Pinball Oddities...

A Pinball Aficionado at Play

While exploring the deep and rich world of pinball, I've seen many things. When you're a pinball aficionado and you love a hobby like this, you naturally immerse yourself and tend to notice stuff. Items like common and popular themes, or playfield elements, designer traits, sales trends etc. This also gets one thinking of stuff that's absent, or hasn't been done often, and I'd love to know WHY that is!

Let's look at some....


1. Right Outlane Kickback.

Yep, you heard that right. Why is it that pinball designers never deploy a coil powered kickback in the RIGHT outlane of the playfield? If they do it, and they've done it a lot over the last 40 years, it's ALWAYS on the left! 

Kickback....On the Left!

I don't get it. I've looked, there's room under the apron for a kickback on the right, but nobody has ever (to my knowledge) ever designed a modern game with that. Back in the earlier EM period of the 70's through the 80's you did occasionally see a ball saver gate on the right to send the ball back to the plunger, but never a full kickback. Why? 


2. Why didn't Gottlieb get those juicy Tommy tie in games?

Tommy, the Rock Opera starring The Who, or more specifically, that awesome scene in the movie where Roger Daltrey and Elton John have a pin duel and Elton is singing Pinball Wizard is absolutely epic, no question. If you watch the scene, they're playing on two Gottlieb games. Elton is on Buckaroo and Roger (or Tommy) is on Kings and Queens. It seems so wrong to me that around the time of the film's release, Bally, not Gottlieb ended up releasing Wizard and Captain Fantastic, two games that launched Bally's meteoric rise in the 70's (and then coincidentally Data East ended up releasing their own Tommy game years later in the 90's). Jeez! if I had been Gottlieb, I'd have been bummed! Talk about a lost marketing tie in opportunity! So I'd love to know the story here, was Bally's head of marketing Tom Nieman just THAT good? If so, why didn't they use Bally games in the film scene? Really would love to know the answer to this one...

3. Why didn't Data East Pinball ever use any of the existing properties that Data East Japan owned? 

Granted I understand, both DE Pinball and Data East Japan were not under the same roof, but they were definitely in bed together. And I always found it so hard to believe that Joe Kaminkow and Gary Stern never mined any of the vast DE properties for use or tie ins or easter eggs in their pinball games (like Karnov or The Bad Dudes), seems like a wasted opportunity to me. This question also applies to SEGA Pinball and to Capcom Pinball. You're telling me Sega Pinball couldn't do a Sonic The Hedgehog Pin? Or Mark Ritchie and the Capcom crew couldn't do a newer AND BETTER Street Fighter pin (as opposed to the Premier one) or even an Aliens vs Predator Pin?!? Would love to know what happened there!

On that note I go to my next question...

4. Why was there never a Mortal Kombat Pin???

MORTAL KOMBAT!!!!!

Seriously! Think about this, Ed Boon, head creator of the video game, was a serious pinball programmer before MK came out (having worked on several pinball games including F-14 Tomcat and Taxi) working for Steve Ritchie on the former. Steve also contributed to MK's development, having named the game and also providing the voice work for mega villain Shao Khan throughout much of the game series. Why is it that Williams/Bally/Midway (who produced MK and made all those great pinball games) never went and made a pin tie in for such a successful in-house franchise?!? They did it before with Defender, they could have done it here! It could have been huge! Oh well, mysteries like this may never be solved, but if anyone does know why, do tell!

Lastly, one final thing I've noticed when it comes to pinball, is that there is a theme that has NEVER BEEN DONE BEFORE. 

And so this leads me to point 5.

5. Why has there never been a pizza parlor/delivery pin???!?!

Many thanks to the fine folks at Giordano's Pizza for this fine and tasty image!

Think about this. Pizza and pinball go hand in hand, it IS the pinball food. Many high end pizzerias serve beer, a popular pinball beverage. Pizzas are round, whirlwind playfield spinners are round, etc. There is so much you could do with a pizza theme and pinball, seriously! I was shocked to learn pizza never became an original pinball theme back in the day. Seemed like a no brainer to me.

If any designer would care to comment on number 5, I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.

So there you go, random questions I've thought about during my time in pinball. If anyone reading this blog would care to chime in, discuss, answer, and commentate I would greatly appreciate it! Do any of you fine folks out there have similar questions on stuff you've noticed in pinball? Do tell! COMMENT BELOW!!! :D

Till next time!

