| Letter from Steve Ritchie about a Europe visit that he did with Scott Slomiani (Matrix) & Peter Piotrowski
Version 1.00 This EMAIL had been sent by Steve on October 31 to WMS Management and Development Lead. It had been leaked by someone formerly employed at WMS and published in August 2026 here: https://github.com/lkoziarz/pinball/blob/main/eurotrip.txt The content is very interesting - it explains why Safecracker and Phantom Haus have been developed by WMS and also the driving force of Pinball2000 may be seen in this text.. TO: NEIL NICASTRO OCT. 31, 1995 FM: STEVE RITCHIE W/ SCOTT SLOMIANY & PETER PIOTROWSKI CC: KEN FEDESNA, LARRY DEMAR, JOE DILLON SUBJ: FACT-FINDING FUNGAME EUROPEAN TOUR Saturday, Oct. 21, 1995 Pete, Scott, and myself arrived in Wimbledon, a suburb of London England. Our agenda on this day was to play coin-operated games in the many pubs, shops and theater lobbies along the "main drag" in Wimbledon. Pinball was not a factor in our obser- vations; on the entire street there was a World Cup Soccer and it was unplugged due to malfunction. We did find fruit machines that were getting a small amount of play. In one pub, we found a new looking BWB machine called Crystal Maze, a health-club themed payout machine, a JPM game called Roller Coaster, an amusement park-themed payout machine, and a payout trivia machine which had questions aimed directly at British players. These fruit machines offered 5 reel spins for 1Pound, and payed out a maximum of 8 pounds. The maximum payout, however, was 4 Pounds in cash, with anything above that paid out in tokens. One bartender told us that the fruit machine law regarding payouts would be modified in the near future to increase maximum payouts to 16 Pounds Scott Slomiany has compiled a document with more complete rules of play for these machines, and can give anyone interested a copy. The machines accepted the tokens it vended as well as a variety of English coin denominations. The tokens were openly accepted at the pub's bar in exchange for food and drinks if the player desired. One feature we noted was that Roller Coaster utilized Flash lamps, a first as far as we know. Since all fruit machines we saw had many bulbs flashing and doing patterns, the games were far more bright and attractive than any pinball machine has ever been. Sunday, Oct. 22 We traveled to London and visited many pubs and arcades. At one seedy arcade, an unplayed Corvette and Star Wars were in the corner of the game room loaded with fruit machines, mostly old. The players were predominately mid-20's, and mostly oriental. We noted that the newer fruit machines (w/ trail games built in), were getting the lion's share of the play. We visited a Namco arcade called Wonderpark, a brightly lit new family arcade. This was a very busy arcade, with many sit-down driving machines. Sega Rally linked-double, a quad Daytona a real Miata-bodied Ridge Racer, 3 Alpine Racers and a Galaxian 3 six-seater were the main attractions. They also had a large Camel Race attraction which was operated by an attendant. All the driving games were busy except a FMS Cruisin' in the middle of the floor. It became obvious to us that linked multiple driving games with non-motion platforms and large screen monitors were the preferred entertainment at all arcades that we visited. We also noticed that all arcades, big or small, and pubs gave patrons the opportunity to SIT DOWN in front of their favorite games, relax, and play until their money ran out or they got bored. This is a significant trend everywhere in Europe. It is interesting to note that games like MK3, WWF, Virtua Striker (a Virtua Soccer game), and other uprights that did not have seating were NOT BEING PLAYED. Virtually all pubs we saw in England have at least 1 or more fruit machines with 8 Pound payout and the limitations as above. Monday, Oct. 23 We departed London and arrived in Hamburg about noon. We met Michael Senglemann and visited the arcades and spielotechs near the Reeperbahn. The first arcade we visited was the El Dorado. While it was never a palace, it never looked worse. Few people were playing games, 1 40ish man playing 2 wall games simultaneously, 3 men in mid-20s playing Johnny Mnemonic, 1 man in mid-20s playing Whodunnit, and one woman playing a flip-card wall machine. 3 fun games were present but unplayed as we arrived. This was mid-day and the arcades were busier at night. We then crossed the street to the Merkur Spielotech which was much cleaner and more modern. At the entrance was a large bilboard informing players of upcoming tournaments including billiards darts, and foosball. There were at least 15 fungames. The newest game was Monte Carlo or Bust, a fun game with a monitor instead of reels. There were 12 positions in the trail, or backglass portion of the game, with significantly fewer bulbs. The rules of the game generally led the player to different casino games the player could stop and play while being driven around town in a taxicab. The graphics were of poor resolution and quality. See Scott's memo for more details on game play. The players present were playing foosball, Addams family pinball, (with the player sitting on a stool), and 1 40-ish man playing a fun game. Once again, even in front of up-right videos, stools were provided so that players could sit comfortably and play. We then visited an arcade in the "bad side of town" on a street called "Rathausstrasse". The name was appropriate. This arcade contained an Alpine Racer, about 15 flip-card poker