# Ep 153: Rock On with John Borg

**Source:** LoserKid Pinball Podcast  
**Type:** podcast_episode  
**Published:** 2024-11-17  
**Duration:** 63m 16s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://zencastr.com/z/17Y1Jc7H

---

## Analysis

John Borg, legendary Stern pinball designer, discusses the creation of the original Metallica (2012-2013) and the 2024 Metallica Remastered, detailing his design philosophy, mechanical innovations, and the integration of new Metallica albums (72 Seasons, Hardwired) into the remaster. He also shares career history spanning Gottlieb, Data East, and Stern, including anecdotes about working with Slash on Guns N' Roses and the origin of the Star Wars game.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] The original Metallica (2012-2013) was designed by John Borg, with the electric chair (Sparky) as the focal mechanical point inspired by the 'Ride the Lightning' album cover. — _John Borg directly describes the inception and design process during interview; corroborates known game credits._
- [HIGH] Metallica Remastered took approximately the same development time as a full new game, despite being a remaster, due to extensive playfield relayout, new lighting systems, and new artwork. — _Borg states: 'development time was just about the same as a normal game, just really... Everything that had to be relaid out on the playfield and adding lights and making new light boards, you know, new art...'_
- [HIGH] Metallica band members re-recorded all original speech plus approximately 400-500 additional lines for the Remastered version. — _Borg: 'I probably added four or five hundred lines to the script' and worked with Raymond Davidson and writer Eric Lieberman._
- [HIGH] The Roadcase edition of original Metallica was produced in approximately 150 units, making it rarer than the LE versions. — _Borg: 'The Roadcase came about when they were thinking... we only made probably 150 of those. Those are actually less. Those are more rare than the LEs, actually.'_
- [HIGH] Sparky's visual changed from the cartoonish original to a skeleton design for the Remaster due to aesthetic concerns with the new sinister art style. — _Borg explains the skeleton appearance as a continuation of the electric chair narrative and UV effect integration._
- [HIGH] The Remastered version includes a Blackened feature (post-collection of all band members) that has not been publicly seen yet, featuring Sparky shocking the band members. — _Borg: 'The thing that nobody has seen in the game yet is the Blackened feature... Sparky gets to shock the band in the new model.'_
- [HIGH] Original Metallica outlane specials were changed to ball saves called 'Resurrection' in the Remaster to appeal to modern players, as specials are now considered a '70s/'80s term. — _Borg and hosts discuss the shift away from 'Special' terminology in modern pinball._
- [HIGH] John Borg spent 5-6 months designing a game after Rush that never received a license (package deal fell through), and those custom toys will be repurposed in future projects. — _Borg: 'one of them I spent about five or six months on, and we ended up not procuring the license for it... I did make some new toys for that game that will surface in the future.'_
- [HIGH] Borg has been designing pinball machines since the 1980s at Gottlieb (3 years), then Data East (starting 1990), then Stern for 30+ years. — _Borg states career progression: 'I worked for Premier Gottlieb for three years. And in 1990, I was hired by Data East.'_
- [HIGH] The Star Wars game at Data East was created after Borg had spent significant time developing a dinosaur mechanism (originally intended for a different game), which was redirected when Spielberg's Jurassic Park project interfered with licensing. — _Borg describes being asked to change his dinosaur-based layout to Star Wars: 'Joe came to me and told me that they were making a movie. Spielberg was making a movie called Jurassic Park about dinosaurs... he really wanted to do the game, and he asked me to change my game into Star Wars.'_

### Notable Quotes

> "They told me that they had procured a Metallica license. And I remember the first heart attack I had working on the game was I started working on the game on a Monday, and then they came and told me that James Hetfield was going to record speech for the game on Thursday."
> — **John Borg**, early in interview
> _Illustrates the high-pressure timeline and last-minute nature of the original Metallica band involvement; sets tone for the scale and urgency of the project._

> "So I looked at Donnie's art, and I thought, wow. You know, let's see what he does. He's going to lay out a Sparky—or it wasn't even Sparky yet. He just actually sent the image of this character in an electric chair. And I go, wow, let's call him Sparky. And we didn't change a thing."
> — **John Borg**, mid-interview
> _Reveals the organic, collaborative design process behind Sparky's creation and naming; emphasizes the role of artist Dirty Donnie._

> "So people ask me in the beginning, you know, when they first saw Sparky, they're like, how come he's a skeleton? I'm like, well, he's been sitting in the electric chair for 10 years getting shocked. His flesh burned away."
> — **John Borg**, mid-interview
> _Explains the thematic justification for Sparky's visual evolution and grounds the design in narrative logic._

> "Development time was just about the same as a normal game, just really. Everything that had to be relaid out on the playfield and adding lights and making new light boards, you know, new art, and just following all that and seeing all that stuff through. It was just like doing a full-blown game."
> — **John Borg**, late-interview
> _Clarifies misconception about remaster development time; indicates remastering is comparable in scope to original design._

> "I start with what I think is going to be the focal point or the coolest thing in the game. You know, like for Metallica, for instance, the electric chair was going to be the big thing. I just look at what toys or toy I'm going to put in a game—you know, focal point, main mechanical feature. And then I just build around that."
> — **John Borg**, late-interview
> _Articulates Borg's core design philosophy: starting with a centerpiece mechanical feature and building the playfield layout around it._

> "I have that bottle. You have the OG Slash Jack Daniels bottle."
> — **John Borg / Josh Roop**, late-interview
> _A memorable anecdote revealing a physical artifact from the Guns N' Roses project and Borg's personal connection to the band collaboration._

> "Joe came to me and told me that they were making a movie. Spielberg was making a movie called Jurassic Park about dinosaurs, but he said he really wanted to do the game, and he asked me to change my game into Star Wars."
> — **John Borg**, end of interview
> _Explains an unexpected design pivot in pinball history; illustrates how external licensing and IP acquisition directly impacted game development._

> "I look, you know, I've been around for a long time. And you know, every ten years the industry just makes like a leap. You know, the games that we're making now compared to into the '90s, you know, as far as the software and just even the makeup of the game, it's amazing."
> — **John Borg**, late-interview
> _Reflects on the evolution of pinball technology and design standards over his multi-decade career._

