In this episode, Alan and Alex are joined by their good friend and staunch solid state pinball evangelist, Ty Palmer. Ty is a fiend for early solid state machines, and will happily go weeks or months without playing a single game newer than 1985.
For his first appearance on the show, we decided to narrow down this era to one manufacturer, Bally, and keep it to the machines they released during the rise of the SBA dollar coin, and how this decision by the US treasury impacted pinball. This also dovetailed with the release of Pac-Man in 1980 and immediately put the future of pinball into jeopardy.
Bally released their best machines of all time in this short window, and we talk about each of them and try to provide some historical context for them in between.
In this episode, Alan and Alex are joined by their good friend and staunch solid state pinball evangelist, Ty Palmer. Ty is a fiend for early solid state machines, and will happily go weeks or months without playing a single game newer than 1985.
For his first appearance on the show, we decided to narrow down this era to one manufacturer, Bally, and keep it to the machines they released during the rise of the SBA dollar coin, and how this decision by the US treasury impacted pinball. This also dovetailed with the release of Pac-Man in 1980 and immediately put the future of pinball into jeopardy.
Bally released their best machines of all time in this short window, and we talk about each of them and try to provide some historical context for them in between.
[00:00:29.870] - Alan
Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Wedgehead Pinball podcast. My name is Alan. I am one half owner of the Portland pinball bar Wedgehead and your host of the Wedgehead Pinball podcast. I am joined by my co host, who's not affiliated with the bar wedgehead in any way, but he's one half...
[00:00:46.340] - Alex
Yeah. Proud patron and one half of this podcast. I'm Alex. Alan likes to call me the water boy.
[00:00:54.430] - Alan
If anyone's wondering why he has that nickname, he works in water.
[00:00:58.590] - Alex
But more importantly than us today is our guest, the esteemed, the one and only Ty Palmer.
[00:01:05.480] - Ty
Oh, thanks for having me. I want to do my fractions, too. I am one quarter of the bartending staff at Wedgehead, and I'm one quarter of boy ride.
[00:01:12.780] - Alex
Boy ride, the illustrious boy ride.
[00:01:14.920] - Alan
Yeah, it's a secret society.
[00:01:16.830] - Ty
It's an adventure team. And I'm also one half of the previous Cobros podcast. And yeah, I am one whole Ty Palmer.
[00:01:24.830] - Alex
Yeah, if you've been keeping up, it adds up to one to one.
[00:01:27.050] - Ty
It does.
[00:01:27.430] - Alex
We checked the math beforehand.
[00:01:28.890] - Ty
Yes, two quarters, one half. One whole.
[00:01:31.340] - Alex
So today we're going to be talking about bally games, solid state manufacturer, and specifically the era from is this 1979 to 1981, kind of curtained by the Susan B. Anthony coin. Ty, what is a Susan B. Anthony coin?
[00:01:46.820] - Ty
It was a dollar coin that was minted between 1979 to 1981, like you said. And they produced about 1 billion of these coins. They minted a lot of them, and it was meant to kind of take the place of a dollar bill or be more of like an international standard for currency. Kind of like more of a european or canadian thing where they have loonies and toonies for $1, $2 thing. Yeah, it's supposed to be a big thing with coin op, not just pinball, but vending all over the place.
[00:02:11.060] - Alex
That makes sense. I didn't really think about how big. Yeah, I guess that's why you would do coins.
[00:02:15.340] - Ty
Right.
[00:02:15.530] - Alex
And that's probably why other countries kind of held onto them. Yeah. I don't know. I'm always surprised, but Americans didn't like them and they killed it quick.
[00:02:21.270] - Ty
Yeah, killed it real quick. So it just lives in this small, little brief period where bally machines were insanely good. And, yeah, you'd pop one into a Bally machine or any other pinball machine from that era and you'd get five plays for $1.
[00:02:34.870] - Alex
Right. Like what you'd see now when you put $2 into a stern instead of one or whatever, and they give you three plays. It was kind of their way to incentivize you to try to play games with your friends or just play more games in general.
[00:02:45.340] - Ty
Oh, totally. Yeah.
[00:02:46.190] - Alan
Give you a volume discount for putting a full dollar in.
[00:02:48.660] - Alex
Yeah. Bally. Leaned into it hard, though.
[00:02:50.770] - Alan
They put it right in the middle. So usually in the two coin slots on the coin door, Susan B. Anthony or the SBA, you'll see it labeled, would be right in the middle of the coin door between the two quarter slots on the left and right.
[00:02:59.780] - Alex
Hmm.
[00:03:00.270] - Ty
Yeah, it's kind of trippy how they'd have it advertised. They'd have a sticker on top of the coin door with the image of the coin next to the branding and this arrow design surrounding the coin, and then a play field topper, like you said, alex. Yeah, I just, like, how were they so invested in this?
[00:03:15.240] - Alex
It's funny that they're just promoting it. It's like they really wanted to get those coins hyped up. And so it's kind of just this funny little era of, I don't know, them trying to sell us on these coins, I guess. But really it just happens to coincide with some of the best Bally pinball machines of all time, which is really what we're here to talk about.
[00:03:32.420] - Ty
Yeah, we got some bangers on the list, and we could just start with the year 1979.
[00:03:36.210] - Alex
Yeah. So the first on the list of the SBA games from Bally would have been Star Trek, designed by. What is that? Who did that?
[00:03:43.240] - Alan
Gary Gayton.
[00:03:44.120] - Alex
Gary Gayton. That's not a name I remember very often, and that's not a game that I think about very often. Despite them making 16,000 of them.
[00:03:51.160] - Ty
Yeah, it's pretty fun. I don't play it as much as I play other solid states from that era, but it has some quirks to it and plays pretty well. The art's okay.
[00:03:58.740] - Alex
The art's hilarious to me because they've got like the super buff captain Kirk. They just really went all in.
[00:04:06.010] - Alan
I wonder if Shatner wanted that. I wonder if he's like, make me buff!
[00:04:09.890] - Alex
Well, the game we're going to talk about immediately after this, that's definitely the case on.
[00:04:13.960] - Alan
Oh, yeah.
[00:04:14.810] - Alex
With Star Trek. I just think that's funny because it's like the first time I saw that. I don't know anything about Star Trek. Our friend shout out to Johnny Demonic here in Portland. He's a big trekkie and he'd probably die if I said this, but I had no idea the game was from a different era than the tv show. The tv show was already old as hell. When this game came out, it was already like, whatever, 15 year old show.
[00:04:32.420] - Alan
Yeah.
[00:04:33.120] - Alex
And so it's kind of funny. It's like the art is intentionally retro, the colors are kind of retro. But now the game itself is so much older than the show was when it released. So it has this very weird old school vibe. It's kind of a timeless looking machine to me. It's not my favorite, but it is cool. It's a good start. Good start of the run.
[00:04:50.470] - Alan
They sold almost 17,000 units on this game.
[00:04:53.380] - Ty
Yeah, that's a nutty amount.
[00:04:55.130] - Alan
I mean, that's massive. That already puts it in one of the highest selling games of all time list, which we're going to see a lot here. It looks like Bally at this point in time had caught all the way up. They were the first people to adopt solid state into pinball. And they hit the ground running. I think Stern Electronics, who we'll talk about in a different episode when we talk about solid state games. They basically copied the bally board system for this first and got kind of a slap on the wrist. They were in some hot water with Bally and they came to some sort of gentlemanly agreement.
[00:05:28.010] - Alex
I know other people have dived into that more and it was kind of just like a gentleman's thing. I think they let them use some mechs they had developed or something. It was just back in the day. I don't think they necessarily saw it as so much competition as know.
[00:05:41.770] - Alan
They definitely saw it as competition. It's just there was more of... I heard an interview and hopefully we'll get him on the show soon with Roger Sharpe, where he was talking about being in an office with one of the pinball manufacturers. And the phone rings as Roger's there to interview him. And the guy picks up the phone and he's just like "oh, yeah, what do you need? Yeah, I could get you a box of those or whatever." And he hangs up the phone and Roger's like "who is that?" And he was like, oh, that was Dave Gottlieb over at Gottlieb. Or it was whoever over at Genco. Or it was Williams. And he's just like, oh, so you guys just sort of. He's like, yeah. I mean, it was more like fraternal then. Yeah, there was definitely competition. They were definitely trying to outsell each other. It's not like it was all Kumbaya. They collaborated more and there's so many mechanisms in pinball, from, like, pop bumpers to spinners to drop targets, to these things that are like, all could be their own patents.
