
Steve Kordek, a game designer who revolutionized pinball, dies at 100 - DanBC
http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-steve-kordek-20120224,0,1021087.story
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koz1000
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.

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ggchappell
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...](http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/11/view/6969/pinball-innovator-
steve-kordek.html)

~~~
koz1000
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.

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tzs
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
> 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.

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rboyd
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
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!

