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The Addam's Family Pinball machine was designed by a special team at Williams. It was led by Pat Lawlor, a long term vetern of pinball concept design. Larry DeMar helped with the design. Art work was created by John Youssi. The release date for the first game is March, 1992. The game is based on the popular movie theme "The Addams Family". The game features actual voices of Raul Julia (Gomez) and Angelica Houston (Mortica), stars of the movie. Many of the special effects sounds can be directly traced to the movie.
Soon after the game was released, it became the world leader as the best and most popular pinball machine ever made, with sales figures that smashed its nearest rival. As a result, and in honor of The Addams Family Pinball machine's great success, Williams decided to make a special edition pinball machine, commonly refered to as "The Addams Family - Gold Edition" in October, 1994. This pinball machine is very similar to the original, with special upgrades to the software, gold legs and detailing, and a special gold edition plate mounted on the front of the machine. There was a limited run of only 1000 of these machines.
Through the years, Williams has created several updated versions of the software used by the machine. The latest, and move active software is from The Addams Family - Gold Edition Pinball machine.
Uncle Fester's friends:
Russ Jensen's Pinball History Articles
Bits, Bytes, Buzzers, and Bells
Here are some bits of information from various sources about The Addam's Family Pinball machine:
Question: While flipping through a guide to coin-op games book, I
saw what looked like an Addams Family with a gold coin door. It looks like the picture was
taken at Expo. What is the story behind this TAF?
Answer: To commemorate the historic event of breaking the modern pinball production
record, the record-breaking game to come down the line on The Addams Family run was decked
out with many gold-plated parts and was signed by all of the people that helped make it.
This is probably the game you saw pictured, as it does have a gold coin door and it has
made at least one appearance at the Pinball Expo. Uncle Willy has seen this game sitting
at the Williams pinball manufacturing plant. As a historical note, The Addams Family Gold,
with gold legs and trim (but just a normal black painted coin door) was actually a
completely separate game theme as far as production records are concerned, and was
produced some time after the run of The Addams Family completed.
(Source: Williams ask Uncle Willy website, 1/4/2000)
Question: I've heard rumors about Funhouse machines with DMDs
installed in them. Apparently they are some sort of hybrid game. Can you tell me more
about how and when these were made?
Answer: Uncle Willy hates to spoil a good legend, but this one is simply not true.
Funhouse was never made into a dot matrix display-based game. However, someone once
related a story to Uncle Willy about a game that was mocked up for a TV studio photo shoot
for The Addams Family pinball. Because it was so early in the project, a complete game
wasn't ready, so they grabbed a Funhouse that was kicking around (*) and used it for the
mockup, which included fitting a dot matrix display so that The Addams Family attract mode
graphics could be displayed. If this game even ran, it would have had simulated segmented
score displays on the dot matrix display, as there was never any dot matrix art created
for Funhouse. Uncle Willy wonders if perhaps this mockup game is the source of these
rumors.
(*) Uncle Willy understands the agony some of you feel as you read about Funhouse games
just lying about, then being butchered for one-time promotional purposes. Such is life in
the pinball business!
(Source: Williams ask Uncle Willy website, 1/4/2000)
Question: Can you tell me about the sounds and music from the
games by Williams Electronics Games, Inc.? How are the sounds made? How is the music
composed? How does the sound system recreate sounds? Who are the people who compose music
for Williams games?
Answer:
Introduction Williams Electronics Games, Inc. designs and manufactures pinball games under
the Williams and Bally names and coin-op video games under the Midway name. Anyone who has
played these games knows that the computing power and graphics behind them have become
very sophisticated and lifelike. Pinball games are equally sophisticated, often containing
several computer-controlled playfield toys that are integrated into the pinball action.
To keep the audio on par with these state-of-the-art games, Williams has developed a new
sound system, called DCS (which stands for Digital Compression System). The DCS sound
board provides four channels of 16-bit digital audio, with independent control over the
volume, looping and playback of each channel. Each channel can dynamically play back
anything from an entire piece of music to a short sound effect, with a typical game using
one channel for music and the remaining three for sound effects, speech and foreground
music such as fanfares or breaks.
