Pat Lawlor

Patrick M. Lawlor (born 1951) is a video game and pinball machine designer.

Lawlor's pinball career began as an engineer for Williams in 1987, when he co-designed a dual-playfield machine called Banzai Run with Larry DeMar. Pat Lawlor had previously been a video game designer and had entered the coin-operated game design world in 1980, working for Dave Nutting Assoc. In 1988, he was given the reins of his first individual design project, a machine entitled Earthshaker!, which was released in January 1989.

Lawlor's first solo project, Earthshaker!, was noteworthy for its integration of a relatively obscure theme (earthquakes). The follow-up to Earthshaker! tackled a different form of natural disaster: tornados. The new game, Whirlwind, was released in early 1990 to similar praise. Both games demonstrated components of Lawlor's design methodology.

Foremost, Lawlor exhibited his instinct for introducing elements that were thematically appropriate and altered gameplay. For instance, upon progressing toward the multiball mode in Earthshaker!, the playfield would begin to shake rapidly to simulate the effect of an earthquake. In a similar mode in Whirlwind, rubberized disks set flush in the playfield would spin rapidly back and forth to throw the ball off-course as it passed over them, while an electric fan mounted on top of the backbox would blow wind in the player's face.

Secondly, Lawlor established his general design style and signature playfield patterns in these first two games. Both games were noted for their crowded playfields, especially when compared to the more fast, flow-oriented machines that were most popular at the time. Lawlor also introduced his signature "bumper shot", in which players needed to shoot the ball on the level playfield between pop bumpers, which is a tricky shot that requires great precision. Also, many of the shots in Earthshaker! and Whirlwind were obstructed when attempted from the lower flippers, and Lawlor's affinity for "horizontal play" was accordingly displayed. Critical shots in both games were only likely to be hit from a third flipper, located near the middle of the playfield on one side, requiring that players develop acuity at sending the ball across the playfield rather than simply up the playfield. Thus, his style of gameplay has often been described by players as "stop and go". Whirlwind was among the first pinball machines to feature what became known as a "wizard mode," a final special mode accessed by particularly skilled players for completing numerous difficult tasks on the playfield, a reward that would be imitated in many future designs. "Wizard modes" were important in giving pinball games a sense of progression that pinball had lacked in its earlier years.

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