring.
    77:34
    And then you, it's something like you increase the value of the spinner, you get the 10X scoring going, and then you hit the spinner. And you get obscene points, like, just instantly. Like, if you get it going, it's easy to turn over. And it has multiplier targets right in the middle as opposed to the standard sort of, you know, bally, midway, inline drops. It's got them left to right. And it has a very similar lower play field to 8-Ball Champ, except it doesn't have the drop targets in front of the stand-up targets. Yeah, I'm trying to remember the exact pattern. It's something like maybe the captive ball increases the spinner value. Then you've got to complete something once. Then there's a star. You've got to hit the star. and then you get 10x scoring for a brief period of time, and then you hit the spinner. 500 units after waiting from November to March. That's got to be pretty disappointing, though. Well, it has winning features that will have your players dealing themselves in again and again. I like when I actually remember some things correctly. It says hitting the trapped ball, that's the captive ball, increases the spinner value. Shooting the ball through the star rollover scores, it increases the lane value. Completing poker increases the value of the bonus multiplier.
    78:47
    Where's the thing where it says get 10x? Unique countdown features activate hitting both flashing star targets while the timer is running and all drop targets are down. Yes, you've got to hit all the drop targets down and you hit the stars. And all play field target values are multiplied 10 times for a brief period. That is quite the thing, Ron. That's a lot of thing. It's a lot of thing. And it's still got the cool, like, Bally sound stuff going on. We are in a bit of a death spiral here, you can see, in 1985. Well, for them anyway. Meanwhile, Williams is, they're coming out with games like High Speed. Well, that's where the money is going, right? You know, capital or money, it moves, and it goes where it has to go. And you can see, through 1984, we're still selling 2,500 units per game, right? Like, that's still a pretty good measure of sales. But now when you've got things like F-14 or high speed or any of those games, the money has moved. There's the same amount of money. It's just moving somewhere else. And you can see by the sales of something like high speed, the number that they hit with that. It's a big change. So there's a different design philosophy here at Bally Midway. Rather than innovating and trying to come up with something new and fancy, they're going to go all in on wild designs to get some attention. And that's where they first won Black Belt of June of 1986. It's 600 units, not a good seller. It's designed by Dan Langlois. So remember, he made that weird billiard game for test. Art by Greg Freres, sound by Michael Bartlow, and software by Riemann Merchant and Howard Shree. So he's at least got some help on this game. Let me bring up an image of this one here, Ron. And I want you to give me your first impression when you see this. I've seen it. What is going on on the top of this play field? It's got a flipper on the upper right that actually you hit like the opposite. that you hit it. It's weird. It's coming towards the player. Yep. You shoot the ball towards the player instead of up the play field. But this is way up in the top corner, so it's not like it's going to come at you. But it goes up a ramp and then around. What is going on?
    81:14
    It is really, really weird. And let's talk about in the middle of the play field with this, like, what is he, like a sensei or a fighting ninja black belt guy. You shoot them right in the nads. Pretty much, yes. So his legs are open, and there's stand-up targets on one leg, stand-up targets on the other leg, and then there's like a saucer kind of in between his legs. Like, what? What were they thinking? It's just silly.
    81:44
    Yeah, I played this. This was at the New York City Pinball Championships. This was one of the games. I got to play this a lot. Is it fun? I got into it after a while trying to do. It was like do the thing, which I already forgot what the thing is. That's probably why my tournament skill isn't the best, but I just remember playing it over and over trying to do the thing. So it interested me enough to do that. And, you know, this is the next trend. Trademarked. Their branding at the time was the next trend. Yep. TNT. Exploding from 54 years of pinball leadership.
    82:18
    But it's not the same company anymore, right? Like 1932 to 1983. It's no longer Bally Manufacturing Company. It's Bally Midway Manufacturing. It's the easiest and best diagnostics package. It permits manual freeze testing. Factory installed Mylar on key wear points.
    82:38
    Built-in playfield inclination. Interesting. Now, we're at 6803s now, so we have the wonderful number pad.
