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Ep 54: The Real VonTökkentäkker with Jack Haeger and David Fix

LoserKid Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 22m·analyzed·Feb 20, 2021
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.030

TL;DR

Jack Hager reflects on his career from Williams pinball art to Amiga/Warhol to modern American Pinball.

Summary

Jack Hager, a legendary artist and designer who worked on classic arcade and pinball titles at Williams Electronics in the 1980s-90s, joins David Fix from American Pinball to discuss his eclectic career spanning fine art, Sinistar, the Amiga computer collaboration with Andy Warhol, and his eventual return to pinball game design. The episode traces his contributions to early video game digitization, voice work, and unrealized pinball concepts that influenced later industry work.

Key Claims

  • Jack Hager was brought to Williams Electronics around 1980 after being recommended by Playboy art director Carrick Pope, initially to help with video game development including Joust

    high confidence · Jack Hager in podcast, discussing his interview with Ken Fedesna and John Newcomer at Williams

  • Jack Hager contributed significantly to Sinistar's design, creating gradient palettes to simulate 3D effects and animating the Sinistar character's facial features, which led to speech animation capabilities

    high confidence · Jack Hager explaining his role in Sinistar development and the technical innovations with 16-color palette

  • Jack Hager left Williams for Silicon Valley in 1981-1982 to work as art director for the Amiga computer project, which was purchased by Commodore

    high confidence · Jack Hager discussing his departure to work with Sam Dicker and R.J. Michael on the Amiga

  • Jack Hager personally worked with Andy Warhol to teach him the Amiga computer at Warhol's Factory studio in New York, and was present when Warhol created the images later discovered by Carnegie Mellon University

    high confidence · Jack Hager's detailed account of his time with Andy Warhol, including the uncovered Amiga disk story

  • A pinball designer under contract with Williams created the World Tour concept, which Williams declined, leading the designer to take the artwork to Alvin G. and Company where it became Garage Band Tour

    medium confidence · David Fix and Jack Hager explaining the World Tour design history and subsequent legal issues between Williams and Alvin G.

  • Jack Hager designed pinball concepts like 'Pirate Island' and 'Hey Bartender' in the mid-1980s for Williams, constrained by a requirement to fit 13 letters for playfield lights

    high confidence · Jack Hager discussing Steve Kordick's whitewood with 13-light requirement and his concept sketches

  • Jack Hager later became art director at Williams Bally Midway and was involved in developing the digitization process that led to Mortal Kombat and NBA Jam

    high confidence · Jack Hager discussing his work with Eugene Jarvis on digitization hardware and software processes

Notable Quotes

  • “Run, coward, run!”

    Jack Hager (referencing Sinistar voice) @ ~27:00 — Iconic catchphrase demonstrating the speech animation innovation Jack pioneered in Sinistar

  • “I sat next to Andy as he created them. There was a Campbell soup can, there was a banana, there was a self-portrait, and he even signed each one with the mouse.”

    Jack Hager @ ~38:00 — Personal testimony about his direct collaboration with Andy Warhol on the Amiga, connecting to historically significant artworks

  • “There was a lot of cross-fertilization that took the industry to great heights.”

    Jack Hager @ ~50:00 — Reflects on the collaborative nature of Williams/Midway development across pinball and arcade teams

  • “Jack came across as being the guy that we needed.”

    David Fix (describing Josh Kugler's account) @ ~45:00 — Explains the hiring rationale for Jack Hager at American Pinball based on his historical contributions

  • “I studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago back in the late 70s, early 80s, studying fine art, much classical painting techniques and illustration.”

    Jack Hager @ ~3:00 — Establishes his formal art training background that informed his approach to pinball and video game graphics

Entities

Jack HagerpersonDavid FixpersonWilliams ElectronicscompanyAmerican PinballcompanyCommodore ComputerscompanyAndy WarholpersonEugene JarvispersonAlvin G. and Companycompany

Signals

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Jack Hager recently hired by American Pinball as creative director/designer, representing significant talent acquisition of legendary Williams/Midway veteran

    high · David Fix confirms Jack's hiring; Josh Roop notes he was 'recently thrown into The Pinball Mafia spotlight'; Hager visited American Pinball open house where Josh Kugler saw his Hey Bartender concepts

  • ?

    historical_signal: Detailed account of Williams Electronics' creative process in 1980s-90s, including cross-departmental collaboration between pinball and arcade/video game teams

    high · Extensive discussion of Williams creative culture, collaboration between pinball and video designers, digitization process development

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Jack Hager's formal fine art training (classical painting, illustration) shaped his approach to game graphics, evidenced by gradient palettes in Sinistar and conceptual artwork for pinball designs

    high · Hager discusses School of Art Institute training, classical technique focus, application to Sinistar's 3D-appearance gradients, approach to backglass artwork

  • ?

    design_innovation: Jack Hager pioneered gradient palette techniques and character animation in Sinistar (1982), laying groundwork for later digitization processes in Mortal Kombat and NBA Jam

    high · Hager's detailed explanation of 16-color palette innovation creating 3D-appearing boulders and Sinistar character; later work with Eugene Jarvis on digitization hardware/software

  • ?

    regulatory_signal: Legal dispute between Williams Electronics and Alvin G. and Company over World Tour pinball design; designer took unrealized Williams concept to competitor, prompting legal action

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.247

0:00
Thanks for tuning in to the Loser Kid Pinball Podcast. We are on episode 54. I am Josh Roop. With me, my co-captain as always, Scott Larson. And today we have two awesome gentlemen with us, one that has been in the industry for years and seen some pretty awesome stuff. The other one is a man that has been recently thrown into the pinball media spotlight. But before we get to them, Scott, will you please, let's recognize those friends of the podcast before we get going. Okay, so first and foremost, let's talk about flipping out pinball. If you're looking at picking up a new pinball machine or any other accessories with your pinball machine, check out Zach and Nicole at Flipping Out Pinball. They're always a good resource. We've been able to get a lot of good machines and accessories from them. I also want to talk about This Week in Pinball. If you're looking at running down the news for the day, go check out This Week in Pinball.
1:04
Jeff Patterson always has a lot of fun information and summarizes that into the top fives. Lit Frames, if you have that trans light that's collecting dust in your corner, please check out Lit Frames, and you'll be able to actually put it on the wall and illuminate it. We love having our alternative trans light. I have my alternative Monster Bash Translite in there. And speaking of alternative Translites, if you're looking for an alternative art package for your classic Williams Valley game, check out Flyland Design. I have the alternative Backglass in Medieval Madness. It's a way to spruce up an older machine.
1:42
Also, check out the Pinball Loft. If you're looking for a blog out there, the Pinball Loft, Tim did a great review of his Guns N' Roses, and he also just upgraded his sound package on his Guns N' Roses collector's edition in case you wanted to blow the speakers off your house and your wall. If you're looking at more information and a deeper dive, go and check out Pinball Supernova. Pinball Supernova is always a good resource if you want to go and dabble in other things. So, Josh, who do we have on the podcast today? We have David Fix, who is over American Pinball right now, who has been killing it with the hires. And with him, we have a man that has not only been on the pinball side, but he's also been on the arcade and the home computer console. We welcome Jack Hager. How are you two doing today? Good. Very good. Great to be here. Yes. Good to be with you, Scott and Josh. It is great to have you two on. I'm not going to lie, Jack. I didn't really know much about you until American Pinball hired you. And then Pinball News did that wonderful article on you. If you want to check it out, go to pinballnews.com. We're going to be referencing a lot through this interview. But you've got some wonderful stuff here. I want to know, how did you get into all this? Well, it's a pretty eclectic and checkered past. I'll say that much. I studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago back in the late 70s, early 80s, studying fine art, pretty much classical painting techniques and illustration. And I was preparing myself to be an illustrator in Chicago, which I became a regular contributor while I was still a student. I was appearing regularly in the Chicago Tribune, the Sun-Times, Chicago Magazine, and eventually Playboy Magazine.

