Ask Uncle Willy #9: January 16, 1996
Here's another 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. He does his best to answer all questions of general interest.
Question: On Black Knight 2000, why was the artwork changed on some of
the playfield plastics?
Answer: Uncle Willy supposes that you were expecting some grand
conspiracy disclosure or an upper-management declaration as
explanation for the change. He is sorry to disappoint you.
The simple answer is "Just because." The design team
decided to change the artwork to better emphasize a
castle/medieval theme. (The original plastics sported a
futuristic high-tech look.)
Question: What is the exact spelling of the pinball WHO dunnit? There
doesn't seem to be a consensus of how to refer to it in
print.
Answer: WHO dunnit. Note that this is how it is spelled on the logo.
The question-mark/finger print embedded in the logo is not
considered part of the name.
Question: I enjoyed the Ask Uncle Willy installment on the DCS sound
system. Could you tell me a bit about the earlier sound
systems used in Williams pinballs?
Answer: Williams pinballs started using electronically produced
sound effects in World Cup in 1978. At that time, the sounds
were mainly just emulations of those produced by the chimes
present in previous games.
The electronic sound board contained a 6808 microprocessor
(MPU), a digital-to-analog converter (DAC) and an amplifier.
Due to the limited amount of program storage all the sounds
were produced algorithmically, rather than being sampled.
(The sound ROMs for the first few electronic sound games were
only 512 bytes big.)
Use of a larger ROM (2K bytes) allowed more varied and "space
age" sound effects. However, an option switch enabled the
selection of the chime emulation sounds. This option was
provided because it was feared that the new "space age"
sounds would not be well-received by the pinball-playing
public -- they would demand the traditional chime sounds.
As it turns out, the only thing that the chime functionality
provided was a small segment of confused customers who
accidently flipped the option switch and couldn't figure out
what happened to the cool futuristic sounds.
With the introduction of the first talking game, Gorgar, a
speech reproduction circuit was added to the basic sound
system. This speech circuit used a CVSD chip. (CVSD stands
for Continuously Variable Slope Delta-modulation, a term that
means something only to a very few techie types.) The CVSD
chip allowed for efficient compression of speech data.
Due to limited ROM space and slow bits rates presented to
the CVSD chip, however, the speech from those early games is
fairly low quality.
The sound system on Williams pinballs remained pretty much
unchanged, with the exception of allowing more data storage
in ROM, for many years. It was this same system that was
used in the early Williams video games as well.
Note that, up until the Space Shuttle pinball game, there was
no "sound designer" on a Williams pinball team. The sound
effects, speech and background sounds were all programmed and
converted by the game programmer.
The High Speed pinball had a second MPU with a DAC and
amplifier added to do background music. Through some tricky
programming, notes and percussion were produced efficiently
enough to fit into limited ROM storage space.
Starting with the Road Kings pinball, an FM synthesis chip
was added to the electronic sound system. This allowed the
design teams to include music and more sound effects in
their games. This chip was controlled by a second CPU.
It is beyond the scope of this brief history to enumerate the
various sound system configurations used over the years, but
the Williams sound system remained conceptually the same
until the introduction of DCS for the Indiana Jones pinball
game. The system included those components outlined above:
one or two MPUs, ROM, DAC, CVSD chip, FM chip, and an
amplifier.
The CVSD chip was basically used for speech and a few sound
effects (it is pretty good at reproducing explosions
efficiently). The FM chip was used for tunes, fanfares and
most of the sound effects. The DAC was used for a few sound
effects, some speech (The "Welcome, race fans, to Banzai
Run" quote was produced by the DAC, for example.), and for
drums that accompany the music. Note that the DAC was used
to reproduce straight sampled sounds in most cases, and its
use had to be limited since those samples consumed a fair
amount of storage. (No compression was used, as is now done
with the DCS system.)
Note that the Twilight Zone pinball makes extensive use of
digitally sampled sounds reproduced by the DAC, probably more
so than any other Williams/Bally pinball. This is because
the DCS system was originally planned for use with Twilight
Zone. Late in the development of that game the sound system
had to be switched to the older system because the DCS
system would not be ready in time for production. Since many
of the sound effects had already been finalized and inserted
into the game, they were simply sampled again for the older
system. (The music had to be rearranged to be played by
the FM chip.)
Question: In sound test on Star Trek: The Next Generation, there is a
quote from Troi saying "I believe they have evil intentions."
Is this quote used anywhere in the game?
Answer: No. Marina Sirtis, who plays Troi, asked that the quote
not be used. However, the sound ROMs and the sound test
script were finalized early on in the design. While the
sound call was removed from use during game play, it was
overlooked in the sound test script.
Question: In the Indiana Jones pinball, how are the SPECIALS lit?
Also, my game has a lamp labeled "Lite Jackpot" above the
left ramp. I have never seen this lamp light. When is it
used?
Answer: During Quick Two Ball (started from the captive ball), hit
the captive ball to collect different jackpot awards. The
seven award (after "Fish of Tales") lights the specials.
The "Lite Jackpot" lamp is used during regular 3-ball
multiball. Note that the lamp is actually a flasher. It
may be burned out on your game.
Question: Could you tell me the design credits for John Trudeau?
Answer: John Trudeau, who is also known as "Doctor Flash", started
working in the pinball industry for Game Plan in 1979. While
there, he designed Attila the Hun, although it wasn't
actually produced until after he left to work for Gottlieb
in 1981.
While at Gottlieb (which, due to several reorganizations,
shutdowns, buyouts, etc., also did business as Mylstar and,
most recently, Premier Technologies) Mr. Trudeau designed the
following games:
Rocky, Spirit, Striker, Q*bert's Quest, Krull, The Games,
Alien Star, Touchdown, Ice Fever, Chicago Cubs Triple Play,
Tag-Team Pinball, Rock, Raven, Hollywood Heat, Genesis,
Gold Wings, Monte Carlo, Spring Break, Victory, TX-Sector,
Robo-War, Excalibur, Night Moves (a cocktail pinball licensed
to International Concepts), Silver Slugger, Deadly Weapon,
Caribbean Cruise (another cocktail pinball licensed to
International Concepts).
In 1990, Mr. Trudeau joined the Williams/Bally pinball group.
Since then he has designed the following games:
Bugs Bunny's Birthday Ball, The Machine: Bride of Pinbot
(co-designed with Python Anghelo), Black Rose, Creature from
the Black Lagoon, Judge Dredd, Flintstones, Congo.
Question: I have heard some rumors about some classic Williams video
games being available for the PC. Is this true? Where can
I buy it?
Answer: Yes. Williams Entertainment, through GT Interactive
Software, has released an Arcade Classics CD-ROM for the PC.
The arcade games included in this collection are: Defender,
Joust, Robotron 2084, Bubbles, Defender II (formerly known as
Stargate), and Sinistar.
These versions for the PC contain the program code from the
original arcade games. The PC is actually used to emulate
the old video game hardware to ensure a "true to life"
implementation of those classic games. The sounds are
digitally sampled from the original material, also, so they
sound just like the originals.
Uncle Willy is not sure of all the outlets selling this
title, but he did see it on sale at Best Buy several weeks
ago.
All text and images © 1996 WMS Electronics Games, Inc.