[00:06:41.610] - Alan
And enforced, like, they could enforce them and be like, hey, you can't do a target that drops down. You can't do this or whatever, but instead they just sort of were like, that's just part of pinball. We're going to take some of your stuff and you're going to take some of our stuff, and then we'll just kind of look the other way. And then you won't sue us and we won't sue you type of thing, right?
[00:07:00.980] - Ty
Yeah. It's good to see them play nice when they're like the titans of industry and not really looking at each other like they're like death rivals.
[00:07:07.470] - Alex
Very different than I feel like you would expect. I don't know how the industry all is now. I guess pinball, but that's definitely not how most businesses run.
[00:07:15.350] - Ty
Not at all.
[00:07:16.600] - Alan
Yeah, I wouldn't imagine.
[00:07:18.320] - Alex
So how do you follow up a monster seller licensed theme like Star Trek?
[00:07:23.700] - Ty
You put in a monster themed men in a rock and roll band called Kiss.
[00:07:29.610] - Alex
Yeah.
[00:07:30.010] - Alan
And this is the original Kiss game.
[00:07:31.820] - Ty
The first. Yeah.
[00:07:32.840] - Alan
1979. They did sell full 17,000 units designed by the legendary Jim Patla, who we'll mention again on this list, as well as probably in the future on his own episode.
[00:07:44.020] - Ty
Yeah. One of the rare machines that actually have a symmetrical play field. Both left and right have same shots, same areas drops, same area targets.
[00:07:51.750] - Alan
And Jim Patla did that a lot. I'm going to ask him about that if we can ever talk to him on this show. But he did that quite a bit.
[00:07:58.870] - Alex
Like the symmetrical stuff he did and even his games. Because we're going to get down the list into Viking and something that's not symmetrical, but at first glance, it kind of is. It's like the shots do different stuff, but they're in the same place. It's kind of interesting.
[00:08:11.050] - Alan
Yeah.
[00:08:11.440] - Alex
He did do that.
[00:08:12.010] - Alan
Totally.
[00:08:12.470] - Alex
From there, get into something real good.
[00:08:14.840] - Ty
Yeah.
[00:08:15.580] - Alex
Paragon.
[00:08:16.450] - Ty
First widebody.
[00:08:18.490] - Alan
First widebody on this list. Not first wide body of any pinball, but first Susan B. Anthony widebody.
[00:08:24.770] - Alex
Yeah.
[00:08:24.990] - Ty
I thought it was the first wide body that Bally did.
[00:08:27.070] - Alex
That makes sense. I think Atari was the one doing wide bodies first. And everybody scrambled because they thought wide bodies were going to take over the whole thing.
[00:08:34.290] - Alan
That's interesting.
[00:08:35.280] - Alex
They didn't, but I'm pretty sure Atari was the first do wide bodies.
[00:08:39.190] - Alan
This one sold over 9000 units. Designed by Greg Kmiec. And this is a super wide body. I mean, we're talking about wide bodies, but this is like mega wide.
[00:08:48.410] - Alex
Oh, yeah, the bally wide bodies are real big.
[00:08:51.140] - Ty
It's a cadillac. Yeah, there's a lot to do.
[00:08:53.460] - Alex
Paragon's so sick. It's disappointing. It sold, like, half as many as kiss or something, but it doesn't have the theme, and it was probably more expensive. I don't know. That's my guess. Yeah, that game's cool, man.
[00:09:04.440] - Alan
Paragon's the best of the ones we've discussed so far by a wide margin, the art package by Paul Faris is unbelievable. Like, legendary. This is firmly in what I also would call, we're calling this the Susan B. Anthony era, where we're talking about these games, but this is the artistic style, which is the bally nipple era, where you're seeing, like, erect nipples under very skimpy clothing.
[00:09:31.260] - Alex
Yeah. Everyone jokes it must have just been cold as hell.
[00:09:34.850] - Alan
It's cold in Chicago. You ever been there? Yeah.
[00:09:37.440] - Ty
You ever wear a t shirt in the winter in Chicago?
[00:09:39.400] - Alan
Yeah.
[00:09:40.100] - Ty
But also too. Yeah. Swords and tits. Yeah, it's the era of swords and tits.
[00:09:44.560] - Alex
Yeah. They knew what the kids wanted in the arcades, I guess. Not as much as they wanted muscly men and kiss, though, because it sold half well.
[00:09:50.950] - Alan
Kiss was a huge band, though and kiss was just as naked. They were a current massive band at that time.
[00:09:57.840] - Alex
Yeah. To be fair to kiss, they're still a monster license. Like, they can still sell. And this is, like, 40 years later, so I suppose.
[00:10:07.890] - Alan
But Paragon is a fucking kick ass game.
[00:10:10.020] - Alex
It is, Paragon rules.
[00:10:11.410] - Alan
We have Ty on this show because Ty is sort of our solid state guru. This is all Ty plays are games from, like, a four year period in the 70s, early eighties.
[00:10:22.850] - Ty
Everything else is kind of a waste of time or money, and it's just simple economics. If I see a Jersey Jack, I'm walking the other way. If you give me the option, I'm not going to play anything else. It's just like, why?
[00:10:31.930] - Alan
So this is why we wanted Ty on the podcast, because we love solid state games we talk about on the podcast, but Ty is on a different level. He doesn't just love solid state games. It's like, that's pretty much all he wants to play.
[00:10:44.140] - Alex
Yeah, there's kind of a reason, and it's a shame that we don't get modern games like this. And we're kind of starting to see some push for that. TNA, I think, was kind of a little taste of that, though, doesn't really have the solid state flavor.
[00:10:55.830] - Alan
Beatles got there a little bit, then.
[00:10:57.870] - Ty
The bond limited edition gets there.
[00:10:59.760] - Alex
I think pulp fiction coming is the first one that. It's because they went all in. They actually committed to the bit, the whole thing. It's like down to the coin door. Like, the SBA team at Bally would be proud.
[00:11:12.200] - Ty
They would be. They even stenciled the art on the side. Like, they would spray paint the bodies of these machines instead of doing airbrush or even decal. So, yeah, I feel like they got that right for pulp fiction.
[00:11:21.310] - Alex
I wonder if we can get a Susan B. Anthony coin door installed on pulp fiction when your shows up, Alan.
[00:11:26.430] - Ty
I think it's just a little slot.
[00:11:30.070] - Alex
Trying to run it back. Yeah, bring in your SBAs, kids.
[00:11:33.340] - Alan
Before we go on, why do you think that the Susan B. Anthony coin didn't stick in America?
[00:11:40.130] - Ty
I think a lot of coin operators, when it came down time to use these things, it just wasn't as practical. People probably still stuck on the dollar.
[00:11:53.160] - Alan
I think the main reason is that they look too much like quarters.
[00:11:56.510] - Ty
Yeah, that's a real problem. Imagine, like, soldering just a little bit of weight on a quarter and making it a dollar. Yeah, because that's the shithead tactics my dad did when he was playing EMs back in the day. He would take pennies and clip them till they weigh the same as dimes. And he would just go to his local five and dime, play sky jump all day for pennies on the dime. it is so, like, they look the like we were playing firepower one time at wedgehead when you guys were open in the first year, and I accidentally put a quarter in where the SBA slot was, and it was programmed for SBA, and it went through, and I got three plays, and I'm like, Alan, I pulled you aside and I was like this gave me more than I should have. Imagine, you know, if something was a little bent or broken on the coin door, that you probably could know pump quarters through for SBA value.
[00:12:45.280] - Alan
I bet it was probably annoying to also fish SBAs out of your quarters, dude. From an operator trying to do your tally.
[00:12:50.570] - Alex
yeah, it is kind of funny. I never thought about that. Trying to get. So if you've not seen. If you're listening to this and you've never seen an SBA coin, they're slightly bigger than a quarter. Like, very slight, and they're the same color and everything. So just from, like, a management perspective, they're confusing, but trying to just shove a quarter into the thing. How do they know? Is it based on weight?. You try to calibrate the switch?