  • Josh Kugler from American Pinball showed Jack Hager's Hey Bartender artwork (with the beer stein feature) to the team, which influenced their decision to hire him

    high confidence · David Fix relaying Josh Kugler's account of Jack Hager's artwork presentation and its role in the hiring decision

  • Jack Hager has recently joined American Pinball as a creative hire and brought historical pinball design concepts to the team

    high confidence · Josh Roop's introduction and David Fix confirming Jack Hager's hiring at American Pinball

    • Sinistar
    game
    Amigaproduct
    Mortal Kombatgame
    Ken Fedesnaperson
    John Newcomerperson
    Python Angheloperson
    Josh Kuglerperson
    Pirate Islandgame
    Hey Bartendergame
    NBA Jamgame
    Carnivalgame
    Pinball Newsmedia
    Insert Coinmedia

    medium · Hager notes 'some sort of legal encounter between Williams and Alvin G. and Company' but states 'I can't go into that any further'; confirms he was unaware concept had left Williams

  • ?

    industry_signal: Historical pattern of arcade/pinball designers moving between companies and repurposing concepts; illustrates tight-knit nature of small industry and IP/design fluidity

    high · Sam Dicker and R.J. Michael left Williams for Amiga startup; unnamed Williams designer took World Tour concept to Alvin G.; Jack Hager initially hired for video but pulled into pinball work

  • ?

    content_signal: Netflix documentary 'Insert Coin' features Jack Hager interview and detailed coverage of Mortal Kombat development and Midway Games history

    high · Jack Hager mentions being interviewed for 'Insert Coin' documentary; recommends it as resource on Mortal Kombat and Midway history; also mentions South by Southwest festival premiere

  • ?

    community_signal: Small pinball/arcade community reconnected Jack Hager with industry peers; Josh Kugler's recognition of Hey Bartender artwork directly led to American Pinball hire

    high · David Fix explains Josh Kugler showed Hager's artwork, recommended hire; Dan Hughes (Alvin G. artist) recently conversed with Hager acknowledging his original World Tour artwork

  • ?

    rumor_hype: Jack Hager's unrealized 'Hey Bartender' concept featured illuminated beer stein on backglass; concept may have influenced American Pinball's Oktoberfest design

    medium · Hager presented Hey Bartender sketches with 'stein of beer' feature at American Pinball open house; notes 'never got used' for that project but 'not a bad idea for Oktoberfest'; timing suggests possible influence

  • ?

    business_signal: American Pinball acquiring senior creative talent from industry history; Hager's hire signals commitment to drawing on classic design pedigree for current productions

    high · David Fix discusses deliberate hiring process; Josh Kugler's recommendation based on historical design quality; Hager brought to team specifically for creative direction

