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. 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 The Pinball Network is online. Launching. Silver Ball Chronicles. Kenny Loggins. F***ing Kenny Loggins. Yeah, I don't think he... He had, like, what, two songs? Hey, that is not true at all. Your mama don't dance and your daddy don't rock and roll. The one with Stevie Nicks. That's the one I know. Sweep up and on a heavenly line. I've never seen such a beautiful sight. I'm all right. Don't nobody worry about me. Full loose, full loose. I'm on highway to the danger zone. I'm missing one. This is it. The one with Michael McDonald. This is it. There you go. There's some outtake material. Hello everyone, I'm David Dennis and this is Silver Ball Chronicles. And with me this month is Ron Tiny Dancer Hallett. How you doing fella? Tiny Dancer, very good, okay. Upcoming game from Jersey Jack, Rumors. allegedly allegedly that's right and of course you are a very good dancer people don't know that uh i didn't know that but i'm glad i'm glad all right what have you been doing besides dancing ron have you been out to a couple crazy tournaments recently or what uh it's been a while since we recorded i know i know we've been we've had quite the uh the adventure here over the last little month but i want to get a couple of them banged out here over the next few weeks and we'll see how it goes. I'm very excited about today's topic, but you've just been knee deep in major tournament winnings. I have. I went to Texas. You went to Texas with a big win in Texas? I won in Texas. Well, you got into the finals, didn't you? No. Oh, that's depressing. yeah but you have got to play all the new games in texas which is really cool which i have not got around to playing just yet yes the most new games and that's this is an historical thing because that had to be the biggest collection of new games ever in one location at one show ever and the history of pinball if it was me i would have delayed my launch and not launched it there so I could get more oxygen. Because if you're all fighting for the same time and energy, I don't know, man, but I'm not a marketing person. I'm just a pinball player. But I am glad for a lot of new pinball, even if it's not great pinball. Pinball is lots of fun. Regardless, it might not sell anything, but it's still fun. All pinball is good. So we've sold out recently. We've joined Patreon, as everybody knows. You can join us over at patreon.com slash silverballchronicles. There you can join us in all of our rumblings and musings. We want to welcome William, Noland, JC, Rob, and Andrew to the amazing Silverball Chronicles Patreon. Those are the new cronies, Ron. I thought we were calling them cronies. No, we did the vote. I put it up, and they went with cronies. Cronies, okay. because they that's what the patreons have decided in the vote as well as we put a vote up for today's topic which we'll get to in a minute a lot of those free stickers are going out those are for our six dollar a month tier where you get access to our private discord you get to ask us questions on the podcast you get to vote on upcoming topics and of course early ad free access for silver ball chronicles so come join us over there what's the top tier ron the top tier is the elitist cronies exactly so that's where you get all of the perks of the six dollar a month tier but after three months you get a silver ball chronicles t-shirt and the t-shirts i've got a notification have gone out for our first patreons at that level so that's great congratulations cronies and if you would just like to say thank you no big commitment you just send us a three a month spot there at our pro level so swing on over and join us on probably the laziest patreon in pinball you can also join us at facebook facebook.com slash silver ball chronicles and we always remind you to please leave a five star review so others can find us easily when they're looking for new pinball podcasts unless the highest rating is six stars in which case leave us a six-star review do we have any comments or corrections from the previous episode ron let's see i'm looking here uh i don't see any no that's because we are a hundred percent perfect in everything that we do okay i believe the subject of our last episode listen to the episode yes and he did not write us so we have to assume we got it right or at least good enough and like all topics that we cover and an individual is still around they often say why hasn't anybody reached out to me that's the fun we get to speculate on silver ball chronicles we get to make up all of the fun things that people have done it's the best part don't let don't listen today we're not making up anything this is an historical podcast so ron i want to jump into today's topic This is one that our cronies over on Patreon had voted for, and one that I have to say I didn't have much knowledge about at all, so I was really starting from scratch. Although you are a massive, massive expert at this topic. Not particularly. Okay, so we're both kind of winging it here. Well, the individual in question, Mr. Wayne Nyans, I would see him every year at Pinball Expo. He was always at Pinball Expo. So let's jump into today's topic. A centurion, as most people know, is part of the Roman army during the classical period. A centurion was a commander, normally of an entire century, or a military unit consisting of a hundred legionnaires. What does this have to do with our subject today? Our subject today is Wayne Nyant. I think he meant centenarian. like a person who's over a hundred years old oh centenarian centenarian so it's not centurion centurion no i don't know if wayne did any roman based um pinballs but so he wasn't around during the classical he wasn't around during roman times he he didn't he didn't oh yeah this this whole episode has been typed out incorrectly oh i'm sorry all right let's we are going to wing it this month. We're just gonna, this is, this, right, okay, okay. A centenarian is someone linked to longevity. Someone who has seen it all come and go, and then once again be reinvented. Like bell bottoms, coming and going, and coming again, and hopefully going. Wayne is Pinball's centenarian. He was there in the beginning of pinball, and he was there when it ended, a couple of times, and he witnessed the rebirth we now see today before his passing at age 104. He was the last of his pinball generation, the last of the wood rail masters, and the man who gave his whole life to making people smile with the silver ball. Wayne made over 160 pinball machines throughout his career, which started in the 1930s and ended in the late 1970s. He frequented Chicago Expo every year, well into his 90s. Join us this month as we discuss pinball's centenarian, Wayne Nyans. Finally, a full electromechanical episode. It's about time. Oh, my God. People have wanted this. They've been emailing. The constant harassment we get in our Discord, on Facebook. People have camped out in front of my home in rural Canada because they want to hear all about EMs. And, you know, to be totally honest, Ron, I actually love electromechanical machines. I love EM machines. I don't like working on them. I don't like cleaning gears and rotors and stepper motors and stuff like that. But I will say I really do like them, even though I do give them a hard time. What about you? Do you enjoy EMs? EMs rule. They are cool, right? They're a totally different animal. Bells and chimes, man. Bells and chimes. It's all about the finer skills that you get in pinball, right? The nudging, the slap saves, the poke in the cabinet with, you know, up in the high and the mid range, like slapping the side of the cabinets. Like, it's totally a different game, right? How many EMs do you have? I have two EMs. One of them is Prospector. Prospector. And one is the awesome Spanish Eyes. Spanish Eyes, right, from Williams, I think, right? Yeah, that's correct. Yeah, so you're on the dark side of EMs. Because most EMs, when people talk about EMs, they tend to tilt towards sort of the Gottlieb era. And that's really where Wayne Nyans builds out his portfolio and his experience. But let's wind it all the way back. Let's start really at the beginning of Wayne Nyans, his life. And this way we can understand why Wayne was the way he was. Because when we grow up in a certain economic time or time period in general, that is what reflects our vision of the world for the rest of our lives. You were born in the late 70s, right, Ron? Early 70s. So you really sort of came into your own in what, the 80s and 90s during that sort of the Reagan years. Okay. Yeah. Early 90s. Yeah. Reagan Bush era. Yeah. So you grew up in that recession back in that time and high inflation and the world was coming to an end. So you probably look back very fondly of your childhood and you hate the world that it is today. Sure, I hate the world that it is today. Exactly, exactly. Where other generations would grow up very differently. So let's talk about Wayne from really the greatest generation. generation. So he was born in 1918 in Mason City, Iowa. You know what 1918 was? That's when World War One ended. Oh my goodness, you're right. Yes. Exactly. He lived most of his life actually in Chicago. His father in Mason City, Iowa was an industrial electrician and he was killed on the job in 1929, which is catastrophic, absolutely terrible. So here's a great quote from Wayne, And it really sort of explains the world as it was at that time. So Wayne says, I was eight years old at the time. My sister was nine. There were no relatives in Mason City. So my mother decided to move to Chicago where she had a sister and two half brothers. You need family around you when you're in that condition. We had a pretty good insurance Ryan Policky. And, of course, my mother invested in the stock market like everybody else in the 1928-29 era. And then, of course, you know what happened. We were broke. yikes that is terrible so i mean think about it right in that era that