Louis Koziarz pinball files: No Good Gofers

 These are tidbits that Louis Koziarz has been sharing on Mastodon.

No Good Gofers

Williams, 1997

Back to #pinball concept art. Meet Bud.

Gofer evolution. The macquette was carved by Youssi as our visual guide to Buzz. (More on that first guy later).

Dave Link sculpted it into a 'squarish' target that filled the mechanical space and wouldn't fall apart when hit. Then it was molded in different materials like sticky rubber and hard Delrin until we found something that felt right.

One of the highlights of working on No Good Gofers #Pinball was working with John Youssi. Nobody can do a backglass or playfield like him. One concept piece:

Gofers started as an idea called "No Picnic", and if I remember correctly it had a croquet theme (get the balls through the hoops) with some kind of antagonist messing up the game. Marketing came back and said "People like golf.  It's easier for us to sell golf. Make it golf".  And off we went.

No Good Gofers #Pinball quickly went into Caddyshack mode, but somehow we had a Homer Simpson type being the victim. The original background music had a soundalike saying stuff. Then it kind of morphed into this Rodney Dangerfield type guy. John Youssi concept art:

More Youssi art for NGG #Pinball. Check out Bud, who looks like he was hit by a truck.

So time for a #pinball story about the Boss Gofer. Remember this sculpted model that John Youssi did? 1/n

So I was riffing with George Gomez one afternoon, his office was right across the hall from mine. We were trying to figure out how to make No Good Gofers fun. (hah!)  My lament was that we didn't have a massive "bash toy" like Medieval or Pub or Cirqus that changed personalities in software because it's impossible to do in hardware. We needed a Boss Gofer! And it should speak French!  2/n

So when it came time to make the website for NGG #pinball, I started with this photo of Buzz from the model.... 3/n

...that was photoshopped into a picture of a prototype playfield and put onto the website as a "fun fact". It's still there on pinball.com. And, just like the original website, there is no larger picture to view. 

404'ed on purpose. 4/n

What's amazing is that the meme propagated across pinball land, winding up in IPDB... 5/n

(And, yes, IPDB, we used to build 15 prototypes of a game when designs were complete. There's a whole list of groups that need a copy from marketing to technical writing to test sites, and even key European distributors)

And it is still talked about in darker corners of the internet today. 😆 Hopefully one day someone gets one of these magic prototypes. I sure as hell don't own one.

THE END 6/6

Epilogue! I found this scribble in one of my notebooks from the NGG era. George Gomez concept drawing of the Boss Gofer!

August 19, 1997 - Pat Lawlor and Vince Pontarelli at the sound mixer, Jon Hey in the booth doing Bud's speech. Vince and Jon then swapped places to do Buzz's speech. Vince was the composer/performer for all of NGG's #pinball music and sound effects.

Found the counterpart picture! Hey on the console while Pontarelli does his Buzz speech for NGG #pinball. 
Pat had a list of phrases he wanted the gofers to say, but there was also a lot of improvised stuff. Vince is a hilarious guy.