What? no video clip?

here you go, for those that don't know.

Gene is a character, no doubt, but it might be a good deal. For those of you going to check it out, at worst you'll have an interesting day or weekend of stories. I'm *so* glad that I went to Gene's warehouse when he was selling all of the parts a couple years ago.

The 180+ games and the "priced list" on the other page are not related. It seems that there are two separate lists and then some stuff not on either list like the BBB's. I don't see anyone sending a serious offer via fax not knowing Gene or any other details or both.

Here are a few images from one of the buildings back in 2006.

http://www.pinsane.com/pinorama/events/GENE_06/qt/index.shtml

Here are pics of the roadtrip we made to the IPB sale a few years ago. Gene was nice enough to give us a tour of all his buildings and his collection. While he has some rare and one of a kind games, he wouldn't let us turn any of them on. You can only imagine what happens to a game when it sits for years with little heat and no AC.

http://www.pinballmadness.net/collections/main.php?g2_itemId=17243

What the hell, if I were close enough, I'd at least go check them out.

Thanks for the pics. That looks like it was a fun trip!

Looks better than I had imagined.

My offer still stands. If anyone buys all these and wants free labor, I only live 3 hours away and would be happy to make the trip down to Blo-No.

I wonder if this is to pool more money towards Kingpin or reduce some of his collection for family reasons (estate)?

Gene personally told me last year he sold WB.

I played his now-sold WB in Southern California last weekend. Also took a few flips on the Pin2K Playboy I never knew existed. I personally despise Pin2Ks, but Wizard Blocks is a blast! Waaaaaay more enjoyable than RFM or the jarjarfest!

Is there a possibility the new owner will pursue getting WB completed and work out deals to get a small run produced?wishful thinking

I hope Gene does well with the sale. Downsizing is a great way to move forward and focus on fewer projects. I would love to see IPB concentrate on getting out more quality playfields.

*GASP* Dispise p2k? HOW? It was the greatest upgrade to come to pinball since they mounted flippers at the bottom. Yes EP1 sucks. But it was first step. RFM isn't bad. And that says a lot coming from someone who doesn't care for AFM.

It really wasn't anything new. Look up Baby Pac-Man, and Caveman. People at the arcades just viewed them as pins trying to act as video games, and left them alone.

P2K was clearly revolutionary. It just never got the time to mature. Imagine if you judged all pinball by the first two games any company released?

Like WOZ & Hobbit?

Earnings reports from the time would say otherwise.

It's just a taste thing! Dagnabbit, people in pinball get so pissy when you don't like everything THEY like!

I didn't get this impression, but who knows. I can't imagine what it'd take to do a run of Wizard Blocks; I get the feeling that the new WB owner just wanted to make a nice home for it and give it a venue where it'll be well-protected. He had a lot of show-piece games; I was just psyched that he let me play them.

Then why didn't they make more vid/pin games?

Seems to be the logical conclusion to the "innovation+success=make more" equation...

They arn't the same at all. One is half video game half pinball. That's not what P2k is at all. P2k is bacially a programmable hologram toy that has endless possiblities. So much more than just watching the ball go up and down the ramp. Wayyy different than Caveman or baby pac.

ANd molly, I wasn't getting pissy. I know you like more old school stuff, I was just giving you shit.

Any idea if he bought all of the WizBlocks kits?

I would love to find one and it appears that Gene originally had quite a few in various stages of development?

I've always heard that EP1 and RFM got smoked in earnings by South Park and such. no idea if that was the case back in 99, I can report that our arcade has all 3 and south park earns what the two,pin2k games do combined.

You know that. I know that. Joe Public does not. All they see is something that looks like a video game and a pinball machine had some kind of unholy offspring and they never fully bought into that kind of a thing. Ever.

The arcade space has a LONG history of pinball machines trying to branch out and creep over into the video game spaces. These kind of machines were meant to blur the lines to the point where fans of each camp would hopefully cross over to the other side and try out their kinds of amusement. By the end of the '90's and into the 2000's, with what few arcades were left, you'd be hard pressed to find a stand-alone arcade that had pinball machines, of any kind.

Truer words have never been spoken on this site.

Well, I don't think WOZ is revolutionary. I've never said anything to that effect. I don't find anything innovative about the game. Putting a screen in the head is not new. What other part of the game is "revolutionary?" The only pinball machine I've seen that might fit that description right now is Metamorphic's P^3, and IMO I still think P2K is a better design. I still really like P^3 and what they're trying to do though and I think it's possible if they step up the software, they could create something that treads all-new ground. We'll have to see.