    • 3:45
    And Playboy, being the major publisher that it was based in Chicago, had a great art director named Carrick Pope, who knew that I was doing freelance jobs here and there. And he said, he pulled me aside and said, Jack, there is a pinball company in Chicago on the northwest side looking to get into this new thing called video games. That's how long ago this was. And he said, they're looking for an artist to help out. And he said, I think this might be a good regular gig for you. And that's when I had my first interview with Williams Electronics on the northwest side of the city. That would have been around 1980. And I brought in my portfolio of commercial or editorial illustration and fantasy paintings and surrealist work. But I was always very much focused in classical training and recognizable, you know, not abstract painting. And the folks at Williams Electronics really appreciated my subject matter, my approach. and I met with Ken Fedesna and another great guy named John Newcomer who were working on some new things at that time. Williams had just had huge successes with Defender and Stargate from Eugene Jarvis, and were in the process of working on Joust. So that's when I was brought in, and I was asked to help out on Joust a little bit, and I was put in the essentially the pinball art department at that time. So there was a guy named Connie Mitchell who did a lot of Williams back glasses from back in the day and games. Seamus McLaughlin was another artist from that period. And I got to work with the early artists at Williams and get a sense of what pinball design and illustration was all about. At that time, I also ran into a larger-than-life personality. You may have heard of him, Python Angelo. Was it Williams at that time? And Python and I hit it off right away because we both had traditional fine art backgrounds, and I came from a basic Midwestern background, and Python had this exotic Romanian life story behind them. And so we kind of contrasted, but we're very competitive with each other. So that's basically how I set my foot in Williams Electronics in the early 80s.
    6:31
    So getting back to that, that was actually an interesting overlap era where they had, And Atari tried to do these things too, where they tried to kind of re-theme some of the games. You mentioned Joust. They came out with a Joust pinball machine. Correct. There's not too many of them, but it was one of the rare ones that actually didn't have a back glass, but it was almost the – you were competing with someone across. Yeah, it was incredible. It's a fascinating game. there's actually one locally in Utah that in someone's private collection I want to go and check out and I was planning on going out there until the corona hit so I'm waiting for things to die down so I can go out there but were you involved in any of these overlaps I believe there was a defender pinball machine too yes it was an ambiguous time for me a little bit because clearly I was brought in to help stimulate building an internal dedicated video design team. But I had such a formal illustration background that it really did lend itself to pinball, but I had to kind of be pulled away from getting too involved with them at that time because we really needed to focus on making new video games. So I didn't get a chance to work on either of those, but, yeah, the head-to-head joust was an amazing table. I wish I could tell you if that was Barry Osler or not. I forget who may have been the designer on that piece. I believe you're right, it is Barry Osler that did that piece.
    8:16
    That's usually, I don't know if you guys know Phoebe, who comes to Expo, but that is one of the pins she usually brings. And there's also one that's very rare called Varkon, which I don't know if you remember that at all, Jack. Varkon was a pretty cool game around that same time.
    8:39
    There's a Varkon actually on location out here. Isn't it the one that's slightly more vertical? Yeah, there's an arcade out here. It's Flynn's Retrocade. And so it's obviously themed with the Tron. And in the back, they have about six machines.
    8:59
    The challenge with that location, as all location, is maintenance on these machines. Because electronics, you flip the switch and it turns on and you basically have to wipe it down occasionally. But it pretty much functions exactly how it's intended as it comes out of the factory. that is the main challenge with pinball is that it's kind of a labor intensive hobby and that if you have a machine on site you have to have someone who knows what they're doing to maintain this because you basically have this violent ball that's smashing around it's a steel ball and it's hitting all sorts of plastic things and if you don't keep that maintained it's it can be very difficult on location oh i i know scott um i have um i don't know if you guys know this but there's a place in Buffalo, New York called Pocketeer Billiards. It's a dream of mine and my partner, and we have 80 pinball machines on the floor. We've hosted some Papa events and so forth, but it's just me and him, you know, wrenching on these machines, and we have a few guys who kind of help wipe them down every once in a while, but go ahead, Jack. I had a question for you for a second. I was going to ask you, you said a name there that I haven't heard in a long time, and there's not a lot talked about Seamus McLaughlin.
    10:15
    Tell us a little, if you can, a little bit about Seamus, because he did Pharaoh's Backglass, if I'm not mistaken, and a bunch of Pharaoh art, Pharaoh pinball. That sounds familiar. I know Seamus enjoyed socializing with Python a lot when I showed up, and they were good friends. And Seamus was a longtime talented artist in the pinball department. I eventually left Williams and followed some fellow employees there to do a startup in California. So I can't tell you when Seamus departed, but when I did come back, he wasn't part of the pinball team anymore. So I don't have a lot to share, but he was one of the great, you know, hand-drawn, ruby-lith cutting, you know, pinball artists of that era. And it's interesting that the Farrow back glass, you can do a lot of research on it, but there's a lot of secret stuff hidden in that glass that was quite interesting.
    11:26
    But what was your first game at Williams, Jack? Well, again, my first game that I was involved in was Joust, working with John Newcomer and helping out on that. Connie Mitchell, I think, was doing the cabinet exterior art. But there was an existing concept floating around called Juggernaut. And it was the concept, I believe, started with John Newcomer. and it was about some object in space being built, floating around, and you had to prevent it from being built or it would come and attack you. And I was given the task of designing the graphics around this, which kind of expanded the game concept. The game eventually developed into what I titled as Sinistar. So some people are familiar with the game Sinistar. and prior to that we had 16 color a whole you know a whole amount of 16 colors to work with and even then I was doing things that really hadn't been done up to that point where a lot of you know very primitive games up to that point were solid color characters and I chose to make a gradient palette. That was a big deal at the time. So I could make 3D appearing boulders. I could make a 3D appearing metallic object, which was the Sinistar. And I also animated the face. So I animated the jaw, the eyebrow, the eyes, so on and so forth. And the team realized, well, we could animate speech with this character. So that's how Sinistar became one of the biggest. Run, coward, run! with Sinistar. So after Sinistar, you kind of left Williams to go on to do computers, if I remember correctly. Like I said, once again, we're referencing everything in the pinballnews.com article, and you got to work with Andy Warhol there. How was that, and how was working with him?
    14:03
    Correct. So I had worked at Williams Electronics, I believe, from 1981 to 1982. I was happy working there, but there were two people that left for Silicon Valley, namely Sam Dicker and R.J. Michael, who became hugely successful in Silicon Valley these days. but they created a startup company focused on building the Amiga computer. And for those that are familiar with the Amiga computer, it was eventually purchased and sold by Commodore Computers. And I was invited by RJ and Sam to come out as the art director of Amiga. And, again, we were just a startup. and I think the code name at that time was High Toro, and we were quietly making this amazing computer that outdid a lot of what Apple was creating at that time. Steve Jobs even came in to take a look at the Amiga in early development, and he was blown away and was very interested in it. as the project reached its fruition and we had an actual computer and Commodore bought us, they were interested in doing a major launch for the computer. And that's where marketing came to me and said, you know, are there any people that you feel would be good visual artists to be representatives for the Amiga? and we had been doing work with digitizing that was pretty interesting at the time and everything that we created reminded me very much of the silkscreen work that Andy Warhol was doing. And I just commented, I said, well, boy, Andy Warhol would be something, but I didn't expect it to happen. And next thing I know, I was flown out to New York to meet with Andy and some of his people at the Seagram's building in New York, and I gave him a demo of the Amiga. and that and a substantial amount of cash encouraged him to become involved as a representative for Amiga, which, of course, every artist, you know, is looking for support. But it became more than that. So I was flown out later to spend time with him to teach him how the Amiga works, and I set up shop in his what was called the factory, his studio, and I would spend a couple hours every day with Andy, just he and I working on the Amiga and, you know, just showing him ins and outs and just letting him play with it. An interesting side story to all this, about 10 years ago or whatever it was, I think, I know Time Magazine had a big story. Someone from Carnegie Mellon University made a big production that they had found Andy Warhol's old Amiga computer. And it had a disk with all of these previously unseen images on the disk. And they published it, and it became a worldwide article. and every image on that disc, technically I sat next to Andy as he created them. There was a Campbell soup can, there was a banana, there was a self-portrait, and he even signed each one with the mouse. And so it was kind of just nice seeing that uncovered, and that became a bit of history after the fact. the video that appears here and there on the internet shows the actual launch at Lincoln Center and Debbie Harry from Blondie was the model that he chose to use who was just wonderful she was terrific to work with too and the interview that I conducted with him was largely unscripted and one thing that I realized in getting to work with Andy and be comfortable with him is that we would have extensive long-running conversations, and it was, you know, no problem. When he was in public, Andy would speak in pretty much monosyllabic responses. So you'd say, Andy, this is the most amazing thing. What do you think? And he'd go, oh, it's great. Then that's it. So as part of this launch, I had to kind of pull things out of him, and that's why I was kind of hamming it up a little bit or trying to get responses from him, which we did. And the crowd responded a little bit, and we made it a fun experience. And that's the story behind the Andy Warhol video that appears on YouTube.
