Pacific Pinball Expo

William Wiley's Punball: Only One Earth pinball machine will be at the Pacific Pinball Expo at the Marin Center from Oct. 3-5, 2008, and available to be played at the Pacific Pinball Expo Kickoff Party on Thursday, Oct. 2 from 6-10 p.m.

William Wiley, the old joker himself, will be at the Expo. Like the coyote, Wiley does not care about sophistication, but takes everyone on the ride with him, kids, gamesters, and art lovers.

Using the theme of global warming, the Punball is a 'global warning' done as a cartoon. Wiley himself plays the fool in the backglass, a long-nosed busybody clown wearing a purple wizard costume which has Bermuda shorts, ('cause it's hot, no doubt), clogs a la the dutch boy, holding a dunce cap and a graduated stick for measuring water level... sticking his neck and his butt out at the same time.

The Punball: Only One Earth on display at the Expo is one of 5 Punballs created in 2007-2008 as a collaboration of William Wiley, the artist, Joe Sweeney, the producer, Richard Lang of Electric Works Gallery in San Francisco as project manager, Jim Dietrick of Pinball Revival as production manager, and Wade Krauss and Helmut Jordt as fabricators.

Jim Dietrick suggested a Gottlieb North Star as the game Wiley would reinvent. North Star was a celebration of the first underwater crossing of the North Pole by the USS Nautilus submarine. Punball refers to the earth itself, which appears on the backglass and numerous times on the cabinet, with sad, querulous, and goofy faces. Wiley's comment "the eye scabs are melting" refers to the poles on first machine North Star, and also that we are now seeing what's happening, and yes, it is as bad as all that.

Says Jim Dietrick: "North Star is one of my favorite of all time games, and is the best game to realize this particular marriage of artwork and form. We had to produce the playfields from scratch. This allowed us to put the playfields we removed into old North Star machines that were otherwise headed for the scrap heap. The backglasses, and plastics were useful for this purpose as well."

The first step was to give a completely depopulated "North Star" playfield, backglass, and plastics to Richard Lang to give to Wiley for reference. Jim Dietrick made a tracing of the playfield, showing drill holes and inserts, for use as a scratch pad.

The cabinets were painted with a light pantone blue and given black and gold "flecking" effect. The original Wiley artwork was then stenciled onto the cabinet. The stencils were drawn by Wiley and then were cut by hand by Adam 5100, a noted local bay area stencil artist. He and Nick Widman of Electric Works then used the stencils to spray the artwork onto the cabinets.

Wade Krause silk screened the playfields, backglasses and plastics. Wade produced his own screens and was of invaluable assistance in guiding Wiley and the Electric Works team in selecting colors that were workable in the process.

Jim says "It was a Sunday evening at around 8:30 when I finished the first of the five Punball games. I was alone in my shop and ready to plug the beast in and hit the start button. I was weary to say the least. This was the culmination of both two years of combined effort, and a series of 14 hour work days, and I was alone and ready to hit the start button on what would soon become the most expensive electromechanical pinball machine in the world!"

"This has to work," I thought aloud to myself as I pushed the shiny new red start button. But nothing...no click, no whir of a score motor...no slamming of reset bank solenoids...nothing. I opened the playfield and immediately saw that the slam switch on the bottom board was being pushed wide open by the plunger. I remedied the problem (installing a push switch in place of the slam switch), and tried again. 'OK, this has to work,' I repeated as I mashed the start button a second time, this time, this glorious time the machine slammed to life and began to reset, it all went perfectly, except...the playfield lights were not on. A very brief inspection showed that the fuse was in fact blown."

"When I say that I lifted the playfield and was immediately staring at the very socket with the solder splash causing the problem, it was as though the socket jumped up and screamed "here I am, get on with it"! The pinball gods were smiling on me, they were on my side this night. I cleared the solder splash and the fuse and gave it a third try...it fired up and worked perfectly – I mean perfectly, everything was as crisp and snappy as I could have possibly hoped it would be. The game played like a brand new North Star but with Wiley's wonderfully beautiful and profound artwork. I felt very lucky and very honored to be standing alone in my shop at 9:00 on a Sunday night playing this most magnificent creation of one of the most progressive and effective artists of the 20th century (and 21st!)."

Art collectors have bought all 5 Punballs, recognizing fabulous artworks when they see them.

Come to the Expo Kickoff Party and play pinball while Wiley's flying hourglasses sing "Lord a mercy there's so much money, but never enough, honey, doesn't that seem funny?"

By Jim Dietrick and Melissa Harmon

Learn about the other "special" game at the Expo,
the Visible Pinball Machine!