I have not yet played WOZ, so I can't comment on how good (or lack thereof) the machine is. I am hopeful however, based on what we've seen and been told and who is on the design team. I see nothing wrong with being hopeful, but you won't find me amongst those saying any game that I've never played before is "the bestest." However, I do think it's pretty obvious the game is going to be extremely well made. There's reason to be excited and hopeful about WOZ. But until the game hits the streets and I get playtime on it (and hopefully the software is solid), I'm going to reserve any judgement.

Gene didn't sell all the WB stuff, just the working prototype I believe.

In that case...

If anyone goes down to look at this lot of games please let me know.
I would like any sort of wizard blocks pf. From the pics mr kelly shared it appeared Gene had at least 5 different pfs that were populated.

Gene wanted $25,000 for each playfield, at the time. They all had nasty white fuzz growing on them from sitting in storage.

yea the WB playfeilds were in sad shape. Rusty like crazy on the bottom. Each one missing something different from the other. They wern't 25k tho. I know someone who was working with Gene on buying them all. But it wasn't worth it in the long run, due to the amount of damage and missing parts to try and make it happen.

From what I gathered, Gene sold this gentleman the fully working whitewood and four additional playfields, which I believe leaves just one populated playfield out in the world.

yikes... well 25k for anything is way out of my price range.

Hopefully the gentleman that scooped them all up has some intentions of bringing it out to the world in a bigger way. If he has $ to drop on all that at crazy prices, maybe he has enough to fund Pat Lawlor to finish the project up.

Not to belabor my point, but here's some more info:

From: http://www.pinball2000.de/wb_story.html

"Was Pinball 2000 living up to the expectations of the people with the control? Not the players, not the operators, not the designers. The control was with the "top brass" who were looking at the bottom line."

Pat Lawlor-
"The basic concept of the game was one where the game play mechanics had you knocking down a little brick or block wall. There had been many video games where that happened. My feeling was that since we were trying to integrate a video into a pinball machine, we'd try to integrate a game mechanic that everybody understood right away. They'd walk up to it and they'd just want to break up parts of the wall."

Also, here's a great site of a guy who's making his own Wizard Blocks:

http://www.specialpinball.com/html/wizard_blocks.html

He's also made an Addams Family widebody and some other amazing stuff.

yea, that guys stuff is amazing. I would love to play that widebody TAF.

That was TheKorn, and if either Kingpin or WB gets done by Gene, I'll sit next to TheKorn and do another "pigs fly" video with him.

As for this sale, everything worth buying has been sold. You'd be better off throwing your $50K into the air and hoping those pigs catch it and turn it into gold stool. Better ROI anyway.

Just one guy's humble, tongue in cheek, opinion.

--
Rob Anthony
Pinball Classics
http://LockWhenLit.com
Quality Board Work - In Home Service
314-766-4587

I totally missed this but...

What this was saying wasn't that it wasn't living up to anyone's expectations... it specifically wasn't living up to the expectations of the upper brass at Williams who decided to kill it off. What those expectations were, we don't really know.

Again, earnings reports of the time would tell you that they did.

Maybe by you this was true, but it wasn't around here. All of the standalone arcades had at least one or two pins in them too. For the most part, most small locations in something else had three vids, a pin and a crane game. Otherwise, where were operators putting these machines? There aren't stand alone pinball parlors out there.

PB2K died for a few different reasons, and without going into tons of detail, the biggest reason was that to get the stock valued the best, they needed to ditch the tiny pinball division. Why didn't Stern hop into this market immediately afterward? Because of a few things - there was no history behind how long PB2K's earnings would be, the start up of that system was a huge investment that Williams made and Stern did not have the rights for, and South Park earned like a monster after it came out, proving that traditional pins could still earn.

I think that Gary and company are concerned about making sure that the 'iconic' pinball machine is part of their sale. If you glance and see a Stern machine, you pretty much instantly know what it is if you're over the age of 10, even if you've never seen a pinball machine before. The PB2K platform isn't instantly recognizable, so to risk it all moving to a similar platform when there is only one game in town would have been a tough thing to do.

Having said that, the amount of PB2K machines that are still on route - even though their computers are flaky as heck - proves that something about the system worked. I'll also tell you that I routed my RFM not too long ago for a whopping two weeks, and it doubled the two traditional pins that I had beside it at it's location.