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| John Borg | person | Legendary pinball mechanical designer and layout engineer at Stern Pinball with 40-year career spanning Gottlieb (1980s), Data East (1990-), and Stern. Known for designing iconic machines including Metallica, Star Wars, X-Men, The Walking Dead, Rush, Avatar, Tron, Iron Man, AC/DC, Guns N' Roses, and many others. |
| Metallica | game | Original 2012-2013 pinball machine by Stern designed by John Borg; became one of Stern's most successful long-running games. Remastered in 2024 with significant enhancements including new toys, UV effects, album modes (72 Seasons, Hardwired, Blackened), and enhanced audio. |
| Metallica Remastered | game | 2024 Stern pinball remake of the original Metallica, designed by John Borg. Features new playfield layouts, UV effects, Expression Lights, side armor, new Sparky design, Blackened wizard mode, ball save mechanics (Resurrection), and 400-500 additional dialogue lines from the band. |
| Sparky | product | Iconic mechanical toy in Metallica pinball—a character in an electric chair inspired by the 'Ride the Lightning' album cover. Created by artist Dirty Donnie; redesigned for Remaster as a skeleton with UV effects. |
| Josh Roop | person | Co-host of Loser Kid Pinball Podcast; pinball enthusiast and collector; interviewer for this episode. |
| Scott Larson | person | Co-host of Loser Kid Pinball Podcast; recently acquired a Metallica LE; collector of games including Wizard of Oz and Monster Bash. |
| Dirty Donnie | person | Metallica artist who created the original Sparky character design for the 2012 Metallica pinball machine. |
| Raymond Davidson | person | Code/rules designer at Stern who worked on Metallica Remastered; described the process of converting the game from SAM to Spike system as 'like converting Spanish to English.' |
| Lyman Sheets | person | Original designer of Metallica (2012-2013); made code adjustments in 2017 version to simplify grave marker shot mechanics. |
| Eric Lieberman | person | Writer for Seth Meyers' show; collaborated with John Borg on scripting additional dialogue for Metallica Remastered. |
| Guns N' Roses | game | Data East pinball machine designed by John Borg featuring custom G and R-shaped ramps created at Slash's request. Borg collaborates with band members during development. |
| Star Wars | game | Data East pinball machine designed by John Borg; created when his original dinosaur-based layout was repurposed after Jurassic Park licensing conflict. Features Death Star and R2-D2. |
| Slash | person | Guitarist for Guns N' Roses; visited Stern factory during Guns N' Roses pinball development; collaborated with Borg on custom ramp designs; gave Neil Falconer a Jack Daniels bottle later gifted to Borg. |
| Joe Kamikow | person | Data East manager who initially asked John Borg to design a dinosaur mechanism, later redirected the project to Star Wars. |
| Neil Falconer | person | Data East programmer on Guns N' Roses who received the Jack Daniels bottle from Slash; later gifted it to John Borg upon retirement. |
| Loser Kid Pinball Podcast | organization | Pinball-focused podcast hosted by Josh Roop and Scott Larson; features interviews with industry figures and deep-dive discussions of pinball games. |
| Flippin' Out Pinball | company | Mentioned as a distributor/sales channel for new pinball machines; Josh endorses buying new games from them as alternative to troubleshooting older machines. |
| Gottlieb | company | Historic pinball manufacturer where John Borg worked for three years in the 1980s as a mechanical designer. |
| Data East | company | Pinball manufacturer where John Borg worked starting in 1990; Borg designed Star Wars and Guns N' Roses for Data East. |
| Stern Pinball | company | Current employer of John Borg; major pinball manufacturer where he has designed numerous iconic games over 30+ years. |
| Roadcase Edition | product | Photo-realistic variant of original Metallica produced in approximately 150 units; rarer than standard LE due to limited production run. |
| 72 Seasons | product | Metallica album (post-2013) integrated into Metallica Remastered as a playfield mode with pick targets; requires 72 switch closures to start. |
| Hardwired | product | Metallica album (post-2013) integrated into Metallica Remastered as a playfield feature with inserts; plays alongside main game without disrupting base gameplay. |
| Blackened | product | New wizard mode feature in Metallica Remastered; activated after collecting all four band members; features Sparky shocking the band in the display. |
| Resurrection | product | Ball save feature in Metallica Remastered; replaced the original outlane 'Specials' on in-lanes; uses guitar pick insert artwork. |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Metallica game design and creation (original vs. remaster), John Borg's design philosophy and mechanical engineering approach, Sparky character design and evolution
- **Secondary:** Band involvement and licensing in pinball game development, Pinball industry evolution over 40 years (1980s-2024), Playfield layout design and mechanical toy integration, Code and rules updates for remastered games
- **Mentioned:** Data East era games (Star Wars, Guns N' Roses) and design pivots

### Sentiment

**Positive** (0.85) — John Borg expresses pride and satisfaction in both the original Metallica and Remastered versions. Hosts are enthusiastic and complimentary. No major criticisms; tone is celebratory of design achievements and collaborative efforts. Minor frustration mentioned regarding licensing delays/failures, but framed professionally.

### Signals

- **[business_signal]** Licensing uncertainty and package deal failures can result in multi-month sunk development costs (5-6 months on post-Rush unreleased game), though salvaged toy designs may be repurposed in future projects. (confidence: high) — Borg: 'I did make some new toys for that game that will surface in the future on something else somewhere.'
- **[community_signal]** Scott Larson's acquisition of Metallica LE represents strong collector enthusiasm and secondary market demand for Remastered version. Hosts discuss side-by-side placement of original and remastered Metallica in home collections. (confidence: medium) — Scott describes securing Metallica LE and planning layout modifications; collectors reportedly placing original Roadcase and new LE side-by-side.
- **[design_philosophy]** Original Metallica's outlane 'Specials' were removed and replaced with ball saves called 'Resurrection' because specials are considered outdated '70s/'80s terminology no longer relevant to modern players. (confidence: high) — Hosts and Borg discuss shift away from 'Special' terminology in favor of modern game design conventions.
- **[design_philosophy]** Original Metallica playfield mechanics had minor issues (stainless steel orbit post needed, drop-target bank reflective opto problems, disappearing ball magnet spring failures after 300K cycles). Remaster addresses all via engineering refinement. (confidence: high) — Borg details stainless steel orbit post fix, robust drop-target bank with real opto, and magnet spring redesign tested to 500K cycles.
- **[design_philosophy]** John Borg articulates his core design approach: identifying a focal mechanical feature (e.g., electric chair for Metallica) and building the entire playfield layout around it. Uses layered CAD techniques to manage complexity across rails, inserts, trap lines, and assemblies. (confidence: high) — Borg: 'I start with what I think is going to be the focal point or the coolest thing in the game... And then I just build around that.'
- **[licensing_signal]** Metallica band proactively requested coverage of two new albums (72 Seasons, Hardwired) released since 2013. Band selected which albums to integrate; Borg designed features to blend seamlessly with original gameplay. (confidence: high) — Borg: 'Metallica wanted us to give them some coverage for the two albums that have come out since 2013.'
- **[market_signal]** Metallica Remastered emphasizes new cosmetic and gameplay elements (UV effects, Sparky redesign, Blackened wizard mode, Expression Lights) while maintaining core original playfield geometry. Positions as 'bigger, better, stronger, faster' evolution rather than radical redesign. (confidence: high) — Borg: 'Everything that I touched on the game, I wanted to make it, you know, bigger, better, stronger, and faster.'
- **[community_signal]** John Borg has collaborative, hands-on approach with band members and artists. Slash visited factory during Guns N' Roses development; Metallica band re-recorded dialogue; artist Dirty Donnie's Sparky design accepted with minimal changes. (confidence: high) — Anecdotes about Slash visit, re-recording sessions, and Dirty Donnie's creative freedom.
- **[personnel_signal]** John Borg maintains unique capability to design and physically build game mechanics himself, providing direct control over concept-to-execution. This integration of design and engineering informs his layout approach. (confidence: high) — Josh references Borg as 'one of the designers that actually could go into a room and build it yourself because you have that knowledge.'
- **[product_strategy]** 30-month gap between Rush (released earlier) and Metallica Remastered. During this period, Borg spent 5-6 months on a post-Rush game that lost its license (package deal fell through), representing a significant sunk development cost. (confidence: high) — Borg: 'one of them I spent about five or six months on, and we ended up not procuring the license for it... they were trying to do a package deal, I believe, and it didn't go through.'
- **[product_strategy]** Metallica Remastered includes features that cannot be retrofitted to original (Blackened, 72 Seasons, Hardwired modes) due to missing playfield inserts, creating intentional product differentiation and incentivizing new machine purchases. (confidence: high) — Josh: 'So they all have to buy the new one, apparently.' Borg: 'They have to.'
- **[technology_signal]** Metallica Remastered required converting from SAM system to Spike system, described by Raymond Davidson as 'converting Spanish to English.' Additionally, manufacturing standards have evolved in 10-year interim, requiring retirement of flat-rail designs and updated mounting specifications. (confidence: high) — Borg: 'he described it as like converting Spanish to English... stuff changes every ten years.'

