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 WMS 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.

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