    19:10
    So how did you get – you started in Chicago. You get your toes wet, and then you disappear. How did you get roped back into coming back?
    19:23
    Amiga got bought out, and Commodore paid all the employees off, with the exception of a few of the lead chip designers and so on. And I was doing freelance work for Apple. Even LucasArts was getting into gaming, and I would drive up to Skywalker Ranch and do a little work there. And in that period, I got a call from Ken Fedesna, who was the manager of Williams Electronics at the time, and he mentioned that Eugene Jarvis was at Stanford University, and he was considering moving back to Chicago from Stanford. and I have kept in touch with Ken and he said, you know, if you'd be interested, we'd love to have you back with Eugene to get the video department kick-started again. There had been a slump in arcade and video arcade coin-op sales at that time and there was interest in you know rejuvenating the production line and let see what we could get going So you know I took the opportunity and I love California but you know I a Midwestern boy and it seemed like an interesting opportunity. So I went with it and that's what brought me back to, and it was still just Williams again at that point. So, and that would have been around 1985 or so so and this is uh you reference the uh the actually are the arcade collapse in 1983 which is pretty infamous a lot of businesses went under during that yes um and so when you brought back in were you uh designed to to just do the arcade stuff because you have a few concept arts uh projects in your portfolio at least in the pinball news thing or like pirate island and hey bartender so you have all these things and they look like they're are they're pinball machines they are yes and so again I was brought back to work with Eugene on you know reinventing the video production and video concepts and Eugene had a concept at that time which would eventually become NARC, the first fully digitized action game that we did. But the hardware and the software wasn't written fully at that time. So that was all in the works. And rather than just sit on my hands all that time, I contributed to Eugene's concept and I came up with some other video game concepts. But I would find my way up to the pinball department again and again, because in my heart, I'm an illustrator and a visual communicator. And I found that there were some opportunities to create concepts for the pinball department. Steve Kordick was still at Williams at that time, and he had a wide-body whitewood, and the unique thing about this whitewood is that it had 13 lights on the play field, and so whatever title you had to come up with had to incorporate 13 letters. It was my limit. So that's what I was starting with, nothing more than that, and I just thought about it, And I thought, well, and I just thought, well, what could I say in 13 letters? And one of the ones I was thinking, you know, different themes, and I thought, oh, Pirate Island. If you use a space in between, that would be 13 letters. So that's where I started sketching, and I came up with Pirate Island, and I thought this would be a nice universal theme, and it has a lot of potential, and could really be graphically interesting. So that's where that sketch came from.
    23:31
    And people seemed to like it, and they were kind of surprised that I was that into it. Again, I was supposed to come back and just focus on video, but it really got me enthused about doing something and helping them out. The sales department commented at the same time. They said, well, gee, Jack, this Pirate Island thing is great, but we also have input from street locations and bars and everything. Do you think you could come up with a theme that's more adult or that would be well-suited for a bar street location? And, again, 13 letters. It was like an episode of Wheel of Fortune, you know. So I came up with, hey, bartender, 13 letters, and came up with that concept. And then there was an additional feature that I just thought about, you know, having a classic bubble machine, transparent mug of beer on the top with a bubble machine, and I could see it illuminated from the bottom even better. And so you'd have this bubbling stein of beer on the back box. I thought that would be a great idea. So that was that concept. So, Jack, where were you when we did Oktoberfest? That would have been perfect, you know?
    24:52
    That's what I'm wondering. I actually saw that and I thought, well, this must obviously be where Oktoberfest came from. I do have to say something, and I don't know if you want this on the record or off the record. Go for it. A friend invited me, not from American Pinball, invited me to an American Pinball open house after the fact. So this is when Oktoberfest was in production, and I may have met with one of the creative members of the staff, and I did bring drawings with because I didn't know if there was an opportunity with American Pinball, or I just wanted to let them know. And I did bring my sketches with, and specifically I brought out the Stein of Beer, and I said, you know, this never got used, but it's not a bad idea for Oktoberfest. And so after the fact, I did my best. I tried. But you guys were already – American Pinball was already in production at that point. And to go with that story a little bit longer, not to drag it out, but that was Josh Krugler you met with because – How do you know that? Because Josh told me. So I'm talking to Josh.
    26:03
    I'm like, Josh, we're looking at bringing Jack on. He goes, Jack did this great game called Hey Bartender, and he put a pinball on the top. He showed me pictures and so forth. Oh, nice. And, you know, the next thing you know, we were just like, you know, trust me, I talked to all the guys in the department on a daily basis, and, you know, Jack came across as being the guy that we needed. So, you know, that's kind of why we pulled you. That's great. So, Jack, as I was going through this pinball news article, I noticed that there was a Williams World Tour, which confused me a little bit because there's – I've never seen this pinball machine before, but there's an Alvin G World Tour. Where did this come from and how did this come to be?
    26:48
    Sure. So that was still in the same gestation period for the new video hardware and software at Williams. And I was asked to help out a designer, a young designer at Williams at the time, who had a concept for a traveling game. And that was about it. It was like, Jack, I've got an idea for going from one town to another. Do you have any concepts or graphic ideas how that might be made interesting and entertaining? So I worked on sketches and concepts, and that's where I came up with the idea that what is better than to travel but to be paid to travel and have throngs of fans waiting for you at every location, you know, like a rock star. So I came up with the world tour idea of a traveling musician, and it wasn't meant to be licensed or anything, just a generic traveling musician, and to clearly show on the back glass that here he had started in Los Angeles and then landed in Japan and then in Russia. and that sort of depicted on the back glass sketch that I created with women in three different costumes. And then you clearly see the stylized earth below him with, you know, the Colosseum in Rome and Big Ben in London, et cetera, et cetera. So I was pretty excited about the drawing. And then I took the drawing to the next step and actually made a 150% scale, a very large painting that I started on. Never completed.
    28:34
    But I did a painting, an acrylic painting of the World Tour back glass. And people loved it. I also suggest that as part of the game that, you know, CDs weren't brand new at the time, but they were really at their heyday. So I thought, why don't we have a compact disc on the play field that spins, and that could be like a spinning ramp or something. So that's where the spinning ramp for a world tour came from. So to tie this in, Jack and I have had a conversation just recently. Actually, it's kind of funny how this all lends itself together. That designer was under contract with Williams. and Williams kind of passed on the design because he was only on a contract. He then took the artwork and the design and went to Elvin Gee. And basically that's how the game went from Williams to Elvin Gee and the artist concept later got picked up. They loved the idea, so they did their own version, an artist by the name of Dan Hughes, who Jack and I had a nice conversation with a couple of days ago. So, you know, it was just kind of funny to be able to be in that circle still with these guys and talking to people. And Dan was like, oh, yeah, I remember seeing, you know, your artwork at this. And we brought in a couple other names. And it was kind of amazing how this little community was all together and how the design that Jack had worked on this, you know, from the CD turned into a record onto Al's, what is it, Al's and G's Garage Band tour. So, you know, amazing.
    30:20