    82:47
    We're in deep now. We're into a wacky playfield. We're into a terrible set of boards. They're not too... The number pad is terrible. If that number pad gets broken, you're done. Yeah, get another one. Yeah, get an aftermarket one. Basically, what we're talking about is a 6803 board set. They had a number pad. So use the number pad to, like, get it, change settings and stuff. It's like if you went and you bought one of those LED strips off of Amazon or AliExpress, and it comes with those weird plastic button controls. Yeah, just think that you have this pad, but if you lose this pad, you can't change any of the settings on your game. Yeah, you're done. That's it. But what it did give you the ability to do is it could, if I remember, it could control way more lights than their old system did. So they took advantage of that. A lot of these games of this era, we're getting to the mid-late 80s, had a ton of lights, a ton of controlled lights. Yeah, they went with a lot of sizzle and less steak. Now, this game had some changes for Europe. So remember, we had mentioned that Europe is a really big market for pinball. So it was produced in Bali Midway, but it was called Karate Fight. Artist Greg Freres had to change the name on the back last from Black Belt to Karate Fight at the request of the European distributor. Freres didn't recall the specific reason the distributor had asked for the name change. although Zachariah in 1986 had Black Belt, and that was released a few months prior, so maybe it was to avoid confusion of the branding. We would also, and IPDB presumes that there's about 600 or so games included in the run that had karate fight back glasses rather than Black Belt. Wow, and I've never seen one. Yeah, they would likely all be in Europe. This was also Bally's first game with self-percentaging. Yeah, they were behind there. Way behind. Not way behind. A couple months behind. No, no. I guess we're in 85 now. No, we're in 86 now. Yeah, that's right. So it probably was right after Williams, but Williams did have it first in high speed. But what is self-percentaging? What does that mean? I have no idea. Before you had self-percentaging, the operator would set what score you needed to get a high score, and that was it. It was a fixed score. So if you put it on a location where a bunch of good players, they could get free games all over the place, and then if you cranked it up high, then none of the lesser players would ever get a free game, and they would get pissed.
    85:27
    So with high speed, they created the auto-percentaging, or Valley calls it self-percentaging, where you put it out and it will change the high score needed to get a replay, depending on how many times it gets hit. You don't want to be giving away things for free, but you want that carrot to be there, right? Yes. You just want to keep moving that carrot slightly further. Operators were concerned. This was like one of the biggest new features that came about around 86 was the ability to do this. Wow. Okay. As players, we probably like some of the other features. Operators, they were wanting that feature. Well, they wanted to, you know, pinball machines are designed to make money. They are. Unless they're made for the home, like now. Yeah. Riemann Merchant would tell IPDB that Howard Shear took over the software programming because Riemann went on to another project. That project would be Motor Dome. I don't think that's how that goes. Oh. There was another game called Motor Show. I remember it was Motor Dome, Motor Show. Really? Yeah. But Motor Show is a bizarre, I think it's a European game. It was at like Papa. That's the only one I've ever seen. Motor Dome is June of 86. It sells 2,000 units. So, oh, my goodness, we finally have something going on here. Greg Kimmick on design, Tony Ramuni on art, software on Riemann Merchant. And this is another sort of, you know, wild and interesting play field. Something very un-Greg Kimmick. He's out of his comfort zone here. The playfield does not have a saucer up on the top, which must be really, really difficult for Greg Kamek to design around. But what is going on here? We are to the plastic era. We're finally moving into vacuum-sealed or vacuum-created plastic ramps. And this thing, what is going on here, Ron? Yeah. And it has the bizarre thing, when you start a game, it asks you what level you want. level one, two, or three. I don't know. And you have to remember to pick three. You have to remember to pick three. It's something like it's harder, but everything's worth more. If you ever play in a tournament, David, always pick level three. Although I don't know if you'll ever see it in a tournament.
    87:47
    So this game, they're trying to compete with high speed. They're trying to compete with something that is completely different in the world of pinball. You know. So much plastic. Okay, so there's a ramp on the right side. There's a drop target. You shoot the drop target, it goes down. Then you go on a long, swooping ramp that comes up to almost an upper play field into a two-inch flipper that then flips the ball back up the play field across the ramp, across the top of the pump bumpers, into a capture hole in the top right corner. But if you don flip that flipper that two flipper it rolls back down to the left flipper at the bottom of the playfield If you brick the shot up the playfield it comes back down and crosses to the right flipper it oh my god it is a mess but is it fun?
