Everyone has good and bad runs. I seriously disagree about Oursler. The quality of his work, especially the early SS games are great! Later on in the DMD era he was partnered with less than stellar software teams and his games tended to be unbalanced.

There is only a few designers that made real dogs all the time (The market would not tolerate them) and while I'll give him an "A" for effort, this is a 100% barf-tacular record. OK, it's only one game.

http://ipdb.org/search.pl?searchtype=advanced&ppl=Pete%20Piotrowski

I REALLY wanted to like this game too. But after a while the video spitoon mode and jumping rope became a distraction from playing pinball. Once the downward spiral kicked in... From an operator's POV, it was a nightmare. I'm glad you like it, but my preference is to play other tables.

His designs pre-Space Shuttle were his own. These are my favorite designs from him earlier on in his career.

1978-11 Phoenix
1979-09 Time Warp

Gorgar, while not my favorite game, was his biggest seller.

1981-02 Jungle Lord
1981-07 Solar Fire Williams
1981-09 Barracora Williams
1982-06 Cosmic Gunfight Williams
1982-12 Defender
1983-03 Time Fantasy
1983-04 Joust
1984-06 Star Light

I also have a great memory anchor when I was a kid playing Space Shuttle. I love the Rolloercoaster trilogy (ok, 2 outta 3 ain't bad) Grand Lizard, Pinbot and Space Station are all players. I'll admit to even playing Fire! whenever I can. And later on in the DMD era, Dr. Who, Draculer and Durty Harry are all well respected players.

IF you can't find a game you like from that list... I am happy to session you out with my Solar Fire for an afternoon and see if I can at least get you to like ONE of his games. PM for for address and we will set an appointment.

I was lucky enough to sit down on the patio with JT (we only use each other's initials when we are drinking) at the Rocky Mountain Pinball Showdown a few months ago and we talked about pins. While not trying to gush, I told him that GB was the best of CftBL and Congo in a single pax. The first thing he did was give praise to Dwight Sullivan for the programming work that he did on the game. About a month later I was playing Trent Augenstein at the GB release party at Press Play in Boulder (guess who came in 2st...) and he hit the button code in for the credits. His name was listed as a beta tester. Now if Stern is tapping the best players in the world for feedback with their designs and code as an outside source, this is a great step in the right direction. It takes a village... right? John Trudeau's work is FINALLY getting the treatment it deserves at Stern. I for one, am ecstatic and look for more awesomeness from the Stern Team.

Back to shots and angles, he said that Steve Ritchie is a big fan of the fan. His more recent designs show this. He placed himself closer to Pat Lawlor's philosophy of every shot is to utilize the entirety of the PF. Flow is good, risk/reward through chaotic shots is better. Keeps play times lower and profits to the operator higher. While he recognizes the pull of toys of the PF, he is more focused on using the paths available to the player through ball travel. He also stated that if things work as well as he thought they would with the magno-slings, that we may be seeing more of them in his future designs. I an't wait to see what he comes up with next.