---

## Transcript

 thanks for tuning in to the loser kid pinball podcast this is episode 158 i am josh roop with me my co-captain as always scott larson and scott i've got to tell you i want to say thank you because you let me borrow your genie yeah but i got it home and i turn it on and i'm like why is it not working and so i had to dig through the whole cabinet and i'm like oh there's a plug down here so i plug it in right and then i turn it on and it's it's not working again and stuff zip tied together like what the heck is going on i had to find a jumper all this crazy stuff right like i've i finally had enough and it reminded me that i'm so glad i buy new pinball machines from flipping out pinball because there might be a little tweak here and there but really It took like 24 hours to get your genie up and going. And finally, it's working. But even like once I got up and running, the left flipper stuck up. And I was like, you've got to be joking me. Come on. I can't catch a break. So if you want less headache instead of buying older games, buy newer games like from flipping out pinball like Metallica. And I think you have a little news for us too, right, Scott? You want to talk about that now? Yeah, so actually I was able to secure myself a Metallica LE. Nice. So I am super excited. Unfortunately, it just got more expensive because they released the accessories. And so now I'm getting a topper and a shooter rod. And thankfully, the expression lights and the side armor are already included in the LE. But yes, so I am going to be blinging this up. And I need to figure out which one of these bad boys that I need to move because Metallica is going to get a feature spot. Well, Wizard of Oz is not the same as the others. Wizard of Oz is not the same, but it's also like 500 pounds and moving it out of my basement would be kind of a pain. It's easier to move a dead body. Yeah, exactly. I may need to move, you know, maybe Monster Bash. Maybe Monster Bash needs to sleep for a while. speaking of dead bodies we we have a man that that now created sparky right scott yeah redefined it and has done probably one what has been considered the best stern game ever made which could be arguable now but you know what metallica hell i'm still going with metallica right now metallica certainly has stood the test of time oh yes and it's not just metallica's other legendary games You think of Tron, you think of Avatar, X-Men, Iron Man, The Walking Dead. These are all top-tier games that have redefined. Rush. Rush. Tournament play has been redefined by these games. They're amazing. We have none other than John Borg on joining us today. How are you doing, Jon? I'm doing great, guys. Pleasure to be on your show. okay i i am super excited because i have been wanting to get uh john bork on for a while and mainly because there are so many things about design that i want to talk about especially with rush but i am going to secure myself and i want to focus on metallica so to start with why don't you wind us way back in the day and this is beef this is in i would say the golden era of stern had just barely started. I would argue that ACDC just came out and they were starting to really ramp up some of these legendary recent games. And John, tell me how the original Metallica came to be. They told me, this was after ACDC, they told me that they had procured a Metallica license. And I remember the first heart attack I had working on the game was I started working on the game on a Monday, and then they came and told me that James Hetfield was going to record speech for the game on Thursday, and I just found out I was working on it. So I had a heart attack. That was the first one. So I sat down for a couple of days and stayed up really late at night. I was working two shifts, and I thought of everything that James Hetfield could possibly say in a pinball machine, and I wrote it down and put a doc together and got it ready for him on Thursday. um luckily um as the game progressed and started to to form uh there were other speech items phrases call outs that i wanted and then the rest of the band found out that hetfield had recorded for the game and then they said they all wanted to record too so i recorded re-recorded with the rest of the band um and i gave them some of even jane's lines that were in his original script and then added a lot to it to fill holes and things that we needed. And it was great just to hear all four of the band members, you know, call outs in the game. So then after that, I was looking at, you know, the album covers, you know, and talking with my team. And we decided that we were going to, you know, I talked about Ride the Lightning. And the Ride the Lightning album cover just has a very small electric chair way off in the background. and I thought, boy, it'd be really cool to put an electric chair in the game and shock a character in the electric chair. So I first kind of saw it as like a real sinister kind of character like Sin City. Okay. You know, if you're familiar. And so then they told me that I was going to be working with a Metallica artist, so they sent Dirty Donnie our way, and I started to talk to Donnie, and I looked at Donnie's art, and I thought, wow. You know, let's see what he does. He's going to he's going to lay out a Sparky or it wasn't even Sparky yet. He just actually sent the image of this character in an electric chair. And I go, wow, let's call him Sparky. And and we didn't change a thing. It just it just looked fabulous. The only thing that was in his original drawings, it had a couple of like big light bulbs sticking up from behind the chair that we, you know, we ended up taking those out. But, you know, other than that, you know, Sparky was just, you know, Donnie did a doodle and sent it in and I was like, I love it. And we just went that that direction. Roadcase came about when they were thinking that, you know, while all this all this cartoon drawn art, all this hand drawn art, we should do a photo realistic package. And we only made probably 150 of those. Those are those are actually less. Those are more rare than the LEs, actually. There were there were fewer of them made. But, yeah, it was a lot of fun. You know, so I started working on the electric chair, and then I came up with the idea to raise the grave marker out of the play field for Master of Puppets. And then I had, you know, so I started working on the toys, and then I sat and I was having a meeting one day with Lyman and Greg, and I was looking at the Injustice for All album cover, and I noticed the gavel. And I thought, you know, and I was talking to the guys about it, and I go, well, what if we do a hammer that comes down and smashes the ball and it goes underneath the play field and it goes into a death magnetic casket? And I was just kidding. And Lyman goes, yeah, that's pretty cool. So we put that down on the list, and then I started working on the layout, and I just started trying to shoehorn everything that we had thought up to put in the game in the game. So that's how that all came about. Did Stern approach them, or did they approach Stern? Do you know? I believe they approached Stern. And I know the second time around, just recently, they had seen a rush somewhere out in the wild. And they looked at the display and they saw the live concert footage and they're like, we want that. So they contacted us about renewing the license and doing another run. So they gave us James Rees Cooper to work with this time. They provided another artist and he did a beautiful job on the new game. it's very sinister and very Metallica. Sparky, the Sparky image changed mainly because the art is just, you know, as sinister as it is. I don't know that Sparky's image would have worked. Right, I agree with that, yeah. So people ask me in the beginning, you know, when they first saw Sparky, they're like, how come he's a skeleton? I'm like, well, he's been sitting in the electric chair for 10 years getting shocked, his flesh burned away. So, but yeah, the new Sparky with the UV effects, he looks really good. I'm really happy with the way everything turned out. Everything that I touched on the game, I wanted to make it, you know, bigger, better, stronger and faster. Yeah. You know, from an aesthetic standpoint and, you know, to like that three bank that was on the original game had reflective optos. and it was troublesome for some people until they were tweaked when we manufactured the game but the new bank is our new 3 bank and it's much more robust it probably weighs twice as much so we just kept picking at it and just trying to make everything better on it and add a few things that we didn't get to put in the first time around one of the things is the Metallica sign on the back panel so you can, as you're shooting ramps you actually just look forward and you can see where you're at. You know, I used to shoot the ramps until I was blue in the face, until I heard the song, you know, until I heard, you know, Lady Justice start. You know, it's hard to shoot a ramp and then get ready for the next ramp shot and look up at the display and see how many letters you've collected. So I wanted to do that and add that to the back panel. But we had a lot of fun. We had a lot of fun working on the game and, you know, the extra features that we got to add, that was, you know, that was just bonus. so I know you're a big rock and roll fan