PC market was starting to lift off in a big way; I had pretty much abandoned arcades roughly around this time and started building gaming PC's almost yearly.

Doom and the other 3D shooter games had come out and things just went nuts from there. 3dFX interactive came out with the Voodoo Graphics for public sale in 1996 and with the drop in ram prices, PC gaming went vertical in a hurry and would continue to do so for the next 5 years minimum. There was a literal revolution in gaming as the market went from 2D with 16 colors to 3D rendered polygons with 32k colors in a less than a few years.

From what I recall Williams STNG was the most expensive game to manufacture.
The tooling costs for the new gun designs and the underground subway system to
the VUK tubings and the Borg unit, all added to costs that far outspends what was
put into The Addams Family.

December 10th, 1993. Spot on with the point in time I'm talking about as well.

Perhaps *if* Pinball Circus went into production, that may have been a contender...

I doubt it would have stopped or even slowed down anything. You have to go to a physical location to play one and the PC and console market was in full afterburner mode. It is true though that some arcade video titles were going nuts like street fighter? So how much cross traffic there was there is open to debate. William's released some decent titles after 1993 and they just did not seem to get much traction compared to 1993.

People went to arcades because that was where the razzle dazzle was, it was only a matter of time before the increase in computer power eroded that slot. 3dFX Interactive was founded and marketed to the arcade and military markets and once ram prices fell through the floor in 1994-1995 they offered 3d image generators to the public and it was like a bomb thrown into the gaming market.

If you every played the arcade games such as Mace the dark age, NFL Blitz, Arctic Thunder, Hydro Thunder, RUSH you were playing with 3dfx hardware. By 1998 3dfx OWNED outright 78% of the 3d graphics market with the rest sucking wind till 1999-2000 when they started to implode due to feature creep, bad management and frivolous spending habits. Was a remarkable time as a gamer to see this play out in real time going from primitive Wolfenstien 3D with bleeps and bloops to Unreal engine games running at 120 fps in "high resolution" online with stereo.

very interesting thread for a newbie. certainly didn't understand the historical importance of some of these games and the timeframe. Quick question, what is "BOM?"

bill of materials, the list of what it takes in parts, goods, and labor to build something.

Pinball 2000 was expensive. Different cabinet, a 19" monitor, prism card, PC, special playfield glass, a different driver board plus all the other stuff. It was like designing a pinball machine and a video game at the same time.

Black Knight 2000 was the start of the 50 cent default. Here is the message that came with it. https://www.ipdb.org/files/311/Williams_1989_Black_Knight_2000_An_Important_Message_To_Operators.pdf

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You jest!

Star Wars was utterly insane from it's release till the end of the trilogy. I'd opine that it's possible that the game didn't get a shaker and a decent topper because a lot of bucks were spent on license. The game would be well suited with a shaker and the "Darth Vader" topper looks like it was robbed from Matchbox.

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fa2bbf47f08535ace8338f7e551ffa93--star-wars-opening-episode-iv (resized).jpg

Not really- Both have drop target bank, both have 2 scoops, Star Wars has a subway, LAH does not, Star Wars has two rotation motors and the R2D2 "jumping mech" both have kickback, both have a VUK, LAH has a spinner, SW has an extra pop bumper, SW also has a THIRD motor that lowers and raises the death star target.

The big difference between the two titles is LAH has a shaker and magnets and the topper was better. The topper itself is 3 pieces of vacuum formed plastic and some #89 flasher bulbs. Not that complicated.

At the AMOA shows Williams was trying to conform to new location standards.
The first location friendly, experimental condensed pinball size, was Safe Cracker.
Data East tried the same thing with mini Viper pinball.
Then came the Pinball 2000 line. The condensed package was supposedly save
on raw material cost... Add in exchange kits on the operator end.. etc.
The whole idea was to save money in the long term and fill a shrinking
pinball niche.
The whole idea of this type of pinball kit, pint-size pinball, started back in early 1980's
Bally's Baby Pac-man, etc. Gottlieb's Mylstar line,etc. William's Varcon..
They all failed to some degree. Hands down, the Pinball 2000 line was the most ambitious
of all the condensed style pinballs made.

I was there and strongly disagree, demand for anything Star Wars was utterly insane. The fact 9-10 years had passed since Return of the Jedi just meant the public would gobble up anything Star Wars related that came out. It's something to see it still trucking along even with Disney's mismanagement of the franchise.

