WEBVTT - The Komplicated Story of Midway Games 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:07.800 Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. 0:00:12.080 --> 0:00:15.000 Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, 0:00:15.160 --> 0:00:18.320 Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio 0:00:18.480 --> 0:00:23.239 and I love all things tech and Way back in 0:00:23.400 --> 0:00:28.200 twenty Holy Cow, more than a decade ago, tech Stuff 0:00:28.240 --> 0:00:32.440 did an episode that was a profile about Midway Games, 0:00:33.159 --> 0:00:37.440 and the company Midway was going through bankruptcy at that time, 0:00:37.520 --> 0:00:40.159 and it would effectively cease to be by two thousand 0:00:40.120 --> 0:00:43.400 and eleven. But the story of Midway is a really 0:00:43.479 --> 0:00:46.680 complicated one and it involves a lot of other companies 0:00:46.800 --> 0:00:49.800 as well. And while the company that fizzled out in 0:00:50.640 --> 0:00:56.040 can technically trace its history back to arguably you could 0:00:56.040 --> 0:00:58.760 go even earlier, it wouldn't be fair to say that 0:00:58.880 --> 0:01:03.040 was really the same come monny, throughout all that time, plus, 0:01:03.280 --> 0:01:07.160 titles that Midway created are still going strong today years 0:01:07.160 --> 0:01:10.240 after the company has gone away, as there is a 0:01:10.280 --> 0:01:12.959 new Mortal Kombat movie preparing to finish up on the 0:01:13.400 --> 0:01:17.000 big or more likely for most of us, the slightly 0:01:17.080 --> 0:01:19.759 less big screen. I figured that we could learn more 0:01:19.800 --> 0:01:23.800 about Midway, its history, it's influence on video games, the 0:01:23.840 --> 0:01:27.680 development of Mortal Kombat in particular, and While I could 0:01:27.800 --> 0:01:32.880 dive into excruciating detail, I'm not going to. This is 0:01:32.880 --> 0:01:35.720 going to be more of a summary than a full account, 0:01:35.880 --> 0:01:42.039 because to go year by year would be tedious. Uh, 0:01:42.319 --> 0:01:47.199 Midway has been involved in tons of different coin operated 0:01:47.240 --> 0:01:51.200 amusements and then later on the home market, so we're 0:01:51.200 --> 0:01:54.000 gonna take kind of a very high level view, but 0:01:54.040 --> 0:01:55.480 it also means we're gonna have to look at a 0:01:55.480 --> 0:01:57.760 lot of other stuff. So along the way we will 0:01:57.840 --> 0:02:02.200 learn about coin operated our acade games and amusements, how 0:02:02.240 --> 0:02:06.120 the video game crash affected the arcade industry, and more. 0:02:06.440 --> 0:02:11.040 But our story begins well before there ever was a 0:02:11.120 --> 0:02:14.840 Midway Games. We're actually going to look at a time 0:02:15.160 --> 0:02:18.639 that happened a century before Midway Games was founded. But 0:02:18.680 --> 0:02:23.280 don't worry, we're not again going to go into deep 0:02:23.320 --> 0:02:27.440 detail here. It is fascinating, but around the eighteen seventies, 0:02:27.440 --> 0:02:30.560 clever engineers figured out ways to make machines that could 0:02:31.080 --> 0:02:35.799 deliver some sort of product or service automatically in exchange 0:02:35.880 --> 0:02:40.040 for a coin. So a coin operated device, you might 0:02:40.080 --> 0:02:42.480 put a penny in a slot and then maybe a 0:02:42.480 --> 0:02:46.400 little ten figures like T I N ten figures begin 0:02:46.440 --> 0:02:50.239 to race around a race track. Or jazz band might 0:02:50.320 --> 0:02:54.639 appear to dance around as music plays from the machine. 0:02:55.000 --> 0:02:58.600 By the way, if you're ever in San Francisco, I 0:02:58.720 --> 0:03:03.640 highly recommend you check out muse A Mechanique. It is 0:03:04.280 --> 0:03:10.400 a an entire museum dedicated to coin operated devices, ranging 0:03:10.480 --> 0:03:16.840 from games like pinball two very odd and specific implementations. 