and whatnot and I assume you're a big fan of Metallica did you kind of fangirl when you heard that the guys were coming in to do sound and whatnot um they actually didn't come in they did it they did it from afar um so I actually didn't get to meet them um but just the fact that they were going to re-record we re-recorded all the original speech plus all the new speech and there were probably I probably added four or five hundred lines to the script. And then I worked with Eric Lieberman. He's a writer for Seth Meyers' show. So I got to work with him. And then working with Raymond was great too. He knows the game like the back of his hand. And while he was still working on the last project, I just started writing rules for the new game. Metallica wanted us to give them some coverage for the two albums that have come out since 2013. So I put the hardwired inserts on the playfield, and then I repurposed the pick targets for 72 seasons. And then the way you collect band members in the game now is a little bit different. You collect a band member by starting a multiball. The thing that nobody has seen in the game yet is the uh is the blackened feature after you collect all four band members the the crank it up scoop lights and you shoot in there and you see the you see the throw switch come up in the display and sparky comes into the view and his eyes roll back and forth like he's crazy and then he he throws the switch or flips you the bird and then he looks back at the camera as as and then you see the four band members come up in the display and there's the silhouettes of the four band members and they've all got the helmets on and they're all getting shocked so shock sparky gets to shock the band in the new in the new model um there is also a uh a family version of that where he gives you the devil horns instead of instead of flipping you the bird so uh that probably makes it a little more challenging considering that i i would say metallica has never been super r-rated but they've certainly been a little more edgy so So finding that balance of being able to get that into a home with young kids. Right. Well, the game's going out in family mode now. I mean, it did ship in 17 and 13 with the adult mode turned on. Well, I may have to wait until my – So if you want to change it, you can. Yeah, when my kids go to sleep, I may have to throw on the adult mode and check it out a little more. Yeah. Okay. But there are a few. Tell me more about. Oh, I'm sorry. Keep going. Keep going. Oh, no. There are a few call outs in the game that are a little risque. You know, they're a little risque, but they're a little they're a little rough for young ears. Sure. Yeah. Now the so the layout now typically with vault additions or, you know, now this is a remastered edition. And typically you try to fix things in the layout, but tweak it enough that it fixes things that were problematic in the past, but need to be revamped or worked. So what are some of the things that you did in this layout to make them function better? One of the things that I did was I put a stainless steel up post in the middle of the orbit because a lot of people would shoot the left orbit on their game. and it would spring off of the nylon post and come back down the orbit shot and feed back to the flipper where it was supposed to just stop up there and feed into the top lanes. So that worked really well. When you shoot it really, really hard, the ball just stops, it dies, and it goes into the top lanes like it's supposed to. The drop target bank was the other thing that was kind of a little problematic on the original model, and that one is much more robust, and it's got a real opto switch instead of a reflective now. But other than that, geometry-wise, I was very pleased with the way everything was and played, and I really didn't make any changes other than just updating things like the scoop is our newer design with an opto switch where the old one had a micro switch. We tweaked the assembly for the disappearing ball magnet a little bit. we changed the spring location and I do believe that the new one is compatible in the old game but it is the makeup is a little bit different the spring is different you know we tested it it went like 300,000 cycles and then the spring broke and we had that happen a couple times so we went and redesigned it retested it and went 500,000 and kept going after that we shut it off at 500k that's pretty crazy the 500,000 so you went half a million like i think it's gonna last now oh yeah yeah we had just two kickers firing balls up to that magnet stopping them pulling them underneath and popping back up and releasing the ball back to a kicker and just bam bam bam bam bam well and this game feels like shoots a little smoother now too was you also did something i'm not really sure what the reason is for that um because the geometry is is roughly all the same um but i feel like i'm i don't know the shot going into the the grave marker to knock down the drop target seems easier to me yeah my game i've been playing with the 2013 code so after i knock down my drop targets i have to go in and hit the grave marker twice for it to stop the ball so in 17 i think lyman changed it so you just first time in when you hit the grave marker it stops the ball and starts the multiball But that shot seems to feel easier The main thing I did was I had to pull the back panel in a half an inch because we use it as a straightener for the back of the play field now where we used to put a wood rail, like the old wood rails that go up and down the sides of your game. And we used to mount the back panel to the back of the game, mounted to the back of the play field and that wood rail. So we moved the back panel in years ago, so I had to do that to the game. So that actually made – I had to actually shorten the ramps each by a half an inch. So I brought everything back in. The entrances are still in the same spot in relation to the flippers, but the back, you know, they're actually a half an inch shorter than the original ones. Does that affect the speed of it, like the ball comes back to you at all? Not much, not noticeable. Not enough. And they both still feel the same. You know, they're both still nice and smooth. So, yeah. Now, we have more music on these. So tell me how you selected or the band selected which songs you're going to integrate more into them and how that affects gameplay. The band selected them. And the gameplay, I didn't want to interrupt the original gameplay that much. but the 72 seasons and the hardwired feature they just kind of come into play and just blend in with everything else very nicely kind of like Injustice for All does you start Injustice for All and you're playing that and then go into a multiball or something like that so those other features kind of work similar to the way that one does and so that worked out really well and they're both pretty lucrative like when you go into 72 seasons If you start trying to nail spinners, it ups the value of the toy you're going to collect. And then for every one of the pick targets you hit, you score that value. So say the first one, you hit a spinner and it takes it up to like, you know, half a mil or something like that. You collect that first target. You hit a spinner or a couple more spinners after that. And then now you're looking at millions of points. And then you collect those off the remaining targets that are still lit. Yeah, that feature is really, that's a lot of fun to play. And it's not in your face all the time. You have to get 72 switch closures to start it. But the hardwired feature, same thing. It plays pretty much along with the rest of the game. It blends in nicely, and it's not stepping on anything. So with the guitar picks, because you said you switched out, maybe not the guitar picks, the inlanes, has that always been a ball save? Because I noticed when we were playing at Stern, it was a ball save. but I don't remember that on the original game. It was a special on the original model. They were Red Outland specials. Yeah, so we changed them to ball saves and called them Resurrection. So you were resurrected when you dreamed. Okay. That does make the game easier to play, and it gives you a little more life. Well, and the reason behind it, too, you guys said no one really goes for specials anymore. That's more of like a 70s, 80s term. Yes. Yeah. Which is kind of sad. But I like special one lit, man. That's good stuff. Yeah, and there's settings to change that because right now, currently, when you light Resurrection, the Outlands, if you hit one of them and it saves your ball, the other one remains lit. So, you know, there's settings in the game. You can make that harder if you want. You know, like when you collect one, they're both gone. You know, they both go out. Gotcha. but yeah it does feel like uh uh our game time and our our ball time and our game time is is good uh but i think a game should play a little a little a little longer you know yeah i mean i some games are so hard sometimes i'm it just irritates me and i'll just go play something else because i can play something else for a while but uh metallica is pretty uh pretty player friendly yeah which is funny because like it always felt like such a brutal game before and it and granted it's still not like the easiest game to play but it's it's taken a little the edge edge off you don't feel