The first pinball game to use DCS was Indiana Jones. The first video game to use DCS was
Mortal Kombat II.
Background DCS is not the first digital game sound system, but it is the first truly
high-fidelity, digital audio system designed specifically for coin-op arcade pinball and
video games. A comparison to past and current game sound systems puts its sophistication
and sound quality in perspective.
The "beeps" and "blips" of early arcade games were made with analog
circuits and simple digital tone generators. These sounds disappeared from arcades in the
early 1980's when chip sets became available to do FM synthesis. For several years, most
sound systems for arcade games combined a microprocessor, and FM synthesis chip set, and a
low sample rate, low quality digitizing system. These systems were very similar to many of
the sound cards currently available for personal computers, and provided fairly complex
music, somewhat understandable speech and sonically interesting (if not altogether
realistic) sound effects.
FM synthesis was in turn replaced by sample playback systems, implemented with custom
hardware or with software running on a Digital Signal Processor (DSP). Samples help to
make music more realistic, but the systems often suffer from a lack of polyphony and and
upper limit of a few seconds recording time for each sample.
One of the most recent advances in game sound is CD-ROM. Although CD-ROM technology is
popular in home and personal computer games, there are several drawbacks that limit its
usefulness in fast-paced, multi-player arcade games. One problem is that CD-ROM audio
schemes are limited to a single channel of mono or stereo sound. Arcade games require
several independent sound channels for layering music, sound effects and speech. Access
time is another problem. Delays
as short as 20 milliseconds between action and sound can make an arcade seem sluggish.
Most of the CD-ROM game systems rely on a separate sample playback or FM synthesis system
for interactive sound effects. Also, few CD-ROM systems can withstand the bumping and
shaking excited players can inflict on arcade game cabinets.
DCS was designed to overcome the limitations of other game sound systems. There were three
main design parameters: improving sound quality, maintaining interactivity and
streamlining sound development. 16-bit audio played back at 32 kHz delivers near-CD sound
quality. The ability to instantly start, stop, loop and control the volume of four
independent channels in response to commands from the game provides interactivity. Most
importantly, the process of developing sounds changes from programming synthesized sounds
to producing music and sound effects in profession recording studios.
Audio Data Compression The biggest limitation with most game and multimedia sound systems
is storage. 16-bit digital audio at a rate of 31,250 samples per second requires about 60
kilobytes of storage per second of sampled sound. Overall cost of a game limits the ROM
available for sounds to about 3 megabytes. The problem is that 3 megabytes of ROM at 60
kilobytes
a second is only enough for about one minute of total sound. Most Williams games have a
total of 10-15 minutes of non-repeating sound.
The solution to this storage problem for DCS was the development of a proprietary
transform coder algorithm that reduces a 500 kilobit/second data rate by a factor of ten
or more, and runs on a low cost DSP chip. This algorithm is similar to the algorithms used
in the Sony MiniDisc format, the Philips Digital Compact Cassette format and the emerging
digital sound formats for movies such as Dolby Stereo Digital, Sony Dynamic Digital Sound,
and Digital Theater Sound.
The encoding phase takes place on a PC, starting with digital audio files. The fields are
broken down into frames of 240 samples each. A frame is 7.68 milliseconds of audio, and
files can range from one to several thousand frames in length. Each frame is transformed
by a 256-point Fast Fourier Transform, with simple cosine windowing and eight samples of
overlap on each end. The resulting spectrum is further broken down into 16 bands and
quantized according to masking curves and user-controlled parameters. The quantizing
levels and the resulting data for each frame are entropy encoded into variable
length packets. The packets for each file are combined with header blocks and stored as
files that are used later to generate ROM images.
The decompression phase takes place on the DSP chip. Starting with the header, a packet of
compressed data is read from ROM and decompressed into a frame. This involves entropy
decoding the data stream, and then de-quantizing the data into a frame of frequency domain
data. The four channels are decompressed independently and summed in the frequency domain.
Volume operations, such as level settings and cross-fades, are also performed in the
frequency domain. The final frame is inverse transformed and clocked out a serial to a
Digital to Analog Converter (DAC). Music and sound effects compress
to an average of 50 to 70 kilobits/second, and speech reduces to 20 to 40 kilobits/second.
