I thought it would be cool to make a list of all the people that made Williams so great. I then figured out it was a big list and would be a good idea to get some help so it would be more complete. Feel free to include any employees including that Christmas dude. I'll start it with the early days.

George Molentin
Sam Stern
Harry Mabs
Roy Parker

And the man that did the hiring,

Harry Williams

Then along came the mystery artist who graced many early 60s game with his style.

And Jerry Kelley and Christian Marche that brought us the pointy people among others.

Him too

There are quite a few missing. I thought this thread would be on fire when I woke up. People need to get their Starbucks on!

Gary Stern worked for Williams. Heck, his dad owned the company for a while. Who can name the current Stern employees that at one time worked for Williams?

I was playing a bunch of Getaway when I brainstormed this thread.

Lyman F. Sheats and Dwight Sullivan both worked for Williams.

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Some of the unsung heroes from the 70s-

Chris Otis
Gordon Horlick
Lloyd Rognan
Randy Pfeiffer
Ron Crouse
Constantino Mitchell
Jeanine Mitchell
Tony Kraemer
Paul Dussault
John Jung
Louis Raynaud

Of course! And I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Barry Oursler yet.

Here's a good one.

The Sterns worked for Williams and Harry Williams worked for Stern.

The 80s were a busy time at Williams and since I'm not so busy at work, I'm combing IPDB and finding lots of familiar names and some not so familiar.

Edward Tomaszewski
Tony Ramunni
Tim Elliott
Jack Mittel
Kristina Donofrio
Peter Perry
Pat McMahon
Tony Pugh
Robin Seaver
Dan Forden
Rehman Merchant
Joe Joos Jr.
Dan Forden
Ed Suchocki
Mark Sprenger
John Krutsch
Ed Boon
Steve Epstein
Doug Watson
Chris Granner
Ed Suchocki
Bill Pfutzenreuter
Brian Dolatowski
John Kotlarik
Claude Fernandez
Larry Day

Nice! Which one's Christmas? ^^^^

Kind of a shame when a company forgets part of it's own history.

http://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?gid=4817

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The man that is probably most responsible for Williams thriving for most of the latter half of the 20th century and going out of pinball on top.

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He could have answered a lot of questions I'm sure. Like who was the mystery artist of the 60s? But now, we may never know.

Ah yes, the forgotten art of pinball quality control!

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Well, the mystery artist did quite a few games for Williams in the 60s before the merger and they were great. And correct me if I'm wrong, but Paul Faris worked on Grand Lizard before the companies joined too. I figure it's OK to include them even if they worked for other companies at the same time. Case in point- Roy Parker.

I couldn't find a pic of these two gentlemen when they worked together at Williams, but this one will do.

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Who's that guy with his hands in his pockets?

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Surprised it took this long. He was only responsible for designing some of the most popular games of the 90s.

Quite a history this company had.

From one innovative man that brought us features like the tilt in the early part of the 20th century, to hiring all the great talent they could find, and trying to modernize and making great games all along the way, and then making pinball fully relevant and fun in the 90s once again.

Inspector 12

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Highly unlikely as they have found a niche in the lucrative gambling game industry, which is kind of ironic as their early pinball machines were known as gambling games as well.

You're gonna have to help me out on this one. Although the lady looks familiar, I live in Ca.

That's some fancy building they have there, not to mention the car.

I guess it was only inevitable he would find his way to Williams.

I'm guessing he was just no good at it and got his ass kicked by a girl.

I'm taking nothing away from any of the other great pinball companies. There are a handful that each at certain times was tops in the industry.

From Rock-ola with it's amazing early games, to Gottlieb, the gold standard in the early EM days that continued to make a well built product till the very end, Bally, with huge sales in the thirties, becoming the king of bingo games, then going full steam ahead in the 70s to pretty much rule the early SS era, to Stern from the late 70s on to become for a while the only survivor. And a lot of credit for what companies like JJP and Spooky are doing now.

But you gotta hand it to Williams pinball from where they started out to where they finished and all the many people that were involved.

I blame Pinball2K. RFM made money on location, but it must have been a pricy venture to create. Most players I knew thought it was a novelty at best and were waiting for their next real pinball machines to come out.

As the song said "video killed the pinball star"

Like I said, when I played it I said "neat, now when do we get another real pinball machine". Then came South Park, but that's a whole nuther story...

Here's a picture of Harry Williams from the old days.

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Nobody gave a shit about SWE1.

And as far that anti pinball dude, let him hang from the tree of wo, and may god have mercy on his soul.

If they had spent a little more time finishing code on games like Cactus Canyon instead of trying to turn pinball into a video game, I think the world would be a better place now.

Well I had a pocket full of quarters that said differently. And the local arcades I visited were thriving with pinball business. But we were either stuck playing stupid video pinball and incomplete CC, or the 100s of other machines we had already played over and over. Just as well, I moved back to the beach and went surfing and let the rest of the world figure it out.

I found this nice vintage photo and article of Sam Stern several years before he actually took ownership of Williams.

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On thing I have noticed was the lack of Steve Ritchie games near the end. His last one was No Fear in 1995 I believe.

OK that makes sense.

Wonder if things would have been a little different if he had stuck around and j-pop had gone back to whatever it was he had been doing.

Well that sort of gives me a sigh of relief as I was sure if anybody knew it would be him. And was frustrated that now it would be too late to ask.

I have a few mystery artist games including Big Daddy which is gorgeous top to bottom. I can't think of anybody else that's still around that might know. It's pretty amazing with all the people in the industry over the years that this has somehow remained a secret and there is no documentation available. Maybe he just wanted to remain anonymous.

Oh well, it doesn't really bother me that much beyond knowing the facts, but I'll just appreciate them for what they are, wonderful works of art.

Well, if not Steve Kordek, who the mystery artist's work appeared on several machines, then who else? Maybe someone from Bally back in the day?

I have to be honest as I think there may be more than one mystery artist, because the styles on some of the unnamed games vary so much.

I had heard that possibly Louis Raynaud might have been at least one of the mystery artists but between pinside's list of games and IPDB's I can't tell which games he really did do or if Cristian Marche did them.

Even some of the info that is documented is not always correct.

Mystery artist goes way back alright. There are plenty of games that George Molentin was not given credit for and don't look like his work at all when he was the main guy at Williams. I'm looking at my 1960 "21" right now and have no idea who did it.

The mystery artist or artists I was referring to were the ones that did many Williams games. I didn't mention anything about Bally in that post. Although it does seem like at least one mystery artist did games for both.