wall games, and a whole wall of fungames, about a third of which were busy. The Alpine Racer was continously being played as at least two or three spectators cheered the player on. There were about 8 pinball machines, only a Johnny being played. This is when we could see (as pointed out by Michael) a vivid difference between the dull, dimly lit backglasses which were all similar on the pinball machines as compared to the fun games which were at least 3 times brighter due to an abundance of lights and bright, popping colors that only silkscreen inks on glass can produce. We also played a barstool table game based on Parcheesi. The next day at Nova, they also had a Monopoly and a poker version of this table. Our first meeting with Hans and Udo was at dinner that night. They consistantly told us that we should try to incorporate fun game features into pinball machines. Udo also voiced his opinion that we should build a video monitor fun game because our graphics are better than anything that BWB can produce. Hans complained about Williams' inability to be flexible with production, specifically aimed at European regions. Hans also suggested that we make a Bingo machine with multipliers in a fun game size. Hans made comparisons between BWB and Williams, and praised BWB for their flexibility to accept their suggestions addressing their market. We do not seem to care about their suggestions. They suggested that everyone should get together and talk about the problems between Nova and Williams. The conversation then turned to the earnings of fun games in Germany. We found out that Secret Agent and Blues Boys were poor earners. Udo said that the best earning game by a factor of 2X is Monte Carlo Or Bust after four weeks. It was also pointed out that Nova buys 50% of BWB production, which also produces English fruit games. According to George Gomez's information he obtained during his trip last year, BWB had said that they aren't producing any more games for England than in previous years, that all their growth has come from overseas exports. They also complained about the growing complexity of our pinballs, primarily rules. They state that their players are often Turkish immigrants and not geniuses like engineers and do not have university degrees. Even Udo agrees that Olympic Gold, the new BWB fun machine, is too complex for the average player and it's earnings don't compete with Sinbad, a game that has been in the market since March. Hans requested that we develop a bingo game at one point, and asked what happened to the Circus game. He recognized the fact that the product was very expensive, and that it didn't work. He then said that cost was not so important if the game earned well. While Hans and Udo complained about the problems, the dinner/meeting was a success in that all of us left with good feelings for each other and there was a sincere attempt at solving problems from both sides. Tuesday, Oct 24 We arrive at Nova early in the day. Udo took us on a quick tour of the facility. We were then shown to a conference room which contained a line of 6 fungames including Cup Final, Sinbad, Olympic Gold, Monaco GP, Monte Carlo or Bust, and Secret Agent. The best seller so far has been Road Runner. I asked how many of each model were sold and the following information was given: Cup Final - 2500 (in Italy, sales are expected to about 300 machines) Sinbad - 17-1800 expected to go to 2500. Olympic Gold - 600 sold so far, not many more sales expected due to over-complexity. Monaco GP - 600 has performed poorly. Monte Carlo or Bust - 2000 expected sales, could be more. Secret Agent- 200 very poor sales and earnings. One important note than Udo stated: Nova limits the production of these machines so that the market does not become saturated with fungames. I asked about pricing for these games and was told that Monte Carlo was purchased by Nova for $2,600. The other fungames were purchased for $2,100. Hans said that Williams should incorporate fungame features into a pinball game a number of times. He offered a suggestion of a very small pinball playfield that could fit into a fungame cab- inet. Mike Sengelmann suggested that we design the fun games at Williams, but build them in Europe and then Hans explained that this idea would be advantageous to him. He cited the fact that he had to pay $60 shipping + 5% duty to import each unit. When he purchases a game from England, he pays $30 per unit and no duty. Hans mentioned that when he requests changes or special features from BWB, they usually recieve the modified product in 6 weeks. Software changes are made in 2-3 days. Udo reminded us that we should not try to develop true gambling games, but stick with the fungame format, which is entertainment only. Ed Valentine suggested that we build a pinball machine as follows: When you press the start button, a score is immediately awarded to the player and decremented as the player loses points or incremented as the player wins points. He thought that this would shorten the game time of better players, and make the poorer players feel less embarassed about their inability to win a high score; at least they could start the game play with a decent score. Mike Sengelmann suggested that maybe a token that was won could be displayed behind the glass and re-vended into a slot to credit the the game automatically. This would mean no token handling at all. During all of our conversations, Nova complaints about pinball quality were conspicuously absent. After a short meeting