99% Invisible - 534- For Amusement Only (Free Replay)

Episode Date: April 26, 2023

There's a new movie out called Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game. It’s a fun and extremely meta biopic telling the story of Roger Sharpe, who, with one perfect shot, helped legalize pinball in New York. That’s right – pinball was banned in many states up until the 1970s. We told that story and interviewed the REAL Roger about, oh, 400 episodes or so ago. So if you haven’t gone that far back in the catalog, we wanted to give you a free replay. After that, we’ve got a new segment with Keith Elwin, a tournament champion who made the move into designing pinball machines.For Amusement Only (Free Replay)

This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars. There's a new movie out called Pinball, the man who saved the game. It's a fun and extremely meta biopic telling the story of Roger Sharp, who, with one perfect shot, helped legalize Pinball in New York. If I pulled back just enough and the ball should go right down the center. That's saving up. That's right, pinball was banned in many states up until the 1970s. We told that story and interviewed the real Roger about 400 episodes or so ago. So if you

haven't gone that far back in the catalog, we wanted to give you this free replay. After that we got a new segment with Keith Ellen, a tournament champion who made the move into designing pinball machines. But first let's go all the way back to episode number 135 for amusement only. Item 4 is actions on special orders of the day that typically proceeds with the 135 for amusement only. Item four is actions on special orders of the day that typically proceeds with the Council member announcements. What you're hearing is an Oakland, California city council meeting that took place in July of 2014.

Announcements? There's a whole bunch of different issues on the agenda, everything from allegations of funds being misused. We know that there was a lot of manipulation of funds, okay? And there's been a big ripoff with those funds to announcements of neighborhood parties. Basketball, pick up game, fuel games, face painting, zoom in dancing.

And producer Mickey Kapper sat to the entire meeting like a good reporter does. To hear them say this. Move the item out of the present. Move the item, Madam President. Move by Vice Mayor Reed. Seconded by Miss McElhaney. And by consensus, we'll adopt the items in the consent calendar. So they never actually say it directly.

But by adopting the items in the consent calendar, what happened there is that the city of Oakland finally legalized for the first time since the 1930s pinball machines. I'm Michael Shee, I'm the founder and executive director of the Pacific Pinball Museum. The Pacific Pinball Museum, which is a collection of really cool, mostly older machines that you can still play, is in Oakland's neighboring city, Alameda. Until recently, coin-operated pinball machines were also illegal in Alameda.

And it's the reason that we started out as a admission-based establishment and everything was on free plate. Most of the museum's pinball machines look a lot like the ones you've seen before in your local bar, but there are a few really old ones that look completely different. And pinball's design history can help explain why it was illegal for so long and why after

nearly 80 years of being a slightly sketchy leather jacket wearing Nurdwell, pinball can now go legit and claim its place with Pac-Man as good clean family fun. Pinball evolved out of a game that was also played in a tilted cabinet, but was a bit more like billiards. You chewed the ball onto the field with a pool stick. In the 1860s, the pool queue turned into a spring-loaded plunger that you'd pull and release to launch the ball. They were simple wooden boards with glass tops, no electricity, no flashy art or colors,

and the game was made small to fit on top of a counter at a bar or drugstore. The mechanics of the game were simpler too. He basically did one action, pull the plunger. The ball would shoot up the right side of the board and onto the play field, where there were little pockets that would catch the ball, and then they were usually stamped with the point value. And there were pins, which looked like tiny nails that obstructed your way into the pockets. That's where pinball came from, was the nails of the pins that were driven into the board.

