Pinball Books
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Order books from the supplied links, or just admire the handsome photos. (NOTE. Archived
site from 07-12-2012. Not current.) More Pinball Books
Jess Askey (GameArchive)
Jess collects classic electronic pinball machines and stories about them. He's also assembled
a vast data base of pinball routines. He specializes in Williams' System 6, 7, 8, 9 and 11. Look for
copies of my manuals on his site. I wrote most of the books for Systems 7, 8 and 9.
Ted Estes
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Ted is a former pinball game designer for Williams. I didn't meet him until we worked
together at WMS Gaming. Today, Ted collects classic pinball machines. (NOTE. Archived
site from 05-05-2009. Not current.)
Directory of pinball sites
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Nice compendium of Web information on pinball. (NOTE. Archived
site from 04-03-2011. Not current.) See a more up-to-date site (Pinball
parts, sales, & service) at: The Directory at Pinball News
Hyperball owners' forum
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Database of Hyperball owners. One of my favorite novelty machines, Hyperball played like a video game.
Unfortunately 200 steel balls on the playfield rapidly wore the machine out. In 1982, the company actually
hired us technicians to play Hyperball for an extra shift. By quitting time, we were blistered, and
only a couple games still operated. Managers Dick Valosek and Herb Foss kept notes on the carnage. Overnight,
another crew repaired the damage. At our next demolition derby, better parts took up the challenge. (NOTE. Archived site from 02-19-2015. Not current.) We miss Dick and Herb. Both have died. (1) Newer forum site; (2) Intro to Hyperball Site
Ted Estes
Ted is a former pinball game designer for Williams, now at Jersey Jack. I met him when we worked
together at WMS Gaming.
Greg Freres & Dennis Nordman
I worked with Greg on the Truck Stop project. Recently Greg and ex-Midway cohort Dennis
Nordman started WhizBang Pinball. The company reconceives and markets old electromechanical games
as sales displays. The machines work, as they're completely restored mechanically. Yet Greg and
Dennis have retrofitted the machines with new, color concept art and new playfields. Each
machine is a small piece of hand-made craftsmanship. With help from Pat Lawlor, Mark Weyna
and other pinball legends, the first games are now on display. The lithography and CAD/CAM
machining are up-to-the minute. Yet underneath, the mechanics are classic. This method is strictly
a one-off process. The first product run is four Whoa Nellie pinballs.
Eric W. Hujar Eric Hujar, Bill Gwiasda, and Erica R. Frohm designed user interface
and motor control programs for WMS Gaming. These programs brought WMS
Gaming's first slot machine to life. Eric, Bill, and Erica helped me to describe the
system in our first slot machine manual. Today, this Model 400 manual is a
collectible trade on eBay. (In the link above, I've included a portion of Eric's
archived page from many years ago.) Eric is a roboticist. One of his early robotic
inventions was an ultrasound-guided, cybernetic lawn mower. To develop the idea, Eric
formed EMB Robotics, and later Eric Hujar LLC. Archived site from 02-24-2007.
Not current.) Eric Hujar Patent
Eugene Jarvis An interview with Eugene, the co-designer
of Defender, Stargate, Robotron, Blaster, and more recently, Cruisin' USA. I had the
pleasure of contributing to manuals for Defender and Stargate. I wrote the Robotron
and Blaster books.
Steve Kordek This Pinball Expo page includes Steve Kordek's personal story about
his pre-Williams days at Genco. Steve died on February 19, 2012. His tenure in the pinball industry covers
six decades of pinball history. He was there through the Great Depression, and left Williams after the demise of Pinball 2000 (1999). I first became acquainted with him in 1982, during Hyperball development and production. Hyperball was Steve Ritchie's manic machine that played at the
speed of a video game. I worked on both the English and German manuals. Kordek, despite being in his 70's at
the time Hyperball came out, could play a mean game. In terms of innovation, Kordek is a giant. He was
the one who moved the flippers to the bottom of the playfield. That simple move made pinball a game of skill.
Also see... More classic Kordek.
Tony Kraemer & Hot Tip This site claims that Hot Tip was the first
solid-state pin. I remember Aztec as the first, but Williams didn't produce many of
the System 3, Aztec machines. Hot Tip was probably the first electronic (computerized)
machine that Williams produced in volume. It would have been a System-4 machine. Tony
left Williams for a few years, and then returned. Pool Sharks was one of Tony's games
from the later period. Tony died in the early 1990s.