sort of the man of the household was like the breadwinner right like the man was the person who went out and the woman stayed home and took care of the family and that was the world we lived in it was sort of this post um egalitarian farmer type of of society that was being built in this time, everybody was doing the smart thing and saving for the future. And buying life insurance and having a life insurance Ryan Policky at work was a big deal. And everybody knows my background as a financial advisor here in Canada. And this is exactly what you should do in that type of situation is to be able to provide for your family. But in the crazy circumstances that were the crash and the inevitable depression that happened in the 1930s, this is heartbreaking. Yeah, we should mention that, the great stock market crash of 1929. That was inevitably what drove a lot of change in society, because over the next eight years, there were serious, serious troubles until the outbreak of World War II. So to make ends meet for his family in Chicago, Wayne sold newspapers, and that helped supplement his income as best as he could. But that generation struggled, and it was because of things like this experience why they were so hardworking. They always said yes to a job. They took every job they possibly could, and they did it to the best of their ability because jobs were hard to come by. In junior high school, Wayne took mechanical drawing, and he took that course in high school as well. Now, graduating in the Great Depression meant that it was tough to find a job, so you took whatever job you could get. Wayne says, You were a little concerned about how you were going to make a living at that time. And making a living was utmost in my mind. Someone sent a notice around that a company wanted to hire draftsmen part-time. So, of course, I ran down and applied for the job, not expecting to get it, because when I got there, there must have been 20 kids standing in front of the door waiting for an interview. I got a call back and started work the next day. That was when Wayne was 17. What were you doing at 17, Ron? I was graduating from high school. Yeah, and you had no idea. You're like, ah, get a job, right? Go to college. I'll do something. Yeah. For me, I was finishing up high school as well, and I was going in to do an arts degree. So I was going to do writing and history and all that stuff, which is kind of where we get to do to this podcast. Then you started to work at a maple syrup factory. I had to do a Canada thing, you know. Yes, I had to go to the syrup mines. Yes. The maple mines of Chewinnigan, Quebec. Chewinnigan? That's a great name. That is Canadian. But, I mean, here at 17, he's kind of in high school, finishing up, and he's like, I need a job right away. And he's taking whatever job he can get with the skills that he got in high school. The man that interviewed him was Eric Bernander, who was the chief engineer of the company he was interviewing at. He was hired. He was given a little room, and he worked under an individual named Lynn Durant. And that's a name we heard before. Do you remember who that was, Ron? He was the president of United Manufacturing. That's right. And he was also a very close friend of Harry Williams. And they worked and learned together back in that day. Lynn was an old man at that time, as Wayne described him. He was 32 years old. So 32 is old. It compared to a 17-year-old getting his first job. He was an old man. What was the name of the company? The company was Western. Western had a million different names. It went by Western. It went by Western Supply and Equipment. It also went by Western Piano. It was like a million different things, and we'll get to that in just a minute. It was run by Jimmy Johnson. He was the big boss over there, and he oversaw all of the teams working under him. Now, do you want to describe the working conditions here, Ron, in the next little bit? Well, according to Wayne, he said in the back of the factory there were cages with chicken wire and two-by-fours so the designers could have their own working space. But Western didn't have any room. Depression-style cubicles. Yeah, so this is like literally like depression-style cubicles, right? So when you're complaining about your cubicles at work and the open concept and all of that stuff, they literally had two-by-fours and chicken wire. But you know what? He had a job, and that's all that mattered, right? It didn't matter what the working conditions were. About a block away, there was a storage building with Western where they would store all their old stuff. and one of the other designers by the name of Herb Breitenstein weaseled his way into getting his own office over there because they were hurting for so much space. Above this area there was actually a loft where Jimmy Johnson had stored a bunch of old cabinets and Herb had built a bed up there. Wayne says every once in a while he'd come in drunk in the morning and he'd invariably go up there and lay down and go to sleep. Jimmy Johnson would catch him sleeping, wake him up, get him going again herb was the character of the old group herb had a brother that worked at bally as chief tool maker over there western was full of characters this is the story that i want to draw is that this is a really really fly by night seat of your pants informal industry at the time right like let's draw the picture here that there's guys coming in drunk sneaking up and having snaps up having naps up above the area where their boss comes in and gets them out. Like, it's cubicles of chicken wire. Like, it is not today's modern stern. It's pretty weird. As mentioned, Western Equipment and Supply Company, or what we'll call them is just Western, they made novelty games. They were mostly flipperless or baseball games, skee-ball, one-ball type of games. and Ron they made the classics like Don't Do It, Lino, Races, Parlay, Air Derby and Hay Day. And being they were all made before 1947 they would definitely be flipperless. Exactly and you love every one of those. I don't know you know Parlay I might have seen somewhere. Wow. That sounds familiar. Okay, what I did is I just took their biggest sellers and I just put them on a list here. And I thought, okay, this is... Because if you go to enough pinball shows, some of them they will have like a 1930s section or the pre-war section, they call it. Yes. And I think I've seen a parlay before. Where all those old sort of pre-war pins, they all kind of oddly smell like a barn? No. Because that was where they were probably pulled out of. the the coolest thing i think is at this time is turnover in staff is you're bringing in people seeing if they work they're moving on or they're moving up uh it was a really interesting spot to be and this is when we kind of got into the idea of game design as opposed to just an engineer yeah wayne says we had maybe five or six designers in this little company and no one knew what they were doing. In those days, nobody knew anything about building a game. People were looking for work. They'd come into the factory. They'd be interviewed. And what do you do? Well, I'm a designer. And they worked there a month or so, and then they'd fire them. This went on all the time. There was no shortage in people willing to work for any wage. So you could bring anybody in, see if they worked. If they didn't work well or they didn't know what they were doing, and you just throw them out because there were like a dozen other people banging on the door for a job. It's crazy to think about that type of situation where the employer held so much power over the employee. Now, Len Durant, he was working on an EM slot machine when Wayne started. He was trying to find a way to compete with the one-armed bandit style of slot machine. I don't know what that is. It just means it's got the thing on the side you pull down? Yeah, the pull thing. Yeah, you pull the thing and the little wheels spin and whatever, and then it lands on something and it pays you. It's the classical slot machine. I'm not big into, you know, gambling machines because it's more fun to compete. Yeah. Pinball games are games of skill. Games of skill. And I know that because I've heard of Roger Sharp. Lynn Durant was an electrical engineer. Now, did he have a degree? I don't entirely know. I wasn't able to find that information, and Wayne wasn't even sure if he had an electrical degree. But nonetheless, he was an electrical engineer in the 1930s. You know, Lynn didn't last long. He was laid off by Jimmy Johnson because he was paid too much. Got like that as a reason. He went to exhibit supply where he linked up with Harry Williams on games such as Lightning. I think they had seven magnets under the play field that messed with the ball. Oh, very original. Harry Mavs would move in and out of Western at this time. So it seems like Western was the place where all these big names were at one point and then just passed through. Well, it sounds like people got fired a lot there. Yeah, that's Jimmy Johnson. Sounds like he was an interesting dude. Yeah. And we'll get into that. You know, what about pinball? Like, did they make pinball at this time in Chicago at Western? Well, they had no idea what pinball even was. And Western was basically trying to make anything that made money, quite literally anything. Wayne tells an amazing story about how they tried to design a skee game which was a bit of a copy of another skee game from another manufacturer and they ordered all of this wood paneling to make cabinets And because they couldn sell enough machines Jimmy Johnson basically just wood paneled his entire house on the inside, because they had so much extra wood. They literally threw everything at the wall, no pun intended, to make money. Why didn't they make pinball machines? Pinball machines were banned in Chicago at this time. They were outlawed, so they didn't grow up with pinball machines like some of the designers in the next generation. Wayne was great at drafting