with Jens Moeller explaining some of the technical aspects of the operation of the fungame, Mike DiSantos, a Nova subdistributor in Italy began explaining the operation of the fungame in his territory. He told us that the Italians preferred different characters on the reels because they couldn't use fruit according to laws which have since been changed. Mike D. began a 30 minute lecture explaining to us that we should not build fungames. He cited the fact that England has been building them for 20 years, and that we would probably screw it up. I don't know what Mike's real agenda was, but it was obvious to us that Hans sent him in to tell us this repeatedly. He did, however, encourage us to build a video fungame, like Monte Carlo because "you guys are the best at building pins and video". "You should add fungame features to pinballs, because pinball is what you guys do best". Mike D. also mentioned to us that we should never again make a driving game that is limited to only 2 linked units. He (and obviously everyone else we spoke to) insisted that games should be linkable up to 8 units. He requested the input pinouts for Crusin controls on the PCB's. His intent was to make FMS units out of non-moving Crusin games that he owns. He has already converted some games, but inputs to his "movers" come from the steering wheel action that the player provides. The result is clumsy, but works to a degree. Mike D. was pretty adamant about how poorly the Crusin FMS's quality and reliability was, and stated that he had far less expensive "mover" devices that were more reliable than ours. He also gave us some pictures of Crusin units with attractive car body sections that he had fabricated. The body sections were 3/4 scale copies of a newer Corvette. He said that he paid $18K to have the fiberglass molds made. He then talked about how we are forgetting the female segment of the market. Puzzle Bobble adresses this market, and apparently 20K were sold world-wide. At this time, Hans came in putting his coat on and saying goodbye to us. Hans left and we began to pack up to leave. As we were leaving, we couldn't help but notice that there were no pinballs in Nova's showroom. When asked about it, Udo replied that he didn't know why this condition existed. Wednesday Oct. 25 A "free" day for us. We visited the Vegas World arcade and played more fun games. The arcade was not what it used to be. The formerly glitzy place was now shabby and nearly empty, but in fairness, we visited at early evening. An entire "tier" of pinball machines sat unplayed and noticeably dark; their placement was tucked in the back, with the only access to them was across a bridge. This arcade contained a lot of wall machines, but strangely, only three fun machines, a Road Runner, and 2 Cup Finals. We played the German wall games. Playing one machine for awhile, Pete figured out how it worked, which is less complicated than fun games. Pete's assessment of the machines are that they are boring; there is no 'show' when you win a big amount of points. I won a token while playing a fungame, and tried to redeem it for cash. The operator screamed at me, "No money! Only for fun! Put the token back into the machine! I guessed that I would never find out if the tokens were good for money at any location in Germany. Once again, the Sega Rally game was busy, as was the four player linked Sega Daytona. The business at the arcades picked up noticably during the evening. Thursday Oct. 26 We arrived in Paris and checked into our hotel. We met Michael Senglemann and proceeded to PSD. We recieved a tour of their facilities. Their showroom contained a Theater of Magic, Dirty Harry, Jackbot, No Fear, and Indy 500. Johnny Mnemonic was conspicuously absent. There was also a dart machine, a sit-down projection monitor game (that currently was playing a volleyball game, Power Strike 2), a WWF, and two Neo-Geo system cabinets. As PSD employees went about their business, we began to play the pinball games on the showroom floor. We noted that the volumes were turned all the way down on most of the games, and that the No Fear had operational problems. The ball launch did not fire the ball underneath the playfield, and the magnet ramp did not function properly. We requested the new replacement magnet ramp guard and installed it. We also adjusted the ball launch so that the game played properly. We repaired a cut wire that went unnoticed on the showroom Jackbot. This wire was for a column of control lamps on the playfield. The wire was cut by the transformer catch pan. Patrick, the head pinball technician, showed us a fax he recieved from Joe Dillon, which very ambiguously described a modification to improve the ball's velocity up the cross ramp on Dirty Harry. The original complaint of Dirty Harry buyers was that the ball did not have enough power to get all the way up the ramp. Joe's fix recommended the installation of two posts in front of the entrance of the ramp which in theory would partially block weak shots from entering the ramp at all. The poorly written "sales/engineering bulletin" did not state the exact locations of the posts, did not supply a template, and did not specify the type of posts to be used. We were surprised that the sales department was issuing service bulletins at all. We performed the fix to the best of our abilities to demonstrate what the principal of the fix was. It was then that we noticed the holding coils of the flippers in No Fear and Indy 500 produced autoflip regularly. For those of