Please. The crane is an angle iron on a stick, I know I own one and made one from scratch.

The R2 mech is far more complex then anything going on with the goofy crane.

On Data East Star Wars:

One must remember, Williams sued Data East over copy rights/ trade names.
From a coinop magazine article:
Data East Star Wars started out as a homage to George Lukas movies.
It became clear that their was more Star Wars stuff in the game than
IJ, American Graffiti, Howard the Duck etc. So the game became Star Wars.
The game got a bottom change over from five lanes to four. Then the law suit
etc. In all, the game could have and should have if Williams didn't interfere.

Added... I probably should not mention this but,
Data East DMD software for Star Wars has leftover language
for rope lite test. Like what is used on Hook.

It's not, I already rattled off a list of mechs and parts.

Aside from the shaker, single spinner and magnets, SW actually has more.

SW has three rotation motors (and the relays to run them, LAH has one) a subway (which LAH does not have) an extra pop bumper and a polished steel ramp vs LAH plastic one. You also have the Death Star and R2D2 assemblies. LAH has the gun shooter, Star Wars has the more complete T handle assembly.

couple more newbie questions on topic.

1) do we know how these licensing agreements typically work? Is it an upfront fee or a per machine manufactured/sold fee? Or both? Have we ever heard what actual numbers are for any licensing deal?

2) so is the data east Star Wars a headache to maintain? I do love it (particularly the music) and have been tempted when I see one for sale, but (i'm sure there's a lot of threads on this) the data east name scares me off a little.

3) which would you say is the most expensive to produce of modern games (and let's just compare Premiums, for fairness, no LE's or special editions)?

100% this ^^^

How many of us know distributors, operators, and industry folks and take them at their word and share insights we’ve gotten from them but can’t always quote them?

Even in cases where we can, some of it is fuzzy memories mixed with nostalgia and urban legend so someone is going to dispute something or remember it differently.

Hell, Munsters is a prime example and not even history yet.

I’ve heard directly from several distributors that they couldn’t keep it in stock. Others told me they couldn’t move ‘em.

We know for a fact Stern cut the final run short and some folks came into the owners thread to say they wanted to buy it new. Were on the list and dropped. So was there demand or not?

How strong were the sales? We don’t know for sure. Only Stern knows and no one there is sharing that on record.

But we would probably all agree it’s not a contender for best selling or most expensive build based on the scraps we can pull together. We could part it out. But the BOM is not the total cost. Labor and Licenses play a huge role in price. That’s were those behind the scenes and often uncitable conversations about “how much did you hafts pay to license that” become relevant.

ISOCHRONIC_FROST, completely missed my point that the reviewer has personal history and real world connections that inform their content.

Somehow his only take away was her dad introduced her to it. Then he goes on to assume and attribute all she knows to him. Like she can’t possibly have those experience or connects herself. Because she’s a female and under 40.

But I’m the biased one because I’m not putting up with gatekeeping and personal attacks that use gender, age, etc to double down and justify skepticism. Laughable and silly.

Nothing wrong with wanting verifiable sources that’s ideal, but it’s not always possible.

On my YouTube channel, I show folks how to mod and do pinball and arcade repairs based on a mix of my own hands on experience and I often also leverage knowledge of pros on here like Vid when I don’t entirely know what I’m doing.

For the technical stuff I cite sources and provide links to the products, documentation, and support threads whenever possible.

I’ve posted how to videos for several mods and covered common topics like Novus and Cab paint stripping. Those are easy to cite and people still find things to debate.

Keep it civil is all I’m asking.

Someone’s age and gender should have nothing to do with their credibility and you can’t cite some things even when you know and want to. In other cases you are citing someone memory or what happened which can still be different than perhaps what actually happened.

Healthy advice about history. I don’t know that any account can be ever taken as gospel. It’s always a lossy capture for one reason or another.

Licenses are very case by case basis.

There are some default universals, like the need to pay royalties for using actors likenesses. Licensing for using original film or audio content. Etc.

But volume of production, exact fees, and derivative works are usually closed door negotiations.

Some require being paid up front. Others can be pay as you go. Some have penalties for not selling above a certain threshold.

I made one from scratch, not much to it in comparison.

A $10 mini-coil, big whoop.

I have had both apart, no it isn't.

I would be very interested in seeing a picture of that.

Only one I have at the moment.

