End of the Line

On Monday, October 25, 1999, Williams Electronics Games, Inc., decided to cease pinball operations. Most of the people in the Pinball Division were immediately out of a job. The pinball production line produced the last pinball on Thursday, November 4. (Playfield production is slated for a few more days to finish producing Star Wars: Episode I kits.)

On Thursday afternoon, several (former and current) Williams engineering employees traveled to the factory to watch the last pinballs being made. I was fortunate enough to be able to buy a Star Wars: Episode I game. We made it to the factory in time to watch my game being made - it was one of the last two games on the line.

Here are some pictures of my game being made...

	Here are the last three cabinets on the line. You can just see the one behind mine.
	A Williams employee who just lost his job personalizes the cabinet after mine.
	This is a shot of the inside of my cabinet. It has "THE LAST" written on it.I suspect that it was the last one out of the cabinet facility, although it was the next to last one on the final assembly line. As you can see, it was written on the bottom of the cabinet previous to having the hardware installed.
	Here is my cabinet after having run down the cabinet line. It has rounded the corner and awaits installation of a playfield.
	Here are finished playfields, staged waiting to be tested. My playfield is second from the left. When we arrived at the factory, the line was filled with playfields slated for kits. Three of them were simply diverted into cabinets.
	Here is my playfield being removed from the assembly fixture.
	This is a shot just before my playfield was installed in my cabinet.
	Here is the playfield being installed into the cabinet.
	Here is a picture of the game going through final checkout.
	Here is another picture of final checkout.
	One more picture of the checkout. The entire testing process takes about 20 minutes.
	After checkout, I had the game turned on end and asked everyone on the pinball line to sign my game. Everyone got really excited about signing the last game (a few folks were a bit teary-eyed), and word spread throughout the factory in waves. A majority of the folks who work in the facility came by to sign my game. Here is a photo of the line early in the process. (That's me to the right with the silly look on my face and the stylish safety glasses.) It was a really touching experience and I am most appreciative of all the folks who stopped by.
	This is a picture of the game after all the signatures.
	This is a slightly closer picture of the signatures.
	Here is the playfield glass being installed in my game.
	Lockdown bar is installed, and game is ready to be buttoned up. My backbox is just to the left on the line.
	Here is my cabinet after final assembly, with the backbox next to it. I picked out a backbox that had already been assembled and tested, as the backbox assembly was slated to continue for a few days. (Since backboxes and cabinets are separately assembled, tested, and boxed for Pinball 2000, the lines do not necessarily run in sync.)
	Here is a really badly cropped picture of my game set up at home next to my Scared Stiff. I drove the game home the afternoon it was built. (I could have left it at the factory to be boxed the next day, but I was too anxious to get it home and assembled. There were a couple dozen games awaiting packing, so they will have "manufactured on" dates later than mine - the serial numbers are assigned as the last step just before packing.)

Last words:

Even though my game was the next to last off the line (the fine folks at the factory were under strict orders to save the last one), I firmly feel that my game is the last one that counts. Since I'm certain that the final game ended up in the hands of a certain CEO, I can say that my game is the last one off the line that WMS sold.