    88:49
    because they haven't had ramps, right? ramps have not been a thing they haven't quite figured out swooping ramps they haven't quite figured out flow they're just like, let's throw some ramps in and see what works I don't know Well, I've only played it a few times, and it's foggy. Which basically says, ah. And also, even though the art on the playfield is crazy, and the cabinet, we still have the just bally midway. Yep, it's got four flippers. It's got that one two-inch flipper on the upper playfield. It's got a standard flipper down on the bottom. But it definitely appears like when you look at this, like, ah, they put some more money into this. I mean, man, there's way more crap on the playfield. Yeah, I think you look at it and you go, hey, this is kind of cool. I think this is kind of fun. And then you probably play it and you're like, oh, yeah, well. But I bet you it's kind of fun. Revolutionary, but I bet you it's fun. Motor Dome. Now, do you know what had come out in 1985 that I think that they might have ripped off for this pinball machine? A Mad Max movie? Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. See, I think I get Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. Well, they weren't the only ones to do that. That's what Road Kings is, basically. Yeah. Road Kings. The donor game of the future. I love Road Kings.
    90:01
    After this, they've also brought in, Bally Midway has brought in Dennis Nordman. And we go that, the Dennis Nordman, let's talk about your ramps episode back in the archives. You can check that out over at silverballchronicles.com in the archives. We're not going to talk about Special Force, but we're getting into vacuum, you know, ramps. We're getting into unusual designs, and we're bringing in fresh blood. It's a fun game, right? Remember Special Force? Yep, I remember it. It was very green. Very green. And mountain-y. Very mountain-y. Strange Science. Oh, boy. Yeah, that's a whole game. It's a fantasy science theme. It's from June of 1986. This game is a decent seller at $2,350. It's designed by Dan Langlois, so he's the guy that's doing all the weird designs. Greg Frere is on art and software by Howard Shear. Weird Science, I think, was that a movie in 85? Yeah. I think that's the one with, oh, God, who was in that? Is that the one with Kelly LeBrock? I think so. I remember. They invent her or whatever. Yeah. Was it Anthony Michael Hall? Oh, God. Now I've got to look this up. I don't think I've actually seen the movie. I just remember. Yeah, Anthony Michael Hall, Kelly LeBrock. Yeah, and any other guy who I don't remember. So I don't think I've ever seen it either. Oh, Robert Downey was in that? Okay, maybe I'll have to watch that. I love Robert Downey Jr. But you have not seen Iron Man? No, I've seen Iron Man. Really? I didn't think you've seen any of those MCU movies. Nope, I saw Iron Man. Iron Man's amazing. I had to see it. Robert Downey Jr. was in it. Have you seen the second one? I saw the first one. With Whiplash? 15 minutes, and that was it. And I didn't see the third one. The second one was good. The third one was decent. The second one was awesome. So good. So Strange Science is pretty cool. It has a cool neon topper. He's looking at pictures of it here on IPTV that have got to be like 30 years old. Oh, my God. And the worst part is the play field is really messy, so it's really tough to pick it out. Let me see if I can find a better picture. Ron, talk me through this because I've never seen this game. Great art. Great Ferraris. Just killer art. Absolutely insane. One of his best packages. Like I said, it's got the awesome neon topper thing. like mad scientist. Basically, it's a mad scientist theme. He's like transferring brains between a monkey and a woman or something like that. It's on the play field.
    92:32
    Just like a dude with a guitar for some reason. You can kind of see that the art is very the style that he'll use later for games like Party Animal, Party Zone, Dr. Dude. It's that style. It's got a crazy lock shot with a flipper that hits it up this really steep, short ramp that comes up into the Atom Smasher, it's called, which they would use the Atom Smasher again on other games. I think even on Keith Elwin's Archer design, he had the Atom Smasher in there somewhere. it's got extra buttons just to do the lane change which is weird I don't know why they did that why not man just just throw anything at the wall it's got cool sound it has a five or six ball multi-ball you keep hitting these balls into the atom smasher until you get them all in there and it starts multi-ball you're also supposed to be able to hit the balls while they're in the atom smasher and get them out. But in reality the flippers are always too weak because these are the horrific Bally linear flippers that suck bad as far as power goes.