part-time, but he wanted a full-time job. So when he was finished his drafting work, he'd lace cable or run cable for machines, stock shells, anything to get enough hours for a full-time wage. That's crazy. So in 1937, he created the Free Play Unit. Wayne Nyans creates the Free Play Unit. What do I actually mean by the Free Play Unit, Ron? At the age of 19, he manipulated and updated a GM laboratory stepper unit. That way the switches would work and reset for free play, free credit. Yeah, he literally created a way for an EM machine to give you a free game, which I would say revolutionized the industry, but nobody really gives any credit for that. So Wayne took that work. Oh, Jimmy Johnson. What did Jimmy have to say about that? Jimmy, of course, was a difficult person to deal with. but he probably knew that there were certain ways to make money. So he shows the unit to Jimmy. Jimmy's like, I don't think it's going to work. So he's like, well, put it in a machine. So he puts it in a machine and it works fine. Then Jimmy says, this is a quote, so Jimmy says, engineers look at all this stuff and poo-poo it all the time. It'll never work. No one will ever play that game. So later, Jimmy calls the president of GM Laboratories, who Western were buying all of their stepper units from. This executive shows up and gives Wayne Nyans $50. He signed away the rights, the patent, to the free play stepper unit for $50 in 1937. Wayne would say he was making 30 cents an hour. So $50 was a lot of money. Probably could have bought a car or something with that much money. oh my god what would 50 be in the 1930s holy moly now western was also notorious for copying games because they were trying to get any product out as fast as they possibly could yeah so one day they got a game from a distributor in the afternoon so they could look it over and that's when jimmy came in with a request wayne says at western we used to copy everything that everyone else made. One night, Jimmy told us that we were going to work overtime. We were going to copy a game. We worked all night, three or four guys. We copied a game absolutely piece by piece, made each part, wired it, had a game in the morning, and we shipped that game back out, back to the distributor. It was amazing. So it's like in the afternoon, they get a game from a distributor. They bring it into one end of the factory. They literally copy it from end to end, and they get that game back to the distributor the next morning before they realized they had enough time to copy it. Like, that's pretty amazing stuff if you think about the effectiveness of Wayne and those around him. I take it they weren't very litigious back then. People just ripping off other people's games. Now, oddly enough, Western went bankrupt two times while Wayne was there. After the second time, there were only three people left in the factory with Wayne, and they basically redesigned a baseball game to keep the company afloat, and they got it out the door. Jimmy apparently spent most of that time upstairs smoking cigars. Wayne went to Jimmy Johnson for a raise after all of his work and was offered a 2.5 cents more an hour. What does that mean? 2.5 cents? How do you have a .5 cent? Two and a half. Two and a half cents. Oh, okay. Wait a minute. What's half a cent? I'm still confused. Wow. Exactly. Jimmy Johnson was interesting. I don't know. You round down, I guess. I don't know. You get to two hours and it's five cents, I guess. One of Wayne's coworkers was making five cents more. That's terrible. Five cents more? So Wayne walked off the job. 19 years old, he said, enough of this, and walked out. He had to be pretty brave to leave a full-time position in the middle of the Great Depression. That's pretty scary. Apparently, he took the streetcar home. And when he was going down a street, it went by Genco. And he thought that he should stop in and see who was there. Maybe there was a position for him. There was a streetcar stop a couple blocks up, and he got off. And he started walking back to Genco, and that's when he noticed Gottlieb was on the same street as well. So because it was closer, he stopped there first. Wayne was interviewed for 10 minutes, and he was hired at 10 cents more than he was making at Western. I could see how that interview probably went. Well, I can. Like, yes, I built all these games. Like, you're hired immediately. Yes, I know how to use a soldering iron. Wayne says, I get on a streetcar to go home, and I get off the streetcar and start walking up to our apartment, and there was Jimmy Johnson sitting in his big old Lincoln. He spotted me. He gets out of his car, comes over, and he says, what's the matter with you, kid? You know what you're leaving me for? He called me nothing but trouble. He's yelling at me in the street and giving me the sales pitch to come back. Yeah, he's putting on the charm offensive, right? Apparently, Jimmy Johnson was really tall, really big-shouldered, huge guy. Yeah, he's probably quite the charmer when he needs to be. Yeah, charmer. He's just strong-arming him. So apparently, Wayne would sleep all night, have a conversation with his mother about why did he leave the job, You should go back. You know, it's a good wage. What's your crazy? But he did. He did pass. And he returned to Gottlieb the next morning. But by two o'clock in the afternoon, Dave Gottlieb tapped him on the shoulder and he turned around to have a very weird conversation. Wayne says, I never met Dave. I knew he was Gottlieb himself. And Dave says, you Wayne Neyens? I said, yeah. And he said, you work for Jimmy? He's up in my office and he's telling me I should fire you. What happened? Oh, my. Like I said, this guy is something. He's a class act. So, of course, Wayne tells Dave Gottlieb the whole story. Dave is this young kid who desperately needs a job. His former employer is a hard ass, and he's fighting to get him back to the point of, I'm going to make sure that this kid doesn't have a job anywhere, So the only place he can work is for me. And he goes to this new employer and tries to cost him that job. Well, I think Dave Gottlieb knew what kind of person Jimmy Johnson was. He probably had a reputation. Because Dave Gottlieb tells Wayne, all right, I'll tell you what. You never have to worry about a job. As long as I own this company, you have a job. So Wayne says, from that moment on, him and I were friends. And I could walk in his office and talk to him. And I did many, many times because we were friends. We became close and he was truly a man of his word. That's amazing. Isn't that amazing to think about, like, Gary Stern coming down and, like, covering for somebody for their entire career? You know, David Gottlieb himself. What a stand-up, amazing individual he must have been. We're getting into the 1940s, and in 1941, the United States enters World War II. A little bit late, but that's okay. We don't hold that against you. and Wayne, like many people, were off to war. When Wayne came back on leave at the end of the war, there were a lot of people in the service and they were letting them out slowly because you just can't let an entire army into the streets. You've got to sort of slowly reintegrate them back into society. Basically, each person got their turn getting out of the military. This is one of the most interesting things I found. Wayne says, I came back to Gottlieb while I leave, and I went in the office, and there was Homer Capehart sitting in the office with Dave Gottlieb, both of them smoking cigars and talking the world over. So Homer Capehart was the manufacturer of record players and a U.S. senator from Indiana. Hey, guys, as a quick heads up, I wanted to let you know that in my real life, I'm David the Advice Guy. At Dennis Financial, we aren't investment advisors or insurance agents. I always thought that sounded terrible. We want to provide you with sound financial advice. In fact, we want to provide you with investment and insurance advice for life, and we take that honor very seriously. Do you know individuals who receive financial advice for 10 years have two times the financial assets of unadvised individuals? For example, we've got mortgage insurance at the bank, right? Well, did you know a 40-year-old non-smoker can save $30 a month every month for 20 years just from shopping around for a more competitive rate? Now, just imagine what a pinhead like you could do with that extra money. Toppers and shooter rods, anyone? If you're looking for a more human dimension to your financial advice, Dennis Financial Inc. has you covered with advisors licensed in most Canadian provinces. Contact me via email at david at dennisfinancial.net for a free rate quote and a copy of our Value of Advice e-book or check out dennisfinancial.ca. Insurance solutions provided by Dennis Financial, Inc., Canadian residents only. Ah, the metropolis of Indiana. So David asked me when I was coming back to work, and I said, well, as soon as they let me out. You know how the Army is. They don't move very fast now that the war is over. There's millions of men that have to be classified and sent home. Dave looks at Homer, Homer looks at Dave a week later I was out of the army I don't know who did what but I was out of the army in one week that's an awesome story I think the whole senator part probably helped him there good job Homer right but that just goes to show you how valuable Wayne Nyans was to David Gottlieb that he literally did whatever he could to ensure that he was out of the military and back into the business and designing and building and working. It was pretty amazing. Wayne was moved into the engineering department at this time, and he worked under Harry Mabs, who was the inventor of the flipper from the Humpty Dumpty pinball machine. And he built test fixtures. And what was a test fixture? A fixture that tests things. yeah yeah it was like a thing that would test like a like a pop bumper and it would just hit the pop bumper over and over and over and over or uh you know the flipper i think