Pinball Magazine No. 3 (preview)

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Everything about KISS pinball Bally’s heyday

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In-depth interviews:

Jim Patla (Bally) Tom Nieman (Bally) Kevin O’Connor (Bally, Stern) Jody Dankberg (Stern) John Borg (Stern)

and: Zidware’s KISS Pinball Maximus Freddy’s Pinball Paradise Project Pinball Charity Restoration features Ed Robertson (BNL) Jack Guarnieri (JJP) Pinball Creative Pinball Dreams Pavlov Pinball French PCBs Festi’Flip and more 1

MAKE PINBALL DREAMS INTO PINBALL REALITY The Pacific Pinball Museum will create the greatest tribute to pinball’s ingenuity in art and technology with a little help from you.

Donate to the Carnegie Pinball Campaign to help PPM secure a permanent location for the world’s largest collection of pinball machines!

The Carnegie Museum will host Valerie & Richard Conger’s collection of rare and historic games, the Schiess brothers’ unique exhibits on pinball science, murals of pinball art, classes, seminars, exhibitions and more!

Samples from the Valerie & Richard Conger Collection

Above, visitors to the Phaeno Museum of Wolfsburg, Germany, enjoy Augesflippt! a unique PPM exhibition that conveys just a taste of what the new museum could become.

Please make a donation today.

Visit www.pacificpinball.org/donate And help make this dream into a reality.

1510 Webster St. Alameda, CA 94501 www.pacificpinball.org

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倀䠀伀一䔀㨀 ⬀㐀㤀 ⠀ ⤀㔀㄀㌀ 㜀㠀㈀ 㔀 ㌀ 㤀㄀ 䔀ⴀ䴀䄀䤀䰀㨀 匀䄀䰀䔀匀䀀䠀䤀䜀䠀䌀䰀䄀匀匀倀䤀一䈀䄀䰀䰀匀⸀䌀伀䴀

洀椀爀挀漀 瀀氀愀礀昀椀攀氀搀猀

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Editorial Welcome to Issue 3 of Pinball Magazine.

It’s hard to believe it’s been more than two years since Pinball Magazine No. 2 came out. In the meantime a lot of work has been put into what was supposed to become Pinball Magazine No. 3 and 4: a cover story on Python Anghelo’s years at Williams (issue 3) and Capcom and beyond (issue 4). Python, who died in April 2014, was what people call “a character.” With his flamboyant behavior and colorful rants about former colleagues, he was very entertaining for a lot of people – just not necessarily the people he was ranting about. As entertaining as his rants could be, they tend to be less amusing if you have to listen to more than 50 hours of them. After transcribing those 50 hours of conversation with Python, and generating 180 pages of unedited text, I just needed a break.

The break actually started prior to that, which resulted in publishing Santiago Ciuffo’s Pinball book in 2014. At the time I figured the book would take up a few weeks of my time, but in reality that turned out to be months. In the meantime Pinball Magazine also published quite a few online-only publications in the Pinball Magazine format. These free downloadable PDF files featured interviews with pinball designers about their newest games and interviews with other key industry people about current events. See the Pinball Magazine website for these.

So when Stern Pinball announced their new KISS game initially I just wanted to do an interview with designer John Borg and artist Kevin O’Connor and publish these as another Pinball Magazine free PDF download.

However, when interviewing Kevin it seemed only logical to discuss the 1979 Bally KISS game as well since he did that artwork, too. Then I reached out for the designer of that game, Jim Patla, who was kindly willing to participate in an interview as well. That interview covered far more than just the KISS game and it would be a pity not to publish all of it. After doing a quick page count I realized I was getting close to 60 pages. I figured I might as well go to print with these articles and just publish a 60-page issue.

Once Jim discussed his years at Bally, it made sense to back and discuss Kevin’s years at Bally as well. In the meantime I also interviewed former Bally Licensing and Marketing director Tom

Nieman, who was a great addition to what was becoming the “Bally heydey” section.

In between doing these interviews I also was in contact with pinball designer John Popadiuk. John had built a KISS pinball prototype and showed that in public in 2014 and since I wanted to cover as much KISS-related pinball stuff as possible, I was interested in covering that story as well. It turned out that John had some interesting comments on the Bally game as well, which lead me to more people with more contributions.

I also tried to get an interview with KISS themselves, but that turned out to be not as easy. Their recent European tour allowed plenty of opportunities for an interview since I’m based in the Netherlands, but despite the geographical advantage I was told the band would not be doing any interviews. Their management did inform me about certain guidelines that are applicable for magazines reporting on KISS. Basically that meant that I could not secure an exclusive interview on the KISS pinball machine and nothing else.

Luckily I still had some articles that had not yet been published and I came up with a few more interesting angles for regular and new features. Then from one article it made sense to do a tie-in article about something else as well and before I knew it the page count went over 200 pages! And that’s what you’re looking at right now.

It’s been a real delight talking to all the people featured in this issue. Hope you will enjoy reading it as much as I did making it.

Kind regards, Jonathan Joosten Pinball Magazine

Disclaimer: The content you are about to see is unauthorized

by Stern Pinball, Epic Rights and McGhee Entertainment.