    93:47
    It's a 6803 so it's got all these lights. It's just got awesome light shows. It's shallow play because you're just going to be trying to lock the ball and get the multi-ball. That's all you're going to really do. But there's lots of But it looks so good. This is worth it to look it up on IPDB because there's a flyer in there and there's like a whole comic book that Greg Ferreres had created about the story behind the mad scientist and the woman and the monkey. It's well worth it. I mean, it's not podcast content because it's hard to talk about that. But this is a pretty unique game and you can see that it has popped a number of about 2,000 units. So that's something to see. Now, we've brought up Dan Langlois a few times, but he is an interesting individual. He was brought into Bally midway at this time to shake things up. His specific goal was to just go nuts on his play fields and change things up, and by goodness, he did it. But he's really difficult to find any history about. I've tried multiple ways to get information about Dan Langlois, and it is tough. Now, I did find an article, and I've included it in the show notes, about Stern Video Games' Dark Planet from 1983. He worked with a, Dan Langlois worked with a gentleman named Eric Erickson, with the most lazy parents when it came to names I've ever heard.
    95:19
    Says David Dennis, yes. It's basically an asteroid-type game. Dan also worked on Gilligan's Island after his Bally Midway tenure when he was tragically killed in May of 1991. He was struck by a car leaving a bar where the game was being tested. He died at the age of 33. And we would know that Ward Pemberton would actually be brought back on contract to finish up Gilligan's Island. So Dan, who I think is one of these unsung, unusual folk in pinball, tragically taken too young. City Slickers was March of 1987. No, it wasn't. It was City Slicker. I'm sorry, City Slicker, the one. Now, this is a train wreck. Sells 300 units, which is not great. Gangster theme, Greg Kimmick, art by Pat McMahon, Riemann Merchant. This was the original name, City Slicker, was the original name for the $6 million man in 1978. Yeah, Greg says, back in 1978, the designers named the Whitewoods whatever they wanted to. And I always liked the name City Slicker. I got the name from a 70s contemporary clothing store named City Slicker here in the Chicago area. During the 1970s, the Whitewood names were always changed by the marketing department once the game was released for artwork, which is interesting. Because back then, they didn't really have that. They'd do the whitewood first and then just make the art whatever the theme was supposed to be. Yeah. So the marketing department would be like, this game is the $6 million man. But by 1987, the industry had changed to the point where the theme was decided first, and then the whitewood was designed to the theme. I still like the name City Slicker, so the theme became a nostalgic Roaring Twenties bank robbery theme, with two players shooting it out on the play field at the same time. I had a new interactive pinball game concept I wanted to try out. This is inevitably why the game was a bit of a sales flop. It was an adventure to basically boost sales. The initial concept was there were two sample games of City Slicker created that had a six-foot cable and a switch that was triggered by a second player. So they were, quote-unquote, playing at the same time as the first player. So the standard bottom flippers on the playfield were controlled by the player in a normal fashion. There were two additional flippers in the upper and the middle of the playfield that were controlled by this opposing player with their cable and their button. Hmm. Interesting. So Greg says, it was truly a shootout feeling. It was really interactive. But Valley Management changed the game back to the standard one player at a time sequence for the production run. That was a big mistake. Valley management removed the attached cable and gun and replaced the top left flipper with a thumper bumper, which made no sense, and had the circuit control the middle flipper to shoot the ball towards the two lower standard flippers, which made even less sense. So the game became muddled. So maybe that's why the game sucked. When I played it, I was like, wow, this sucks. I had no idea that it was supposed to have all that other stuff in it. Man, we need someone to retrofit that stuff back in to see what it would have played like. It probably would have been pretty cool, I think. Let's dive into what I think is a pretty unique and unusual game, Hard Body. This is a bodybuilder theme from April of 1987. It sells 2,000 units, so again, a pretty good seller. Designed by Ward Pemberton, art by Pat McMahon, and software by Riemann Merchants. So Ward is back on contract. He was brought back to design this pin, but at the same time, because he's not with the White Sox anymore. He's working as a firefighter in Chicago. So this guy, this guy's had one crazy life, man. He's designing pinball machines. He's playing baseball for the White Sox. He's a Chicago firefighter. Something else. So the theme here, Ron, do you remember Rachel McLish? I do not remember Rachel McLish, no. Neither do I. I had to look this up. So Rachel McLish endorsed this pinball machine. Well, in 