[00:13:13.650] - Alan
It's usually size.
[00:13:14.970] - Alex
That's funny.
[00:13:16.100] - Alan
So the coin mechs are the size. It's supposed to be an exact size, which is why you'll see with, like, tokens or any other coins or canadian quarters. Canadian quarters look a lot like american quarters. You see them, but they'll usually get rejected or they'll just get jammed at a coin mech. Right. And you go to fish them out, and then you have these canadian quarters. It's usually calibrated to the size of a coin. So each coin mech on the inside that you don't see behind the coin door as the player is a different size, and it's only meant to take one very specific diameter, size of coin. So I think the older ones, like Ty was talking about with his dad, was... they were a little bit less sophisticated. And so it's like you could trick those a little bit more easily. The new ones, hopefully not as much. Best case scenario, it just rolls right through the bottom and rejects out. But a lot of times they just fucking jam, and it just pisses everybody off.
[00:14:10.500] - Alex
Yeah, that's like every operators nightmares, coin jams. It's just like the one thing you're going to have to fix more than anything in pinball is fucking coin jams.
[00:14:17.780] - Alan
Oh, yeah. I mean, if you have an arcade every day, people are just going to be like, hey, this game ate my money, and you just got to do it all the time.
[00:14:23.970] - Ty
And how players deal with coin jams, you're like, let me shove a knife in there and hit the machine several times. It makes it worse.
[00:14:31.980] - Alex
I usually will slap the shit out of the doors always, which I feel like if you haven't seen clear a jam, people will be like, what are you doing? But it's like when you've had to clear them, you kind of just got this motion. You really just kind of jab it, and half the time they clear. And so you're like, I know what I'm doing. I just look crazy.
[00:14:47.350] - Alan
Yeah, like the Fonz, dude. He did it famously on Happy Days. Over and over again.
[00:14:50.380] - Alex
I've never watched that.
[00:14:52.250] - Alan
You never seen that?
[00:14:53.440] - Alex
I'm not over here watching happy days.
[00:14:56.650] - Alan
Oh, man. Missing out.
[00:14:59.100] - Alex
So following up Paragon. Eventually we're going to have to start skipping games. We don't run out of time, but we got to talk about the next one or the next couple. But the next game to come out was Harlem Globetrotters. 1979, still another big licensed game. Big production number, 14 and a half thousand made. And that game's a banger.
[00:15:16.950] - Ty
Oh yeah. It's basically like Paragon Jr. They took kind of all the good stuff of paragon. Kind of like shrunk it down a little bit because you have inlane drops, you have your spinner for value, go up top to collect. You have all these wonderful things that they took from Paragon and be like, you know what? How do we make this better? And they did. And I love that machine. We have it right now at wedgehead. And I will be really bummed when Rhodes pulls it.
[00:15:38.070] - Alan
It's going to get pulled at some point. Like all games do.
[00:15:40.940] - Ty
They all do. Well, good things must pass.
[00:15:42.970] - Alan
We're bringing a Stars in soon/
[00:15:45.230] - Ty
That's going to be good.
[00:15:45.930] - Alex
Oh, I'm not going to complain about that. That's fucking sick. And then from there we get to our first George Christian game of the night, which is Future Spa, another wide body. Somebody else describe the theme.
[00:15:57.610] - Ty
Oh yeah. So it's basically, if you like Lonnie Anderson, or Bo Derek, you're fucking stoked. You have five Lonnie Anderson's on the play field, all like diving around water. There's some future shit like a guy's curling a laser bar for exercise in a pond that's flowing from a woman's hair. And there's lots of mirrors, lots of neon. It's a shiny, awesome view of the future.
[00:16:21.820] - Alan
I would call it horny space gym.
[00:16:24.480] - Ty
Yeah, totally.
[00:16:25.890] - Alan
It's just like horny future people working out.
[00:16:29.910] - Alex
The main centerpiece of the back glass is like a guy kind of chasing after a girl, which is just so. It's maybe not in the best taste, but it's awesome.
[00:16:40.120] - Alan
The art is definitely not tasteful, I don't think any of this art in this period really is. This is the bally nipple era. Like I said, look it up, go on IPDb and look at these photos.
[00:16:48.050] - Alex
It's all a product of its time.
[00:16:50.060] - Alan
Oh yeah, it is.
[00:16:50.980] - Ty
The one thing I will say about art and design for this period is the typography for most of these games is absolutely fantastic, that is polished and that you can actually look at with pride and be like, you know what? They did killer custom typography for all these and you know, Xenon stands out, Eight Ball Deluxe stands out and they just look amazing. But yeah, a lot of the Paul Faris tits and swords art, it's a little overboard.
[00:17:15.770] - Alan
And they all did it. Like Dave Christensen and all the guys that were doing art for these games. It had to come from the top, and upper management.
[00:17:23.820] - Alex
Oh, they knew what they were doing. They knew what would earn.
[00:17:27.200] - Alan
I guess they knew what they would sell. They knew it would earn. And you see the numbers, and they did fucking earn. This is where they went from, like, maybe third place, I don't even know. It's hard to know. But in the early 70s, they were behind. They were behind. Gottlieb was number one by a lot. I think Williams was number two, and then Bally. This is where they jumped, I think, from number three to number one is this era. They went the first to go to solid state, and they started licensing games.
[00:17:55.530] - Alex
Yep.
[00:17:56.060] - Alan
Two things you still see to this day.
[00:17:57.680] - Alex
Yep.
[00:17:58.430] - Alan
Like, we're never going to go back to EM games, obviously, so we're still in the solid state era, and every game's got to be licensed now.
[00:18:05.260] - Alex
And I think a big difference with Bally at the time, too, was that they invested in art when other companies were not. Like, if you go to stern electronics, stern electronics, like we said, we'll talk about a different episode. They had some sick games. Their stuff was cool. Their art, for the most part, was pretty phoned in. Some packages were really good, but a lot of them went out the door looking like ass. Bally. Pretty much every game on this list had a sick art package that was well polished. They had good people doing every piece of it. It's not like they forgot about the plastics. They would have a different person doing the plastics as their full assignment. And it was just like everything kicked ass on.
[00:18:38.500] - Alan
Yeah, all hand illustrated, beautiful art.
[00:18:41.510] - Alex
Yeah.
[00:18:42.260] - Ty
Really well done. And when they were screening the play fields, they pushed the limit for amount of colors they could get on there and use unique color, too, to their advantage. And used awesome teals, amazing magentas, and made these things pop and actually had really good color theory that balanced the way these art packages looked.
[00:18:59.740] - Alex
Yeah, they're gorgeous games. I think it's also cool that the colors, everything about them, you see a lineup of ballies, they all kind of fit in with each other, but each one has its own vibe. And not to knock on modern pins, but a lot of the time when you see modern games, they kind of all blend together. They're a bunch of bright greens, bright reds, bright blues, or whatever. And it's like the games of this era just. They really knew how to do a lot with the art.
[00:19:25.730] - Ty
Yeah, you look at newer sterns, I feel like they use every crayon in the box and just run the full spectrum of colors. You, like, squint your eyes, you look at Godzilla, you're like, oh, my God, it looks like the exact other game that's right next to it in newer stern Field.
[00:19:37.180] - Alex
Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, after Future Spa, our boy George Christian, he got a couple more games. Dolly Parton and a Nitro Ground Shaker. I'm going to just kind of skip ahead a little bit here.
[00:19:47.430] - Ty
Sure.
[00:19:47.610] - Alex
Unless you guys specifically wanted to talk on those. Nitro Ground Shaker is sick. I love the theme, love the art. It's not my favorite game. I don't want to do, you know, talk about it too much.
[00:19:56.910] - Ty
It's one of those ones that's like, really. I don't know.
[00:20:00.910] - Alan
I think Nitro Ground Shaker is better than Dolly Parton. Dolly Parton's the George Christian game that I wish was so much better than it is. I love Dolly Parton. She's America's sweetheart. Truly a treasure to this country and to the world. And it's rad that she has a pinball machine. I wouldn't have picked any other designer other than George to do it either, but...
[00:20:21.380] - Ty
It's not his best.