like you're white knuckling the game the whole time yeah yes well it for me i was always surprised when people talked about iron man being so hard and i'm like it's it's hard until until you like it yeah i know until you get it dialed into your brain and then it feels a lot more familiar and i i was able to get long when i had my iron man i was able to get some long ball times to keep it going and it's uh i i would argue it's probably similar with metallica that um because people are familiar with metallica because it's been around for 11 years that they're going to have a connection instantly with this game and it's going to be a you know it It's a new reinvigorated version of a classic favorite that they had. Yes. What was your favorite thing to add to this game? Adding the UV was really cool. The extra play features, that all came together really nice, with kind of like a mini wizard mode with blackened at the end of it. And the game had a lot of rules to begin with, So to just be able to add a few more was just really cool, a lot of fun. I've had some people ask me if those rules can be, you know, if we're going to code them and do an update for the old game, but you don't have any of those inserts on the play field, so you really can't. Right, yeah, so it's kind of hard to retrofit in some ways. So they all have to buy the new one, apparently. They have to. So, John, I know a person that has a road case game. And they have a lot of games in their house, and they add it onto their house to make their game room bigger. They have a road case in their living room to the left of their fireplace, and then they've got another game on the right side. And they bought a Metallica LE to put on the right side, so they've got a Metallica pinball living room. Nice. Yeah. It's in stereo. I've seen people that have had all the Elviras in their collection, side by side. A lot of people are putting their Metallica in their game room with their new Metallica. Vice versa. I don't know if you can talk to this or not, but it's been about 30 months between when Rush was released and Metallica released. it usually takes 18 months to do a a game itself from start from you know scratch to to end and with this being a remastered i would assume there's a little less development time can you kind of speak to what happened between that time yeah we talked about that um uh development time was just about the same as a normal game just really wow everything that had to be relayed out on the play field and adding lights and making new light boards, you know, new art and just following all that and seeing all that stuff through. It was just like doing a full-blown game. But I did also two games after Rush, and one of them I spent about five or six months on, and we ended up not procuring the license for it. So they were trying to do a package deal, I believe, and it didn't go through. So I had to just take five months' worth of work and just push it off to the side and go, okay, what's next? Save it. I guess that's the business, right? You never know where it's going to be. You never know. But I did make some new toys for that game that will surface in the future on something else somewhere. so now you you're also notorious for being um of the designers one that actually could go into a room and build it yourself because you have that knowledge how does that integrate into like approaching a game like when you get a game and you're like okay i i want this game to feel this way. I want it to go this way. How does that integrate into your design layout? What you want to put in a game? Lead me through that process. Oh, wow. Goodness. Um, um, are we editing? Are we editing this at all? Yeah, we can. Can you read me that question again? I'm kind of lost to what you're asking me. Okay, so when you get a license and you approach designing the game for it, what is your process when you think of the license? Because each layout is a little different and it flows differently. And so how do you make that license into the game? I start with what I think is going to be the focal point or the coolest thing in the game. You know, like for Metallica, for instance, You know, the electric chair was going to be the big thing. I just look at what toys or toy I'm going to put in a game, you know, focal point, you know, main mechanical feature. And then I just build around that and I'll I'll I'll lay these, you know, mechanisms in in places on the play field and try to plan shots around them. it's a crazy puzzle and when I'm looking at it in the beginning it's a top view of the play field and I'm looking at everything that's on the top and the bottom of the game at the same time so that when I build the thing nothing's crashing into each other it's crazy sometimes your eyes pop out of your head when you're looking at the layout going wow, trying to remember exactly what everything is because, you know, the layers, I work in layers too. So rails are a certain color, inserts are a certain color, trap lines are a certain color. And then, you know, I break down all my major assemblies after I've laid it out, laid out the top view with all the spotting and motors and switches and whatever's going on it. And I'll take that and then I just make like a single entity out of it and then I can take it and place it and move it around in the play field. a lot easier than if you're drawing individual lines and circles and trying to move a whole big group of something somewhere else. If you, you know, like if I want to move a lane over, you know, if I want to open up a lane, you know, a quarter inch or something, I'll just take the two flat rails, pull them off the drawing, you know, update them and then restore them. And then the ones that are in my drawing and the ones that are in a, another, a block that shows like all just all the rails that are on the game it just updates all that stuff um it's kind of like uh if i draw a mechanism um say i draw sparky in his electric chair you know and i do all the line work and stuff like that then i go and i i put a fence around it and i make it a single entity so i can take and move it wherever i want instead of having to move two or three thousand lines um but yeah as far as far as far as you know how i how i you know go about making a game i look at the mechanisms and then I'll place a mechanism somewhere where I think it should be. And then I, and then I pretty much build the game and lay out shots around it. So how was it different making the original Metallica versus this? And was it kind of a pain to transfer everything over from 2013 to 2024? No. You know, and I talked to Raymond about that, you know, because he had to, He had to make the game function on the spike system. And it was originally a Sam game. And he said it was kind of like he described it as like converting Spanish to English. You know, some of the rules are different. You know, punctuations are different and whatnot. And he said that was kind of what it was like for him. And as far as myself, I laid out all the rails and everything, and I started pulling things off of the old layout and placing them on a fresh playfield layout, if you will. And then there were things that we don't do anymore, like flat rails that make up your lanes in your game. We don't put mounting feet on radiuses any longer because it's a little harder to hold. you know so Metallica had you know mounting feet on the the corners on the the radii and the orbit flat rail you know so I had to change all that so I just had to apply standards you know some of the new standards to the uh to the layout um you know to just 10 years ago so stuff you know stuff changes every 10 years I look you know I've been around for a long time and you know every 10 years the industry just makes like a leap. You know, the games that we're making now compared to into the 90s, you know, as far as the software and just even the makeup of the game, it's amazing. Well, we were talking earlier, too. You started out in the 80s at Gottlieb. So it's definitely, you've been through a couple decades in this industry. Yeah. Yeah, I worked for Premier Gottlieb for three years. And in 1990, I was hired by Data East. And they had just had Simpsons started on the line when I started working with ADs. And you probably – now, was Guns N' Roses your first, like, experience with working with a band for a layout? And this is the old version, right? This is the original with the GNR ramps. Yeah. Some people didn't know about that. That was something – Are you serious? Yeah, no. That was something that Slash – he said, hey, can you make a ramp look like a G and another one look like an R? And I'm like, yeah, I could do whatever you want. You're the boss. Yeah, so it was kind of cool when we did that game. You know, Slash came out and hung out at the factory. You know, he got there about, you know, 3 o'clock in the afternoon and hung out with us, and we were there until midnight working. We were passing around a bottle of Jack Daniels, and I can't drink bourbon or whiskey or anything like that. If it was tequila, I would have been good with it. But, you know, we were walking around, you know, passed around a bottle of Jack Daniels and stuff like that. And it ended up being emptied. And the programmer, Neil Falconer, had the bottle. And when he retired, he brought it up and handed it to me. So I have that bottle. You