The DCS System

Williams Electronics Games, Inc. designs and manufactures pinball games under the Williams and Bally names, and coin-op arcade video games under the Midway Manufacturing name. Pinball fans know Bally's The Addams Family as the best selling pinball game of the 90's, and video fans have made Mortal Kombat and NBA Jam two of Midway's biggest hits.

Anyone who has played these games knows that the computing power and graphics behind them have become very sophisticated and lifelike. Pinball games are equally sophisticated, often containing several computer-controlled playfield toys that are integrated into the pinball action.

To keep the audio on par with these state-of-the-art games, Williams has developed a new sound system, called DCS which stands for Digital Compression System. The DCS sound board provides four or more channels of 16-bit digital audio, with independent control over the volume, looping and playback of each channel. Each channel can dynamically play back anything from an entire piece of music to a short sound effect, with a typical game using one channel for music and the remaining three for sound effects, speech and foreground music such as fanfares or breaks.

The first pinball game to use the DCS system was Indiana Jones The Pinball Adventure. This was followed by the Judge Dredd pinball game, based on the popular comic book hero. The first video game to use the DCS system is Mortal Kombat II, the sequel to the successful original Mortal Kombat.

Today, the DCS system is used in all of the pinball and arcade video games produced by Williams Electronics Games, Inc.