And the first games weren't coin-operated. Bars would buy one. And they would rent it out to people that were wanted to play it and gamble with it. It was kind of like running out the card table. with it. It was kind of like running out the card table. By the 1930s, Pimmel games were coin-operated. And you'd find these little countertop games all over the place, in bars and drugstores. You know, you'd buy an egg cream to drink and some horrible tasting elixir at the local

drugstore, and you'd use your change to play some pinball. And maybe you'd win a pack of gum or cigar. And you'd have fun doing it. Then it moved to just straight up gambling. Where instead of being awarded a prize, you were given cash. And it's around this point that pinball became electric. Lights and buzzards started showing up along with other stuff like bumpers that you could bounce off of to get more points. Points that needed to be tallyed up on a scoreboard which led to what is now referred to as the back glass. That's the part of the pinball machine that faces you as you play. And the art on the back glass became one of the most iconic things about

the pinball machine. On the newer games, a lot of the art is licensed from movies, like the 1991 hit blockbuster The Atoms family. But if you go into the pinball museum in Alameda, almost all the old games from the 30s and 40s were done by one of two artists. George Mullenton and Roy Parker. The art was meant to appeal to men and boys, so a lot of it features pictures of pretty ladies. The back glass of a game called Marble Queen depicts a group of women in swimsuits and high heels gathered around in a circle

playing marbles. They're surrounded by a big tall fence almost like they're in a clubhouse. I used to do the guys that are picking through the fence and it's pretty funny. The ultimate fantasy of a boy from the 1930s was women in their bathing suits playing marbles. The lights and buzzers and women in bathing suits just made you want to put more and more money into the machines.

Sometimes people were just playing a win-a-free game. Other times, there was a bigger payout, but it all added up. These things made a ton of money. I can't emphasize enough of that because the mafia got involved. It was all cash. With so much money disappearing into pinball machines,

the authorities started cracking down. It really got heated in the 40s. More and more laws were being enacted to make pinball gambling harder. Manufacturers would try to get around this by labeling the machines. It says right here, for amusement only, no prizes, no wagering.

I mean, they put that right on the machine and everybody knew that, well, that's exactly what it was for. By the end of the 1940s, pinball was banned in most major cities, including Chicago and Los Angeles. But perhaps nowhere was the pinball crackdown so extreme as in New York City, where in 1942, Mayor LaGuardia ordered the NYPD to round up all of the machines. Then, in a press event, the mayor personally shattered some of the machines with a sledgehammer and had them dumped into the Hudson River.

LaGuardia later reported that 2,000 new police Billy clubs would be made from the wooden legs of old pinball machines. Perfect for knocking the heads of pinball plane hooligans. Mayor LaGuardia did not succeed in ridding the world of pinball entirely, though. It was still legal in some cities, and even in New York, it didn't totally disappear. It just moved into CD underground establishments. Meanwhile, the game designers were still developing new features, the most important of which were the flippers that first appeared in 1947 that allowed you to swap the ball around the playfield by

pressing two buttons on either side of the machine. In other words, the flippers gave you some control over the outcome of the game. Remember, when pinball machines were first banned, the games were considered a game of chance. You'd basically put your quarter in, pull back the plunder, and hope for the best. When the flipper was added to the pinball machine, it should have changed the game's legal status. It wasn't a game of chance anymore. You could finally control the ball. If only they could find some way to prove it.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Roger Sharp. I guess at one point I was considered to be, if not the best player in the world, one of the best players in the world. Nearly 40 years after the introduction of the flipper, in April of 1976, Roger Sharp was called upon to prove that pinball was a game of skill before a meeting of the New York City Council. On the day of the hearing, tensions were high. It was packed. A lot of camera crews. The New York State Coin Operated Amusement Game Association

had arranged for the hearing and they'd hauled two pinball machines into the meeting room. One that Sharp was to play and another that would serve as a backup in case the first one suddenly died. And I started going over to the game that had been designated. The council had been pretty antagonistic to Sharp. They thought he would cheat. And right before he was supposed to play, a council member stopped him.

He said, no, not that game. That game over there. I think that the head of the city council thought that that game was somehow rigged. Let's go with the game that's been turned off that nobody's paid any attention to that's over there in the corner. The council session took a 20 minute recess

so that the camera crews could change the lighting from the original machine to the new machine. And then Roger Sharp steps up and starts playing. Back then I was able to really show off. So it was very nice to be able to call my shots and just do whatever I wanted to do, making backhands and shots for right to left, the left to right.