This magazine is not endorsed by KISS. 5

Table of Contents

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Specials: Almost

Everything about KISS pinball

Special: Bally’s heydey - 21

Bally’s heyday

In-depth interviews:

Jim Patla (Bally) Tom Nieman (Bally) Kevin O’Connor (Bally, Stern) Jody Dankberg (Stern) John Borg (Stern)

Who’s working on what? - 9 Feedback - 18 Extra ball - 19

and: Zidware’s KISS Pinball Maximus Freddy’s Pinball Paradise Project Pinball Charity Restoration features Ed Robertson (BNL) Jack Guarnieri (JJP) Pinball Creative Pinball Dreams Pavlov Pinball French PCBs Festi’Flip and more 1

Interview with Bally pinball designer Jim Patla - 21 Foreign games based on Jim Patla designs - 42 Pinball artist Kevin O’Connor’s years at Bally - 50 Bally Pinball’s marketing man: Tom Nieman - 82 Catching up with Roger Sharpe - 93 A closer look at Bally’s KISS - 95 Rarities: Bally’s KISS prototypes - 99 Mambelli’s EM KISS conversion kit - 104 Custom restorations: Jack Shields - 106 Custom restorations: Steve Wallander - 112 Pinball art: The Destroyer painting - 116

Special: Zidware’s KISS Pinball Maximus - 119

Colophon Pinball Magazine is a non-periodical, glossy, magazine publication, largely focusing on people who play, or played, an important role in the development of pinball, their work, the promotion of pinball, and/or other forms of support for pinball.

Managing editor Jonathan Joosten editor@pinball-magazine.com Copy editors Eric J. Kos Paul Rubens Pinball Magazine online www.pinball-magazine.com www.facebook.com/PinballMagazine www.twitter.com/PinballMagazine

Photoshop artist Susanne Arnoldussen Proofreading Gisi Cannizzaro

ISBN: 978-90-816266-4-4 This issue of Pinball Magazine would not have been possible without the collaboration and contributions of: Ingrid Milkes (RePlay Magazine), Bonnie Theard (PlayMeter Magazine), Martin Ayub, Susanne Arnoldussen, Eric Kos, Paul Rubens, Gisi Cannizzaro, Jim Patla, Kevin O’Connor, Tom Nieman, Alan Reizman, Mikael Lysti, Federico Croci, Jack Shields, Steve Wallander, John Popadiuk, Tony Ramunni, Harold Balde, Jeremy Packer, Matt Andrews, Roger Sharpe, Jody Dankberg, John Borg, Jay Minor, Creature7, Ed Robertson, Daniel Spolar, Tess Brennan, Giacomo Malvermi, Henrik Maurer, Freddy Pika, Jack Guarnieri, Sylvain Escalle, Rebecca Astley, Phil Keller, Santiago Ciuffo, Stephane Pinck, Pascal Janin, Nicolas Manaud, Timothee Manaud, Olivier Galliez, Chris Ward, Chris Williams, Ciske Vreuls, Carlos Regis, Kevin Wayte and all advertisers. © Pinball Magazine 2015, a publication of Unigroove Publishing Any copy of this magazine issued by the publisher is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than in which it is published and without a similar condition including these words being imposed on a subsequent purchaser.

First published in The Netherlands in 2015 by Unigroove Publishing This entire publication is protected by copyright. All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, scanning, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Pin tale # 2 - 119 Interview with graphic artist Zombieyeti - 125 Interview with graphic artist Matt Andrews - 137 Roger Sharpe’s comments - 142 Interview with pinball designer John Popadiuk - 145

Special: Stern Pinball’s KISS - 148 Stern Pinball joins the KISS army - 148 Game review by Pinball News - 150 Interview with pinball designer John Borg - 161 Interview with pinball artist Kevin O’Connor - 170 Interview with Jody Dankberg - 174 Pimp your pinball - 182 Celebreties and pinball: Interview with Ed Robertson (Barenaked Ladies) - 186 Project Pinball Charity - 192 P1N84LL 8Y NUM83R5 - 197 Essential websites: Pavlov Pinball - 198 Pinball Creative: The art of (restoring) electromechanical pinball machines - 203 Custom games: Pinball Dreams - 209 Museum: Freddy’s Pinball Paradise - 216 Jersey Jack Pinball: The future is looking bright - 222 Showtime: Fest’Flip - 231 Feedback - 238

Special: The French Connection - 240 Part 1: Resurrecting Bally games (Steflip) - 240 Part 2: Resurrecting Gottlieb games (Flippp) - 243 Part 3: Pinball sounds in the remix (PinSound) - 249 Part 4: Pinball Browser and SmartDMD - 253 Show diary - 256 7

update Who´s working on what?

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n these pages you’ll find an overview of what the various pinball machine manufacturers and boutique companies currently are working on.

In some cases it may just be rumors . . .

Stern Pinball: Latest games (and still being produced) are Metallica (2013), Star Trek (2013), Mustang (2014) and The Walking Dead (2014). The newest 2015 titles are Wrestlemania, designed by John Trudeau, , Whizbang’s Whoa Nellie! Big Juicy Melons and KISS, designed by John Borg and featured in this magazine. Right before this issue went to print Stern confirmed their next title to be Game of Thrones, designed by Steve Ritchie. Stern also announced a partnership with Farsight Studios, makers of the popular Pinball Arcade app. Stern Pinball is currently also assembling the remake of Medieval Madness for Planetary Pinball. www.sternpinball.com

Jersey Jack Pinball: The Wizard Of Oz (2013) and the 75th Anniversary Edition of that same game are still being manufactured, while The Hobbit has seen some delays in making it to the production line. After displaying a prototype of The Hobbit at Pinball Expo 2014, the less than positive feedback on the playfield art resulted in new playfield art package, as well as some re-designed elements in the layout.

