GameRoom. The Truth About Billy Mitchell We uncover the story behind the movie The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters

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1 D e d i c a t e d t o t h e A r t o f H a v i n g F u n GameRoom Oc tober Volume 19, Number 10 w w w.gameroommagazine.com $5.95 The Truth About Billy Mitchell We uncover the story behind the movie The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters

Rob Craig s Tales of the Silverball The Wonders of a Widebody If you re an avid pinball player, you ve certainly played a widebody pinball machine.

Maybe your collection goes back a bit further in time and games like Haunted House, Black Hole, or maybe a Stellar Wars line your gameroom wall.

There s something special inside, additional segments of pinball design that offers a different approach to the compact brute forces found in standard sized machines.

By definition, a widebody is any pinball machine that is wider than the standard majority of machines found in pinball history.

2 Rob Craig s Tales of the Silverball The Wonders of a Widebody If you re an avid pinball player, you ve certainly played a widebody pinball machine. Most collectors own one possibly a Twilight Zone, Star Trek The Next Generation, or Guns N Roses. Maybe your collection goes back a bit further in time and games like Haunted House, Black Hole, or maybe a Stellar Wars line your gameroom wall. I liked widebody pinball machines as a kid, and still find them capable of earning real estate in my gameroom. There s something special inside, additional segments of pinball design that offers a different approach to the compact brute forces found in standard sized machines. What makes these games great to play, or on the other extreme painful to flip? Read onward Silverball maniac and let s explore more of this widebody world. A bit of history on the super wides. By definition, a widebody is any pinball machine that is wider than the standard majority of machines found in pinball history. Keeping things simple, a standard pinball machine throughout the 60 s to present measures about 22 inches from outside siderail to outside siderail regardless of the manufacturer. Aside from the few wider EM s that Steve Kordek designed in the late 60 s and early 70 s, the conceptual widebody that eventually brought the industry giants to the larger platform was initiated by none other than pinball newcomer Atari in late 76 and early 77 with The Atarians (amazingly creative title indeed). It and all Atari titles were true behemoths with a siderail to siderail width of 29 inches (7 inches wider than the standard machine). Williams and Steve Kordek paid attention to the player impact with the wider Atari machines and quickly responded with Contact and Pokerino in 78. As both Atari and now Williams continued to produce 29 games in 79, Bally joined in with their first SuperSize machine in Future Spa and their second machine, Paragon in the same year. Not to be left out, Gottlieb signed on the widebody bandwagon by producing Genie late in the year. Stern popped into the scene with Big Game in 80 but with a different approach. Their machine was only two inches wider than the standard machine measuring about 24 in width. That same year, Gottlieb made a similarly interesting move with Spiderman, dropping some of the extra width to bring it down to about 25 ½ inches (siderail to siderail). There were a few other 29 s in the Gottlieb lineup but the 25 ½ inch format was something Gottlieb stuck with until 83. Williams made only a few more 29 s, stopping in 80 with a short run of Algar. Bally ended their widebody line the next year with Embryon. Stern stuck it out with 6 more wide titles, but like Bally, went back to standard widths in 81. Pinball history has a way of repeating certain elements of itself. In 1993, the attempt was made again by the conjoined company Bally / Williams (WMS), feeling that the market was ready for something new to spur sales. Coming off of the huge production of Pat Lawlor s The Addam s Family machine, the design teams were allowed to explore an additional 3 inches in width. The SuperPin cabinet was born. In 93, Pat started the widebody trend with Twilight Zone, Mark Ritchie designed Indiana Jones, John Trudeau designed Judge Dredd, and Steve Ritchie designed Star Trek The Next Generation. The next year, WMS continued onward with Dennis Nordman s Demolition Man, Oursler & Anghelo s Popeye Saves the Earth, and ended in the same way it started with Pat Lawlor designing Red & Ted s Roadshow. In 1994, Data East joined in the modern widebody frenzy with WWF Royal Rumble and Guns N Roses, but ended the next year with Batman Forever under the Sega name. Is wider really better? When I was a quite a bit younger, I can remember having to choose which pinball to play at the local skating rink. There was a fast playing quarter-gobbling Stern Meteor, and then a slower, wider Gottlieb Roller Disco. When I was almost broke and hungry for pinball, I chose Roller Disco. With the long ball lobs and largely open playfield, my game would continue for what seemed an eternity, even when I was playing horribly. The standard sized Meteor was much more intense and far more enjoyable, but a quarter eater nonetheless. There were others that caught my eye at the time. Space Invaders pinball, with that infinity backglass lighting and the Alien look-a-like beastie glaring at you 32 GameRoom October, 2007

while you flipped across what seemed like an infinite amount of space on that playfield. For me, Space Invaders was more fun to observe than to play.