The resulting audio quality exceeds that of other algorithms operating at similar
bitrates.
Several aspects of the DCS algorithm capitalize on the nature of sounds for games. The
encoding, which is more complicated than decoding, can be performed on a PC without any
restrictions on processing time. The algorithm has a variable bitrate, which means that
the amount of artifacts and the overall quality can be fine tuned for each individual
sound. Since the frame size is small, it is possible to carefully edit sound effects and
seamlessly loop music.
Hardware The DCS hardware is relatively simple. The major components, a surface-mounted
DSP chip, sockets for ROM, a 16-bit mono DAC, and an audio power amplifier, are contained
on a two-layer printed circuit board measuring about eight inches square. There are
additional discrete analog and digital components making up filter, interface and power
supply circuits.
The DSP chip used is the ADSP-2105 by Analog Devices. The 2105 runs at 40 MHz and executes
over 10 million instructions per second. The 2105's on-chip RAM is supplemented with
additional static RAM on the DCS board. This memory is used primarily as temporary storage
for the realtime decompression and inverse FFT operations required for each of the four
playback channels.
DCS contains a bi-directional, 8-bit interface between the sound board and the game host.
Playback commands from the game host can trigger anything from a single sound effect to a
one-minute segment of music that loops indefinitely. Commands from the host are
asynchronously received and buffered and can arrive at a rate greater than 25 thousand per
second, although a typical rate in game play is 10-100 per second.
The sound board can also send timed data back to the game host. This data is useful for
synchronizing animation, display effects and light shows with music and sound effects.
Staff Several full time composers and one freelance composer produce sound effects, voice
overs and music for all of the pinball and video game projects.
Jon Hey has been at Williams for several years. The Jon Hey Band recently headlined at the
Chicago Film Makers benefit and performed at the Bucktown Arts Festival in Chicago. Vince
Pontarelli joined Williams two years ago, having previously worked at Libman Music, a
well-known Chicago jingle and post-score house, and as a writer for Todd Scales at
Windsound. Dave Zabriskie also joined Williams fairly recently, having come from Premier
pinball. In addition to a long
list of game sound credits, Dave has written extensively for orchestral and choral groups,
including a recent string symphony for
the Chicago String Ensemble. Kevin Quinn is the newest addition to the Williams sound
department. Before coming to Williams, Kevin owned and operated Concord Music, a
successful commercial jingle house in Chicago. Freelancer Dan Forden works out of his own
project studio. Dan has put together and worked out of several project studios over
the last several years in connection with bands that he has both played in and recorded.
Facilities Each staff composer has an office and a MIDI workstation. Supporting the MIDI
workstations is a fully equipped recording studio built around a Tascam M-2516 16-channel
mixer. Four patch bays connect the mixer to a DS-30 DAT recorder, a CD player, an Alesis
ADAT and the outboard gear, which includes a Lexicon LXP-15, an Ensoniq DP/4,
and various equalizers and compressors. The studio is divided into two rooms, one of which
is built around an isolation booth.
The studio is used mostly for recording vocals and voice-overs in the isolation booth and
for creating and editing sound effects on a Macintosh IIci running Digidesign Sound Tools.
Sound files are stored on removable 45 megabyte cartridges, making it easy for each person
to manage the files for the game projects he is working on.
Production
Original music is composed for each game. The MIDI workstations for the staff composers
consists of a Mac Quadra 630 running Mark the Unicorn Performer software, a Kurzweil K2000
keyboard, one or more Emu Proteus modules, Roland JV 1080 sound modules, and Ensoniq DP/4
effects processor, and Alesis Quadraverb II, and Alesis Quadraverb GT and an Alesis D4
drum module. Each workstation also has its own MIDI interface, mixer, compressor and
equalizer. For variety, there
is also a Roland JD-990, a Korg 01W/FD, and Ensoniq SQR and two Akai S1100 samplers and an
Alesis ADAT digital multi-track tape machine.
In addition to the Mac Quadra, each composer also has a '486 or Pentium PC. The PCs are
used for hard disk recording and editing, using custom hardware and software that
generates files for the data compression system.