1980, Rachel was the first ever IFBB Miss Olympia contest winner. After her 1980 win, no woman appeared on more magazine covers for the next five years than Rachel. She lost the title in 1981, but then regained it in 1982. These breakthrough victories in bodybuilding, together with her visual appeal, brought women's bodybuilding further attention than it had ever had before. She never placed lower than third in any contest she entered. After she finished second in the 1984 IFBB Miss Olympia, McLeish retired from competitive bodybuilding. She's actually still incredibly active online today with various workout programs and a YouTube channel. But why the heck would they go with a Miss Olympia pinball? Because they have Bally Fitness health clubs. Oh, my goodness. Yes, Ward Pepperton tells us, Bally was in health and fitness clubs now. Rachel McCliff signed with the fitness department, and they wanted to do a pinball machine for that. Sure enough, that's what we did. we changed BMX a little and made it hard body. So there you go. You've got a machine that didn't really sell very well, so we're going to mix it up and we're going to make it hard body. And I don't think people like it. They prefer this over BMX. I think they swapped some of the drop targets out for stand-ups. They removed one of the magnets. But it's pretty much BMX. I have a friend that has one of these. I've never been to his place to play it. But he, like, loves this game. Legitimately is like, this is a great game. I don't know what people complain about. I mean, the theme is a bit weird, bodybuilding and such, but he thinks the play field is pretty unique. The Trans Light, though, is screaming 80s. It's just photos of Rachel McClish. Yeah, in her various poses and lifting things. And it's photorealistic, which is not a traditional ballet thing. That was more of a Gottlieb thing where it was like a photo translate. I mean, it is designed to bring teenage boys in to play it, right? That's kind of what pinball was at this time. We still have the generic cabinet art. This has the awesome reflex saves. You love those, right? They are the worst. So can you explain that this is a terrible, terrible design idea, but please explain this, Rod. Picture a situation where there is no in lane, there's an out lane, and you have to save the ball every time it goes there. There is a second category. But not each side that you push to have a, just like a thing that comes up so you can't drain. But you have to time it. And you only have so many and so much, so many times you can do that. Depending on the game. Before it just, oh, it's true. Yeah, there's different, like, I think BMX, you could just, you could only do it, you couldn't do it consecutive times within a certain period. But you always had them. and you had to do it every time. And then I think some later designs, they made it so it would do it for you at least a few times so you didn't just drain instantly. Yeah, and you have to be on the ball enough that when you're going out the out lane, you've got to shift your mind to move your hand down to the other button to hit it to save your ball from going to the outside. Because it will always 100% of the time drain unless you do something. which is, I think, a terrible design, but a lot of people really like it. They think it's really cool. Yeah, they did it with BMX. It's on this. Dungeons & Dragons, which is going to come up soon. Those are the ones I can think of. All Ward Pemberton games. It has an upper playfield, which is not a Bally staple, and in that upper playfield, you're basically shooting stand-up targets, drop targets, in-line drop targets, and those are like workout stations, right? Like you're working chest in one area, you're working arms in another area, I haven't been to a gym in a long time, so I assume that's what you do in a gym. So then we come into Party Animal. We talked about that in our Dennis Nordman episode as well. Amazing art on that one. There's not much more else we can talk about how amazing that is. But the one we're going to jump into next is Heavy Metal Meltdown. This is the heavy metal music theme, August of 87, 1,600 units designed by Dan Langlois, art by Tony Ramuni, software by Riemann Merchant because like literally this is all he does is code. He must be completely insane. This is the only there's the only music in this game is a drum track and a bass line while the player is left to fill in the lead guitar riff by hitting shots. Every switch triggers part of the riff. The duration of the ball sounds extends the guitar solo. It's as awesome as it sounds. I don't know It is. 100%. Is it? You start the game, and the first thing it says is, Heavy Metal Meltdown! And then it's got extra buttons on the side. When you hit them, it'll say, Heavy, heavy, metal, metal, heavy, heavy. That does sound pretty good. It has a huge boombox topper. Yeah, so back in the 80s, you had to have a sweet stereo. And the cabinet is total crap. It's horrible. So I've seen these with the topper, like, is weighing down the back box. It's, like, drooping. It's because it's fiberboard. It's, like, glued together fiberboard. If you look at it, look what's on the cabinet. Arts! It doesn't say just Valley Midway. It actually says Heavy Metal Meltdown. And it is really cool art. Like, we're getting