have the OG, the Slash Jack Bourbon bottle. The Slash Jack Daniels bottle, yes. Oh, yeah, Jack Daniels, yeah. so um yeah but that was that was a real interesting project to work on and that was definitely first uh first experience working with a rock and roll band well speaking of scott's ringtone that was star wars how crazy was it just like the first game you get to design a data east was star wars was star wars started out as jurassic well it wasn even jurassic park um when i first started to work there joe camico asked me to make a he goes start thinking dinosaurs He goes I want a dinosaur you know to move around and you know do stuff and eat a ball So I made this mechanism. I took a pretty good size Godzilla model, roto molded plastic. And I started laying out this, I laid it out. And then I started laying out this mechanism around it and in it. and I made it throw pinballs like you saw later on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Then I made it pivot back and forth, and I put a magnet way in the back of its mouth, and it bent over, and it leaned down to the playfield, and it sucked the ball off a magnet on the playfield into its mouth, and then it would go back up, and it would deposit it into a pit. So I started working on that, and then I guess Jurassic Park then came about maybe months later. So I was getting pretty far into this dinosaur layout, and Joe came to me and told me that they were making a movie. Spielberg was making a movie called Jurassic Park about dinosaurs, but he said he really wanted to do the game, and he asked me to change my game into Star Wars. And I was like, what? I'm like, ah! So I took the dinosaur out, and I put the Death Star in its place, and then I wanted R2-D2 in the game so I put him over on the other side and re-laid out a lot of the line work and stuff like that. So that's how that came about. And I remember some people came to me and said, Star Wars? Gosh, who's going to remember that? And I'm like, a lot of people are going to remember that. And we sold a lot of it too. I mean, it was the right game at the right time. Dot Matrix was just starting to come into play and starting to fill in arcades and outdate LED display games, alphanumerics. That game and Lethal Weapon 3, we sold tons of it, tons of both of those games. Where was the dinosaur supposed to be on Star Wars? I've got it pulled up. No, the dinosaur was part of a dinosaur game that I was working on. Oh, gotcha. And they swapped themes on me. They were like, you want to do Star Wars? And I'm like, sure. They said, I think this will sell a lot of games. Well, that was always the key with, well, Data East and then Stern, is that that was really when people started discovering that licensing made a huge difference on the marketability of a game. Well, you can call a distributor and say, hey, I got Jurassic Park coming, or I've got, you know, Monkey and Around coming, you know. If you give them a non-licensed theme, they want samples and they want to test it before they place orders. But if you tell them you have Star Wars coming, they're like, yeah, I'll take a couple containers. So it says on the notes that you did work on Jurassic Park. Did you happen to work on Jurassic Park? I did some work on Jurassic Park, and then later on I did the Lost World game. Can I ask, and maybe this is like forbidden territory, maybe because it's so old it doesn't really matter anymore. is there a reason Jurassic Park is very similar to World Wind for play field World Wind? yeah really? you mean Data East Jurassic Park? yeah Data East Jurassic Park's layout is very similar I think it looks more like Funhaus than World Wind I mean think about it you know you got the dinosaur from a side flipper shot on the one side you got Rudy on the left vice versa I thought it looked a little more like Funhaus Now I've never even heard anybody say it looked like Whirlwind I love that Maybe it's because it's the two holes on the left side Like you have on Whirlwind with the shelter or whatnot Oh yeah that's possible With the C and the A shot Yeah Okay Ramp entrance is a little the same It has flippers It has balls It has balls Round spheres that roll around No, that's interesting. Yeah, I never even heard anybody say that before. I heard a couple people say, well, it looks kind of like Funhaus. I keep seeing that too. Like Funhaus and Whirlwind had a baby. I like how some people take a plan view of somebody's play field, and then they'll superimpose another one over the top of it and show that the shot lanes are all in the same spot. Okay, but if you have, especially if you have a two-flipper game. And you realistically have seven, maybe eight shots. Yeah. Yeah. And so, of course, that's what you're going to have if you have a two-flipper game. If you have a third flipper, okay. And if you put in nine shots, it's going to be really, really, really challenging. Yeah. Yeah. But, well, and actually I would say American Pinball got into that with Houdini when they tried to cram too many shots. I actually like that game. I like tight shots. Rush is a shooter's game. Yeah. Well, Rush, I still, in many ways, I love the game, and sometimes I want to take a sledgehammer to it because, man, it is such a buster on me. Okay, I do have a question. Typically on so many of your games, there is typically a double in lane on one side. Why? What's the thought process on that? It's a catcher's mitt. When I'm playing a normal standard bottom and the ball gets over near the sides, I feel like I'm in peril and I'm freaking out. And when I got that big opening and I got two lanes on the one side, I feel like the ball gets over there. I'm really not that worried about it. Okay, because I am really good at bouncing it on the post between the two inlanes and going to the out lane. Like that is, if I have a special talent in pinball, that is my talent. Yeah, you can shake it to the out lane, you got to shake it back into the game. Okay, you're overestimating my ability. Everybody used to, you know, I was getting teased a little bit about being what people call bored. Yep. I saw a girl in an arcade one night and she had a t-shirt and it showed the top view of the two return lanes and the outline showed the ball bouncing out with an arrow following it out the outline. So in the last couple of games, I've actually put rubber there on that wire form that you were getting bored on to give you a sporting chance to shake it. Okay. Metallica, I was playing Metallica for a while with the outline posts all the way down, and it was playing a little bit too long, especially with the ball saves. Okay, I can see that. So I did move them into the upper position. But it's not really, it doesn't feel, I don't feel like it's killing me. You know, and like, you know, just like Ironman. If I play Ironman, I play 10 games. It killed like five or six of them. But then when you get in the zone, you just can't be stopped and you get to Jericho and the hair goes up on the back of your neck. Same thing with Metallica. I'm getting to crank it up a lot easier now. I've noticed. so yeah i was going to say when we were there at stern i got to crank it up almost every game i played but then again yeah ray day said that you guys had it set a little easy so that way we could explore the features and you had rubber bands on the other side we should have turned extra ball off at expo because people were waiting oh yeah you know i think that's the other thing people were waiting so long to play that game when they finally got their hands on it they wanted to have The best game they could have. It played long at the show. I watched some of the video. A guy comes up and scores $5 million on his first ball. Then he scores $50 on his second ball. Then he scores like $300 on his third ball. It just lit it up. Then you have guys behind him poking him in the back. Hey, get off the game. Can I play now? We all want a chance. Okay, tell me about the topper. How did the topper come about? And tell me about, I've always said, and Josh has said it too, the game changer is with expression lights and making it more an immersive experience because music and light shows, that is the concert experience right there. So tell me about integrating that into this game. I had a couple of plans for topper. The band actually wanted a Metallica beacon on top of their game. So I have a seven inch height restriction, you know, can't go over seven inches. Otherwise, some of you folks won't be able to get it in your basement. I have a seven foot ceiling in my basement, so I have no toppers on my games. But I have a height restriction. So I laid out the Metallica logo and I actually tried to make it a little bigger than it, than the production model, and I cut off the bottom of the M and the A. And where it sits on the game from a player perspective, if you looked up at it, you could see the logo. But, you know, I made the logo bigger, cutting off the bottom of the M and the A. But we were afraid to show that to licensing because, you know, we were kind of like playing with their logo. So I downsized it a little bit and got the whole logo on the topper and went and made it like that. And that's, you know, the letters are, you know, the M and the A are this big. And I've got a seven inch height. So I just laid that all in there. And then we came up with the design for the topper. It's all RGB. there's