3 while you flipped across what seemed like an infinite amount of space on that playfield. For me, Space Invaders was more fun to observe than to play. But I remember playing Gottlieb s Genie where the additional inches were loaded with chucks of pinball stuff like an extra set of rollover lanes, or a mini-playfield area with a long bank of drop targets. In fact, it was exciting to try and maneuver the ball into the extra segments of pinball lanes and targets. It felt quite different altogether. So why go wider anyway? What inspired the pinball industry to design larger scale pinball? In the late 70 s, there was something else contending for the pinball players attention. As video games blossomed, pinball began to take a back seat. Through discussions with industry insiders and historians, it seems apparent that any good sounding idea was given attention if it hinted to higher sales numbers, even if it meant spending more money per machine to manufacture. As Atari busted loose on the scene with their massive machines, the extra real estate must have had some players thinking that they were getting more for their quarter. I can attest to some level of this perception. Even though Atari didn t realize large production numbers, other manufacturers found ways to translate the additional space into strong sales numbers. Some titles like Bally s Space Invaders and Paragon, Gottlieb s The Incredible Spider-Man, Black Hole, and Haunted House, and Stern s Flight 2000 sold exceptionally well, with many of the others holding above average sales for the period. But widebody pinball wasn t enough to keep the pinball market afloat in the rough times after So why would WMS re-visit the concept in the 90 s when standard size pinball was still selling well? The market had become saturated and needed something new to inspire sales. Why not buy a SuperPin to mix things up a bit? Apparently operators were convinced. WMS SuperPins sold quite well, with 3 of the 7 selling over 10,000 units, and all but Popeye Saves the Earth selling over 5,000! Putting this in perspective, there weren t too many titles that sold over 5,000 units after the company switched back to standard sized machines. Did the death of SuperPins cause the decline? It s more likely that the industry was further saturated by the 90 s widebody machines along with their predecessors. 90 s pinball machines were earning well enough on location, with little reason for operators to pull them off route and buy new machines to replace them. One of the local operator s near me mentioned his position on buying pinball in the mid-90 s stating that it was easier to send a board off for repair and spend a few hours wiping down the machine then investing in a new game that didn t earn any more money than the old one did. I bet he wasn t the only one with that train of thought. There were other changes in the industry that also detoured traditional sales in foreign and domestic markets. The lack of widebody pinball probably had little impact on downward spiraling sales. The compelling urge to do more with more How much of a difference does a few inches make? In the earliest examples of early solid state widebody machines, there didn t seem to be much innovation, but more of the same stuff arranged differently. In the case of Atari pinball, the wild arrangement of flippers didn t really meet the mark with pinball players. That s probably why they seem to be slow and sleepy. But it didn t take long for designers to inject additional playfield goodies in the extra space, and snap some of the fundamental rules of design back into wide machines. Stellar Wars is a good example of a machine that makes good use of the ad- GameRoom October,

ditional plywood, yet sticks to the traditional layout of flipper and slingshot location.

Steve added that the additional width near the bottom of the playfield can be used for neat tricks on the outlanes like using a gate to drop the ball back to the shooter lane.

While it s possible to pack more shots into the game, the ability to make them work nicely off of the flipper grows more difficult.

4 ditional plywood, yet sticks to the traditional layout of flipper and slingshot location. In fact, a recent conversation with Steve Ritchie and Pat Lawlor on successful widebody design yielded the same answer don t mess with the arrangement of flippers and slingshots. Steve added that the additional width near the bottom of the playfield can be used for neat tricks on the outlanes like using a gate to drop the ball back to the shooter lane. But he made it clear that designing on the bigger plywood, even the narrower SuperPin, was much more difficult. Why? While it s possible to pack more shots into the game, the ability to make them work nicely off of the flipper grows more difficult. Ahh, yes, for Star Trek The Next Generation, both the ball lock / rollover shot to the upper right and the Warp Factor spinner shot on the left require me to get a couple of warm-up games under the belt before I can hit them consistently off of the tip of the flipper. Another often overlooked item is the time it takes the ball to travel through a shot and return back to the flippers. While it doesn t seem to take that much longer, it surely does due to the overall shot length being longer than usual. For me, Judge Dredd immediately comes to mind, with Dead World shots taking quite a while to wind their way back to the right flipper. So the next time you step up to a widebody, consider the pain that was potentially invested in making those shots work. The future of wide Will we ever see widebody pinball anytime soon? With larger cabinets are increased costs. And if a designer is given additional space, you can bet they will put something in there. All of those extra goodies add to the bill of materials of the final product. In the 90 s, the creative juices re-flowed to a greater extreme. All of the SuperPin s built by WMS in the 90 s are packed tightly with loads of new gadgets on, above, and below the playfield. And for most of us, that translates into a fantastic, yet different playing experience than standard machines. It s the financial condition of the current pinball market that doesn t offer such flexibility. While new ideas may be just around the corner, going bigger (and costing more) is still counterproductive to profits. But no need to be discouraged. The used pinball market has a healthy supply of wide machines to explore. Do you have one in your collection? Special thanks to Pat Lawlor and Steve Ritchie for their discussions with me on the topic of widebodies. GR Bally Paragon, 1979 Gottlieb Genie, 1979 Bally/Midway Judge Dredd, GameRoom October, 2007

A Chronological Widebody Pinball List Data courtesy of IPDB.