steve ritchie started doing similar things building text test fixtures exactly so it's like you're cycling things over and over and over again to see how long that they will go until they break In 1947, during his time in engineering, Wayne would invent and patent another big item, and that was the pop bumper switch. And the reason that was a big deal, because up to that point, the pop-upper switches of the time had a carbon ring with a stem going into it. And every time the stem made contact with the carbon, there was an arc and fire. This would gradually burn the carbon away. Pretty soon the carbon would wear away completely and fall out, and the pop-upper was dead. And it wouldn't work anymore. So he was efficient at building test fixtures and solving problems and making things better. and he proved himself over and over. During this time, he was so efficient that he actually had spare time. In that spare time, he decided to start trying to design his own game. And that game became College Days. D-A-Z-E. Days. Zed. Dead with a Z. Oh, is that a Canadian thing? The Zed thing? It's an English thing. Because we're speaking English. It's the letter Z. Why do you say Zed? It's Zed. It's the letter Zed. It's the letter. It's like Zed Zed Top. Okay. The Nissan 350 Zed. A Z06 Corvette. No? Weird. Very weird. This is the football nostalgia theme. This is from August of 1947. It sells 2,230 units, designed by Wayne Nyans and art by Roy Parker. this was a side project which took two years to complete and then in 1949 wayne actually would release this with three other games so this is a wood rail game which is uh an old style kind of maple cabinet with all the wood edges and stuff it doesn't look anything like uh the modern uh pinball machines that we would know today nor does it look anything like even the machines in the 1970s. I mean, it looks like a pinball machine. It's just made out of wood. It's just got wood rails. Significantly different. I mean, it's still a play field. It's got flippers, right? So he came in in the post-flipper era. He never made really any, he didn't design any games that were flipper-less. Now this game was originally called College Days with a D-A-Y-S. But Roy Parker, the artist, decided to change it to D-A-Z-E. or z c for everyone else yes wayne would say that parker was very sharp smart and comical and he had an eye for marketing which is why they played the fun college days play on words so what are we looking at here well there's a flyer even in 1949 there is a flyer even back then you're gonna read this from like like a 1940s guy what's a 1940s guy like there's russell tassel galloping gridiron action in gut leaves new college days is that it like like the news the old uh what news reels kick off to a big season with gut leaves t formation terrific appeal top earnings blocking action player blocks out 11 men bumpers and lights clock lights up and scrolling positions triple in value when 11 men are blocked out in the second time of the same game bottom rollovers and two kickout pockets light up to indicate special award possibilities i think we have a new talent for you you're the newsreel guy now is that what's new fifth ball special scoring gives all players a chance to come from behind and achieve a winning score pop bumpers with original flippers of course interesting they don't have anything on it that says for amusement only or they didn't have they look like they have the um it is more fun to compete yet or any of that stuff yeah no not at all and this is very much a football-y theme right like it is this is a thing this is a cultural thing in america that i don't think um the rest of the world really understands like most of us like football but it's really like this odd cultural thing for you this whole um college football cheerleading band marching band thing that's really what they're playing on with this with this game we have light box scoring we don't have reels yet no reels so this is like a light turns on when you move up points across the top it's got like a one two three four and a five on the back glass and under it says million so whenever that's lit that's one million two million three million and then you've got 10 all the way up to 900 for the thousands i do like that even in the 40s we had millions scoring everyone thinks that's like a later thing like no they had millions scoring in the 40s the play field itself is also very cool um it's symmetrical so the left looks exactly like the right it has three three dead bumpers at the top two pop bumpers in the middle and the pinball just sort of kind of falls down the play field and then there's two flippers pointing outwards. So they're not like we have today that flip up. They flip out. Not in the traditional position. It's a neat looking little machine. And the art, I think, is very cool. It's got these like cheerleaders with the, what do they call those, like the megaphone things? Yeah, I guess that's a megaphone. Yeah, before it was like electronic. Yeah. Yeah, really cool little game here. I think this is a winner, very much a winner. And by the sales numbers of 2,230 units, that seems like a lot. That's a lot for that era. And especially for a first game. I mean, anybody would be pretty excited for 2,000 units nowadays. and I think it's a big, big winner. But to give you an idea, Harry Mavs, he had 12 games he designed in 1949. Yeah. 12 games. Yeah. Could you imagine somebody coming in with three games in one year? That seems pretty amazing. But Harry Mavs is like, hold my beer. So in this era, speaking of numbers of games, Wayne Neyens had three games in 1949. So I guess when you said this game plus three, that was incorrect. It's actually just three. Yeah, that's right. Okay. In 1950, he had five. In 51, he had seven. In 52, he had 11. In 53, he had nine. And then in 1954, he did 19 different games. In a 12-month period. That is pretty nutty, man. With most of these games selling between 800 and 1,400 units. and some of them, as you would imagine, had very similar features and layouts. See, that was the thing in this era is that you could kind of get away with recycling some ideas. Barry Ousler kind of gets crap for replacing his long lumbering ramps that kind of sweep across from the left to the right or the right to the left. Somebody like Pat Waller kind of recycles the bottom, the double inlanes. But these guys literally would be like, well, I'm going to put the three-drop target bank on the left side of the play field, and that's an entirely different game. Well, Wayne says, sometimes I build it from scratch. Sometimes I cobble up something from a previous game, take a bottom pane and a light box, and then I take a play board and make a new game out of it. I always have five, six, or seven games ahead of the line. Holy moly. Five or six games ahead of time. like there's rumors that Keith Elwin is like three games ahead and that seems outrageous but this guy's five or six or seven night now we're not going to go through every single game he ever released because I mean as you can see that that will be a serious undertaking that would be an eight hour podcast but I mean if the top level cronies want it maybe we can make something special just for them yeah it's yeah no okay that would be the platinum that's the hundred dollar page draft if you want that so so what we'll do is we'll pick out a few games along the way that i think are high points in wayne's career another one i think is four horsemen the four horsemen from september 1950 1800 units all of these games almost 100 of them are Wayne Neyens obviously designing and Roy Parker. They work together quite regularly on their designs. This is another sports football theme. Again, a favorite for Wayne. It is the Four Horsemen, which I don't know, were people probably a big deal? It was, I can't remember if it was a college team or a pro team, but there was four particular players and they were the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. So they were Four Horsemen. And I would assume that's what it's based on. So it's almost like a licensed theme, kind of. But we're not paying anybody for their likenesses. Experts predict season winner, the Four Horsemen. The most amazing scoring combination in game history. Action-packed football thriller produced by Gottlieb. Four ways to win. One point scoring. Oh, no, that's one as in the first thing. Oh, there are four ways to win. Four ways to win. point scoring, backfield sequence, numbered sequence, high score, four pop bumpers, flippers, relay rollovers. So they're really going with the four. There's like four of everything. Four of everything. Very, very smart. It has the flippers pointed in the right direction, although they're very far apart. This makes a flipper gap look like nothing to complain about. It also has at the top of the playfield another set of flippers. Four flippers. Uh-huh. Four horsemen. And it has a center post. So you bump the center post. This is a nudger's dream. If you love to nudge, this is where it's at. But you are losing balls like crazy. But you got five of them, right? You got five balls. That's no big deal. Looking at it with that center post, I think you could save a lot of balls. You think so? I think so. I'm so bad at nudging, I don't think I'd be able to. Look at the flyer again. Look at the flyer again. They have one cool line at the end. Yeah, I like the one line they have at the bottom of the flyer. get out in front at the kickoff order from your distributor now got labe always i think had amazing marketing at this time again they're not as cheesy as the williams marketing back in the day but it's still according to the flyer it says there is a blocking gate and it assures extended ball action so i wonder if something pops up to actually block that from draining let's look under the play field a cool feature we don't even realize yeah so if you swing over to ipdb you can see all of these games if you search for the name and yes it does oh yes it has