All music must be uniquely arranged and recorded for a game, even when the music is based
on a film or television score. For example, in Star Trek the Next Generation pinball,
which was arranged and scored by Dan Forden, the music package included an arrangement of
the show's well known theme (based on the movie theme by Jerry Goldsmith) as well as
several original Forden compositions.
Sound effects for games fall into three basic categories: sound effects pulled from CD,
field recordings and sounds taken from film or video soundtracks. Williams owns several
sound effects libraries. A portable DAT recorder is used to make field recordings. Many
sounds, such as those used in the Indiana Jones pinball, are taken from sound effects
submixes of film soundtracks. Regardless of the source, almost every sound effect is
custom edited and processed to work in the context of the game.
Speech and voice effects are also an important part of the sound package for any game.
Anywhere from a fourth to a third of the available memory space is used for speech and
voice effects which inform and entertain the player. This is especially important in games
based on movies or other high profile themes. For example, each major cast member of the
television series Star Trek the Next Generation recorded material expressly for the
pinball game. Vocal talent is also recorded in the isolation booth located in the Williams
sound department studio. This was the case with all of the screams, grunts and moans heard
in the Mortal Kombat II and 3 video games.
Because WIlliams sound designers now work in a recording studio using professional tools,
as opposed to programming music and sounds in assembly language, the time to complete a
sound package for arcade pinball and video games has been cut roughly in half. More
importantly, the sound quality has been drastically improved with the advent of DCS.
(Source: Williams ask Uncle Willy website, 7/7/1995)
Question: I really enjoy the games made by designer Pat Lawlor.
Could you provide the list of games of this designer?
Answer: Here are Pat Lawlor's design credits: Banzai Run, Earthshaker, Whirlwind,
Funhouse, Addams
Family, Twilight Zone, Addams Family Values (a coin-drop novelty game), Roadshow,
Safecracker
(Before coming to Williams Electronics Games to design pinballs, Mr. Lawlor worked on
these titles released
under the Midway video label: Adventures of Robbie Roto, Demons and Dragons, Ten Pin
Deluxe)
(Source: Williams ask Uncle Willy website, 7/21/1995)
Question: Can you tell me about the pinball game process? How are
game themes picked? How long does it take to develop a pinball game? What computer tools
are used? What are some of the steps in bringing a game from a designer's imagination to
the production line?
Answer: Design Teams Williams Electronics Games, Inc., employs several pinball game
designers who are responsible for putting the wizardry under the glass in its games. Each
game designer heads up a game team which is
chartered to produce a new game. The members of the teams and their roles are outlined
below. Keep in mind, however, that team members' contributions often extend beyond these
roles, as game design is very much a group effort with everyone on a team contributing
ideas and refinement.
Game designer - The game designer is responsible for leading the game team and coming up
with a concept for the game. Traditionally, the game designer draws the pinball playfield
and comes up with any devices or "toys" for the game.
Software developer - The software developer develops all the game-specific software to
handle rules, devices, effects, shows, etc.
Artist - The artist is responsible for all game art and graphics. This includes the
backglass, playfield, cabinet, bottom arch, stickers, plastics, etc.
Mechanical engineer - The mechanical engineer is the person who makes all those toys and
gadgets that the game designer thinks up possible.
Sound designer/musician - The sound designer creates the music and sound effects for the
game.
Mechanical designer - The mechanical designer is responsible for putting the finishing
touches on the drawings and designs from the mechanical engineer and game designer.
Animator - The animator generates the images for the the dot-matrix display. (Actually, no
one particular dot-matrix animator is
assigned to a game. The animators spread their time among all projects.)
The above design team is supported by numerous others, without whom a pinball game would
not be possible. These include:
Electrical engineers and technicians, who come up with the unique electronics and circuit
boards
Cable designers, who lay out the wiring for a game Publication writers, who produce the
manuals and technical documents
Sculptors, who design buildings, heads and other molded items Model makers, who build the
first instances of ramps, ball guides, toys, and other devices for a game
(Uncle Willy is doing his best to make sure not to leave out anyone else who works hard to
help bring a game to production. Licensing, marketing, sales and testing support is
necessary. Production engineering, purchasing, regulatory compliance testing are also
required. Voice and music talent are sometimes employed. Of course, engineering support
such as costing and bill of materials creation are needed.)