you who don't know, autoflip is a condition that re-propels the ball off of a flipper that is being held up by the player. The ball strikes the flipper, pulls the plunger off the coil stop, and opens the end-of-stroke switch, which then fires the main coil, snapping the flipper back up, and shooting the ball in an unwanted manner. It appears that all games operated in France may have this problem. I believe it to be a problem of low voltage. We experienced this problem in the midday when it was cool outside, meaning that the problem must be more severe in the summer months when the current draw of their power lines is greater. Lights are noticably dimmer and the solenoids do not kick as hard as a game operated in the United States. It became apparent that PSD employees placed the games in their showroom in poor working order; whether or not they knew any better is unclear. I would tend to believe that they were not test-played in the showroom. This presents a poor image of quality to a would-be buyer who I'm sure would be sampling play in PSD's showroom. The PSD techs unpacked a WhoDunnit, and they were getting ready to place it out on location for test. Initially, the technicians were impressed that it was seemingly perfect out of the box. Not even close. We found quite a few problems. Again, a wire had been cut by the transformer catch pan. One of the opto cable connectors was yanked off the driver board when the backbox was lowered in shipping. The flipper interruptor was warped. During the first play, we discovered that the left flipper was sticking in the up position after flipping. After several hours of six technicians (including us), we finally had to replace the whole machanism to eliminate the problem. Dwight reported to us that the WhoDunnit's at the Expo were showing the same symptoms. Apparently, the stop bracket will become magnetized, attracting the plunger. When we replaced the coil stop bracket at PSD the same problem persisted. There is a potential that there is a whole batch of defective coil stops in our production supply. PSD technicians had the following complaints/suggestions to improve our products: On WhoDunnit, the spring metal at the entrance of the up/down ramp is too short, causing some balls to bounce up and not flow up the ramp. The front molding welds break often. They want them to be reinforced. They would like weld nuts on the cabinet interior leg mounting plate instead of the pressed and threaded method that we use now. They are stripping frequently. Things vibrate loose too much. They want more items shock-mounted. We repeatedly heard about how bad our cabinet flipper switches are. We must come up with a new design that really works, and is cost effective for the operator. We consistantly have problems with the gearboxes and motors on all games. The lifetime of the dot matrix display is very short. Partial lighting of dot elements seems to be a common complaint. They request that PC boards on the bottom of the playfields be standardized. PSD wants to fix their own display boards. Is this possible? Soldering on the PC boards, especially in the backbox, is of poor quality. Theater of Magic had a major problem with bad connections on the CPU board. Quality control is non-existant; games have been recieved by PSD with components missing from the PC boards. They have to work on the games too long to get the games ready to sell out of the box. They want better ventilation in the backbox. During the summer months, the games get too hot, lose 5-volt power, and reset by themselves. Most locations do not have air conditioning and ambient temperatures can become extreme. They want better ventilation on our videogames as well. During the summer months, monitors burn out frequently, and the 5-volt supply goes bad. They don't like any of our playfield pivot systems. They especially don't like No Fear's. They would like the ability to tune the flipper coil voltage in software. Capcom does it now. Playfields are too complicated and difficult to service. We must test games at lower voltages in the factory to simulate voltage variances in France. They want us to standardize our monitors in video games. In one shipment of our games, they may recieve games with Hantarex and two different models of Wells-Gardner. They have to carry a bigger variety of spare parts and deal with more confusion on service calls because of this. They request electronic coin accepters on video games as well as pinball. Customers in France are demanding it. Improve video mode sequences in pinball. French players like them and want more of them. They request a way to illuminate the inside of the backbox for technicians to work on boards. PSD recommends that we lower replay to 25%. They request more progressive scoring on repeatable loop and ramp shots. Instead of 10,20,30,40 million, they suggest 10,30,60,100 million, as an example. PSD had a series of problems with games that had bad display roms out of the box. The opto reciever on the Indy 500 turbo unit picks up ambient light. They corrected the problem by placing shrink tubing around it. PSD technicians expressed a need for infrared indicator cards to assist them in diagnosing opto problems. While almost ridiculous to us, they complained about the noise (klak-klak) the flippers and other solenoids make. Apparently, some of their customers complain about ALL noise that pinballs make. They complained about all of our games' brightness on location; games are too dim and are not attractive enough. On