Pat Lawlor
I only had a nodding acquaintance with Pat. He joined Williams
during the Bally coin-op buyout in 1988. I wrote the first Bally pinball manual after the
buyout (Truck Stop). But it was a Jim Patla game, not Pat's. My Williams contract ended a few
months later. During the contract, I composed a service bulletin for Pat's Banzai Run (1988). My
then-boss Fritz Runyon wrote the manual. (Unfortunately, Fritz died in 2007.) I also
contributed some writing to Pat's Earthshaker (1989). In 1992, Pat designed
the top-selling pinball machine The Addams Family. After Williams, he founded PLD (Pat
Lawlor Design) and contracted for Stern Pinball. Afterward, he retired, but then unretired to design pinball tables for Jersey Jack Pinball.
Above, my Offroad
Thunder manual is a pre-release copy. This is one of the last hand-printed copies before the production
version. Note the scars from separate staples through the front and back covers. The book was really too thick
for manual stapling. (Retouched Offroad Thunder logo by JT Hawes, 2022.)
Midway Home / Tradewest This San Diego design studio resulted from Midway's purchase of the Texas
game design company Tradewest. Midway Home (MH) didn't have its own writing staff. This shop was a real ace
in the hole. I worked with MH on the original Offroad Thunder arcade project. The project consisted
of two machines, typical for arcade releases of the time. One machine had a 27-inch color monitor. The other
had a 39-inch color monitor. The manuals went together during development between mid-November and
mid-December, 1999.
Giovanni Gonzalez provided line drawings for the parts section. As often in tech
writing, changes occurred daily. We didn't work over
Thanksgiving, so the deadlines were particularly tight. By phone from Chicago, I interviewed MH subject matter
experts. With my notes and data from our own engineers and art department, I drafted early copies of the two game
manuals.
At the beginning of December, I turned the 39-inch project over to Alex Ball. Alex developed that book
through many subsequent hardware and software changes. As I recall, his book actually came out first. My 27-inch
project went through some extra development. With much overtime, both books were ready (whew!) for production
just before the December shutdown. That situation allowed Pat Cox to squeak out a few prototypes before
the Waukegan plant shut down. Full-bore production began in the first quarter of 2000.
Barry Oursler Games A complete list of machines by the late Oursler, creator of
Solar Fire, Star Light and Space Shuttle.
Jim Patla's Truck Stop After I returned to Williams in 1988, I wrote manuals
for two legendary games: Williams' Narc video and Bally's Truck Stop pin. Jim
Patla, the soft-spokenTruck Stop designer, was a pleasure to work with. Of course, the
Pat McMahon backglass sports the de rigueur Bally girls. Also note the grinning taxi driver. He's
none other than the late Joe Dillon, Williams' then vice president. Dillon had returned to
Williams after the company bought Bally coin-op. Now, he was my boss once again. On the left,
that's my Truck Stop manual, one of two for the game. Nina Clemente designed the cover.
Norma Rodriguez contributed inside art to many of my projects, probably including this one.
Pfutz's Gaming History Page
Bill Pfutzenreuter was one of the key programmers
for Williams' Star Rider (Harry Cline was another.) Bill also programmed the
Wiltelco 5000 phone. I composed books for both projects.
(See the cover at left.) Pfutz was also my main subject matter expert for several other
Williams manuals. We first worked together on Joust. As I remember, I prepared the
first Joust literature in 1982. Thanks, Pfutz! I always enjoyed working with you,
Bill. Great page.
Python Anghelo's artwork for Pin*Bot
What a ace team that Pin*Bot group was: •Python Anghelo, Art; •Joe
Joos Jr., Mechanics; •Fritz Runyon, Manual; •Chris Granner, Music & Sound; •Bill
Pfutzenreuter, Software. I'm pleased that I was at Williams for Pin*Bot. I was writing
manuals for the Wiltelco 5000 phone at the time. Actually, the phone was a Pin*Bot
sibling. Bill Pfutzenreuter wrote the original phone software, too.
Mark Ritchie's Big Guns
A playfield closeup of classic Big Guns: The machine with the towering
backbox. A brilliant, 1987 machine by a splendid team: Mark Ritchie, Python Anghelo,
George Petro and Chris Granner. I directed the AMOA show video on the game. Manual
by Fritz Runyon. Today, Mark parks his hat at
Raw Thrills. Python and Fritz have died. RIP.