0:03:17.040 --> 0:03:20.480 It is a fascinating place and I love it very much. 0:03:20.639 --> 0:03:25.320 Also kind of creepy. But the basic business model of 0:03:25.360 --> 0:03:28.960 this whole operation was that you have a company that 0:03:29.080 --> 0:03:32.760 builds these sorts of machines, right They specialize in creating 0:03:33.000 --> 0:03:37.280 the clockwork or mechanics that actually do the thing. And 0:03:37.320 --> 0:03:41.320 then that company, once making this machine, would sell that 0:03:41.360 --> 0:03:45.000 machine to various business owners, and the owner might run 0:03:45.000 --> 0:03:48.560 a bar or maybe an amusement park or carnival or 0:03:48.680 --> 0:03:52.160 a bowling alley or whatever, and the owner would then 0:03:52.400 --> 0:03:57.200 recoup the cost of that purchase a penny or much 0:03:57.280 --> 0:04:00.320 much later a quarter at a time. So as long 0:04:00.360 --> 0:04:03.120 as the machine was in good working order and people 0:04:03.200 --> 0:04:06.240 liked whatever it was the machine did, it would become 0:04:06.280 --> 0:04:09.760 a revenue generator and eventually turn a profit if you 0:04:09.800 --> 0:04:13.280 could run it for long enough. There's a great story 0:04:13.520 --> 0:04:16.560 of a sort of proto coin up device I want 0:04:16.560 --> 0:04:18.640 to talk about for a second. It came from the UK, 0:04:19.120 --> 0:04:23.960 specifically London, even more specifically Fleet Street, where a barber 0:04:24.040 --> 0:04:26.560 of some renown was known to cooperate with a local 0:04:26.600 --> 0:04:30.680 pie shop owner. But that's a musical for another time. Anyway, 0:04:31.120 --> 0:04:35.360 there was a bookseller and political agitator named Richard Carlisle 0:04:35.560 --> 0:04:40.320 who had this weird idea that it wasn't totally fair 0:04:40.360 --> 0:04:43.640 that only about three percent of the UK's population actually 0:04:43.640 --> 0:04:46.560 had the right to vote. So he set up a 0:04:46.640 --> 0:04:50.360 bookseller shop on Fleet Street. And the authorities didn't really 0:04:50.400 --> 0:04:53.480 care for some of the literature he was selling, and 0:04:53.520 --> 0:04:56.560 they brought upon him charges that he was knowingly selling 0:04:56.680 --> 0:05:00.919 prohibited books. Carlisle came up with what thought was a 0:05:01.080 --> 0:05:05.800 pretty clever workaround of this. He installed a shoot near 0:05:05.839 --> 0:05:09.000 the front of his shops. So there is a wall 0:05:09.040 --> 0:05:12.480 there and a little shoot a slot that was right 0:05:12.520 --> 0:05:14.600 there at the front, and there was also a coin 0:05:14.680 --> 0:05:18.000 slot and a dial next to the shoot, and customers 0:05:18.080 --> 0:05:21.080 could come in. They could put a coin into the slot, 0:05:21.760 --> 0:05:23.960 and then they would turn the dial to a number 0:05:24.000 --> 0:05:28.159 that would correspond to a specific title of a book 0:05:28.200 --> 0:05:32.520 that would otherwise prohibited, and then the respective literature would 0:05:32.600 --> 0:05:34.640 come down the shoot and the customer would pick it 0:05:34.720 --> 0:05:37.760 up and walk away. Now, the only reason this doesn't 0:05:37.760 --> 0:05:40.719 actually fall into a true coin op is that behind 0:05:40.760 --> 0:05:45.120 the scenes there was no automatic vending system. Carlisle had 0:05:45.160 --> 0:05:48.560 employees who were behind that wall. They could see what 0:05:48.760 --> 0:05:51.480 number of the dial was set to and then they 0:05:51.480 --> 0:05:55.200 would select the appropriate piece of literature and slide it 0:05:55.520 --> 0:05:58.640 down the shoote by hand. And carl Le wasn't trying 0:05:58.640 --> 0:06:01.359 to fool anyone into thinking the was an automatic system. 0:06:01.400 --> 0:06:05.240 He just wanted plausible deniability. If the fuzz came by, 0:06:05.360 --> 0:06:08.720 then Carlisle could claim that the customer would be unable 0:06:08.760 --> 0:06:11.719 to say who it was that sold them the book 0:06:12.160 --> 0:06:17.000 because whomever it was was behind a wall. Reportedly, this 0:06:17.120 --> 0:06:21.800 defense wasn't really impressive to the coppers and not found 0:06:21.800 --> 0:06:24.919 to be legally sound, but by the eighteen seventies the 0:06:24.920 --> 0:06:28.520 basics of coin operation and automation had really taken shape. 