And then for the grand finale, Sharp wanted to prove that even the first shot, the one that involves just pulling back the plunger and letting go, that even that shot can be perfected with skill. So he turns to the council members and says, If I do this right, it's going to land right down the center. Pull back the plunger, it went up and ball was straight down the center.

And the guy was at the seat council, kind of threw up his head. He said, and I was right, I was right to keep on playing. I was having fun. City council voted 6-0 to pass the legislation. Sharpe has said in the past that he got lucky with this shot. It's not fun. City Council voted 6-0 to pass the legislation. Sharpe has said in the past that he got lucky with this shot, but now he says that he was being modest, that his blunge was not luck. To do what I did, that was skill.

To have done it the way that I did it was pure naivete. Within a year, pinball was legal again in most places across the country, but not in Oakland and Alameda, where as we heard in the beginning of the show, pinball just became legal in 2014. Even with the rise of video games, the pinball industry continued to experience waves of success until the 1990s, but over time, people lost interest. The last big corporation to manufacture pinball machines lost millions of dollars on its pinball division and decided to shut down in favor of a more profitable operation, making slot machines for casinos.

After decades of fighting to prove that pinball could be a game of skill, it turned out that the most lucrative bet for game makers was on games of chance gambling machines. You know, Bally's casino, they used to be in the pinball business and they took their name from their first hit pinball machine manufactured in 1932 called Ballyhoo. Welcome to the 21st century. In 1999, pinball tried to make a comeback with a game that integrated a video screen on the back glass with a mechanical play field. Welcome to Pinball 2000. Welcome to the new image in Pinball. Welcome to the 21st century.

That was a promo video for Pinball 2000, despite the reverb and the menacing ticking clock, and the mountains of hyperbole heaped upon the promotion of the game, it never really got on. Which is probably because if Pinball still has any appeal, it's actually the vintage, analog nostalgia feelings it brings up in people. We like it because it's not the future. It's the past. Back at the Pacific Pinball Museum,

Mike Shees thinks Pinball is making a bit of a comeback. And it's because people are longing to get away from screens and from games that they play at home alone. So with Pinball, you can kind of gather around and watch your friends suck. And that's the other thing that's really cool is that anybody can suck at pinball. I mean, it's a great equalizer. You don't have to be smart. You don't have to be physically an athlete.

I think what he means is that anybody can suck and anybody can be great. It's a nerds game, a rebels game, an underdog's game. After the break, I talked to Martín Gonzales about the many layers of modern pinball. We are back with Martín Gonz is hey, Martin. Hey, what's up, Roman? Hey, not much. I heard you talking about pinball last week on that deer hankin' John the way played. That's right. Does that mean you've been taking advantage of it? Now that's legal in Oakland. I have. I mean, I, I'm not a very good pinball player, but when I see it in a place like the stay gold barbecue in Oakland I'll throw some quarters into a pinball machine for sure

I find pinball to be just it's intoxicating in a way like even if you're bad at it Watching it is very very fun. So but how long have you been playing? Well, I used to actually cut class and music school to go play at the music plays across the street. I was like, Baroque theory 101 or attack from Mars, like easy choice. Okay. But I started playing a lot more when I was living in Portland, Oregon, which is just like a real pinball

mecca. So just to put it in context, New York, where I live now, has a population close to 8.5 million people and there's about 200 pinball tables But the greater Portland metro area has 2.2 million people and over a thousand tables. Oh, okay That's very precise. How do you know all these pinball statistics? Well, there's this great crowdsourced website called pinball map And it shows you what machines are where and people couldn't leave comments on like, what's broken when they swap a machine out. Right, kind of like a pinball, 3-1-1.