an actual full it's not even a gate i would call it like a almost like a lane guy type thing that pops up in front so you can't lose the ball it's like a piece of metal that pops up from a coil through a slot in the playfield yeah see there you go right like uh shout out to uh the internet pinball database for archiving a lot of this really cool stuff ipdb.org one of the games that popped up a lot when um i was doing some of the research was niagara oh niagara falls this is an international landmark tourist trap theme it is from december of 1951 it sells 1 200 units Niagara Falls, Ontario is a Canadian city around the famous waterfalls of the same name. It is linked to the United States by the Rainbow Bridge. It's on the site of Niagara River's western shore that overlooks the Horseshoe Falls, the Cascade's most expansive section. Elevators can take visitors to a lower wetter vantage point to view behind the falls a cliffside park which features a beautiful promenade and even underwater caverns which were originally used to generate power And if you love to go to all those crappy tourist places to buy stuff from China with Niagara Falls written on it, this is your town. Wow. Have you been to Niagara Falls? Uh, no. You haven't been to Niagara Falls? No. Isn't the Canadian side the better side? Everything on the Canadian side is always better. Oh, okay. I think it's like five hours from me. So on the Canadian side, you can see the falls, right? Like you're looking into the falls, where on the American side, you're kind of looking across to the Canadian side, which is just kind of a city in a forest. But it is actually a very cool place. And when you see the falls themselves, they are, like, impressive. The time that I always think when I've been to Niagara Falls is if you can imagine being like the discoverers who are rowing or going up the St. Lawrence River and they're trying to find a connection across North America and then they get to this and they're like, ah, s***. That's always what I imagine. Or they're going down the one way and they don't see the falls to the last second. Like, oh, no, paddle the other way. Wayne loved those bingo machines that were very popular around this time. He loved them because of their complexity. And he wanted to bring some of those interesting, complex ideas to his pinball design. So that's where he came up with the ideas that were implemented in Niagara. The idea was that in the center of the playfield, there are like these captive saucers. saucers and if you get a ball into those captive saucers the ball stays there and increases your score by 500,000. The idea was that it is sort of like Niagara Falls. You're falling in to these captive holes. This caused a lot of fighting among some of the other designers and engineers. He was breaking out of the mold. Wayne says the other designers were saying why lose a ball up the middle of the play field why lose the ball in an out hole up top we'll never play the game dave gottlieb was sitting up on a stool he always came in and sat on my stool he very seldom said much and he was pretty quiet all the rest of the guys were arguing and sometimes you get a little heated and they want to change this change that one day he says all right everybody out then he says to me you do anything you want and that's the way it's going to be built at that point i had supreme power and i used it whoa could you imagine having supreme power so you basically had the owner of the company just saying do whatever you want flippers are kind of back into where they should normally be the honeymoon is on for operators of got leaves niagara it's a torrent of action swirling speed so they call it okay their name for it is a ball trap everybody falls for new ball trap when balls are trapped pop bumpers light for points scoring trapping four balls awards one replay ball trap speeds play increases earnings so here's the thing right you get you lose that ball you go through your five balls faster which is good for the operator right it's pretty smart what are they two four pop bumpers two flippers two cyclonic bumpers create flashing speed ball action immediate delivery order today it's a beautiful looking pin the back glass is is gorgeous it's like niagara falls has this um weird um nostalgia of romance and honeymoons and things like that right where the heart-shaped uh jacuzzi tub right that's kind of the niagara thing it's got a wonderful back glass it's got a a 1940s 50s couple kissing in front of the falls it has all of these silly characters there's one person who's type rope walking across the falls just a wonderful back glass what do you think yeah that's a classic roy roy parker their characters would always be doing something you have to really look at these back glasses to see all the different stuff going on like there's a lot of stuff going on and itself is kind of interesting right like it's not just a back glass it's like it's it's fun it's it's joyful it's just wonderful i love it absolutely love it and the play field itself is beautiful as well it's a very similar scene but there's a a fellow with a barrel that's the get that's the thing right is the guy in a barrel falling off the falls and there's all of these characters again hidden in the playfield. Just beautiful. I understand why people, I think, love these wood rails. What about Queen of Hearts? This was Wayne Nyhan's favorite game that he made. This was a playing card theme from December of 1952. Sells 2,200 units. And with these, it's primarily, if you notice, instead of our previous episodes, where we got, you know, the designer was, The sound person was. Basically, the designer is so-and-so, and the artist is so-and-so. Yeah, they're bagging out 12 games a year. You know what I mean? They're not changing it up too often. Now, there's a back glass error in this one. If you look at it, the back glass is pretty risque. It's like a queen. Her midriff is showing. She's wearing a very short skirt, which is unusual for Gottlieb, but they went there on this occasion. The error on this back last is that the 7 of clubs actually has 8 clubs on it. Whoops. Whoops. Queen of Hearts with 5 brand new drop-through ball trap holes. Basically gobble holes. Gottlieb deals you another winning hand. Very nice. Very nice. This is the game that I mentioned before. This is Wayne's favorite game. He loved this game because he loved the concept of the gobble holes. He loved the idea of building a hand in the middle of the play field. He enjoyed the pop bumper action at the top. Two dead bumpers, three pop bumpers. He really liked the geometry and the code, if you will. It's a fun-looking game. I'm not into the card-playing games. It doesn't really appeal to me. I mean, they're fun. It's a very used theme in pinball. Especially in this time, right? It was, you know, men and women and playing cards and having people over for a dinner party and playing cards was a thing. They didn't have board games really at this time, so cards was the board game of choice at the time. Roy Parker's very risque when it comes to this theme. That was not really a topic that happened all the time. The risque-ness was not a big, big thing at Gottlieb. They got away with it this time. Roy Parker was an artist who worked for ad posters, and he did art almost exclusively for Gottlieb from the 1930s until his death in 1966. He was an introverted person and never really played pinball, but he was humorous and fun with those he knew. Parker would often come into Gottlieb with artwork for his games where the women were depicted in, you know, maybe a little bit too revealing clothing or suggestive themes. And that's when Dave Gottlieb would tell Parker to tone it down a bit, is what he would always say. And Parker would just take out a pen or pencil right there and fix or edit that artwork. He was often described by those who worked with him as a wonderful artist and so cooperative. He worked and never complained, even when his art was criticized by the designers or David Gottlieb. It just rolled off his back. Some artists are very, very sensitive with their art. Well, Wayne says you got to be careful how you criticize an artist. You know, you can't tell him or her that that's too much of this or the legs are too long. You got to be very careful. But not Roy. Roy was a consummate professional. He just said, yeah, sure, you're paying my paychecks, I'll make the change. No big deal. Especially during this era, Ron, there was always a lot of legal jeopardy for the pinball industry. Wayne was even sometimes called to testify at various trials around pinball. Was it a game of skill? Was it a gambling device? Was it a thing to indoctrinate the youth of America into satanic worship? Well, we never will find out what the answer to that is. Oh, it definitely corrupts youth, 100%. Wayne would actually say, one day, while I was designing a game, the telephone rang. And it was the woman at the switchboard. She says, there's a man out here to see you. I thought, uh-oh, nobody comes to see me. Then, when he went downstairs, there was a government agent waiting for him. When was the last time a government agent visited you, Ron? Back in my mob trial. Me and Michael Corleone, yeah. Yes. Now, was Bruce Nightingale from the Slam Tilt podcast, your other podcast, was he involved in that as well? Because I know he has strict Italian heritage. I am going to plead the fifth. Very good. Well played. Very Italian of you. Oh, oh. I'm offended. As an Italian, I'm offended. You take that back now. I'm offended that you're offended. Yes, this is offensive. So Wayne, he would be whisked away to testify at a trial about a game being a game of chance, how the game rewards replays. And this would happen quite regularly through the 1950s as, you know, states tried to figure out what to do with pinball. And a way to get around some of those rules was something that was a wonderful invention and something that really changed the industry, especially for Gottlieb, which was