0:06:28.880 --> 0:06:32.440 Penny arcades would then become a thing, and they were 0:06:32.520 --> 0:06:36.680 extremely popular from the eighteen nineties into the first few 0:06:36.760 --> 0:06:40.080 years of the twentieth century. So these were areas that 0:06:40.120 --> 0:06:43.680 were specifically set aside to hold different amusements that were 0:06:43.720 --> 0:06:47.400 operated by the insertion of a penny, and then you 0:06:47.400 --> 0:06:49.680 would get to do whatever it was like. It might 0:06:49.720 --> 0:06:53.160 be a game, or it might even be sort of 0:06:53.200 --> 0:06:57.359 like a little movie. There were these devices called muto scopes. 0:06:57.839 --> 0:07:00.960 They did not mutate people. Rather, they were kind of 0:07:00.960 --> 0:07:05.479 a predecessor to motion pictures, and they allowed people to 0:07:05.480 --> 0:07:08.520 watch short, silent movies. It was really a series of photographs. 0:07:08.520 --> 0:07:12.080 I mean all movies are really those, a series of 0:07:12.080 --> 0:07:16.480 photographs that were mounted on stiff cards that were then 0:07:16.560 --> 0:07:21.240 in turn mounted on a round drum. So the machine, 0:07:21.320 --> 0:07:24.120 once you put a pinnion, would rotate the drum and 0:07:24.160 --> 0:07:28.120 that would present these photographs in series at a speed 0:07:28.160 --> 0:07:33.040 fast enough to create the illusion of animation. Many of 0:07:33.080 --> 0:07:37.040 these early devices were of a rather salacious nature. They 0:07:37.080 --> 0:07:41.840 featured movies of young women cavorting in various stages of undress, 0:07:42.760 --> 0:07:46.960 and each device was dedicated to a specific film, sometimes 0:07:47.200 --> 0:07:53.400 with incredibly evocative titles like what the Butler Saw. This 0:07:53.560 --> 0:07:56.680 also meant that the industry in general of the coin 0:07:56.720 --> 0:08:00.000 op world was starting to get a bad name for itself. Uh. 0:08:00.080 --> 0:08:02.960 A lot of the people behind it also abandoned it 0:08:03.120 --> 0:08:06.880 because they started to get into the actual motion picture industry. 0:08:06.960 --> 0:08:10.120 So for a couple of different reasons, the penny arcades 0:08:10.760 --> 0:08:14.280 began to have a bit of a decline in popularity, 0:08:14.360 --> 0:08:16.640 and they definitely had a stigma attached to them. I mean, 0:08:16.680 --> 0:08:21.280 the fact that you had these little, you know, movie 0:08:21.320 --> 0:08:27.320 machines showing off women partially undressed, meant that they were 0:08:27.400 --> 0:08:33.800 essentially associated with a certain clientele of low repute. And 0:08:33.880 --> 0:08:37.560 the next big advantage in coin operated amusements fell into 0:08:37.640 --> 0:08:42.080 the gambling category, with like the early versions of slot machines, 0:08:42.120 --> 0:08:46.280 and that further associated coin operated devices with the more 0:08:46.480 --> 0:08:50.559 seedy elements of society. First you had peep shows, now 0:08:50.640 --> 0:08:54.920 you got gambling. Such stuff attracts the wrong crowd, you know, 0:08:55.000 --> 0:08:59.560 like hoodlums and gangsters and hop heads and whatnot, or 0:08:59.720 --> 0:09:03.440 so thought the various guardians of virtue, many of whom 0:09:03.520 --> 0:09:08.640 were self appointed. Meanwhile, some inventors were creating devices that 0:09:08.679 --> 0:09:13.040 introduced games of skill rather than just games of chance. 0:09:13.600 --> 0:09:17.640 So in other words, it was something where the person 0:09:17.720 --> 0:09:20.080 putting in the coin actually had a chance to to 0:09:20.160 --> 0:09:24.280 change the outcome in some way, as opposed to just 0:09:24.880 --> 0:09:28.320 hoping that dumb chance makes a ball fall into a 0:09:28.360 --> 0:09:31.920 particular pocket or something. But the association with stuff like 0:09:31.960 --> 0:09:35.400 gambling and peep shows clung to these devices too, and 0:09:35.400 --> 0:09:39.440 they were all kind of lumped into uh machines that 0:09:39.480 --> 0:09:45.160 were guaranteed to send the country into moral decline. Then 0:09:45.160 --> 0:09:48.320 we get into pinball, which similarly had to deal with 0:09:48.360 --> 0:09:52.960 the problem that citizens of unimpeachable morality were sure that 0:09:53.040 --> 0:09:56.520 pinball machines would lead the innocent youth astray and perhaps 0:09:56.800 --> 0:10:00.520 serve as a front for organized crime. Serious of y'all. 0:10:00.920 --> 0:10:05.520 And there were tons of other coin operated amusements, some 0:10:05.600 --> 0:10:09.120 of which simulated various sports. So you could play a 0:10:09.160 --> 0:10:13.640 sort of game of baseball or tennis on this mechanical device. 