From: Duncan Brown Newsgroups: rec.games.pinball Subject: The True Story Of Banana Flippers (and other Ritchie Ramblings) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2001 06:31:36 -0500 Message-ID: <3AE56418.88B5820F@eisner.decus.org> The recent thread about Time Warp, and whether it played better with straight flippers or banana flippers, got me wondering "you know, what the *heck* was up with those banana flippers??" Here's what I came up with... Duncan ********************************************************************* This thing has become a frikkin book in just 2 hours-Damn! It's OK to post the following. Remember--different people remember different things and some others of us might recollect other details. This is what I remember: Curved Flippers Here's what I *remember*, and that means there will be certain approximations in this note about Curved Flippers--and that's what we called them. "Banana" was a term some outsiders applied, and it certainly fits. We're talking 23 years ago. Why...it seems just like yesterday...... Some facts need to be sorted. First, Tony Kraemer, (NOT Barry) was the "Dad" of curved flippers, and they may actually have been conceived by Mike Stroll, the Prez. My brother Mark recalls that a mechanical engineer, Johnny Jung, may have actually drawn and spec'd the first set. I don't remember much because I was preoccupied with Stellar Wars and maybe Firepower. Mike certainly was eager to see them work. Disco Fever was actually the first playable game with curved flippers. Tony had them made in the model shop out of Nylon, a nearly frictionless material that went "click" whenever the ball hit them, or they struck a ball. Stroll played the Disco Fever with curved flippers more than anyone else. I don't remember Roger's reaction, but Roger can always find something to like in every game. He has his favorites, but he always looks for the most fun feature and plays it as though it might be the last time he ever gets to play pinball. He is usually able to overlook the bad things and enjoy the good things. I don't think Roger ended up liking curved flippers, but you'll have to ask him. The flippers were shaped like a Jai alai cesta, (that's the curved wicker basket that players wear, about 2 feet long and curved with a built-in glove on the end to put your hand into), the ball in the pinball machine did exactly what cestas do--- accelerate the ball at a fierce rate and shoot the ball out on a very straight course into the wall (or targets, on a pinball playfield). "Straight" means that the Jai alai ball (called a pelota) stays about the same height from the ground on its trajectory to the court (cancha) wall 176 feet away. Why? The pelota is slightly smaller than a baseball, very hard, and is caused to spin with great speed and momentum. Gyroscopic forces keep trajectory steady. The ball WHIPS out, and people have been very badly injured, even killed, by the 150 MPH(!!!) ball. But we're talking pinball here. The engineers made this silly looking thin rubber "glove" to fit over the hard plastic flipper. The gloves fell off often and "clogged the drain" rendering the game unplayable. I think we may have offered glove adhesive to operators, but I'm not sure. Since the curved flippers were fixed horizontally, the physics are applied at 90 degrees to Jai alai, which meant that the targets in the center 6-8" were battered, and it was very difficult to hit outside loop shots, or anything else along the outer perimeter of the playfield. They did nothing to enhance the game, in my opinion. In fact, most of us simply stated "SUX" to ourselves, and waited to see what happened next. Stroll was not easily convinced that they weren't fun. Tony was confused and some Disco Fevers were shipped with them. Then Tony (NOT Barry) designed Time Warp and a lot of them were shipped with curved flippers. Time Warp (and Disco Fever) made more money with straight flippers than with curved ones, that much I can ascertain through my stack of old Mother's reports compiled by Bill Herman. There are notes that state with/without curved flippers. I remember that we also made retrofit kits so that the operators could use normal flippers on their games with mini-posts, as Duncan states. I seem to remember that both Disco Fever and Time Warp were produced in our factory with and without curved flippers. There is definitely no "correct" version of either game. Both games were made, played and sold with and without curved flippers. Some Interesting Notes: Tony Kraemer was nicknamed "Colonel Nutzy" after his wristwatch had stopped working intermittently for the last time. He screamed some profanity and threw the watch as hard as he could at a plaster wall in engineering. The watch flew apart in a hundred pieces and we all laughed so hard, Tony included. He WAS nuts. He could create pinball designs faster than anyone else at Williams. Tony was a great guy who made the best of life through a tough childhood and a love for Steve Kordek who mentored him as a game designer and treated him like a son. I miss Tony and think of him often. He was hit by a car in front of Oinkers, a bar where we hung out in 92-93??. Free lunch and as many soft drinks/day as you could drink were available in the cafeteria for engineers and managers when I first arrived at Williams. Two very nice ladies cooked for us and the meals were very good very often. It was a smart move, because we would only stop working long enough to eat and play a few games of pinball. Before my time, there was an open bar in the cafeteria with alcohol and a barber shop right in the factory at 3401 N. California Ave. I wonder how much work got done when the bar existed? It was fun to eat with everyone in the same room, and Mike Stroll would work the room like a proud host at a dinner party or a standup comedian. It made us all feel wanted and powerful. Everyone who reads this knows that in that era, we WERE powerful. We kicked ass and took names because we were a TEAM held together by bonds bigger than our own projects. It was a heady time, and Mike Stroll was the charismatic leader that steered us carefully and respectfully. Several teams were making hit games simultaneously, and we ruled the pinball world until it died, under many leaders. The main group of contributors stayed and worked together (even from different departments) for many years. Mike Stroll may have pressed for curved flippers, but I doubt it; it was not like him to force a feature, especially if it was controversial. He gave us max freedom to do what we thought would get the most play. Mike could actually play pretty well and was deeply involved in the engineering aspect at Williams back in the day. I adopted a philosophy about flipper placement after first observing pinball play in the early 70's at Atari. Games that had odd flipper placements GENERALLY did not make as much money as games that had more normal arrangements. There are Great Exceptions, including Capt. Fantastic, but even there, the basic 2 lowest flippers are in a very normal position. "Standard" placement gives the player comfort in that recognizable and predictable play can be had on a given playfield, and flipper placement always has a huge impact on drain schedules and feeds to the flippers. Designers can never leave well enough alone, and when they don't, they end up with something like ST:TNG which I will always wish was not so brutal with side drains. Oh well. In reference to "Dad" above, all games have a Dad. The Game Dad is the guy with the vision of a given game, and is not always the designer. The Game Dad can be an artist, a programmer, a mechanical engineer, or a game designer. Games with no Dad (and they happened) were doomed to failure. Someone must always carry the torch for every game as it's developed. The Game Dad reference was probably first coined by George Gomez. It seems real chauvinist. But I only knew one Game Mom. Pinball Mary at Atari. Her game wasn't fun and it died. I think it was because there was no Game Dad! This is all the time I have at the moment. It's interesting to note that thoughts about Curved Flippers brought about the memories of so much more, just like it was yesterday..... Regards, Steve Ritchie