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I think there is a Roger Sharpe quote about B/W being their own worst competitor or something to that effect. Having built some tank worthy titles in the early 80’s & 90’s, they had to try and convince ops that newer machines would bring bigger earnings and that was not really happening. So they turned to technology and Pin2k to try and get video heads to try and play pinball and then pulled the plug before the fruits of the endeavor could manifest. I personally thought it was a step in the absolute wrong direction, and was glad to see Pin2k fold, but not glad it took B/W Pinball down with it.

When I got into pinball 20 years ago, there were some old-timers who loved to say "diamondplate killed pinball!"

The theory being that with playfields on successful games no longer being reduced to a late-70s Bally style pulp, there was less need for ops to buy new equipment.

Is there a blog post on that?

"When Diamondplate on tables came into fashion, the tables lasted forever, therefore nobody bought new tables. Also, tables!"

Looks pretty good from what I can see!

It's not complicated if you have a metal brake and some scrap.

It is even easier today with laser cutting services...I could draw that thing up in an hour as a flat pattern and have the parts cut perfectly...just need to bend them nicely on a brake and pant (or powder coat).

Look close at the apron- You will see it does not match the factory unit.

I made it from scratch, took pictures of my own LAH apron decals, imported into Photoshop and modified and resized and assembled. It's a neat piece of animated wall art and thank to JodyG I have some test ramps coming to fill it out a bit more and I'll have to scratch build some wire forms.

Might even link the crane and flippers to a servo so they slowly go back and forth.

It's a theory. I don't agree with it.

Ops had three types of locations. Top ones, middle ones, bottom ones.

With diamond plate, and the playfield lasting longer. When a new game comes in, the diamond plate could be rotated down the location chain. And a great looking pin coming into a middle location, will earn better. Then as it's rotated to the bottom location, again looking great it will earn better.

Ops stood to make more over the life of the game.

I still hold that the price per play didn't keep up with the economy, and earnings slowed up. Ops buying less, distributors ordering less, manufacturers were going down hill fast.

The first game that shipped at 50¢ per play was Black Knight in 1981. The cost of living index shows that the price should have increased to 75¢ per play in 1991. Ops were still making good money, but losing buying power. By the mid 90's pinball was on the roller coaster to hell. Players were still there. But Ops were losing ground and going after coin op equipment that could keep earnings up.

The rest is history.

LTG : )

FWIW that was my experience as well, as a young teen in Chicago at the time. The feeling around Star Wars then - at least among people my age - was "oh yeah, a one-and-done trilogy killed off by cutesy Muppets and Ewoks 10 years ago... what are you like 9? Why do you like that crap? Terminator and DieHard and DemoMan and (***insert early-90's gun-hero action trope here***) are where it's at". Hell, even the Indiana Jones trilogy was more recent and relevant and to recall lingo of the time, "hip". And the Star Wars prequels weren't even a whispered rumor yet so... yeah. They were those movies that UHF stations sometimes ran after Wizard of Oz.

The kids who grew up with Star Wars in 77-83 were too busy desperately trying to NOT be kids in 92-93. And the adults of that time generally (excepting such lovable nerds like my own dad) were a less frivolous sort who let the past stay there and, also, didn't have anything marketed toward them to buy anyway. Except via Franklin Mint in the TV Guide.

Hell, in 92/93 even STTNG (at its arguable peak then) had more merchandising across all realms than Star Wars. Which I specifically recall due to my dad being a huge ST nerd, I'd often look for stuff for him as gifts. And I worked at KMart at the time (*shudder*). Star Wars stuff was still being made, but barely existed and was little stocked in comparison. Freaking "Starting Lineup" figures and NASCAR diecasts (even in Chicago!) were way more popular. And wow but you had to look for TOYS then because the "adult / pop-culture / fandom collectibles" market as we know it today simply did not exist back then. It was sorta in its infancy, as a lot of those action-figure "toys" were silently if not-so-secretly appealing to older wallets - but you certainly didn't have the cross-marketing orgy in every venue and market you see today. Comic shops sold... comics, as in paper, only. Media stores sold... tapes and discs. Sure, for the last 15-20 years, you can't go to any comic or media store, or bigbox electronics department, without being awash in licensed toys and nostalgia trinkets and related crap and yes Star Wars is the big dog now. But none of that was a thing in 92/93. You wanted Star Wars stuff you were stalking yard sales because no internet!

That all changed by the late 90's of course, when things like Comic-Cons and nascent internet culture began to prove that Nerds had lots of buying power and influence. (Remember those first cons? "Who the hell goes to those? NERRRRD!" Now they're an industry to itself).

