Dirty Harry

DIRTY HARRY was developed in Autumn 1994 at the same Time when Clint Eastwood filmed “Bridges of Madison County” and produced from December until March.
The Production-Run of 4.248 Units was rather disappointing, but this Year was the Beginning of a new Decline-Period for Pinball generally. From the later following Williams-Machines only NO FEAR had a slightly higher Production-Run.

Here is the Story of CLINT EASTWOOD’s Involvement in the Sound-Programming told by the Development-Crew :

The game was in development during the time Clint was shooting/directing/editing/etc. Bridges of Madison County. After contacting his people about getting him to record custom speech for the game, we were generally told that he was too busy, but a sound-alike would be just fine. So we brought in our standard sound-alike guy who did a great job. His Dirty Harry voice was everything you could want in a Dirty Harry pinball game: growly, angry, exciting, bigger than life, etc.
Generally, exactly what you remember Harry to be in the movies (which isn’t necessarily what he was in the movies).

Pretty close to the end of the development cycle, Clint’s people called and said that now he would have time to do the speech, since he was doing some dialog replacement stuff at a sound studio. So Vince, the sound guy, flew out and did a recording session with Clint.

Well, Vince comes back, and we’re naturally all excited to hear his stuff. And we were all pretty disappointed, with what I’d call, at best, a very desinterested Harry. Now given the situation, I don’t think anyone can be blamed, as there were many factors involved here:
a) Clint had a lot of things on his mind at the time, and pretty much only had a hour to spare to read a very long set of dialog.
b) Clint at the time was now over 20 years older than when he was when he filmed the first movie, and pretty much acknowledged that to Vince.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve played this character.”
c) It’s gotta be very intimidating to have Clint in the sound booth and try directing him “C’mon Clint, grit your teeth a little bit more, sound ANGRIER!! Trust me, I know how your classic character should sound.”
d) And just the fact that we REALLY liked the way the sound-a-like turned out.

Unfortunately, everyone felt compelled that we had to use Clint’s speech even though we weren’t very happy with it. So, rest assured that every speech call in the game was specially recorded for the game. And when Dirty Harry leans back and finishes his coffee as he off-handedly mutters “Hey, that punk just stole my car” in a voice that seems to want to add “but that’s okay, it’s a rental,” you can be sure that it’s Clint Eastwood.