Steve Kordek, a game designer who revolutionized pinball, dies at 100

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-steve-kordek-20120224,0,1021087.story

by DanBC • 14 years ago

70 9 14 years ago

tzs2• 14 years ago

He is from an era when the minimum score on a pinball machine was 1 point, and every digit on the score counter moved. Later, to pander to simple-minded people easily impressed by large numbers, companies started making the minimum score 100 or 1000 points, and the last few digits of the score counter were fake counters.

It must be some kind of cruel joke on the part of the gods to take him at 100, a number that ends in a string of zeros.

kitanata• 14 years ago

> It must be some kind of cruel joke on the part of the gods to take him at 100, a number that ends in a string of zeros.

What better tribute could a God give? Scoring 100 is pretty damn good if points only increment 1 by 1.

ggchappell• 14 years ago

This is interesting, but it seems to assume that the reader knows what pinball was like before 1948. I don't. What was it like?

FTA:

> ... he borrowed a concept — the flipper — from a competitor."

So apparently most early pinball machines had no flippers.

I found a couple of pages with images of machines that date from 1940:

http://www.arcade-museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=11596

http://www.arcade-museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=13783

And, indeed, I see no flippers. I guess these were entirely games of luck -- slightly more exciting versions of spin-the-wheel-and-win-a-prize.

But at least one had flippers. FTA:

> But instead of having six flippers in the upper playing field, he reduced it to two electrified flippers near the drain at the bottom, ....

and

> "What Steve did was revolutionize the game of pinball," said Larry DeMar, a video game and pinball designer and president of Leading Edge Design in Northbrook, Ill. "It now became a defensive battle."

I'm finding it difficult to figure out what this six-flipper machine might have looked like. Apparently the flippers were near the top, and the game was not defensive in nature. Does anyone know any more?

EDIT: Here is a page with pictures of Kordek's Triple Action game (the one that "stole the show" in 1948):

http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/11/view/6969/pinball-in...

koz10002• 14 years ago

Try the Internet Pinball Database:

http://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=1254

Humpty Dumpty added player-controlled flippers (which was a breakthrough in itself) but if you look at the images you'll see that the placement was awkward and hard to map between the buttons you were touching and the motions that the flippers made.

Triple Action put them on the bottom and swung them like bats - something that felt more natural and enjoyable.

tzs2• 14 years ago

The pre-flipper games were not entirely luck. You generally had control of how fast the balls entered the play field, and you could also bump the machines to try to influence the play. The machines had sensors to detect and stop the game if you got to violent at this.

There is a good article on this at The Straight Dope: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/279/did-they-used-t...

mmetzger• 14 years ago

The best reference to this is in "The Simpsons Pinball Party" (released 2003 - and repeatedly through 2009) is a quote from Grandpa Simpson:

Back in my day, pinball had no flippers...

rboyd• 14 years ago

There are a couple of pinball documentaries I watched recently which are probably interesting to some here: "Special When Lit" and "Tilt: The Battle To Save Pinball"

RIP Steve Kordek. Great contributions to an amazing game.

pasbesoin• 14 years ago

Just FYI, since you got me to look: "Special When Lit" is in Netflix streaming. "Tilt" is (only) available on disk.

Guess I have something to watch this weekend!

koz10002• 14 years ago

I worked with Steve for a number of years at Williams.

One of the most remarkable things about Steve is that he never retired. He came into the Williams plant every day up until the close of the pinball division and for years after. He was in his late eighties by that point.

I've never had a job before or since where I could walk across the hall and speak with someone that was in the business since nearly the beginning. The man had over 60 years of pinball knowledge in his head and readily accessible. He would always take time to answer any question you had. We avoided a lot of mistakes by having someone like him on our team.

At Steve's wake an ex-coworker remembered a story about how AutoCAD was first showing up on the design floor. Pins were still designed on drafting tables up until the early 90s. Steve saw a few guys trying out AutoCAD and immediately ran to the store and installed it on his machine. He was probably 85 at the time.

Every time I read a HN story about being too old for the job, I remember that story.

Steve Kordek, a game designer who revolutionized pinball, dies at 100

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