Game Concept
The first step in pinball game design is to start with a concept for a new game. This can
have various sources. Sometimes a designer has an original idea to develop. Other times, a
TV, movie or other license presents itself that would make an interesting game theme. It
is also possible that a game designer has an idea for a device or toy that would be fun,
and a game concept is developed around it.
Licensing a theme provides its own complications which must be weighed with the the
identifiability and other benefits of a license. Besides having to negotiate the terms and
fees of a license, there is also the need for the approvals from the licensing agent to be
considered. For example, actors' movie contracts vary widely as to how much freedom a
movie studio has in selling ancillary rights and to how much control actors have over
their depiction in a derivative product.
Playfield Design
Pinball playfields are laid out using a CAD package. Standard devices, such as flippers
and jet bumpers can be called up out of a device library for placement on a playfield.
Laying out makable and interesting shots is a bit of an artform, as one might imagine, and
it is here that the game designer spends many hours trying to come up with an original and
innovative "feel" for a pinball game.
If a game has a toy or special device to be placed on the playfield, its placement is
usually the first thing to worry about. Shots are then created around and leading to it,
as necessary.
Also keep in mind that the game designer must be thinking in three dimensions as the
playfield is laid out. Ramps and wireforms allow the ball to rise from the plane of the
playfield, and the designer uses them to make the game more interesting, keeping in mind
flipper power and other physical limitations. Care must also be taken to make all
components fit on BOTH sides of the playfield.
While the playfield designer is busy laying out a playfield, the mechanical engineer is
kept busy designing and prototyping game-
specific devices. Often with the help of an electrical engineer or the software developer,
the mechanical engineer invents
a solution to implement some wild idea of the game designer. It is through these efforts
that we are all able to enjoy such playfield toys as talking heads, ball-launching gun
turrets, hands that pick up the ball, and revving car engines.
If the software developer is lucky enough, one or more of these custom devices is
fabricated before the first playfield is wired,
so that work on a device driver can be started at this time.
Whitewood Construction
After a playfield is designed, the next step is to test it by making one. The first
playfields are made from bare plywood, and as such are called "whitewoods". A
game may go through several whitewood revisions due to changes in layout or other
improvements. Often, the first whitewood or two for a game has little more than flippers,
bumpers, slings and a few ball guides on it in order to try out the shots. Often, in order
to save time to test out ideas, whitewoods are heavily modified and "patched" to
test out improvements, rather than constructing new ones from scratch. Uncle Willy has
seen wood plugs and Bondo adorning many whitewood playfields.
Creating the blank playfield for whitewood construction is rather straightforward. The
designer's CAD file is converted to drive a computer-controlled routing machine which cuts
the blank plywood to accommodate light inserts, mechanical devices and mounting points.
Light inserts are glued into the routed playfield and allowed to dry, then a clear finish
is applied to seal the grain and approximate the finish of a screened playfield.
All the game-specific parts for early whitewoods are hand-crafted in the model shop. Not
only the above-mentioned ball guides must be made this way, but also plastic and wireform
ramps, under-playfield troughs, and other unique mechanics must be fabricated.
Once parts are collected, the build-up of the whitewood commences. Lamps, switches and
other parts are mounted on the playfield, and a wiring harness is hand-crafted and
connected to the playfield electronics. After a thorough checkout, the whitewood is ready
for flipping.
Software Development
(To keep this article to a reasonable length, Uncle Willy will gloss over much of the
effort and tasks involved in developing software for a new pinball game. Perhaps this can
be the subject of another Uncle Willy installment.)
Making a whitewood flip for the first time is relatively simple task. Williams Electronics
has developed a proprietary operating system that it uses in its pinball machines which
simplifies implementing much of the standard functionality of a pinball game. Filling out
a few tables that connect switches to coils gets the flippers flipping, bumpers bumping
and ejects ejecting. Of course, if that were all there is to programming a pinball game,
everyone would be doing it.