Johnny Mnemonic: The screw drive couplings for both X and Y directions come loose. The brace for the hand assembly bends due to the wieght of the magnet carrying the ball. Reinforcing is recommended. The disc in the optos strikes the sides of the opto, causing a failure of the hand assembly. They also complained about the scores being very high and difficult to beat. After the novelty wears off and the scores are too high no one wants to play it anymore. We discussed the possibilty of reintroducing Daily High Scores. They fear that further problems with couplers (Theater of Magic was cited) would detroy the gearbox of the motors that drive the X-Y hand mechanism. Themes that they would like to see are soccer, bowling, basketball, team handball, racing cars (Euro rally races), rugby,. bicycling, and Mortal Kombat as a pinball. They also want more platform games (such as Super Mario Brothers) for video. Driving games with multiple linking are higihly desired. Strategy games like Tetris and Puzzle Bobble are popular, but scarce. The following general remarks were made: The range of scores are too high and frighten the player. Score inflation is way out of hand. Please add a daily high score feature. All games' initial and default high scores are too high. Game play is too technical for the common player. Many high level features are never seen by the player because they are so far out of reach for the average player. They request lighter colors on cabinets for both pinball and video. Friday Oct 26 We continued our conversations with a protracted discussion of PSD's almost desperate plea for a printer and interface mounted to the coin-door of the pinballs they operate and sell. Their plan is to hold tournaments and eject a printed "ticket" with the player's score, location, date and an encrypted numerical verification code. The players would then send in the ticket to PSD who would keep track of results on a computer system, Telenet, which anyone could dial in. Players on a daily or weekly basis could play competitively yet on their own time. Prizes would be awarded for the high score of the day or week. An identical scheme, run by another Cunick division head in France for dart machines has increased the earnings of dart machines twofold. Dart machine sales increased in a big way as well. The people at PSD feel that this printer is the wave of the future. They were begging for help in any form. They were willing to do the software interface themselves or contract out the work to someone else. They said that they were willing to pay Williams to do this software interface work. We then went to a private office at PSD where a new-in the-box fungame was placed to demonstrate the workings of the machine. It was a BWB Cup Final. The French were totally unaware of their existence, it seemed. Mike Sengelmann arranged to have a man who is an expert on French gaming laws present. He stated that games operated in France cannot pay out anything. He thought that if the token dispensing ability was removed from the game, that it could be operated in France as well. He did mention that only 5 free games max could be awarded to the player in any game. Since many "plays" are given for one coin, interpreting this rule for fun games would be vague. The expert also said that the French "gaming police" would take years to do anything about machines that they felt were in violation of French gaming laws, at the street level. We then left PSD, with Patrick the head technician, to tour some Paris arcades. He drove us to a beautiful new arcade on a busy, central street. The arcade's owner, Madam Pesch greeted us and took us on a tour of her game palace. It was actually 2 arcades on the same street separated by a baggage store which she was trying to buy, so that she could have 1 huge, half- block arcade. The old half was super crowded with games and people. There was a row of 9 recent pinball machines, 3 of which were being played. Virtually all other games in this part of the arcade were sit-down games. Even Puzzle-Bobble was in a sit-down with a rear projection monitor. She had a coin-pusher game in the center of the floor, and supposedly, because of her good political connections, held the only license in Paris for token play. She then showed us the new section of her arcade and it was impressive, to say the least. The place was loaded with sitdown games in five huge rooms. Even games that were not designed to be played in sitdown cabinets were installed in them. Rows of Daytonas, Sega Rallys, Suzuka 8's and a Galaxian 3 attraction crowded the rooms. They had one MK3 being played. It was one of the few upright games in the arcade. She is building a downstairs section (also huge) with another Galaxian 3, a virtual reality area, and an "Internet Cafe" where kids can log on and pay by the hour at numerous computer stations. She also was going to install a champagne bar for parents of the patrons. Saturday Oct. 28 We experienced a very bad simulator ride which absolutely thrilled the French riders and pissed me off. The movement was annoying and stupid, and the film that was running was more or less running the "return from space" in reverse from the "take-off' footage. Totally dorky and amateurish in every way. Some French people clapped and whistled when the ride was over. We hated it. Mike Sengelmann felt that the trip was a sales-boosting success, and left for home. Sunday Oct. 29 Departed for the U.S. -- | |||||
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