better. We talked about Rock, which was a Rock game, obviously, from the System 80 era over at Gottlieb. and they did the photorealistic 80s thing. Well, this is similar, but it just is cooler because of the art. The art is beautiful. Now, the gameplay on this is somewhat shallow. There is a ramp, and that's what you try to do is hit the ramp. That's all you try to do is hit the ramp. People love ramps, right? You lock the balls, and you start multi-ball, repeat. It has the Atom Smasher from Strange Science. They brought it back. I don't think they call it an atom smasher. I don't remember what they call it. But it literally is the same thing. That's what the balls get locked into. The power amp. Yeah. And it's the same thing. You should be able to hit the ball in front and knock it out, but that never works. But, yeah, I'm a fan. I used to play this at Papa back in the day. You just try to hit the ramp and start multiball and enjoy the music. Heavy metal meltdown. One of the things that they are promoting in the flyer here is the solid construction of the cabinets. No. Cabinets are rock solid using miter joint construction and 65% more plywood. No. And sizzling graphics to finish off the perfect pinball cabinet. Lie. The house lights go down. The crowd cheers, and the drummer lays down a backbeat that just won't quit. You'll pull the plunger. The ball screams to the top, and the stage is set for your first pinball concert experience. It's a total concert package. Long before Guns N' Roses, there was heavy metal meltdown. What's cooler than rock and roll and heavy metal music, Ron? Crank up your profits. That's another one I like. Crank up your profits. But you know what? You know what, though? The next game we're going to talk about has better music, even better than Heavy Metal Meltdown. Well, I mean, the only thing cooler than hard rock and 80s metal is Dungeons & Dragons from October of 1987. This is the fantasy nerd theme, 2,000 units, Ward Pemberton back again on contract to do a second game, art by Pat McMahon and uncredited software. But if I were a gambling man, I'd probably say it was Riemann Merchant. It has even a more insane topper. I think that's even taller, the dragon topper. It might be like the tallest thing ever, I mean, other than big guns or something. Like when you put the back box, the topper extends just out over everything. It's ridiculous. It has this music that does not match the theme at all. You would think Dungeons & Dragons. I would think medieval orchestral music. That's what I would think. No, no. It's like the funkiest soundtrack ever. It's so good. And the more balls you lock, the slower and funkier it gets. I used it for my podcast, the Slam Thrill Podcast. We originally used the multiball music for our theme music. It was so good. It has another unusual play field, and that, again, ties back into sort of Ward Pemberton, Dan Langlois, All those guys that are like, hey, we've got to create weird, unique layouts because we have to be different than Williams, and we have to be different than Gottlieb. Ward Pemberton would say that every game takes about a year to design. That's why they had always different game designers in between games. Even in the contract, it would pretty much state that you had one year to do a game. And you can see that with that 12-month turnover, you're getting a lot of recycling. And in this game, we are getting those FlexSave outings again. FlexSave. We got the carrot flippers. They're an eighth inch longer.
    109:20
    So they're, what would that be, three and an eighth inch flippers. It has a ramp that leads to the inline drop targets. That's cool. Only time I've ever seen that. Ton of lights. So when the dragon breeze fire, it looks really cool because they use the center of the play field as the fire coming down. The ball goes in behind the backboard and around on the left and right side, which is really neat. Unconventional pop bumper in the middle of the play field. What do you think of the Dungeons & Dragons theme? It seems like a good theme for pinball, doesn't it? Sure. I've never played it. That game. I played the pinball machine. Now, the artist, Larry Elmore, he threw in his signature in the bottom of the Translate, which you'll see on a piece of the stone down there. So that's a nice little Easter egg in there. I have played this game. I think it's pretty cool. And that's the thing, right? Like, sometimes I'm, like, harsh on games, but I'm just teasing. Sometimes. You know, like, every pinball is generally good pinball. I mean, not even, like, I mean, except for Halloween. but all of them are all pretty great games. I'm just joking about that one, too. Calm down. Don't send your hate mail to me. You can send your hate mail to silverballchronicles at gmail.com. And this is an unusual game, but I think it works. Just don't play it at a show where you can't hear it, although that's probably the only place you'll ever see it. But if you can play it somewhere else, just tell them to crank up that freaking sound. Crank up that music and listen to the brilliance. It's so good. Blackwater 100 was the Dennis Nordman game after this We talk about that in the Dennis Nordman episode Speaking of plastic But we're coming to a watershed moment in the pinball industry We are coming to the actual