JJP’s 3rd game will be designed by famed pinball designer Pat Lawlor with artwork by artist John Youssi. David Thiel has been announced as JJP’s sound and music designer. Also see the Jack Guarnieri interview in this magazine. www.jerseyjackpinball.com

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Everything about KISS pinball Bally’s heyday

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In-depth interv

Jim Patla (Bally) ally) Tom Nieman (B or (Bally, Stern) Kevin O’Conn (Stern) Jody Dankberg ) John Borg (Stern

and: us S Pinball Maxim Zidware’s KIS ise ad Par ll Freddy’s Pinba Charity Project Pinball tures Restoration fea L) n (BN tso ber Ed Ro i (JJP) Jack Guarnier ve Pinball Creati s Pinball Dream ll ba Pin Pavlov French PCBs Festi’Flip and more 1

Pinball Magazine No. 3: Specials on Bally’s heyday and KISS-themed pinball machines (Bally, Zidware, Stern) Lots of unauthorized artwork and sketches Also lots of non-KISS related content 260 full color glossy pages “More a book than a magazine” All (ordering) info: www.pinball-magazine.com

special

Pinball designer Jim Patla (left) and pinball artist Paul Faris hold Paul’s original Centaur backglass painting at Pinball Expo

Interview with Bally pinball designer Jim Patla Interview: Jonathan Joosten, Copy editing: Jim Patla, Eric Kos, Gisi Cannizzaro

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im Patla is a former Bally pinball designer who designed more than 40 games during his career, mostly during the 1970s and early ‘80s. His designs include classic games like KISS, Centaur, Playboy, Mata Hari and Silverball Mania, just to name a few. Pinball Magazine contacted Jim to talk about his design of the Bally KISS pinball machine. But Jim had such interesting stories to tell he ended up discussing most of his career at Bally, including quite a few games he designed and many other fascinating topics as well.

PM: Jim, during your childhood and teenage years pinball was not legal in all parts of the United States.

Before you started working at Bally, were you familiar with pinball?

Jim Patla: Yes, I was familiar with pinball because my uncle was in charge of Engineering at Bally. So when we went to his house, he had a pinball machine in his basement. Actually he had Balls-a-Poppin, which was an inspiration for Centaur. So he had a game, my other uncle had a game, and different family members had games because of him. They had a shuffle al-

ley and a pinball machine. When I was a small kid, my parents would go bowling. At bowling alleys I would play the pinball machines, or the claw, or whatever games they happened to have, while my parents were bowling. That’s more or less the way I was introduced to the amusement industry.

I went to a high school that was less than a mile from Bally.

So I started working there after school in 1965, when I was sixteen. Part-time, three hours a day, just playing the games.

All I did was play pinball.

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special drill all the holes for the lights, drill and route all the different details for all the different devices. We would paint the boards with a design that helped illustrate what you were supposed to accomplish. Obviously it was just very straightforward colored artwork. Then we made the plastics to go on the game, then we’d wire the game. That’s what I did in the late ‘60s.

PM: Were you technically educated?

Jim Patla: I was in my sophomore year at a technical high school when I started at Bally. Most of my technical knowledge was picked up on the job. We had fantastic engineers, model makers. If you wanted to learn something they would take the time to teach you.

Here is an example of the standards that we were held to: when we would make the playfield plastics we had to give them to Ted Zale for his approval. He would close his eyes and feel the edges with his fingers checking for burrs, nicks or transitions from a straight edge to a curve. If he found any nick, any imperfection, he would throw them away and make you do them all over again. So everything had to be perfect.

That was the way everything was done. Nobody felt that you were being picked on you were proud to meet the standards that were in place.

Bally’s Balls-a-Poppin from 1956. The game had a unique multiball feature, which inspired Jim years later to design Centaur.

When we painted the whitewoods we would sand between every coat of lacquer. By the time we were done, they looked like custom cars. They were beautiful. It was kind of sad to The playfield of Jim’s first game 4 Queens.

PM: You mean like test playing?

Jim Patla: Yes. The whole purpose of test playing was to figure out how many specials or free balls and the average score you got, so the rules could be modified on the evaluation of that data. We had a board that was adjacent to the machine with a stop watch and a pen on a piece of string. You had a place where you would write the score, the time and the different features that you accomplished. Ted Zale was the main designer at Bally. He wanted a three-ball time and a five-ball time, because some games were operated on three balls, some were on five. You had the stop watch, wrote everything down and continued the game. If there was a skill shot at the top, he wanted to know how often you made those. That’s what I did.

They had a practice at that time where they hired people to play for six months and at the end of that period they would be let go. Because the players would get too good and it skewed the percentages on the games. I was allowed to stay longer than six months because then they put me into disassembling the whitewoods, the playfields. I’d take them apart and reclaim the parts: switches, flippers, slingshots, posts, gates, relays to be used on the next game.