Yeah, exactly. And it also helps like, you know, whenever I travel, I check to see if like, there's any rare games I want to play and you're where I'm going. Nice. I was a little different. Okay, so when the story originally came out, we left off on pinball, just starting to make a comeback.

And it kind of feels to me like, I see a lot of new machines. Like, where are things at? Pinball's gotten much more broadly popular in that time. And now we're in kind of like a pinball Renaissance. Like, it's more popular than ever. But we talked in the story about how, by the end of the 90s, manufacturers were getting

out of the pinball business like the big flop of Williams' pinball 2000, 1000. So around that time, Sega sold off their pinball division, data east, to Gary Stern, who'd been running it since 1986. And Stern's been just cranking out these really high quality games for 24 years now. And for a long time, they were like the only game in town, but now there's a bunch of boutique manufacturers producing new machines and licensed reissues of some of those really great 90s era Williams tables. And in 2020, a lot of enthusiasts bought home machines because they had extra disposable income and had no hard to go play.

Yeah, sure. I know one of those people. Oh, yeah. Yeah, can I come over and play? And these modern games are also just like a lot deeper and more advanced and interesting than earlier games were. So in what way are they more interesting? Because I agree.

Like when I see a new modern pinball machine, it is, first of all, really beautiful and just gorgeous how the ball rolls and the ramps and everything, but they kind of stress me out because I'm kind of just like, keep the ball alive, flipper guy, and I don't know how to do any of the missions. And if I get into multi- multiple, it is by pure chance.

You know, yeah, multi ball is like its own crazy thing. Like really good players will do this thing where they hold a couple balls in one flipper and like just shoot with the other one, which is I'm still trying to figure that one out. So yeah, the actual skills are the same across games, but the thing you're talking about like all the objectives and shots, they're different for every table, and it can just be really daunting to keep all this in your head. Most of them have this little cheat sheet in the lower left corner,

and there also tends to be visual cues like lit arrows to communicate what the next move should be. And that can be the difference between a game that's frustrating and possible to figure out, whereas one that you can just like shoot and have a nice time, even if you don't have a bunch of stuff memorized. Right. I mean, this is where the real hardcore game design comes in, because you're really trying to balance a player like me

who can just walk up and play it versus someone who tries to master it and doesn't get frustrated. Right. And there's even in the pinball movie Roger Sharp's character gets a line in about that. That is a game of champ. That is a game of skill. Actually, it's better than that. That is a game of choices.

Everything that is on that play field was put there for a reason. I've spent time with the people that have created this game. They're not criminals. They should be celebrated. And doing this episode was a great excuse for me to spend some time myself with one of the most celebrated non-criminal designers working today. Hi, I'm Keith Owlin. I've been competing in pinball since 1993. I've won the most majors in tournament history, currently 11. And now I am a game designer at Stern Pinball. I've won the most majors in tournament history currently 11. And now I am a game designer at Stern pinball.

I've designed iron maiden Jurassic Park Avengers, Godzilla and the bond 60th anniversary edition. Now Keith's not one for bragging. So I'm going to do it for him that he's pretty widely considered one of if not the best players of all time. The world's best pinball player. He has been named the goat for many reasons. Best player in the world, best designer. Oh, is that too early? But even though his first commercial design

was only released five years ago, he was practically born for it. My dad would always have like scrap wood nails, you know, whatever, I'd be born, I'd take a scrap of wood, hammer a bunch of nails and put some rubber bands on it. And hey, look, I made a pinball machine and you know, use my fingers or blocks of wood as flippers.

That's so endearing. Yeah, I absolutely love that mental image. But so I asked them about the transition from being just a player to also designing. One thing I've noticed that I didn't really pay attention to when I was a player is that there are generally two types of pinball players, the ones that they just want fun, kinetic action. They want to score as many points as they can. And then there's the other set of players who are really into the story. It's like, I want to, you know, see what every mode, every video.

