# The Super Awesome Pinball Show - Ep. 33 Fix/McQuaid **Source:** The Super Awesome Pinball Show **Type:** podcast_episode **Published:** 2022-07-06 **Duration:** 169m 51s **Beat:** Pinball **URL:** https://superawesomepinballshow.libsyn.com/the-super-awesome-pinball-show-ep-33-fixmcquaid --- ## Analysis Episode 33 of The Super Awesome Pinball Show features interviews with David Fix and Ryan McQuaid of American Pinball, discussing Ryan's background in pinball restoration and homebrew game design (Sonic Spinball) and his new role as a designer at American Pinball. The hosts also discuss recent pinball developments including Dutch Pinball and Ike Lebowski production updates, Cactus Canyon remake impressions, and various community events. ### Key Claims - [HIGH] David Fix states that American Pinball has multiple projects in development and promises people will be satisfied within the next 365 days — _Interview with David Fix discussing AP's future roadmap_ - [HIGH] Ryan McQuaid won two seasons of NEPL Championships and the New Hampshire State Championship — _Introduction/bio section of Ryan McQuaid during interview setup_ - [HIGH] Ryan McQuaid's homebrew Sonic Spinball won Best Intro at Pentastic 2019 and Best Custom Game in 2021 — _Introduction/bio section of Ryan McQuaid_ - [HIGH] Dutch Pinball has ramped up production and is now shipping games at a much faster rate — _Discussion of Dutch Pinball Ike Lebowski seeing truckloads of games coming in over past weeks/month_ - [MEDIUM] Ike Lebowski uses karaoke versions of film music rather than actual recordings — _Chris Marquette conversation about music licensing for Ike Lebowski_ - [HIGH] Ryan McQuaid started pinball restoration work around 2016-2017 — _Ryan's direct statement about his background during interview_ - [MEDIUM] Cactus Canyon Remake LE production is delayed due to hand-painted toppers — _Jeff Parsons discussing Scuttlebutt version shipping while LE toppers are being hand-painted by Matt from Back Alley_ ### Notable Quotes > "People have been riding them pretty hard for their choices, and I think they'll shut up within the next 365 days." > — **David Fix**, early interview > _Promise of significant upcoming announcements from American Pinball to address community criticism_ > "This license is a huge get and if this actually gets made and you actually end up on art it's going to be incredible because your art style is perfect for this license" > — **Christopher Franchi**, mid-interview > _Teases unknown unannounced pinball game project with music IP license_ > "It's a music bin. So I'll say that. It couldn't be anybody." > — **Ryan McQuaid (via Christopher Franchi context)**, mid-interview > _Cryptic confirmation that unannounced project involves music-related IP_ > "The way it came out and just everything, I just kind of, I thought this gets made. This is going to be fantastic." > — **Ryan McQuaid**, mid-interview > _Strong confidence in quality of unannounced backglass design for mystery music IP_ > "The game, it feels like Williams made it in the 90s" > — **Jeff Parsons**, mid-interview (Cactus Canyon discussion) > _Positive assessment of Cactus Canyon Remake gameplay and aesthetic_ > "I started doing them around, I want to say, 2016, 2017. You're just a baby." > — **Ryan McQuaid**, late interview > _Ryan's entry point into pinball restoration work_ ### Entities | Name | Type | Context | |------|------|---------| | Ryan McQuaid | person | Pinball designer, competitive player, homebrew machine creator (Sonic Spinball), now employed at American Pinball as designer; won NEPL Championships twice and NH State Championship | | David Fix | person | Director of Operations and Marketing at American Pinball; helps run Chicago Pinball Expo; partner at Pocketeer Billiards in New York; close friend of Christopher Franchi | | American Pinball | company | Boutique pinball manufacturer; hiring Ryan McQuaid as designer; has multiple unannounced projects in development; promises significant announcements within 365 days | | Christopher Franchi | person | Co-host of The Super Awesome Pinball Show; artist/designer working on unannounced music-based pinball game; involved in game art design for multiple projects | | Sonic Spinball | game | Ryan McQuaid's homebrew pinball machine; won Best Intro at Pentastic 2019 and Best Custom Game in 2021; likely upcoming commercial release through American Pinball | | Ike Lebowski | game | Dutch Pinball title based on The Big Lebowski; uses karaoke versions of film music; positive reception; Scuttlebutt version shipping while LE delayed due to hand-painted toppers | | Dutch Pinball | company | Pinball manufacturer; recently ramped up Ike Lebowski production with significant shipments; held open house with positive community reception | | Cactus Canyon Remake | game | Remake/restoration of classic game; Scuttlebutt version available; LE delayed for hand-painted toppers; praised for gameplay flow and pristine condition by playtesters | | Jeff Parsons | person | Co-host of The Super Awesome Pinball Show; producer of Pintastic New England commercials; tournament player; playtested Cactus Canyon Remake | | The Super Awesome Pinball Show | organization | Pinball podcast and media outlet; hosted by Christopher Franchi, Christian Lyne, and Jeff Parsons; episode 33 features American Pinball interview | | Pintastic New England | event | Pinball event June 23-26; features 200+ pinball machines, tournaments, classic rock tribute band; location Sturbridge Host Hotel | | Cointaker | company | Pinball distributor and modifier; based in Sunbury, Pennsylvania; sponsor of The Super Awesome Pinball Show | | Back Alley Creations | company | Custom pinball art/modification company; Matt painting hand-painted toppers for Cactus Canyon Remake LE | | Matt (Back Alley) | person | Artist at Back Alley Creations painting custom toppers for Cactus Canyon Remake LE | | Pocketeer Billiards | company | Pinball location in New York; partner David Fix runs this operation alongside American Pinball role | | Pentastic | event | Pinball tournament/event where Ryan McQuaid's Sonic Spinball won Best Intro (2019) and Best Custom Game (2021) | ### Topics - **Primary:** American Pinball upcoming projects and pipeline, Ryan McQuaid's career transition from homebrew to commercial designer, Unannounced music-based pinball IP project (Christopher Franchi art), Dutch Pinball production ramp-up and Ike Lebowski shipping - **Secondary:** Cactus Canyon Remake reception and availability, Music licensing in modern pinball (karaoke vs. original recordings), Community manufacturing and production delays, Pintastic New England 2024 event promotion ### Sentiment **Positive** (0.78) — Generally upbeat and optimistic tone about American Pinball's future, positive reception of recent games and production updates from Dutch Pinball and Cactus Canyon Remake. Some mild frustration expressed about lack of new announcements industry-wide, but this is quickly offset by excitement about AP's promises. Community engagement and collaborative spirit emphasized throughout. ### Signals - **[community_signal]** Positive community reception of Cactus Canyon Remake with praise for pristine gameplay and design (confidence: high) — Jeff Parsons detailed play report; comparison to original; specific praise for improved code (modes now start after three-shot completion); aesthetic praise ('gorgeous') - **[design_philosophy]** Christopher Franchi employing strategic licensing approach to blur lines between different IP avenues for unannounced music game (confidence: medium) — Franchi states project 'can be taken two ways' and there are 'two different avenues of licensing' for it; mentions deliberately trying to blur lines with full backglass design presentation - **[market_signal]** Dutch Pinball production ramping significantly with truckloads of Ike Lebowski machines shipping in recent weeks (confidence: high) — Discussion of shift from slow production to truckload shipments; comparison to earlier concerns about production ratio; specific mention of early achievers starting to receive machines - **[community_signal]** Ryan McQuaid's industry trajectory from restoration hobbyist to competitive champion to hired commercial game designer (confidence: high) — Interview structure tracing Ryan's path from 2016-2017 restoration work through tournament success to current AP hire; explicit statement about his rapid work pace being reason for hiring - **[personnel_signal]** Ryan McQuaid transitioning from competitive player/homebrew designer to commercial game designer role at American Pinball (confidence: high) — Episode structure and formal introduction of Ryan as new AP designer; discussion of his hiring and background - **[announcement]** American Pinball promising significant new announcements within 365 days to satisfy community criticism (confidence: high) — David Fix quote: 'People have been riding them pretty hard for their choices, and I think they'll shut up within the next 365 days' - **[product_strategy]** Cactus Canyon Remake LE delayed due to hand-painted topper production (confidence: medium) — Jeff Parsons notes Scuttlebutt shipping while LE not yet available; discussion of Matt (Back Alley) hand-painting toppers taking time; comparison to previous games where this wasn't an issue - **[rumor_hype]** Unannounced music-based pinball IP in development at American Pinball (or partner) with Christopher Franchi as artist (confidence: medium) — Franchi describes 'huge get' music IP license; deliberately vague about specifics; mentions it's a 'music bin' and could be licensed via multiple avenues; excited about backglass design completion - **[technology_signal]** Growing use of alternative music licensing (karaoke/cover versions) in modern pinball due to cost/complexity of original recordings (confidence: medium) — Ike Lebowski confirmed using karaoke versions of Big Lebowski music; Jeff notes karaoke quality is close enough for most listeners --- ## Transcript Dearly beloved, we have gathered here today to introduce this thing called the Super Awesome T-Mobile Show. Get him in motion! The following feature has been rated R. It is intended for mature audiences and parental discretion is advised. And now for our feature presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming Christopher Franchi, Christian Lyne, and Jeff Parsons of the greatest pinball podcast in the entire world, The Super Awesome Pinball Show. Hello, everybody, and welcome to episode number 33 of The Super Awesome Pinball Show. So we've got a great one for you today with David Fix and Ryan McQuaid of American Pinball. They're going to be talking about the future of Sonic Spinball and much more. So stick around, or I'll kick you in the nut pack. That's right, it's summertime, folks, and you know what that means if you're a pinball fan. Stinky pinball tournaments. More stinkier than ever. How you doing, Greg? I've been to several. I've been to like six. Yeah. And it wasn't even a summer. I have the good fortune of not experiencing the pinball stench that I hear so much about. It's got to be a place with, you know, a lot of close contact, a lot of games in a very small space. And you'll get a whiff. Yeah, Pemberton never had that because it was such a big hall. But you get in a small little, you get in some guy's basement. You throw 30 people down there on a hot summer day, even in the basement. Yeah, that's gross. It's a piece of cake. Well, welcome to the super awesome pinball show. We're fresh off of one of the best interviews we've ever had with George Gomez. Yeah, definitely. People were really impressed by his openness and willingness to pretty much talk about anything. And our interview skills. Of course. So, thank you again, George, for a great interview. And man, that was a lot of fun to hang out with an icon in the pinball industry for two consecutive nights. super nice guy amazing this is the first I've ever talked with George and he's just I knew he was a nice guy but he just proved it and what a let down this episode because we've got David Fix coming up oh it's another shirt interview you guys are going to like this Ryan McQuaid you know up and comer in the pinball world and we get to pick his brains all about his new gig at American Pinball and Sonic's Pinball right catch up with David Fix the director of operations and marketing at American Pinball, who's always up to talk pinball and bring us up to speed about what's happening at AP and talk some pinball. Yeah, I just got off the horn with him yesterday and lots of things are brewing. Lots of irons in the fire, as they say. I think people would be happy. People have been riding them pretty hard for their choices, and I think they'll shut up within the next 365 days. This is going to be a tough interview for you, right? Because you know all of the dirty little secrets here, all of the latest and greatest. Well, I don't know everything. We do have a good friendship, and we do talk a lot beyond the scope of the things that I'm doing for him. You know, I know the stuff that they're working on and all that sort of crap, but I'm sure I'm not told everything, which is fine. The more you know that you're not supposed to know, the more of a burden it is. The easier it is to have it leak out. God damn. I think there's a pinball tournament in my office today. Farlow just farted. Oh, my God. throw a dog in the pinball tournament and look at it, all of a sudden you just double the smell. Oh, I have a little bed next to my desk here, so when I'm working and he's bored, he can lay by me. And you know how when you scare a sheep, they fall over and their legs just stiffen up and stick straight out? Dude, that's a very unique kind of sheep. I didn't know that, but okay. It's a fainting sheep. It's not like a common thing amongst sheep. Okay, but I've seen it. I don't know that it's... Yeah, when you scare them. If he's laying down and he has to stretch, that's what he does. He just stiffens his legs and sticks them straight out. So I see this movement over the corner of my eye, and I look down, and he just starts. He goes, whoop, whoop. He just blows his big, loud fart. I instantly turn the fan on. I'm like, I ain't smelling that. Man, French bulldog farts are the worst smelling fucking dog farts ever. You know exactly what it's like then to be at one of those French bulldogs. You live in that. Anyway, yeah, so what's going on in the pinball world, man? And this, I don't know if it's just everybody else, like, taking their time and dragging their ass and then sternly adjusting their schedule and pulling shit back, but there is nothing going on. Toy Story, and that's it. We're all obsessed with manufacturing and who's making how many games, and there's really nothing. Who's not making how many? Exactly. Not a ton of information about the new stuff coming, which is what everybody really wants. Yeah, you sent me that thing, I guess, sent out their first game. I mean, you can't jump up and down once one game, but my point of bringing it up is it looks very nice. Ooh, shiny! It does, and there's actually two. They just posted that they sent out their second game. Oh, yeah. So they're slow but steady. And Dutch Pinball had an open house, and they posted a shit ton of pictures, and they got a lot going on there. Yeah. That's good to see. That's good to see. I'm glad that, because I remember when their ratio, they said, like, well, every one to seven games will go to an early achiever or whatever. and I thought, well, that sucks. These guys are never going to get their games, but it looks like they're pumping them out. So I'm sure you and I know Chris and Melissa, right? A coin taker. And when they were first getting their shipments, they would send us pictures and they'd say, hey, we just got some, you know, some games in. But over the last week or two or month, I would say we've seen truckloads of these games coming in. So it's definitely picking up. And hopefully the early adopters or early achievers will start to get their games and they can make them whole and move on to the next. We're talking about Ike Lebowski here, right? Yeah, Ike Lebowski. And I finally got to play it in Ohio when I was at that show. The coin taker had it set up in the booth, and that's where I was. So if there was ever a lull, I would go over there and play it, and then it turned into I'm going to create a lull. As soon as somebody walks away, I'm running over there, and if someone walks up, I don't care. I really like that game. It is an awesome game. A friend of mine right here in Maine, he got his before everything went down. So he was like one of the few. His number, he's in the single-digit numbers on the Lebowski. That's cool. And he actually shoots. You can see him on Twitch. It's IceKidoo. He used to be a snowmobiler. I don't know if he still is. IceKidoo on Twitch. He streams that, and he streams, I think, Stranger Things on a regular basis. But the game, it feels like Williams made it in the 90s. It totally does. And I like that feel. The shots, I mean, you know what you have to do. Rules aren't deep, but it's still challenging. And the call-outs are just, I mean, it's Big Lebowski. They're fantastic. Man's the beverage here, man! Not a lot of people know that Scott Danesi actually helped out with the creation of that game, at least some of the programming behind it. So he has a prototype, one of the early prototypes of the game in his house, that I was able to play, and he keeps it in the best condition, obviously, and it's such a fun game. The bowling alley, the garage, getting up to that upper play field. They can get music from the film, which is great. um here's some insight maybe not everybody knows i did talk to chris marquette about that and i'm like this something you got me some kind of bootleg shit going on here because i mean like they got all the actors they got all the movie clips they got all the music and he goes listen to the music and i was listening to it uh it's like karaoke it's not the actual recording but it's really damn close right it's good enough so you feel like it is yeah well because i didn't notice and i've really got an ear for that kind of crap i can pick that up all the time a lot of Sometimes when I want instrumental music for something for our show and all I can find is karaoke, I'm usually like, no. Anything will make it. So, you know, you can't replace horns with a keyboard. Sorry. If a song's got horns in it, you can't get what you want until you know what you want. But Joe Jackson, awesome horn line in there. Don't do it on keyboards. Do your job right. You only had one job. Make a shitty karaoke song. So, God, what else is going on in pinball? I know it's going on in my world, but I obviously can't talk about that, but a lot. Oh, man. Well, give us some vagaries. Like, how many projects are you working on? Usually, I don't share a lot of stuff with you guys, but there's one thing I'm working on that is more or less a pitch from my end, so I shared it with you. And if you know what I'm talking about, I just sent the final sort of back glass design to you yesterday, I'm really excited about that I mean if I'm allowed to talk about this then let's get into it you can talk about it of course I have to say that this license is a huge get and if this actually gets made and you actually end up on art it's going to be incredible because your art style is perfect for this license and what you are into is perfect for this license so it's going to be a perfect marriage of you being passionate about the license and you being amazing at creating this world within that IP. That's going to start the rumor going, I don't know what is. Okay, something French he's into. He's into Batman. People are just going to run down the whole list of what you love. I mean, he loves everything that's culture, pop culture, so it's going to be really tough. I'll say this. I'll say this. It's fair enough. It's a music bin. So I'll say that. It couldn't be anybody. So that's not really giving anything away. But it does sort of narrow the focus down to, you know, exactly. It's not a movie or a cartoon or whatever. It's a music thing. But that's all I'm going to say. And, yeah, you know, when I started doing that, when I got about three-quarters of the way done, I couldn't sleep. Because it came out better than it was in my mind, and that rarely happens. Usually I picture something and then I do it and I'm like, hey, well, you know, I don't know what, you know, I'm not Superman. It's impressive. I do the best I can. But the way it came out and just everything, I just kind of, I thought this gets made. This is going to be fantastic. So let me pick your brain a little bit because this is my introduction into how this process goes. So if there's a, let's say a pinball company gets a license, right? They now have the permission to make that pin. Then they go to you and they say, okay, we want to present an art package to this license and they have to approve it. So we want you to be on the game. You have to then prove to the company that you're up for that task, right? So how many images, how many drawings do you have to make generally to have a good feel for your style? Okay. What you said is true, but it's not always true. You don't always have to try out for somebody. A lot of them will just trust you. It depends on the property. It depends on the licensing people. this particular one that I'm talking about with you guys, I don't know that they wanted to see it. The way this whole thing came about was that somebody came to me and said, we're thinking about and I said, that's not bad, but you should think about and to help sell the idea. Cause you know, if you're not an artist, you don't think visually. So to help sell the idea to this person, I did that up and said, all right, now, now maybe you get it, you know, cause it's kind of hard to explain because of the property. If it gets made, you'll find out. If it doesn't get made, I'll tell you all about it. As soon as someone gives it a thumbs down, I'll say, well, here it is and we'll have a chat. So in that particular case, I just did it because I thought it would help sell the idea. I'm working on another one where I did have to do a tryout and all I did was one draw. I didn't do a full backless. I just did a drawing so they can see how I draw this particular property because it kind of fits in a certain channel. You know, like I don't think, well, while I would, I would personally probably enjoy like zombie Yeti worked on this. It's not what the brand is looking for his style. So in order for them