[00:20:22.280] - Alan
And the layout's not bad. It's the rule set. It's just not great.
[00:20:27.440] - Alex
It's also. We'd compare it to some of our absolute favorite games of all time, some of which we'll get into still down here. And that's why I was just like, let's just save the George Christian talk maybe, for a little bit later.
[00:20:38.410] - Alan
I'll still play it whenever I see it because it was Dolly, and it's a beautiful game.
[00:20:43.050] - Alex
Both of these are still fun, unlike the next game on this list, Silver Ball mania.
[00:20:48.150] - Ty
Oh, my God.
[00:20:49.120] - Alex
I've had fun playing it. It's got an insane art package. They sold over 10,000 of them, which is the most on this list so far. That wasn't a licensed theme, and it.
[00:20:59.150] - Alan
Sold more than paragon.
[00:21:00.600] - Alex
Absolutely batshit crazy art package. Yeah.
[00:21:03.630] - Ty
And you mean that in the most literal way? Like, it's insane.
[00:21:06.910] - Alan
It's pinball themed.
[00:21:08.930] - Ty
Yeah.
[00:21:09.760] - Alex
As all good pinball machines are themed, the theme is pinball.
[00:21:12.860] - Ty
Just pull it up on your phone and look at. Just look at the back glass.
[00:21:15.800] - Alex
Yeah. It's got, like, chrome, dudes. It's very, like this late 70s psychedelic era. Very cool use of colors in that one specifically because it's really kind of like blues and chromes and silver. And it's insane. But the game? Not the best from Jim Patla.
[00:21:34.240] - Ty
No.
[00:21:34.940] - Alex
And the next one that follows this up is Space Invaders, another very, very cool looking game. Kind of one note gameplay. Another Jim Patla symmetrical play field. It's actually, now that I say this, that's kind of like the wide body version of Silver Ball Mania because it has a U-turn right in the middle.
[00:21:49.310] - Ty
It does.
[00:21:49.700] - Alex
There's some similarities coming right off of Silver Ball mania. We've seen a couple of those already.
[00:21:53.490] - Ty
Yeah, this one has more of an interesting story than it does have gameplay because there is a lawsuit involved with this.
[00:21:58.630] - Alex
Interesting.
[00:21:59.250] - Ty
Yeah. They got sued by 20th Century Fox because they ripped off the xenomorphs from Alien. And all of HR Geiger's designs are used for the backglass. The play field actually mimics more space invaders than the back glass. But the black glass looks really cool and has that mirrored effect where it has, like, that kind of infinity mirror, but a big xenomorph in the middle of it looking at you head on. And they did not license that. They are just like, this. Movie rules.
[00:22:24.410] - Alan
What does that have to do with space invaders?
[00:22:25.760] - Ty
Like, there's so much shit in space. Like aliens. You're like, like the movie aliens. You're like, yeah, dude, let's fucking rip this shit off. And they got sued.
[00:22:34.470] - Alex
It's funny because it's like, you'd think having the license or name of space Invaders, which is, like, a very iconic, popular arcade game, especially in the era, you'd think that would be enough. And they're like, no, man. They're like, we got to take some art from a cool movie, too.
[00:22:50.070] - Ty
Yeah.
[00:22:50.560] - Alan
I think that the art package sold this game, though. I think also, it's probably another Jim Patla game that sold over 10,000. This is 11,400 units. Jim's just moving units, dude. So I bet at this point, if you're an operator and you have some of his previous games, you're like, cool sign me up
[00:23:09.770] - Alan
Sign me up, dude. I'm getting this. 100%. I'm getting this.
[00:23:12.840] - Alex
We're also looking at this at the lens of, like, 40 years later. Whereas at the time, I don't know, maybe people liked seeing the symmetrical stuff. Maybe people liked some of the different things. It's hard to put yourself in the shoes of a 13 year old kid in 1980.
[00:23:27.160] - Alan
I think there's something to say about Patla games. I think there's something there. You're looking at the list of them. He's selling the crap out of games. He's a pinball legend.
[00:23:38.040] - Ty
I think we need to look at the psychology of what this game does, too, because this is a first theme based off a video game. And during this time they're going up against the first era of mass arcade games. And so the arcade became a battleground for both video games and pinball. And so this is kind of. They're taking a knee a little bit to video games. They're like, no, we'll theme it after a video game to try to pull those kids over there, pump some coins in our machine. And we're going to make 11,000 of them.
[00:24:06.730] - Alex
Yes.
[00:24:07.770] - Ty
It's kind of a trippy thing.
[00:24:09.320] - Alex
Yeah. And then from there we go to another Jim Patla game, his third in a row. Rolling Stones.
[00:24:15.110] - Ty
He's a busy man. Yeah, Rolling Stones is fun. Easy. Rhodes is like, it's too easy. It's boring. Don't do it.
[00:24:21.070] - Alan
And, we're talking about classic Rolling Stones here. Obviously, you're listening to the podcast. You're following along. I hope you know we're not not talking about the Stern one.
[00:24:28.460] - Ty
Still in 1980, folks.
[00:24:29.990] - Alex
Yeah, I don't have too much to say on that. I want to get into the next one.
[00:24:33.480] - Ty
Yeah.
[00:24:33.990] - Alex
One of the best pinball machines of all time. It's just an amazing classic from George Christian. It didn't sell very many, so don't let that sway your opinions on it. It's 1980s Mystic. Yeah, I don't know. Someone take it away.
[00:24:48.360] - Ty
Brilliantly brutal. Every shot puts you in danger. And just even where your orbits are, it's weird. The trajectory is weird. Like, you have to nail these shots perfectly. And the captive ball to increase your bonus multiplier. Tough shot. Really tough shot. And your front drops to get all those in a row without touching a pop bumper or a side sling to change your value from a pyramid to an eye. Because it's basically a filling out...
[00:25:13.660] - Alex
A tictactoe.
[00:25:14.670] - Ty
Exactly, thank you.
[00:25:15.140] - Alan
Tictactoe. Bingo cards. But there are two currencies. There's like the all seeing eye or there's like these little pyramids.
[00:25:21.130] - Alex
Yeah. Which alternates with the photorealistic backlass feature. Like there's a light that changes, which everyone's illuminated on the play field. It'll change what's displayed on the back glass. It's got a sick art package, too.
[00:25:31.990] - Alan
The art package is unbelievable. I love the cabinet stencil that they used on it.
[00:25:38.140] - Ty
Cobras and skulls.
[00:25:39.690] - Alan
Yeah a Skeleton. But it's got like an egyptian motif. So it's like skeleton with one of those egyptian pharaoh headdresses on, and flanked by some snakes. It's just sick.
[00:25:50.660] - Alex
yeah, because it's kind of like a carnival. Like fortune teller kind of all these magicians.
[00:25:57.010] - Ty
And then there's Satan, like, whispering.
[00:25:59.550] - Alan
There's literally Satan on the back glass. It's fucking sick.
[00:26:02.650] - Alex
It's good.
[00:26:03.220] - Ty
"Go ahead, stick your dick in the mashed potatoes."
[00:26:06.020] - Alan
Yeah. And it's got three banks of drops, like, on the left, the right, and the center. They're all very dangerous, but you need them to complete your boards.
[00:26:15.800] - Alex
Like, we're saying, this is like, George Christian. Like, this is one of those games that when you play these, you're just like, fuck, yeah. This game is awesome. Every pinball machine be like that. And that's why I think we hold them to a high standard when we talk about Dolly and Nitro Ground Shaker and stuff, because it's like, this is good shit.
[00:26:31.120] - Ty
Yeah. This is his first great game of this era.
[00:26:33.610] - Alan
Which sold so much less, which is strange.
[00:26:37.370] - Alex
Yeah. That's why we're like, those numbers. They don't mean shit now!
[00:26:39.860] - Alan
George Christian is an amazing designer, one who we're trying to build a whole episode on for y'all in the future, since he's a lot of our favorite designers from this era.
[00:26:51.150] - Ty
Right up there with the Ritchies in my opinion.
[00:26:52.840] - Alex
Yeah. He doesn't get enough attention now. This game didn't sell particularly well, but some of the best selling games of all time were George Christian games. It's basically him, Pat Lawlor, Steve Ritchie. Those are the guys that ever broke 20,000 units on a game.