Canadian Coin Box Magazine
Bygone magazine on the amusement games industry. In the 1980s, I met the CCB editor
at the AMOA show. Later, she printed one of my stories.
Play Meter
It was the number-one trade industry magazine about coin-op amusement games.
(Ceased publishing in 2018.) Back in 1982, I published my first magazine
article in Play Meter.
RePlay
A monthly magazine on coin-operated amusement games. RePlay
headquarters are on the West Coast. In 1990 or so, RePlay printed
my article on Kanban manufacturing at Williams' revitalized Chicago
pinball factory. The factory is gone. RePlay is still going
strong.
Star Tech Journal
The magazine for coin-op technicians. In the Eighties, Star Tech ran a
few of my game servicing stories.
Vending Times
A monthly magazine on coin-operated amusement games. The latest on the
shows, the games, the personalities and the machines. A fine magazine
that picked up my Williams factory process engineering article.
Cashbox Games
One of Ken Fedesna's Chicagoland game design outfits, now defunct. Ken
is another of my former bosses at Williams, Bally and Midway. In fact,
he became the general manager of the whole shebang, Mr. Games
himself.
Coin Controls
Possibly the most important human-machine interface on any coin-op machine is the coin
mechanism. We in the industry lovingly call it the “coin mech.” When
you need a replacement mech, who ya gonna call? A good choice: Coin Controls.
Coin Mechs Inc.
No coin-op device can function without a coin mechanism. Coin Mechs Inc.
(CMI) manufactures some of the best coin mechs.
Electrohome
Early in my career with Williams Electronics, many of our video game monitors
came from Electrohome in Kitchener, Ontario. (You might find an Electrohome
monitor in a Defender game.) During that time, I wrote monitor
manuals for Electrohome and several other monitor brands.
GTech Holdings
GTech manufactures slot machines. During my tenure at WMS Gaming, Jim Breindel
was our marketing manager. Today, he's GTech's senior manager of retail development.
Hantarex
Williams Electronics started using Hantarex monitors in about 1982.
Hantarex monitors came from Italy. I remember that the Hantarex circuits
impressed me. These circuits looked as if they might be easy to
service. At the time, I was writing the Hantarex manuals for Williams'
video games. Today, the company makes LCD and LED monitors.
Suzohapp Controls
Suzohapp supplies the pinball, video and gaming industry with parts such as buttons and
joysticks. After Midway quit the coin-op video business, Suzohapp bought Midway's parts
and service divisions. (In those days, it was still just “Happ Controls.”)
Hontech / Catapult
At various times during my relationship with Williams, Marty
Glazman was my boss. In those days, he ran the marketing and sales department. I
fondly remember planning AMOA presentations for him and our team. AMOA speeches,
displays and AV shows became my Halloween activity through the late Eighties.
A few years ago, I touched base with Marty again. This time, he was Wells Gardner's
executive VP. Today, Marty is Executive Vice President for Hontech / Catapult, in
Henderson, Nevada.
Innovative Gaming Corp. of America
IGCA produces gambling machines based on the Linux operating system. WMS Gaming
veterans recall Jerry Flynn, premier account executive for our outfit in the 1990s.
Today, Jerry is IGCA's vice president of sales and marketing.
Incredible Technologies
IT has a local Chicagoland office in Vernon Hills. This is the home of the
world-renowned Golden Tee! Some of my Williams and Midway buddies
now work for IT. Keep those fabulous video games and gaming machines coming,
folks!
Kristel Displays
Displays for the games and gaming industry. Custom and stock. We used
these excellent displays at WMS Gaming, and I rewrote Kristel manuals,
adapting them for our machines. The company location
is in St. Charles, one of Chicago's west suburbs.
Leading Edge Design
Larry DeMar's design house in Northbrook, IL. You may remember Larry as one
of the designers of Defender, Stargate and Robotron. He also created much of
Williams' Pinbol/PERC macro language that operates Williams pinball machines.
Today, Larry and his associates design gaming equipment for IGT.
Midway Amusement Games
Midway designed and published video games for home consoles. The company
left the coin-op video game business in 2001. That year, Happ Controls purchased
the assets of Midway's former arcade division.
Warner Brothers Games. Midway's offices remained on Roscoe and California in Chicago, where I once worked.
(2727 W. Roscoe.) Since the company no longer manufactured coin-op games, the factory
was gone. In 2009, the company declared bankruptcy. Warner Brothers bought its assets,
mostly IP and software designs for the home video platform market. Some of our former designers and other employees also joined WB. Ironically, the Warner purchase
included the remnant of Atari that Midway had bought from Warner in 1996.
