I don’t have an affinity for Barry Oursler games. His oeuvre can be split into two distinct bodies of work: his early designs which all appear to echo one or two stand-by stock layouts, and his later designs which are too reliant on one feature or toy that make the games seem shallow and trite. For me, two games stand out as exceptions, Fire! in the former category and Bram Stoker’s Dracula in the latter. BSD is currently the darling of collectors and tournament players alike and is enjoying a bit of a renaissance of sorts (meaning the price went up $1000). Maybe I don’t enjoy it because it IS beyond my skill level as a player, or perhaps the art package is just too wretch-inducing. Either way, it leaves me no choice but to take a closer look at Fire!
Fire! was released in August of 1987, and takes its theme from the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. With nearly 8,000 units produced, the game was far from scarce, however, it is not a game that comes up often for sale in my area (maybe all the firemen have bought these up…firemen love being firemen and everything associated with fire history and fire prevention and being a fireman…just ask them). To put it into perspective, Williams made 8,100 units of Comet. I can’t go for three days without seeing someone trying to unload a Comet, so I guess once Fire! finds a home, they stay put. I mean, who doesn’t want a game in a poo brown cabinet to be the centre of their collection?
Legend says a cow (!) kicked over a lantern in a barn, and that’s what started the fire that burned for days and destroyed most of the city of Chicago. The game is a natural fit theme-wise, paying homage to the fire-fighting history of the city in which these great pinball machines were built. The theme stands out from other Williams/Data East machines being built at the time–-most being themed upon capitalistic Cold War paranoia (Millionaire, F-14 Tomcat, Secret Service) or Science Fiction in the pure sense of the genre (Pin*Bot, Laser War, Time Machine). You could almost picture olde tymey dudes with mutton chops and pork pie hats gathering around this amusement machine for a bit of merriment. Wait, those aren’t olde tymey dudes at all…just hipsters from Portland!
No pop bumpers in this game. Let’s get that out of the way. Purists have long complained that any game without pop bumpers isn’t a pinball machine at all. I think this just adds to the game’s overall flow and overarching theme, and helps to set it apart from the other games released at the time. Complete playfield symmetry is achieved here, each side of the playfield being a mirror image of the other, and can be read as a throwback to the simpler woodrail games of the 1940s and 1950s. There is also a post-up “hydrant” ball save which is seen on only a couple System 11 games of the era (moving towards a less expensive “lit” ball save instead).
The main idea of Fire! is to “put out” fires (no kidding!) by hitting the stand-up target banks in front of the the various vacuum-formed buildings around the playfield. Two banks lie mid-playfield, while two dead end ramp shots flank a mini-area with two more target banks. A second set of kickers really get the ball moving in that closed off mini-area. Surrounding the dead-end ramp shots is an elevated horseshoe orbit with lifting ramps (a la the left Pin*Bot ramp) that lock balls on either side once an indicated fire is extinguished. Dead centre is your rescue shot, which is a ramp (with no guides) that lifts out of the playfield to help launch the ball through a “window”. This can serve as your last shot to start three-ball multiball and carries with it a 50,000 bonus. One million points are awarded if all fires are put out in multiball and the rescue shot is achieved.
To me, the game feels like it’s a martyoshka nesting doll in both layout and art package. There is a layering effect to the loops and ramps that pulls the playfield together quite nicely and symmetry is something we don’t often get in modern era pinball, so you should enjoy it where you can. Bill of materials on this game must have been quite something. In the days before Dennis Nordman arrived at Williams and became the undisputed king of vacuum-formed plastic, Oursler orchestrated quite the miniature diorama of 19th century Chicago under glass here. The amount of detail Mark Sprenger put into fleshing out the plastic buildings is phenomenal. With such intricate playfield art, its easy to overlook the spinning fire reel that turns below the playfield to give a burning effect that flickers through the windows of the buildings above. Sprenger also nailed the gold leaf and cobblestone look of the era on the playfield to really give it that pre-Capone Chicago feel, as well as creating an intricate maze of a darkened huddled mass of citizens cowering from the power of the fire. Sound package is ho-hum, nothing to write home about…olde tyme piano mixed with limited speech from muffled male voices (as was the style for many System 11 games at the time), but man, that bell atop the backbox really catches your attention when it rings. I was at the Allentown show last year, and you could hear that thing ringing out from anywhere in the venue.
Fire! plastic sets are currently available from Classic Playfields, and a repro playfield is currently in development by the CPR folks and available for pre-order. Repro plastic buildings, however, are a different story. These vacuum formed plastics are subject of a ton of wear and breakage with the physics of the playfield the way they are. Plenty of promises out there from companies “if there is enough interest”, but nothing as of yet has materialized. Not only would the plastic have to be vacuum formed, the art would also have to be reproduced as stickers to affix to them. I think this is something beyond what CPR or other repro company would be interested in doing (profit-wise), so it will be up to the ingenuity of the pinball community to find a work-around. Plenty of call must exist for these, as the production run on the machine was quite hefty.