to say yes to me, I can't just say, Oh, you know, trust me. You know, so I had to put something together. But the other one that we were talking about with a full backlash design, that was, that was me trying to convince somebody because you guys know what it is. Now, I'm going to edit this out so that we can get on the same page, and then we'll bring it back in. But I'm trying to get away with doing. I got that. So the one that I showed you guys, that one can be taken two ways, right? You know what I'm talking about? Yes. There's one avenue of licensing, and there's another avenue of licensing, sort of. And I'm trying to blur the lines. that's also why I did the full back glass design was to kind of present what the concept is and I'm sure this is painful for pinball people say that five times painful for pinball people painful for pinball people shut up professional radio man I just draw and get fat for a living okay I don't have your skills I don't have your drawing skills so we're even you just don't try That's true. True. When was the last time you tried to draw something? And was it a dick? Second grade. Was it a dick on a windshield? I wouldn't have known what a dick was then. It had no dick? Nobody called it that. They didn't call it that? All right. Sorry. We're throwing off pinball for a moment here. This is definitely a blooper. If not, just a complete edit out. So what did you call a dick? I don't know. That didn't come around until high school. So it was what, a wiener? I don't know. I don't remember. I don't think it ever happened to me. Your parents, you know, will teach you about things like that, but in their own way. Yeah, right. I remember this from when I was a kid. My parents taught us to call it a tinkler. Because you tinkle with it. That's fucking awkward right now. This is so wrong. So much. That's why we're like a super awesome pinball show. There's nothing super awesome about this house. I don't know. I don't, somehow I went the left turn and fast forward five minutes. Okay, so anyway. Parsons. Hey. Hey. What have you been up to the past couple of weeks in pinball? Well, I did this week, finished up three commercials for the radio for Pintastic New Robert Englunds. Oh, nice. Yeah, we kind of, we aimed, I talked with Dave Marsden, who you guys I'm sure know, and we came up with three different approaches. We wanted to aim some ads at the classic rock people. We had all the music pins. We wanted to aim one towards collectors that have game shows, game rooms. If you've got a game room, come on by Pintastic and you can check out all the stuff you can get for your game room. And then the third way, we actually have tournaments in there as well because there's like four different tournaments going on at Pintastic. So three different commercials. But I can't, legally, I can't put music behind it because I don't own a music library. So the radio station will have to do that. Do you want to hear one of them? Yeah. Yeah? All right. This is the one for the classic rock people. It doesn't have music. It's just voice. Looking for a fun time for the entire family? Pintastic New Robert Englunds is coming to the Surbridge Host Hotel June 23rd through the 26th. Over 200 pinballs to play with just one entry fee. Play some of the latest and greatest pinball machines with your favorite bands like Rush, Led Zeppelin, Alice Cooper, ACDC, Metallica, and more. Live show Saturday night by Rush Tribute Band Limelight. If you haven't played pinball in a while, come to Pintastic New Robert Englunds because it's a whole new game. Learn more, check out the event schedule, and get your tickets now for Pintastic New Robert Englunds at PintasticNewEngland.com. There you go. Okay, I got two critiques on that. Oh, boy. Number one, I'm disappointed that there was no delay when you said the bands, Rush, Rush, Rush, Rush. Well, and then number two, this is not a critique. This is a suggestion. You have to lay out, but from back then, like every commercial or whatever it was about, it was about music, something music in general, but not a particular band. They always played that song that I think was by ELO that was like, fire on high is the one you're thinking of. Yeah. So you got to rock that one. Looking for a fun time for the entire family? Pintastic New Robert Englunds is coming to the Sturbridge Hotel June 23rd through the 26th. Over 200 pinballs to play with just one entry fee. Play some of the latest and greatest. Jeff, that was awesome, man. I feel like if you were a guy or woman who doesn't know that this kind of stuff exists, that's definitely going to pique your interest. You're going to hop on Google and fire up Pintastic and see. Yeah, that's really, really cool. The trick is I did this three times, and I had to do it again, and I was happy to do it. But you only have 30 seconds, and it's tight on radio. So that's why you heard like all the rapid fire. Originally that was all spaced out, but I had to condense it in multi-track to get it down to rapid fire. So I could add the Rush tribute band that Gabe wanted to add. I mean, that alone is a draw. Some people love to go to that stuff. So if you can go there, play some pinball and then check that out, that's amazing. That was fun to do. So there was that. The other thing I did was I finally played, went to a pinball tournament where they had a Cactus Canyon remake. Oh, very cool. And it was, oh, my God, this game is, I played it before. I played the original at, I was going to say Pinburgh, but it was at Pop at the time, the old facility. So I was familiar with the game, but this one just played pristinely. It was so good. It looked great. And now it's gone. They don't have all the additions they're making, but they do have what should have been there in the first place. Like now when you complete three shots, you know, it's like a family layout, and it's kind of like Mythical Madness and Takumas. You hit something three times, and then, okay. Now when you do that, it starts in mode, which it never did. You just finished it. You just didn't like it. Okay, that's done. Next. You know, because they just never finished the code. So I love that. The DMD, I'm not traditional, so I'm not a big fan of colored DMDs and the big wide DMDs and new animations, but it looked good. They did a great job with it, but it was just gorgeous. It played so beautifully, and partly because it's brand new. It just flowed, and the shots were great, and it was fantastic. I love hearing that, because I cannot wait to get mine. I've talked to a lot of people who played it, and they all say very similar things. Yeah, it's fantastic. They did such a great job. The Scuttlebutt version is the only one that's out right now, right? They haven't started building the deluxe ones? Yeah, I think this was the one you were saying. The Scuttlebutt, is that what that means? I don't know. I think it's a topper issue. That's what I've heard, whether that's true or not. It's a, they're working on making the toppers, and because those are obviously unique to the LEs, they can't ship those yet. I think, who needs a topper? The game's down in the glass. I think those toppers are hand-painted, too, which is going to take some time. Because I think the last one, that wasn't an issue, but I talked about it, and I said, you know, we're at East Dunn, and we were talking about it, I believe it said that Matt from Back Alley was painting them. I don't know if he's painting these, but they were all hand-painted. That takes time. Was that it for you, Mr. Park? Yeah, that's pretty much all I've got. The rest of it's kind of boring tournament stuff, so let's move on. I want to hear that, man. I love tournament talk, but we can skip it for French's sake. I love playing the intro. And it gives me a chance to take a shit, get a cookie, whatever. Well, my last few weeks, not a whole lot going on. Sarah, I had a birthday. I won't say exactly how old she is because that's sacred, but we had a really fun weekend extravaganza. Really? Because I heard she was f***ed. Oh, really? You kind of put it right here in this little note thing that we have. Yeah, but that's not what you guys are supposed to talk about, right? That's for us. Our eyes only. I'll beep it out. All right, fair enough. Yeah, so it was a lot of fun. We went to Longwood Gardens, and we met some friends for lunch. But long story short, the pinball stuff, we went to the Delaware Pinball Collective for an hour or so. That's about as much as my kids can take. And we loved it. We went back for the second time, played their awesome collection. Highly recommend it if you guys are in the area, anywhere near Delaware. Go by, check it out. Okay, hold up. Before you get too deep into this, we do have a special surprise for Sarah for her birthday. You do? Really? What is this? We do. Well, you know, I pulled some strings. Okay. Got a little something special. Oh, now I'm intrigued. I should probably play it for you, huh? The way that Franchi just paused and like his eyes looked up in the sky, I thought for sure you were about to fart. Dear Sarah, have an awesome day. God bless you. The song is for you. Happy birthday to you, Sarah, Sarah. This is your special day, this is your special day, hey yeah. Happy birthday to you, yeah yeah. Happy birthday, Sarah. Dude, what was that? That was amazing. Who was singing? That was a random Hawaiian guy on a beach. That's so cool. Dude, that's so good. And now, I mean, random Hawaiian guy on a beach. Now, is this something that you commissioned? Or is this like a YouTube clip that you found? Were you in Hawaii? All right. I got five bucks. I might have stolen it off YouTube. Either way, I mean, that's freaking amazing. especially because we're actually going to Hawaii in two weeks so that is perfect she's going to love it see if you can track that guy down we'll shake his hand this is the girl, it was her birthday that was very very sweet she will love that, I will definitely play that for her I can only take credit for taking the time to find it and then record it and clean it up a bit and all that it's something I could pay I love it you can do that if you get a cameo and you can just say, hey, just sing happy birthday to so-and-so. Next year I promise I will get her a song. Very nice. Not expected, but appreciated, man. Thank you. All right. So happy birthday, Mrs. Penn, and back to your week in pinball. Awesome. Well, the only other thing really that I did, which is also Mrs. Penn related, is that we've been working on an idea. Sarah, she loves to teach, but she's also kind of antsy. she's always looking for the next thing. So we have been talking about her topper game, and I've been trying to convince her forever to just make a few extra toppers and then throw them online and see if anyone will buy them. I mean, you guys know that there are a ton of people out there who love toppers, and there are delays with every game. You can't find the toppers that you want. And most of the time, these toppers that come out are like plexiglass with some LEDs. So she goes way above and beyond. There's nothing that's, you know, there's nothing that's as nice as one of the high-end toppers. I forget what they're called. The company that's doing, like, the, you know, the Pirates of the Caribbean. $3,000 toppers. Yeah, $2,500, I think, is what the Pirates topper went for. High-end pin, high, whatever it was. Ooh, I'll buy two. But I do think there's a market for, you know, handcrafted stuff that people would love to throw on top of their games. And Sarah goes all out. We just did a Jurassic Park topper that had, it took us like three hours, and I think it was about $200. But she had a jungle scene, a flying pterodactyl, a T-Rex, there was a velociraptor peeking over the back of the topper, and this really cool green light behind the topper. And check out Mrs. Finn's Facebook page if you want to see pictures of it. But she's really talented. We've done toppers for all of our pins. And so I am trying to convince her, please write us and let us know if you think this is a good idea or if you'd be interested in buying one. But I'm saying, listen, let's make 10 toppers, right? Let's make a Godzilla topper, and we'll make it amazing. It will be a little bit ghetto fabulous. It's not going to be a high-end pin, but we'll have her make 10 of these and see if people want to buy them. What do you guys think? That sounds like a fantastic idea. I've seen her work, so I can vouch for it. She is amazingly talented when it comes down to it. She must have learned to do this because she's a teacher, so she learned how to do art with the kids, I assume, right, and just build it into these things? Absolutely. I mean, she's very crafty and she's creative and she loves pinball. So it's like a perfect blend of all of her hobbies. And yeah, I mean, we'll see what happens. We'll see what happens with this. If she makes 10 of these and they sell out instantly, then maybe we'll go bigger. But I definitely think it would be a fun thing to do on the side. And we can, you know, I can help her with it. And it'll be, you know, cool to do together. I want to look at some warehouse space. That's right. Make a video where, you know, people are, you know, putting stickers on things and hiding behind walls and stuff like you outside. I guess video reference. All right, I guess it's my turn. The Super Awesome Pinball Show. It's kind of like Canada without all the bitching. Okay, well, it's nothing like Canada. But it's here. Brought to you by Cointaker in lovely Sunbury, Pennsylvania. And yeah, well, words are my sponsor. This show is sponsored by Cointaker, distributor of brand new full-size authentic Stern pinball, Chicago game, raw thrills, arcade games, and much more. Also, a full line of dramatic pinball mods, LED flipper kits, speaker lights, custom laser LED toppers, playfield protectors, Valley Williams parts, pinball apparel, and much more. Get the latest releases and glam out your game room with Cointaker. Everything at your fingertips at Cointaker.com. Get your game on. Okay, so anyway, I'm trying to think of the best way to put this. Hey, this is Zombie Eddie, and you're listening to the Super Awesome Pinball Show Podcast. Now, back to our program. And now it's time for the interview portion of our show. Please, no flash photography. Ryan McQuaid has been in pinball for a while now, but has started to make some major waves over the last few years. Many first heard of him after he made his mark in the competitive pinball scene by winning two seasons of the NEPL Championships and the New Hampshire State Championship. Behind the scenes, Ryan was restoring pinball machines and eventually branching out into his own homebrew game, Sonic Spinball. His game won Best Intro at Pentastic in 2019 and Best Custom Game in 2021. His obvious talent and love for pinball caught the eye of American Pinball, who has brought him in as their next game designer. And joining him is one of our favorite guests because he's ridiculously passionate about pinball and brings a lot of fun and knowledge to every interview. David Fix helps run Chicago's Pinball Expo. He's a partner at Pocketeer Billiards, one of the best pinball locations in New York. And, of course, he's also the executive... Ah, shit. The executive... What the hell are you? Let's listen to Jeff fuck it up all day long. All right, here we go. Executive director? No. No, he's the vice president. Vice president. Big deal. Hey. Great job, Jeff. Welcome to the show, guys. Thank you. Thank you. We want to kick off the interview by getting to know Ryan and find out about his background and then jump into what's going on at American Pinball, both for Ryan and for the company overall. Then we'll get David to fill all the details for his upcoming titles. Does that sound good, guys? Great. Sounds great. Can we? Ryan, we want to jump into everything that's happening with you at AP, but for our listeners who might not know you, let's talk a little bit about your background and how you got where you are today. Let's get the most commonly asked pinball interview question out of the way with a slight twist. Rather than how did you get into pinball, what is your background that allowed you to dream up and build your own homebrew pinball machine? We don't like to call them tables. We like to call them machines. I didn't say table, did I? No, you didn't. I'm just explaining like you're five. Even on my favorite table, he can beat my best. Damn you, Pete Townsend. It's not a table. My background mostly comes from pinball restorations. I started doing them around, I want to say, 2016, 2017. You're just a baby. I am. I'm a baby. But I work really fast, and that's one of the reasons I'm here. So the first game I ever worked on was a Williams Grand Prix, and I had no idea what I was doing, as many other people. But it was cheap because it was broken, and therefore I could actually buy it. So my store is just like a lot of other people. A lot of other people getting into fixing up games just can't afford really brand new ones. So bought it, fixed it up, had a great time doing it, and the next thing I knew I had a Roller Games that was destroyed. It was completely destroyed. It booted, but that was it. So I had to go full in-depth restoration. I'm talking scraping, decals, re-clear coating it, everything, if I ever wanted it to function. So I kind of just dove right into it all. I was just enjoying my time restoring the games so much that I couldn't imagine. Like, I was always looking, right, what am I going to do after roller games? What am I going to, like, what's next? So luckily, a couple years ago, which is just this thing you can always say, a couple years ago, the market wasn't as crazy, and you could actually buy projects. And I'm sure people will be saying that in a few years about today's prices. So I was able to keep the train rolling, you know, finish the restoration, in, keep it for a while, keep my favorites, then build up a little bit of a collection going on. The last one I ended up doing, and I promise this is relevant, I'm going somewhere with this. The last one I did was a Twilight Zone that I bought off of an online auction. I should hear some groans right about now. I hope so. I love to tell people I got a Twilight Zone for $1,500 and I got ripped off. Was it a flood game? It was not a flood game. So my actual theory as to what happened in this game is that around 30 years ago, somebody dropped it off of a loading dock and then tossed it in the corner of a warehouse. More like that. Tossed it in the corner of a warehouse and physically ripped parts off of it for the next 20 years. When I say ripped, I literally mean who has time to go find a screwdriver? Let's just pull this gumball machine off because I need one. So it was a year and a half long affair. I documented the whole thing because I thought it was really interesting going from like a totally incomplete game to something that was, you know, beautiful museum quality. Like, because Twilight Zone was my holy grail, so I was going all out on that one. And so I watched the entire original series of Twilight Zone while I restored it. Cool. And I would like name my updates with the episode that I was on and rate the updates, and it was just really fun. But more importantly, it was more than a regular restoration because I basically had to rebuild the whole game from scratch. I'm not exaggerating when I say I wish, if I could go back, I would have just bought a wiring harness and built the rest myself. I would have come out ahead if I had just bought a wiring harness and then went from there. I did a full place field swap. I had no co-indoor. It had no transformer, no boards, no nothing. So I basically had to assemble a game that was 25% there, and I didn't even know how it was built because I didn't get to take the pictures that I normally would take. When we're doing restorations, it's take 1,000 pictures, then take 1,000 more, because the one that you're going to need is the one you didn't take. But I never had the original full, complete game to take the pictures of. So anyway, long story short, by the time I was done with that, I had basically already built a whole game from nothing. So I figured I can do it again, only not have to copy someone else's design. I can just do my own. That's really cool. Well, so since you're so new at this, you started this Twilight Zone relatively recent, a couple years ago. That means this wasn't 15, 20 years ago, and you probably paid a fortune for parts. It was not great, but it wasn't that bad either. I mean, like I said, I only paid $1,500 for the whole game. So I think I ended up into that game for $6,000, which was the going price for a player's condition one four years ago. So, I mean, I remember having to shop around to buy a gumball machine for $300. and that one was, I only got that for $300 because it was broken. Like, it had all the mounting tabs were broken off, so I used this, like, liquid plastic stuff to repair it. The hardest part to find, believe it or not, was the crossover wire form ramp that comes from the left ramp down to the left in lane. That, nobody had. Nobody. I ended up finding it when I accidentally found a gentleman on Pennside. He messaged me privately. I don't, I have no other correspondence with him. he sent me private pictures of 16 twilight zones that he was working on in a row damn like i don't know where he got them but he's like if you need parts i got your guys i have 16 twilight zones and this was another moment of like where were you a year ago when i started looking for this stuff so so you jumped right from twilight zone to sonic spinball yes i did that was the last one i did um i mean i i started and finished the whitewater while i was in the middle of sonic spinball so Ryan, I know you because you're a competitive pinball player, or used to be at this point with the New Robert Englunds Pinball League. Who are you? One of the few champions. Remember me? Yeah, I'm the one who always interrupts you while you're making the announcements. That's it. Yes, that was the advice. Trying to announce winners every year. No, but you're a great player. You really are. You've won some championships. You've won some IFPA state championships in New Hampshire. Tell us a little about your competitive pinball roots. So obviously we know you played a lot in the New Robert Englunds Pinball League. How did you get into competitive pinball? So I got into competitive pinball. The very first tournament I ever entered was actually somebody tagged me on Facebook. It was just, hey, there's