NEP Electronics
NEP manufactures and acquires parts for pinball and video games for sale to
game manufacturers.
Play Mechanix
George Petro's game design outfit. Back in 1984, George worked for me. By night, he programmed games.
After college, George returned to Williams and then Midway
and became a famous designer. He was one of the programmers behind Narc,
Williams' first game on the Texas Instruments 34010 microprocessor.
I've had the
pleasure of writing manuals for George's games Narc and Invasion. More recently,
I composed the manual for CoinUp, the tournament game feature. In a 2006 merger,
Play Mechanix became a subsidiary of Raw Thrills.
Sigma Game
This isn't exactly Sigma Game's web site. This page describes the resolution
of a lawsuit between WMS Gaming and Sigma. The story also quotes Sigma President
and CEO Jim Jackson. It's a small world! For a short time at WMS Gaming, I
worked for Jackson. Also see: Sigma
Game. Sigma is now V3 Gaming.
This page concerns Multimedia Games' 2005 buyout of Sigma.
Shuffle Master
Jim Jackson update: He's one of the Shuffle Master vice presidents. Shuffle Master makes excellent gaming
tables.
Raw Thrills
Eugene Jarvis' design house in Skokie, IL. You may remember Eugene as one
of the designers of Williams' Defender, Stargate and Robotron.
Or maybe you know him as the wizard behind Midway's Cruisin' USA.
Today, Eugene's company carries on the tradition with new, world-class
video designs.
RightHand Technologies
Mark Loffredo's Chicago hardware design house. Mark designed the electronics
for Narc and many more classics. In California, you can visit the San
Andreas Fault. Here in Chicagoland, you can visit the speeding, bleeding,
leading edge. It runs straight through RightHand Technologies.
Stern Pinball
Like Elvis, Bally, Gottleib and Williams have left the building. But
Stern is still cranking out hits. See them at this year's Pinball Expo.
Many of my former Williams cohorts design and build games for Stern.
In 2018, I wrote drafts for two manuals about Stern's Spike System for
pinball. This system uses distributed processing. My 112-page theory,
maintenance, & troubleshooting book was complete when Stern
abandoned it, a week before the release date (for Pinball Expo
2018). My 88-page schematic set was in its design stage when
Stern canceled the project. C'est la Vie.
Team Play Inc.
Ken Fedesna and Ed Pellegrini's premier Chicagoland game design and manufacturing
company. (Location: Wood Dale, IL.)
I contracted at Team Play in 2014, 2016, and 2017,
writing manuals and other technical literature. Notable among my Team Play
manuals...
Published books
Fishbowl Frenzy (PDF: In Print, 2014)
Launch Code (PDF: In Print, 2016)
Grumpy Cat Photo Booth (HTML & PDF: In Print, 2017.
HTML version* had random-access features.)
Unpublished Drafts
Family Guy Bowling (HTML & PDF; not production version, 2017.
HTML version* included random-access features.)
Jumanji (HTML only; incomplete, 2017*)
NOTES. The client abandoned this project.
Wells-Gardner Electronics
Most Williams video games of the classic period contain a monitor by one of these
manufacturers: Wells-Gardner, Electrohome or Hantarex. WMS Gaming video gaming
devices use Kristel or Wells-Gardner monitors. During the classic period, Wells
occupied a Kildare Street plant near Fullerton and Pulaski. From Williams' point
of view, Kildare was the ideal spot. A mere, two-mile scooter ride would speed us
to Wells' doorstep. Today, Wells resides at more spacious quarters down south,
in McCook Illinois.
Wico
Wico has been a leader in the replacement parts business for many years. Wico also
supplied the OEM joystick for Williams' MakeTrax game. (Near and dear to me.
Make Trax was the first video game manual that I wrote. (Except for the
troubleshooting section that the late Ted McPeak provided.)
Williams Electronics
Until 1999, Williams manufactured pinball games. While I worked at Williams, we built games
downstairs, at 3401 North California Avenue, Chicago, IL 60618. Most of our video game
manufacturing took place at our Gurnee, IL plant (later Gurnee I and II). Our PCB
fab plant was our owned subsidiary, Menasha Controls in Menasha, WI. Later, this plant
moved to the mezzanine level at Gurnee I. After that, manufacturing shifted to a swanky,
new building in Waukegan, Illinois. (Waukegan was mostly an assembly plant, plus a
substantial warehouse. Yet Part Sales remained at our California Avenue warehouse.)