There was also a “Champagne Edition” of Fire! released concurrently with the standard edition which was a classier version, probably for use in higher class bars, restaurants and atriums looking to cash in on the re-emergence of pinball as an arcade staple. The game came with a real wood veneer cabinet, gold rails/legs/lockdown bar and two extra spinning fire cylinders in the backbox, like the one below the playfield. Only about 300 were released.
This game is an anomaly not only in the oeuvre of Oursler, but also in the design and theme of what Williams and their contemporaries were coming out with at the time. Fire! can be viewed as the Eight Ball Deluxe of the System 11 era. When Bally was making a ton of sci-fi themed games and licencing everything under the sun, they came out with EBD to appeal to a very different demographic of pinball player and hit a home run. Fire! exists somewhat in the same way, just a tad less successful. For Fire!, they were shooting for a more refined demographic, and the production of a more refined looking machine in the “Champagne Edition” really hammers this point home. I mean, look at that Champagne flyer below. You could put the game in an atrium (SEE! I TOLD YOU!) surrounded by ferns and play the game IN YOUR DAMN TUXEDO! This game is so f*cking classy, right?? Anyhow, the standard edition is a beautifully executed machine, did I mention it came in a poo brown cabinet, with a straightforward ruleset much like the other games from the System 11 family. Go put out some fires and save Chicago.
Further Reading:
Classic Playfield Reproductions – Fire! Plastic Set Photo Gallery
Pinball.org – Fire! Rulesheet
AAARPinball – Fire! Restoration
I’ll admit that the gags and catch phrases Tuckey relies upon get old fast. If you watch more than a handful of videos, you are bound to hear one of the following more than once: Mr. Tuckey mouthing words or lyrics lifted from a bygone film or TV show, a reference to reflowing silver solder, Mr. Tuckey “accidentally” electrocuting himself, the camera man shaking the camera in a yes or no motion (and Tuckey chiding him about it), or employees yelling for their colleague “CURT!”. The last of which is more endearing than the others as it seems to be a shop-wide joke, with employees playfully mocking Tuckey’s delicate diction when calling for one of his most versatile employees who never seems to be within earshot. The rest of Tuckey’s corny jokes can be excused as he probably started out making all of his videos to entertain himself, something one does when there is a perceived limited audience watching. Now, however, the videos have entered into the lexicon of pinball reference. The playful and light nature of the videos should never cease, but perhaps some of the more over-used corny antics could be retired to the TNT Amusements Hall of Knee-Slappers.
It wasn’t overnight that Tuckey groomed himself for this type of success. A mining of the extensive YouTube feed will reveal that he has a Bachelor’s degree from Temple University in Communications and he was a classmate of Danny Tanner…I mean, Bob Saget. The feed also includes parts of a series recorded in the late 1980s entitled “Understanding Pinball”, which has to be one of the earliest examples of people putting the hobby on film for an in-depth strategical and technological discussion of the machines. It is a blast to see Tuckey twenty-five years younger (and a lot thinner) still doing what he does today–giving video tours of pinball machines. The series is just Tuckey, a pinball machine, a camera and no frills whatsoever, but to think they were made before Funhouse was released really shows that Tuckey was one of the founding fathers of pinball video broadcasting.
Tuckey does get thrown under the bus a lot, but that is to be expected with anyone attempting to be a public figure in this hobby (ask Clay Harrell). There are petty complaints about restoration and sales practices, however the one stunt Tuckey is chided for, above all else, is for filming the destruction of four complete pinball machines–Street Fighter 2, Bad Girls, Mario Andretti, and Last Action Hero–along with various arcade games by throwing them from the roof of his TNT Amusements building. Collectors cried foul, and lamented that even the most blown out game should have a fate better than being destroyed in such a fashion. Tuckey explained that the games were not even fit for a wood chipper and any parts that could be salvaged were before they made their final plunge. The stunt worked, and got people from both inside and outside our community curious about what was happening on the TNT rooftop. The video has reigned in over 30,000 views on YouTube alone, far and away the most popular of any pinball related video TNT Amusements has posted.