From taking games apart I went to building games. The way we built a new game was to start with a blank board, lay a print of the playfield drawing on top, take a center punch and mark the board. From there, we’d take it to the drill press and 22

pinball art

Pinball artist Kevin O’Connor’s years at Bally Interview: Jonathan Joosten, Copy editing: Paul Rubens, Gisi Cannizzaro, Noelle de la Croix

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evin O’Connor is a well-known pinball graphic artist. His career in pinball started in 1978 at Bally and since then his artwork is featured on over sixty pinball machines, including both Bally’s and Stern’s KISS games. Pinball Magazine caught up with Kevin and discussed his years at Bally as well as the artwork for Stern’s current KISS game. This article also contains elements from Pinball Expo and NW Pinball & Arcade Show seminar recordings.

PM: Kevin, how did you get involved with doing art for pinball machines?

Kevin O’Connor: When and where I grew up, we didn’t have that many Arcades. I lived in the far west suburbs of Chicago, and it was kind of like the wild west out there. This was 1957, 1958. The roads were gravel. We would spend our days in the forest, imagining we were Robin Hood. There was absolutely no supervision. Parents didn’t worry about where you were or when you were coming home. That’s how we grew up.

In the 70’s, after a few art classes in high school and junior college, I was packing boxes at a bookbindery. The foreman came up and we started talking, and I explained I was an artist. They were going to start an Art department upstairs, and that’s how I got started inking with a pen. I was drawing parts for a catalog, nuts, bolts, machine parts.

Finally I got a job at a point of purchase design studio. That’s

where I started with my magic marker renderings. Everything we did, all the designs, were done with magic markers. Mostly we did signs and displays for the liquor industry.

After a while driving into the city became unbearable for my personality. I applied with a competitor in the suburbs, and I got the job. Here I met a young Greg Freres. He was doing production art at the time. We immediately hit it of as we were both musicians, playing in bands. Little did I suspect that Greg would be the drummer in my Rockabilly band The Hipnoz, twenty years later. Not to mention that thirty something years later, we would still be working together, making art that decorates Stern Pinball’s to this day. Greg is currently the Art Director at Stern Pinball, his experience and expertise and our long history of working together help to make projects flow smoothly.

After a while of working at that company with Greg, I started looking around to move on. I answered an ad in the paper.

It didn’t say exactly what it was for, only that it was for the world’s largest manufacturer of coin-operated machinery.

That was very vague. It didn’t say what they did, or what they made, but they were looking for an illustrator which was the avenue I wanted to pursue. I called them and was quickly connected to Paul Faris. I found out that the job was illustrations to decorate Bally pinball machines. Paul was running a very small art department at the time. It was Dave Christensen, Mary Beth Bush, Margaret Hudson, and himself.

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pinball art

The backglass for Strikes & Spares. On the next page the Strikes & Spares playfield for which Kevin o’Connor did the playfield plastics.

Strikes & Spares Bally, 1978, 12,820 units, Design: Gary Gayton, Art: Kevin O’Connor, Dick White

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o I went there and Paul took a look at my portfolio.

Some things that caught his eye were some examples of the sword and sorcery type of art that I was a fan of. One artist in particular was Frank Frazetta. He did a lot of covers for creepy monster magazines, as well as sword and sorcery artwork. I had a few pieces in there that Paul recognized and he, himself, was a fan as well. So I was hired there as an illustrator.

We were in a very large area that also housed the Slot Machine designers and the people who were doing art for slots.

We were over in a little corner, and there were only five of us.

I learned a lot from Paul and Dave. Dave was a very colorful

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character. Looking over his shoulder watching him work fascinated me. I watched his inking techniques, I watched him create Mata Hari and a lot of other games. I also watched Paul create Evel Knievel.

They told me that the first game I would be working on would be a bowling game, so I should just come up with sketches, or a sketch of whatever idea I had for a bowling game. Naturally, looking back in history and remembering pinball machines from when I was younger, I knew they had girls on them.

My first step was that I presented them the sketch of the backglass. They approved that, and I started inking with just a

“This is flat out the best pinball photography I’ve ever seen published.” - Charlie (Spooky Pinball) “This photography sets a new standard in pinball publications. Fantastic!”

– Bruce “This book is a MUST for any fan of Pinball art.” - Eric “The photos are superb and very original.” – Tony

PINBALL Santiago Ciuffo

208 pages Hardcover coffeetable photo book

3 languages: English, French and German

For more info visit: pinball-magazine.com 237

(p)in business

Reprinted with permission of Replay Magazine

Bally Pinball’s marketing man: Interview with Tom Nieman Interview: Jonathan Joosten Copy editing: Paul Rubens

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om Nieman was Bally’s VP of Marketing and was involved in licensing popular pop culture brands featured on Bally’s pinball machines.

By doing that Tom sort of created the concept of licensing proprietary branded properties for the coinop amusement and arcade industry.

His efforts paid off and Bally’s pinball sales increased by more than ten times over a period of four years in the late ‘70s.

Tom was closely involved in the development and promotion of the 1979 KISS pinball machine, which turned out to be a milestone game for Bally. He was also involved in other licensed music and pop culture themed pinballs. Pinball Magazine caught up with Tom to talk about his years at Bally Pinball.

PM: Tom, you started at Bally in 1972 and went on to become its licensing manager. How did that come about?