death of Bally Miller So that's what we're getting into 1989, well, were you aware of Aladdin's Castle? I've heard of Aladdin's Castle I've heard of it, but I didn't know of it back then But a lot of people have a lot of amazing, fond memories of Aladdin's Castle. Aladdin's Castle was a shopping mall arcade chain that began as American Amusements Incorporated in the early 70s. It was purchased and renamed Aladdin's Castle by Bally in 1974. The number of store locations grew from 20 in 1974 to 221 in 1980. It was 360 of them when the chain was spun off in 1989. Yeah. So we had talked about the dwindling of the war chest, all of the dumb spending that they had done with the video game money. They didn't invest it in pinball. They didn't invest it in gaming. They bought silly things, and they expanded silly things. Aladdin Castle would be one of them. But Aladdin's Castle is quite smart because you're manufacturing the game, you're operating the game on location, and you're buying the game to put on locations. Very smart sort of vertical integration, they call it, with corporate stuff. But by 1989, the luster was very much off of Bally Midway. All the money was now apparently in yachts and fitness equipment. Another quote here from George Gomez. The notion of selling off the land's castle and selling off distribution when you basically had it going on all ends. If you walked into an era where Atari had a hit in Asteroids, Bally was profiting because Bally was operating the game, and they were distributing the game. It's nice when you have a Bally Midway game like Pac-Man, but what about when you don't? Well, guess what? Sega's got something, or if you've got Missile Command, guess what? You're distributing and you're operating. Who would shoot this golden goose? I mean, what kind of idiocy is that? So eventually, the Bally Midway executives would see this profitable arm, or they needed to raise money and they would send it out. Why would you do that? That's terrible. Then the big day, the sale of Bally Midway to Williams. Wow. Pinball's dead, Ron. That brings us to the end. Pinball is dead. The funny thing about that is from the video game side, Midway was a much more known name than Williams. So even though Williams bought Bally Midway, Williams then took the Midway name as the name of their video game arm, which pissed off most of the employees there. It's like, hey, we won. We bought them, and we're using their name? What the hell? Yeah, Midway, the name Midway would stick around well into the 2000s until it wasn't around anymore. Yeah, George Gomez ended up, he was working there. Yeah, so, I mean, Midway was a powerhouse, right? They would eventually, under the Bally-Williams-Midway sort of umbrella, would come up with the amazing smash hit of Mortal Kombat, which I think changed video games in quite a unique way. Speaking of powerhouses, you have Williams Pinball. They now have the Bally name, and they would use it. Now in the industry, we have Gottlieb Premier with their System 80, AB80C era, who is moving into System 3. And you've got basically Bally Williams Midway. You got that East. But those are the three main manufacturers. One of the pillars of early pinball, 1930s, right? Ballyhoo, you know, gone and absorbed into their largest competitor. Wow. Pinball's dead, Ron. It is? It's dead.
    114:55
    That's not a positive way to end the podcast. Well, spin this in a positive way. The Bally name got to live on on really good games made by Williams.
    115:16
    As always, you can send your comments, questions, corrections, and concerns to civilballtrollicles at gmail.com. We look forward to all your messages if we read every one. Please subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or your favorite podcatcher. A day that you know favorite is still spelled wrong. What's with the you? I mean, seriously, I've been doing this for how many years now? Fix your spelling.
    115:39
    I'm sorry. Turn on automatic download so you don't miss a single episode. Remember to leave us a five-star review. That way more people can find us. Oh, the Patreon, okay. Join us on Patreon to support the show and become a crony.
    116:19
    I'm sorry, I'm spacing out. What did we talk about last time? What was he referring to? What was the episode? What was our last episode? right after that we get into speakeasy 4 oh hold on i don't think it's called speakeasy 4 i've never heard of that i've heard i've heard of speakeasy i've never heard speakeasy 4 ipd being right now wow i've i've never ever heard of that i heard speakeasy okay so it was speakeasy and then they made for export speakeasy 4 which i have that's why i've Never heard of it. Interesting. I wonder what the hell that... Does it actually say that on the back glass? I have to look now.
    117:21
    It does. Holy Toledo. Wow. This is the hard-hitting research that I do, Ron. It all began thousands of miles beyond the mouth of the Nile River in a... It's too small. I can't read. There we go Okay I'm trying There Valley Management Changed the game back To the standard one player At a time sequence Valley Management Changed the game back To the standard Valley Management Changed the game Wow Let me start at the beginning As always You can send your comments Concerns Corrections And oh I fucked up again Shit