And when he said that, I was like, Oh, that second one is like my true nature. I like to just like shoot around and see what's there. I frankly, never used to really care too much about what score I got. I was just like trying to have a good time. So when you actually game in a tournament, you're going to see players just make the same four shots over and over. It's just a good point. Rinse and repeat.

Some players enjoy doing that. And you got to kind of give the little carrot for them. It's like, yeah, if you skillfully do this thing over and over, you can get a lot of points. But the average player is just like, yeah, I don't want to do that. I want to see what else this game has. So yeah, when I want to design a game get a lot of points. We don't even know how to open up a new level or story mode. We're just trying to keep that ball on the table. Yeah, exactly. It has to have enough there to be fun for casual players too. And even Keith gets bored with just shooting for points. When I first started designing, I always thought, oh, it would be so awesome to have a game where you're just completely in control

all the time, but then I, yeah, and my later designs, I'm realizing that the outer control parts are what makes it fun and challenging. Basically, like, okay, Roman, you always feel out of control and like you're gonna die at any moment. And Keith's trying to give that experience

to like even the people at the top of their game. The terror of losing is actually what makes it fun. Right, right. They should feel more like me. I like this. This is very good. And that's what makes it more fun than a video game. Like no matter how you design it

or how well you can play it, there's always that physics element that makes it a little bit of random and unpredictable. Yeah, I mean, I think that's one of the reasons why pinball is so fun to sort of line up along the sides and watch someone play because the ball is bouncing around in this physical space and there's always like a little bit of a chance that there's a little bit of

wobble or like, you know, the ball like hits the glass and then smacks down really hard. It's always fun. And the ball is moving so fast. Sometimes even just a couple milliseconds of reaction time, we'll make it go, hit a different ramp or go in a different direction. But some shots are a little easier to predict and hit repetitively than others that might send it corigning around.

But it's not any different than any other player of any sport with a ball in it. It's all about risk reward and making the player feel like, okay, I know what I know if I shoot this shot, the ball's going to be dangerous, a good chance I'm going to lose it. But this is the chance I'm taking to get this multi ball or the jackpot, you know, whatever big payoff is. I mean, is it ever a problem that he is so good that, you know, he would design a shot inside of a pinball machine that he could make, but really no one else could make. I mean, I've had that same experience sometimes playing his games where I'm like, all right,

this must be easy for him, but, you know, so I asked him about it. Sometimes, I get that a lot on Jurassic Park, but here's my philosophy. If you make a game with all these e-shots, you're never gonna have that wow moment. Oh, I did it. You want at least one or two hard shots in every game that people are initially frustrated, but then when they make it, they're like, yeah, that's awesome.

And another cool thing about modern games is that they're actually connected to the internet. Like they have Wi-Fi built into them and they get their software tweaked over time. And something I love about Keith is he'll purposely put in these risky shots that make you lose control. And then he goes back in and makes sure that the incentives are good enough for people to go for them. One of my favorite things to do is like, one of my game releases, I'll watch the top players

play because a lot of them stream and I'll see them either avoiding shots entirely or just hitting the same shots over and over. And then so I'll go to Rick Nagle, my programmer and I was like, yeah, we need to do something about this. How about we try this or we'll put our next ball here. Okay. Now you can aim for it. Yeah.

Okay. You know, I start to see people start to aim for it. He did this a lot on Godzilla, which is currently number one of all time on this pinball forums, a long-running list of like the best games ever. And you know, so I watched one of these videos he's talking about and sure enough, this amazing player couldn't resist the reward. So he took a risk to try and get the extra ball. The sensible thing to do now probably is to trap up.

I'm not gonna, I'm gonna play it. Oh, don't die. I really want this extra ball. And he lost control. Ah! Wow, I mean that's really like the heart of an iterative design process. I just didn't think that was possible in pinball because it's this big massive machine. You know, like he can't go in there and like, you know, move a ramp a little bit to make sure it's better. But he can, you know, tweak the code and then make it so that, you know,

if it's worth the risk, he can like rebalance it. You know, he'll also make certain objectives easier if he sees players struggling to reach them. Oh, I love this. This makes me really want to play when he has games. Well, it's like I've got pinball map open here. Looks like there's a Jurassic Park three blocks away from the Oakland office. If you want to see if you can make one of these in possible shots, I will never make it.

