Thursday, March 16, 2023

Louis Koziarz pinball files: Tales Of The Arabian Nights

Louis Koziarz has a decade of pinball credits, for both design and software. From Theatre of Magic for Midway in 1995, to NASCAR / Grand Prix for Stern in 2005. They are on Mastodon sharing some incredible things, and I am boosting them here. These posts will be compiled one per game.

Please show Louis some love for their incredible contributions to the industry.

These have been reposted without express permission.

Tales Of The Arabian Night

Williams, 1996

First whitewood. See if you can spot all the changes from the final version. The actual playfield shot geometry didn't change at all, but the ramps did.

Note the "open sesame" cave that was trying to have two positions (partially open and fully open). And the vanishing magnet was on that small standup off the left ramp. The mech is awesome, but not in that position. Capturing the ball was impossible.

The cover letter CCs Ken Fedesna (WMS VP) saying "Popadiuk really wants this title - but is it worth the trouble?"

Another photo of XY1, but with the handmade lamp in place and the left ramp being rethought with the Bong magnetic diverter. (Fireball is a whole story coming soon) You can see the GENIE spellout used to open the cave. The lamp icons on the smoke trail were from an early rule idea.

All my notes reference XY1, XY2, etc which was the internal notation for a whitewood ("XY" meaning an AutoCAD layout being loaded into a CAM drilling machine on plywood).

Here's the original development schedule. Jim Patla, a legend in his own right, was our engineering manager and tracked multiple pinball projects while herding all the cats from start to finish. Really an unsung hero in the 90's W/B era. I believe American coaxed him out of retirement to help do it all again.

Time for some art. I always thought McMahon did great stuff but he pushed his boundaries for Arabian and it's insanely good.

Secrets in the keyline.

Joe Joos was a mechanical engineer at Williams #Pinball that passed away shortly before TOTAN began development. The entire department missed him dearly.

Dimira.

Tiger Lock art. I wanna say that Pat McMahon stole this art from Pinball Circus but I can't be sure. Might have been the speaker cutout / coaster art. Maybe...Python drew it?

The artists upstairs at WMS were always working under the gun and turned out amazing stuff out of nowhere in short spans of time. But all good artists steal. The woman on the TOTAN #pinball backglass? That's Stephanie Seymour, lifted from either a Playboy magazine or something similar.

One more TOTAN #Pinball photo for now: The portrait of a young developer at his desk, looking happy to have a working whitewood and door that can close. Probably fall 1995. That's a beefy Pentium 90 and 20" CRT on my desk. Still took 15-30 minutes to assemble the code. WPC-95 prototype boards (red) in the backbox.