1991 - When I first did the backglass I copied a original from [redacted1]. [Redacted2] wanted one so I copied the glass and finished it so it would work in a game. It was never finished by David Christensen when he did it. I wanted to test it out so I put the glass in an original game that had no artwork on it, period. It was stripped to, like, a red or green color, I do not remember. It was not in very good shape. I think the game went to [redacted1], I do not remember. When the glass worked in the game we made a run of the glass and I gave one to [redacted2] and sold the run out. I would not put the [redacted2] part on the internet, he would not like it..

1993 - The second game I found in a batch of games I found and it was in great shape, all original. All Williams artwork. I had a extra glass laying around so I pulled out the original glass and put that one in. I sold that one to a collector out of the country who was a friend. I think he still has it.

1996 - I got a request from a movie company and a swing club for the games so I made the 5 custom games. I had a friend in the printing business who made about 500 flyers for fun. I kept half of them, he got the rest and who knows were they went. I then did a second run of 30 glasses to put in the 5 games and sold the balance of glasses again to collectors. They are all long gone now. I did have the game at Pinball Fantasy 97 and then that one was traded for a new CD Jukebox at the show to a dealer back east and he sold it a few years later. Those games have custom artwork on sides and a custom plastic set plus a sound system inside that plays a custom tune when the bumpers are lit and the game starts up. It uses a tape system. They all had plaques on them also. The picture was at the Pinball Fantasy Show in 1997 in Las Vegas. It was taken by a staff member and was given to me. [See Files section; has name of game in large letters on lower cabinet.] Everyone knows these games because of the flyers.

The other games were never out there as I sold them quickly and never saw them again. Plus a lot of collectors put their glasses in original games so there are a lot of them out there. I have seen a few on ebay.

We had heard anecdotally that when the Golden Cliffs feature is at maximum and then a ball lands in its saucer, the tune that is played is the interlude from The Ohio Players' song "The Worm" that was on the charts when the game was being designed. Designer Greg Kmiec later told us:

It has come to my attention that the song was indeed "The Worm." Every ball in the saucer added one note to the tune. Paragon was Bally's first wide-body. You might be able to recognize features from different games in the layout: the Capt. Fantastic bottom flippers, the Old Chicago bottom thumper bumper on the left, the Knockout Wiggler channel on the right (the across-the-playfield feed into the Knockout Wiggler lane was an homage to Ted Zale), the Harlem Globetrotters in-line drop targets on the left side feeding a reverse Capt. Fantastic across -the-playfield drop target shot and the top two saucers similar to Wizard.

We asked Greg Kmiec to comment on why the 3-flipper version was created. He replies:

I wouldn't have originally designed Paragon with that lower right section that way because it looks like the pinball could get stuck between those two wire forms.

If my memory serves me correctly, I seem to recall that the Italian, French and German markets were quite strong for Bally during that period and Bally was often visited by various foreign distributors. I recall that they relayed the fact that their players liked to hold the pinball by the flippers. The way it was relayed to designers through interpreters was that their players liked to hold the pinball on the flipper, take a drink of beer and brag to other players about the skill shot they were about to shoot. That couldn't be done with the original Paragon design. I tried something different with Paragon, since it was Bally's first wide-body game. It was relayed to Bally that the foreign player preferred one return lane on each side at the bottom of the game that "returned" the pinball to the flippers for a playfield skill shot. This type of design became known within the industry as the "Italian Bottom." It was used extensively then throughout the industry and is still in use today.

I do seem to recall adjustments being made to Paragon for foreign games [to have the "Italian Bottom"]. I don't recall how many were changed or if they were changed for only one country or one distributor, but they were definitely changed in the factory on the production line. It might have been due to a combination of two factors: the foreign distributors requesting something their players wanted and Bally realizing a cost reduction on the Bill-Of-Materials by eliminating a flipper. Bally might have been willing to change part of a production run just to sell a new wide-body game.

We asked designer Greg Kmiec how many units of this game were actually made. He replies:

As I remember, only 1 engineering sample playfield and cabinet of Star Ship were made. Two backglasses were made, one for the game and one for art registration.

Greg Kmiec also explains why this game never went into production but instead was later used to make Supersonic:

I had just designed Wizard and Capt. Fantastic. I quickly went on to design a whitewood game called "Super Shooter" with two S's as bonus lights. That game was renamed "Star Ship" probably because of the bonus lights, and a futuristic art theme was added.

Bally had just realized it was a bonus to manufacture licensed games like Wizard and Capt. Fantastic. (It distinguished Bally from the rest of the pack.) Bally went out and procured the Star Trek license. I had just done two licensed games. Bally management hired a new designer and gave him the Star Trek license in order to spread licensed games among the four designers.

After Star Ship was done, I was already working on Night Rider EM, a game that was themed after the then popular CB radio fad. It was imperative to get a CB-themed game in the market ASAP. Night Rider was deemed too good of a game to change its name. (Changing "Night Rider" to "Star Trek" would have delayed a CB-themed game by about a year. In retrospect, the drop target banks probably could have spelled S-T-A-R T-R-E-K. But it all worked out, as Night Rider SS became the test game for Bally solid state games.)