a pinball tournament at the Salem Willows Arcade, which I'm sure you've been there several times. That was the old stomping grounds, as it were. Before pinball, when I was in high school and college, I actually used to be a competitive DDR player, believe it or not. No way. Yep. You've got some moves, man. I used to have some moves. Now I have some asthma attacks. I had those then, too. But as many local people know, they have a decent collection down there, and there used to be a Twilight Zone. That's why I fell in love with that game to begin with. But it was just a little casual selfie tournament run by a local guy who didn't even, like, show his name. He wasn't part of the NEPL. He wasn't part of IFPA. It was just a little casual thing. And when I saw this, I didn't know that the competitive pinball community even existed. But I was like, are you kidding me? A pinball tournament at the Salem Willows, my favorite arcade? I'm going to win this thing. I'm going to go down there and win this thing. So I had all summer to go practice, get my scores and whatever. And it ended up being just like a one-day finals of the top four. That was it. And I did win it, and I was hooked. So I was like, this is, again, that was awesome. There's got to be more of these. So I ended up making friends with some of the people that were in that tournament. and formed this weird little bubble of ignorance, I like to call it, at Bit Bar in Salem. Shout-outs to them. So we had this little group, and we would just run our own tournaments. We would try to get casual people involved. We were trying to build competitive pinball from the ground up because we didn't know all of you were all around us. So we didn't know all we had to do was call Jeff and, oh, can we join the league? Yeah, you're done. There. Um, we eventually figured it out, but, um, I eventually made my way over to the Southern New Hampshire Pinball Club when I was approached at Pintastic by, uh, one of its members, uh, Mike Testa, shout outs, um, and congratulations on your new kid. Oh yeah, that's right. Mike Testa just had another baby. We call, whenever, uh, Testa plays, he gets us sometimes very angry and then we call that full Testa, going full Testa when he doesn't play well. Yep. Well, the best part about playing with him and that was he's over it in seconds, like Literal seconds. He's right back up. Those few seconds when he isn't. Yeah, those couple seconds. I think he's the only human I've ever actually seen slam, tilt, and deserve it. It's kind of becoming a trend now that a lot of the best pinball designers and coders started out playing competitive pinball. You've got the rules knowledge and a handle on what makes a pinball game really fun. So at what point did you make the decision that you wanted to design your own game? I got interested in making my own game, I think, around 2018, 2019. I've been a Sonic the Hedgehog super fan my entire life, ever since I was little, literally ever since I was old enough to hold a controller. My big stepbrother, Ben, handed me the Genesis controller, and I was doing it from that young. And it just kind of never wore off. I was the kid who had the Sonic backpack and Sonic birthday parties and all that other stuff. And, you know, I chilled out a little bit later on. But, you know, I still, every kid who grew up with their favorite show, their favorite game, their favorite franchise, they all have, you know, a shelf of like their couple collectibles or way more collectibles than they've collected over the years. And it always just blew my mind that Sonic didn't exist as a pinball machine. Like, come on, one of my favorite Genesis games is Sonic the Hedgehog Spinball. It's literally a pinball game. and then I found out once I got into this world and started learning who made what games when, it's like, oh, Sega literally made games for, what was it, six years? Something like that? They made 18 titles including Baywatch and South Park, but no Sonic. Okay. So it was a gap. It was something I needed. All of my interests combined, and you know how it works when you're drinking and you're playing League or whatever and you're just like, oh, if we had this other insert, one of a thousand themes that anyone in the world could come up with here, you just start speculating. Oh, we'd put the big bad guy on the left, and it just all kind of started clicking. So anyone who would talk to me, like, oh, yeah, I'd make Sonic if I would make one. And then they were, oh, what would you do? And then I realized I had a whole notebook filled just from casual conversations. I'm like, all right, well, maybe I should do that at some point. And then suddenly I was locked in my house for over a year. Because COVID. And had to make the best of it. So obviously you're a super fan. Do you think you're one of the biggest super fans out there for this? Absolutely not. No? No way. There are some crazy, and I say that both complimentary and derogatory, there are some crazy Sonic fans out there. I'm pretty far up the rankings. Let's see if you can pass our super awesome pinball show Sonic Nerd quiz. Oh, my God. Ready? We're going to hit you with a few questions here. I'm a little scared right now. I'm going to take the first one. I've talked a lot about the game. How many main Sonic video games have been released? Oh, you need to define main. All right, so none of the spinoff characters games. If Sonic is a main character. So it's in the title. Yes. All right, so I have to count them now. All right. So we'll start classics. Sonic 1, 2, 3, Sonic & Knuckles. Are you counting handhelds? 2D side-scrollers and 3D platformers. Okay, so I do have two Game Gears. We'll go back to Game Gear. Sonic 1, Sonic 2, Sonic Triple Trouble, Sonic... No, Dash is the iOS one. There's at least one more Game Gear one, but I forget which one it was because my parents stopped buying me Game Gear games after the fourth one. mostly because it ate batteries so fast alright so I'll just say Mania right now because that's 2D as well so I hope you're counting on your fingers because I stopped then we go into the Dreamcast era with actually no there's a cancelled one for Sega Saturn whatever we'll go to the Dreamcast era Sonic Adventure or Sonic Adventure 2 many people consider that to be the pinnacle of the series. Then we had a couple awkward years with Sonic Heroes. I was not a fan of Sonic Heroes. I actually returned that to GameStop for $1 and felt justified in it. I'm going to get attacked physically for saying that if any Sonic fans are listening. There was the Storybook series for the Wii. So we had... This is riveting content by the way. I'm just going to give it to you. I feel like you're going to have the answer. I already plan on doing that effect where you go for me. All right, so give me a rough I'll give you the very latest one and then you can just do the thing where you skip to it. Perfect. And then lastly, of course, we have the latest game that the trailer just, the gameplay trailer just dropped for yesterday which is Sonic Frontiers That was a question in the quiz Yeah you already that one right so so i going to tell you there a total of 31 games in the sonic uh sonic wheelhouse but you also got sonic frontiers right so i'm going to give you credit for both of those okay uh parsons you want to take the next one yeah okay so have you seen both of the new sonic movies in the theater and a secondary question do they suck yes i have seen them the first one i would i gave a 6 out of 10. It was good. The newest one, 9 out of 10. It's amazing. I love it. Even Jim Carrey? Jim Carrey is making that movie. He almost single-handedly saved the first one. The animators are the ones that really saved it. Yeah. But he carried a lot of the first one. And he was incredible in the second one. They could have done a little more on licensing. They could have grabbed some of the music and it probably would have been perfect. We had a lot of boring, original, just epic fantasy music that had nothing to do with any of the games that could have easily been replaced. Other than that, go see it. It's amazing. Gotcha. Dude, I think you're going to nail the last one. Name six different Sonic villains. Different villains. All right. Dr. Ivo Eggman Robotnik. We got Metal Sonic. Both. Oh, if you want, I can just take the whole question for free right there. Metal Sonic Mark 1, 2, 3, and Silver Sonic. So there you go. What else we got? That's cheating. That's absolutely cheating, and I knew exactly what I was doing when I did that. Right, cheating. We have Infinite from Forces. Doesn't matter, doesn't matter. Yeah, you just got it. You just got it. Yep. Oh, all right. So I'm all done? Yeah, you're done, man. You missed more. You could have gone into Black Doom, Dark Gaia, Razor Jin, Alina. Oh, God, Dark Gaia. These are obviously Wikipedia'd for us, but I'm sure you could have gotten them. He probably wrote the article. Yeah. Yeah, congratulations, man. You're a true super fan. I think you clearly passed that test. So I'm going to give you guys a quiz to the super awesome pinball show. Let's see how much. You know, you guys are going to quiz my guy. I've got to give you guys a quiz. All right. Who's the fattest one? Well, that's easy, Chris. If you pass the quiz, that means I get paid this week. That's right. You get paid. Now, let's see if we can continue this podcast if they can answer this question. So, we know that Sega was making pinball. But what happened that Data East went to Sega? What transpired that caused Sega? Stern made a game where they illegally used the Sega character and they got in trouble. No. Didn't Joe Camico? That is partially a true statement, but that's not this story, Chris. Didn't Joe Camico help that transition? No. Take some of that line. Damn, you got it right. No, no, no. He's got partial. Another story, correct. but that's for later on. What happened that caused Daddy East to become Sega? Oh, oh, oh, oh, God. I'm not picking you guys' Wikipedia. Did Sega just want out? I don't think they could Wikipedia this. They wouldn't know it. Didn't Sega just want out? No, it's part of the video game lore. So Daddy East used Daddy East Pinball as a marker and money towards Sega to spin off their new home console game that Data East put millions of dollars into, and it failed. You lose! Good day, sir! And thus, the marker, which was Data East Pinball, went to Sega. So that's how Sega Pinball acquired Data East. What was the video game that failed? It was a video game console system. Oh, which one was that? I can't remember, but it was a Data... I mean, it came out in Japan and China and was up against, of course, NES and all these other... Sega, they were like the fourth game system around Jaguar time, and that was just it. They just... Available now at your local radio shop. Obviously, Sega had the Dreamcast, right? I mean, that was a big console. I don't know if that was the one you're referencing, though. I had a Dreamcast, and then all of a sudden, there was nothing for it. It was Daddy East's home console system. No shit. They had an East home console system, which they used. Daddy East Pinball is their leverage chip, their marker, to get the money from Sega. And then when it failed, they ended up taking over control of Data East and Bob. The Game Station? That's unfortunate. Wasn't the Game Station... I'm honestly, I'm Googling this one. My Arcade Game Station, yeah. Data East Edition. That might just be a, like, emulator platform that they're loading a bunch of... Yeah, you're right. You can look that up on some other podcast. And Frankie! All right, all right. I'm sure one of the viewers will let us know. That's what they're for, right? That's right. Yeah. Okay, back to the interview. With a homebrew, you don't have any licensing constraints to keep you from putting everything that you want into a game. You had assets from the video game and cartoon. How did you go about choosing what it was you wanted to put into the Sonic game? So I put what I felt would fit the pinball aspect of the game in there. Really, I kind of threw out any kind of continuity or like I'm not going to try to copy this game or that one. I'm just going to make like just lump all of all of the essence of the Sonic entire universe and just take whatever fits pinball perfectly and put it in there. So really, it was just a compilation of this. This particular level fits like just transfers perfectly to a pinball mode. So let me give you my example. One of my mini wizard modes is the pipe bonus level from Sonic the Hedgehog 2, where you're collecting rings running down a pipe. And it just kind of fit perfectly with its three-checkpoint-then-victory system as a progressive multiball. It's like, all right, your whole goal in this thing is to collect rings. Here's two balls. You have 30 seconds to get a certain number, just like in the game. And every time you succeed, you get a new goal and you get another ball. and at any point you fail out, you fail out. If you succeed, you win, you get the emerald in the game, you get some points in my game. It just kind of naturally fit and I kind of just used that philosophy anywhere. I didn't want to force anything into existence and luckily it was a really easy franchise to adapt to pinball because it's just so perfectly suited. So you got a loop-de-loop ramp. I'm not really a visionary for deciding to add a loop-de-loop ramp to a Sonic game. I made a nice design that worked on the first try I mean it wasn't my final design but who cares and just other stuff just seemed to fit right so we're going to have boss fights so let's make a boss arena I basically just took all my favorite games and put them together because again it was a homebrew I wasn't really trying to sell this thing until this guy called me like halfway through the project and then suddenly I'm like oh crap I've got to rework this whole thing to be marketable that's not something I was planning on doing so yeah you got your Attack from Mars saucer, you got a catapult from Medieval Madness, you got just all these little things that I thought would fit really well, put it to one game, and then other things that had not been done before, like the signpost, which had never been... You have a spinner that is inactive and out of reach, and then once you're at the end of the level, it'll come down within reach so you can hit it. That just kind of... It just fits with the lore of the game, so every single level ends with a spinner. So, alright, we have to adapt that into a working spinner. because it just fits. We don't have to force anything. So, yeah, most of the ideas came up separately. Some of them relate to each other. As you know, when you're brainstorming, you think of one thing and then three other things follow. But then they just got placed wherever they seemed to fit for a gameplay progression kind of way. Because I've never – that's not true. I actually have dabbled in game design as early as, like, when I was 15 years old. I was using RPG makers and stuff. So I'm always kind of thinking of, like, why did the game designers choose to have the game progress in this way? Or, like, what choices do I really have underneath this story when it comes to, like, where everything goes? So I do have a little bit of experience mapping out how I hope your game is going to play out. So I have different multiballs that are accessible by different skill levels of players. I mean, a good player is going to get everything. So I just plan out there the order that a good player is going to get it. So, for example, Jeff, you're an incredible player. I've seen you play many times. I don't. You said it. So for you, I expect, as the game designer for the 1-2-3 lock system, to be the first one you get because you're hitting your shots, you're collecting the things that light those, and that's probably going to be the first thing that happens to you. Then I have what I like to call the pity or mercy multiball, which is when you are just hitting the random targets around the play field. You're missing your shots. Would you ever want to really miss a shot in pinball, in my opinion? You kind of want to always collect something, be awarded something, play a sound effect, just do something to make the player know that they didn't just waste their time. Rubber posts are awful. I hate rubber posts. If I can avoid putting a rubber boring post somewhere, I will. I would put a switch there always. So if you're just hitting all those around the play field, you're going to get a multiball because I want a five-year-old to be able to do something in the game every time, almost every time. Like you have to at least be paying attention. But if you don't hit a single shot in my game, you're going to get a multiball and it's going to play all this stuff and you're going to fight the boss. And then it's rigged so that the mini boss, which is the pity mode, has infinite HP. You can't actually kill him. However, he always dies when you drop the multiball. So no matter what happens, the five-year-old kid beat the mini-boss. They don't know that. And they're super excited when they get it done. And they're like, I beat him. I did it. I did it. And I've seen that reaction on many people's faces. So you're going to get that eventually, but you're going to stack that with something else because you know what you're doing. So I don't have to worry about you. But just game progression, like leapfrogging the different events, when everything's going to happen, And that kind of just was already in there. So it was easier to make this not a tangent and actually address the question. It was easier to plan where to put all those random ideas, like in order. I love the way you made this. You explained it perfectly. Have a five-year-old come up and be able to feel like they did something. You know, that's one of pinball's biggest challenges. Make it something that the good players can enjoy, but yet somebody that never even played pinball can have fun with. Yeah. Well, I have too many memories of being a little kid who was fascinated by physics. Everything I enjoyed when I was little, I really loved physics. So I would go to the Museum of Science in Boston. I'm sure you've been there a bunch. And all I would want to do is stare at the rolling ball sculpture in the lobby. I wouldn't even do the rest of the museum. They would just have to assign one of the adults to hang out with me in the lobby. I still watch that thing as an adult. Well, I just stare at it. Exactly. So I would see pinball machines in, like, pizza shops and wherever I would just end up. and we didn't have a lot of money growing up, so if I could get like 50 cents from my parents, that was all right, I'm not going to ask for any more because that's all I'm going to get. And I would see something like, I think I remember seeing a demolition man in some, I honestly think they had it at Prince Pizza on Route 1 for a while. And I put my quarter in because I was like, whoa, that crane looks super cool. What does it do? And little kid me couldn't tell you because I couldn't get it. I wasn't good. All I wanted to do was see what the thing did, and I wasn't good enough, so I couldn't see the thing, and that would happen to me all the time. I would just want to play with everything on the play field, but I wasn't good enough to do it. So it was really frustrating, and so that's where I kind of came up with one of my core design beliefs that I'm going to be using going forward. Never hide your toys behind rules. Love it. I love that. Never hide the points behind rules. but your toys should happen by accident, should be happening by unskilled players and everyone should get to enjoy them all the time. I love it. I had an insult to injury. David's over there laughing his ass off at the fact that you couldn't get the board. I don't think I've told him what it was called. No, no. The reason I'm laughing my rear end off is you probably can ask Dennis what the claw does and he'll probably tell you he doesn't know it either. So, you know. And I'll tell you what. I know that Christopher Franchi loves Sonic because he's just that little five-year-old going, I did it, I did it, I did it. I've never played it once. We know because it's still working. Never. It's not a video game. Well, all right. So, Ryan, just to kind of put a button in the homebrew process before we move on to the bigger and better things, what do you feel like were the hardest parts of creating a homebrew machine? I mean, you see that when games get made by major companies, people have specialties, right? You've got a coder. You've got the art department. You've got everyone who's working to make one thing, whereas you had to do all of that stuff yourself. So, I mean, that's a great resume because you have David seeing that you're capable in all those areas. But what do you find was the hardest part of that? And what was the easiest, maybe? All right. So this is actually a really easy question. and I answered this at the very beginning of my seminar at Expo. The hardest part about building a homebrew is starting. Just deciding I'm going to do it instead of saying I'll do it someday. It's too overwhelming of a task. Just starting in any way you can. Even if you're an artist and you start with the art, that is still somehow the hardest step. yes there's a whole lot of stuff you're going to need to learn but just deciding that you're going to undertake this massive project and decide you're going to finish it is the hardest thing by far and if you can get past that if you can just commit to starting then you're going to be fine because yes pinball machines are crazy complicated yes there's a thousand things you have to do but you actually don't really have to do it yourself because if you don't know how to do it, you can either learn, ask for help, go into, um, I'll say business, but you know, go into hobbyist with other people, make your own little team. That's been done a lot of times. Um, and there are resources there now that you didn't used to be. So it's real, it's a lot easier for guys like me right now than it, than it has been in the past for sure. but there are resources available to anyone who wants them for free up to and including I've had people starting off making homebrews messaging me privately on Facebook and I'm just like yup I'll help so will anyone else who's doing this so if you don't know how to code you can guess what somebody else didn't know how to code they got frustrated by that fact so now Mission Pinball Framework exists so now you don't have to learn how to