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Tom Nieman: The whole concept of licensing came about when I was stuck in the sales office selling used equipment.

Paul Calamari sold the new stuff and whatever was left at the end of a run they gave to me to peddle anywhere I could.

I found that interesting and educational, except it left me with too much time on my hands – I was bored and looking for ways to improve my job and my company. I was aware that there was a Tommy album coming, and I knew there was also a movie. So I spent some time on the phone trying to track down who was doing the movie, what studio. Of course I didn’t know anything about licensing but I learned that on the fly.

I discovered that Columbia Pictures was the distribution arm in the U.S. and a Mr Barry Lorrie was in charge of all the licensing. It took me weeks of calling to get through to him and finally get my chance to pitch my idea of a Tommy licensed pinball machine by the company that’s actually mentioned in the song “Pinball Wizard”: Bally.

Lorrie told me to meet him in New Orleans at a Columbia

(p)in business pitch session to field sales people. So I met Lorrie, pitched my promotional idea, struck a deal and we co-promoted the pinball at premieres in ten cities in the U.S. I earned my doctorate in licensing overnight!

PM: That resulted in Bally making Wizard! It features Roger Daltrey and Ann Margret in the artwork, as well as some other references from the movie.

Tom Nieman: Yes. So Wizard! turned out to be a success.

Ironically my eldest son’s name is Tommy. He still thinks to this day that I did that first licensed game because of him.

Bally gave me a Tommy machine as a “thank you” bonus and I kept it through the years.

When it was over I thought I would be going back to selling more used equipment. But my boss, Ross Sheer, came to me and said, “What’s next?” I remember thinking, “What do you mean ‘What’s next’?” And he said, “You’re going to be doing this on a regular basis, so find us another license.”

To me the star of the Tommy movie was Elton John and his character. Since I had made those connections I just went back to Elton’s management and got a hold of Elton, and they were anxious to do something.

Just recently, I had the game fully restored and gave it to my son and his four children to enjoy. The game is in a game room in their home and is being enjoyed by the next generation.

The backglass for Bally’s Capt Fantastic game, artwork by Dave Christensen. Below the backglass for the home version. The art on the home version and album cover was done by Alan Aldridge.

Photo credit: Classic Playfield Reproductions

Backglass of Bally’s Wizard! Artwork by Dave Christensen.

When I gave my son that game I also gave him a framed piece that I’ve made over the years. It had the Pinball Wizard T-shirt, the belt and the buckle and about half a dozen photos from the world premiere. They had me running around getting that T-Shirt autographed by the entire cast: Daltrey, Moon, Townsend, Entwistle, Ann Margaret, Eric Clapton, plus Robert Stigwood the famous English producer. Too many of them have now passed away. As I said, this piece of Tommy memorabilia is hung next to the game. It’s a lot of fun to pass this on.

One day my son had a guy over at his house, who was some sort of a collector. He worked at one of the studios in L.A. He looked at the framed piece and he said, “I’ll offer you $20,000 for that right now.”

PM: He may want to put it up for auction some day.

But to get back to your job at Bally,Wizard! was a hit!

Tom Nieman: Wizard! skyrocketed sales.

The most bizarre thing is that Capt. Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy is a mix of two brands. It’s the visual of Elton in the movie and the name of an album that has nothing to do with the movie: Capt. Fantastic. Nobody noticed that though.

Or at least nobody brought it up at the time. I just kept pushing and I loved the visuals that Dave Christensen did - and we just stuck with the name Capt. Fantastic and married two unique and totally different licenses and put it into one game.

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restoration

Custom restorations part 1: Interview with Jack Shields Jonathan Joosten, Paul Rubens

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ack Shields may not be a very common name to a lot of pinball enthusiasts, but his work may be more familiar with many as photos of it circle around on the internet. Jack was probably the first to restore a Bally KISS pinball machine and upgrade the cabinet with his own artwork.

Where others may have touched up the original stencil art, or put new decals of that side art on the game, Jack went full color and beyond. Pinball Magazine talked to jack about his KISS pinball restorations and more.

PM: Jack, first of all, how did you get into pinball?

Jack Shields: The love for pinball. When I was a kid we took a lot of family trips where we drove up from the middle of the United States to the East Coast and that included a lot of stops in hotels. One of the things that my father loved to do 106

was go down, hit the bar and hit the hotel arcade. Back then, in the ‘70s, you had nothing but electromechanical games, so everything was pretty much pinball machines.

It started out as a bonding experience between me and my father. That’s how the love for pinball machines started happening. I got my first pinball machine for my 14th birthday, which was a Bally Mata Hari. I immediately started tinkering with it!

PM: Nice. And how did you get into restoring pinball machines?

Jack Shields: I started out by doing video arcade games and I was pretty heavy into that. I did two good size warehouse raids in the early ‘90s. A pinball machine that I picked up along the way was a Gottlieb Black Hole. Everybody always said how they hated working on these games. That particular machine got me intrigued. My first Black Hole is kind of what hooked me on the restoring end of it.

