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Patrick M. Lawlor (born November 30, 1951) is a video game and pinball machine designer.
Pat Lawlor had originally been a video game designer and had entered the coin-operated game design industry in 1980, working for Dave Nutting Associates. Lawlor's pinball career began as an engineer for Williams in 1987, when he co-designed a dual-playfield machine called Banzai Run with Larry DeMar. In 1988, he was assigned his first individual design project, a machine entitled Earthshaker!, which was released in January 1989. Notably, Earthshaker! was the first pinball machine with a shaker motor.
Foremost, Lawlor introduced thematically appropriate elements that altered gameplay. For instance, upon progressing toward multiball mode in Earthshaker!, the playfield vibrated to simulate the effect of an earthquake. In a similar mode in Whirlwind, rubberized disks set flush in the playfield spun rapidly back and forth to throw the ball off course as it passed over them, while an electric fan mounted on top of the backbox blew wind in the player's face.
Secondly, Lawlor created playfields that were especially crowded compared to the faster flow-oriented machines that were popular at the time. Lawlor also introduced his signature "bumper shot", in which players needed to shoot the ball between pop bumpers—a tricky shot that requires great precision. Also, critical shots in Earthshaker! and Whirlwind were obstructed when attempted from the lower flippers; they could only be hit directly from a third flipper, located near the middle of the playfield on one side, requiring that players develop acuity at sending the ball across the playfield rather than simply up the playfield. Thus, his style of gameplay has often been described by players as "stop and go". Whirlwind was among the first pinball machines to feature what became known as a "wizard mode", a final special mode accessed by particularly skilled players for completing numerous difficult tasks on the playfield, a reward that was imitated in many future designs. "Wizard modes" were important in giving pinball games a sense of progression absent from pinball in its earlier years.
Lawlor followed up Whirlwind with FunHouse, which released in November 1990. Funhouse was a carnival-oriented game which bore the trademark playfield elements established in Earthshaker! and Whirlwind, plus a unique talking head named "Rudy" (voiced by Ed Boon). More than 10,000 FunHouse machines were produced.
The Addams Family included several new features. One of these was "Thing Flips," in which the game could automatically take control of one flipper under certain circumstances and attempt to make a particularly difficult shot for the player. Results of previous shots were used to adjust the timing of the flip for each new attempt. Lawlor also placed magnets under the playfield that were activated during multiball and other modes, adding tension and randomness to the gameplay. In 1994, a limited-edition Gold version was produced to commemorate the record-breaking sales of the original. The Addams Family Gold featured minor rule modifications, as well as cosmetic enhancements such as a gold lockbar and gold-trimmed rails.
Its complexity was a mixed blessing, highlighting many of the pitfalls of the coin-operated game industry in general and pinball in particular. That is, the more elaborate the game, the more likely it would overwhelm the average player, which in turn would hurt sales. Furthermore, Twilight Zone was expensive to produce, particularly in the massive quantities that were expected following the astronomical record sales of The Addams Family. Lawlor was well aware of the difficulties the project posed, as he told an audience at a trade show in 2003. "We had a nickname for Twilight Zone," he said, "and it was 'In Excess Pinball'...we had just gotten done setting the record with Addams Family, and Williams were willing to let us do anything, and we did, which was a big mistake." While he conceded that "extreme pinball players" would enjoy the game, he added that "from a commercial standpoint, we were out of control...nobody would be allowed to do something that complicated again; nor should they be."
Among its toys was an elevated, magnetic flipperless mini-playfield; the player pressed the flipper buttons to activate the magnets, driving the ball into switches on the walls and through a scoring hole at the top. The game also featured a gumball machine, which could be loaded by the player and which could dispense a ball into play. This machine was also connected to another new feature, the "Powerball" — a white ceramic ball which was lighter than the others and unaffected by the game's magnets. A fully operational, 12-hour analogue clock served as a timer for several modes and could also display the current time.
While the theme of Road Show paid homage to Earthshaker! and Whirlwind, the game's most prominent feature duplicated the talking "Rudy" head in FunHouse. Road Show included two talking-head characters: a male bulldozer driver named Ted and his female boss named Red (voiced by country singer Carlene Carter; she also performs her song, "Every Little Thing" in the multiball and jackpot modes). The game's design, however, resembled The Addams Family and Twilight Zone in that a sinkhole started modes, the progression of which could be followed by a prominent display in the bottom center of the playfield. It had a dual-plunger design reminiscent of FunHouse.
In 1996, Lawlor designed a new take on pinball, an innovative game called Safecracker, which featured a much smaller playfield than standard pinball machines of the time, operated on a timer rather than a 3-ball structure, and featured a backglass-based "board game" as a major gameplay feature. Safecracker was unique in that players could earn collectible tokens by achieving certain goals. It is widely believed that Safecracker was actually originally intended to be a game based on the Monopoly board game, a contention supported by the prominence of the generic board game ultimately included in the final product, but Williams was unable to negotiate a favorable deal for the license. True or not, Lawlor got another crack at Monopoly in 2001. Safecracker, however, met with uneven critical response and was not a particularly successful commercial product: only 1,148 units of Safecracker left the Williams factory (compared to the over 20,000 units of The Addams Family only four years earlier.)
Lawlor returned to his more conventional style in 1997 with No Good Gofers, an amusing golf-themed machine that returned to his standard signature design elements as well as featuring the return of the spinning disc from Whirlwind. The game included a retractable ramp that launched a ball onto a transparent upper playfield with a hole at the top to simulate a golf shot for a "hole-in-one". No Good Gofers was a limited commercial success with only 2,711 units made.
1998, however, marked the beginning of the end for Williams pinball, as its final three games, The Champion Pub, Monster Bash, and Cactus Canyon were released. The production run of Cactus Canyon was cut short as Williams made a drastic alteration in their hardware philosophy, attempting to revitalize the pinball industry by integrating video screens with standard pinball playfields with Midway's Revenge from Mars (the sequel to 1995's Attack From Mars, and designed by longtime Midway employee George Gomez) in 1999. This experiment, called Pinball 2000, ended ignominiously after heavy initial losses, and Williams ceased pinball operations in late 1999, leaving Pat Lawlor's only planned game for the Pinball 2000 platform, Wizard Blocks, canceled.
Lawlor has since designed RollerCoaster Tycoon, Ripley's Believe it or Not!, NASCAR (also known as Grand Prix in Europe), Family Guy, and CSI pinball machines for Stern. NASCAR, released in 2005, was a bit of a departure from Lawlor's normal design philosophy, utilizing more "flow-oriented" gameplay due to the more speed oriented theme. Family Guy, released in 2007, was notable for a unique design element, the "Stewie Pinball", a mini playfield within a playfield. Unlike other mini playfields which simply reduced the distance between pinball elements, "Stewie Pinball" actually engineered all the pinball elements to be completely reduced in scale, a first in mini playfield design. The Family Guy playfield design was duplicated and re-released as Shrek the following year, with all the same features and a different rule set.
Two more machines were designed while working at JJP: Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory in 2019, based on the Gene Wilder film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, and 2022's Toy Story 4 based on the film of the same name.
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