Ask Uncle Willy #5: July 21, 1995
Here's this week's installment of the Ask Uncle Willy question/answer feature.
Please keep in mind that some of the questions take a bit of research, so that answers to some questions may not show up right away. Also, with all the questions in his mailbox, Uncle Willy gets a bit overwhelmed sometimes. (Not to mention that Uncle Willy is kept rather busy with other duties at W*S Electronics, Inc.) He does his best to answer all questions of general interest.
Uncle Willy enjoys hearing from you!
Question: I just saw the new match effect on the No Fear pinball.
Could you tell me the significance of the dice rolls?
Answer: The dice roll is just a different spin on the familiar match
algorithm. First, a fair roll is made -- that becomes the
"master" one to match. Then, all players are checked to see
if they would have matched using the regular algorithm.
Players who do match get their dice set to the master roll,
others are randomly picked.
Question: Can you tell me about the Varkon pinball?
Answer: Varkon was a pinball made in a video game cabinet. The
cabinet was essentially the same as those used by early '80s
Williams video games, such as Defender and Robotron.
Varkon was designed by Tony Kraemer in 1982. Artwork was by
Constantino Mitchell and software was by Bill Pfutzenreuter.
Less than a hundred of this game were made.
Bear with Uncle Willy as he tries his best to describe Varkon
here. Readers may also want to search the r.g.p archive for
articles on Varkon, as comments on this game pop up from time
to time.
Varkon is a two-level game, although each playfield has its
own ball. (The ball does not pass between the two
playfields.) The lower playfield is visible through a window
in the upper playfield.
Both playfields are tilted away from the player and viewed
through a mirror. The mirror is mounted at eye-level, so
the illusion is presented that the ball is moving about on
a vertical playfield. The mirror is only partially silvered
and the score displays are mounted behind it. Also mounted
behind the mirror are some flash lamps behind a screened
plastic. The effect of the flash lamps when they fire is
to overlay lightning bolts over the reflected image of the
playfield.
The playfield on Varkon is a combination of wood and
plexiglass. The plexiglass overlays the wood, and is
screened with artwork.
Uncle Willy has found Varkon an entertaining and strange
game to play. The ball behaves differently on the plexiglass
than on a typical wooden playfield. The fact that the
playfield slopes downward away from the playfield means that
nudging the game doesn't do what one might expect -- it's
backwards. Combine all this with the illusion of a vertical
playfield to get a very different pinball experience.
(Uncle Willy has heard Varkon likened to playing Banzai Run
on the moon.)
Question: I really enjoy the games made by designers Steve Ritchie and
Pat Lawlor. Could you provide the list of games by each
designer?
Here are Steve Ritchie's design credits:
Airborne Avenger, Superman, Flash, Stellar Wars, Firepower,
Black Knight, Defender (conceptual contributor), Hyperball
(a rapid-shooting game with lots of balls), Devastator (a
3-D space video game that was not produced), Chicken ala
King (another video that was not produced), High Speed,
F-14 Tomcat, Rollergames, Black Knight 2000, Terminator 2,
Getaway, Star Trek the Next Generation, No Fear
And here are Pat Lawlor's design credits:
Banzai Run, Earthshaker, Whirlwind, Funhouse, Addams
Family, Twilight Zone, Addams Family Values (a coin-drop
novelty game), Roadshow, Safecracker
(Before coming to Williams Electronics Games to design
pinballs, Mr. Lawlor worked on these titles released
under the Midway video label: Adventures of Robbie Roto,
Demons and Dragons, Ten Pin Deluxe)
Question: What educational background do your game designers have?
Answer: There is no "typical" educational background for a pinball
designer at Williams Electronics, Inc. The design group
backgrounds include mechanical engineering, computer science,
industrial design, graphic arts, pinbalogy and good,
old-fashioned hard work.
Question: I have heard about some Dr. Dude pinballs made with the WPC
electronics. How were these programmed?
Answer: Before the WPC electronics were used in a full production
run of a pinball, they were field tested in approximately
100 Dr. Dude pinballs. Even though the System 11 electronics
used in the production Dr. Dude are based on a 6808 micro-
processor and the WPC electronics are based on a 6809 micro-
processor, the programming was not as difficult as one might
imagine.
With the help of a few macros, the 6809 is pretty much
source code compatible with the 6808 (which uses the 6800
instruction set). The difficult part of the Dr. Dude
conversion actually involved the differences in hardware for
lamps, switches and solenoids. Even so, handling these
differences involved moderate changes to some fairly well
localized code in the operating system.
All text and images © 1995 W*S Electronics Games, Inc.