    Al's Garage Band goes on a world tour. There you go. Thanks. Yeah. So if you see my original sketch, that was the intention of the original Backglass and the vibe and so on and so forth. it's it's really that's a pretty amazing um like that would be a fun art thing to have in the game room actually yeah yeah that's a really fantastic uh backlash there right the other ones it's different the other one's a cartoony one um and uh this one's uh just kind of a fine fine art interpretation but it's that really is fantastic i'm really impressed by that thank you thank you and you got to remember during that time frame you you know a lot of um i mean i love jack's back glass too and i'm going to tell you dan is a really good artist and he probably could have done something very close but you got to remember at that time a lot of the companies were yes it was very close market but they probably got a lot of heat from williams if they were using the same back glass that jack had already done so they had to be a little bit of a change a little bit more done into the cartoon. And listen, Alvin G, he was kind of, uh, Alvin was a great guy, but he always loved the Archie look. So, you know, the Archie comic look. So. Right. And you can definitely see that you can definitely see that style. And well, it's the, I would argue it's the same thing as, uh, Star Wars pinball. So that there's two different versions of the Star Wars pinball. There's the comic version and there's the, the photorealistic painting version. And I actually, like, I understand why people like the comic version, but I like the more realistic interpretation of it. But that's the beautiful part of it is there is that space for everybody. Sure. And, you know, to talk about the conclusion on that, on our end, because I was, I became the art director at Williams Valley Midway. there was some sort of legal encounter between Williams and Alvin G when they found out they were producing a game based on World Tour. And I can't go into that any further, but I had no idea that the concept had left the building.
    32:41
    Now, I know it seems as though I kept throwing stuff at the wall and nothing happened, it, but it was fine. And I'm not even listing every concept that I was working on at the time. There were redemption type games I was designing. There were alternative video game concepts. But again, the hardware and the software was being developed, and Eugene Jarvis and I were starting to experiment with the video digitizing process, lighting, the fact that if you wanted to have a repeatable cycle of somebody walking or running that would require a treadmill solution in front of the camera. So we figured out all of the requirements that eventually would lead to other game development, to significant game development at Williams Valley Midway, as in Mortal Kombat and NBA Jam, etc. So we were really building the processes and the procedures for the other teams to develop in. Yeah, that's actually a pretty... Everybody who is in my age demographic, they all pumped in tons of quarters into Mortal Kombat, NBA Jam, NFL Blitz, all of those games because it was different. And really, Mortal Kombat was, it seemed that that was chasing Street Fighter 2. Yeah. So Street Fighter 2 came out. It was very cartoony. It felt very much like a Sega Genesis game, I would say. Yeah. With better graphics. And then when Mortal Kombat came out, I looked at that and I thought, huh, that's really interesting. They found a way of animating really well. I actually didn't even know until recently those were pictures, and you found a way of animating those together. Absolutely. And actually, to help support a Good Friends project, there's an excellent documentary that's out now. It's available on Netflix, if I can plug it, called Insert Coin. And it's by a former Midway designer and incredible artist named Josh Sway. and it hit all the film festivals, South by Southwest and so on and so forth. So now it's available on Netflix Prime, I think in the paid documentary section called Insert Coin, and it deals in great detail on the rise and fall of Midway Games and the process, and it focuses a lot on the development of Mortal Kombat. So for anybody interested in the inside workings of Mortal Kombat, it's a very good documentary that covers that history. Does it cover Steve Ritchie being the voice? It may mention him. I don't, you know, quite honestly, I was interviewed for it. I still haven't seen the whole thing myself, but I hear it turns out great. So, but, yeah, Steve, that was, again, one of the side issues of Williams Valley Midway is we all pitched in on everything. And I think that kind of reinforces what we're talking about here. There was a lot of cross-pollinizations. So you'd have people from pinball going, hey, can you do speech for my game? And people from video asking for cabinet art support, this and that, from the pinball side. So there was a lot of cross-fertilization that took place. Now, Jack, you brought up something to me the other day. You did some voices. So can you tell us some of the voices you did? Oh, boy. Well, now, a lot of them were computer-aided and synthesized.
    36:37
    Probably the greatest number of voices in one game I worked on was a game I designed. called Carnival, and it was a video game, and it was an evil carnival, basically, and it had a great back story, and there's a nice intro to it with sort of a Vincent Price sort of reading of a local legend that tells you about the history of Carnival and when it returns in this small Iowa town, and that was my voice. And then there was a disembodied skull that you would meet throughout the game named Umlaut. And Umlaut is a character in Germanic alphabet, but I also like the sound of it. And the leader of Carnival, I sort of pictured being from Luxembourg. He was Ludwig, Dr. Dr. Ludwig von Tokentaker. and his name is literally what it sounds like. We had the game on test and one of the guys said, boy, the game's really doing well. And I said, yeah, it's really taking tokens. And he said, yeah, it's a real token taker. And I go, that's it. That's his name. And that's where we came up with. It's a shooter. It's like an Area 51 type game. Yeah, but I guess the best way to describe it is kind of Tim Burton-esque, You know, very fantasy.
    38:09
    And so Ludwig von Tocantaker might be, Welcome aboard. From this room I have observed your every move. But you do not obey. Prepare to die. And that was Ludwig von Tocantaker. And then Umlaut the Skull would be, Welcome to the haunted house. Meet a ghoul who lost her head. If you'd like to stay and join us, you're always welcome, alive or dead.
    38:41
    But it would be pitched way up. So I would read these silly poems. We had poems for the start of every wave, the freak show, the big top tent, and so on. It's where Umlaut would read these things. So guilty as charged, I am Umlaut. Well, that just tells me I'm going to have to use you for some voices for our games.
    39:07
    I just want to rewind for a second because I noticed here on your resume that you've got Elvira and the Pottery Monsters on here. So how did you get involved with that? After Williams bought Midway, we brought on several incredible people.
    39:24
    Two of them were Greg Freras and Dennis Nordman. And they were working on Dr. Dude and Elvira and the Party Monsters was a game they were developing. And they realized I also had a background in sculpture, and I designed puppets for puppet theaters and things like that. So they said, Jack, we have this tunnel ramp thing we would like to do. Do you think you could do a sketch and a sculpt for it? And the concept was a skull cave, sort of a skull cave entrance. So I worked with Greg and Dennis on that and sculpted it out of plastilina clay, and we casted it and put eyes in it. And that's the skull cave ramp on Elvira and the Party Monsters on the upper left side. An interesting detail to that is it has green lights for the eyes. And originally, almost by default, I said, well, it should have red bulbs for the eyes. And that was not allowed due to concerns of people in more conservative areas of the country who might feel that it was a satanic object. So we had to change it to green. So that's just the fun fact. I remember we couldn play Dungeons Dragons in the 80s because apparently that all led to devil worship So let me get this right It was wrong for kids to see the red eyes but it was all right for Elvira bosom to say hello to the kids Now wait a minute Wait wait let me touch something on that Hold on one thing. You know, not so fast. Not so fast. We're okay with the knockers, but not okay. No, no, not actually. Do you know that Elvira and the Potty Monsters was the first game to come with a panel, a modesty panel that could fit on the inside of the translator back glass. So you didn't see the knockers, as it were. It was the first one to do that.
    41:37
    Here's a fun fact for you youngsters out there. If you develop a game like Elvira and it requires a modesty panel, the quickest and most efficient solution is you go to a Hobby Lobby or a store like that and purchase a pack of paper doilies. And they're sort of lace doilies. and you cut it into a little triangle, and that literally is how you make an Elvira modesty panel.
    42:05
    And it works like a charm. Lace is okay. Lace is okay, apparently, yeah. Okay, so I do want to get back to – this has been a fascinating travel through all the entertainment game industry thing. But I want to bring back – so you brought back to pinball. You had involvement in Full Throttle and Ultimate Spider-Man and Stern Star Wars. So I want to talk about that. But I also want to transition. The reason why we have you on is because you are at American Pinball. And so we want to talk about American Pinball and what you're doing at American Pinball and the next five games you're going to release. So go ahead. Next five. Wow. Well, three would do. Three would do. We're not even going to tell you the next three. But anyway, we're already working on those. But anyway, go ahead, Jack. well I was contacted recently by David sort of out of the blue I had been talking to Greg Freris and I was doing contract work and consulting work for Stern whenever they needed it there were concepts that I worked on for several games and Greg and George Gomez would contact me and say hey, Jack, could you give us, you know, 10 flavors of this cabinet and how you, different approaches. And I would do that. And in some cases, I would be asked to continue and do final artwork on the side. Or some other times it would be the concepts would be handed off for other artists, which was fine. So I think there may have been some communication there. David can tell you how that happened, but I got a call from David, and it was just a real surprise and a real honor to talk to David and just to discuss American Pinball and their needs and how I might be able to help out with my background. Well, it was kind of funny. I'll give you a quick brief thing is when we joined American Pinball, before I brought Dennis in, one of the biggest concerns from a bunch of the guys was that we needed an art director. We've never had one. We've had artists where they gave us our concept, but we never had an art director.
    44:24
