I was at the U of Illinois in 1990 and I recall a petition from the users of the computer lab (which sat next to the Union arcade). The AAAHHH-FIGHT! every 2 min in attract was driving them nuts. Lawlor told me bartenders would switch the game OFF if attract was too obnoxious. You don't want that.

Phillips' Law: If your design has an I2C bus it will take 20% of your design time but cause 80% of your bring-up headaches. 😖

PLD, post-Monopoly. We finally set up our new office and had some space to think and work. And now we needed to start designing the next game ASAP.

PLD, Post-Monopoly. With the game in production and some pinball money coming in, Pat decided it was time to get out of the garage. Or his family decided we had to go. Probably both. We moved to an office building in downtown Harvard, IL, sharing the building with a hair salon and a psychologist.

@pinballmap.com do you offer a reverse search? As in "where is the nearest <x> machine?". 🤔

Monopoly Pinball easter egg: Backdoor to Land Grab final mode. Game must be in FREE PLAY, enter this during attract mode: 1R-1L-1R-2L-1R-3L-1R (ABC) Pennybags will tell you he loves to build houses. Shoot mode start to begin. Don't be a jerk and do this in tournaments. 😝

Monopoly Pinball design team easter egg: 2R-7L-1R-4L-1R-4L-1R (GDD)

PLD Post-Monopoly stuff. The game was launched and things were moving. Stern was happy with the relationship so we were discussing another title and batting about ideas. We also went to Pinball Expo and did a "Making Of" presentation. Steve Kordek was kind enough to be our hype man.

Yup! There was a Titanic redemption from Sega, and it was... something. 1/n www.youtube.com/shorts/jxTO-...

This existed, I have a photo of it somewhere at a trade show. Peak Kaminkow.

For those that say pinball history is poorly documented, find the people like Caitlyn that are doing the hard work. They are furiously scanning and preserving as much as they can and doing an incredible job quietly and without fanfare. Brava!

I was there At all the cool kid birthday parties At Dave & Busters I DJ’d at the first ever indoor trampoline party I woke up naked In a Chuck E.Cheese Ticket Blaster Booth In 2013

I post all kinds of insider baseball pinball stuff and it gets a fair amount of attention. Cool. Post ONE picture of the poke-the-butt game and hooooooly shit.

AMOA 2001 was also the North American debut (and probably ONLY sighting) of Boong-Ga Boong-Ga and thankfully I got proof. I did not try it. Details in ALT caption.

Monopoly Pinball: We started production at the end of August 2001 and then 9/11 happened. Airspaces closed, people stayed home. Thankfully life resumed in time for the AMOA show in Las Vegas the next month. But it was a slightly somber affair.

If anyone is thinking of ragging all over the new Arabian Nights remake just remember: I was there first.

Good timing!

One fun addendum: This was during an era where games exported to the UK had to have extra flipper buttons, which lifted "skill posts", removing the chance element of pinball (cough). So we had to drill out Rich Uncle Pennybags' face, which was kind of funny. (more)

Alright we're gonna finish Monopoly Pinball design with the team photo. This was the PLD team on August 30th 2001 with Monopoly #1. We made it to the finish line, and we didn't murder each other. We were kind of proud of that. Now we had to go out and sell it to the world.

"Alright, I ordered the 1,000 purple powder coated lockdown bars and the 4,000 purple legs for the Cirqus Voltaire remake and... wait, what? We're doing Arabian now?" 🤮

Oddly enough, @heyrocker.com took this photo of Pat signing /another/ Monopoly game. Was this the first US production going in the box?

Totally blew a chance to have CBS' Charlie DeMar do the story...

Excerpt from a statement provided by Ed Suchocki, programmer of Time Fantasy (1983), to the Internet Pinball Database regarding the game's creation. Source: www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?...

Monopoly Pinball: The first one goes into the box. This was a solid year of heads-down pinball design work and it felt pretty good. We were happy to still be in the business after nearly two years of Williams going dark.

