Stern Pinball lays off all design staff

According to pinball designer Keith Johnson Stern Pinball, the last manufacture of pinball machines has laid off at the very least, nearly their entire design staff, including staff working on upcoming releases.

Here is Keith's post on rec.games.pinball today

Link to post


First of all, while it is true that both Pat and myself have worked on
CSI, to call it either of ours' game is not quite accurate. Pat laid
out the original playfield, and it underwent some modifications. I
was one of 5 programmers who worked on the game. To say I was "lead"
or even did the most on the project is not accurate.

And to say I will do anything further on the project will not be
accurate either. I, along with many many other people, got laid off
today, 9 years and 4 days after the last time it happened!

I wish everyone that remains behind nothing but the best of luck; I
think it'll be severely needed. And, please, don't worry about me;
I'll be fine. If anything maybe it just means I'll be a little more
vocal about some things now than before. ;) No trashing or drama on
my part, I just hope pinball survives. But I'm not entirely sure that
that will be the case, honestly. I'm definitely a lot less sure than
I was when I made this post:

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.pinball/msg/16a6571ed04d963d

keith

We know about thier lives, but what about their deaths?

This is so off topic, and pretty freaking morbid, but I kind of was sucked into reading a bunch of this today. A website by a self-proclaimed "death hag" who chronicles the deaths of celebrities, some of which had fallen on hard times at the end.

"Find A Death"

My personal favorite

Veronica Lake





Wow. The "it" girl from the 40's. A true classic beauty unlike the hags that emulate her today. During WW2 the government asked that she change her hair as so many women followed her style that they were afraid that their hair would become entangled in the war machinery. She died alone in Vermont in 1973 after having worked as a waitress in the years following her movie career.

More pictures from Dayhuff's party 2008

These pictures came from Tom Brackman's Picasa Album.


Here is a great pic of John's Charlie's Angels EM that he had been searching for for years.
The story as I understand it....There were only 150 of the EM version made. Rare, but really not that rare as far as pinball goes. The problem is, where are they? Not many are known to exist anymore. The machine pictured was the first Charlie's Angels off the production line, that's right "Charlie's Angels EM #1". I can only guess at what it cost for John to buy it. My wild ass guess (cause John isn't telling)....low 5 figures.

Yuck

This is a Gottlieb "Wipe Out" that was at the "Ball Joint" in Battle Creek, MI.

Charging $.50 per game. For that you got a game with no rubber to speak of (notice in the pictures that both slingshot rubbers were gone) most of the post rubber was gone, no GI on the game at all, and large amounts of dirt.

"Ball Saved" a short documentary

Part 1


Part 2


Part 3

Guns and Roses

My favorite thing about going to pinball parties is to play machines that I wouldn't normally run across. I would have to say that my favorite from John Dayhuff's house this year is "Guns and Roses", a 1994 widebody by Data East.

IPDB link here

Here is a video of Slash (a pinball collector by the way!) talking about his love of pinball.

Pinball on "Good Morning America"

Lame. This was supposed to be a 20 minute segment on pinball. Josh and Zach traveled up to participate. Stern even made a special "Good Morning America" themed pin. View the suckage below.

John P. Dayhuff's 6th Annual "12 Hours Of Pinball"

Randy, Corey, Glenn and I drove up to Battle Creek Friday afternoon. The van said 487 miles from Grinnell to BC. It took us about 7 hours. Our other passenger Nick was too sick to travel. I did pick up his t-shirt for him however.

While driving through Iowa City it was raining pretty hard. About 200 yards in front of us a semi started to Jack knife in the middle of the interstate. I'll I could do was apply the brakes and scream "Look at that! Look at that!". Anyway, the trailer as about at a 90 degree to the cab. Somehow the driver straightened it out. The rest of the drive was pretty easy except I was on edge from the near death experience.

"John P. Dayhuff's 12 Hours of Pinball 2008" Part 1




"John P. Dayhuff's 12 Hours of Pinball 2008" Part 2




John's elusive "EM Charlies Angles". There is a NOS playfield sitting next to it.


60's and 80's SS and EM line on the right. Data East and Capcom on the left.






Data East King Kong (IPDB Link) One of 9 produced.


King Kong playfield
























My buddy Randy


The "Match Predictor" that I gave John last year. I brought him a switch to enable "free vend" for his soda machine this year.





















My buddy Corey


Randy








Randy


My fellow van rider Glenn


Glenn playing G&R












Glenn and I enjoyed John's excellent sys80 collection