four lights that are under the Metallica logo that light up when you collect your band members. Each one of those lights represents one of the band members. So you can look up there and see what your progress is as well as on the play field between the flippers. And it also has like, does it have an extra mode with the topper? We're kind of considering that, yes. okay because i know that that is like at least a visual representation of your progress in you know in multiball or something like that so that does help yeah yeah it also tells you when you also that when you when you're getting to uh injustice for all lady justice so you've made a ton of band pins you've had metallica rush uh aerosmith kiss uh i'm trying to think g and r who's been your favorite one which which band are you most partial to out of all these uh like to listen or to work with what's your question that's a trick question no i love rush um rush is uh musically they're probably the most amazing band band on the planet Metallica is just so hard driving and so cool they're amazing Guns N' Roses is awesome Slash is a really super nice guy he was great working with him through the whole project I've enjoyed working on all of them I can't say gosh if you put Metallica and Rush together, two totally different types of music which one do you like better? they're both just top notch. They're both pens. They're both in my top two or three favorite bands of all time. It's cool. It also depends on what mood you're in. Sometimes I'm in the mood to listen to Metallica. Other times I'm in the mood to listen to Rush. You can't compare La Via Strangiato with Ride the Lightning. It's a totally different feel. I remember when we first released Rush, people were like, I've heard Limelight and Tom Sawyer, but I don't know anything else that these guys do that's any good. And that's probably fair. And that's probably fair. So now that people have got the game, I have people writing to me saying, Cygnus X-1 is the coolest song I've ever heard in my whole life. And I'm like, yeah, well, there's two of them. There's one on Hemispheres, and there's one on Farewell to Kings. So I think people that were pinball fans became Rush fans, and I think there's a lot of people that were Rush fans that have now become pinball fans. We have people calling us up going, hey, what else do you have? So you know how it goes. You buy one game, then you have three, then you have five, then you move one out, you buy two or three more, and then you look just like that. There you go. Then you're putting an addition on your house. Okay, I've considered it, by the way. Yes, you have. I actually did run into a random guy on a Antonio Cruz, and we were in like a trivia night and it ended up that we both were big rush fans and he had a rush pinball machine oh yeah that's funny yeah and so so it's like you find you find a niche and finding out like these little fingers into these subgroups that you didn't really have an in with but having like a especially a band because any band has a loyal following yes so you're going to get a lot of crossover with people who are interested. So it might to assume that this Metallica remastered has been an exceptionally good seller. Yes, I think so. Uh, well, you know, we'll find out when we do re-releases. I think, uh, you know, we only made 500 LEs. I think if we made a thousand, they'd all be sold. Um, the premium is gorgeous. I'm, I'm going to, I'm going premium. Um, and, uh, you know, I'm going to put the expression lights in, and somehow I think one of those prototype backglasses, LE backglasses, is going to find its way into it. Yeah, probably. I bet you know a guy, right? I know a guy, yeah. It's a very beautiful game, and it's very well-deserving of one of the top Stern games ever made. I was happy to see a remaster so well-received. If I remember correctly, when we were talking to some of the distributors, they said they had like 80% of their socks sold out before the game was even revealed. But then again, they've already seen the game, but it's like, you know how it's going to play. All they got to see is the cherry. Right. Okay, but the challenge is because in some of these games, people are like, well, I already have one. And so the fact that people who are so familiar with this and are such fans of the game see the new skin on it and say, I don't care if I love the game and I already own one, I'm going to have another one. And that tells me that you guys did such a good job of modernizing an already modern pen and taking it to the next level. Some people buy a pro and then they end up liking the game and then later they go and buy a premium or an LE or something like that. So there's that too. If you could go back in your catalog and pick any game doesn matter if it from Gottlieb or Data East What one would you want to give the remaster treatment Tales from the Crypt Oh, nice. Yeah. I would want to do, I would probably do Tales again. I think that would be a lot of fun. Occasionally. That would be a lot of fun, especially with the, with movie clips or TV show clips. Yeah. The game was kind of shy on, you know, we didn't really follow the movies all that much when we, when we made that game, it was just entertaining. You know, the features that were in it, there were so many of them and the ball was all over, you know, the crazy wire ramps and the one 80 ramp. And, but it would be cool to redo that and then get Casir back in the sound booth again and have him do more speech. Cause he was just fabulous. I mean, he did so much ad living when he recorded the first time for it. And I still, once in a while, I'll send him a note on Facebook. I went to an arcade and the guy took a picture of me. He had a Tales from the Crypt on the floor. He goes, I got to get a picture of you next to the Tales. And then he sent me the photo and then I forwarded it to Kassir and I talked to him. I hadn't talked to him in like 20 years. And then all of a sudden I just popped up and started chatting with him on Facebook. He's a very nice guy. I'm sure he'd be glad to do it again. It is a very unique game. It's something that's very cool. I played that game once at a tournament, and on ball one, I made it to the Crip Jam. I was just unstoppable. That was so much fun. Somewhere in New York, I was playing. 100 years ago. 93, 94, I think. It says here on Pinside, 93. 93, yeah. Good. It's crummy. Time flies when you're having fun, right? Yep. Yeah. How many games have you been lead designer on? Do you have any idea? I made a list when I went to Expo. I gave a seminar and talked about all the games I worked on from the time I started at Gottlieb to Prezzo. And there were some of them that I just kind of picked at a little bit or helped somebody else on. And I made up a list, and there were 60. I think there were 60. So somewhere in the 50s. I have to look at that list and narrow it down to see which ones, how many I was actual lead on. But it's a lot of games. It makes me tired just looking at the list. But gosh, a lot of fun. I mean, I'm so lucky, too. I just got into this business by luck. I wasn't trying to get in. I was a draftsman, mechanical engineer, and I was working at a company that made injection molds. So I was trying to get into mold design, not the actual piece parts, but the molds that make them and designing that. And then one day I was looking for something different and just looking around at what might be available out there. and I saw an ad in the Tribune, and it said, it was about the size of a postage stamp, and it said, mechanical engineer needed, and it had a phone number underneath it. So just for grins, I called it. This guy answers the phone, and I'm talking to him, and they said, you know, come on down for an interview, you know, da-da-da-da. They gave me the address. So I walk into this building, and it was Premier Technology, and they were in Bensonville at the time. And I walk in, and I'm sitting in the lobby, and there's pinball back glasses, surrounding the perimeter of the room up by the ceiling. And I'm like, wow, this is a pinball company. How cool is that? And they walked me around and walked me through the factory. I'm like, wow, this is so, so cool. And I played pinball. I was a pinball player. I liked a lot of games and video games, like in the mid-'80s and stuff. Me and my friends were always at the arcade playing pinball and video games and stuff like that. So they invite me in for an interview. I interview, I see the plant. I was offered another job for a hydraulics manufacturer for more money per year, and I took the job in pinball because I thought it would be more fun because I'm going to be working with plastic piece parts and sheet metal and vacuum forming and all kinds of stuff. And that's what I was studying. I'm like, this would be perfect. And so I ended up taking it, and then I just got hooked on it. I got the sickness. I would argue as a mechanical engineer. So that's my major too, by the way. That's what I studied in college. And that is like, that would be the dream job for a mechanical engineer is to work on a pinball machine. Making gadgets and, you know. Exactly. And it takes everything that you have worked on, but it's also fun. You're not working on like a, you know, a transmission shaft or something like that. When I hear people complain, I'm like, we could be making taillights for cars here. You