So there was "Star Ship", a complete game all designed with artwork, with the two S's as bonus lights, [while the Star Trek license had been assigned to another designer]. What was Bally to do?

"Star Ship" was designed as an economy game in a "push" market. What that meant was that because of the success of Wizard and Capt. Fantastic, Bally was able to "push" game orders to distributors instead of distributors "pulling" game orders from Bally. And the bonus to Bally was that these "push" games were inexpensive to make but sold just as many as other games.

Bally didn't want to kill the "Star Ship" game. Therefore, a new theme, "Supersonic", was created, to take into account the two bonus light S's. (And, "Supersonic" is a spacey sounding theme.) In a game designed from scratch, the "T" of "SST" would have had bonus lights in it.

To my knowledge, Supersonic is the only Bally game that had two production names, "Star Ship" and "Supersonic."

I did use the name "City Slicker" on the 1978 whitewood. Back then, the designers named the whitewoods whatever they wanted to and I always liked the name "City Slicker." I got the name from a 1970's contemporary clothing store named "City Slicker" here in the Chicago area. But also remember that during the 1970's, the whitewood names were always changed by the Marketing Department once the game was released for artwork.

I was rolling out hit games back then. Tom Nieman obtained the license for "The Six Million Dollar Man" and the "City Slicker" whitewood played so well that the whitewood was chosen to be the next license game and the artwork assignment was given to Dave Christensen. Bally wanted to extend the Kmiec-Christensen magic first exhibited on "Wizard" and "Capt. Fantastic."

Bally was transferring to 7-digit displays just then, so the decision was made to use up all of the existing 6-digit displays in inventory by making The Six Million Dollar Man game a six-player game. The game sold quite well for its time.

As everyone knows the #44 bulb was the standard at the time, however the brass content of the base was getting expensive. We're talking just pennies but when you purchase millions of them a year it adds up.

At the time, circa 1978, the available wedge base bulb substitute for the #44 was #444. Supposedly, the 44 and 444 were electrically identical except for the base.

I hand built a prototype game in the old basement lab, then we went ahead and ran a pilot run of about 100 games with the wedge sockets and 444 bulbs. These were run in the factory so the games should look professionally wired and not modified after the fact. The sockets used would be a firm black plastic win encased connections. If I saw a close-up of the underside of the playfield I could confirm. All the games but one are factory wired and should look like they were built that way. My single hand built lab game would not appear quite as professional but the black sockets will give them away as they are expensive and if somebody wanted to retrofit they would probably use a less expensive socket. My hand built game would have a serial number of 1001 through 1010. That was the numbering convention we used for lab games, I think.

I tested a 444 bulb game side by side with a regular 44 bulb game in the factory lunchroom. Brightness was the same as was reliability of the lamps. Management approved the switch in upcoming production. First we had to use up about a million of the awful bayonet sockets and 44s.

Somewhere along the line GE came to us with an alternative bulb, the #555. They claimed it was less expensive to manufacture. Again, maybe 1/2 a penny but it made sense considering the high volumes. Before I could test it our purchasing department placed orders for millions of bulbs and sockets for the 555.

When the games started coming out I was amused at the cheaper sockets that had been ordered. While I tested and approved parts, the purchasing department would, from time to time, go rogue and order cheaper substitute parts. The first complaint was the new sockets had sharp metal edges that would cut the hands and fingers of the factory workers. You can just imagine reaching into a bulk box of those sockets with bare hands and scooping them out and handling them as they were installed on the playfield. One line worker told me it was like handling razor blades!

But the biggest problem was yet to come. I started noticing the switched lamps were failing rapidly on the games in the showroom. Lamps that were pulsed frequently in attract mode were dying in less than a month. Distributors were calling too and complaining the failure rate of the 555 playfield lamps was high.

Finally, I ran a test on games equipped with 555 vs 444 vs 44 and the tests showed the 555 bulbs where inherently defective. We ran through 4 or 5 different runs across 3 or 4 game productions before GE finally corrected the problems. That is why there are different bead colors in the 555 bulbs. The bead color designated the batch so we could tell the runs apart.

Programmer Ed Suchocki provided us the following information about this game:

Time Fantasy was developed to hit a market demand for a low cost pin game that would limit the play time. Our distributors were requesting a pin design where play time can be better managed and for the game to be cost reduced..

Time Fantasy was designed as a two-player unit and had most of the coils removed. Plasma displays and coils were the most costly items on the playfield so they were limited.

We also had a need to get a game ready for the factory in less than three weeks time, otherwise the factory was looking at being shutdown. Williams did not like shutting down the line and wanted to keep people working. We were placing our emphasis on the development of video games at that time and we had limited programmers available.

Besides Larry Demar, I was probably the most familiar with the pinball operating system at that time. The design team was able to complete the game in two weeks which gave us some leeway in getting playfields, artwork, and testing in before production.

Testing was interesting and showed us something we didn't expect. The game was played by an older audience. We were told that parents were playing the game while their children played all the ticket vending machines.

It tested well in the family centers but it didn't do so well in the locations for hardcore gamers. I do remember there was an earnings report showing the game made over $500 for a week in one location. However, it just wasn't mainstream and didn't perform well in all locations.