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pin tales

KISS The Pinball Maximus: The game that never made it to KISS collectors Story: Jonathan Joosten, Copy editing: Noelle de la Croix, Erik Kos

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t was the weekend of April 12 and 13, 2014. A few days after the death of pinball artist and designer Python Anghelo. The annual Midwest Gaming Classic show was scheduled to be held at the Sheraton Milwaukee Brookfield Hotel in Brookfield, Wisconsin. Besides pinball this show also featured arcade video games, home video game consoles, computers, table top gaming, crane games, collectible card games, air hockey and whatever else they could set up. In the previous years, the show had proven to be a very wellattended show, with a lot of interesting seminars. Being held somewhat near Chicago, traditionally the epicenter of the pinball industry, it allowed many Chicago-area-based pinball industry people to visit the show, or in case of some designers, to showcase new products.

It was at this show that pinball designer John Popadiuk introduced KISS The Pinball Maximus, the ultimate KISS-themed pinball that never would see the factory floor.

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pinball art The way it basically works is that they shoot these reels and they literally have like five minutes to get someone’s attention who’s sitting behind a desk and doesn’t really care. So I think the idea was that this would be something that would be possibly favored because Gene Simmons had had his show, I believe on the same channel, and because it works well with pinball.

PM: And the huge following of KISS as well?

Jeremy Packer: Oh, no question. I’ve been told by many people that John, by showing that game, helped Stern to work on their game in some way, shape or form. I don’t know if that’s true or not. I don’t know the timing of everything.

PM: The story as I know it is that John showed the game in public and mentioned something about how he had built it to show KISS what his ideas were, in order to get their approval to go ahead.

Jeremy Packer: I can actually verify that. After I finished my part of it John occasionally popped in and let me know that he was having a Skype call with the Gene Simmons camp and another party. So he was having discussions with people, so that makes perfect sense.

PM: Then two months after showing a KISS foamcore prototype game in public John was told to stop working on his game as Stern had secured the KISS license.

Jeremy Packer: Well, here’s the good thing out of all of this. At least I can say I had a hand in it being created, right? [Laughing] PM: So did you see the new Stern game?

Jeremy Packer: I just looked it up. I’m not the type of person that will go: “Oh, it’s less-than, or whatever.” It’s a different style than my work – but that’s what’s rad about it. It’s not the way that I would have approached it.

There are some crossover things.

This full color playfield is still very different than what was shown in public: no spinning Gene head in the center and the popbumpers are not placed as an X-shaped group of four.

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game review

KISS Stern Pinball, 2015, available in Pro, Premium and Limited Edition model

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s Pinball Magazine is about the people that make pinball happen, the magazine does discuss games with the people involved in the design, but it usually does not review games. As Pinball News does a far better job in writing reviews than Pinball Magazine ever could, we asked Pinball News editor Martin Ayub to allow Pinball Magazine to publish a large summary of Pinball News’ in-depth review of Stern’s KISS. Although still in-depth this summary is far less detailed and containing less photos than the full version, which is available online on http://www.pinballnews.com/games/kiss/index4.html. In this summary however some photos have been added to indicate the visual differences between the Pro and Premium and LE model.

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pinball design

Pinball designer John Borg holding the back panel in place on the final version of the KISS whitewood

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Photo credit: Jody Dankberg

pinball art

Kevin O’Connor continued: KISS II Continued from page 81

Stern Pinball, 2015, Design: John Borg, Art: Kevin O’Connor

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But it’s a really good job, with fun people. I’m designing online slot machines. There’s a lot of new technology to keep up with. That’s one of the tough parts, but I’ll hang in there as long as I can.

PM: Kevin, how are you.

Kevin O’Connor: I’m fine. I had a very busy winter. I took a full-time job about a year ago and for the first time in thirty years I worked outside of my studio.

The first year had a steep learning curve. I’m feeling things smooth out a little bit, but technology doesn’t stand still. Everyday I’m learning something new in the online slot world.

Constantly changing ways to generate extra revenue, selling extra coins. There’s a lot of online advertising connected with it and that has all sorts of new parameters that you need to get used to. So it doesn’t really stand still, it keeps moving forward.

fter Bally Midway Kevin O’Connor did pinball a lot of pinball artwork for Data East, Williams, Sega and Stern Pinball. These days Kevin is still working with Stern Pinball, assisting with art packages of new games. Stern’s KISS is Kevin’s most recent game. Pinball Magazine caught up with Kevin to hear his comments on working on that game.

PM: How did that go for you?

Kevin O’Connor: Well, it was a rough winter. Rush-hour driving every single morning on my way to work and again on the way home was a new experience for me. The weather in Chicago can be on the rougher side, so it was different.

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PM: So doing a new pinball package must have been refreshing since you’re very familiar with that?

Kevin O’Connor: Yes. I actually worked previously for IGT, the slot machine giant based in Reno, Nevada. I worked for them for a long time, where I did a lot of concept work. They would say, “We want to show management what a machine

mods

Photo credit: Creature7

Love Gun girls (Creature7)

Photo credit: Pinballsupernova.com

22. Cliffy’s Back stage pass scoop protector (Passionforpinball.com)

Photo credit: Creature7

27. Detroit Rock City sign and Ace figure

Photo credit: Steigerpijp

Custom painted Gene head (not for sale)

Photo credit: Mantis Amusement

Back stage pass scoop protector (Mantisamusement.com)

Photo credit: Sspruch.de

Photo credit: Pinball Life

11. K-I-S-S letter seperator (Pinball Life)

Photo credit: Jay Minor

21. Spinning disk protector (diy)

Photo credit: Mezel Mods

Illuminated logo (MezelMods, not for sale)