called add a ball. How does an add a ball work? You add a ball. So if you have a five-ball game, you do something skillful in the game, and you get another ball. Another ball you can play. Ah, so it requires you to do something. It requires skill. Right. It just doesn't happen magically. Earn and add a ball. Let's see. So instead of playing the game and getting a free play, you would just add a ball to your current game, and you could play indefinitely. If you're good enough, yeah, yeah. On a business trip to Texas and Wisconsin, Alvin Gottlieb, the son of David Gottlieb, he heard from the distributors that they weren't selling enough product. Now, in those states, free play was illegal. They needed something to move around the law. And that, inevitably, became Adaball. Wayne was given the project and he had to come up with a way around free play illegality and that was when he came up with Flipper and by free play we mean winning a free game I don't think the games were ever on free play back then Flipper is named after the fantastic dolphin that everybody knows I knew you were going to say that so bad the show that didn't exist yet it's named after do you do a very good flipper impression i don't speak dolphin no i'm sorry uh flipper from 1960 they call it flipper flipper this is a magic theme so no i'm sorry it's not a dolphin theme the theme that we all want flipper this is from November of 1960, it sells 1,100 units. Flipper is the first add-a-ball machine, and it was introduced as a concept again to extend play. Until this game was made, David Gottlieb was of the firm opinion that nothing would replace winning a free game. In fact, prior to this game, he had halted the project multiple times on extended play concepts because he was unsatisfied with the development. Gottlieb's 1960 Dancing Dolls was the first extended play prototype. It was never manufactured. Well, Alvin Gottlieb told IPDB, the Internet Pinball Database, that after he played Wayne's first finished production model, a flipper, he decided to try to get it approved in some foreign markets where a free play was considered a thing of value that made it part of gambling sir infestions mondial company i know i butchered that managed to get it approved in france and italy and the rest is history there's a whole thing here about how they were able to actually get add a ball to be approved in italy they had to change the back glass lights because you couldn't you couldn't win a thing of value so they had to make it seem like it was less valuable it was very weird but there's a whole there's a whole thing in there and in the interest of time i'm not going to go into that because i mean there's only five people that are listening to this podcast that care anything about italy hey hey talking about italy this also would start around the same time as the wedge head era so what am i talking about when I say a wedge head? It's the shape of the backbox. Yes, it's the shape of a wedge. So during the run of Flipper, Gottlieb began rolling out a new cabinet design, and this was changing from the standard wood rail sides and square back boxes to cabinets with metal side rails and wedge style back boxes. According to IPDB, there are 415 wood rail versions of Flipper, and 685 wedge head versions. Why did they make the change in the head design? Why did they make this massive change? Well, Wayne Nyhan says, when the game Flipper came on location, we soon heard complaints about side-by-side games. It was hard to keep the games in line and separated so there was room for two pairs of hands. The answer became obvious. We needed to increase the size of the light box on single-player games. I believe that Roman Garbark, head of mechanical engineering at Gottlieb, came up with the wedgehead design. You had them bumping into each other because the wood rails actually extend beyond the sides of the cabinet. You're going to be able to fit less of them there, get your hands in there, hit each other. So this is the thing. Ron, it's taken 13 years, 13 years before they redesign a cabinet because they noticed they had a problem when they were sitting next to each other. That seems amazing to me. They must have known they had problems before, but I guess it wasn't a big enough problem? Maybe there wasn't enough locations that had multiple games. You ever think of that? You ever think of that, Sonny? Because if you just have single games, like in a, I don't know, what kind of places would they have then? A drugstore? A pharmacy? Yeah, we both went for the same place, but yeah. It's pretty amazing it would take 13 years to come up with that. I find that mind-blowing. I'm sure there were other minor changes with cabinets as far as automatic ball loaders, as far as manual ball loaders, coin doors probably changed, that kind of stuff. Now, Williams would not be outdone as they also tried to innovate their designs in the 1960s. So something around this time prompted people to say, hey, we need to make some changes here. one of their machines would be darts followed by viking and jungle and of course a few others they were called a reverse wedge their heads were generally the same size but in the front there was a shelf where you could place a drink yeah i've seen those in front of the coin door yep yep and their wedge heads were literally wedge heads just turned upside down it's just different they just like okay it's not the same it was the game hollywood in 1961 where williams moved to a wider head to make more room for people's hands once the wedge head design had been proven to be a superior style gottlieb was the innovator and as we've said many times in this podcast the cadillac of the industry as wayne would say our games worked we had a system of trying everything out we had in our boiler room. We had a steel vault in which we put everything in and ran everything on test relays. We ran them endlessly. They ran for months on end with a relay operating this one, operating that one, which operate this one. Then when one would drop off, it would start all over again and run again and just run like that for weeks and months on end. They went on and on and on and on until they literally failed. 60 years later, Stern has the same room. They have a room where they do the same thing. They'll just have different mechs in there, and they will run them 24-7. It must be really loud in there. Actually, yeah, when you say that, it probably is. This brings us to Wayne's probably most famous game, Slick Chick. Slick Chick, gobble holes. This is the electromechanical game, which is a... What kind of theme is this? It's like barbershop quartet with women with bunny ears. I don't know. Not only do we have the wedge heads now, we now have reel scoring. Yes, which is a big, big deal. It's an interesting thing. So no more millions, folks. No, we can't do the million score because we're not making that many reels. Yes. So this sells 4,550 units, a massive seller. what does the flyer say about this wonderful game oh what does it say ron i mean it must have did a good job if it's all that many got leaves slick chick and they even have the name printed out the way it is on the game which is like an x so there's pop bumpers in the shape of an x each one of them is a letter featuring new playboard auto clamp i wondered that it probably means you can't lift the play field up it's probably a lockdown but like the lock mechanism new maximum security door lock new double size cash box for all those earnings right there new front door styling new front molding clamp a lot of cabinet upgrades with this particular game new lockdown bar modern style coin door and i'm thinking that might be another reason they sold so many of them Operators liked all these new features. Okay. All right. Where do I start? The top here? Yes. Okay. Becoming a pro crony is the perfect way to say thanks, and it starts at $3 a month. Want to get early access to episodes before everyone else? Have a strange love for stickers? Do you know what a Discord is? Interested in having your comments and questions take priority on our episodes? Jump on. Wait a minute. This is on twice. Idiot. Oh, boy. You get what you pay for, I guess. All right, hold on. Jump on a $6 a month premium crony. Want all the other perks and a shirt after three months? Join us at $20 a month as an L.E. leadist crony. Wow. Can I have my money now? Kind of before the major coin door, right? This isn't the first game by any means, but just to describe it for people, It was like, you know, those old quarters or loonies that you would put into a washing machine, right? You'd put it in the little thing and you'd push it in and it would go. This is more of your now modern day coin shoot where you'd put it in and it falls into the bottom and clicks the switch. Originally, this game was called Party Girls, which was a bit of a risque name based on David Gottlieb. And he wanted a better name. So Wayne went off to figure out what the heck he was going to call this game. And one Sunday night, he went to a friend's house for dinner, and he saw around the corner a big sign for a new restaurant, which was opening, called Slick Chick. So Wayne says, that sign must have been 10 foot high. So when I went to Gottlieb the next day, I put it on the game and called it Slick Chick. There you go. Boom. Most people talk about code in pinball, especially nowadays, the lack of code or the quality of code or multipliers or this and that. So EMs, they did have code. It was very different than today. I wouldn't say they had code. It's mechanical. When I think of code, I think of like programming and something written. It had steppers and motors and steppers. The way it would work is that you had objectives and things to do. slick chick stood out because it had an interesting style of play so we mentioned before that the pop bumpers spelling slick and the other set of pop bumpers spelling chick were in the formation of an x and this was important because you had to spell out slick chick but