Steve Ritchie - The Williams Years

The Williams Years

Ritchie moved to Chicago, Illinois, the home of Williams' headquarters. His first game for the company, Flash (released in 1979), was noted for its revolutionary figure-8 design and the first pinball game to feature bright Flash Lamps. It would go on to be his best-selling pinball game, having sold 19,505 units. 1980 would be the year for Ritchie, when he designed Firepower (the first electronic pinball to feature multi-ball, as well as Lane Change), and eight months later, he designed Black Knight, which was noted for having the first two-level playfield and the patented "Magna-Save" feature (in which magnets help prevent outlane drains).

After 1981's Hyperball, Ritchie took a break from designing pinball games to design a video games at his newly-formed company, King Video Design. Devastator was the first 68000 microprocessor video game and it was a spectacular 3D flying-shooting game with remarkable graphics. Ritchie pioneered automated conversion of video-taped color images into objects in the video game system. After that, he returned to pinball with 1986's High Speed, which was based on a true story about him being chased by the police in his Porsche. High Speed's bill of materials was higher than other games, and some rival Williams designers nicknamed it "High Cost". The cost increase was minimal, and the game sold 17,080 units. It was the major title that revitalized the entire pinball market. After that, he released F-14 Tomcat in 1987, and in 1989, he released the sequel to 1980's Black Knight, Black Knight 2000, which was acclaimed for having perhaps one of the best musical soundtracks ever for a pinball game (composed by himself, Brian L. Schmidt, and Dan Forden). It was also one of the first games to feature a "Wizard Mode", called "The King's Ransom".

Next up was Rollergames (based on the TV show of the same name which was cancelled well before game production), it was a game with a loud and rowdy soundtrack and the first solid state game to feature mainstream advertising. Ritchie designed Terminator 2: Judgment Day, which featured the voice and likeness of Arnold Schwarzenegger. T2 was the first game by Williams to use a dot-matrix display (although Bally's Gilligan's Island beat it to the market, because T2 had a longer production schedule, and management at Williams felt that other games needed it first.) After T2, he designed The Getaway: High Speed II in 1992, a sequel to 1986's High Speed. In 1993, Ritchie released a widebody game, Star Trek: The Next Generation, which many pinball fans consider to be Ritchie's best game. For the game, Ritchie enlisted the entire cast of TNG, including Patrick Stewart, Michael Dorn, and Jonathan Frakes to reprise their roles. The game would sell 11,728 units. It was the last pinball machine to sell in the 5-digits. After he was finished with 1995's No Fear: Dangerous Sports, Ritchie left Williams, feeling that he could better serve Williams/Bally/Midway by producing video games at the newly-acquired Atari Games. 1996 was the beginning of the decline of pinball with gradually diminishing sales, eventually leading to the extinction of all pinball manufacturers except Stern Pinball.