Once everyone in engineering has had enough of checking out the newest whitewood and
clears out of the software developer's office, work begins on inventing and implementing
rules. Lots of time is spent developing rules to make a game interesting, and quite often
everyone on the design team has ideas and opinions. Sometimes, the game designer or
another team member has a particular idea for the game, but it proves impossible to
implement, due to physical constraints of the playfield or other devices. In this case,
the concept may spark another idea or may be modified to fit in with the possibilities of
the game.
Of course, during the course of rules development, display, lamp and sound effects are
also being developed. The software developer works with the sound designer and animators
to coordinate material to be put in the game. Much of the software development time is
spent on the choreography of these effects.
Artwork
Once a theme has been chosen, the artist can begin work on the backglass and cabinet art.
In the case of a licensed theme, reference materials are collected and rough pencil
sketches are submitted for approval before proceeding to produce more finished artwork.
Once the playfield and lamp insert layout has been finalized by the game designer, the
artist can start on playfield artwork. If the
artist is lucky, enough of the rules have been fleshed out so that cues for the player can
be incorporated into the playfield art. Soon after the playfield is finalized, the game
designer lays out the playfield plastics; after this is completed, they can be submitted
to the artist for artwork layout. Stickers for ramps and other locations can be started at
this time also.
The artist uses many media in his/her efforts, including computer graphics, as well as the
more traditional ink and paint. (Uncle Willy senses an opportunity for another installment
topic here.)
Cost Limitations and Bill of Materials
Throughout the development process, the projected cost of the game is monitored. Rough
estimates of component costs are continually updated as quotes are obtained from outside
vendors.
As nice as it would be to design a pinball game without regard to cost, real world
constraints dictate that a game designer not exceed the game budget. This means that
compromises are often made to make a game meet its budget. Hardware and devices undergo
redesign to make them less expensively, or are sometimes removed altogether.
Some items that were removed from recent games during the design process include:
- A motorized target bank in the Neutral ZZone on Star Trek: the Next Generation
- An up-post between the flippers on Theattre of Magic
- A third spiral magnet on Twilight Zone
Along with this refinement of the cost estimate, the bill of materials must be created.
Every part for a particular game -- down
to each screw and nut -- must be accounted for. The bill of materials is continually
refined up through production so that the
actual cost of a game can be accurately determined and so that parts can be ordered in
time for producing the game.
Prototype Building
Once the physical design of a pinball game has pretty much "gelled" (playfield
layout finalized, device designs released, playfield
artwork finished, wiring cables designed, etc.) parts are procured to build 10-15
engineering prototypes of the game. These prototypes are used for several purposes.
Just building the prototypes verifies that the parts coming from vendors are made to spec,
and that all the parts fit together on the pinball game. Also, during the assembly of the
prototypes, the procedures for building the game on the production line are
identified and established. This includes identifying subassemblies and specifying work
stations for the production line.
The engineering prototypes are allocated to various uses. The software programmer or
programmers typically get the first one or two prototypes for programming purposes. One
game is used for FCC RFI testing; one game is used for a pack-ship-and-drop test; a number
of games are allocated for field testing; one game is used by the publications writer in
the production of the game manual; one game is used for the photo shoot for the game
promotional flyer.
Sometimes, additional prototypes are produced for display at a trade show, depending upon
the timing of the game and the show.
Into Production
The next several weeks of the game design schedule are spent putting the finishing touches
on the game. The rules are finalized, sounds are finished, the hardware is refined, and
the documentation is completed. (Keep in mind that all this is a *lot* of work. Uncle
Willy does not want to trivialize the effort involved here in any way.)
A small sample run of games is produced before the full production is started. This run
helps to ring out the manufacturing process in preparation for actual production. These
sample games are shipped to distributors for display in their showrooms.
Finally, full production begins, and the games start shipping throughout the world. During
production, a careful eye is kept on
new orders and expected demand. Long lead times on certain parts mean that further
production release decisions must be made weeks before the end of a game run. It simply is
too expensive to shut down the production line and start it back up when more orders come
in.
The production process itself is probably worthy of another Uncle Willy installment. Those
of you who have been fortunate enough to visit a pinball plant during Pinball Expo are
familiar with the large amount of manual labor that is involved in building a pinball
game.