it had to be done in order so when you would hit a pop bumper it lights up and if you hit that pop bumper again it unlights so the pop bumpers all had to be spelled in order to win a free play i'm trying to remember were they well the pop bumpers are dead bumpers i think they're dead bumpers because if they were pop bumpers wouldn't that be hard oh yeah no they would be dead bumpers that's right they were just because they're pop bumpers you'd have the light off on off on off on that would like never work yeah they're dead bumpers so it goes up it hits the bumper it turns on and it comes down and it is a beautiful play field it's got this creepy rabbit in the middle yeah he is creepy that's and then next to him are these like ladies with these weird bunny hats but they're like bunny hats your grandmother would like knit you is chick like a slang word for bunny back in the 60s i don't know yeah that's a good question i don't do that kind of research here ron come on Okay. In this era, balls didn't directly feed into the shooter lane automatically. You had to feed them in manually. They used to call it like a spoon mechanism. So you would put your ball into the shooter lane and you'd pull the shooter rod and shoot it. And then when your ball would drain, then you could add the next one mechanically. It was a little rod below the shooter lane. You'd push it in to load a ball. Yeah, so there wasn't a coil under there that when the ball would drain into the trough, it would pop another one out. You had to do it yourself. So theoretically during this time you could feed five balls into the game as you were playing and you could kind of play multi You were paying a dime in 1963, so I seriously doubt that you were putting five balls in there at once, because you're kind of banging through it really quickly. That's kind of expensive. But it was kind of neat because this game you could throw multiple balls in there in the hope that you could get more of these bumpers to light up in order. So what about that theme? It's fairly ladies, sexy kind of theme, right? Maybe they're supposed to be Playboy bunnies. Oh my goodness. Well, I mean, at this time, Wayne was designing games for 16 to 24-year-old men. And, of course, they made a lot of games with ladies, a lot of dancing ladies, and, you know, silly things to make you laugh or giggle. Because boys are kind of dumb sometimes. But they do look a lot like Playboy bunnies, don't they? Wayne says, we did a lot of things in those days. Today we would have been sued. We never thought of being sued. People weren't in the business of suing people at that time. I think they thought, well, it's good publicity. What happened? This is something that popped up as well during the research. What happened to all the design stuff? The sample plastics, the drafting boards, the pictures, the outlines, the notes that Wayne would write? Everyone might want to cover their ears here. Because Wayne says, everything landed in the loft at Gottlieb. After a run, the glass plate, boards, plastics, brochures, everything was thrown up to the loft. When the loft got full, we'd hire a truck to come in, and they'd push everything out the loft window. You saw everything going out that window, and of course at that time, all you wanted to do was clear the space to get new stuff in there. So they threw it all out. Did you hear all of those people driving to work screaming? All that history just thrown out a window, literally, into like a garbage truck. Tip of the hat again to the pinball database online because they've been able to cement a lot of that history and keep it going. Thank goodness. One of the fun games that I found when I was looking through Wayne Nyhan's games was Skyline. And this is a nightclub elevator theme. It is from January of 1965. It sells 2,000 units. really famous for an unusual back glass animation but also the beautiful beautiful roy parker art on the back well did you know it has the new multi bumper scoring or if you're in uh the wisconsin or chicago the new multi bumper scoring new comical oh i hate that new comical light box animation but it is a it is a fun interesting uh game the theme okay it's like a it's like a a nightclub really high up in a skyscraper in chicago and there's an elevator there as well on the backbox and as you uh build up your score eventually the elevator opens up to um reveal a very backbox image but you can look out the window there's like a restaurant in the background people are ordering they're wearing beautiful suits it's very elegant they're obviously very high class fancy society in chicago and in the background of that back glass there's a window and behind there you see the the chrysler building you see the this beautiful skyline with uh with RCA and Americano and the Ritz, Chicago in the background. It's very cool. All kinds of places that didn't give their permission to use their stuff in this back class. The play field art in itself is also very beautiful. It's these dancing couples, and it's really, really elegant. So the object of the game is to get you to keep playing, and there's got to be a gimmick. The gimmick is that the elevator doors open up and there's people standing in front of him, standing in front of this elevator, like gasping, like, who is coming out of here? Because everybody there is like high society and bow ties and fancy. Ron, when your score gets to a certain level and the elevator doors open up, what do you see? I assume it's supposed to be a homeless guy and a dude in drag. Coming in together, yes. They're coming in to crash the party that is high society. Damn high society. Be great if it was like the Blues Brothers or something coming through there. Yeah. Look in the restaurant. I know that has nothing to do with Skyline, but wait a minute. No, that's in Chicago, isn't it? I think it is. Yes. Yes, see? There is a tie-in. Now, Kings and Queens is from March of 1965. it sells 2,875 units this machine is famous because it was used in the musical tommy with roger daltrey playing it on stage with elton john and those crazy stilts boots do you remember that i do remember that so if you throw that into google it will come up where elton john has these crazy stilts boots and he's super tall and um he's like playing a 10 foot high pinball machine in like a futuristic cabinet well the cabinet has a keyboard in the front and he's playing yeah it's a whole it's a whole thing start let's start with kings and queens before we get into the game that elton john is playing but kings and queens is as you could probably guess a card playing style of game. It's a lady who's cheating, playing cards against a gentleman. They're cheating. There's another lady standing behind that gentleman with a mirror to show you what his cards are. And there's like a few fellows at a Western bar scene in the background. There's a fellow under the table who's passing cards to the uh the gentleman at the card table it's a very comical fun backlash everyone is cheating everybody's cheating in here very crazy it's another great creation from the master maker of card games got leaves kings and queens got leave head card games like lockdown that was like a niche they really did amazing jobs like all new colorful sunburst pop bumper caps the art design of the pop bumpers is new yes this is when you think of sort of the 1970s you know pop bumper caps these are those caps in the 60s amazing in the 60s I know, this is like the birth of that, which is pretty cool. It's a fun little game. I have seen and I have played Kings and Queens. It's all about sort of shooting the capture holes, I think. And those give you aces, kings, queens, and jacks, and then you build up your hand down at the bottom. It's really challenging because it has the flippers, are those little two-inch flippers. they are not your traditional italian bottom so what i mean by that is there's no inlanes that feed the flippers the flippers are attached to the slings and it makes it really difficult to get a hold of to catch up and line up your shots brutal so much fun though wow there is like so many lanes so many lanes there's what one two three four five six seven lanes at the top and then there's four in the middle of the play well if it does it go all the way to the left like this can it go there probably not because then it'd be one two three four five six seven eight nine lanes oh there are look at that that's a lot of lanes sonic hold my beer you have no lanes five lanes that's for wussies elton john in his crazy boots is playing a game called buckaroo also by way nions so he's way nions is is attached to the who is he's all over the who when it comes to the tommy musical it's the western cowboy theme june of 65 it sells 2600 units and uh this one is is really neat because it has a backbox animation of a horse kicking a cowboy in the ass which is pretty great. Cowboys always did well in certain markets. Apparently, New York City and Wisconsin always bought a bunch of cowboy-themed pinball machines. I think this is because there was like this romantic image of the Wild West. People in New York City were in New York City, and they never really ventured to the West. Traveling out of the city was something that sort of rich people would do i do like the backbox animation it is funny it's pretty cool isn't it you know we thought he was the bally table king when in reality he was the gottlieb table king yes oh my goodness this was wayne's last really big project and he'd only released one game in 1966 he didn't release any games in 1967 and only one in 1968. Roy Parker would die in 1966, probably influenced the fact that he didn't want to make a whole lot of games. As well, he's starting to move into more of a management role. Wayne's last game was the smash hit Paul Bunyan. You're a big Paul Bunyan fan, Ron? That's the big lumberjack guy. Yes, your spare bedroom is themed after Paul Bunyan, is it not? It is not. Oh, so this is like the giant lumberjack guy. So he's like this myth of the