Photo credit: Jay Minor

6. Smaller Superband rubber ring at ramp entrance

Photo credit: Sspruch.de

2. Mylar playfield protectors for Bally’s and Stern’s KISS (Sspruch.de)

Photo credit: Pingraffix Photo credit: Creature7

Speaker grill print suggestion

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Photo credit: Pinball Life

4” Axe guitar (PinballLife.com)

Pro Pinblades (also available for LE. Pingraffix)

celebrities and pinball

Photo credit: screenshots from the “Silverball” Pinside music video

Barenaked Ladies: Tyler Stewart, Kevin Hearn, Ed Robertson, Jim Creeggan

Barenaked Ladies: Interview with Ed Robertson Interview: Jonathan Joosten, Copy editing: Eric Kos, Gisi Cannizzaro

Barenaked Ladies is a Canadian rock band that has been around since the late ‘80s and has sold many millions of records. Perhaps best known for their television theme song for The Big Bang Theory, the band consists of Jim Creeggan (vocals, bass), Ed Robertson (lead vocals, acoustic and electric guitars), Kevin Hearn (vocals, guitar, keyboards, accordion) and Tyler Stewart (vocals, drums). Lead singer Ed Robertson is quite the pinball enthusiast, which influenced the band to release their latest album, called Silverball, in June this year. The “Silverball” title song on their latest album is a metaphor for love using pinball references. Not only is the artwork on the album pinball themed, but the band also shot two pinball-themed videos. For the Pinside community they recorded a video for “Silverball” in lead singer Ed Robertson’s private game room. For the music video of “Say What You Want” the band was placed inside a Barenaked Ladies-themed pinball machine.

To promote the new album the band has been touring the U.S. and Robertson did a lot of media interviews.

Besides promoting the new album to traditional mainstream media, Ed also appeared on podcasts of Coast 2 Coast Pinball and Spooky Pinball.

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As it can be quite a challenge to get certain rock stars that appear on pinball machines to talk about the game, Pinball Magazine was pleased to talk to a star who actually enjoys pinball and who was more than happy to discuss the hobby.

PM: Ed, it was rather easy for me to contact you, as you ordered Santiago Ciuffo’s Pinball book last year from the Pinball Magazine web shop. Thanks for doing that.

Ed Robertson: You’re welcome. I think it’s a beautiful book. I had to have it.

PM: Glad to hear you like the book. Since we’re going to be talking about your passion for pinball, let’s start with when you played pinball for the first time.

What do you remember about that?

Ed Robertson: Well, I was born in 1970. During my independent years when I started riding my bike to the local plaza, the arcade was the main destination. My local plaza, which was maybe a five-minute bike ride from my house, had two full-on arcades and probably three convenience stores with standup videogames in them. Both arcades had a back section with maybe fifteen to twenty pinball machines each and a front

restoration

Giacomo Malvermi (right) of Pinball Creative and Henrik Maurer of Pinball Dreams work together on high-end EM restorations

The art of (restoring) electromechanical pinball machines Text and photos: Paul Rubens This article is an updated and expanded version of an article originally published on pavlovpinball.com

There’s a small industrial unit in deepest South London that’s filled with pinball treasures. To find it you have to locate the right residential street and spot an old black iron gate. If it’s not locked you can head down an unpromising alleyway until you get to a wooden door. Only then do you get a hint that you’re on the right track: the door has been painted to look like a giant Bally Fireball backglass.

Henrik Maurer and the staff from his company, Pinball Dreams, who are responsible for repairing and repainting playfields and restoring backglasses.

This is the entrance to the workshop of Pinball Creative, where proprietor Giacomo Malvermi brings old and worn out electromechanical (EM) pinball machines from the period 1958-1979 and restores them to their former glory. Malvermi, 53, is an ex-shipping salesman, and his love for pinball is so strong that it’s almost palpable.

So it should come as no surprise that some of his restoration projects end up being auctioned at Christie’s, the fine art auction house more accustomed to selling works by Picasso and Monet than the products of Chicago pinball manufacturers. In the last two years Malvermi has sold five machines at Christie’s, including a rare EM Mata Hari that went under the hammer for £12,000 ($19,000, 16,500 Euros).

“The idea I have is to restore pinball machines from the period I think is the golden age back to the condition they were in when they were made,” he says. “My passion is restoring things and making them beautiful.”

To do this he works closely with German restoration expert

He firmly believes that classic pinball machines should be played, but he also appreciates them as extraordinary works of art: exquisite playable period pieces from the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s.

That’s quite a sum for an old EM, but Malvermi points out that restoring it to the immaculate state it was sold in took hours of dedicated work. “It does sound like a lot of money but there’s a lot of work to be done if you are going to restore it properly. If you don’t mind taking short cuts then anyone can 203

custom games cals on this game are also different than the original ones.

We also completely converted a Tommy pinball machine for him. Franz made all the artwork, like a new backglass and side art, for that game. I think that game looks really stunning.

Above: Custom White Water Ice Edition.

Below: Front view of the custom Tommy pinball machine.

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Above: Side art for the custom Tommy pinball machine.

Below: Summerbreeze, a custom re-themed Earth Shaker.