WMS Gaming
WMS Gaming is the descendant of arcade greats Williams, Bally, United and Midway.
Today, WMS Gaming designs and manufactures gaming devices, such as slot
machines and video gaming devices. Today, the company headquarters is in
America's gaming capital, Las Vegas. (Viva Las Vegas!)
As tech pubs manager at WMS Gaming, I
wrote the company's first slot manual (1994). That machine weathered a
lawsuit from IGT.
WMS is a subsidiary of WMS Industries. In turn, WMS Industries is a wholly owned subsidiary of Scientific Games Corporation.
6800-09 Tech Details All about the Motorola microprocessors
that were the brains of Williams' pinball and video classics. You'll find a
6808 in most System 7 pins. In videos like Defender, look for the 6809. The
6809 was also the sound board microprocessor. Williams also used CMOS 6809s in its
coin-operated pay phones.
Pinball: The Man Who Saved
the Game(trailer)
Roger Sharpe's autobiographical account: How he persuaded New York to legalize
pinball in 1976. (I still remember when Chicago eventually legalized it in the
1980s. At the time, I was working at Williams Electronics. Several years
later, Roger joined the company. We worked on AMOA show presentations
together.) Click button for related interview with my celebrated
colleague, Roger Sharpe.
Pixels(trailer) According to Pixels (2015), outer space
aliens breathed life into 1980s video game characters. These characters,
who once skittered across 2D arcade screens, became hulking, 3D monsters.
Unstoppable leviathans who invaded our world: Pac Man
chomps Cincinatti!
Tommy(trailer)
The 1975 film of the first rock opera, Tommy, by the rock group
Who. As Roger Daltry says in the song: “That deaf, dumb and
blind kid sure plays a mean pinball!”
Tron(trailer) The original, 1982 version, featuring
Jeff Bridges (Flynn) and my former college classmate, Cindy Morgan
(Lora). Plot: Abducted as a datastream into a video game, hacker Kevin
Flynn becomes a virtual gladiator. Flynn can only escape the wicked
“Master Control” by allying with the security program Tron.
Disney studios released a sequel (2010).
AEI Show
The AEI show (successor to the AMOA show) is an annual amusement game exhibition. AEI is
both a conference and a trade show.
IAAPA Show
IAAPA is the global association for the attractions industry. It holds a massive
annual convention that includes every type of attraction: Including coin-operated
pinball, video, redemption machines, entertainment centers, museums, theme
parks, and more.
Pinball Expo
This annual show includes games, from the 1930s to the present. Game
designers autograph memorabilia. Take in seminars, a plant tour, and a
themed banquet. Compete in a pinball contest. Buy parts. Play classic
machines on the game floor.
Pinball Hall of Fame
Las Vegas site of a gigantic pinball museum. Machines by every
manufacturer. And you can play all of them!
Ted Estes' Williams photos
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Williams pinball, the way it was in the late 1990s.
(NOTE. Archived site from 05-05-2009. Not current.)
FOR EMPLOYEES(Midway, Bally, Williams, Atari, etc.)
Midway Reunion(including Williams, Bally, Atari, United, Wiltelco,
WMS Gaming, etc. Remember when we were Seeburg? Show up and tell us the
story!) Midway is gone. The memory lives on. Were you an employee of this
great company of many names? Join us! Here are the details for our next
reunion...
Manu Industries
Manu Jayswal, an impressive colleague of mine, was production engineer at Williams pinball.
He designed our cable harnesses. Today he is the president of Manu Industries, Inc. in Schaumburg.
Need cabling, PCBs, or electromechanical assemblies? See Manu, an authority and top
achiever: Friendly, understanding, and always in touch with the best in the industry.
Tom Sedor & Deloreanride
I came to know Tom Sedor when he was a mechanical engineer at Midway Amusement Games.
Did you ever see the film Back to the Future? Tom Sedor looks a bit like Michael J. Fox,
the star of that blockbuster sci-fi comedy. Today, Tom runs Deloreanride. His outfit
allows you to rent a DMC-12 DeLorean car, the twin of the one in the film. (Tom even included
the time machine technology!) Other rentals: A Delorean 4x4, Delorean limo, and other
movie/TV cars.
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Williams System 7 pinball
You'll find a lot of my manuals here. I'm glad that someone else scanned them!
(NOTE. Archived site from 08-25-2009. Not current.)
