This is an article I wrote in 2003.

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WHO dunnit is the story of how I met Barry Oursler.

By 1995, with the help of many talented people, I had helped design some very successful games. While up to this point I had a great deal of input into those games, I wanted more control over the design of a game.

Through attrition of one sort or another, Barry Oursler, a game designer of almost 3 decades was left with a short design team. He often worked, in later years, with Mark Ritche, Bill Pfutzenreuter, or Python Angelo. I approached my bosses and Barry and suggested that I start co-designing games with him. They all agreed that that made sense.

I told Barry about an idea that I had been cooking. It was an idea to do a game about a murder mystery. He liked it and showed me a playfield that he had drawn. We started talking about how we could merry his playfield idea to my murder mystery game. Since it was my idea to do the theme we agreed that the buck would stop with me on theme related stuff and Barry would handle everything else.

My main goal in the design was to have the player solve the murder. To do this someone would have to die and there would have to be suspects. This means there would have to be a handful of characters. It also had to be different from game-to-game or murder-to-murder. If there is a different person killed each time and any of the remaining characters could have done it, then all the characters had to be related to each other in some way and all had to have a reason for wanting to kill any of the others. This lead to team meetings where we hashed out the background stories for all the characters. Paul Heitch (sound engineer), Linda Deal (artist), Adam Rhine (dot Artist), Barry, and I worked hard at making sure there would be no loopholes in the back-stories of the characters. It was a lot of fun.

At this point in pinball history, gamming machines in Europe called AWPs and just gambling in general were being blamed for the decline of coin-op/pinball. It was decided that our pinball machines needed to have more gambling themes. This changed the theme of our game a bit. We wrote into the story that it all took place in a casino, Tony’s Palace. We also then added the slot machine toy in the game.

Once we had the story and we mapped the theme to the playfield the rest of the game fell into place. We needed lights to show the players what was going on. We needed speech, lots of speech, to tell the player the background story. I think it was Barry that came up with the phone ‘toy’. I thought of how to use it. It is one of my favorite features in all of pinball. When a phone rings its clear what is going on. You have to answer it.

After WHO dunnit, Barry and I started to do another game that takes place in a junkyard. Since I was the lead of WHO dunnit Barry was going to take the lead of this game. Near the beginning of Junk Yard Barry was laid off from Williams.

Early in the development of WHO dunnit Barry and I started a group of people playing poker at his house every month. I still play poker at Barry’s house almost every month to this day.

Dwight Sullivan
8/18/03

“Somebody answer the phone”

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While we were developing WHO ? dunnit it was important to me to have a back story that we could all draw from mainly to minimize the the continuity errors. It was also important to me for all the characters in the game to have real reasons to want to kill all the other characters in the game.

So I made most of the team sit in Barry’s office for hours till we came up with the following background story for the game:

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Characters:

TONY’S PALACE – Casino, The place it all happens.

Nick Spade Private eye.

Tony 38 Owner of the casino and very content.
Trixie 23 Works as a dealer, for Tony
Bruno 42 Tony’s bouncer/ body guard.
Victoria 34 Spider Lady from Europe.
Butler 53 Victoria’s Manservant.

TIME LINE:
1900
Walter, a young wealthy playboy, and Mia, wife of the English Ambassador have a fling. They conceive VICTORIA, a secret VICTORIA’S mother keeps. She doesn’t tell him before he leaves never to see him again.

1911
TRIXIE’S mom dies giving birth to her. Tex is forced to be a single parent.

1915
Walter comes to town, meets TONY, and they become partners. They start the W&T PALACE, a struggling casino. TONY then cheats Walter out of his half of the casino and Walter disappears.

1917
Walter returns to Europe to learn that VICTORIA’S mother has died and that VICTORIA has grown up in a boarding school. VICTORIA looks amazingly like her mother. Walter can only think of how much he loved Mia when he sees VICTORIA. Walter changes his name to BUTLER. He tells VICTORIA that he used to work for her mom and she hires him as her manservant. BUTLER, trapped by the memory of Mia, does whatever VICTORIA says. VICTORIA treats BUTLER like dirt… as she does most everyone.

1919
Tex forms a partnership with TONY and they create the T&T PALACE. This casino thrives and they become rich. TONY and Tex each get a tattoo on their arm that reads T&T PALACE. TRIXIE is 8 and has a crush on TONY. TONY and Tex are like brothers.

1922 MAY
BUTLER suspects the fate of all his daughter’s past husbands and encourages VICTORIA to go after TONY. VICTORIA shows up with BUTLER. VICTORIA and TONY have been lovers off and on for a couple of years. TONY still avoids her grasp. VICTORIA marries Tex, her third husband. She becomes TRIXIE’S stepmother. TONY doesn’t recognize Walter because BUTLER is the shadow of the man Walter was and looks 10 years older.

1923 JANUARY
VICTORIA and TONY conspire to kill Tex. The plan was: VICTORIA gets the money and TONY gets the CASINO. Tex overhears VICTORIA’S half of the conspiracy. When she hangs up the phone he roughs her up and threatens that if anything happened to him she would be sorry. BUTLER witnessed Tex roughing her up. Unknowing to VICTORIA or TONY, BUTLER sabotages the brakes of Texs’ car. Tex drives off a cliff. Car explodes. Body was never found.

Tex, injured and disfigured, makes it to an underground doctor/plastic surgeon. Tex is reborn as BRUNO. BRUNO has one agenda, to get VICTORIA for attempting to kill him. No one will get in his way.

TRIXIE, now 11, moves in with TONY. VICTORIA cannot be tied down with a child. TONY is the closest family that TRIXIE has. She resents VICTORIA for this and still has a crush on TONY.

TONY and VICTORIA each believe that the other did the brake job on Tex. VICTORIA and BUTLER leave for Europe in search of another husband for VICTORIA.

T&T PALACE becomes TONY’S PALACE.

1930
TRIXIE and TONY are lovers but TONY will not commit. TONY gives her a job at his casino. He keeps her on a string, never letting her get enough money to be free.

1932
BRUNO goes on a fact-finding mission about VICTORIA. He learns all about her and her dead husbands. He learns about her real father. He also learns about her relationship with TONY. He now suspects TONY and VICTORIA of “fixing” his brakes.

TONY, unknowingly, hires BRUNO to work for him. BRUNO wants to be close because he knows that sooner or later VICTORIA will show up, and he wants to keep an eye on TRIXIE, his daughter. TRIXIE has been his only reason to live on some dark lonely nights. BRUNO keeps a locker full of TRIXIE pictures and news clippings.

1934 (Yesterday)
BRUNO waits for the day he can extract his revenge on VICTORIA and TONY.

TONY thinks all is well and is ready to enjoy the good life that he deserves.

TRIXIE has finally learned that TONY is not to be trusted and she must do what it takes to protect her-self.

VICTORIA and BUTLER show up to try and snag TONY once more!

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