code you have to learn how to use configuration files. And if I... I am not a coder. That was one of the first things I said. Don't shake your head. I said that in our first interview. I said, I'm not a coder. But I'm really good at pretending to be one because of this great framework that was put together. So if I can... For anyone who's played the game, it doesn't... It looks like a pretty well-coded game. Just don't actually look at my code. One of the selling points for us was that you could do it all yourself. So I didn't have to hire a whole team for you. You're just doing it all yourself. You're going to do the coding. Oh, you don't want my art. I outsourced all that art. Oh, me too. Oh, yeah. I gave you the name. I know. I reached out to Amber Cyprian. His name was Chris Fronty. No. Their name was Amber Cyprian. They did the amazing whitewood art because everyone thinks the term whitewood art is weird. I wonder why nobody prototypes that on the Whitewoods so I was putting our little David Hankin doodles where I thought they might fit and then I would move them with the lights and just like everything else but it also kind of lent a little bit of character to the Whitewood because normally you guys don't show off your Whitewood to the public whereas I was planning on doing so I'm not an artist, I never claimed to be someday I will release Into the Wild, the original concept art file, which was done in MS Paint by me. There's a preview if you manage to get the Midwest Gaming Classic there's a preview of MS Paint Robotnik that I drew, it's on a POG now. Nice. Do you want to hit your follow-up, Christian? Yeah, I mean, now that you are where you are with Sonic, and we can go into where it is commercially, but how complete do you think the game is at this point in your mind? Okay, so as a homebrew, because that's, you know, we'll talk about commercial later, and that's not up to me. So just as it sits as a homebrew project, the code is probably, I would say, at .99. Cool. All I have to do is finish up a couple of cut scenes, and I can call it 1.0, honestly. it's feature complete which was really hard honestly I spent as much time coding as building if not more so that's great to say and as for the play field it would be on version 2 of at least 3 planned so there's a lot I want to make some version 2 was kind of like the tweaks let's fix the first one like incorporate all the changes I made by just like drilling into it and moving crap when it didn't work and then the third one, alright, now this all works pretty well as it is but I want to make some big ambitious changes so there will be some if I ever get around to working on that project there's still a lot to do So Ryan, you've done this game and a couple others and now you're at American Pinball and you're designing a new game have you experienced any sort of deja vu and maybe some self-discovery in that there's some consistencies between these games that you realize you have a thing, in quotations. The Ryan McQuaid thing, you know, whatever gimmick that might be. Have you found that out, or is that just not the case? I'm discovering a few, mostly minor. I've been trying to, since, you know, I haven't designed that many games yet, especially compared to, like, the industry legend I'm working with, Dennis. Like, he's done everything. But really, I've been trying to make my games that I design at this stage as different as possible from each other, just to make sure that I don't accidentally end up designing the same game four times. I mean, it's fine to enjoy specific elements and put them in there. So I'd say I'm trying to make spinners great again. Spinners I love. I don't know. There's some games where spinners are just like the most important thing in them, and I tend to always love those games. I love Grand Prix. I love Space Shuttle. What's the other one I'm thinking of? Flight 2000? I'm all about that right spinner on Flight 2000. You just go right through it, sweep the drops, and now it's worth even more. So we haven't lost spinners in pinball, but they just haven't been as important. They don't do something that's integral to the game. Some of them are. I'm not saying that they're a lost art or anything, but I really love these spinners. And I say it plural. I also love shots that have two spinners on them. Ooh. Oh. Now, if I may suggest a left out lane spinner. Copyright Jack Danger production. Oh, I've already told him I'm racing him to it. Danger, danger. I'm flagrantly stealing that idea. The boss didn't know that one yet. No, I knew about that one. Don't worry about it. Oh, okay, good. Are you kidding me? Jack's been trying to sell me that on a game for a long time. But anyway. Well, speaking of the boss, I suppose it's time we bring in Mr. Duran Duran Hare and join the conversation. You know you got a haircut. Now, don't be so jealous that I have hair. You don't. I have hair. His cloth was all poofed up in Duran Duran the other day, and I think I made him get a haircut because I said that. But anyway. Hey, David. Christopher. What made you decide to pick up Ryan and bring him in? Well, come on. It's funny because some people think that I've only known Ryan for a little bit, but truth be told, Ryan, how long have I known you? I would say before Virtual Expo. And I wasn't even working for American yet. So I helped him out with Virtual Expo. We got him on there. Loved the thought. Thought, oh, great, this guy's got it. You know, he's got it. And then when I went to American, I started working with Scott, who I knew from years ago with Wrath of Olympus and other games that he had done back then. So I'm thinking to myself, oh, you know what? I'm in the right position that we need to bring some homebrew guys up the ranks. So literally, I started talking to Ryan then. We shipped in Sonic to AP back in, I think it was September. Yeah. September. And then we played it, and we had him come over, and then we brought it to Expo for him. And right there and then, I knew this kid had to be there. So this whole year has been all goofed up. I'm just going to tell you that. Because if ever in my wildest dreams did I think I was going to go to Expo, then Midwest Gaming Classic, then another show in Houston, then to IAAPA, then have Thanksgiving, and then go on vacation to come back to a world of craziness. You've got Fantastic. Oh, and Fantastic. Yeah, right. Right in the picture. IAAPA. No, it was great. And then the best part of Fantastic was Jeff's doing a podcast with young Michael Grant, who was my employee, and then I just kind of slid in behind Michael. I'm just sitting there listening to him go on and on, and meanwhile Jeff and everybody else was like, there's somebody behind you. You might not want to say anything bad about America. That's awkward. It's a little awkward. It was fun, and Ryan's just sitting there chilling, drinking something. What were you drinking? I can't remember. I think they had Angry Orchard. I'm a cider guy. Yeah, he was a cider guy. And we were just having, chilling and talking, But, you know, it was at that moment, just playing the game, seeing the people loving Sonic. I already had liked Sonic before this. And just, you know, it was just time. You know, there's a passion. And, like, he brought out certain things that he wants to do to make it appealing for younger people. But not only that, the skill players. And, you know, when you saw Sonic being played by all different types of people and they just got it and they loved it, kind of told me that this was the right move. So it was a no-brainer for me to start pick up the phone and say, okay, kid, let's have you have a meeting with the owners, and let's start working on getting you to become an employee here at American Pinball. And at the same time, let's go after the Sonic license, and let's just turn this up. You had already talked to Sega prior to Expo, and then after IAFA and the entire world, I found out there was somebody else in the mix. Well, hold on, hold on. We're going to get to that. We'll come back to it. Maybe we should jump to that part. Maybe we should jump to that part because these guys can't read our minds. Let's tackle that elephant in the room. So obviously Sonic is the license that a lot of people have been asking for. And it's my understanding that AP were hoping to get the license and produce the game. And despite having some productive talks with Sega, it was picked up by another company. So can you, David, tell us kind of exactly how that played out? Sure, sure. We had, of course, our licensing guru, Roger Sharp. I had talked to him before Expo. I think it was September when we got Sonic in. We're looking at it. I said, Roger, why don't you make a call to Sega and let's start the negotiations. And Roger said, sure. And he brought it in. And he kind of told us, Sega's on board. They're wide open. We've got this. I remember you called me after that one. And I was over the moon that they said they'd even consider it. Like that alone was a dream come true for like a little five-year-old Sonic fan. We had sent, so you guys know I had access already because of Virtual Expo. I had sent Sega his little video presentation he did for Virtual Expo, and they loved it. Okay, so they were like, oh, this needs to happen kind of thing. And I told Ryan, and Ryan's like, yeah, good, yeah. You know, like the little kid was like jumping up and down, you know, like when Franchi is happy about something. Always back to me. with the insults. Of course. How dare you be happy? You knew this was going to happen. Goodbye, Chris. Wait till you get your final invoice. I know, I know, I know. That's how I get out the screwdriver, mister. Sorry, don't worry. I make him regret hiring me every day. I kind of regret sometimes Christopher when he calls me at all weird hours and says, don't you know who I am? I'm Christopher Franchi. You need to answer this phone. You made it sound so desperate like I actually did that and meant it. I have the voicemail. Do you want to hear it? It's pretty close. So back to Sine. Okay, so we went for it. We got back. We started going for it, and lo and behold, somebody else. And I will be a spoiler here. So a lot of people think it's Stern Pinball, but it is not. Wow. Um, so, I know that Stern has already put up some posts with, you know, them with the Sonic character at the license. You're not going to tell me this. Troll. Troll. Troll. So, anyway, um, but it was told to us at that time. I said, well, you can take your apology and shove it straight up your ass. Is it Stern? And they said, no, it's not Stern. Well, all right, hang on. We've got to put the brakes on here. There seems to be a massive gap missing. Now, you said back before Expo, you looked into it and you talked to Sega. Yes. Now you're like someone else. And they said, yeah, that sounds great. And now you're saying someone else had it. What happened in between there? There had to be a re-approach. Was there a delay? Oh, yeah. No, there wasn't. We had, here's the thing. We had Expo, right? We were, yes, let's do this. We then had five shows on top of it. I told Roger, let's do this. Roger reached out to them. IAAPA is this big, giant trade show that everybody goes to, so we always get put on hold. By the time we got back from, I mean, this is a trade show where Sega, all the big manufacturers are at this show. So we come back after this show, and we find that somebody else is already sitting in the seat negotiating for the license. You dick! All right, and what was the time span between you reaching out to Sega and saying, we want it, and they're saying it sounds good, and the IAAPA show? What was the gap there? How long? Three weeks, four weeks, max. I thought it was more like two. It was not a long time. It was very short. It wasn't a long time. It was very short. In fact, before we even expo, we were kind of already hearing from them that nobody else was there. I think that, you know, whoever was at expo played the game. You know, of course, I made the, you know, homebrew challenge for American Pinball. We announced that then. We talked about, you know, what we're going to do with Scott. and everybody saw how well Legends of Valhalla is doing, and it's still doing awesome. I think somebody took note very strong about the game and even the licensing aspects of the game. Now, what happened in the two, three, four weeks in between there that a name was decided on the dotted line? Why wasn't the license initiated when Sega said, yeah, this sounds great? Because there was this trade show called IEPA. And they're like, hold on, we have this show, we have to do this. So they told you to sit back and wait. Three weeks goes by, and someone else swoops in. Uh-huh. Yeah. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Oh! Fuck! So, David, for those of us that don't know how this works, I mean, you have Roger Sharp kind of in your pocket to help you with this. Right. He is an expert at this. So what was his advice, and how does this normally play out in terms of... Well, I was supposed to say Roger was blindsided by it, too. If there are multiple people who are vying for a license, how does that usually play? So do you start to bid on the license? Is it just they give it to the person that they just feel the most comfortable with? I mean, how does that process happen? Well, there's a bunch of things that kind of fall into play. You know, money is one of the big things. You know, you start the licensing project. You go in, and this is X, and they're offering X. And, you know, normally you go in and say, okay, we're going to offer you X and then so much towards royalties and then so much towards this. And, you know, before you know it, licenses can be very expensive, okay, depending on the people, right? So, listen, I kind of contribute this, and I've been using this term over the last couple days when I've asked, you know, some other people have asked me. Think about it. Star Wars, the blue one that Daddy East did, was kind of a dead license, right? There were no Star Wars movies out in many years, and Cameco went after it, and it was very easy to pick up the license because it hadn't been publicized so much. Sonic here hadn't had a game or hadn't been in the industry for a good period. It was kind of like a dead license. So naturally, somebody could walk in. We were vying for it, and now all of a sudden Sega has this two companies. They're going, hey, we want this, and they're like, okay, you know, and they're just rubbing their hands together, and they're going for it. We did make the bigger offer, and I think, this hasn't been pointed out to me, but I think it was a multiple deal. I think there was Sonic and something else that was kind of rolled together. We'll find out. Man, this is some bullshit! When history comes out a little bit more, I'm kind of interested to see this, but, you know, in the industry, you know, you know a lot of people, you know a lot of things, and trust me, through back channels, I have been quietly trying to get the license, but some of the other major companies, they're like, we don't have it. So it's kind of an interesting little mystery. You've reached out. You've talked to people at Stern. They say, we don't have it. You've talked to the other major players in the industry. I hadn't talked to Stern because I was told Stern is not the person. But I did talk to a few other people, and Ryan has done a little work, too, a little digging. God, I hope it's not that guy who did the Thunderbirds. put some more cake decorations in the game. But it's going to be interesting. I think it's going to come out to the shade of light in the next year or two. I kind of left it open that if they don't want the license to let us know, we'll talk about it. And I kind of think of this as the collector industry, the collector's personnel, right, or the collectors in general, know what Sonic Spinball is. And now they're going to measure anything that comes out from any major player up to that game. And God help them when they're going to try to measure that. They want to put out bingo cards. Yeah, it's like when one of their own creates a game and it excels to the point that it did and everybody's kind of backing him and behind him and like, yeah, go, go, go. And then someone swoops in. That's not going to look good for that because they're going to know you're the one who fucked it up. You came in and you snatched it away. That's just bloody rude. You know, it's like we said with Godzilla and Stern. It's a damn good thing that Elwyn crushed that game because if he didn't, Stern would still be taking shit for stealing that license. But how many years was that, Chris? That's the whole point. How many years did Stern sit on that license? That was almost six years. You know, that was back around Rob Zombie time when Spooky was going after Godzilla. I wasn't aware of that. Oh, yeah. It's an old. That's old. It was sitting around for a long time. Listen, I was there. I knew Charlie back then. I still know Charlie. Charlie and Bug. I know they wanted Godzilla way back when, okay? And they started working on that right around Rob Zombie time. I think it was, yeah. And then after Rob Zombie was, what, Nightmare? Alice Cooper. Alice Cooper, yeah. Yeah. So let me ask you about the license. So if this is a pinball license, which is clearly what was picked up, is that only good for physical pinball, or could this have been a Zen or some other virtual pinball company that picked up the license? And does that exclude you from making a physical game? You know, that's a good question. That was never really clarified. It's just it's the pinball license to do a pinball format of the game. But I have a feeling that it was a physical pinball machine. We'll see it. We'll probably see it probably in the next. If they're wanting to roll with this. Now, it could happen that they might let the license lapse, which usually most of the contracts, and I'll tell you that, you know, they have to put something out in three years or they lose the license. So if they picked it up, we'll probably find out in the next three years. If they let it lapse, then we could always give Ryan the nod and go, hey, listen, you guys never did anything with this license. Are you interested in letting us have it? And we could probably do that. So we're kept secret in the industry, you know. Oh, a game available, American Pinball, how are we going to do this? So you can't really reskin that game because you've got to put it on the back burner in case you can blow the dust off in three years. True. But then again, it might be a good vault edition that all of a sudden nobody knew about and it comes out and we keep it quiet. Sonic has so many iterations. They've got comic books, they have video games, they've got the movie. So is there a different license for each of those or is it all encompassing? All encompassing. That's wild. In fact, this went all the way up to the president and the owners of Sega in Japan for the decision. So it was tough. Now, I will tell you, it's a funny story. And I'll let Ryan tell the story. So, Ryan, tell us the story about Gary Stern playing Sonic at Pinball Expo. So we have a picture of him. Ryan sent it to me. There's Gary playing Sonic Pinball, Spinball. and Ryan I'll let you you tell this part of the story so it's really not really that much on topic what happened there Gary Stern was one of the many people that came up and played my game during Expo it was a great experience at the time I'm just trying to meet everyone and be like yep I exist pay attention look what I can do and so when you're just a homebrew guy and in one day you have David Fix with the hat and everything playing your game. I want you to keep that shit kicker hat at home. You got Gary Stern playing your game. You got Keith Elwin waiting in line going, oh, I don't want to stand in line, and then leaving. That was it. Oh, no. So it was a great day. So he gets up, and he's playing my game, and I'm not really asking. I'm kind of just staring at it and like, this is happening. Like, you know, I didn't have a lot of, like, what do you call them, starstruck moments. I was like, this is getting, this is real. This is happening. Like, I did it. I made it here. I got it all done. So he starts telling me a story. And actually, Chris started to talk about this earlier. He starts to tell me, he's like, you know, back when we were owned by Sega, we made this arcade game, this redemption game. It's a coin roller game. And I'm like, oh, I know exactly which one you're talking about. I managed to track down a prototype topper for that game. And, like, he was not listening to anything I said at all. He just kept going. so we were we were owned by sega and so we figured we could just make this game and they they just created and produced this little coin roller game where you have to get it on a little like in the columns on a play field kind of thing and if you've got the quarter match up just right you got the tickets and if it was even a millimeter off forget you you little kid you shouldn't have wasted your quarter um it's nothing to write home about it's got some cute art whatever um but what he told me was they didn't ask they just were owned by sega so we can use the sega stuff and so they just went ahead and did it and when sega found out they called them and like just talked to them like they were five years old he's like we own you you do not own us you do what we tell you to and you don't ever touch our characters or our licenses without our permission and like He was like, they were angry. Dang. They were very mad at us. So I was, at the time, just like, oh, my God, I got a nice little cute industry story that I never would have any reason to find out other than this. This is so cool. Did that by any chance turn into the Stimson thing that they did? Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Very good, Mr. Farson. Very good. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Actually, it was two games. They cut the production short. They did one called Sega Sports, where you rolled it past the goalie, the football, and all that other stuff, and then that later became into Kooky Carnival by some sense. Don't ask why I'm the trivia master tonight. I don't know. Oh, you're the trivia master when it comes to anything in that. Yeah, we found out to be true, for sure. Got a thousand stories for you. So let's talk about where you might have taken the game if American Pinball did make Sonic. Was the plan to use Ryan's Sonic Spinball game outright, or were you going to modify it, or even start fresh on another version of Sonic for American Pinball? Ryan's game was very well put together, okay? It needs some tweaks, just like Legends of Valhalla needed a little brush up and a little, you know, massaging, and we were going to do that. Maybe even go a little crazy. However, I'm not going to go into all the details of what we were going to do today, just in case at some point this does come out. Don't say no to the Macho King. I will tell you that, I don't know, should I tell them one of the little things we were going to do with that game? No. Okay. We were going to use a blue Powerball. Oh, that's super cool. You know, Ryan, that kind of harkens back to your Twilight Zone obsession, right? I mean, it's a perfect marriage. That's really cool. It actually became kind of a meme for me during the development of the game, because it's the number one suggestion I would get. Like, you've got to have a blue ball. and after like the 150th time you get the same suggestion and it's been in your frequently asked questions at the very top of the list for six months, you start being like, oh, damn, I wish I had thought of a blue ball. If I could just say, if I could just step in here, I've got blue balls and I don't suggest it. I don't recommend it. I knew it was coming. I knew it was coming. Ew! Like clockwork. I know this must have been really tough for you, man. I also know a lot of pinheads out there who loved your game. So, you know, how much of a gut punch was this? And did you know that it might be difficult kind of to obtain the license and the game might not get made commercially when you started with American Pinball? Well, I always knew from day one that it was a possibility. It was a strong probability that the game was not going to get made as it was. I mean, honestly, it was never really the goal. It was always just kind of like the icing on the cake, like this would be like the little kid dream. But like the real goal from day one was just to get a job. everyone who would listen to me I must have talked to like 200 people at Expo in October and less so in Fantastic because I was just so tired but everyone who would listen I would say this is a resume this game is a resume yes I'm trying to get this game produced but I come with it if one company says we want to make this game and another company says we want to hire you I don't care what the first company offered me I'm going with the job this is what I want to do I'm going to keep doing this I really would love it if I could trick someone into paying me so Did I trick someone? What the heck? Delightfully gullible humans. You're not getting your checks either? Oh, I see. I only got my check this week because I passed your little test. Give me a test so I can get mine. I've been paid like clockwork, no complaints. So there was a time where it kind of seemed like all the stars were aligning for me, and I was like, I can't believe this is all happening. Like, they're going to make it. I am a princess. Like they're going to hire me too. And then, yes, when I found out, it was a huge, huge punch to the gut that I couldn't tell anybody about because I didn't work at a pinball company yet on paper, officially. That was still under wraps because, you know, you have to keep things under your hat in this industry or things happen. So I currently was still in the phase where I was under NDA. I couldn't tell anybody that I had a job, so I couldn't even tell anybody what happened to me. and I still couldn't tell anybody. So I kind of had just to Carl Weathers that with me and my mom. I call my mom. I love my mom. She's so supportive. She's my number one fan. The night that I was getting announced, she planned to go to the local bar and make them turn on Jack's stream and refuse to tell them why. That was her idea. The only reason she didn't do it is because she had to go take care of my grandmother. But I tried to talk her out of it, and she wasn't having it. So thank you, Mom, for that and for being the one who was able to help me get through it when that happened. It was unfortunate. But to the Sonic fans, you're welcome because guess what? Sonic Pinball is coming. One way or the other, it's happening. And nobody cared about that license for 30 years before me. So I'm taking full credit for that one. Do it, man. Yes, you should. I am the only reason the Sonic Pinball machine is coming out. Yep. You're the best. I would love to be the one who makes it, but either way. I mean, for everyone who really felt for you, because we knew how passionate you were about the license we played your game we loved it and everyone who was following you on Pinside I think they all got hit when they found out that you weren going to be the one who going to make it But you know from that story that you just told that you actually got the job and that was your number one goal I mean, that's a huge silver lining. And I think that's going to make lemonade out of lemons, I guess. And we were happy to get them. Because here's the thing. You know, you can go out and you poach somebody's license. You can poach somebody's idea and so forth. But to have the creativity and the person behind it with the passion, that's what I wanted. I wanted the employee, and guess what? You know, spoiler alert here, this was one of the junior designers that I had said way back ago on your podcast. Yeah, I remember that. Well, you have some junior designers. There's still one or two more floating out there that we haven't talked about yet, but those are more surprises. And, you know, so this was, there's passion behind this young man to want to do this. It's one thing to dream it. It's another thing to make it come true. And then to help him along with that, I said, come on, let's start. And we were going to make an announcement early on, but then we ran into this breakfast that Ryan was sitting with me in Chicago. Oh, God. And that was the day the entire world just kind of fell out of the bottom when I got the phone call that Barry Osler had died. Oh, yeah. And, I mean, we were just beside ourselves. And, you know, here's the nice thing. Barry's game is being produced. Ryan's been working on it with Dennis. So this has been kind of a teaching of the tribe. And I'm going to tell you that Barry wanted to work with young guys like Ryan and Scott and a few of the other guys that we got kind of cooking up because Barry and Dennis both are under that mindset that they have to impart this tribal knowledge to these young guys. And that's great. And I laughed because I remember the first day, the first week that Ryan was there, my flight was delayed, and he sat in his office. Sat in your office? Sat in my office for an extra 20, 30 minutes just to build up stamina to go and talk to Dennis because he had one of those crush moments or just like, you know, I'm going to have to go talk to Dennis Northen here. You know, this is, this is, can I do this? You know. I had to psych myself up to it because I had to just go knock on his door because there was no one around to introduce me properly. And I just happened, like, oh, there he is. Should I go bother him? I guess it's technically my job to go bother him. Oh, God, day one was such a day one. I do want to tell a really quick story, though, in regards to, since we're talking about the license and the gut punch and how American handled it. And I want to I really just want to thank the people of American Pinball and you, David, because not only, first of all, did they not get rid of me when they lost my license, but I actually day after I found out they said I suddenly had a meeting with David and the owners. And I was like, oh, boy. Yeah. The day after they lose the homebrew kids license, I suddenly need to meet with the owners and David at the same time. You are fired. Oh, yeah. Um, and do you know what that meeting was? That meeting, they took an entire, like, 45 minutes out of all their days just to tell me that I was part of their family and that no license was going to get rid of me. I love that story. Like, that I belong here because of what I've done, not any one game and what I'm going to do. And they, it never even crossed their minds to let me go. And they wanted to make sure I knew that. They wanted to make sure I felt the same way. And, of course, obviously I did. But I almost cried in the meeting. It was ridiculous. Yeah. Today we're counting down the top ten moments that made us happy cry. I mean, David, you talk about the American Pinball family all the time. I mean, that's a great example of it. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, you know, it was one of those things that McCash looked at me and he said, we better put this kid, you know, understand to him that he's part of us. We built into him. We're not building into a machine or the license, you know. Licenses come and go. Machines come and go, too, right? But it's what you bring to the table, right? And that's what we wanted. And we just were like, listen, we lost this one, but we're not losing you. You're here. You're part of the structural program that we want, and that's what we went with. Hey, listen, I went out and got Franchi because he's what I wanted too. Because, you know, when I want to talk to him, I want him. You know, stop talking about those night calls that you get me all the time. You want me. It's sad. My wife calls him my work wife. I don't know what that's all about. Jesus, you talk to Franchi more than you talk to me. I find that hard to believe with all the no answers I get. It's her voice. I actually. Sorry, I went aside with Reggie on that one. Here's a true story. I called him up not long ago, maybe a week ago, and I said, all right, level with me. It's cool. You know, you're married. I understand, you know, you got your own shit. Is your wife telling you not to answer the phone when I call? Because what's going on? He's like, no, no, no, no. And so I was relieved to hear that I wasn't upsetting his wife, but then I was more pissed at him because, like, well, so you're just not fucking answering the phone calls, asshole. Right, not special. He does that to everybody. No, I'm an equal opportunity abuser. Just remember that. Love it. And let me put it this way. We are so busy that this actually sunk into Ryan when McCash and I took 45 minutes out of our busy days to sit down and have this meeting to tell him, We didn't get the license, but we got you. And you're not going anywhere. Did we buy you lunch? Did we buy you lunch? Oh, you bought me many lunches. Did we buy you dinner? Art did. Did they have you come in and stay at the Red Roof Ghetto Inn? Quality Inn? No, no, no. We're past the hatchet inn stages, okay? Yeah, we know that story. We have a nice hotel that we have a arrangement with for the breakfast, and you were invited, but you had to listen to the emperor. Oh, my God. death case and you couldn't come in and do your job so tell me the truth tell me the truth david when you when you heard him admit that on our podcast i just i just shook my head and said dude you are shooting yourself in the foot did you call me before that i didn't bite you down i said listen we need you to come down we need to we need to go through this artwork we want to do some other stuff and we have some people the teams that are flying in for this day oh i i got something going And I'm like, no, no, no, no. Something's going on. You're throwing me to the dogs here. This is what happened. You offered, and I said, let me check my schedule. I'll get back to you. And then I sent up your Google calendar, and you thought Johnny Depp and Amber Heard. No, I said, for some reason, that date seems familiar. I don't know why, but let me just double-check before I go ahead. And then I called you up, and I said, look, this is extremely embarrassing. I know, and it's stupid, but I cannot miss this. This is getting down to the wire, and they're putting Amber Heard on the hot seat, and there is no way I'm going to miss this sitting in a car for four hours driving to Chicago. Well, you know, we all know what happened when we all watched the white Bronco going with O.J. Simpson. He knows where he was supposed to be when Amber Heard's case was going on. Yeah, and now we do too. Yeah, the whole world knows. All right, this is going to take forever. Yeah, let's move on. We've got roughly half of our questions. David, with Ryan coming on board, you've got a solid lineup of staff at American Pinball. Let's run through a few of them and catch up with what they're up to. We know that Dennis Nordman and Ryan are working on game designs, and you're working with the Riot Pinball guys. Who do you consider to be your core game design team at this point? Well, of course, it's going to be Ryan and Dennis. They're the in-house guys. And Dennis is, you know, he's taking the lead because he wants to work with Scott also, and Scott's kind of excited to start giving some of the design aspects to Dennis. So Dennis is really going to start mentoring some guys. In fact, Dennis was working on some of the shots with Scott on Legends of Valhalla when we took his game and kind of just massaged it into a production piece. So the core guys are Dennis. We have Jack Haeger as art director. And Jack, he is more than just an artist, an art director. He's an idea guy. He's a roundabout good guy. He gives Franchi a lot of crap, so he must be doing something right. And then we have Zulfia. He's half my job. He's not taking half the paycheck. So we have Zulfia, who is just an amazing mechanical engineer and director of mechanical engineering. She's the person who sits there and just goes, Oh, you want this? Here, give me a minute. It's easy stuff. boom, it's done. You know, it's like, this is how we did it then. And this is, let's do it this way. It's a simple mechanism this way. And, you know, we have a bunch of other people that have helped out. I'm going to tell you that we have a lot of people that are just in the R&D division that are passionate. Well, let's just talk about the passion that people bring. Okay. Let's talk about Steven Bowden for a minute. Okay. Steve is this guy who followed his dream to Texas and unfortunately me turn into a nightmare man wrote rules and is a great player uh he him and ryan love teaming up for stuff and playing and i'm going to tell you it's just amazing to watch steve just kind of eat into a rule set on a game and just love it but he has a passion do you know what i'm saying he wants to be there he's giving it his all uh and then we have um some of the young guys that people don't know about uh mitash pitta mitash is this wiring uh guru kind of guy who just sits down and he just digs into the game and digs into it and helps dennis and ryan and everybody make their game the whitewood come to life okay so you know we can't say enough about mitash he's the only one you give more shit than Christopher Franchi oh absolutely absolutely and that's because he's wow yeah oh Yeah, right. Poor guy. Yeah, he's always good. But you know what? His father told me to. He says, you know, you got to give it to my son. He says, because that's the only way you're going to keep him straight and narrow. Okay. He hasn't spoken to my dad. He'd tell you the same thing. Yeah. He wouldn't say keep him on a straight and narrow. He'd say, just give him a bunch of shit. Yes. We have Casey. Okay. Casey Casey Butler. We're going to hear a lot more about Casey over the next couple of years here. Because Casey came from Rob Craig. Do you remember, guys? Rob Craig of the Silver Ball Pinball Podcast. Rob Craig was life after death. He was huge back about 10 years ago. He had his own podcast. He had everything going. He's great. He became a professor at Southern Illinois University. Well, Rob Craig is teaching pinball down there. He's teaching pinball coding and phonetics and design and how chips and circuitry works and so forth. So it was happy for me to donate a whitewood of Legends of Valhalla to the Southern Illinois University. We're going to hear more about that in a little bit because they just got it. They're going to be showing that off to all the new kids in the class. And it got there just before school ended, and the kids went nuts. So Casey is this kid that was a whiz. I mean, he's the kind of kid that says, oh, you want it coated this way? Done. Let's look. Okay, it took the last guy months. So Casey just jumps in, but they want to be there, right? So you have Zofia. She loves pinball. You've got Dennis who wants to be there. You've got Jack who wants to be there. We have two talented video guys. One video girl, a young lady, and one guy. Both very talented animators, which we're going to see in our next game that French has been working on. And then we have some other people that are just passionate that want to be there. You know, Joe Shulker. I can't say enough about him. great coder guy who wants to be part of the team and he's just always thinking about what needs to be done and another one it just does this and you know joe says great things about casey casey says things about joe so it's just happy and steve steve is just now just rolling into this and um he's he's moving more out of sales more into you know coding and rules and and trying to learn the the new fundamentals, which we're all about. And then, you know, so just, you know, you think, okay, this is a great team. Well, no, I also went out and got Matt Senesac, who is a great player. He came down. He worked. He is now running, like, the front office. He's kind of taking care of a bunch of things for me, helping with sales all the time with Steve. I mean, you know, I find that if you build a company with passion and people who want to do it, they don't go to work. They go to have fun, and this thing just happens, okay? and it's great. You know, we got pinball people that are, you know, building a company, you know, from the ground up and want to be there. It's just great. I just, you know, I know Christian's going to say, there's the family thing, David's bringing the family all back together, you know, but it is, it is, it's great to be here. You've got all these, you know, new acquisitions and a solid base and, you know, everyone that you've just gone through. One thing that's left out is the Valhalla guys that their game has seemed to have done very well for you guys. Are you planning to continue to work with them in the future? Yeah, we're working with Scott and Frank. I didn't mean to leave them out, but see, that's the other nice thing. We opened the door for the homebrew guys, and now the homebrew guys are like, oh, there's a company that is acknowledging us. There's a home for freaks like us. Yes, yes. They hired Ryan, the poster child. The poster child of the freaks. There you go. That's my life. But no, we wanted this because, you know, Well, listen, at the end of the day, we build a machine. And, you know, if you build a machine and you love it, everybody else is going to love it. And, I mean, I'm telling you, Scott's game, Legends of Valhalla, he loved it. It plays smooth. It's tough. A good friend of mine who just went to a new pinball company, he worked for another pinball company, but he's known as the king of flow. Let's just say that. He walks up to me at Expo, and he says to me, he goes, he shows me some Jersey Jack. I open my shirt. It's American pinball. He goes, I know. He says, you finally built a game I like. Now it's his turn. Yeah, yeah, he liked it. He says normally he plays one ball and walks away. This day he played three balls. He played the entire game. And he felt like, you know, he's king of adversary games. I mean, you know, he's a good friend, Steve. That is high praise from Steve. Yeah, that is. So are the Valhalla guys consultants or are they? They're still contact. The thing is that Scott and Frank have these huge paying jobs, and they do this little side thing. I could never touch what Scott's making at this other company. He's been working there many years. He's got two kids. I don't want to put him in any. Just build it in the garage, bring it on in. We'll make a deal with you, and we'll do all that stuff. Same thing with Frank. He's a programmer at another company. He's been doing that for many years, and he just sat down and this is just this fun little thing to do. So, I mean, they're part of the family. So Franchi's doing art for you guys as well. Can you spill any details about what he might be working on for you? Because he won't tell us. Next question. I paid Jeff to say that. Yeah, that's right. Are you thinking about what we had to ask him? No, no, no, I know. Listen, Chris is not one and done either. We love his artwork. He moves like lightning. He's already pitched other ideas to us, which we cannot talk about, unfortunately. You mean **** and ****? Yes, yes. And ****, ****, you know, that one too. And, you know, there are many ideas. Chris is a wealth of knowledge. You know, just, you know, creativity just flows out of this guy. There's reasons he calls me and goes, I got this idea. I think **** is a great idea, you know. And I'm like, okay. and then I'm like, well, maybe, and then the next day, like over a weekend, he goes, here's the artwork. I just did it up in about two hours. I'm just, you know, do-do-do-do. What about the artwork for the game that we're doing? I know you've got this love here. Not two hours. I just don't sleep. I saw a piece today that Chris put together in four hours, and I was very impressed. So shout-outs to the Insomniacs. Hold on a minute. Hold on a minute. I never gave an amount of time to any of my work. So are you talking about the single image or the full back glass? Just the single image. Okay. The, uh... Fuck, I can stay and edit it out. Yes. David, I have an NDA with you anyway, so I'm not spilling anything. We just need to get Jeff one, and then we're all... That's right, that's right. Okay, I spent a little more than four hours. I said I spent four hours on it that day, but I also spent two days earlier working on it. You just told me four hours. I'm telling everybody. If you look at that artwork, does it look like four hours worth of work? No. Which is why I brought it up. But I'm thinking to myself, he's telling me four hours. I'm thinking, man, why is he charging me for so many hours to do all the other art? Why is he doing this in four hours? I can think of a lot of reasons why you get charged if you get charged. But anyway, you know, while we're still on the topic of staff, Can you comment on why Josh Coogler is no longer with AP? He seemed to be one of the founding fathers of American