[00:27:05.570] - Alan
Look at Jim Patla's games, dude. Not 20k, but many 15k+ games.
[00:27:07.590] - Ty
Yeah. Insane, dude.
[00:27:08.940] - Alan
Jim Patla is a monster.
[00:27:10.330] - Ty
I mean, dude, look what his output in 1980 is. Insane.
[00:27:13.490] - Alex
Yeah.
[00:27:13.960] - Alan
It is insane.
[00:27:15.150] - Ty
That's a lot of work he did. Yeah. Were we looking at four machines? Yeah. Four machines in 1980. That's a busy, busy year.
[00:27:22.410] - Alex
So after Mystic, we get into another one of the bally wide bodies, Hot Doggin! which is, like, freestyle skiing themed. It's kind of. It's kind of a unique outlier in this one, because I don't think anyone's too into it. There's not a lot. I mean, I'm sure people like it. I haven't spent any time on it, so I don't want to dog on it too hard.
[00:27:40.020] - Ty
It's the only one on this list I haven't played.
[00:27:45.810] - Alex
They didn't sell a lot of them. It's an oddball theme. It's funny. It's like the same way I like No Fear. I like the theme and art package and everything.
[00:27:54.600] - Ty
It's a guy jumping on his skis it has to be fun.
[00:27:56.820] - Alan
I agree with that. I like the name. I like that it's called Hot Doggin!.
[00:28:00.140] - Ty
Hot dog themed skiing pinball machine. You want to marry two things that are awesome. Hot dogs and skiing.
[00:28:06.620] - Alex
And then we get into Jim Pala's next game. I think this is his least successful game. The lowest production number at least. And it's also probably my favorite on this list, Viking, which is Viking themed. And it's cool as hell. It's so sick. The theme is like, the art package is awesome. It's got this saucer that it falls into in the middle a lot that will kick it right down the middle and fuck you. It's so good. It's got this shot. It's like what I was saying. It feels like it's symmetrical but it's not as symmetrical as his other games. It's got a shot that kind of wraps around. So it's got some fun, cool stuff.
[00:28:39.160] - Ty
Lots of spinners, which I think you love.
[00:28:41.010] - Alex
Oh, yeah, and those spinners.
[00:28:43.030] - Ty
And they collect in that saucer so you get kind of that double hit.
[00:28:45.760] - Alan
The in lanes are also very unique.
[00:28:49.100] - Alex
It's got really cool. Yeah, they kind of copied that, to keep this topical, Jaws coming out soon from stern, or already has come out when you're listening to this. They kind of copied that for that where there's a post in the outlane and you can bounce it off of that through a one way gate into the inlane. So it's friendlier than other games of this era in that way. But it also throws it down the middle on you so much in my experience, anyway, that it doesn't really feel overly friendly. It's a cool game.
[00:29:14.040] - Alan
I think Viking is a kick ass game.
[00:29:16.240] - Alex
Yeah. It's worth a lot because it's rare and it's cool. But it is fun. If you ever see one, make sure you play it, it's very unique.
[00:29:23.300] - Ty
Yeah. Only 2000 of those made and, yeah, it took me up until, like, this last year that I got an opportunity to play it.
[00:29:29.480] - Alex
Yeah. Not very common. After that, we see Skateball.
[00:29:33.210] - Ty
Hell, yeah.
[00:29:34.200] - Alex
Skateboarding, California van roller skating themed masterpiece.
[00:29:39.370] - Ty
It's a look into Spiccoli's dreams.
[00:29:41.340] - Alex
Oh, dude, I'm, like, getting hyped the further we go down this list right now. I'm like, the list just gets better and better. Skateball is sick.
[00:29:50.530] - Ty
If you love drops, you love skateball. If you love unique shots, you love skateball.
[00:29:54.940] - Alan
Yeah. It's got that great plunge shot that you can plunge all the way up and around to the top. I think that was Ted Zale, who was a longtime bally designer before this era. So, like ten years before he was like, in the 60s, he was like the main designer there. He started doing this. He started with this cross playfield, plunge shot across the whole playfield, then whips back around to the top. So that's sort of like an homage to him.
[00:30:22.610] - Alex
It's interesting because skateball, if you look at it, it's a good example of things are more than the sum of their parts, because if you look at it, it has a very similar layout to William's flash, designed by Steve Ritchie. A lot of the stuff's in the same places. You could say skateball's kind of a ripoff because Flash came out the year before, but skateball plays so much different and so much better.
[00:30:47.610] - Ty
Yeah, I agree.
[00:30:49.260] - Alan
It's also got a great switch, reverse outlane, inlane thing on the left side.
[00:30:54.680] - Alex
It's got a unique.
[00:30:55.870] - Alan
Even on the right side, it's different.
[00:30:57.180] - Alex
A unique outlane thing on the right side too.
[00:30:59.070] - Alan
Yeah, there's lots of nudging on the outlanes. Very unique gameplay.
[00:31:04.040] - Alex
And it's another one that's kind of friendlier for this era. So if you're new to solid states, I think it's one that kind of sucks you in right away because it's a bit friendlier.
[00:31:11.830] - Alan
It has a really has a big scoring moment.
[00:31:13.730] - Ty
It does.
[00:31:14.660] - Alan
If you can max out your bonus collect hole, and then if you can hit it and then survive and then hit it again, you can blow this machine up.
[00:31:25.020] - Alex
Yep.
[00:31:25.440] - Alan
It's hard to do, but you can do it. A skilled player can do it. I will say the last thing about this game is this is the first time you see Greg Freres on art.
[00:31:34.190] - Ty
Yeah.
[00:31:34.750] - Alan
Legendary Greg Freres, who is still working in the industry. He's working at Stern now. I think he's the head of the art department still to this day. But you'll see him through the merger later on when Williams buys Bally. Through all the different eras. He did like, the Elvira games. He did like, the Dr. Dude games. Did a lot of work with Dennis Nordman. I mean, he did No Fear the game you own Alex.
[00:32:03.430] - Alex
Oh, yeah, there's the good one.
[00:32:04.920] - Alan
Greg Freres is a fucking legend.
[00:32:07.920] - Ty
Yeah. And this is the first Claude Fernandez game on the list as well.
[00:32:11.860] - Alan
Yeah. Which is interesting. I don't know much about Claude. I know that he did another game that we're going to talk about shortly, which was my first game. So I'll just hold my piece until that.
[00:32:23.370] - Alex
So after Skateball, how do you follow up a masterpiece? It only gets better with what is 100% my wife's favorite game of all time. It's probably up there for me personally too. It's another George Christian masterpiece. Zero faults, perfect game. Sold like shit. Frontier, from 1980. Amazing game.
[00:32:44.140] - Ty
We all love this game.
[00:32:45.010] - Alex
Perfect game, perfect theme. It's ridiculous and campy and cool as hell at the same time.
[00:32:52.390] - Alan
This is basically the movie Jeremiah Johnson. There's a guy on the backglass or on the playfield in the background, shirt off, holding a knife, like attacking and fighting a bear.
[00:33:05.290] - Ty
Yeah, got some wolves.
[00:33:08.730] - Ty
They're just looming about. And this game kicks your ass, you will spend so much money in quarters in this machine. If you don't like quarters. Give them to Frontier, they'll take them really fast. But it made me a better player 100% just being able to save the ball from these crazy situations you're put in where the pop bumpers throw the ball like your targets. Like if you want to hit the targets to advance your animals through the den instead of going up through the top. Yeah. Good luck. You're going to need to be good at saving the ball.
[00:33:40.310] - Alex
It's funny because it's one of those games that you play it and the safest shot is ripping the spinner and sending it back up, which feeds into exposed pops. And that's when you realize you're like no shot is safe. You're fighting for control all the time and it's just great. It's like a huge collect bonus cash in kind of game.
[00:33:58.570] - Alan
Yeah, you're trying to fill your den of predators. There's three columns to your den. You can get them just by the lanes up at top, so you get them off the plunge. Or if you hit the spinner, like Alex is saying, you can advance up that way. And there's also three corresponding ABC standup targets on the lower play field. But again, every shot's dangerous on the game. You get so close so many times, and there's a bunch of inline drops on the left hand side.