0:10:13.720 --> 0:10:16.640 It was coin operated, and you would control these little 0:10:16.679 --> 0:10:20.480 figures using different handles and wheels and other types of 0:10:20.840 --> 0:10:24.240 you know, input devices. And and they were also early 0:10:24.480 --> 0:10:28.079 pellet gun based games and later light gun based games, 0:10:28.080 --> 0:10:31.720 so they were shooting games as well. Meanwhile, mass production 0:10:32.000 --> 0:10:35.280 had also become a thing, with assembly lines and efficient 0:10:35.320 --> 0:10:39.800 methods of making a lot of versions of the same product. 0:10:40.200 --> 0:10:42.760 That led us to the birth of several companies that 0:10:42.840 --> 0:10:48.360 started to specialize in coin operated entertainment. One of those 0:10:48.400 --> 0:10:53.679 companies was Lynn Durance United manufacturing company, which would end 0:10:53.760 --> 0:10:56.760 up being incredibly important for our story. It first burst 0:10:56.840 --> 0:11:00.640 onto the scene in ninety two, but its first really 0:11:00.679 --> 0:11:05.679 big hit was in had a bowling game called Shuffle Alley. 0:11:05.840 --> 0:11:09.600 The game had these little cutouts that represented bowling pins. 0:11:09.640 --> 0:11:13.920 They were suspended from hinged poles. So you would slide 0:11:13.920 --> 0:11:18.360 a puck like device down the alley, uh, which really 0:11:18.400 --> 0:11:21.120 is going kind of underneath where the pins are. But 0:11:21.280 --> 0:11:23.880 as it goes down the alley, it would trigger these 0:11:23.920 --> 0:11:29.080 little switches that corresponded to those suspended pins. So as 0:11:29.120 --> 0:11:32.640 the puck would trigger the switch, those poles would flip 0:11:32.720 --> 0:11:35.480 up and retract the pins, which represented that they had 0:11:35.520 --> 0:11:37.959 been knocked down, like in a game of bowling. And 0:11:38.000 --> 0:11:41.840 it was a really big hit. But more importantly, United 0:11:42.000 --> 0:11:46.480 employed a couple of amusement designers who are critical to 0:11:46.600 --> 0:11:51.679 our story. One was Marcine Iggy Wolverton. He went by Iggy. 0:11:52.120 --> 0:11:55.720 I felt that Marcine was a uh an effeminate name 0:11:55.760 --> 0:11:58.680 that he didn't want, and so he went with Iggy. 0:11:58.800 --> 0:12:01.160 And he was an engineer who had worked on everything 0:12:01.240 --> 0:12:04.840 from military aircraft in World War Two two juke boxes 0:12:05.320 --> 0:12:09.359 before he actually joined United. The other was an electrical 0:12:09.440 --> 0:12:14.400 engineer named Hank Ross, and together Wolverton and Ross worked 0:12:14.400 --> 0:12:18.080 on lots of different amusements coin operated amusements, but in 0:12:18.120 --> 0:12:22.040 the nineteen fifties, United was going through some financial difficulties 0:12:22.040 --> 0:12:24.760 and Wolverton and Ross decided that they wanted to strike 0:12:24.800 --> 0:12:28.320 out and found their own company. They did so in 0:12:28.520 --> 0:12:32.560 Franklin Park, Illinois, and they named their company after the 0:12:32.760 --> 0:12:37.720 nearby airport in Chicago. They called it the Midway Manufacturing Company, 0:12:37.760 --> 0:12:40.760 and it officially became a thing in nineteen fifty eight. 0:12:41.280 --> 0:12:44.880 Funding coincidence, the Midway is also the name for the 0:12:44.960 --> 0:12:48.760 area in a carnival that hosts stuff like games and 0:12:48.840 --> 0:12:51.760 amusement rides, so in this case the name of the 0:12:51.760 --> 0:12:55.560 company had a sort of double meaning. Anyway, the two 0:12:55.559 --> 0:12:58.240 men founded the company with a startup fund of just 0:12:58.400 --> 0:13:01.920 around five thousand dollars, and they knew that they wouldn't 0:13:01.920 --> 0:13:05.120 be able to compete on the same scale as the larger, 0:13:05.320 --> 0:13:08.720 more established companies in the business, most of them located 0:13:08.760 --> 0:13:12.600 out of Chicago, so their plan was to keep costs 0:13:12.800 --> 0:13:15.240 low so that they could sell their games and their 0:13:15.280 --> 0:13:20.080 amusements for lower prices than other companies. The margins would 0:13:20.120 --> 0:13:22.680 be small it would be hard work, but they figured 0:13:22.720 --> 0:13:25.240 they could carve out a place in the market for themselves. 