Williams Electronics

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Williams Electronics
Williams-logo-1.png
Founded 1943
Headquarters USA
Other Names Williams Electronics Games

WMS Industries, Inc. was an American electronic gaming and amusement manufacturer in Enterprise, Nevada. It was merged into Scientific Games in 2016. WMS's predecessor was the Williams Manufacturing Company, founded in 1943 by Harry E. Williams. However, the company that became WMS Industries was formally founded in 1974 as Williams Electronics, Inc.

Williams initially was a manufacturer of pinball machines. In 1964, Williams was acquired by jukebox manufacturer Seeburg Corp. and reorganized as Williams Electronics Manufacturing Division. In 1973, the company branched out into the coin-operated arcade video game market with its Pong clone Paddle Ball, eventually creating a number of video game classics, including Defender and Robotron: 2084. In 1974, Williams Electronics, Inc. was incorporated as a wholly owned subsidiary of Seeburg. Williams Electronics was sold as an independent company during the bankruptcy of Seeburg in 1980.

In 1987, Williams changed its parent name to WMS Industries, Inc. when it made its public offering. WMS is a shortening of Williams, which it also selected for its NYSE ticker symbol. In 1988, it acquired competitor Bally/Midway, which it spun off in 1998, together with its own video game business. WMS entered the reel-spinning slot machine market in 1994. It closed its pinball division in 1999.

In 2013, WMS became a wholly owned subsidiary of Scientific Games. In 2016, WMS was merged into Scientific Games. Today, WMS is a brand of Scientific Games, along with SG, Bally and Shuffle Master.

When developing video games, they are best known for their games Defender, Joust, Robotron: 2084, NARC and Smash TV. Its video game unit was absorbed into 1991 by Midway. Most of the time, Williams' video games never had credits. There are some exceptions, including the arcade version of Smash TV, in which the game had credits.

Games

Audio Development

ARC

In 1978, Williams engineers developed a sound board using a Motorola 6800 CPU and a Motorola MC1408 8-bit DAC to generate all the sounds heard in their pinball games, starting with "World Cup". The hardware engineers decided to reuse it for Williams' first original video game, Defender (ARC), while also giving the sound board a new model name: "D8224". This same board would be reused several times for multiple games including Stargate (ARC), Robotron 2084 (ARC), Joust (ARC), Sinistar (ARC), Bubbles (ARC), Splat! (ARC), and Blaster (ARC).

Because of its design, the D8224 sound board is a completely independent computer that can run separately from the arcade machine's main CPU, effectively making it a standalone digital synthesizer. The synthesizer routines and patches written for the D8224 were created by many different people at Williams, all using 68000 assembly. Like the hardware, these routines would also be reused for later games, with new sounds being created by simply modifying preexisting sounds, often times through trial-and-error.

Eugene Jarvis, the lead programmer on Defender wrote a routine called, GWAVE, which is a compact wavetable synth that also uses a frequency pattern table to generate many sounds. Eugene also wrote a routine called VARIWAVE (Variable Duty Cycle Square Wave) that creates loud, aggressive square wave drones and noises. These two routines are arguably the most well-known and recognizable from Williams games.

The company later developed an FM sound driver using a Yamaha YM2151 (8 channels) with a DAC for one channel of 8-bit digitized audio, primarily used by the composers for a drum track. The music was written in a special language coded by the driver programmer, and made use of CVSD (Continuously variable slope delta modulation). The driver used 6809 assembly. The sound driver was written by Bill Parod, Brian Schmidt, Chris Granner, and Rich Karstens.

Later games like Mystic Marathon (ARC) and Inferno (ARC) use newer hardware but continued to use routines like GWAVE for audio.

Audio Personnel

Links