Well, there you have it, folks. Uncle Willy necessarily glossed over some of the finer
details in the process of bringing a game to production. The entire process takes from
nine to twelve months to bring a game to production. Thousands of parts go into a pinball
game. Keeping track of those parts and all the hundreds of other details that go into a
pinball machine keeps the crew
at Williams Electronics Games, Inc., mighty busy!
(Source: Williams ask Uncle Willy website, 9/1/1995)
(reprinted from PlayMeter Magazine, March 2002)
It's spooky and it's kooky and it's an award-winning game.
It's The Addams Family pinball, celebrating 10 years of popularity
and long life in the field and on the Play Meter Equipment Poll.
The design genius behind The Addams Family pinball and later The
Addams Family Values redemption game was Pat Lawlor, a prolific pinball
designer who was also responsible for a string of pinball hits: Banzai Run,
Earthshaker, Whirlwind, Fun House, No Good Gofers, Road Show, Safecracker, and
Twilight Zone in the Bally/Williams/Midway days.
Today his talents and expertise are apparent in Stern Pinball's Monopoly, a game his company designed "soup to nuts" including programming, art, and music, and then turned over to Stern for production. Pat Lawlor Design staff includes John Krutsch, mechanical designer on almost all of Lawlor's games, who also worked on The Addams Family; Louis Koziarz, programmer on Tales of the Arabian Nights and No Good Gofers; and Greg Dunlap, a former programmer at Williams. Consultants are used on a regular basis for music, sound, and art. Among them are Chris Granner, who has his own music and sound company, and John Youssi, an independent illustrator who did the artwork on most of Lawlor's pinball games.
"I was lucky," said Lawlor, referring to the large talent pool that became available when Williams closed its pinball division. "I couldn't see this talent leaving," he said. "Our industry needs these people." Lawlor said, "I'm really happy that we could go back to doing pinball and help bring it back from the abyss. And it looks like we did a good thing. Monopoly's long-term legs are holding. I pride myself on games that earn for a long time because that's what the operators need." He explained: "There are a lot of operators who know how hard it is to do this. The equipment does not magically appear. It takes a tremendous amount of skilled people to get any piece of equipment to make money. That's a tremendous feat. You're walking past something sitting there quietly and people are drawn over to put money in it. Amazing!"
What does Lawlor say to those who claim that pinball requires too much maintenance? "Tell me a business where you don't have to do a little work to earn money." said Lawlor. "In reality, the upkeep of these games is not that extensive. Those who operate pinball and make it part of their daily routine are rewarded; these games make money." Lawlor warms to the subject of pinball: "Our business is a cyclical industry. What is old becomes new again. Consider that in 1982 Bally declared pinball dead, went out of business, and closed its pinball division. How wrong could they have been? Just look at the following decade. We've just gone through a really low time for pinball and now sales are picking up and people are playing the game again. People see pinball and they smile."
He continued: "Pinball has an intrinsic resale value. In fact, the resale value of pinball games has never been higher. When figured into the equation of operating, when you move that piece of equipment on after operating it many years and still get back half and sometimes more than what you paid for it, what other piece of coin-op equipment can you do that with?"
Creating a legend
Lawlor was a regular viewer of "The Addams Family" TV series; it's fitting that he would design what could be called the best selling pinball of all time. As expected, Lawlor has a pinball collection that would be the envy of any collector since he has one of every game he designed, including a special gold edition of The Addams Family with serial #1 on a brass plaque.
According to Lawlor, the game designers at Williams were in charge of what they wanted to work on; it was a game designer-driven organization. When he heard about "The Addams Family" movie, as he put it: "I went crazy." At the time, the marketing department at Paramount Pictures told Lawlor what inspired the studio to do the movie: A survey produced a 95 percent hit rate for recognition when people listened to snapping fingers and "The Addams Family" theme music. The deal for The Addams Family pinball was made while the movie was being shot.
Lawlor had the script from the movie in his hands nine months before the movie's debut. "We took all the good stuff we could out of the script," he said. The design team attended the movie's opening in Hollywood. Lawlor said the movie opened with a box office of $55 million for the first week. "We took the pinball and ran with it." The Addams Family was a Bally game. Lawlor explained that Williams had purchased the Bally trade name to make pinball machines but had been unable to sell more than a few thousand of a model. There seemed to be a "spell" over the Bally name. Lawlor said, "After I did Fun House, which was a huge success, I was asked to do a Bally game. There was fear of the Bally name.