[00:34:22.560] - Ty
Your bear drops.
[00:34:26.430] - Alan
And that's so much fun.
[00:34:27.900] - Ty
So much fun.
[00:34:28.640] - Alex
And those bear drops. So George Christian likes doing inline drops like that. But those bear drops are, they're all kind of, I guess, do the same thing. But it's like the shot gets progressively more dangerous the more drops you have down, just because the way they roll back out of it.
[00:34:40.560] - Ty
Yeah, it just gains more momentum the further up you go. And so, yeah, it'll hit like the little doughnut of rubber and just kick out just a little bit differently depending on what drop number you're at.
[00:34:48.150] - Alex
I get so cocky. Because it's like you smash the first drop, you get it right back on the flipper. You're like, oh, yeah, easy. I can just go through that. You're like, if you're not feeling good on the spinner shot on the left flipper, you're like, well, I'm going to just go for bears now. And then you get fucked on the third drop, second drop, or whatever. And you're like, I'm an idiot. Why did I ever do that? I suck at pinball. And you put another quarter in and go again.
[00:35:06.530] - Alan
It's just so good.
[00:35:07.520] - Ty
Yeah, you have to adapt with the game because it is changing on you no matter where the shots are. And it'll make you better at saving the game or saving ball, I should say.
[00:35:14.750] - Alan
It's one of those games that just feels perfect.
[00:35:17.230] - Ty
It really does.
[00:35:18.670] - Alan
I mean, it just feels like everything's in the perfect spot. There's variety in what you shoot for at any given time, especially for a game of this era. People think these games are simple. They are. If you're comparing them to a modern rule set, but damn, they are hard to do. Hard to do the whole thing in a single game.
[00:35:33.700] - Ty
You got to be skilled. That's the thing. You could have a massive rule set and be a simpleton on the flippers, but you have to be fucking skilled if you want points on this game.
[00:35:42.350] - Alan
Yeah, it's so good. And the sound, the sounds are so good.
[00:35:45.630] - Ty
Yeah, the crickets start intensifying throughout the gameplay.
[00:35:48.210] - Alex
Wolves.
[00:35:48.630] - Alan
I mean, how many times have we mimicked the wolves howling sound effect?
[00:35:53.450] - Ty
So good.
[00:35:54.280] - Alex
Everything about the game is perfect. From there, we get back into a game that actually sold some numbers. Xenon by Greg Kmiec. Is that how you pronounce his last name? I never know.
[00:36:02.850] - Alan
I believe it's K-mech.
[00:36:04.200] - Alex
And, yeah, this is a really unique game because it's got full digital sound. It was composed by a woman whose name I'm blanking on right now.
[00:36:11.160] - Alan
Suzanne Cianni.
[00:36:12.730] - Ty
Yeah, she won like five grammys and was known for one of the first divas or queens of synth. Yeah, so, like, badass composer, badass musician, badass producer.
[00:36:27.170] - Alan
She's a legend outside of pinball. And it just sort of, like, dabbled in pinball for a minute. And we benefited from it as pinball fans.
[00:36:34.650] - Alex
Yeah. Because she kind of raised the bar here on integrated sounds and what you could do with it. And it was also unique because as far as I'm thinking, this was the first game from Bally with a ramp on it.
[00:36:44.180] - Ty
And a multi ball.
[00:36:45.680] - Alex
Oh, I didn't know it was the first multi ball.
[00:36:47.780] - Ty
Not the first, but it had both.
[00:36:49.860] - Alex
Oh, gotcha, gotcha.
[00:36:50.690] - Alan
It had both. Yeah. And the first ramp, it's got, like, a single tube ramp.
[00:36:54.730] - Ty
Yeah. So if you're a ramp guy, you got one right there. If you're a multi ball guy, you got it.
[00:36:58.740] - Alan
It's the first bally game with speech, right?
[00:37:01.280] - Alex
Yes, sorry. That's what I meant. Yeah.
[00:37:03.510] - Alan
It's the first Bally game with speech. And it's got a ramp, I think the first ramp in any pinball machine period, it's got, like, a little tube.
[00:37:08.330] - Alex
Yes. It has, like, a 90 degree little metal ramp, and then it goes up into a transparent plastic tube. It's called the tube shot. You know that because Suzanne says over and over, try a tube shot.
[00:37:19.340] - Alan
Yeah, it's awesome.
[00:37:21.060] - Alex
The game's very cool. It can be a little one note because you want to throw it up top over and over. But it's a really fun game.
[00:37:26.730] - Alan
Nailed it on the art package. So good.
[00:37:31.320] - Alex
It's nice to see that it actually sold 11,000 units because it's an oddball one, you know, they put a lot of love and work into it, and it's cool. It's just good all around after that. You want to talk ramps?
[00:37:43.590] - Ty
Oh, boy.
[00:37:44.540] - Alex
We got better than one ramp. We got, like, three up to an upper level.
[00:37:48.760] - Ty
And their first elevated play field.
[00:37:50.400] - Alex
Yeah. With Flash Gordon from Claude Fernandez. 10,000 produced 1981.
[00:37:55.620] - Alan
So right after a famous game by Steve Ritchie called Black Knight.
[00:38:00.070] - Alex
Oh, I've never heard of that one.
[00:38:01.250] - Alan
Never heard of it?
[00:38:02.260] - Alex
Okay. Yeah.
[00:38:03.400] - Alan
So this is after Black Knight set the world on fire. We're not talking about Williams games here too much, but this is essential.
[00:38:08.260] - Alex
It's not like Claude just copied Steve Ritchie's last big game with Skateball, and now he's maybe copying Steve Ritchie's next big game with Black Knight and Flash Gordon.
[00:38:17.170] - Alan
Hey, if you're going to draw inspiration, draw it from the king, dude.
[00:38:20.720] - Ty
True.
[00:38:21.120] - Alan
It's got an upper playfield. Famously. That's what we're drawing parallels with Black Knight here. Black Knight was the first game of the upper playfield. Flash Gordon has an upper playfield which you plunge into. There's flipper up top that you can hit some different drops. It's the first game I owned. It's the first game I bought. I bought a pretty roached out one for about $700. It was the first pinball machine I ever owned. Rhodesie and I went to go pick it up and he helped me load it in and bring it down to my basement. And the game is famously, brutally difficult. Like, unbelievably, brutally difficult, unrelenting. It's got some inline drops on the lower play field on the right hand side.
[00:39:04.970] - Ty
That's my favorite feature is just going for those to get extra ball right off the bat because you need it.
[00:39:09.390] - Alan
Yeah, you need it on that game.
[00:39:10.570] - Ty
It's another game that every shot puts you in danger.
[00:39:15.630] - Alan
Control is just getting it up to the upper play field. It's just like, that's what you want to do. That's true of most upper playfield games. But man, it's a good time. And it's based on a famous movie that came out around this time.
[00:39:28.790] - Alex
I have never seen the movie. From the art package. I know that Queen did the soundtrack for it. It looks fucking amazing.
[00:39:38.520] - Alan
It's amazing, it's campy sci-Fi space opera.
[00:39:43.260] - Ty
Yeah.
[00:39:43.840] - Alan
Wonderful.
[00:39:44.510] - Ty
Before he was Flash Gordon, he was quarterback for the New York jets.
[00:39:47.660] - Alex
Oh, wow, that's like in the movie or.
[00:39:50.820] - Alan
Yeah, that's the plot of the movie.
[00:39:51.960] - Ty
Yeah, then he gets on a plane and everything goes astray.
[00:39:56.170] - Alex
Okay, this seems like a good movie.
[00:39:57.040] - Alan
No, it's great. And Emperor Ming, who's the villain in it, he's just fantastic. It's a fantastic movie and it's a really good pinball machine.
[00:40:03.240] - Alex
But then once again, Claude's good work is followed up with another masterpiece from George Christian and one that could finally fucking sell because it was themed after something everybody loves. Pool. This is Eight Ball Deluxe, 1981. They did 13,000 of them or so.
[00:40:25.540] - Alan
And they re ran it a couple of times because it was so popular. And it's a sequel to his previous game, Eight Ball, which was the best selling pinball machine of all time.