    And when I brought Dennis on, we started talking about people. And believe it or not, Dennis said to me one day, he says, I need a mechanical engineer. And I says, okay, we'll get you one. He says, her name was Zofia Bill. Can you find her? Now, Zofia Bill, I'm like, okay, how am I going to find this woman? And it literally was, thank goodness I had a little background with the U.S. government at one point where I was able to find people. It took me about an hour. I had her on the phone. She was excited to come join American Pinball. You can hear her podcast on the super awesome pinball show with Chris and Christian. But it was like, you know, Dennis was sitting there and saying, okay, now we need an artist. And he goes, there was this guy by the name of Jack. and he gives me this information and the next thing I know, I'm like, I told Dennis, you give me somebody and I'm going to pick up the phone and I'm going to call these people. And listen, I've been turning over rocks and saying, hey,
    45:25
    you want to come work for American Pinball? And Jack was like floored, honored, and, I mean, it just took a little time. And before you know it, he was coming in as our new art director. So, Jack, if you want to talk a little bit about what your role is as the art director, go ahead, but remember, don't tell them game three, I mean game four, game five, and game six. We've got to keep those kind of secrets. Okay, okay, we won't tell the public, but you're more than welcome to tell us afterwards, wink, wink.
    45:54
    You'll have to wait like everyone else. Okay, okay. Yeah. Well, initially it's been surveying recent projects, And like any game in production, there are some revisions that need to take place. And I've been looking at that and helping out with that immediately. We have some promotional concepts that I've been involved in that are really terrific promotional concepts. So I'll be supporting the marketing efforts as well. And my role also extends to the parent company, which is Ametron Corporation. So from time to time, I will be providing them with art direction and graphic design support, working with promotional materials that promote and inform people on their capabilities as a PCB company and manufacturer. So it's a great opportunity to help out pinball, the entertainment industry, as well as development that supports the medical industry, military, government, and consumer computer products. So I'm just very happy to be here, and they're going to keep me busy, I have a feeling. Oh, yeah, we have plenty of projects. Okay, so lead me through this. as an art director. Like, you're basically overseeing, and I would assume it's very similar to like a project director or anything like that, where you obviously have multiple games at various stages of development. And so you now are the one who is saying, okay, we're going to be guiding for this look. Yes. We need to look for these artists. We need to figure out how we want to steer the theme and how we want to find the right audience and find the right description. So tell me how involved you will be in actually producing the art yourself for it, or are you going to be more of a supervisory role where you're guiding the vision, so to speak? Well, the way you stated it, Scott, is very true. Where, let's say, an engineer has a concept for a game, I will be involved in heavily involved in working on brainstorming on refining that concept and trying to find the most entertaining aspects of the idea and and ways that we can exploit those in a game. if I'm not personally involved creating the artwork then yes I'm we are going to seek the best artist the most appropriate artist for the concept that can really support the theme and make for a nice cohesive experience and then along the way it's my job to shepherd that person in that I'm looking to encourage and champion their work So people may do things very differently than I do. They may have a different style or manner of creating art, but my job is to really champion them and celebrate their work in the game. So I try and keep my style out of it, but my attitude is how do we efficiently make this happen? Are we communicating the theme of the game? And is it working to make the best product and the most desirable product, most importantly, for the customer? So everything that we do, I hope that it inspires desire and entertainment and people appreciate the product in the end. And I'm just going to touch on this, too, because Jack brings a very unique perspective. Not only has he done pinball art and has a great artist's flair of stuff and done stuff, but he's also been in the background with Williams with the video games. And you know now that the pinball machines are heavily video style with the back display. I mean, we're not talking about dot matrix. We're talking about high def. So, you know, Jack and I have had discussions already about characters, how to bring them into animation, how to bring these creations and give it more dimension, even with a little of the flair of the Williams style or even some green screen stuff that we can bring into the pinball realm to give it that all-around effect. Because I'm looking at back classes, and you look at the different games that have been made, and it's like, wow, this is like the days of just the score display is gone. We're now talking about almost a video game inside of a pinball machine, which is already heavily illustrated as in the first place. So bringing Jack to have that vision to be able to work with not just video animators, but also with the artist who's coming together with this to make sure that everybody's on board to communicate that. It was a very important step for me. And I think it was a very important step for American Pinball at the same time. Now, in the design process, your last machine that you released was Hot Wheels. Yes.
    51:50
    And I actually know two people who have Hot Wheels. and I uh okay I I'm the first to admit I was a little puzzled by the theme because it it's it's a little different than what you typically see you typically see the dad rock bands or you see the you know the the theater assets or something like that and when Hot Wheels came out I actually had two friends was like yeah I bought it and they they gave surprise like when I say surprisingly good reviews I didn't know what to expect and so when they reviewed it they said yeah it's a blast there's actually a lot of fun to to play so that was about a year ago so to speak yeah right yeah yeah it's actually a year in march so next month and let me let me talk to you on that real quick because you know houdini came out and you know i've made some other podcasts and i talk about houdini houdini is a really uh an advanced players game okay it's challenging i I have played it. Yes, it is very challenging. Tight shots. Very tight shots. And you know what? If Houdini was made three or four years from now and it was a tournament game or a Papa game or something like that, it would be a challenge for some of the key players in the industry. But it was our first game out of the gate. And, unfortunately, it got kind of a bad rap because it was so tight and so hard. And then Oktoberfest, a lot of people said, oh, it had some, you know, they released it. There was a couple shots that weren't working. They fixed the shots, but they really didn't tell the world that the shots were fixed. So now all the new games that are coming out from Oktoberfest have the fixed things. Thank goodness we have Twitch and other things who are showing these games because you can see that. Hot Wheels, we kind of leverage, you know, and some people said, And some of the people who love the original Hot Wheels go, I don't get the dinosaur. I don't get the, you know, the characters and so forth. Well, we've really brought in the whole Hot Wheels City, you know, TV show that's on YouTube for kids. And you know what? We've already seen this now transcending to operators. And operators are seeing this. You know, I had an operator in Wisconsin contact me and just said, you know, I get it with Hot Wheels. He said, put it out on a location. it was in like a little family diner and the kids that were sitting at the table go dad that's my favorite tv show and sure enough he saw the father and the kids go over and we were playing the game and he's like i get it i see where you're going for with this and um it was a great playing game too it's a little bit easier than you know houdini it's got some good flow um you know it's it's challenging and it's, and the artwork on that package was brought together pretty well. You know, and to talk about licensing, I mean, Jack can tell you a little bit about licensing and, you know, licensing holds your hand an awful lot, you know, a lot more than you want because, you know, Hot Wheels was probably going to have more of that classic Hot Wheels look, but that wasn't the brand that Mattel wanted. They really wanted to support the new logo, the new Hot Wheels. They didn't want the old style cars, you know, that we want to bring this in. So, you know, with licensing, you kind of get roped into stuff, but the package came out really good. Now, the marketing on it wasn't so great. All right. We kind of should have pushed it out to everybody, you know, and done that. And we kind of took it to a trade show and then everybody took pictures of it and wasn't really well received. And, you know, there's reasons for that. But COVID hit and that also hurt the sales. But we're still selling them. We're still selling all three games. People are buying Houdini. The players who want a challenging game are buying Houdini still. People who have found out that Oktoberfest is fixed, they're buying that. And Hot Wheels is rolling out the door. So we're really doing well with that. But, you know, there were challenges along the way. And I have to say, I love Hot Wheels. I have it in location, and it's a great playing game. So, David, I've got a question for you specifically. American Pinball has made quite the splash here in the last couple of months between hiring you and then Dennis Nordman and Zofia and now Jack. It seems like American Pinball is saying, hey, we're here to play ball. So can you kind of give us some of the vision of going forward? What's going to happen with American Pinball if we're going to see a different schedule? Because it's been kind of hit or miss with like every 12 months or 18 or 24 months. Are we going to see a more tight schedule? Are we going to see more machines? What's going to go on now? So let's touch on that. So, you know, I'll just tell you that the owner of American Pinball now is Mukesh Vasani, and that's part of the Ametron Corporation.
    56:40