I said OK, but I had to be allowed to 'do my thing' with the game. Up until
that time the Bally box was a different package than the Williams package. I
changed that package to be the Williams package. I was told the company would be
happy with 5,000 games sold and we sold more than 21,000!"
As Lawlor explained, Larry DeMar, the programmer for The Addams Family, wanted to do a feature where the flipper flipped by itself and shot the ball into the swamp on the game. The flipper got better and better. DeMar generated a piece of code that was able to modify the behavior of the flipper and it learned to perform this action and improve upon its performance. In The Addams Family, when Thing flips, the game is learning how to do this flip and does it better. The flippers made it look like Thing was flipping from under the playfield.
Lawlor noted that when the Terminator 2 pinball game came out it was called 'the game that came along once in a decade.' Well, it was followed by The Addams Family! After The Addams Family, the company alternated games under the Williams name and the Bally game. The Bally spell had been broken and designers did not know whether their next game would be a Bally game or a Williams game, depending on where it fell in the production cycle. "Everyone who worked on The Addams Family is still in a version of the game business somewhere," said Lawlor. "The talent that was at Williams in the decade of the '90s was staggering."
Lawlor has a theory about why all the great pinball companies in history were family-owned: "The industry has its ups and downs and families are willing to hang in because they love it and it's a craft. A big corporation can't do that." He continued, "Anyone in this business who designs something looks at that product like it is one of their children. You take a year to create this thing, put your own personality into it, and heaven forbid something should happen when you release it because it's like your child is misbehaving. You become attached to the games and they are important to you." Setting records Lawlor said the record in the modern era for the most pinball machines ever made was 20,230 for Eight Ball and its incarnations by Bally.
He noted, "In the first run of The Addams Family we produced in excess of that number. We broke the records. And six months later the company reissued the game as The Addams Family Gold and announced 1,000 serial numbered games made with gold trim and brass plaques. The day the late Joe Dillon made the announcement the games were sold out." (DeMar has the gold edition game with serial #2.) Lawlor estimates that approximately 21,250 The Addams Family pinball games are in existence. Roughly one third went overseas. A number of the games have been shipped back to the United States because the resale value is higher here, said Lawlor. The Addams Family first appeared on the Play Meter Equipment Poll in March 1992 and continues until today. By January 2002 it had garnered the highest number of longevity points for a pinball game (4,131 in January 2002), and until recently had the highest number of longevity points for any game on the chart (that record was broken in January when ICE's Cyclone redemption game reached 4,149 points).
Lawlor would be prime for the "You don't know me" line made famous in credit card commercials because when he travels and people ask about his line of work, all he has to say is, "You would know me from pinball machines. I designed The Addams Family" and everyone knows it. Lawlor commented, "They say, 'the game where the hand comes out!'" "The Addams Family was special because the people who built it were special, and that's not just me. I cannot begin to list all the games and products that this design team touched. Without this kind of talent there are no games and no money to be made by the guy on the street."
Lifetime love of games
Lawlor got an early introduction to the coin-op game business. His dad was a sales representative for Schlitz beer and brought young Pat along with him on Saturday business calls to taverns. Pat received dimes to play the games in the locations. His fascination with the games planted a creative seed for the future game designer. A self-taught programmer, Lawlor started in the amusement business in 1980 with Dave Nutting Associates, an R&D group that was part of Bally/Midway.
Lawlor said, "If you're that excited about doing something and you can
teach yourself, you will probably be a more driven person."
Lawlor receives e-mail from game collectors all over the world, the most recent one from The Netherlands asking about Fun House. "The Internet has made a global community out of anything you're interested in," said Lawlor. He sees the Internet as a tremendous advantage for operators: "With the Internet you can put games up for auction on eBay and make them available to a worldwide group of collectors. Look for used pinball machines on eBay on any given day and you will see what I mean."
(Posted May 14, 2004. Here is a direct link to source article: TAF Pin Article)
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