Pinball, so to speak, and did a lot to get that company where it is today, but he's no longer with you. So I have it very simple. We're just going to say it like this. In March, American Pinball and Josh decided to part ways, and that's it. That's all I can talk, go into detail. Yes, he was one of the founding fathers. He will always be part of American Pinball. We have Houdini, we have Oktoberfest, we have Hot Wheels, we even have Legends of Valhalla. And Josh worked on lots of parts of those games. In fact, he coded all of Houdini. He worked with Joe Chilber with Oktoberfest and himself on that. Then they worked on Hot Wheels together. There's many things that Josh will always be part of American Pinball that will always be in his thing. But just in March, we decided to part ways, and that's what we're leaving it. Do you know if he's going to stay in pinball? Can you speak to that? I've heard already that he's working on some homebrew stuff, which he was originally a homebrewer. So, you know, hey, I'd love to see some stuff. I mean, he was very talented with some of the homebrew stuff that he had been working on. And, you know, he had a passion, right? Listen, the guy was doing homebrew stuff and then walked into the industry and basically coded Houdini in nine, ten months so they could make a course show. Four hours. Four hours. I mean, really, he really worked, you know, he put in his life and things. And to this day, you know, he's always going to be the guy of Houdini, you know, and Oktoberfest is part of him as much as Hot Wheels. And he even helped Frank with the integration of Legends of Valhalla into the AP system. Okay. And then two other guys that also are part of the family, Michael Grant. I can't say, you know, can't not say that he wasn't part of the family. He was there. He put his time in with us, worked on sales, but he also helped with the code and just worked on the code with Frank on Legends of Valhalla, worked on finding the bugs and everything else. And then Steve, when he walked in, Bowden, he kind of just did the same thing. He took right over when Michael left and just kept working with Frank. And, you know, again, it's all part of that family. Does it hurt? Yes. Are we going to miss him? Sure. But we'll see him at shows, you know. But he will always be American pinball alumni. You know, what's cool about what you've just said is the fact that you've got all these different people and they all seem to love pinball so much that, I mean, you might have a guy there that just empties out the trash. He goes, hey, I got an idea for a multiball, and you have an open-door Ryan Policky to take in all these suggestions and bounce them up and see if it'll work. Yeah, yeah, that's really cool because a lot of people are just like, you know, stay in your lane. You know, there seem to be no lanes at American Pinball, which is kind of cool because all these separate mines would make for one great machine. They're very dotted lines for the lanes. Yeah, yeah. We have some lanes, like you said, they're dotted, but the door is open, right? You know, creativity, you can't just keep it under a jar and keep it to two people because after a while it just doesn't work, right? So we have to open that up to everybody. Listen, I have the guy from the cabinets who have come up and he has said, you know, if you change this one shot, I think it's going to be good. We had people in the cabinet department taking bets how many Legends of Valhalla we would release and how many would sell within the first 24 hours. And there were people who were right on the number. Okay. And that was quite impressive because they're passionate about it, you know? And that's what makes it fun to run this company. Let's talk a little bit about some of the other company decisions that you guys have made just to kind of push a little bit more into where AP is heading. So in April, we learned that moving forward, you're still going to be producing all the games in your catalog, but you're making some changes to the deluxe versions of the game. So after your next run, all cabinet styles across your titles will be similar. They'll come with black side rails only and some changes to being made to the game toys. Can you tell us a little bit more about why you made those changes? Well, it's just financial. Listen, I have to keep looking at the bottom line. I don't want to keep raising prices on people. I want to give you a game that you're paying for, and I want you to feel good that you're paying a good price for it, okay? And, you know, when I have to go and have 200 side rails painted a special color just for Oktoberfest, because I don't have it in there, and now the price of that color has gone up, or it's not existent anymore, or there's this. There's reasons that we do it just for limited runs, right? There should be limited runs. So limited runs are always going to have the little extra, the stuff that we can do with, whereas the classic model will still have the, you know, the standard industry coin-op version of this game. Because listen, guys, you know, I know you're in the home sales world, right? I come from an industry where there was zero home sales. In fact, I was working for a company. We did $120 million a year, and not one of it was being sold to the home. The company literally had 21 game lines producing 21 different brands of games, doing somewhere close to 500 games a week, shipping all over the world, and not one was going to the home. And what happened when COVID hit, they literally had to shut and lock the doors because there was no orders coming in for the coin op industry. It almost killed them. And needless to say, the guy who ran and owned the company, a good friend, good mentor, Ralph Coppola, he saw, I don't know how he did it, but he saw to make a war chest. and that company, and I'm going to touch on this for a second because Ralph was the kind of guy that treated everybody, and it gives me the reason why I treat everybody like family, okay? Ralph would walk the line every morning and talk to people when he was in the building. He would go up to people that had been here 20 years and ask how their kids are doing. He knew people by name. He knew what they were doing. He knew their kids when they were going to college. He would actually give out little gifts when their kids graduated from college. He helped families. He was the kind of guy that gave back because you were working for him. That meant a lot to him. And he gave back to his employees very heavily. So when this happened, he had a war chest. And, you know, some hard decisions had to be made, and they had to make them. And then there were some more hard decisions that had to be made. But, listen, they kept a hundred people core on the payroll, paying them for almost a year and a half through COVID and took care of these people and made sure that they were there. And to this day, all those people are still there, and a bunch of people have gone back. I mean, when I took the job at American, they told me, Fixer, and that's what my nickname was there at the company, you always have family here. And if it doesn't work out at AP and things go wrong, you always have a job here. We love you. And we're so proud of you. and Americans are going to be so lucky to get you and you're going to do some hard numbers for them. You're going to have to do a lot of work like you usually do, but you can do this. And at the end of the day, they just, you know, to this day I still talk to some of the guys all the time and the owners at the trade shows always say, hey, you want to go out for drinks or something? You know, it's just kind of, it's just great to have that backing. But that's the core that I brought to America. And, you know, those employees, you know, Everybody who works for me, I see them just like Ralph did. They're family. So that's a key point. You had mentioned at one point that American Pinball was also thinking about selling game add-ons that would physically mod your game on the play field. It might change gameplay in a new and fun way. Where are you with that, and can you tell us more about what that might mean? So we still are working on that. So there are going to be some company mods that will be coming out. We talked, Ryan, about a couple ideas. You know what it is? It's timing. It's everything that hits you. Trust me, all those mods that I have in my mind that we've already shared as a group, they're on the back burner. It's just one of those things you've got to turn it up. But it's tough when you're running a company and all of a sudden all the stuff hits the fan at once and you're trying to scramble to get your lines back up and running and doing this. So sometimes some of the mods hold off. Now, we do have one that is very far along. It's an upgrade for Oktoberfest. It will be coming out shortly. It's going to help reliability of the game, okay? So, and there are two other ones that we're looking at. Of course, one for Houdini, which I had already consulted Josh about, and he's like, yeah, that'll work great before he left. And there's other mods that we're working on also, maybe for Hot Wheels. and just, you know, there's little things that, you know, will improve the gameplay or change it a little bit, gives people a little bit more of that wow factor, and then they can just, you know, add on to their game and change it. So it's kind of a neat little thing that we're looking at doing. Well, it's the part of the interview that people are probably most interested in, and let's talk future American pinball titles. So it seems like you guys have a lot in the works over there, and you've talked on this show about your goal of getting two titles released in a year. Can you comment on what your current release schedule goals are? and where you are in the process of achieving those? Well, as soon as Christopher Franchi gets done, gets his work done, then we should be able to... No, no, Chris is not my hold-up. Chris has never been my hold-up. Chris is my sounding board half the time. So, listen, we'd love to come out with more games. You know, I mean, I wanted to have two games this year, right? Hey, listen, Stern pulled their production. They didn't even come out with one in the spring. We're trying to catch up. I'm happy to say that I signed off yesterday on the third line being installed at American Pinball. So now we're not going to have just one line, two lines. We're going to have a third line. So, you know, I'm going to be able to pump out a lot more games. The cabinet changes that we talked about a minute ago before I got on my soapbox and what it's all about, that's another reason that we wanted to streamline things, you know, so that we have all the parts. You know, I'm not waiting for legs. I'm not working with side rails or lockdown bars that are in a certain color. I'm not waiting for a cabinet that's this, this, this cabinet, and that's that cabinet. You know, so it's one of those things that we're just trying to streamline it to the manufacturability of getting games pumped out on a continuous basis. So I'm not running and stopping, running and stopping, running and stopping. And trust me, everybody wants games. I'm happy to say that we announced the kind of like the final run of the trim package of Oktoberfest and sold it out. That was gone. we're going to announce that also with Houdini down the road probably in two months and you know I already have some of the distributors are like you know if you're going to do this again then let us know because we're just going to do this we're just going to buy them out right now so Houdini is already kind of partially done that way Legends of Valhalla is just flying out the door as fast as we can make them one thing I want to talk about because everybody asks me this question and I just want to touch base on it for two seconds Everybody asks me, when are we going to hear about Legends of Ahala Classic? And that's the number one question. And probably one on your list, but I'm going to check it out for you now. Legends of Ahala Classic will come out once Legends of Ahala Deluxe Limited is done. I am giving the people who ponyed up and said, listen, I want the Deluxe Limited Edition. I'm buying it. You guys get the first rights. Okay. When that is done, then I will bring out the classic and let that be available for it. So because you, the consumer, the pinball wanted it so much, you get the game first, all right, because you said yes. And I'm going to honor that. And then I'm going to bring out the classic. And then that will be open for everybody. And trust me, the line of people who want classics already, it's staggering because the number, you know, I know there's another podcaster who is saying, nobody wants Legends of Valhalla. And I will tell you right now that I have close to double the original release amount of the deluxes with people who have already kind of said, yes, let me know when the classic is available. So that's just, you know, hard numbers that we're excited about. I'm happy that, you know, Scott developed a great game with Frank. But overall, I want to make sure that the guy who put in the money, he said, I want that deluxe. Those 500 customers, they'll get them first. Then we'll bring out the classics for the rest of the people because they put their time in. And guess what? We're going to do that again with the next release. We'll have a deluxe limited edition. We'll bring it out. It'll be those people who get it first. Then we'll bring out the other game, the classics. Oh, you're going to want that deluxe one. Oh, yes. Yeah, you are. And I'm going to tell you, Christopher Franchi did some beautiful art. It is complete Franchi art from top to the bottom. And trust me, Chris is the one who's like, damn it, now I've got to find a new spot to put this game because I'm loving this thing. This has got so much in here, and I'm just loving every piece of it. It's funny that you say that because I remember when I was working on the art, it wasn't until I was about halfway through that you felt you were getting a Franchi, quote-unquote, art package. So I was concerned that, like, for the first half, you were like, when's he going to step it up? This isn't quite up to snuff here. Like, what's going on? No, no, no, no, no. You've got to remember, I can't beat you down at the beginning. I've got to let you get enough into it, then beat you down a little bit. You know, because if I beat you down too early, then you're going to walk away. All right, so can you guys give us some hints as to when we might see this? You will see this in 2022. All right. And here's the thing, guys. Timing, manufacturability, and other things. Listen, I really want to get the Legends of Valhalla out first, the deluxe models before releasing another game to everybody. Then bring the classic out. That will be on the third line. Because, you know, the people who support American Pinball, we support them. And I think I said this on another podcast and a couple other things. I don't know if you guys know this. I think I said this also to Texas, that all the deluxe models are getting Art Blades that are done free of charge. We're going to be signing those out. They're going to be added to all the deluxe models. The people who already got deluxe models, make sure you register your game. I signed off yesterday on the artwork and the printing. We got part of them in. We don't have enough yet, but we're going to be starting shipping some of those out to the people who registered their game. And that's a free upgrade from us at American Pinball. Thank you very much for your support and your allegiance and staying with us. I'm happy to say that, you know, I have been looking at Pinside and all the other marketplaces. I do not see anybody selling their Legends of Valhalla to us. Once they get it, they're like, wow, I did not know that this was going to, this is a sleeper. Texas was blown away by it. Everybody in Texas just loved it. We had people lining up, up and down. Even Franchi came over and looked at it a couple times, played a few games. Well, I played it at the shop. Yeah, I know you played it at the shop. Well, I mean, Mrs. Pinn, who's not on this show, she played it at the shop. And I love it because there was this debate about one of the side shots, one of the orbits. And Mrs. Pinn hit it three times in a row without beating the pass. And a couple other people were complaining about the shot. And when I saw her hit it three times in a row, I'm like, we're done. Yeah, she loved it. I mean, when we went in, it was kind of like a magical Willy Wonka behind the curtain moments where we finally got to see what actually happens in the super secret room at a pinball company. And I was blown away. You guys had a really cool setup in there, and it was just so neat to see the original game that was made on the homebrew side and then what American Pinball had done to enhance it even further. And even though it wasn't completely finished when we were there, you could really see where it was headed, and it was almost done. That was amazing. Super fun to play. Thank you again for giving us that access. You're welcome. And I know your daughter's had some fun with that too. Yep. And thanks for bringing the candy. That always helps keep everybody happy in the factory. Ryan, when you see this guy, make sure you bring his candy. The perks of living in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Yeah. The home of chocolate. So, Ryan, I'll definitely have some for you. He brings me Fireball when he sees me. Oh, I want some of that too. You got it. Chocolate and Fireball. Fireball the candy or Fireball the drink? The drink. Ah, the official drink of pinball. That's right. Well, speaking of new games, AP is one of few companies that is still putting a lot of weight behind unlicensed games. Besides Hot Wheels, every title so far has been unlicensed. Where do you see the ratio between unlicensed versus licensed themes going moving forward in the future? Because I know a lot about the licensed ones, but I don't know about the unlicensed ones. Well, except for the one. But I'm not going to say any more than that. Very good. I'm glad that you figured that out. That's good enough. Answer the question. I want that in the show. I was going to ask you to have the button. Just answer the question. I mean, hit it. So let's talk about licensed and unlicensed games. Okay. I will tell you that licensed and unlicensed games, yes. There is a two-edged sword with licensed games. We've always said this, right? You have the licensor who kind of holds your hand and controls you back, and the unlicensed person doesn't do that. I mean, the unlicensed title allows us to do it. The other thing the unlicensed title does that a lot of people don't know about is we can continue to make that game many years after the licensor has already said stop. So when you have a licensed title, it's on a clicking time, you know, And you can go back and pay more money to extend the license, which is doable. But just remember, it's costing you something. So, you know, you have to take those into account. Whereas, like Houdini, still classic. People love it. People are still buying it. You know, I'm happy to say that we're still selling it in great quantity. It's a good game. It's a tough game, but it's a good game. I know Chris always says that he plays Houdini. He wants to love the game. I want to so bad. I think it's just because I suck, really. Yeah, and the funny thing is he puts his money in his start, the thing kicks him in the groin and says, get away. You know, or give me more money. That's what it feels like, but I think seriously it's his lack of skill. I can't hit the shots. I can't find the shots. I can't hit them. I never claimed to be a good pinball player. I just love to play it. Remember, I designed them for five-year-olds, so you'll be fine. That's nice. There you go. Sweet. All right. But I will tell you that they're in great demand. People want them. And also, here's the other thing. On licensed titles, we can do T-shirts. We can do all kinds of swag for those, right? We can do everything from lunch boxes, right, Chris? Oh, spoiler on that one. Oh, oh, oh. Action figures? Action figures? Action figures? Oh, another spoiler. So you can do all kinds of crazy things when it's unlicensed. One thing about that, and I'll say from an outsider because I don't know if you're just not thinking of this and would say it as well. Well, what people don't seem to think is that a company like American Pinball is not Stern. You guys don't have the financial backing that Stern has. So when you produce a non-licensed game, you're getting all of that money. You're not paying out royalties, and that money goes back into the company to help you grow, to help you afford licenses in the future. So it's important for a company like yourself to have those things. It's not like people think it's like you're trying to skimp out or something like that. It's a stepping stone that's necessary to a company that is growing. Absolutely. Can you give us an idea, though, of what you think moving forward your ratio of those will be? Obviously, you're going to continue doing unlicensed games. Well, yeah. I mean, listen, we don't want to go down that road where we're always, I mean, I like the idea of being, and most of the designers love the idea of, you know, letting their creativity and let that craziness go run wild to create a game that's unlicensed, right? And when you think about it, there's only your imagination to stop you. So, I mean, if I told Ryan, which he's already talked about, unlicensed things, he's like, oh, we can do this, we can do that, watch what I'm going to do with this, and we put this in, and he just, you know. And trust me, you get people like Steven Bowden and then Jack and then other people and Chris Granchy, and you start putting these people together and you say, go at it. You see what they come up with. I'd like to suggest my next non-licensed title right now, if I may. Is this the one we were already talking about? It's called Lingerie Store. I knew this was coming. I knew it was going to be something off-color. So, Ryan, I mean, do you have a... Just keep going. Bulldoze that. Yeah, yeah. So, Ryan, do you feel like you have a preference? Obviously, you started with a licensed theme as your homebrew, but do you have... Oh, okay. So do you have some ideas? I mean, obviously... It's up to you right now. Okay. So David's actually referring to the first game I ever designed, which was a VPX exclusive for