0:13:25.280 --> 0:13:28.240 That way, they might not get rich, but they thought 0:13:28.280 --> 0:13:31.720 they could make some interesting games and devices and earn 0:13:31.760 --> 0:13:35.240 a good living. Their first game was called Bumper Shuffle, 0:13:35.400 --> 0:13:38.360 a sort of shuffle board game with bumpers similar to 0:13:38.360 --> 0:13:40.960 what you would see in a pinball machine. But their 0:13:41.000 --> 0:13:44.560 first big hit came out in nineteen sixty It was 0:13:44.880 --> 0:13:47.800 Shooting Gallery, and it used a pellet gun. It was 0:13:47.880 --> 0:13:51.480 such a hit that shooting games became a cornerstone of 0:13:51.520 --> 0:13:55.480 their business. They also kept innovating. In nineteen sixty four, 0:13:55.800 --> 0:13:59.080 they created a system in which the machine would automatically 0:13:59.200 --> 0:14:03.720 speed up the moving targets as players scored more points, so, 0:14:03.920 --> 0:14:06.640 in other words, the game got more difficult if you 0:14:06.679 --> 0:14:09.040 were good at it kept the game interesting for like 0:14:09.280 --> 0:14:13.080 highly skilled players. They also introduced targets that were covered 0:14:13.080 --> 0:14:16.320 in fluorescent paint, and they started to use black lights 0:14:16.320 --> 0:14:19.280 and some of their games, and both of those innovations 0:14:19.320 --> 0:14:23.600 would find their ways into shooting games moving forward. Before long, 0:14:23.920 --> 0:14:26.080 the demand was high enough that it required them to 0:14:26.160 --> 0:14:29.240 move to a larger building to house their operations. In 0:14:29.400 --> 0:14:33.520 nineteen sixty six, Midway, the company that was going to 0:14:33.560 --> 0:14:38.960 be a scrappy little underdog had become an overdog, or 0:14:39.000 --> 0:14:41.560 maybe just a dog whatever I mean. It got big, 0:14:42.040 --> 0:14:44.800 big enough to stand toe to toe with the four 0:14:44.920 --> 0:14:51.400 other big coin operated companies in the United States GOTTLIEB Williams, Bally, 0:14:51.880 --> 0:14:56.480 and Chicago Coin and spoiler alert. Two of those four 0:14:56.720 --> 0:15:00.280 are going to be incredibly important to our story. And 0:15:00.520 --> 0:15:02.120 let's go ahead and get this one of those. In 0:15:02.200 --> 0:15:05.000 nineteen sixty nine, there would be a big change in 0:15:05.000 --> 0:15:07.680 the industry. That was the year that Bally bought out 0:15:07.840 --> 0:15:12.680 Midway Manufacturing. Bally was known not just for coin operated amusements, 0:15:13.000 --> 0:15:16.880 but specifically for gambling devices, though it had made its 0:15:16.920 --> 0:15:19.160 name early on with pinball machines. And if you listen 0:15:19.200 --> 0:15:22.400 to the whose song Pinball Wizard, you'll hear the lyric 0:15:22.760 --> 0:15:25.480 I thought I was the Bally table King, but I 0:15:25.560 --> 0:15:29.040 just handed my pinball crown to him. So yeah. Bally 0:15:29.160 --> 0:15:32.000 also very much associated with pinball machines as well as 0:15:32.040 --> 0:15:36.520 gambling machines. Bally itself had nearly collapsed in nineteen fifty eight, 0:15:36.600 --> 0:15:39.200 that was the same year the Midway was founded. That 0:15:39.280 --> 0:15:43.280 was when Bally's founder had passed away. A group of investors, however, 0:15:43.320 --> 0:15:46.000 came in and purchased Bally's and the company went on 0:15:46.040 --> 0:15:49.080 to produce updated slot machines kind of similar to the 0:15:49.160 --> 0:15:52.280 ones that you might find in a casino today, of 0:15:52.320 --> 0:15:55.160 the classic type, that is, and Bally had a near 0:15:55.200 --> 0:15:58.880 monopoly on slot machines and casinos in Nevada and became 0:15:58.960 --> 0:16:02.880 financially stable, in fact, flourishing enough to acquire Midway Manufacturing 0:16:02.920 --> 0:16:06.400 in nineteen sixty nine. So at this time, the Midway 0:16:06.440 --> 