know, I mean, you know, wow, look at this. look at this one, you know? So yeah, it's, it's, it's a blast. It's a lot of fun. It's really hard. I mean, you know, anybody who thinks it's easy, it's not, you know, I mean, I've had people, I've had people, you know, say, Oh, you know, how come you didn't do this? Or how come you didn't do that? And I'm like, you know, some of those people, I want to just send them a piece of plywood and tell them to, you know, come back in six months. I want to see what you got. so um but yeah you know everything nowadays is uh you know if you're an artist and you bake a painting people are going to critique it people are going to love it and that's that's what i do so i have pretty pretty thick skin um you know sometimes i get a little a little uh i get a little perturbed you know like when a rush when rush uh released i had some guy the first post on my facebook page was some guy he wrote he goes he goes hey borg he goes why do you want to do a game about a bunch of guys that never got any. And I was like, are you freaking kidding me? I wrote him back. I sent him a big emoji of like a troll. And I just left it at that. You know, those guys, I remember seeing an interview with Gene Simmons, and he said that we were touring with Rush, and he said he had six girls waiting outside of his room after the concert, and these guys, Rush could have had the same exact thing. and he said those guys were in their room practicing for songs for their next album. You know, they were hearing stuff that was going to be coming on there, just them jamming, you know, in their room. You know, that's why they're musically 100 times better. Yeah, yeah. I have Gene coming after me. Yeah, no. So, OK, they're they're they're three of probably, you know, the most amazing musicians on the planet. And they do really well together. Yeah. I would argue I don't even think Gene Simmons would counteract that, because if you look at Gene Simmons, like there's a I'm summarizing a quote, but he talked about in the 70s, everybody wanted to be the next Led Zeppelin. I wanted to be the next Coca-Cola. Oh, interesting. And so if you look at everything Kiss has done, it is about brand and marketing. Yeah. Yeah. And they took it to the next level on that. Gene Simmons is brilliant. Yeah. Yeah. He's a brilliant business guy. Everything. You can buy coasters and coffee cups and you can buy decals for your car. You can buy masks. Coffins, actually, too, if I remember correctly. Yeah. a kiss coffee yeah that was yeah yeah anything so crazy yeah no i i don't know i don't know many people that have uh musicians that have looked at rush and be like i can play better than that they're just they're on a level of their own a musician's band actually yeah okay i i can't remember who it was but it was it was actually a guy in a band and i i'm sure someone will send me, you know, some rush fan will tell me, but it was a guy who was like, they were going to play a rush song and he was going to play Geddy's part. And he said, I thought I could like, just you know, learn it in an hour or something like that. He's like, you know, a day or two later, I was barely getting it down. Yeah. I mean, that's just that's the level that Geddy Lee took, like, and he played lead bass and singing at the same time. I mean, that's not easy. not at all yeah he's holding his bass he's playing keyboard you know and then he's then he's singing you know that's that's just amazing yeah yeah i can't i can't play and sing at the same time i can't either i can't i just can't i did though i did just start retaking guitar lessons so i'm trying to build up the calluses on my fingers my fingers are all tingly and numb right Yeah. Yep. Yeah. After a while they get to be like rocks. Yeah. Well, even did you, did you listen to Geddy Lee's autobiography? Yes. Yeah. And the part where he talked about his fingers have so much calluses on them that he can take a pen and put them in his finger and it doesn't, he doesn't feel it. Yeah. I had a little accident and I smashed my index finger. Like I was telling you guys about earlier. And, uh, So I just started playing like maybe three weeks ago, and my index finger hurts. I mean, it hurts when I play. I mean, I'm building that callus back up again. I can play for like 10 minutes, and I'm like, ah, you know. What do you play? What do you like to play? I have a Strat. I like to play Rush. I like some Zeppelin stuff. I make up a lot of my own stuff. stuff. Once in a while, I'll be sitting around playing at 10 o'clock, midnight or something like that, and I'll post a YouTube video. So I'm not great. I can entertain for maybe probably about a half an hour, 45 minutes, and then I'm about done. But it's a lot of fun. It's fun to play. It is. I'd recommend to anyone to pick up a guitar and start learning because there's so many easy avenues to do it now too i mean between musician and just there's so many so many ways to learn guitar now there's no there's no excuse not to yeah just the the youtube videos you know with them showing you note by note and you know the tab that's available now you know compared to how it was 30 years ago where you just had to just figure it out listen and try to try to figure it out yeah yeah well josh was able to work out um who was the who's the guitar builder So we're both getting guitars that have the play field cut out. So mine's going to be Silver Ball Mania. And you got Earthshaker, right, Josh? Yep, I did. Sothard Guitars. It's the same guy that makes all of Ed Robertson guitars. Yes. Yeah. Yep. Yeah, I saw Ed's guitars. It's got LED lights that light up while he's playing. It's cool. Yep, he just got that Dolly Parton. I guess he got like a Dolly Parton Tele. It's pretty cool. Really? Yeah. I haven't seen that one yet. I'll have to write them and tell them to send me a pic. Any chance, John, that your next game is a Dolly Parton remaster? Actually, I shouldn't be telling you guys this, but I'm going to start working on On Golden Pond. No, I'm just kidding. That's what I usually tell. If somebody will write me and say, hey, I won't tell anybody, but what are you working on? I'm like, I'm working on On Golden Pond. Or I'll say, you know, like Saved by the Bell. you know you have the Screech LE yeah Family Matters Mod and then Mod's coming out next year oh my gosh yeah that's the Golden Girls before Golden Girls we're going old school we're going to go Quantum Leap we're going way back to the 70s hey Brady Bunch we could do a Brady Bunch and the best thing you get a call out Sure, Jan. Yeah. That would be hilarious. You'd have to give something that's just so ridiculous. The next day, it's on. It's on Pinside. Yeah. Hey, guess what? Yeah. Borg's doing Quantum Leap. Quantum Leap, yeah. Cool. We appreciate you coming on and talking Metallica with us, Borg. Is there anything that you don't feel like we've asked that you've wanted to talk about? I'll probably think about it in an hour and I'll go, Oh yeah, about that. Um, no, I think we did a pretty good job of covering it. So, yeah, thank you so much. I, I really have been looking forward to this interview for a few years. Um, so thank you so much for coming on. Thank you guys. We appreciate your time. My pleasure. Well, if you want, if you want someone to get ahold of you, how do they get ahold of you, John? Facebook and Facebook messengers. is usually the best, good place to get a hold of me. Yeah. Yeah, I don't want my email at work to overflood. Well, I'll cut that out so you don't have to worry about it. Okay, thanks. And your social security number and your personal cell phone number. Yeah. I had somebody, I had a scammer call me on the phone one day and he was asking for, you know, my taxes are way behind, I owe $20,000. you know if you give us your credit card you know we can take care of it right now and you won't you know you you won't have to worry about being arrested and i was like oh geez hold on a second let me get my card and then i kept reading them you know uh 17 numbers you know i gave him an extra number you know he's like okay i'm like four five eight three two you know six reading the numbers real slow and i gave him an extra number he's like that's too many numbers yeah I'm like, could you read that back to me? You know, so I, yeah. Yeah. I did the same thing. I did the same thing one time. And I was, I was talking to this guy for like 30 minutes saying I was super concerned. And I kept giving him like a wrong, a wrong credit card. And finally he said, this does not appear to be a valid credit card. And I said, this does not appear to be a valid offer. Yes. Yeah. I had one. Then I think he swore at me. I had a guy, he swore at me, and he told me that he was going to blank my wife. And he told me, I go, I'm not married. I go, what's your wife look like? And then, in a click, he hung up on me. I'm not married. So, yeah. Nice. That's awesome. If you want to get a hold of us, we are LoserKidPinballPodcast at gmail.com. You can find us on all the socials, Facebook, Instagram, X, Twitch, YouTube. Subscribe, all that jazz. Yeah, Scott, what do you got for us? Send us off. Go buy Metallica. I'll probably see you guys at the factory next time you come in. Thank you.

_(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_

---

*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 4de3818f-07ac-43ab-8d07-527a81122c88*