[00:40:34.960] - Alex
When it came out, yes.
[00:40:36.650] - Alan
And at this time was still the best selling pinball machine of all time. So this was the sequel to that game. And it's sort of famously one of Ty's favorite games of all time.
[00:40:45.040] - Ty
Yeah, and this is the first machine I bought. I love this thing so much. All the action around the entire play field. You don't go for just one strategy. You take what it gives you because it is a motherfucker. You have three naked pop bumpers that can throw the ball absolutely anywhere. And you have to really just catch the ball and you're like, okay, cool, I'm going to go for the orbit and get extra ball so we can survive longer. Or you know what? I'm going to be ambitious. Knock down all my ball drops, get that 56,000 and then start going for my bonus multiplier. You have to stick to those and just keep it rolling and just hang on for dear life because there's so much chaos within the layout of that game. The ball goes fucking everywhere.
[00:41:28.450] - Alex
It's so much fun. It's just like one of those ones I just love every time, like, trying to go for the eight ball or whatever. And it's also got phenomenal call outs. It's kind of got like the same. It recycles the speech, but it changes.
[00:41:40.760] - Ty
Yeah, it's a second squawk and talk board. The first one was in Flash Gordon. And so, yeah, you get more call outs than you did in previous games.
[00:41:48.980] - Alan
It had more memory. It would still be a dinosaur, by modern standards.
[00:41:54.530] - Ty
But it tells you what to do. But you're like, no, I don't want to do that.
[00:41:57.330] - Alex
It's also another very good art package of all around. And it just very much has that 80s smoking inside pool hall vibes.
[00:42:06.540] - Ty
Yeah, it's Margaret Hudson's first art package.
[00:42:09.720] - Alex
Yeah.
[00:42:10.310] - Ty
Which kind of like full encompassing art package, I think.
[00:42:13.090] - Alex
Yeah, I think she had done some plastics or something. I know she has. Yeah.
[00:42:16.200] - Ty
But this, I think might have been her first back glass.
[00:42:18.330] - Alex
That's kind of sick. So it's like they were working. I don't know. It's kind of cool of Bally to actually be working with women artists and women sound designers and stuff.
[00:42:26.460] - Ty
Yeah.
[00:42:26.800] - Alex
In the early eighties, not something you would have seen prior to this era, for sure. Man, that thing is. Eight ball deluxe is genuinely one of the best games of all time.
[00:42:36.080] - Alan
It's a fantastic game. Everyone loves it. I mean, if you were playing pinball at this era, people will ask you about this game. Like, this is a famous game and, yeah, Margaret Hudson did the full art package here and she deserves her own episode in the future, which we'll do for sure.
[00:42:50.560] - Ty
And she's won awards for it. And back to what you were too, like, like, everybody has played this, like, I have had creative directors that I have worked with in the past, like, oh, have you ever played an Eight Ball Deluxe?
[00:43:03.050] - Alex
You're like, oh, I've played it, buddy.
[00:43:05.430] - Ty
Yeah. And when you go on location and there's quite a few people out, it's the one like the old timers really gravitate to and I've seen like an old couple of dudes that they have a little notebook where they keep score of how many times they get free play, not who has the better score, how many credits they won.
[00:43:25.870] - Alex
That's how, you know, they've been playing pinball for a while. Yeah.
[00:43:28.210] - Ty
And they only play that. Kind of charming to see.
[00:43:31.980] - Alex
Yeah, that's great. After that we go back to another wide body. It's from Claude Fernandez, Embryon. It's a really cool game. It's got comic sans inspired text. It's got one of the most questionable text or typeface choices on this list.
[00:43:48.420] - Ty
Yeah.
[00:43:48.880] - Alex
But other than that, it's kind of like this bizarre Sci-Fi theme. And it's a cool game. I like that one.
[00:43:53.830] - Ty
Just a dude holding a giant space egg, harvesting other space eggs.
[00:43:58.050] - Alan
Very creepy art by Tony Ramunni. Yeah, very cool. Very creepy, weird art.
[00:44:05.030] - Ty
You build a story around this thing and it's just bizarre. You're like, oh, you've been in your own space shuttle for a while. He's like, yeah, you want to see my egg collection? You're like, what made those eggs, buddy? It's bizarre.
[00:44:16.580] - Alex
It's good. After that, another game that's known probably mostly for its art is Fathom designed by Ward Pemberton. In 1981, they made 3500 of those things. And it's gorgeous.
[00:44:28.130] - Alan
I think this is Ward's first game.
[00:44:30.310] - Ty
I believe this is Ward's first on this list for sure.
[00:44:32.500] - Alan
I think he came into being a designer around this time at Bally. So I believe this is his first game. It's a very collectible game. An australian company just remade this, made some new Fathoms, added some new code. It's famous for its art package by Greg Freres, who we talked about earlier. The art package is fantastic, and the layout is very cool, very interesting.
[00:44:57.900] - Ty
But Alan, you have like an interesting story about having this at Wedgehead when you first opened.
[00:45:01.320] - Alan
When we first opened, we had a Fathom. Well, I don't know how interesting the story is, but we had a Fathom. And it's one of those games where being a fan of solid state games, my business partner Rhodesie, he finally got a nice one and we had it on the floor, and we were so excited and we were playing it and we were playing it, and we were playing it, and it was almost like we were kind of looking at each other like, who's going to say it? And then we're just sort of finally like, meh. There's something about this game and it's probably just us. It's a well loved game. It's one of the most famous from this era and one of the most expensive from this era. But we were both kind of like, there's something about it that leaves me flat. I want it to be better than it is as a game to play because it does have multi ball.
[00:45:44.140] - Ty
It does.
[00:45:44.550] - Alan
It's got a bunch of drop targets, including inline drops.
[00:45:48.630] - Ty
It's kind of like a choose your own adventure game. You either go blue or green, and that corresponds with the multi ball you want to get. But other than that, yeah, it does fall flat for me too. I just kind of lose interest.
[00:45:58.430] - Alex
I think it's one of those ones. It's just hyped up so much more, and it's worth three times as much as a lot of really good games on this list. And to us, it's like you try not to let that affect your opinions of games. But it's like when you know that and you're like, boy, you could have had three Eight Ball Deluxes or Frontiers for the price of this Fathom. And you're like, it's pretty, but it ain't, like, as good as those other games.
[00:46:18.670] - Ty
Nice piece of furniture.
[00:46:21.330] - Alex
If it was the same price as everything else, I think we would kind of judge it differently. But all of us, I feel like, went into it with high hopes because it's such a hyped game and that kind of hurts it. It is gorgeous, though, and I think it's fun. It's got some unique stuff on it. It's got that huge gate at the top that the ball kind of falls through. It's got some cool stuff, but it doesn't hit like I wanted it.
[00:46:42.090] - Ty
No, it doesn't slap as much.
[00:46:44.050] - Alex
What do we got next? Medusa.
[00:46:45.220] - Ty
Another mid game.
[00:46:47.950] - Alex
Medusa is another very cool art package, though. Yeah. And Medusa's got like the translucent flippers and stuff, right?
[00:46:54.610] - Alan
Translucent red flippers. It's not a true upper play field. Like, it's not like a multilevel play field.
[00:47:00.830] - Ty
It's partitioned.
[00:47:01.930] - Alan
It's partitioned off, but it's got the coolest little mech between your lower flippers, like as your about to center drain. On a gimmick episode, we talked about extra button gimmicks.
[00:47:13.570] - Ty
Yeah, this is a good one.
[00:47:14.550] - Alan
And it's a good one because it's got like a little post that kind of like, if you drain down the center, you can press the extra button on the side of the cabinet. It'll kind of punch it like, it'll punch it back up into the center.
[00:47:26.970] - Ty
You only get five of those punches. And Jason had this for a while, and we got kind of bored of playing it. You're like, okay, you can't hit the ball with the flippers. You can only punch it with the center, see who gets the highest score. That entertained us a little bit more than playing it regularly.
[00:47:39.270] - Alex
From there, we have another gorgeous game that does not land for me again. It's Centaur 1981 still. And how many did they sell of this?
[00:47:49.080] - Ty
Not enough. I love it. I'm on the opposite side of the spectrum. I have a lot of fun playing it.