Monopoly Pinball: the word comes down from the factory. Sample games start shipping on 8/30/2001. So the entire PLD crew spends the day checking and tweaking and testing the first thirty games in the box. These games go to key distributors and customers, it's critical they work perfectly.

I used to think pinball collecting and the related expos were an exotic hobby but that all seems relatively mainstream now compared to the people that collect and restore... air raid sirens. Holy crap.

Monopoly pinball, more factory prep. The first couple of units are working their way down the line and being checked over and reworked with PLD staff helping out.

Monopoly pinball preproduction: It's a little strange to walk into the Stern factory and see your work all over the place in blueprints, subassembly jigs, wiring harness maps, etc. And the playfield press die is ready to go.

Monopoly Pinball: it's late August 2001 and finished parts are starting to arrive. Subassemblies are being completed. The first sample games will be completed in about a week's time.

BREAKING: Emmet Otter's Jug Band has also withdrawn from the Freedom 250 celebration

We used Linda Jack for v/o talent at WMS all the time. I wonder if Dave was the person that started the conversation with her in the first place.

Monopoly on test: Mo' machines, mo' problems. But the game was getting a lot of play! 😋

Monopoly Pinball: an example of a field test report. The awesome Joe Blackwell was running Stern's service/tech department at the time and placed a Monopoly test game near his home at Durbin's pub on the south side. Looking at a $150 week. Not great like the WMS days, but not completely bad.

Monopoly Pinball: the second test game went out a few days later, and the internet was waiting. This was online the same day. Pat and I were still tuning the game as pictures were being taken. It was that sports bar in Streamwood, I forget the name. www.pinballnews.com/games/monopo...

Monopoly Pinball: July 26th 2001 and we're finally on test. Production will start in about a month.

Monopoly Pinball history: after a day or two of mechanical tweaking and code bombing, we're going out on test. Pat is friendly with a few bar owners in the area so we hide #1 away in a roadhouse near Woodstock, Illinois. #2 will be somewhere more visible and the net kids will find it for sure.

If you go by Atari's internal newsletter Coin Connection, today is the 50th anniversary of Breakout, their most popular title since Pong at the time and such a massive hit in Japan that it spawned a bunch of clones and inspired Space Invaders. Granted, other internal sources say April 76, but hey

Oh no

Arrrgh total fakeout using the Jack*Bot flyer image...

@aaarpinball.com created the awesome new pinbetween.com which reminds me of that old classic Kittenwar: www.kittenwar.com

As a GenX I feel compelled to share this bad news with you about this new epidemic: Hacky Sack is back. It's already in the high schools. Save yourselves while you still can.

Found the Harem Cat flyer in my files! (TOTAN research) @cpi.pinball.horse @universalfacts.bsky.social

Monopoly pinball: Now that prototypes are being completed, the pressure is on to get it to test. We spent a day or so getting last-minute fixes done and getting as much code into the game as possible.

Time to get back to Monopoly #pinball: The work intensifies through the summer as we get closer to production. We've already gotten some extra time from Stern because Austin Powers is doing pretty well. Then, one morning, Pat drives to Melrose Park and picks this up:

The leading indicator of a quality pinball room is a clean and working Mata Hari. 😍

Was driving across Indiana today and stopped into Wizard's World. This has to be the most immaculate collection I've seen in decades. Every game clean, waxed, and running. And some old friends in perfect running condition... Simply amazing.

I choose to believe this is how most 90s arcade race tracks were initially conceived #gaming #retrogaming #arcade

Holy crap a @noobde.bsky.social cameo in the trailer!

Monopoly Pinball: after a quiet period of heads-down design work, finished parts start showing up. The best day is when you hold the 1st screened p/f in your hands. I might need @heyrocker.com to help me on this: did we convince Stern to use spot color instead of CYMK here? Or is Youssi that good?