Atari SS 1977 Time 2000 Atari SS 1977 Airborne Avenger Atari SS 1978 Ic

D.I. SS 1978 Middle Earth Atari SS 1978 Contact Williams SS 1978 Space Riders Atari SS 1978 Pokerino Williams SS 1979 Future Spa Bally SS 1979 Road Runner Atari SS 1979 Stellar Wars Williams SS 1979

Hankin SS 1980 Shark Hankin SS 1980 Roller Disco Gottlieb SS 1980 Big Game Stern SS 1980 Space Invaders Bally SS 1980 The Amazing Spider-Man Gottlieb SS 1980 Cheetah Stern SS 1980 Circus Gottlieb SS

5 A Chronological Widebody Pinball List Data courtesy of IPDB.org 1963 Race Way Midway EM 1964 Flying Turns Midway EM 1967 Derby Day Williams EM Aces Williams EM 1971 Planets Williams EM 1971 Zodiac Williams EM 1972 Winner Williams EM 1976 The Atarians Atari SS 1977 Time 2000 Atari SS 1977 Airborne Avenger Atari SS 1978 Ice Mania I.D.I. SS 1978 Middle Earth Atari SS 1978 Contact Williams SS 1978 Space Riders Atari SS 1978 Pokerino Williams SS 1979 Future Spa Bally SS 1979 Road Runner Atari SS 1979 Stellar Wars Williams SS 1979 Superman Atari SS 1979 Paragon Bally SS 1979 Genie Gottlieb SS 1979 Laser Ball Williams SS 1980 Howzat! Hankin SS 1980 Shark Hankin SS 1980 Roller Disco Gottlieb SS 1980 Big Game Stern SS 1980 Space Invaders Bally SS 1980 The Amazing Spider-Man Gottlieb SS 1980 Cheetah Stern SS 1980 Circus Gottlieb SS 1980 Hotdoggin Bally SS 1980 Panthera Gottlieb SS 1980 The Empire Strikes Back Hankin SS 1980 Scorpion Williams SS 1980 Counterforce Gottlieb SS 1980 Algar Williams SS 1980 Flight 2000 Stern SS 1980 James Bond 007 Gottlieb SS 1980 Star Race Gottlieb SS 1980 Time Line Gottlieb SS 1981 Freefall Stern SS 1981 Force II Gottlieb SS 1981 Mars God of War Gottlieb SS 1981 Pink Panther Gottlieb SS 1981 Embryon Bally SS 1981 Split Second Stern SS 1981 Volcano Gottlieb SS 1981 Black Hole Gottlieb SS 1981 Iron Maiden Stern SS 1981 Viper Stern SS 1982 Eclipse Gottlieb SS 1982 Orbitor 1 Stern SS 1982 Haunted House Gottlieb SS 1982 Devil s Dare Gottlieb SS 1982 Caveman Gottlieb SS 1982 Rocky Gottlieb SS 1982 Spirit Gottlieb SS 1982 Striker Gottlieb SS 1982 Punk! Gottlieb SS X4 Atari SS 1983 Goin Nuts Gottlieb SS 1983 Krull Gottlieb SS 1983 Q*Bert s Quest Gottlieb SS 1984 Af-Tor Wico SS 1993 Twilight Zone Midway SS 1993 Indiana Jones: The Pinball Adventure Williams SS 1993 Judge Dredd Midway SS 1993 Star Trek: The Next Generation Williams SS 1994 Demolition Man Williams SS 1994 Popeye Saves the Earth Midway SS 1994 WWF Royal Rumble Data East SS 1994 Guns N Roses Data East SS 1994 Red & Ted s Road Show Williams SS 1995 Batman Forever Sega SS GameRoom October,

Page 1 of 27. Castlestorm Table Guide By ShoryukenToTheChin

Page 1 of 27. Castlestorm Table Guide By ShoryukenToTheChin Page 1 of 27 Castlestorm Table Guide By ShoryukenToTheChin 6 4 5 7 2 3 8 1 9 10 11 12 Page 2 of 27 Key to Table Overhead Image 1. Mission Sink Saucer 2. Left Orbit 3. Skyfall Ramp 4. Domination Target