Now, one of my goals in working machines is to leave no exhaust–meaning whatever I do should be able to be undone in the future. For example, 
RK: The ezSBC switching regulator is a direct, pin-compatible replacement for the 7812 on a Power Driver Board. Do look at the pictures on ezSBC’s web site so it don’t get installed backwards. The 7812 (and like it the 7805 for 5 volt loads) is a linear regulator. In the pinball machine it takes the 18 volt supply as an input and provides a very stable reference voltage at 12 volts for loads up to 1 amp. It accomplishes this by “burning off” the difference between the input and output voltages as heat. The load is important because a 7812 with very little load (and thus very little current draw) will not produce a lot of heat. As the load grows however, the amount of heat expelled increases because more current flows through the regulator. Essentially the input and output are wired together through a semiconductor (silicon) and are always connected. The ezSBC switching regulator operates differently in that it rapidly connects and disconnects the input and output to transfer power to the load. Because the device is either “on” (i.e., conducting) or “off” (not conducting), it does not burn power like a linear regulator and therefore does not need a heat sink. Think of a fire in a fireplace. You burn logs and the room warms up. But heat also goes up the chimney instead of into the house. That’s analogous to a linear regulator. Now think of ventless gas log fireplace. No longer is heat going up the chimney. That’s analogous (sort of) to the switching regulator. It would be more analogous if the gas log set had a chimney that opened and closed 300,000 times per second… but it’s the best analogy I’ve dreamt up so far. All that said, switching out the 7812 for a switching regulator is just a “nice to have”. I was kinda expecting some nay-sayers when releasing the daughterboard (I’m used to RGP moreso than Pinside) and I wanted to have a good answer as a mitigation for the increased load on the 12 volt line. So, in some ways it is more of a “political afterthought” rather than an imperative. Or, think of it like driving a Prius instead of Camry. Both get you from A to B, but the Prius does so with less gasoline. Your pinball will play the same whether or not you swap out the 7812; will you feel better knowing it burned a little less power when the DMD flashes “Game Over”?
If you own a WPC game, its almost a given that you have experienced a reset problem at one time or another. My most recent experience with this annoyance was with my White Water. I had “5X the Fun” running and had just started multiball. Big points were coming my way. Sure enough, with coils firing and flippers flipping, the machine’s power supply collapsed under its own weight, and I experienced the dreaded reset. I hung my head and softly cursed, knowing I had a long journey of troubleshooting ahead of me.
I was especially high on this announcement. Funhouse stands as one of my favourite games of all-time, and it solidified its place there during the impressionable days of my childhood. I currently have one in my collection and it gets a lot of play. When Rick Bartlett of PPS shared three slides announcing the platform and his partnership with FAST Pinball for the hardware end of things, it was there in black and white: FUNHOUSE 2.0, DMD support, new DMD animations, game rule extensions. Being one of last games to roll out of the Williams factory with an alpha-numeric display, pinball fans always wondered aloud what the game experience would be like with a DMD. It seems we are not that far off from finding out. One can assume it would follow the Bride of Pinbot 2.0 (BoP2.0) approach by Dutch Pinball—new speaker panel and speakers to accommodate a colour DMD and some new hardware in the backbox to run it all.
Written by a true fan of pinball, Eric Priepke took it upon himself to reconfigure the incomplete rules of Willaims/Bally/Midway’s 1998 release Cactus Canyon using a PROC controller, and in doing so made an already desirable game (due to rarity) even more desirable. Countless features that did not exist were added; problematic features that did exist were honed and polished. Williams originally released the game as a throwaway placeholder title, only producing it only to keep the production lines moving while they made the unfortunate move to the Pinball 2000 platform. Priepke fished the abandoned baby out of the dumpster and cared for it like his own. He wasn’t a money monger about it either. Anyone who wanted to buy the PROC controller and a Cactus Canyon machine was welcome to the code at no charge. This was a true labour of love. It was not, however, a labour that was completely above copyright law. Seeing as Priepke used Williams/Bally/Midway characters, names and actual animations from the original game to create his “…Continued” package, Rick/Planetary/WMS took exception. I believe it causes even more of an issue now that Planetary is in the business of re-releasing classic games with an $8000USD price tag–Cactus Canyon is surely on their radar as a future candidate. Folks that have seen what NAME did with the extended rule-set would probably not want an “incomplete” Planetary remake. With the move towards WPC2.0 (and simultaneously away from the PROC platform used to run “…Continued”), it allows Planetary & Co. to reimagine CC however they wish and charge however much they want for it. It appears as if Priepke doesn’t want his code to be a part of it. The unlicensed damage may have already been done: any rule-set update by Planetary will have to exceed the bar set by the “…Continued” code. Expectations have been set. It will be an uphill battle: Priepke is seen as cult hero to the pinball masses for taking on this project and not asking anything in return, while Bartlett, legally protecting what is owned by WMS, is perceived as the Black Bart our story. As of November 2013, the code for “…Continued” is officially available online, but the sounds and animations are not, which renders the code nearly useless. Cactus Canyon Discontinued. I can’t be the first to have made that joke.
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