    And at the time, there was Daval Dasani, who was his nephew, who was running American Pinball. well back in december um mckash and his advisors got together and they contacted me and i and i told the story already a little bit that i was i had been working for ice and unfortunately it's one of the major manufacturers of arcade games worldwide and during because of covid it kind of got shut down you know i mean i feel sorry for the guys at ice i still plug the you know the super checks game uh all the other games that they have they even have a whole new arcade version of the games coming out a really nice looking um arcade a skeeball you can actually see it at flipping out um zach many is now a distributor for ice uh home arcade and they have a lot of other games that are going to be absolutely cool and zach will be rolling those out on a on one of his streams but um they basically came to me and said dave we really want to change the direction that American Pinball has been heading. And, you know, everybody's been, like, watching American Pinball, including myself, for the last four or five years going, okay, guys, let's get this going. Because originally I helped them out with Houdini. When they first came out with Houdini from Papa Duke, I run, I help Expo. I run it with Rob Burke. At that time I reached out to American Pinball and said, listen, we're going to get you the back room. We want you to bring the first, you know, Houdini there. Let's show it off. They said, we just hired Joe Balzer. I said, fine, let's get everybody together. And we gave them a room, you know, that kind of thing. And they got great publicity off that. And then when Oktoberfest came out, Nermal reached out to me and I said, let's do it. Let's launch it at Expo. We got Jack Danger to stream it. We got a bunch of things. We got this whole thing. We had a whole launch party right there at Expo, and we kind of pushed it out. And then, of course, Hot Wheels kind of floundered. So when I reached out to them and I said, listen, hey, how are things over there? And they said, they're okay. And I said, well, I'm not doing anything right at the moment. They said, would you like to come work for us? We would really love you to be the director of operations.
    58:57
    Deval is going to take a – is leaving the company. You're going to answer right to McHash. It's going to be McHash is the owner, and you're going to be the principal guy over it. And we looked at it and we said, listen, let's bring together this team. And I had a vision. I said, listen, the golden years of Williams and Bally were made by some great people. And one of them was Dennis Nordman. And then, you know, you look at Sophia where she came out with some great mechanical stuff. There were some great artists that came out at that time. And Jack was one of them. And I'm like, this is just fitting the vision that I have to make a company look and be respected in the industry as a pinball company. OK, and the other idea was it's like we are bringing in other people to help design games so that we just go from one game every 18 months to two years to two games every year. you know and we're going to turn the with basically i said to mikesh i said listen we can build a game you guys can build some really good games what we got to do is put the burners on and start you know cooking the games really well so you know dennis came on board we started looking at that and now i'm happy to say that with dennis and sophia and jack and the rest of the team josh and joe and all the guys were starting to sit down and we were like okay this is going to be great you know we're going to start and trust me dennis has already brought some great ideas we're already cooking on that uh jack and i and dennis have already had conversations and you know the the you know i love there was a there was a guy who did a podcast one time who worked for williams and he says when when you get engineering going there's like it's all excited and great ideas are flying off the walls and you know what you just start grabbing and it's like lightning in a bottle. And what you want to do is try to hold it and bring all this creativity together and basically say, go at it, guys. Let's do this. Jack, what do you got for a vision? Can you share that with Dennis? Dennis and Jack got together and they're sharing their vision together. We're going to bring in the right sound guy that's going to share that same vision. We're going to go out and we're going to get the right artists that can bring this all together. and you know what you let the guys create let them create let them build some cool cool mechanism Sophia build me another Miss Multi-Ball or build me some kind of a cool mechanism that's just gonna you know people are going to love and uh hey that what I that my idea is just sit back let them create and let them go at it and uh we already have a game coming down the pipeline and we have another one that already in development Jack and Dennis are working on that and we're bringing the rest of the team on board. So I think it's just going to be a win-win. You guys are going to be excited over American Pinball over the next year or so. Yeah, it sounds like you're getting the band back together and we're doing a Williams 2.0. That seems like the culture you're trying to do. Is that fair to say? Yeah, I would say it's fair to say. In fact, some of the uh it's funny i i was talking to uh another designer mechanical engineer and i told listen i'm trying to get the williams band back together and they go are you crazy there's some sitting over here there's some sitting over there there's some guys sitting over there they're all over the place it just won't happen well then all of a sudden zofia comes walking in jack comes walking in guess what you know we're gonna make it fun you know we're gonna put fun back into pinball guys we're going to have some fun making these games and you know what the way if you come to me you say hey listen i worked for williams and i'm just you know hey listen williams was great because a good friend we were talking about this with jack and we can go back over this because i want to know more stories about python but python was this other guy who was just energetic he just brought so much to the williams and he just was like he bounced off all these teams and he gave people ideas and, you know, the creativity level just expounded. And with that, you know, more people build on that. So, I mean, Python was a good friend. I do miss him. I, you know, I miss the phone calls at midnight because he worked with us at ICE on some projects over the years. And, you know, Python was a driving force, I would say, in the Williams department during the 80s and a good part of the 90s, and then took that to Capcom for a while there. And I think that, you know, bringing these guys together, letting them create, let them have the passion. They have the passion. They want to do it. I mean, I'm not saying Jack's old, and I'm not saying Dennis is old, and I'm not saying Zofia is old, but, you know, hey, guys, would you like to work for a pinball company, or would you want to just kind of take an easy job and retire? No, no, we want to work for a pinball company. We have the most fun. We want to do this. We want to have some fun with these people. And I'm just excited to have them. And you guys are looking for – I see your press releases. You're like, hey, if you want to be in pinball, send us your resume. Check us out. We're growing. That's the message I'm getting from you guys. Yes, we are growing. And unlike other companies, you've actually made pinball machines, so you've got that going for you. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
    64:20
    Okay, I'll put my cuffs on. I've been a little – I've been aggressive about a different manufacturer who is all promises.
    64:29
    Yeah. Well, you know what? In all fairness, you know, pinball is not an easy business, okay? No. And God bless you. You're trying to put it together. I mean, I remember – I mean, listen. In Expo, I supported – I would say the first foremost, I remember walking in when I was still working with Paysack over Expo and Burke. And I said to him, I said, there's this guy by the name of Jerry Stellenberg who makes this thing called P-Rock. We want to I want to give him four booths free of charge because he's going to bring in homebrew guys. And then Aaron from Skill Shot out in Seattle calls me and I said, hey, he said, can I get a booth? Yeah, we'll get you two booths. And just to create these homebrew guys and the passion to work at this was one of my driving forces back in 2010, 2011 at Expo.
    65:24
    You know, it's not an easy job. And from that point, I helped, you know, I helped the kid that made this thing called Predator Pinball. You know, Kevin, I kind of gave him this. Oh, yeah, Skip B? Yeah, Skip B. I remember helping him where I could with bringing him at the Expo and so forth. I helped, of course, a friend, Highway Pinball, Andrew Highway, which I actually own one of the prototypes number four of Jack's game there, Full Throttle. We didn't even get to talk about that. I'd love to hear a little bit more stories about his thought on Full Throttle. And, you know, there's a lot of passion. People try to make the machines. I give them full credit to doing it. And I'd love it when they can pull it off. But it's not an easy toy. It's not an easy thing to do. You know, give them the credit for trying. That's all I have to say.
    66:19
    But, Jack, tell us a little about Highway Pinball. How did you get over there into UK and working with Andrew? That's got to be an interesting question.
    66:29
    It was another case of being contacted out of the blue. Andrew was working with another artist, another Williams artist, Tim Watson, at that point, and Tim went on hiatus because he wanted to, I believe, get into teaching and wasn't able to get back and do revisions on what he had started with full throttles. So I came in when the project was already underway. Tim had created a back glass that featured two motorcycles driving away from the place. You're seeing the back end of the motorcycles and the riders.
    67:17
    And Andrew just gave me the wonderful premise of this upstart young rider who is a total unknown and nobody expects anything from him in the red number 28 motorcycle against this world-renowned leader that wins every race. And, again, Andrew asked me to develop the theme a little more, and I worked with him on creating this South American character who ultimately you really had to hate. So we made him the character that would produce speech calls at you and taunt you and tell you you're never going to win. And that's where the three-dimensional model came from on the playing field. I did sketches of the actual character, and the 3-D artist did a fantastic job. I think the character's name was Valentino in the end. And so I created a back glass concept where the bikes are coming at you, and you can see in the one character's shield, the finish line is reflected in his visor, so they're just yards from the finish line, and the Valentino character is reaching out with his boot to kick him off his bike. So all this is happening at once.