Visual Pinball, because I designed it just to teach myself the tools. And that was an unlicensed, like, just nonsense thing that I made called Cosmic Lady with the most cheesy, like, 70s disco soundtrack you could think of, and I just got a bunch of, like, silhouettes of yoga girls and just cut it out of space pictures from the Hubble telescope. It was the, like, silliest thing ever, but you can actually go download that on visualvpforums.com if you want. I finished it, rules and music and everything, so there's the little bit of trivia you're alluding to there. But, so I actually really like both. I think both are important. I will tell you right now, I have some ideas that I've already pitched and fixed in the car as he's toting me around Chicago before I move out there that would not fit into any license. I'm like, hey, I got a dumb idea. How about I do X? He never says no. I'll give him that. The man never says no outright. He makes me come up with my own no's. But there's some things that he's absolutely right. You can never do in a license title because it either doesn't fit with anything thing or like you're you're losing a portion of the money you're putting into the product in somewhere else um and like sometimes you end up with a really amazing license with a really bare play field there's like reason for that other times if you don't have all that that is definitely yeah that's the one i'm talking about i own a star wars for around a year um i don't anymore on the other hand i also like being able to take a source material and adapting it because that can help you, like, really tap into somebody's, like, appreciation and why they loved the source material in the first place, and that can help guide you a little bit. Because, like, limitation breeds creativity as well. Like, you can have a wide-open canvas, or you can have a canvas with a bunch of holes in it, and now all of a sudden you have to get creative and work around them or make them part of your piece of art. So, like, both approaches are valid, and I actively want to do both. And in fact, the two games that I already have fully designed, one was designed with a license in mind. I have no idea if it'll ever be a thing. That was just a, well, let's see if I can do this. And the other one, I, on purpose, had no license in mind whatsoever. Like, can I just make a fun thing for a ball to roll around on and for a player to shoot, and then we can drop something on it? And that a perfectly valid approach and I think you need to have both I honestly less of a fan of when I see things like people designing games and then dropping a licensed theme on top of it Because then you have no connection, really, with the source material and what's on that play field. You just have a skin, and it could have been anything. I mean, I understand that that's sometimes a valid and necessary approach, but I would much rather that game be released as unlicensed because otherwise you're not cheating. We'll go back to Sonic. If someone else were to do Sonic and they designed a game and then just drop that on top of it, you think it would be anywhere near as good as mine? No way. I designed it from the ground up with that theme in mind, and that's not always an option. So, I don't know. I think there's a place for both. People say they want unlicensed titles, and I think they do because, like David said, we're selling at an incredible rate a lot of our unlicensed titles, and I have some unlicensed titles that I've been pitching. I'm like, can I do this one? Like, this ridiculous unlicensed thing that I'm now trying to convince you to do, I'm excited for. So it's both. Well, let me ask you a question based on this. And listeners will enjoy this because it brings up something that they always scratch their head about. First of all, I have to ask you a question. Name me a band that you hate more than life itself. Huh. So the problem with this is that. A movie that you hate. Anything that you hate. Give me a licensed property that you hate. I can't. For fuck's sake. Because the one I want to give you, I can't say. Okay, all right, so we're going to play pretend. Okay, okay, okay. Let me ask you a question, and this is totally hypothetical. Christopher, you are not having any say into this. Ryan, people have talked about Beavis and Butthead. What do you think about that? Stupidest freaking thing I've ever seen in my life. Okay, we're going to go with that. I designed a Beetlejuice back glass, and I thought Beetlejuice would make a fantastic license. I'm not going to say who I brought it to, but I brought it to a company who then showed it to all their designers, and none of the designers wanted to do it. So they kicked it back to me and said no, which blew my mind. If David comes to you and says, I'm putting you on Beavis and Butthead, are you the kind of designer that's going to do it because it's your job, or are you going to say, I've got to spend a year with this. I would prefer not to. I'm the kind of designer who's going to say, I'm going to do this because it's my job, but I'm going to bitch the entire time and make it miserable for you, David. Do you feel like you could immerse yourself in it so much? I see you're comfortable with your boss now, Ryan, by the way. I have to be. You have to be to keep up with him. Do you feel like you could get into it enough? You could immerse yourself in this and make it? If it were something I truly despised, I would need a lot of help because I would probably be wanting to put things in the game that made fun of the source material, and that's not fair to those fans. That's the thing. I understand the need to have somebody be passionate about what they're working on or at least have some good ideas because otherwise it's not fair to the people who actually are fans of whatever that thing is. Well, there's another angle you have to look at. I think I might have gotten in trouble. You've got to think about this, though. I'm not making fun of anybody. I'm just saying this because it's a very hard job that I personally would not want. If you dug ditches for a living and someone said, dig a ditch over there, that guy's going to go over there and dig a ditch because that's his job. He's not going to say, I don't want to dig a ditch over there. So wouldn't pinball be the same thing? If it's your job and you have to do it, it may not be exactly what you want to do. Wouldn't you just do it? Exactly. Well, luckily when you're a pinball designer, they put you in the category of artist, which I'm sure you know something about. So we get a couple of privileges under the, like, we hired you to be creative. And it's like, all right, well, yes, I am going to go dig that ditch. The ditch I'm going to dig you, you're probably not going to like. But I'll do my job. So you're going to do your job poorly. Not on purpose. I'm just going to be honest about it up front to try to save somebody some time. So I'm going to jump in here and I'm just going to say this. You know, listen, I'm the guy at the end of the day who wants the people to enjoy what they're doing. Right. We've talked about this before, and I brought it out in this podcast, I think, pretty heavily, that you have an employee who wants to work or a designer who has a passion that wants to do it, it shows in the game. I'm going to take back all of us to 2009 and a couple games that were made by Stern, and we're kind of like just thrown at designers and kind of said, here, go do this. And the designers were like, I don't like this. I don't want to do this. And it kind of showed in the games. All right. So, you know, and I think we brought it up, too, that, you know, some of these people are spending a year of their life. Do I really want to subject them to a year of digging ditches, right? I mean, yes, we want to better ourselves. There are some people who just love to dig ditches, you know. At the end of the day, it's just what you're passionate about. I mean, Chris, I can say we want you to do some artwork like another artist that you can ask them to stand. Hold on, we can actually bring up something that is actually real. Now, you can tell me to cut this out if you want. Okay. And I'll be happy to cut it out. Quick editor's note, sorry, he made me cut it out. Oh, Jeff, I have something I want you to talk about. I want you to talk about the NEPL annexing Illinois. Oh, snap. Is that some sort of a tournament shit? Yes, tournament shit, yeah. And moving on. Christopher Frenkie can't tournament shit. that's all I do in pinball we can't do that no no he gets his own segment but we're not going to throw it in the interview too but what we can do what we can do as part of our tourney talk is you can submit your question and he will do it as part of the show not part of the interview but I should be polite to your guests that ask questions okay then can you ask it after I ask the last question has to do with the main interview, and then we can move on to whatever. Yes. You know what? I don't want to ask this question. After all that. Let's just get on toppers and shit and whatever. No, ask the question. I want to hear it. Okay. We see homemade toppers selling for thousands of dollars, yet most companies are still making flat acrylic toppers with some colored LEDs. Ryan made a functional roller coaster for his rehab of roller coaster tycoon at Fantastic. Would you consider making Ryan head of your topper division, maybe? Well, I don't have a problem with Ryan doing toppers. No. But I don't want him to be lost in toppers. I want game design. I think we all see great game designs. But I think at the end of the day, a topper is kind of nice. And, in fact, if Mrs. Penn wanted to submit a topper, we would probably consider it. All right. Holy cow. It's easy. That is amazing. We're swinging wide open for the Mrs. Penn. And so I said, David, please tell David Fix from Mrs. Penn that she will absolutely quit her teaching job to head up your topper division. If she can work remotely from Pennsylvania, we've been offered big bucks for our homemade toppers. All of that talent can be yours. And then she paused and she said, actually, I don't know if American Pinball can handle me. I'm wicked extra when it comes to toppers. I don't know if they can handle my bill of materials. but she would very much take you up on the offer of of creating something so if you guys ever wanted to uh you know send her some some ideas in terms of what she might base her her topper on i think she could take that and run with it brace yourself for what you're gonna get though because it's gonna be like ultra topper i love it i know it's gonna be it's gonna be extra that is definitely it's a world over glass you know what i might just take her up on that you know that's awesome David. I would definitely, you know, listen, she's very talented. I'd question her taste in men with the guy she married, but... All right, give it to someone else other than me, yeah! And Ryan will tell you I'm an equal opportunity abuser, but no, I think that, of course... And she's a brand, too. Mrs. Penn is a pinball brand. That's well known. Listen, I could actually get behind, you know, her design up something, and then that be the factory mod. the factory licensed topper and then you can buy it through American Pinball but she will have to make like 10,000 of them to make sure it can keep the toxin in bowling that's a lot of glue sticks but fire up that glue gun fire up that, we'll get her some hot glue guns there you go we can tell her to get away from her husband's cheap glue sticks and we'll give her some professional hot glue guns no, no Listen, I've been open to people who come up with games for toppers. I mean, there's been some great ideas that have been done. Listen, we put toppers on some of our games. Could they be better? Of course. You know, I mean, it depends on, you know, I mean, I love the Indiana Jones topper that came out last year. Didn't that win, I think, a flippy? That thing was just crazy. You know, I mean, I have an Indiana Jones. It would look great. I mean, I know Franchi has a creature from the Black Lagoon topper hanging in his bathroom so it's staring at people when he goes to the bathroom. But I don't know. Whatever. You know, for the most part, I mean, I like toppers. They're kind of cool. They dress up the game. And I mean, listen, we want a topper. We can build you a topper. I mean, it's kind of crazy what the price is for these things. I mean, I used to buy pins, two or three pins for the price that some people get one topper for. I mean, I know you guys were just talking about that earlier with Ryan, you know, what you guys could buy games, what we're going to say that. I mean, if I went back far enough, I mean, I don't want to go that far back, but, you know, the Bride of Pinbot and Pinbot, my first two games, I paid $2,000. For those two games. Oh. Oh. Yeah. $800 for the Pinbot and $1,200 for the Bride. Nice. Those were the days. Those were the days. And you know what? That was chopped and cleaned and done and gone through. And I'm not working. I was buying broken pin bots for $400. So I was like, you know, I mean, there were times when you did that. But toppers? Sure, why not? I mean, I love it. I mean, there's toppers that can be made for just about anything. And I'm looking back there right now, and I see, what is that one you have behind you, Christian, in the corner with the topper? I'm trying to see that right now. There's a Wonka. There is Jurassic Park. Ripley's, Tack. And then we've got a Liberty Bell. She's got to do one for Liberty Bell. Yeah, right now it's just Liberty Gin and a bunch of, like, little bells. I mean, she's got to get it set up so that every time you hit the bell, it goes ding, and it just rings, you know, and drives people nuts. Like the top of the old Taco Bell building, you know, the little arm and a half. Uh-huh, uh-huh. Yeah. When you bring that up, it makes me think about Mexican pizza. Chris, have you got any Mexican pizzas lately? I finally got it. let's just say it took me four visits to finally get one and since i i tried so long and i was really hungry i'm like i'm getting three fuck it so i ate three mexican pizzas and i had the shits for two days i mean i could have told you that dude i had gas pain so it goes gas bubbles we get where it's just like oh man did it tear me up fuck those mexican pizzas well that's a great visual to go out on better visual Ryan the pinball world is rooting for you man the fact that Sonic's Pinball was your first go at designing a game and was so universally loved and celebrated is a really great sign of things to come from you at American so thanks for coming on with us we'd love to have you back in the future to talk about your next game thank you so much for having me I'd love to and David it's always a lot of fun to have you man go fuck yourself that's how you make them feel at home yeah we really appreciate uh that you've always been really open with the latest and greatest developments at ap so you're assembling an incredible team over there and we're really grateful that you're willing to share their stories with us and uh with our listeners i enjoy being on with your listeners i uh you know listen we're all pinball hobbyists we all love the game we all are we have a passion for it and uh i'm just making the company being that passionate about it so that we all are loved by everybody. So, you know, we're going to go out there and have a fun time doing it. And we're going to create great games. And, listen, I love it that we have a great quality, right? We stand on our quality, and if you've got a problem with it, call me. My door is open for my employees. It's open for my customers. It's open for everybody. So if there's a problem with the game, I want to know about it, and I will take care of it. That's my guarantee as not only as the executive vice president of American Pinball, But also, as a collector and a hobbyist in his own right, wanting to make sure that everybody's happy with their product. Mr. Fix's word is bond. There you go. Thank you, sir. Awesome show, as always. Thank you very much. Thank you, guys. This is a special Super Awesome Breaking News Report with your host, Christopher Franchi. Well, everybody, since the recording of the interview you just heard, there was a video that went out by a certain pinball podcaster who doesn't play pinball, nor does he have one in his home, but considers himself an authority. Some questions were raised that he had the incorrect answers to, so I brought David Fix from American Pinball back on to address these questions and get the correct answers out there so there's no confusion. How are you doing, Dave? Doing good, Chris. It's kind of late at night, but I heard the airwaves are burning up, so let's get the record straight. All right. Okay, I guess the first question would be, is it true that Rob Burke, the man behind the Chicago Pinball Expo, is an investor in American Pinball? No, that's not true. Rob Burke is a partner of mine. We run Pinball Expo together, but he has no financial backing in American Pinball. In fact, he's not a distributor. I don't think he even owns an American Pinball yet. Well, I'll have to change that, but no. A nerve. Yeah, he has no financial backing in American Pinball. It's just Mukesh Rasani. All right. Now, is it true that American Pinball is putting Houdini, Oktoberfest, Hot Wheels, and Legends of Valhalla back on the line? Well, yes. Actually, Legends of Valhalla has not gone off the line. It's continuously rolling off the assembly line. The secondary game line right now is making Oktoberfest. We have orders. We have tons of orders for all four of our titles. Not just here, but overseas as well. Just like Stern right now, if you look at Stern's recent posts, they're making Mandalorians. That was a game from over a summer ago. That was before Godzilla. So they're still making Mandalorians right now in the factories. So we're still making, of course, Oktoberfest, Legends of Valhalla, and Houdini is going to go back on the line, and so is Hot Wheels. In fact, there is a third game line being installed. We just signed off on it, and we have that being produced in the factory. So pretty shortly we'll be able to have three different games coming off the floor and be able to produce games. We're talking about a fourth one in 2023. Just to be clear, your business model is not to prepay for games when people order them, correct? Correct. Our business model is we make the games, we tell you they're ready, you pay for them. A bunch of our distributors have a prepay or a deposit system set up, but that is not with American Pinball. That is only with the distributors. Okay? So what happens is they put their orders in. We do not see the money until we finish and put the game out. But the customer is giving a deposit to the distributor. Correct. Now, is that every distributor or just the ones that choose to do business that way? It's just the way that some of the distributors choose to do business. Now, do you know what the cap is on that deposit? I do not know. I don't set any of those. Those are not set in any of their terms and conditions with our contracts. So it's entirely up to them. Correct. Okay. And just a little tidbit of information that I heard, Stern is also making two less games in 2023 as well to catch up on back orders. So a lot of people are running their lines with old games because they're just trying to play catch up. You know, Chris, there is a reason that Stern did not release a game this spring. And who knows, maybe they'll cut back on their production in 2023 because they're trying to catch up as well. Many of the manufacturers are trying to catch up right now with the orders that are on hand. So we are still trying to catch up on all the orders we have on hand, including Legends of Valhalla Classic, which has not been released yet. But I have a list of names of people who already have signed on for the Legends of Valhalla Classic, even though I haven't disclosed what's going to be in it or the price tag. Now, are your builds that you're currently going through now, are they just to address orders? Are you making any back stock or just filling orders? Yep, we're just filling orders. We're just filling the orders that have already been placed and purchase orders from all the distributors. Now, in our interview, you talked about how you're going to be completing some Barry Osler games. It's assumed that the game is Food Truck. Is that true? No, it's not going to be Food Truck. We don't have the rights to Food Truck. We don't have rights to any of Barry's games right yet. Barry's games, he did six games in three years for Deep Root. Anybody who does any research and does the due diligence of actually not reading somebody else's posts or reading somebody else's stories and doing their digging can find out there were a lot of games, sadly, that got very far in development, Deep Root, and just never saw the light of day. And it's kind of interesting to see what that all is. But for us, Barry started working with us in September of last year, and within the six months that he was with us, he had developed a fresh new game, a new theme. In fact, we worked on it with the theme. We kind of worked the title around a little bit, and he worked with Steven Bowden that whole time, working on the rules and the concept of the game. and trust me, the entire team is totally on board with this game that's going to be a fresh game from Barry. It's Barry's last game. In fact, Barry finished this game and I was already starting and throwing ideas at me for his next game like three days before he died. In fact, I got the call on Tuesday morning while I was in Chicago and it was a shocker to me because I had literally talked to him three days earlier and he already had an idea for his next game with American. Now, it was also said that Legends of the Halepins were sent out to several prominent arcades free of charge to be paid six months down the road. Is this true? Yeah, Chris, we did do that. And I did hear somebody ask that question to me going, does anybody else ever do that? And they have. Other locations, other companies have done this in the past. It's to test the markets to see how things go. Listen, we didn't want to tease the public. I hate to be teased by the public. I wanted you to basically understand that this is the game. We did a cross, we did a multimedia blitz. We put it into a magazine that was shipped to 7,000 pinball subscribers across the United States and Europe. We took over the whole magazine. on the