Louis Koziarz
@koziarz
Embedded systems farmer. Ex WMS, PLD, Stern Pinball. Randomly posting wacky stuff I saved from my time in the coin-op business and most likely retold incorrectly. |✶✶✶✶
The sales material brags about the technical ability of the PCB facility, but the photos are all of System 11 pinball boards being stuffed and tested. Hawes also notes that WIT (the electronics arm of WMS) also built modems for USRobotics and... Apple. Still tracking these models down.
That's another fun rabbit hole. I have some info. These emerged when some laws changed and allowed businesses to own their own payphone equipment. So Williams jumped in around 85-86, probably as a hedge against pinball failing again. They managed to build some number of phones.
Another fun Bally acquisition was the Barnaby's Pizza chain in the mid 80s. They remodelled a handful of stores into "TomFoolery", a hybrid restaurant/arcade with a game room full of Bally/Midway titles of course. And they REALLY leaned into the Pac-Man connection. I went a few times, it was neat.
Neil Nicastro also didn't know or understand pinball history. Everyone else around him was VERY aware that Tom Nieman rescued Bally Pinball, and really the whole pinball industry, from a lackluster future by introducing licensed properties to their line.
That moment was the perfect intersection of "yeah we're following the security rules" and "who the fuck cares?" Dwight Sullivan took his office door home.
I never heard this quote from Nicastro but it's incredibly ironic. Once the movie licensing money was rolling in Neil got on a tear and started shoving licenses down the throats of the design teams. "Hey, Crichton wrote Jurassic Park and that was a smash. We're buying Congo and you're gonna do it."
"Do you mind taking this with you to the factory?" "No problem. Anything important?" "Just a quarter million dollars worth of flash memory" 😳
Joey had a thing for microwaves. Note the other DE inside jokes and easter eggs in this endscreen from TA.
"...or Cruise Ship fatality." The cruise ship fatality was Joe, we had heard these stories that Kaminkow was shopping an action movie script he wrote, similar to "Under Siege" but takes place on a cruise ship. The ship had a room-sized microwave oven (why?) where the villain meets his demise.
We can love/hate private equity but it really saved the big two companies from completely disappearing when times got tough a while back. And yeah, now they expect a ROI and $10K games + subscriptions are the way to do it. There'd be no more pinball otherwise - street locations are a dead end. (pun)
Phillips' Law: If your design has an I2C bus it will take 20% of your design time but cause 80% of your bring-up headaches. 😖
PLD, post-Monopoly. We finally set up our new office and had some space to think and work. And now we needed to start designing the next game ASAP.
Swiss Maid Bakery! Looks like they changed hands but the building looks the same. Best cheese danish in the county. The lady behind the counter had our order ready to go most mornings.
The fun part about being that far out is we would regularly encounter drunken Cubs fans that passed out on the train after a game and wound up at the end of the line. "Where the hell am I?" We would ask ourselves the same thing from time to time.
PLD, Post-Monopoly. With the game in production and some pinball money coming in, Pat decided it was time to get out of the garage. Or his family decided we had to go. Probably both. We moved to an office building in downtown Harvard, IL, sharing the building with a hair salon and a psychologist.
I worked next door to the ComEd plant that served the neighborhoods near Wrigley Field and Tom Skilling's studio @ WGN TV. The power grid was so old and overloaded that transformers were exploding. Chicago Fire set up hoses to try and keep the remaining ones cooled down.
Monopoly Pinball easter egg: Backdoor to Land Grab final mode. Game must be in FREE PLAY, enter this during attract mode: 1R-1L-1R-2L-1R-3L-1R (ABC) Pennybags will tell you he loves to build houses. Shoot mode start to begin. Don't be a jerk and do this in tournaments. 😝
PLD Post-Monopoly stuff. The game was launched and things were moving. Stern was happy with the relationship so we were discussing another title and batting about ideas. We also went to Pinball Expo and did a "Making Of" presentation. Steve Kordek was kind enough to be our hype man.
LED also designed a broken switch detection/compensation patent that was another bat to hit Data East with for a long time. Keith Johnson finally figured out a workaround when he went over in 1999. patents.google.com/patent/US476...
A few years later Stern asked if we could use the Monopoly license and reskin Titanic into a game. It was work. Probably a bit more than I expected. I mean we just change the dots and use the Mono sound package and we're good, right? So I had a Titanic next to me for a month or two. 2/n
AMOA 2001 was also the North American debut (and probably ONLY sighting) of Boong-Ga Boong-Ga and thankfully I got proof. I did not try it. Details in ALT caption.
And I wish I could find a scan of the Play Meter show issue, we got a good review but I can't recall if it was from Roger or his kids. Anyway, people were happy at the Stern Pinball booth and that's all that mattered.
We also got a thumbs up from a very important person that happened to be wandering around the show.
Monopoly Pinball: We started production at the end of August 2001 and then 9/11 happened. Airspaces closed, people stayed home. Thankfully life resumed in time for the AMOA show in Las Vegas the next month. But it was a slightly somber affair.