lumberjack who's like 20 feet tall. I will tell you, in Lake George, which is the resort area like an hour north of me, they have a mini golf and they have uh around the world in 18 holes and around the u.s in 18 holes and one of the holes they have paul bunyan like the they got big like he it was originally for some parade or something it's it's been there for like 40 years this thing huge paul bunyan statue johnny appleseed paul bunyan all those kind of like romantic 1940s american myths right like he's he's a big deal paul bunyan do you know it has dynamic total play field action it is dynamic it has six flippers it allows players to make relay recovery shots at the very top of the play field it has an abc rotation sequence relights running light rollover and target for 500 points as bullseye targets lights top roll under for shoot again feature shoot again extra ball two kick out holes like for 600 point score and they do have at this point gottlieb does have the little gottlieb flipper skill game yes because they they're drawing those distinctions right this is skill that extra touch of quality and originality is what you get with paul bunyan which has an interesting back glass yes this is art by uh oddly enough art stenholm this had a little bit of input by ed krinsky and steve kirk steve kirk from meteor and stars and nine ball and gamma try eventually move on to stern now there was also an italian version of this game that sold 1,725 units, that game had a different name. It was called A Bigger Jack. No, it was called Big Jack. A Bigger Jack. Wayne would start to move into more management positions at Gottlieb, and we'll get into that in a whole other podcast in the future. So we'll go into Wayne's career and his management in another episode, but I want to talk about Wayne's retirement and his move into the centenarian that we all know. Upon retirement, Wayne moved to Mountain Home, Arkansas. What's your favorite part of Mountain Home, Ron? I'll let you know when I go there. All right. The wonderful, wonderful population hub of Arkansas. Also a very difficult word to spell, Arkansas. I had to type that out quite a few times before I got that right. Arkansas. Just say it like that and you're all good. It's very odd, very odd. So there's a wonderful article in the Pinball News about Wayne's 100th birthday. His photos and a beautifully written article I'll include it in the show notes. To add some context to this, currently, as of 2023, only 6% of the Earth's population are above the age of 100. Getting there is not particularly easy. Pinball historian Gordon Hayes put together a presentation for Wayne on his birthday. That presentation is also in the Pinball News article. Another pinball historian, Michael Scheiss, and Larry Zartarn. the guys from the pacific pinball museum like i really try for these names but my god anywho let's move on they presented wayne with a pinball trophy of sorts from the pacific pinball museum it's a score motor with pinballs mounted on the top and they also added three em score reels and they set it to 100. And every year at Wayne's birthday, they would move the final reel one digit. So it would move from 100 to 101 and 103. It was a wonderful gesture and something that I think is amazing. And the Pacific Pinball Museum probably has one of the largest collections of EMs of any place I can think of. and you've been uh i went to their they used to have the pacific pinball expo every year and they would have a section that was just tons and tons of ems lots and lots of way nyan's games in attendance yeah this was in uh marin county they used to have it it was very close to james headfield and metallica's home oh very cool somebody's looking up ipdb no i was not looking because his custom Earthshaker Metallica pin was there one year because he lived right in the area, so they just brought it to the show. Pinball Magazine No. 5 was also published in 2018, which featured a large section about Wayne Nyans. He was featured on the cover in, I think, a very old-school, cool picture of him in a white shirt with a tie and those dark rimmed glasses. Fantastic. It was a large article that was written by Gordon Hayes. Also included in the magazine was an interview with Jonathan Joosten, where he and Wayne reflected on Wayne's career with industry legend Alan Edwell, John Burris, and the patron saint of pinball, Jon Norris. Have you read Pinball Magazine No. 5? I have not. I flipped through it. I saw it at a show one time, and I flipped through it. It is huge. To call it a magazine at all, that thing, is insulting it. It's like a book. It's clearly a book. Yes. This was also the last Pinball magazine which had been published, which is a bit unfortunate. They haven't released one since I've joined Pinball. Wayne's 104th birthday was marked with a special cake, a celebratory banner from John and Jan Osborne, and the ceremonial changing of the trophy digit. The following day, Wayne passed away. That was July 30th, 2022. His funeral took place on August 2nd, 2022 at the Roller Funeral Home in Arkansas. I actually took a moment to sign the guest book digitally for Mr. Nions because even though I've had limited interaction with him, he has done a lot to make me smile. It's probably the last of the old guard. I mean, him and Steve Kordick, they both left to be 100. If you look at where we started this podcast of a cubicle made of chicken wire and where we are today with an HR department, there has been a lot of change in pinball. It's something else. But you can also see that Wayne had a love and a passion that he just worked hard and he loved it and he did that. And as you said, he literally went to Chicago Expo all the way into his 90s. So any final thoughts of five decades around pinball with Wayne Nions? Thank you, Wayne, for all those games. All 160 games. From some of the interviews I've read, stuff I've seen about him, he really liked the engineering part, like the making the stuff work part. supposedly he didn't even need the schematics and stuff he could just do it all in his head like he got to us that was yeah i saw i read some kind of article or heard something it was something like he he got in his 80s or 90s before he actually had to look at the stuff anymore to remind himself what he did he could you know before they could still all do it just in his head that's amazing absolutely amazing i can't remember what i had for breakfast without writing it down and what was the what was the woe nelly game based off of again was that continental I believe it was one of his games and they asked him about that and his response was like why that game that's not one of my better games yeah that's a terrible like why did they do it off of that one most of the content from this podcast was was gleamed from some youtube videos that Wayne had done with the Pacific Pinball Museum please watch those videos now there is Wayne you know staring into a camera and talking and they're kind of boring the content and the quality of what he's saying is second to none and he's so it's so amazing to see that he is so sharp at that age and able to remember those things and he talks about all these people like jimmy johnson and names we've never heard of before these people that hopefully we've given a platform on this podcast that they will be remembered when he was at expo i always thought he was like in his 70s Because that's how old he looked to me. He's like, oh, no, he's almost 100. What? Fantastic, Shane. Thank you, Wayne, for everything you've done. As always, you can send your comments, questions, corrections, and concerns to silverballchronicles at gmail.com. We look forward to all your messages, and we read every one. Please subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or your favorite podcatcher. Turn on automatic download so you don't miss a single episode. Remember to leave us a five-star review. That way more people can find us. Join us on Patreon and support the show. Become a pro crony. This is the perfect way to say thank you, and it starts at $3 a month. Want to get early access to the episodes before everyone else? Have a strange love for stickers? Do you know what Discord is? Because quite frankly, I don't, because it's the 1940s. Jump on to the $6 a month premium crony level. Want all those other perks? And a shirt after three months? A free shirt? Are you crazy? Join us for $20 a month on the elitist crony level. But maybe you just want a shirt. I understand. I like shirts too. Swing on over to silverballswag.com and pick out your favorite Silver Ball Chronicles t-shirt. And don't forget, you can also listen to my other podcast, the Slam Tilt Podcast. Give that a look-see, or a look-here, as the case may be. Slam Tilt Podcast, brought to you by the letter F. For fun. For fun. F*** you. Oh, no. Wrong. Oh, God. I shouldn't have taken this one. Surin. Festian? Yeah. Is that okay? Until next time, David. The news of the world is over. and the Hindenburg blows up oh the humanity oh the humanity alrighty shall we get underway sir yes sir alrighty just let me do the old the old sip of water here first it's like it's like mabel eating chips on the pinball party podcast oh i'm in a brain fart hold on let me think maybe i got like it's maybe i'm going to see now it could be possible i am old what's the thing again not the manual but okay hold on yeah like the seatbelts in the impala they had to be primed or whatever you were supposed to pull them down slightly and release so they would actually like lock into place. Like if you grabbed it and pulled on it real quick, it didn't stop. It didn't work that way. How about the lap-based belts, right? They go across your lap. So then when you get in an accident, you turn into an accordion. Yeah. You know what I mean? Come on. Let's be real. Oh, my God. The Impala didn't – yeah, the Impala, yeah, it just had lap belts in the back. oh it's great and i'm still alive you know amazing you sound better than i do we did it together ron high five