same day that that hit the mailboxes was the day that the locations revealed it. We also revealed where it was going to be. All the locations were in the magazine so that people could see this. The idea of this is to catch the public and the pinball community basically by saying, hey, we're not going to say this is our next game and then let you sit two weeks and then let you sit two more weeks. We're just going to reveal this and say, here it is. It's in production. You want it? Go play it. And that's exactly what we did with the street launch. And the street launch locations had been suffering terribly because of COVID. So for me to give back to these locations was basically just giving them the game, telling them, hey, listen, I want to get you the game. You got to be quiet about this. You can't tell anybody you're going to get it. This is the day we launch it. And trust me, all the locations were on board 100%. They loved it. They are using the games. They basically promoted it. Jack Bar in New York got one. And I'm telling you, John over there loved it. People lined up and brought people back to their locations. See, the idea of this was to try to help reestablish these locations to go play pinball. They just went 12, 24 months, if not more, going through COVID and wondering where they're going to, you know, the people are going to find them again. You know, putting these games in locations really helped them put them back on the map and made them a location that people came. I think of Interium in Chicago. It is their home test location. They have all four games. We constantly go in there and monitor them. These locations that received them gave me back feedback on the cash box and also if there were problems with the games. These games were special to those people. And, yes, I did that. Yeah, and, you know, the other good thing about doing that is I think, you know, when other companies come out with reveals for their games, you see a video that's been edited. And the gameplay is usually minor. You don't see much of what's going on, you know, up on the backboard and whatnot. But this gives people an opportunity to go out and play it. And, you know, it's a tight-knit community. So if you're not close to an area where there was a game, you certainly probably knew a friend who was. And rather than just take the video as a word for it, you could actually have a conversation with someone who played the game and found out what they thought about it. Absolutely. And I have to agree with you on that. I've said this in many podcasts. I continuously say, play the game, right? I know John at Jack Bar will say to Kaneda, did you play the game, Kaneda? Have you played Toy Story 4 before making your criticisms or saying something? Listen, the day that JJP launched Toy Story, okay, the next day it was out on location in Chicago. Where was I? I took the entire team, or a good part of the team, the next day I took the rest of the team to Interium. We had a dinner, and we played the game. We supported JJP and their launch of Toy Story 4. We were there. We played it. You know, I have to play the game before I give any criticism on it. I do not think that it's fair to judge it by just watching videos or watching, you know, streamers, you know. But I have to put my hands on the game. And listen, hey, at the end of the day, listen to the pinball players, the people who play the game. If you put time on it, and I have to give kudos to Gary Hardy. I listened to his YouTube channel that he put on, and he put two hours on Toy Story. Listen, he had all fair points about the game, okay? And listen, he puts his time in on it, and I agree with that. So you have to play the game. Every game is different for every person. And unless you're playing it, you're just going by somebody else's word. It's a small community. Put your time in. Go play it. And the other thing is that American had such a wishy-washy launch with Hot Wheels. People were like, well, why didn't they do it this way? Why didn't they do it that way? Here, here's the game. Go play it. There it is. I'm not going to announce it and say this is it. We caught everybody by surprise. In fact, hey, J.J.P. put the game out the day after they announced their game, right? So obviously we've already changed the industry a little bit, and I wouldn't be surprised if Stern, on their next release, does something a little bit different than we've seen before. Then again, maybe they'll just give you a trailer sometime in about three weeks and then show you another trailer two weeks after that, and then probably get the machines out sometime by the end of August. of people to see things, or whenever they're going to release their next game. Well, I can guarantee you, not if you're talking to a marketing person, but if you're talking to a pinball player or a pinball buyer, and you said, I'm going to give you two choices. I'm going to spend $35,000 on a fancy video that you can watch on release day, or I'm going to have this game in 25 different arcades for people to play, and not only will you see the game, but you will have the chance to talk to people that you know, whose opinion you trust and find out what they thought of the actual play of the game. Most of those people would pick the latter. Correct. So. Absolutely correct. And hey, listen, I mean, I know certain people don't remember history, but I have recorded clips from certain podcasters who said, David Fix, you're absolutely correct. I was wrong. And, you know, here it is. Legends of Valhalla was received. Congratulations. kudos to you, Michael Grant, and all the rest of the team over at American Pinball for what you did with Legends of Valhalla. And listen, we went a week later after Expo and won Best Modern Game at MGC for Legends of Valhalla. It has to be played by people. People, you know, I was at Texas. People played it at Texas, and they loved it, you know. In fact, I had somebody who came to Texas to buy one machine specifically because she always loved that machine, and she changed her mind while at the show and bought the Legends of Valhalla. Oh, yeah? It's funny. It's just, you know, she says, I love this game, and people are like, it's a sleeper. Do you remember what the game was that she was planning on buying? I do not remember, no. But I know she changed her mind, and she says she'd taken the Legends of Valhalla, and she went over and talked to our distributor there, who, believe it or not, had one of the show games. He was going to keep it for himself, and he ended up selling it to her. So a certain podcaster has also said several times that he believes if you pay more, you should go first. Meaning if you bought a collector's edition or limited edition or whatever, depending on the company, you should get your game first. Now, isn't this exactly what you're doing? Because you're building the collector's edition of Legends of Valhalla first, and then the standard edition comes after that. Correct. That's what we're doing. We're doing that. But here's the one thing. I didn't take any money for these games. When we haven't built, you will pay for your games. Yeah, and I think the fact that you're aware that money was taken, being the distributors, that all more supports your choice to do this. Correct, correct. It tells me that the distributors are right behind me on that. I guess the thing that I'm trying to say is that I'm not releasing another game until I get out the deluxe stuff, right? I have people that want the classics. It's like releasing the pro model before all the premiums and all the pros. There's so many different qualifications. I'm just trying to give you guys games that you have asked for. And that includes Houdini. It includes Oktoberfest. It includes Hot Wheels. I mean, you know. I laugh that Canadian is one-sided. He looks at this market and just understands just the collectors. Flippers. The guy on the street, but there's also the operators. How many times has he flipped a game? How many times has he put a deposit down in a game and sold it? No idea. I think every time other than Guns N' Roses, but whatever. Now, it's also been said that your blunder, for lack of a better term, in the mishandling, so to speak, of the Sonic Spinball license was the fact that you went to Sega USA and not Sega Japan. Can you clarify what happened there and why that may not make a difference or be true? Well, I'm kind of interested in how they know who I went after. I actually went after Sega Japan for the Sega license for Sonic. We were waiting on Japan to get back to us when we found out that there was another company that was already in the works for it. I know people say that other companies stole Sonic. Well, you know, I don't know if I'd say stole, but here's the thing. Sonic was a dead license, right? Nobody was making a Sonic spinball, Sonic pinball. Ryan put his heart and his time into making that game. Brought it from before anybody ever knew it. I knew about it from Expo Virtual back in 2020. I knew about it months before that show because I went after Ryan and got him to make the whole little video presentation, which we shared on Saturday morning. It was a dead title. Nobody was going to make it, right? And then the next thing you know, somebody went after it. Now, it came back to me from Sega directly that Stern Pinball did not get the license. Who got the license? I don't know. There are many new players that are coming to the market. There are other players that are in the market that could have grabbed it. I know some people have asked other companies in podcasts and everything else because everybody wants to know who's going to do Sega. Here's the thing, and I think we went into detail during this podcast about it. understand that we went for the person who created it, Ryan McQuaid. That's the person we wanted. Sonic Spinball was just an added bonus. It was his resume, right? He showed us he could design a game. So for me, it was a no-brainer just to go at it. And after we lost the title, we had a nice conversation with Ryan. We sat him down and we basically said, listen, we didn't get it, but you're still part of us. We're happy that you're part of this team. We want you to grow and everything else. And unfortunately, there's some tough breaks. You know, it goes back to some of these people who are the homebrewers, who come up with these great titles, right? They just want to create this new thing. Well, guess what? You run the risk of somebody stealing your IP. And you did all this work, right? So Sonic, somebody's going to get a great license. I know Kerry Hardy was 100% on board with the Sonic. He played the game. He loved it. I know that other people played that game, including Gary Stern. Everybody played that game. They liked the game. They could feel it. They could see it. But at the end of the day, we wanted a designer, right? So Ryan's really excited about the next games that he's working on in American, and we're excited to have him on board. In fact, he's already helping with Barry Osler's game that will be coming out in 2023. Well, I pity the company who got that license because I think, you know, there's such a story behind that game and, you know, Ryan's quest to build the game and to get it made and all that, and to have the rug pulled out at the last minute, I think there's going to be some backlash. Because if it's, definitely if it's not Stern, because I think the only reason that Godzilla was forgiven was because Keith Elwin made a great game. People always forget about the European guys too. There's Pinball Brothers and Dutch Pinball, you know, one of them could be making it. What if they don't make a game that's up to snuff? You know, that's not an amazing game. I think there's big potential for a lot of backlash. Oh yeah. You also have Home Pin, right? Out of Taiwan. Well, they can't make a good game. Well, they're currently making another title, so who knows? They could have grabbed the title. Could have been them. Here's the crazy thing, Chris. I laugh about this. And guess what? Put your announcement on right now. Special announcement. This is a first-time exclusive. It's another super awesome exclusive. So here's what I'm going to share with you, Chris. This is an exciting little story here, okay? We have these guys in Time Tall Podcasts who are covering the news, right? Or, you know, just recapping or redoing it. Doing the diligence, digging into the news, going. I wrote a couple articles for Pinball News back in the day, you know, exclusive stuff. stuff that was earth-shattering and breaking. There are two new companies on the horizons that are going to be releasing pins in the next year or two. Two new companies in the Chicagoland area. Wow, what's the chances of that, you know? On top of that, whatever about the whole Deep Root story, right? There's tons of stories behind that whole Deep Root thread and what's happened with that. And we'll hear more about that in 2023, October, when a lot of people's NDAs come to the end, right? So there's a lot of stories that will be shared on Deep Root. How far Deep Root actually got with all their gains, and it was just because they couldn't manufacture. It's amazing. It's mind-boggling. And the loss of money that some people put in there, right? I mean, I think of, you know, the amount of millions that he just wandered away, and yet the assets, the stuff that was finished, the stuff that was almost completed, and just was waiting for manufacturing to kick off, and got stuck behind Raza. It's amazing to me, you know? Yep. And we'll announce it right now, but we'll have Dennis Nordman on in October of 2023 to tell us all about his miserable experience at Deep Root. But there's some people out there, wink, wink, that think that Mr. Steven Bowden has done nothing to deserve his position at American Pinball and the titles that he's been given. And I believe that because you hired the man, you feel differently. Can you explain how you believe that Steven Bowden has qualified for these things? Well, okay, so I don't know why anybody would be calling the question because Steve doesn't answer to anybody else, right? He answers to the boss who sees what he does on a daily basis. Now, listen, Steven Bowden is probably one of the best players, okay? Granted, there are a lot of other players out there that are really good, but I like Steve. He knows the rule sets. He comes up with some wonderful rule sets for games. He's continuously thinking outside the box. He is probably one of the best ambassadors to the game of pinball. People love to listen to him talk about games and talk about how the games play and how they do this. I mean, you know, Fun with Bonus is a great little podcast. When he's doing that, he is right now Jack Danger's substitute teacher. So when Jack is literally backed up at Stern and can't do something, Steve will jump on his podcast or his Twitch channel and be the substitute teacher that night for a game and go through all the details on it. Steve is an ambassador to pinball. I've known Steve for over, good grief, it's got to be about 15 to 20 years. He used to come to Pocketeer and play. What he knows about pinball is amazing. amazing. The young man's, there are many players out there who just understand Steve and Steve's commentary, understands what he's doing. Listen, at the end of the day, he knows the right angles on some of the ways to bring out a new game, talk about a game, new talking points about a game. So obviously he is going to be part of my sales, but also he's going to have a time in marketing too. Not only that, he's been working right now with Casey and working on the rules, okay? And actually, he started to learn coding. So now we have a great player who kind of is going to try to follow in the lines of Lyman Sheets to be a good player and a good coder. So, I mean, and Lyman was a good friend of Steve's. They played a lot. So, you know, Steven Bowden is a really good guy and just a great employee. Trust me, I ask him for stuff, I get it. You know, he does his job without question. And he's a good ambassador. Yeah, he's definitely an asset. And I'd say if they had a Twippy Award for the nicest guy in pinball, he would win hands down every year. Absolutely. And I would win it for the best jerk in the industry. All right, so to wrap this up, there are some people out there, or at least one person out there, that thinks that maybe every decision you've made has not been the best since you've taken your position at American Pinball. Do you think that you've made any missteps or wrong guesses since you've come on board, or has everything gone just the way you planned? Well, there's always, you know, if I'm looking back 2020, there's always things I could have done better, right? And I think that's true of anybody who looks back at stuff. I mean, listen, I went on a Canadian podcast, so, you know, did I make a misstep there? Who knows? Regrets, I've had a few. No, you know, I think maybe I came out a little strong at the beginning when I took over the reins of American Pinball, but it had to be done, right? Listen, I think people don't understand how close in there was not going to be an American Pinball. It was over with, right? And then the idea was, David, you need to restart this whole company. Did I do everything perfect? No. Could there have been better steps? Of course. Do I have a passion for pinball? absolutely do i think that i know the collector community you know pretty well i'm a collector myself do i know the operator community yeah i know it pretty well too i've not only been there so do we have some more things coming out sure do we have the money behind us yes could we have more money behind us oh absolutely who couldn't listen we turned around a company that was pretty much dead and really have made it now a major player in the industry to the point that we're there is a there is an American pinball I'm you know I know some people are like oh Dave Fix is in charge but at the end of the day a lot of people are like we're happy for Dave Fix to be in charge and they're excited to see what's happening right they're excited to see what's going on with American. We know how to build a good game. We build a tank for crying out loud. Best playfields in the industry, best cabinets, best electronics. We don't have problems. You can ask our operators. I was on a call today with John from Jack Bar who put Legends of Valhalla out in a different location. He loves it. He goes, I don't have to check on that machine. I go out every couple months, I check on it, I pull all the cash out of it that it's been making, it helps me, and it runs like a tank. It just runs great. And people are loving the license, or the absence of a license, let's just say. They love the music. They love all the stuff that's in the game. Yeah. Well, you know, I think the fact of the matter is, prior to your arrival at American Pinball, for lack of a better term, the inmates were running the asylum. There wasn't a whole lot of pinball knowledge behind that company compared to what you possess. And I think that's what it needed was more knowledge and it needed better, stronger, tighter leadership. So by you coming on board, I think that's exactly what they got. So, you know, the roads are getting righted and, you know, all paths are moving forward in a positive way. I don't see where there's room to to criticize anything. Well, like I said, there's always better ways to get things done. And I'm the first guy to look at it. But I'm going to say right now I'm doing the best I can. And listen, the company's doing really good. I know I'm going to get blasted by people like, well, why are you making all these old games? Like, it's because the public wants them. There's not one that's going to stock. Everything has been with a purchase order and a name on it. No cash taken. People get their phone calls when the game is ready to ship. Done. That's the model. And I think that's enough said on this topic. So thanks for coming on and clarifying this stuff. It's a good thing that we could get this out last minute because this was just brought to my attention today, and I was just putting the final cap on the episode to get it out, and I'm glad to get this information out. So thanks for spending a little bit more time with me and setting the record straight. You got it, Chris. Hey, listen, you know, pinball fans and pinball people who are in it like you who look at it as a livelihood, you understand, you know, It's this people's livelihood we talk about here. This is what puts the food on the table for their children, puts their kids through school, helps them have a better career, right? And they want to be part of this industry. So everybody who puts time in, whether they're designing a game for JJP or designing a game for Stern, hats off to them because they're the ones that make the dreams come true. And I just want to say, if you're going to criticize a game, play it first, and then you can give me all the criticisms you want. So, Chris, thanks for letting me come on the show, and thank you for letting Ryan come on the show to share his stories. As always, thank you to the super awesome team, Christian and Jeff, and, of course, you, Mr. Cranston. I know I tease you terribly in these podcasts, and I give you enough zingers, but you know what? You're the big guy. You can deal with it. We work together on a daily basis, and, Chris, I'm so happy that you're on board with American Pinball doing the art for the next game. and people to coin a phrase, and you've heard me say this so many times, get ready, because we're going to continue to surprise you at American. Even though some criticisms out there might say, you know, what are they doing? It's not their call. At the end of the day, it's the guy who pays the bills and you who are buying our games. Thank you. Well said, sir. Well, there you have it. A special thanks to David Fix and Ryan McQuaid of American Pinball for joining us. If you'd like to email us, you can do so at superawesomepinball at gmail.com. You can find our merch at silverballswag.com. And the contents of the show is copyright 2022 Asshat Radio Productions. This is Christopher Franchi on behalf of my partners Christian Line and Jeff Parsons. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time with an exclusive interview with Jack Guarnari of Jersey Jack Pinball. Oh, my love, you're just gonna never keep your promise _(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_ --- *Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 506e17e1-4c28-4507-a25c-398103c2de29*