But you know, at least I can admire its craft. I mean, have you ever gotten the urge to play in a tournament yourself and use some of this knowledge, well, I've just always been a little scared too. Like, there's this kind of like very macho, bro. You like slam on the machine around and like, oh, I got the high score kind of thing that like kind of intimidated me.

But, you know, my friend Michelle, who she works at WFMU, shot out WFMU. Oh, the great WFMU. Yeah, they put a pinball team together. So, she talked to me into it. She was like, you know, it's okay to just go and suck. You don't have to win to have a good time. So, I thought like, all right, you know, I'm talking to Keith.

I'm doing this episode. I just got to get over my fears and go do one. So, last week, I went to Jack Barr and Brooklyn for their regular Thursday night knockout tournament. The rules are you plan the same machine with one or two other people, the lowest score gets a strike and three strikes and you're out.

Okay, so how'd you do? So I got off to a really rough start on Cactus Canyon. I was just like super nervous. First of all, I'm up against Hunter. He got five million. I got one million, not looking good so far. I ended up losing that game, and suddenly I just didn't really feel nervous anymore.

Like, oh, like, losing's not so bad. And then I ended up having a nice surprise in my second round. I had a creature from the Black Lagoon second, which is actually one of my better games. Even though I didn't do too well by my usual centers, I did better than the other two people, so I'm alive a little longer. But in round three, I got my ass kicked in Spider-Man,

apparently I'm playing against one of the best here, and I got absolutely shredded It wasn't even close. And then in round four, I actually captured the moment that I got knocked out of the tournament. I am playing Star Wars against Hunter who I played on my first game. Typically not one of my best games. I watched a video last night to try and find a strategy for it. But I think, yeah, he just passed me. So it's going to be my third strike. He'd watched the same video and he remembered a lot more of it. But still, that's not so bad

for your first time. Yeah, I had so much fun and I was really high off of that one victory. So I actually went to another tournament two days later and I won three out of my first four games. So I was like feeling great. But then I got eliminated with strikes on Iron Maiden and Godzilla, which are two of Keith's games. So I'm sorry Keith, I tried my best for you. Well, I am just proud that you've used your job here as an excuse to play penball. Anytime you need me to, I'm quite happy to. 99% Invisible was produced this week by Mickey Kapper, who originally made the story back in 2014 with production assistants from Katie Mangle and Sam Greensman. Our team Gonzales produced and remixed the rerun. Original music by Swan Raill,

plus Kansas City stomp by Jelly Roll Mourn. Many thanks to Keith Owin for talking with us. Thanks also to Zach Sharp, Josh Rube, Michelle Colomere, and Maya Raskovich. Delaney Hall is our senior editor, Kurt Colstead, is our digital director. The rest of the team includes Chris Baroube, Emmett Fitzgerald, Christopher Johnson, Jason Dillion, Lasha Madadon, Vivian Le, Jacob Moltenado Medina, Kelly Prime, Joe Rosenberg, Sophia

Klatsker, and me Roman Mars. The 99% invisible logo was created by Stefan Lawrence. We are part of the Stitcher and Serious XM Podcast family, still headquartered in beautiful, law abiding, uptown. Oakland, California. You can find the show and join discussions about the show on Facebook. You can tweet at me at Roman Mars and the show at 9-9-PI-O-RG. As long as you don't tweet to tell me that I should have made a pinball wizard joke. We're on Instagram, Reddit, and TikTok too. You can find links to other Stitcher shows I love as well as every past episode of 99-PI

at 99- at 99PI.org. This is an emergency broadcast. The Earth is being invaded by flies also from Stinger. Mamma mia! Save the tower of bees! Your cities will be destroyed! A TORK!