| Star Wars Episode I / IPD No. 4458 / June, 1999 / 4 Players | [ Submit Changes ] |
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Incorporated (1985-1999) [Trade Name: Williams]
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Last game manufactured by WMS industries (Williams and Bally labels) before the announcement to close their doors on October 25, 1999. The jet bumper rule of the 1.4 software reminds players of that date. (The number of points for spelling Jar Jar is 19,992,510; This is the date 25-10-1999, the same day WMS announced the closing of their pinball branch.)
Ted Estes, a former WMS employee has a story about buying and manufacturing the second to last Williams pinball machine built in the 20th century: http://www.softwarecrafters.com/starwars/index.html.
According to Kevin O'Connor at the 2004 Texas Pinball Festival, the Darth Maul character in the video sequence is actually Kevin himself, who trained for several weeks in stick fighting so he could be filmed against a green screen and appear in the game.
A number of the final cabinets made for this game had plaques affixed to them indicating sequentially numbered games up to a quantity of 5100. We do not know how many of these cabinets had such plaques, but a number of 200 (unconfirmed to us) is floating around in general discussion. Other cabinets had a different plaque for "The Final Collector's Series of 100". Duncan Brown tells us that these type of plaques were used to move the final inventory out the door at full price, and this was done by manufacturing facility people long after all of the engineering people were let go, the engineering people being the ones most likely to care about this sort of thing, therefore exact numbers for each plaque may not be known, in spite of what numbers the plaques might show. For instance, there could be two series of "100" plaques, for all we know. Perhaps the difficult task of locating and counting available plaques would be necessary to estimate their quantities. In contrast to our stated Production Run number of 3,525 units, Duncan believes they made 5100 units (plus playfield kits), but he remembers being told the number was more like 5,103.
Shown in this listing is a one-off game having a gold cabinet. Duncan tells us it was made just like any other game, but with a gold laminate on the cabinet parts instead of the usual black, before the art was applied. It has serial number 5371, a number that he believes was fabricated and not indicative of the total number of games made. He thinks they merely added 200 to the serial number of the last game they saw, since they knew they were done with production and would never reach that number. If he is correct, a quick mathematical subtraction points to 5,171 games made, but Duncan allows that not all serial numbers may have been used to arrive at that number. For instance, if something as trivial as a serial number label printer jammed, they would just skip over the affected numbers and move on.
Star Wars Episode 1 Quick Take (Aug/23/1999), by Krellan
(click to zoom)
 Backglass 486x368 [Todd George] |
 Playfield 896x1096 [Todd George] |
 Flyer, Front 892x1159 |
 Flyer, Back 892x1153 |
 Cabinet 1024x768 [Christopher Wolf] |
 Backbox 1024x1043 [Christopher Wolf] |
 "Tips & Tricks" Pamphlet, Front 1634x534 [Christopher Wolf] |
 "Tips & Tricks" Pamphlet, Back 1641x529 [Christopher Wolf] |
 Player View 647x1019 [Mark Clayton] |
 Machine 675x891 [Mark Clayton] |
 Collector's Series Plaque 1024x556 [Mark Clayton] |
 Full Machine 700x1100 [Allen Shope] |
 Cabinet - Front 700x465 [Allen Shope] |
 Cabinet - Left 700x900 [Allen Shope] |
 Cabinet - Right 700x900 [Allen Shope] |
 Cabinet - Rear 350x500 [Allen Shope] |
 Upper Playfield 700x465 [Allen Shope] |
 Lower Playfield 700x465 [Allen Shope] |
 Playfield Detail 700x465 [Allen Shope] |
 Playfield Detail 700x465 [Allen Shope] |
 Playfield Detail 700x465 [Allen Shope] |
 Playfield Detail 700x465 [Allen Shope] |
 Playfield Detail 700x465 [Allen Shope] |
 Playfield Detail 700x465 [Allen Shope] |
 Playfield Detail 700x465 [Allen Shope] |
 Playfield Underside 350x500 [Allen Shope] |
 Playfield Underside 700x465 [Allen Shope] |
 Playfield Underside 700x465 [Allen Shope] |
 Cabinet - Inside 700x465 [Allen Shope] |
 Cabinet Electronics 700x465 [Allen Shope] |
 Backbox - Rear 350x500 [Allen Shope] |
 Backbox - Front 700x900 [Allen Shope] |
 Monitor On Screen 700x465 [Allen Shope] |
 Full Machine 700x1100 [Allen Shope] |
 Blank Playfield 1024x1583 [Philippe Thibault] |
 Later Production Plaque* 646x514 [Duncan Brown] |
 Later Production Plaque* 800x533 [Duncan Brown] |
 Gold Laminate Cabinet* 352x515 [Duncan Brown] |
 Later Production Plaque* 1024x768 [Rich Huff] |
 Driver Board Cover 1200x900 [Benjamin D. Reed] |
 Illuminated Backglass 552x616 |
 Monitor In View 855x641 |
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