Ted Estes' Home Page

Pinball Promo Plastics	I have a fairly extensive collection of pinball "giveaway" plastics for Williams and Bally games. I'm interested in finding the ones I am missing, so be sure to check out my trade and wanted lists.
Safecracker Tokens	The complete set of collectable tokens from Safecracker pinball are catalogued here. As an added bonus, there is also a picture of the prototype token.
Pinball Photo Gallery	Here are a few photos of minimal interest. They are pinball-related, though.
End of the Line: The last Williams pinball game	Here is the story of how my Star Wars: Episode I game was built.
Romancing the Zone	This is an article I wrote in early 1999. It was originally published in the February 1999 issue of Gameroom Magazine.
Prototype vs. Production	This is another article I wrote for Gameroom Magazine and published in March 1999. I've included larger images of the Twilight Zone Prototype Photos.
Roya's Interview	This is an online interview that Greg Dunlap and I did with Roya Naini. Somewhat interesting reading about how Greg and I ended up working for Williams Electronics.
Ted on the Radio	Just before Pinball Expo '95, Dave Zabriskie (former head of the sound department at Williams Electronics) and I appeared on the "Bill and Wendy" show on WLUP in Chicago. (Netscape appears to have a problem with this link. Right-click on the link and do a "Save Link As ...", save the file, and open it with Windows Media Player.)
Ted on the Television	A few months after I started working at Williams Electronics, I came to work one day and was notified that Wild Chicago was coming in to film a segment and that they wanted to see a "designer's office". Not only had I never heard of Wild Chicago (It's a show produced by the public television station in Chicago. They spotlight "wacky" stuff around the city.), but I certainly didn't feel comfortable being called a "designer". It turns out that my office was the only one that didn't have some new game under development in it, so I got chosen.
The Uncle Willy Archives	Back when Williams Electonics was still in the pinball business, Uncle Willy would answer questions about pinball games and other minutia. The Uncle Willy archives used to be hosted at the Williams Pinball web site, but there's nobody home there to do updates, and Uncle Willy was woefully lost. There's good information here, even though some of it is out of date.
Firepower drop target retrofit	Back in 1995, I wrote an article on news:rec.games.pinball about putting drop targets on a Firepower. The article is pretty popular, as I've found copies of it in numerous places. I've included scans of the switch chart, switch locations solenoid chart, solenoid locations and drop target sticker. The link to the left is a much more detailed (and very nicely presented) description of the steps involved. You can find a link to my original instructions there.
Green Flipper ROM "7-digit" Display	A couple of years before I worked at Williams, I made a modified Williams System 6 Green Flipper ROM set. My goal was to convert Firepower to 7 digits. I did this by dividing all the scores by 10. The 7th digit is a "virtual zero". These Green Flipper ROMs work with any Williams System 6 Green Flipper ROM game, except for Alien Poker (which already has 7 digit scoring). Turn off MATCH to enable the modified scoring. With MATCH on, the game scores as normal.