[00:47:54.770] - Alex
Those are moments for sure. This is another one Haggis pinball is remaking because there's a huge demand. They're valuable because they didn't make a lot.
[00:48:02.420] - Alan
Again, like Fathom, they only made 3700. This is a Jim Patla game. It's probably if you asked a lot of people to look at this list, they would say this is his best game that he ever designed, which is strange that they made so few of them. But I think, like Ty was saying, Pacman was released in November of 1980. So video games were directly competing with Pinball, the games that he was selling in 79, in 1980. Now when he's Centaur in 1981, Pacman's already broke. You have a lot of other games like Space Invaders, and you have these big games, Robotron, you have all these video games that are eating up quarters. So you're starting to sell less. Pinball market saturated. Everyone wants to play video games now instead.
[00:48:47.790] - Ty
You need a gimmick too. And this game provides it in an interesting way. You can have up to eight balls in play for multi ball.
[00:48:55.150] - Alex
Yeah. Which is wild.
[00:48:56.000] - Ty
It's insane.
[00:48:57.200] - Alex
We're in the era where multi balls at all are still like a novelty. And then it's like it has an auto launcher, right?
[00:49:04.010] - Ty
Yeah, it's up to the upper right hand portion of the game.
[00:49:08.090] - Alan
It's got great, again, in lanes where you could bounce the ball from an outlane, off of a post, back into the inlane through a gate.
[00:49:16.500] - Ty
Got to spell orbs in order to get your first multi ball. And then, yeah, you're off.
[00:49:21.230] - Alan
And the art package is black and white chromatic.
[00:49:23.890] - Ty
Yeah, the philosophy was they wanted the lights to do the coloring and they have like lots of colored inserts and so that was provided like red and green, some blues. So yeah, your orbs are blue, lots of red, but yeah, another gorgeous art package.
[00:49:37.640] - Alex
Iconic. It's got a half motorcycle, half man on the back glass, really sick.
[00:49:43.350] - Ty
Bug lady riding his back.
[00:49:45.530] - Alex
Yeah, it's just like everyone's dream. Super motorcycle, half human.
[00:49:49.190] - Alan
So metal. Art package is so metal.
[00:49:51.790] - Alex
Did you know the art package was lifted? I don't know if you guys have ever seen the album cover for Lady Gaga's Born This Way. And it's straight up like she's half motorcycle and it's black and white.
[00:50:03.000] - Alan
I didn't know that.
[00:50:04.470] - Alex
100%. There's no confirmation because how would you confirm something like that? But you see it, like, if you guys saw it out of context, you'd be like, well, that's knockoff. Like Centaur.
[00:50:12.950] - Alan
I'll call her and ask her.
[00:50:14.340] - Alex
It's 100% stolen from Centaur.
[00:50:16.200] - Ty
Lady Gaga is an easy get. We should just bring her on.
[00:50:18.050] - Alan
Yeah, don't worry. I'll have her on the podcast.
[00:50:19.770] - Alex
Yeah, we'll get her on the podcast. We'll talk about it.
[00:50:21.520] - Ty
We took her off speed dial a while ago, but she always picks up.
[00:50:24.360] - Alan
Yeah.
[00:50:25.200] - Alex
And then after this, we get to our last game of this before the US government rudely canceled the Susan B. Anthony coins on us. And it's Electra. Yeah. How many over that one were made?
[00:50:36.040] - Ty
2950 of them.
[00:50:37.800] - Alex
And that's from Claude Fernandez again. And do you guys have much to say about Electra?
[00:50:43.330] - Ty
I am just mesmerized by the back glass. That's about it. I play it and I'll get a little lost. There's a lot going on.
[00:50:50.570] - Alan
Yeah.
[00:50:52.970] - Ty
Only opportunity I have to play this is at next level and it's next to a bunch of other amazing games. So I just kind of fade it.
[00:50:59.220] - Alex
That's been my experience, too. I've played it to play it, and it hasn't stuck with me. It's a game that I probably should put some more time on because looking at this list, I like Claude Fernandez's other games. So who did he rip off for Electra? Yeah, we got to find what Williams looks exactly like this play field, but, yeah, that's kind of it. It's a really unique era for Bally because it's like we said, these games are gorgeous. They're some of the best games ever made. There's some of the biggest selling games ever made. They're really iconic. If you ask a lot of older guys that have been in the hobby for a long time, their best games, chances are this SBA era would capture at least one of them.
[00:51:38.410] - Ty
It does. Yeah. Production really drops off in 1982. They go from producing like ten games to eight games, and then in 1982 drops to five unique properties.
[00:51:47.170] - Alan
Well, yeah, man, they stopped producing the Susan B Anthony coin and everything goes to shit.
[00:51:53.310] - Alex
Arcade profits plummeted once they stopped minting these coins.
[00:51:55.680] - Ty
The economy took a dump.
[00:51:57.540] - Alex
You know, this has me really curious, and I know we've got some canadian operator friends that you've talked to in the past, Alan, but if we ever get a chance, we should ask them about loonies and toonies and how they handle them up there.
[00:52:09.480] - Alan
Yeah, I will. We're trying to get a couple of canadian operators on the show here shortly in the future.
[00:52:16.550] - Alex
I would love to install like a loony or toonie coin acceptor in a Rush machine in the states and make it be like you drop a toonie in and you get ten games or something. Just be like absurd. Because it would just be funny to see if anyone brought a toonie in and you'd be like, put them here, bud.
[00:52:33.440] - Ty
Oh, it's for the nice price, eh? So one toonie will get you ten. And it's the metric system, so it's ten. So it's extra nice for you a loony. On the other hand, only five, but still nice. You just use one of those, eh?
[00:52:47.270] - Alex
So, yeah, I think that kind of wraps it up. Do you guys got anything you wanted to say before we close out this golden era of Bally?
[00:52:54.550] - Alan
This truly is the golden era of Bally. This is their rocket shot from kind of last place in the pinball industry, in the pinball minds to first place. It's a very short period that we covered, what, two years?
[00:53:07.530] - Alex
Yeah, two years.
[00:53:08.440] - Alan
And they made that many games? They made 23 games.
[00:53:11.850] - Alex
It's insane, man.
[00:53:12.710] - Ty
Yeah. And just a weird confluence of events where you do have the uprise of video games and arcades and then they really have to come to bat with these heavy hitting, solid state beauties.
[00:53:21.940] - Alan
And they did.
[00:53:22.580] - Ty
They delivered on every expectation of making sick games.
[00:53:25.970] - Alan
Jim Patla, Greg Kmiec, George Christian, Ward Pemberton, Claude Fernandez, these guys showed up.
[00:53:34.220] - Alex
Yeah, they're like. They're fighting for their lives. And you see that throughout pinball again and again. Every time the industry is in peril, people put some of their best work forward. And I think we'll talk about this sometime when we get into system eleven eras, because I know that was another crash and it's just cool.
[00:53:49.960] - Alan
This will be a familiar refrain of the pinball rise and fall in popularity over its different eras, but this is the golden era. This is the Susan B. Anthony years of Bally Pinball from 1979 to 1981. And I'm your host, Alan from the Wedgehead Pinball podcast. I want to thank my guest, Ty Palmer.
[00:54:09.600] - Ty
Yeah, thanks for having me on.
[00:54:10.840] - Alan
Great friend. You could see him at Wedgehead behind the bar and he'll kick your ass on Skateball or Harlem or any one of these fucking games. In case you get the wrong idea...
[00:54:20.290] - Ty
Let's play some dollar games.
[00:54:21.430] - Alan
Ty will kick your ass on any of these solid state games. He's an assassin. Thanks, Alex, once again for hosting us in your basement studio. For everyone listening, I'm going to end this like I always end these episodes. I'm going to implore you, try to find some of these bally games. You've heard the stories. Try to go find some of these games. Use the pinball map and support operators that put some of these really cool old games out there. A lot of these games are just in collections now. They're in private collections. Dudes got them cheap and they're just stored away in some basement. Go out and play them on location. They're incredible games. Some of the best games bally ever made in their entire history are right here in these two years and I hope you go out and enjoy them. Until next time, good luck.
[00:55:06.290] - Ty
Don't suck.