    68:46
    There's more that I wanted to develop in the glass, but there was only so much time available to do this. So there were some comments, which I take wholeheartedly, where the characters appear to be kind of sketchy, which they were at that stage. But Andrew said, you know, this is fine where it's at right now. I'd like you to work on some, to adjust some graphics on the play field, which I did. I did the two motorcycle characters on the play field, and there was a female character. I did the cabinet side. So there was a lot of work that I kind of fit into a limited amount of time.
    69:27
    But I was excited. It was a great opportunity to kind of come out of the video and redemption world that I had been working in and a chance to, you know, really work on a pinball project. And I was excited, and I thought it was pretty neat to work with a designer and a company based in Wales, having relatives over there it was kind of a nice homecoming experience for me Now did you get to work on any of the other game from Highway, the Alien? No, no There was talk about it I was asked to come up with some concepts but at some point as a freelance artist You know, you have to decide on a contract and so on and so forth. And Andrew hadn't gotten to that point with it. Got it. So out of respect for him and the business, you know, things were on hold at that point.
    70:30
    But another company I came in and out of quite a bit is Team Play Incorporated, and they're based here in Elk Grove Village in Illinois. That's Ken Fedez's place. right? Ken Fedesna, who was my former boss at Midway for many, many years and a great guy. And their focus was primarily redemption games. So types of games that you would see at Dave and Buster's, Chuck E. Cheese, that sort of thing. And so I got to work on some concepts with them that were actually pretty interesting and some that actually touched on the pinball world as well. Oh, yeah. And it's funny, which is kind of fun, which I laugh. There was a game that team play brought together and I had seen it it was called fishbowl frenzy and it's interesting because I talked to Ken at um at IEPA and I saw fishbowl frenzy and we were talking and I said so how did you lure John Yowsey out of retirement to do the the artwork for fishbowl frenzy and he looked at me he goes how did you know that's John Yowsey's artwork I said listen John has a style Everybody's got a style. I mean, you know, Jack's got a style too. And I said, not only that, you basically got Williams coils up there dropping the ball. I mean, the whole thing has got like, you know, well, I think it was stern coils. But anyway, they had pinball coils. And, you know, and Ken's like, you know your business, Mr. Fix, I will tell you that much. And then they came out with another game, which was more pinball-like. And you worked on that one, Jack, a little bit more. That was, what was that one with the little pinball tables? Yeah, Spins Ahoy. There you go, Spins Ahoy. And originally it was a license that we were working on, and sometimes, as you know, when you're working on a license and you have financial investors, it can go south in the middle of the project. And that's what happened with the original concept, but we still had this great game that had four individual kiosks,
    72:35
    And basically, it was a board game, basically, and little characters would move around the board game, and that was your one credit. You put in your credit, and you'd see where your character would end up on the board, and that would tell you how many credits you won. And it had some nice novel features as well. And we decided that the license wasn't going to happen, but we still wanted to go ahead because the mechanic worked. It was great. And then, again, because of Ken Fedesna and his great leadership and experience as a leader at Williams Valley Midway, Ken was the one who came up with the idea of, okay, we've got the spinner, but how about we make a little mini pinball play field? Technically, it's a bag of towel because there's no flipper. So you just pull the plunger and the mini pinball drops down between slots. And it tells you, again, the same thing, tells you where your how many spaces your character moves on the board. And I just love this idea of the mini pinball play field. And we applied that. Spins Ahoy was a sort of a cartoony pirate theme. and the characters were really well-defined and wonderful, unique characters. And we named one of them Captain Ken in honor of Ken Fedezna.
    74:03
    And it turned out to be the highest-earning game ever at a Chuck E. Cheese location, because it was a four-player, four players independent. And this was at Chuck E. Cheese headquarters, which was no small feat. So they saw firsthand how well it did.
    74:25
    I can't say anything about distribution or decisions after the fact, but it did reach that milestone. And I'm proud to, you know, at least illustrate it when I was asked, you know, to post some images. Spins Ahoy, I'm really fond of it. And had a lot of pinball people involved in that as well. Yeah, it basically looks a little bit like a, well, kind of like a bingo machine, actually. I'm kind of looking at it. Yes, sure. And imagine four of those side by side, each, you know, at a slight angle to the screen. And it was really fun, and it really drew people in. You know, you don't see that very often. You know, everybody's used the joysticks, you know, gun games, et cetera. But this, it was really special.
    75:17
    Yeah, it looks like a lot of fun. so after that you kind of went to uh you did some work on the star wars for steve richie and and stern and again you did your photo realism kind of art you want to talk about a little about that yeah yeah correct there was again another case where uh greg freris reached out to me to ask if I could contract some art. And the Star Wars license, without getting into too much detail, required a lot of scrutiny by the licensor. And I think there were a lot of changes and revisions that affected the schedule. So Greg had to call in several people to help out to meet the milestones that they had set. and it was a case where I had to match an existing artist's style and method, which I did. So it looks very painterly, and that was the intention, and it was all done on computer, but it was intended to appear to be more hand-drawn, a painting illustration of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader on the back box sides and the coin box front and some other work that I did. But those are the – I think they appeared on the pro version of the Star Wars cabinet.
    76:46
    And I was one of several artists, but we all had to pitch in and, you know, try and have a unified style so the final package looked seamless for the consumer, which it did. Yeah, that's certainly true. We've talked about that before is how in many ways we as casual fans don't understand the licensing constraints and how really the owner of the license really guides the visual presentation of their product because that's their product. They want to know how it's going out, and it doesn't matter if you make the coolest thing in the world. If it doesn't follow whatever their style guide is or what their agreed-upon presentation for the theme is, it's not going to fly.
    77:32
    Yes, very true, very true. And the metaphor I've used a couple times, and I'm not going to name specific games, But, you know, you go into it hoping they give you the box of 128 crayons and they give you the box of 12 and make something with this. And, you know, as a creative person, then that's what you do. And we can't always come out and, you know, point to that, but you do the best you can in every situation. I told Jack when he started working here, I says, you hit the big box of crayons, my friend. And you don't have to worry about playing with the kiddie pack from any restaurant where you only get four colors or six or eight colors. You can have all 64, use them sparingly, and go for it, you know, that kind of thing. Yeah. But I do have to – I would like to just call out specifically, I can't thank and show my appreciation enough for the leadership at Stern with Greg Ferreris and George Gomez. Those guys are amazing. They are pros. They're at the top of their game.
    78:47
    And, you know, in the times I've had to work with them, I've been truly grateful and appreciative for their guidance and, you know, how they've done things, you know, over the years. So good guys. Yes, very good guys. All right, before we wrap this up, David Fix was nice enough to hook us up with a Houdini Translight and we're going to give this away to you, our audience What we're going to do is kind of what we've done in the past We're going to make a post It's going to be of this episode Make sure you comment you like and if you share The share will get you extra entries and then here in two weeks we will toss all the entries into a hat, stir it all up and announce a winner and we'll work with you in getting that Houdini Translight Yeah, the Houdini art style is certainly very fun to see. Yeah, it was done very well, the Houdini artwork.
    79:45
    Same artists did, Houdini did Hot Wheels, too. So I'm happy to give one away to any of your listeners out there. It would be really great. We want to thank David Fix and Jack Hager from American Pinball. We really appreciate them coming on. And it's always fun hearing about a pinball company that's on the rise. David, if someone wants to send their resume to you and contact you, how do they do that? Very easy. David.Fix at AmericanPinball.com. And you can even call the office and talk or send to info at AmericanPinball.com. You can do that too. Thanks, David. If you want to get a hold of Loser Kid Pinball Podcast, you can get a hold of us the traditional way at LoserKidPinballPodcast at gmail.com. Or we prefer Facebook. So if you hit us up, I am Josh Roop. That is Scott Larson. You can hit us up at Loser Kid Pinball Podcast page. Everything, all of our Twitter, Instagram, Facebook is at Loser Kid Pinball. We still got some hats and some beanies. So if you want to hit us up for that, there is a gentleman that did reach out. But I'll make sure I get you taken care of, my good sir. and I think that wraps it up pretty much for us now Scott is there any other last thoughts you have for us? well when it's time for you guys to announce we'd love to invite you guys back and we can do a reveal and talk about it and certainly more pinball is good pinball and it's always good to have more seats at the table as we always say thank you for having us thank you both we really do appreciate it
    81:28
    Shut up and sit down. .