Stern Factory Visit!

On August 8th I had the wonderful opportunity to visit Stern Pinball and tour the factory. I was headed to Illinois to see family and had the opportunity to stop for a bit in Chicago and thought "Why Not?". 

Me at Stern

So I messaged the great Jody Dankberg (Stern's head of Marketing, really awesome guy btw) and got everything set up.

What an experience! As soon as I got out of the car and walked up to the building I see this group coming toward me:

(L to R): Greg Freres, Steve Ritchie, Mark Weyna, Chuck Bleich, and Steven Martin

I went nuts!!! I ran up to them, shook their hand, chatted them up and took their photo LOL. Greg is responsible for some of the most recognizable pinball art of the last 30 years. Steve R is known as "The King of Flow" for his distinctive pinball designs, Mark is a program manager and is known by fans to have helped create the great game "Scared Stiff" during his time at Williams Pinball. Chuck is the senior electronics project engineer, who used to be the electronic engineering manager at Williams for decades. Finally, Steven M is production art manager at the company, and worked on Star Trek with Steve Ritchie, Greg, and others.

After meeting that group, I went inside (some of my family was with me) and got ready for the tour. 

We were herded into the company showroom/arcade where we saw the latest games they had produced. 

ACDC Luci Premium with Metallica Pro

My nephew (and Pinball Aficionado in training) on the new ACDC LED Pro!

A Stern Rawhide (the first game old school Stern produced) with Melony beside it...a hint of the future???

The Room also had Mustang BOSS Prem, Mustang Pro, and ST Pro

ACDC LED Pro was real flashy, speaker panel is cool looking in person.

Here's the new Swinging Bell toy for this version of ACDC Pro

It's a simple pendulum that attaches at the base and uses the target (no optos or code revisions needed)

Shot from the top (I want one for my game now heh!)...

Metallica Pro, looking nice and BRIGHT....

Gary's Stand-In watching us play...hehe

After we played for a few mins, our tour guide came in....

The amazingly knowledgeable and friendly Jack Benson!

Heeeeere's Jack!

Jack was awesome! He is one of Stern's newer programmers (his first project was coding Mustang...wait what?!) and now he's busy working on the ST Code update, holy cow! He knows a TON about pinball and was the best tour guide as we proceeded to go through the factory.

Star Trek cab waiting for its playfield...

I only got a few pics in during the actual tour, as Jack was telling us everything and I kept asking him questions and we were moving fast. The two principal games that I saw being made was a ton of ST Pros and several Iron Man Vault Editions, (there were a few ACDC Pro's and a Mustang Pro getting completed, but ST and IM just dominated the line it seems).

Iron Man getting ready to kick ass...

Miles and Miles of wire....................... ;)

A Mustang Pro nearly ready...

ST Pro playfields getting ready for insertion...

ST Pro being worked on...

A ST Pro Playfield...

After the tour, I thanked Jack and gave him a Pinball Aficionado T-Shirt...

He's DEFINITELY an Aficionado! Are you? ;)

After the tour Jack took us back to the arcade room and then told us to wait a minute, and next thing I knew, my jaw hit the floor! George Gomez, John Trudeau, John Borg, Mark Weyna, all legends of modern pinball design stopped in and we chatted, it was surreal, like a dream!

George Gomez!!! (Vice President of Game Design)

John Trudeau!!! (Senior Game Designer)

John Borg!!! (Senior Game Designer)

We started talking to all of em, and it was great, talked about game routes, operating, collecting, arcades, bars, design philosophy, their time in the industry, it was great, really really great!

These guys, and their teams, and everyone they work with are responsible for some of the greatest and most respected pinball machines of the last 30 years, and it was so gratifying to meet them, the minds behind these great games!

After that, they all had to get back to work (bummer.......) and we were escorted out to get back to the rest of our trip.

Stern Pinball

It was a great time at Stern, and I want to publicly thank everyone that I met and made this visit possible: Jody Dankberg for making it happen, Steve Ritchie, Greg Freres, Steven Martin, Mark Weyna, Chuck Bleich, Jack Benson, George Gomez, John Borg, John Trudeau, and though I didn't get a chance to talk to him as he was busy, I'd like to thank Gary Stern. Finally, I'd like to thank all of Stern's very hard working employees on the shop floor for keeping pinball manufacturing alive and well in Chicago, to all of you, from the bottom of my heart: THANK YOU!