9 episodes tracked since 2024 about →
Episode 8 – Spotlight Series – Spanish Eyes with John Lee
PodcastAnalysis updated 3d ago31 min listen
This is the second episode in my pinball spotlight series. John Lee joins me again to talk about Spanish Eyes which was made by Williams in 1971 and 1972. I also talk with John about owning EMs and...
Highlights
- Spanish Eyes was manufactured by Harry Williams Electronics with 85 sample units in late 1971 and 3,820 units in main production (March-May 1972), totaling 3,905 units.
- Spanish Eyes art package was designed by John Craig, not George Christian Marsh as previously attributed.
- Sagasa in Spain made a slightly different version of Spanish Eyes in 1973 with different art and plastics.
- Norm Clark, Spanish Eyes' designer, had his entire pinball career at Harry Williams in the 60s and 70s before moving to Bally as head of pinball department.
- Spanish Eyes is playable at 11+ verified public locations including Pinball Hall of Fame, Roanoke Pinball Museum, and Rainville's Hideaway in Williamstown, NY.
- The center bumper in Spanish Eyes acts as a trap door between the flippers: if the ball goes the wrong way, it drains.
- Earlier EM games with center bumpers (like Magic City) had different mechanics: smaller flippers with rollovers underneath for points, unlike Spanish Eyes' trap design.
- Rainville's Hideaway in Williamstown, NY contains approximately 60 pinball machines in a garage converted from a junk car repair shop.
- Pittsburgh area (Aliquippa, Perfection locations, Pinburgh tournament history) is the East Coast pinball hub with massive EM and modern game collections.
- Pinburgh tournament recently restarted after COVID and flood disruption, featuring tiered play across EM and modern machines.
Notable quotes
“There's only one version of Spanish Eyes, right? As far as I can tell, and as far as my knowledge extends, yes.”
“That bumper, especially if you hit the top rollover and light the bumpers for 100 points instead of 10, it's such a lucrative feature on that game.”
“It's going in there. It's just a cool thing to get that ball down in there and just have it just bounce around on that and then pop back up into the playfield. You didn't do anything. The game just dictates where the ball's going to go.”
“In the first Doldrums, the finals, we used Spanish Eyes in the finals because nobody played it. We didn't even tell people we had it. We just rolled it out.”
“These people who made those things could design space shuttles, go to the moon, but they made pinball machines for your enjoyment.”
“The fact that you can take somebody who now, my 14-year-old son, wears his Oculus, this VR device, but at the same time, he'll sit up and he'll flip on an EM machine. That's awesome.”
“EMs fill a niche in time... A lot of it's nostalgia. Some of it is just the cool factor of these things, these mechanical apparatus that were constructed in a different time.”
“So if they're going to do pinballs, they're going to do it right. They're going to do it insanely well... Pennsylvania is like the weirdest place ever for hobbies.”
“That place is great. He fixes like junk cars... I think he's got like 60-something pinball machines in there now. It's definitely a destination. It's one of those weird places in pinball that exists.”
“Cable address WillCoinChicago... So the days before the internet, right? Morse code. Somebody would be like, send Spanish Eyes. Stop.”
Entities
- Bally· company
- Harry Williams· company
- Sagasa· company
- Allentown Show· event
- Doldrums tournament· event
- Pinburgh· event
- Granada· game
- Spanish Eyes· game
- Replay Foundation· organization
- David Rick Morgan· person
- John Craig· person
- John Lee· person
- Nick Shell· person
- Norm Clark· person
- Oscar H. Ray· person
- Roger Sharpe· person
- Pinball Map· product
- Pinball Hall of Fame· venue
- Rainville's Hideaway· venue
- Roanoke Pinball Museum· venue
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