0:16:10.600 division was still making electro mechanical arcade devices. But in 0:16:10.640 --> 0:16:14.440 the early nineteen seventies things changed. The birth of the 0:16:14.520 --> 0:16:17.600 video game opened up new possibilities. You could make a 0:16:17.680 --> 0:16:21.000 game that ran on code instead of on servos and 0:16:21.120 --> 0:16:24.880 actuators and lightbulbs. You could reduce the number of possible 0:16:24.960 --> 0:16:28.080 fail points, and that would reduce how much maintenance you 0:16:28.080 --> 0:16:31.280 would have to perform on machines, and so Midway's focus 0:16:31.320 --> 0:16:35.720 began to include video games. Early on, Midway established a 0:16:35.760 --> 0:16:40.160 couple of incredibly important partnerships with Japanese companies. The first 0:16:40.280 --> 0:16:44.680 was with Tito, which produced the phenomenally popular Space Invaders 0:16:44.760 --> 0:16:47.720 video game. At the end of the nineteen seventies. Midway 0:16:47.760 --> 0:16:51.560 would also become the North American distributor of Space Invaders, 0:16:51.720 --> 0:16:54.320 and that got that company a lot of money. The 0:16:54.400 --> 0:16:57.840 second big partnership was with Namco. That's the company that 0:16:57.880 --> 0:17:01.160 brought us pac Man. So Midway introduced these games two 0:17:01.160 --> 0:17:05.320 Americans who went gaga for them, and Midway, Tito, and 0:17:05.400 --> 0:17:10.040 Namco all benefited from this relationship. Around this time, Valley 0:17:10.160 --> 0:17:15.680 merged its own games division with Midway, creating Bally Midway. Previously, 0:17:16.040 --> 0:17:19.239 both divisions had been making games like pinball machines on 0:17:19.320 --> 0:17:23.159 their own. Now their forces were combined and they moved forward, 0:17:23.520 --> 0:17:27.400 with Bally usually using its own name for the pinball 0:17:27.440 --> 0:17:32.000 machines and using Midway for the arcade video machines. Midway 0:17:32.040 --> 0:17:35.240 would also jump on some other opportunities. When a company 0:17:35.240 --> 0:17:39.960 called General Computer Corporation created a modified version of pac Man, 0:17:40.400 --> 0:17:44.840 Midway agreed to act as distributor, and through collaboration, this 0:17:44.920 --> 0:17:48.920 game evolved into MS pac Man. It was fairly late 0:17:49.320 --> 0:17:52.600 into that project when Midway actually bothered to seek out 0:17:52.680 --> 0:17:55.640 the blessing of Namco that's the producer of the original 0:17:55.680 --> 0:17:58.879 pac Man game. They were able to get it, obviously, 0:17:59.080 --> 0:18:01.399 but they also had to agree to pay out royalties 0:18:01.440 --> 0:18:03.960 to Namco for leaning so hard on the I P 0:18:04.320 --> 0:18:08.640 And that only makes sense. So you had engineers, developers, artists, 0:18:08.640 --> 0:18:12.119 and such working on games under the Bally Midway label. 0:18:12.400 --> 0:18:14.199 When we come back, we're going to switch gears and 0:18:14.200 --> 0:18:17.639 talk about a totally different company. But don't worry, it 0:18:17.680 --> 0:18:24.040 all comes back together as we head toward Mortal Combat. Okay, 0:18:24.040 --> 0:18:33.720 I'm gonna take a break now, all right, it's time 0:18:33.720 --> 0:18:36.280 for us to backtrack a little bit. You might remember 0:18:36.359 --> 0:18:38.639 before the break that when I listed out the big 0:18:38.720 --> 0:18:41.920 coin op companies that emerged from the nineteen fifties, one 0:18:41.960 --> 0:18:46.760 of them was called Williams, which also grew out of Chicago. Now, 0:18:46.800 --> 0:18:50.159 remember when I mentioned United Manufacturing, that was the company 0:18:50.200 --> 0:18:53.560 founded by Lynn Durant. Well, technically there was a co 0:18:53.720 --> 0:18:57.480 founder to that company, Harry Williams, And that means you 0:18:57.480 --> 0:19:01.440 can actually trace the history of both Midway and Williams 0:19:01.480 --> 0:19:04.640 to this one company that produced coin op entertainments way 0:19:04.640 --> 0:19:08.119 back in the nineteen forties. Harry Williams actually left United 0:19:08.160 --> 0:19:11.200 after only a year of being with the company, and 0:19:11.240 --> 0:19:14.760 then he formed his own Williams Manufacturing company