Pinball Magazine No. 3: 260 pages!

In-depth specials: Bally’s heyday, featuring Jim Patla on his career at Bally, Kevin O’Connor on his years at Bally, Tom Nieman on Bally’s marketing and Alan Reizman on Bally solid-state prototypes.

Zidware’s KISS Pinball Maximus prototype, featuring artists Matt Andrews and Zombieyeti.

Stern’s KISS, featuring pinball designer John Borg on his new KISS design, Jody Dankberg on Stern’s marketing, mods for your KISS game.

Non-KISS related content: Ed Robertson (Barenaked Ladies), Project Pinball Charity, Jack Guarnieri (JJP), Pinball Creative (UK), Pinball Dreams (Germany), Pavlov Pinball, French PCB’s, Festi’Flip, Freddy’s Pinball Paradise and more.

All (ordering) info: www.pinball-magazine.com

museum

Freddy’s Pinball Paradise: Interview with founder Freddy Pika Interview: Jonathan Joosten, Copy editing: Eric Kos, Gisi Cannizzaro

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chzell, Germany is a small town near Frankfurt where nothing much seems to be happening at first glance. Pinball enthusiasts may want to take a second look, however, as a former supermarket there has been transformed into Freddy’s Pinball Paradise. With 170 pinball machines set up, the location proved to be a perfect setting for the 10th International Flipper Pinball Association (IFPA) Pinball World Championships in 2013. But there is more: Freddy’s is also the European distributor for Jersey Jack Pinball (JJP) and selling new Stern Pinball games as well. On top of that they have an online pinball parts store. So PM had plenty of reasons to sit down with Freddy Pika and his translator Hagen Krentz after the successful IFPA 10 event. This interview is from 2013 but was recently updated to address some interesting events that took place in the mean time.

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PM: Freddy, you have a very impressive collection consisting of the latest Stern games, most of the popular games from the 1990s, a nice selection of known and rare 1980s games and a bunch of electromechanical games, too. When did you start collecting, and how did it get this big?

Freddy Pika: I started working with pinball machines and collecting them in 1975, but I quit in the mid ‘80s. In the early ‘90s I started collecting again. I was actually looking for a Bally Fireball. On my way to finding that game I came across a lot of other games that I just could not pass on. That’s how the collection grew so big.

PM: At some point you decided to open up this location, Freddy’s Pinball Paradise. What’s the story behind that?

Freddy Pika: Actually it’s a space thing. It always is with pinball machines. I built my house and below my basement is another basement where I was planning to have ten pinball

showtime

Photo credit: Santiago Ciuffo

Photo credit: Santiago Ciuffo

Photo credit: Santiago Ciuffo

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PINBALL

SANTIAGO CIUFFO

Argentinean photographer Santiago Ciuffo has captured the Argentinean pinball scene in a wonderful series of photos. PINBALL, a 208page hardcover coffee table book, contains his best work. The fullpage photos in this book mostly focus on bingo and pinball machines manufactured between the mid ‘50s and mid ‘80s by companies like Bally, Williams, D. Gottlieb and some rare European manufacturers.

Besides giving an inside look on pinball in Argentina, PINBALL also showcases the often forgotten art on pinball machines. Ciuffo’s eye for detail is shown in photos of games with artwork by artists like Roy Parker, George Molentin, Gordon Morison, Doug Watson, Christian Marche, Paul Faris, Greg Freres, Kevin O’Connor and others.

The international edition of PINBALL features text in English, French and German. The book comes with a special 80-page supplement Issue of Pinball Magazine, which includes an interview with Ciuffo in twelve languages and photos that are not in the book.

Visit www.pinball-magazine.com for all (ordering) info, reviews, feedback and more. PINBALL may also be available at your favorite pinball parts supplier, barcade and / or pinball museum.

www.pinball-magazine.com

the french connection

Nicolas (left) and Timothée and their PinSound board

PinSound: Pinball soundtracks in the remix Interview: Jonathan Joosten, Copy editing: Eric Kos, Gisi Cannizzaro

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he third French Printed Circuit Board manufacturer we’ve interviewed is a company called PinSound, which is run by two brothers: Nicolas and Timothée. The PinSound board is not just a replacement soundboard. PinSound enables the owner to use custom sounds in their pinball machine. The result could be an Indiana Jones or Terminator 2 game where the synthesized background music is replaced by the orchestral soundtrack from the movie. But it also allows owners to upload their own updated versions of the game’s music and speech. This resulted in a growing online community where Pin-

Sound users exchange their own sound packages for specific games.

Pinball Magazine editor Jonathan Joosten met Nicolas and Timothée first at Festi’Flip in 2014. Not only did they have a booth at the show floor, but they also had twelve pinball machines set up in a separate room. All of the games were equipped with PinSound board and headphones only (all speakers were muted). This formed quite a contrast with the show floor: a quiet room with the only noises being the mechanical sounds.

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www.pinball.co Bally parts Williams parts Gottlieb parts Capcom parts Alvin G parts Original WMS and IPB stock Replacement Ramps Wide Range of Used parts All at great prices Pinball Spare Parts Australia Pty Ltd Factory 6, 176 Canterbury Road Bayswater North, Victoria 3153 Australia P 613 9720 6422 F 613 9720 7344 E orders@pinball.co W pinball.co