PB2K didn't die because of what it was. It died because someone at Williams told them to pull the plug.

sterns didn't pick up the p2k platform because williams made sure to patent so many aspects of it, that it was impossible for anyone else to make it, without falling into a big lawsuit. They wanted to make sure no one else could make it and prove that it was a big hit and money maker. So williams wouldn't look like a bunch of assholes to their investors, for closing a very profitable division.

I so agree with this comment that I wish I had written it! And Gene can't make Wizard Blocks, He's not licensed to make Bally/Williams games.

This info is already a little old. I was going to post the info but was afraid someone would try to buy it sight-unseen. I wanted to own one of gene's pins when we were working on Nucore. I told Gene and he invited me to stop down and pick one out. Eric A. and I spent three hours looking for anything that wasn't completely destroyed. I found a nice looking target alpha. I tried to pull it out and very little movement caused the legs to start pulling out the cabinet like butter (completely rotten wood.) Eric found a nice Gottlieb. I told him to check the head, no boards whatsoever. The long and the short of the story is there were maybe 20-30 machines in his whole collection that we're in decent shape or repairable. It's a bit sad to see so many machines in such bad shape. I hope someone has gone in and saved what could be saved.

Gene probably has run out of retainer and needs to pay the attorney to keep fighting over peanuts.

Dale from Chattanooga Pinball made reference that he purchased these. Can't tell if he is kidding or not though on KLOV.

The way he wrote it, it looks like a joke.

Gene or the KLOV guy?

KLOV Guy. THis is what he wrote "Yaw are too late I done got them ".

I went down to Blo-No all day yesterday to help out a fellow pinhead that bought a few games out of Gene's collection. It was a fun adventure to say the least!

Gene was a very nice guy and I had a great time talking to him about the history of his life, him buying out B/W stuff back in the day, and other nerdy pinball things. He has gotten older and he and his wife need/want to move into a single story house with less property to manage.

The long and short of the collection:
I did not even go into the "other warehouse" that he is trying to sell for 1 lump sum but I was told things are worse in the warehouse than the collection I saw.

I spent most of the day in the temperature controlled storage portion of the collection which does have some salvageable stuff but also some firewood. There were a few AMAZING NEW games that never even had balls in them which I believe are all purchased now. I was fortunate enough to see some really neat and unique titles that I will likely never see anywhere else. I did not buy anything but would have if I had some extra funny money. Some of his prices were HIGH and some of his prices were VERY low (even when factoring in condition).

Gene still vehemently states that KingPin will be made and that he has other games in the list also. He still has 1 complete proto Wizardblocks and all of the source code. He is making TAF pfs and I met his son-in-law/ employee that helps with production that also states that blanks are coming back from silkscreening in the next week or so and he is "not looking forward to how much work he has coming up". I will still believe it when I see it, but things sounded better than I had expected.

They are actively making a few other game specific parts, so things are definitely still happening in the land of IPB.

Gene gave me permission to photograph anything so I actually took some quick videos where I ran up and down the aisles just to film the backglasses. When I get a chance I will upload them to youtube in the hopes that it will at least help some people to see if there are any titles that interest them enough to want to make the trip. If you go, be ready to haggle and bundling seems to have the best chance of you getting you a reasonable deal. It really seems that he wants to get rid of volume of games so if you want something nicer (all relative), be prepared to also buy something that is in need of some work (but still salvagable) in order to get a better overall deal.

Just to be clear, you're talking about one "complete" playfield, correct? There was only one known complete game, and that's now no where near IL. I say "complete" because the only complete playfield was in the game that sold. All of the other playfields were missing various things. None were complete no matter what he tried to tell you.

--
Rob Anthony
Pinball Classics
http://LockWhenLit.com
Quality Board Work - In Home Service
314-766-4587

It appeared to be a complete playfield but not in a cab.

I looked it over very well and while I have no idea of everything that is supposed to be on it... It appears 100% complete from both the topside and the bottom side. It could be missing a few key parts and I would have no idea.

He asked a crazy price that was way out of my range.

He told me they are debating on weather it would be worth while to just sell a kit "when they make it" I am hopeful but doubtful it will ever happen.

Me too.

--
Rob Anthony
Pinball Classics
http://LockWhenLit.com
Quality Board Work - In Home Service
314-766-4587

This coming from Rob Anthony? Take it to the bank, people.