in nineteen 0:19:14.880 --> 0:19:18.400 forty three, Williams had already made a ton of contributions 0:19:18.440 --> 0:19:21.640 to the development of games like pinball. He had actually 0:19:21.920 --> 0:19:25.600 introduced elements like the tilt detector, which can tell if 0:19:26.000 --> 0:19:29.200 someone's trying to nudge or tilt a pinball table in 0:19:29.320 --> 0:19:32.200 order to control where the ball is going. If that happens, 0:19:32.560 --> 0:19:35.480 they tilt detector shuts everything down and allows the ball 0:19:35.520 --> 0:19:37.560 to drain. It's kind of a punishment for people who 0:19:37.560 --> 0:19:40.240 are trying to cheat the game. He also introduced the 0:19:40.320 --> 0:19:43.040 concept of a free play. If a player achieved a 0:19:43.080 --> 0:19:47.000 sufficiently high score on a game, the Williams Manufacturing company 0:19:47.080 --> 0:19:49.760 would have a pretty wild ride of its own. I 0:19:49.760 --> 0:19:52.280 guess it's a good thing there wasn't a sensor in 0:19:52.400 --> 0:19:55.040 the company for tilt, because it would have gone off 0:19:55.160 --> 0:20:00.119 numerous times. In ninety eight, Sam Stern would buy to 0:20:00.200 --> 0:20:04.199 the company, taking up almost half of the ownership Williams 0:20:04.440 --> 0:20:07.800 is Harry Williams focused on developing games, while Sam Stern 0:20:08.000 --> 0:20:10.720 kind of handled most of the business side of the enterprise. 0:20:11.200 --> 0:20:14.120 In nineteen fifty nine, a conglomerate out of New York 0:20:14.160 --> 0:20:18.600 called Consolidated sun Ray bought out Harry Williams share of 0:20:18.640 --> 0:20:22.840 the company and it became the Williams Electronic Manufacturing Corporation. 0:20:23.119 --> 0:20:26.119 Harry Williams essentially left the company at this point, though 0:20:26.160 --> 0:20:30.320 he did occasionally design games for Williams in the following years. 0:20:30.840 --> 0:20:34.960 In nineteen sixty one, sam Stern then purchased the shares 0:20:35.000 --> 0:20:38.840 that were owned by Consolidated sun Ray, but in sixty 0:20:38.880 --> 0:20:42.280 four he sold the company to another corporation called ce Berg, 0:20:42.880 --> 0:20:46.879 which also acquired the old Union Manufacturing. So yeah, I'm 0:20:46.920 --> 0:20:50.639 getting kind of dizzy too. The operations transferred over to 0:20:50.680 --> 0:20:53.560 a factory that had been owned by Union, and the 0:20:53.720 --> 0:20:58.560 entire company adopted the Williams brand name, becoming Williams Electronics. 0:20:58.960 --> 0:21:01.480 Sam Stern was actually brought back in to run the 0:21:01.520 --> 0:21:06.240 operations that were overseeing the coin op amusements like Bally 0:21:06.280 --> 0:21:09.359 and Midway. The folks that Williams understood the potential for 0:21:09.480 --> 0:21:12.719 video games as those came onto the scene, and so 0:21:12.800 --> 0:21:16.040 the company started to work on developing arcade video games 0:21:16.040 --> 0:21:20.159 in the early nineteen seventies. This coincided with a restructuring 0:21:20.359 --> 0:21:23.120 of the company, and in nineteen seventy four we got 0:21:23.200 --> 0:21:27.640 Williams Electronics Incorporated, which was still a subsidiary to see 0:21:27.680 --> 0:21:30.640 Berg at that point. But in nineteen eighty a guy 0:21:30.720 --> 0:21:35.720 named Louis Nicastro purchased Williams Electronics from Seaberg. It was 0:21:35.800 --> 0:21:38.199 this version of Williams that would introduce the world to 0:21:38.240 --> 0:21:43.880 some incredibly popular arcade titles like Joust Defender and Robotron. 0:21:44.320 --> 0:21:47.040 Classic arcade game nerds will be familiar with those titles, 0:21:47.080 --> 0:21:51.040 which sucked down quarters at an incredible pace. Now, a 0:21:51.119 --> 0:21:56.000 related area of revenue was the blossoming home video game market. 0:21:56.040 --> 0:21:58.320 That one one was ramping up quite a bit, in fact, 0:21:58.720 --> 0:22:02.200 a bit too fast, as would turn out. Usually, companies 0:22:02.240 --> 0:22:06.800 like Midway or Williams wouldn't develop games for home systems. Instead, 0:22:07.119 --> 0:22:11.240 they would license out their i p to other game studios, 0:22:11.240 --> 0:22:14.479 which would then create home versions of those arcade games. 