 Arcade flyer | |
| Manufacturer | Williams Electronics |
|---|---|
| Release date | December 1979 |
| System | Williams System 6 |
| Design | Barry Oursler |
| Programming | Paul Dussault |
| Artwork | Constantino Mitchell, Jeanine Mitchell |
| Sound | Eugene Jarvis |
| Production run | Approximately 14,000 |
Gorgar is a 1979 pinball machine designed by Barry Oursler and released by Williams Electronics. It is the first speech-synthesized ("talking") pinball machine, containing a vocabulary of seven words.
The game was planned for a year before its introduction at the 1979 AMOA show; [1] a single prototype of Disco Fever with speech was shown at the 1978 AMOA show, but the table never went into production with this feature. [2]
The game uses its vocabulary of seven words ("Gorgar", "speaks", "beat", "you", "me", "hurt", "got") to combine to form varying broken-English phrases, such as "Gorgar speaks" and "Me got you". The pinball machine also has a heartbeat sound effect that increases in speed during longer gameplay. [3] [4]
The sound board uses a Motorola CVSD chip. [2] The words were played back about 30% slower than they were recorded for a robot-like sound. [5]
The background sound improved on that used on Flash released in January 1979. [6]
According to the game's programmer, Paul Dussault, "the voice was John Doremus, an announcer in Chicago that we recorded and then digitized his voice. He was the voice of the in flight audio for various airlines. We had tried in house voices but weren’t getting the bass effect we wanted to make Gorgar sound menacing." [7]
A promotional flexi-disc for the machine titled Gorgar Speaks was produced by Bud Solk & Associates and recorded at Zenith Cinema Service Studios. John Doremus was the announcer, Tom Erhart portrayed Gorgar, Phyllis L. Fineberg wrote the script, and Ron Crouse directed. [8] [9]
The designer of the game thought it worked well because the speech was primitive, but so was the creature "Gorgar". [4]
The game includes a magnet that holds the ball while points are awarded; this feature was taken from a 1971 Williams game called Zodiac. [2]
At the top of the machine are A-B-C lanes above three thumper bumpers. [10]
A maximum of one extra ball per ordinal ball can be earned. [11] [10]
In a review for Play Meter Roger Sharpe awarded the game 3/4, praising the artwork both on the playfield and on the backglass, but criticized some aspects of the layout leading to unfair ball drains. He said it had "phenomenal earning potential" due to the novelty of the voice. [10]
RePlay published a special feature about the machine. [12]
FarSight Studios released the table for Pinball Hall of Fame: The Williams Collection on several systems between 2008 and 2011. [13]
Gorgar was released by the same developer in 2012 alongside Monster Bash as table pack 3 [14] for The Pinball Arcade for multiple platforms, and was available until June 30, 2018, when the license for Williams tables expired. [15]
German power metal band Helloween's 1985 album Walls of Jericho includes a track titled "Gorgar" that symbolizes the machine as a form of gambling addiction. [16]
Gorgar at the Internet Pinball Database