Oh and somewhere in all of that cultural shift, the OG Star Wars re-releases - themselves only made to reboot nostalgic interest and hype the forthcoming prequels (which were still NEW and thus not the controversy they are today), happened. So if anything Star Wars is a masterclass in how to take a moribund but fondly remembered franchise and kick its money printer into high gear on the backs of nerds. See every IP "reboot" which has followed.

BUT TDLR All of that is to say: if I had seen the Star Wars machine in 1992/93, I probably would have skipped it myself if there was a Terminator or STTNG or hell even LAH anywhere near it. At its evident nadir, the Star Wars license should not have been anywhere near as valuable as it would become even just a few years later.

IPDB sometimes has stuff. They have actual BOM and cost to distributor in some 70s games

Grand Prix https://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=1072

BOM: $402.23
Price to Distributor: $945.00

Here is a photo of the Paragon BOM
https://www.ipdb.org/files/1755/Bally_1979_Paragon_Original_Factory_BOM_incomplete_evidentiary_photos_only_dated_5_8_79.pdf

Here's Corvette's BOM
https://www.ipdb.org/files/570/Bally_1994_Corvette_Parts_List.txt

Doesn't have prices here though. But I feel like I've seen one with prices for a 70s games.

LTG is a wise and smart pin head, he knows his shit !

To revisit an earlier tangent about earlier pins in this thread, I have to credit my wife for finding this, I knew I'd seen it somewhere before:

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I guess it's not conclusively linked toward recouping a high BOM / Retail price, but Gottlieb indeed asserted Black Hole as the first pin to price at 50c/play, back in 1981.

What I’m thinking will that sinking ship be reincorporated into a Jaws pin perhaps someday!! Wishful thinking.

Imagine having just another ten years of that concept being made. Or whatever number years if it was to continue. Awful.

Also read the Black Hole flyer

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>the first accepted at 50 cent play

Granted I wasn't around at the time, but were all games the same price? I can see why ops would have charged more for Black Knight and Black Hole to other typical games with less features. I've also repeatedly heard Black Knight OG cited as the first "you should charge 50 cent" games. Did coin op price dip down during the arcade crash?

When was Bally's first 50 cent recommended game?

All of this just hammers home the point of what others have said...this is ancient history at this point and we just have to read it all and consider it all and draw your own conclusions. I would expect the people writing Gottlieb's promo material didn't really give a shit what was going on over at Williams or whether or not their claims were actually true, or really expect that anybody was going to be arguing about who sent games from the factory at 50 cents a play first 42 years later. Maybe it was Black Knight...maybe it was Black Hole...regardless, we aren't gonna get the definitive answer from 42-year old flyers, memos to distributors, or stories from old men who were on the scene back then (or their kids).

This all reminds me of the great book about Ed Wood that was adapted into the Tim Burton Ed Wood movie. The book interviews all of the at the time living dozens of lunatics involved in the Ed Wood story from the 50s-70s and published all of it. Tons of the interviews contradict each other, but it all makes for good reading. What's the true story? Who the Hell knows. The reader gets to sort it out, and of course, the best stories made it into the movie.

Gottlieb can assert all they want. Black Knight beat it by 11 months. Black Knight was November 1980. Black Hole October 1981.

LTG : )

Well yeah, it's just marketing. They even word it as "first accepted" so they admit it wasn't the first 50 cent game. And we all know OPs didn't like BH because it's a bear to maintain. It's all hype...

It was more about having another data point that the shift to 50 cents began in 1981, not 1989

What was Bally's first 50 cent game?

There is video of Lawlor talking about it.. so even better

Anyone catch the qualifier? The first “Accepted” machine set at $0.50 per play. Implying that they are not the first, but the first that was worthy of the extra expense. Please. We dropped our quarters where we got the most bang for our buck. $0.25 for 5 balls or we walk!! And I did until I started making that fat enlisted peon wage in the Navy, then it was nothing but $0.50 a play on good old Black Knight… wait, Black Out was still $0.25 for 5… and then it was all gone. 3 balls for $0.50 was here to stay. Even Fire Power got drug into the mess… if a machine had multiball it went to fifty a play, only non multiballs stayed at a quarter, but went to all three ball play. Shit started getting pricey to play at the arcades. By 1991 I said it would be cheaper to buy a used machine… that ain’t anywhere near true today but it was only slightly outrageous back then.