0:22:15.000 --> 0:22:19.000 The home versions were often, at best pale imitations of 0:22:19.040 --> 0:22:22.160 the original arcade game experience, and there were a couple 0:22:22.160 --> 0:22:25.280 of big reasons for this. Some of them are technological, 0:22:25.680 --> 0:22:29.359 some of them are more related to gameplay, and let's 0:22:29.359 --> 0:22:33.639 go with technological first. From that perspective, early game consoles 0:22:33.840 --> 0:22:37.520 had a really limited amount of processing power. Moreover, I 0:22:37.560 --> 0:22:40.520 am really talking about consoles that could play different games, 0:22:40.560 --> 0:22:44.040 typically by inserting a cartridge into the video game console. 0:22:44.760 --> 0:22:49.639 The games were hard coded into the circuitry inside those cartridges, 0:22:50.080 --> 0:22:53.680 and plugging the cartridge into the console connected the game's 0:22:53.800 --> 0:22:59.360 circuit board to the consoles processors. Arcade games were instead 0:22:59.440 --> 0:23:02.199 dedicated machines that just did one thing. They played a 0:23:02.280 --> 0:23:06.680 specific game based on whatever wrong chips that is, read 0:23:06.800 --> 0:23:10.120 only memory chips were plugged into the circuit boards for 0:23:10.200 --> 0:23:14.520 that arcade cabinet. Arcade games provided a more sophisticated experience 0:23:14.560 --> 0:23:17.440 than the home game market, even when the experience was 0:23:17.480 --> 0:23:21.400 still fairly primitive early on. You would never say that 0:23:21.480 --> 0:23:25.240 the Atari twenty version of pac Man was identical to 0:23:25.240 --> 0:23:28.720 the arcade version, because it clearly was not. In fact, 0:23:29.359 --> 0:23:33.200 it was pretty awful. But from a gameplay perspective, there 0:23:33.240 --> 0:23:36.680 was another big difference. Let's talk about why arcade game 0:23:36.720 --> 0:23:39.840 designers made games the way they were. So. The whole 0:23:39.880 --> 0:23:43.159 point is to convince someone to plunk over a quarter. 0:23:43.440 --> 0:23:46.199 In order to play a game, the game has to 0:23:46.240 --> 0:23:50.720 be interesting and more importantly, arguably fun. It needs to 0:23:50.760 --> 0:23:53.600 give the player the sense that if they are skilled enough, 0:23:54.040 --> 0:23:57.080 they can progress further into the game, perhaps even getting 0:23:57.080 --> 0:24:00.679 a high score or finishing out of storyline depending on 0:24:00.720 --> 0:24:03.439 how the game is constructed. But that's just one side 0:24:03.480 --> 0:24:06.439 to it. The machines have to make enough money to 0:24:06.520 --> 0:24:10.160 convince proprietors, that is, the people who own a video game, 0:24:10.280 --> 0:24:13.720 arcade or a carnival or whatever. It has to convince 0:24:13.760 --> 0:24:17.240 them that they will recoup their investment after they purchase 0:24:17.480 --> 0:24:20.320 the arcade game. And if a machine costs a couple 0:24:20.359 --> 0:24:23.479 of thousand dollars, the proprietors want to know that at 0:24:23.480 --> 0:24:25.879 the end of a week they'll have a few hundred 0:24:25.880 --> 0:24:29.280 bucks in quarters. And this is really important because games 0:24:29.359 --> 0:24:32.320 might pass out of fashion. That means over time you're 0:24:32.320 --> 0:24:34.679 gonna expect to see smaller takes at the end of 0:24:34.680 --> 0:24:37.640 a week, So you need a lot of quarters. Well 0:24:37.680 --> 0:24:40.960 how do you get a lot of quarters? Well, part 0:24:40.960 --> 0:24:42.840 of it is that you have to make a game 0:24:42.880 --> 0:24:45.600 that people want to play, But another part is figuring 0:24:45.640 --> 0:24:48.159 out a kind of an amount of time that the 0:24:48.200 --> 0:24:51.640 average person might play before they run out of lives 0:24:51.720 --> 0:24:54.280 and thus require the player to either cough up another 0:24:54.359 --> 0:24:57.720 quarter to start over or to continue to play, or 0:24:58.040 --> 0:25:01.080 they'll move on and open up the arcade machine for 0:25:01.160 --> 0:25:04.639 some other player to come and try it out. That 0:25:04.720 --> 0:25:07.280 amount of time has changed over the years, like the 0:25:07.280 --> 0:25:10.639