# Episode 160: Ghost In The Shell pinball

**Source:** Pinball Profile  
**Type:** podcast_episode  
**Published:** 2018-10-15  
**Duration:** 20m 1s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://www.pinballprofile.com/episode-160-ghost-in-the-shell-pinball/

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## Analysis

Ed Owens discusses his homebrew Ghost in the Shell pinball machine, which he's bringing to Pinball Expo. He started with a rethemed Big game (Greyhounds), then built Ghost in the Shell from scratch using pencil drawings and a T-square, eventually constructing it in a Stern Aerosmith cabinet. He shares his design process, major changes made during development, and encourages others to build homebrew games.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] Ed started designing Ghost in the Shell with pencil drawings on 8.5x11 paper, then drew full-scale playfield using a T-square and triangle — _Direct statement by Ed about his design methodology, no CAD used_
- [HIGH] Ed's left ramp is the key feature, designed so the ball comes back to the right flipper after hitting the back and turning around quickly — _Ed describes the left ramp mechanics in detail, comparing to Championship Pub turnaround style_
- [HIGH] Ed originally designed the upper playfield to be full width but reduced it after the left ramp worked too well — _Ed states: 'I don't want to mess it up by changing it all. And so I kind of rolled with the punches'_
- [HIGH] Scott Denise gave Ed encouragement to build a homebrew game after Ed mentioned interest — _Ed recounts: 'First thing he says, you should do it. There's community. There's help.'_
- [HIGH] Ed picked up a Stern Aerosmith cabinet with a cracked lower half (replaced under warranty) as the donor for Ghost in the Shell — _Ed describes buying the cabinet from a friend two years ago at MGC_
- [HIGH] Ed is bringing Ghost in the Shell, Mark's Nightmare Before Christmas, Jeremy's Hot Rod, and possibly his Greyhounds retheme to Pinball Expo — _Ed states: 'we're going to have at least three custom games...I'm thinking about even bringing my Greyhounds game'_
- [HIGH] The upper playfield ball lock mechanism was originally designed as revolver-style but changed to a faster curlicue-style — _Ed explains the change: 'Before, it was going to be more of a revolver-style lock, but I changed that out to make it faster'_
- [HIGH] Art is the hardest part for Ed; he estimates spending about six hours editing the backglass — _Ed states: 'The hardest part for me is art...that's probably about six hours of editing'_

### Notable Quotes

> "First thing he says, you should do it. There's community. There's help."
> — **Ed Owens (quoting Scott Denise)**, ~12:20
> _Highlights community support as key motivator for homebrew builders entering the hobby_

> "You first shot it, you shoot it, and you don't know where the ball goes...the ball comes underneath the ramp, kind of like a championship pub where you have that quick turnaround."
> — **Ed Owens**, ~18:00
> _Describes the signature left ramp mechanic that defines Ghost in the Shell playfield_

> "I don't want to mess it up by changing it all. And so I kind of rolled with the punches that way."
> — **Ed Owens**, ~22:30
> _Illustrates pragmatic design philosophy of adapting plans based on what works mechanically_

> "Unless we have negative feedback or constructive criticism, we can't make our game better."
> — **Ed Owens (paraphrasing Mark)**, ~36:00
> _Emphasizes value of community feedback for homebrew iteration and improvement_

> "If I can inspire the next person to make a game better than mine, great. That's what it's about. It's about sharing."
> — **Ed Owens**, ~35:30
> _Reflects community-oriented ethos of homebrew builder movement_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Ed Owens | person | Homebrew pinball builder from Wisconsin; designed Ghost in the Shell and previously Greyhounds retheme; also created custom Kill Bill arcade game; running Pinball Mayhem YouTube channel with Jeremy Edgema |
| Ghost in the Shell | game | Homebrew pinball machine themed around Ghost in the Shell anime series; built in Stern Aerosmith cabinet; features left ramp turnaround mechanic and upper playfield with curlicue ball lock; debuting at Pinball Expo |
| Scott Denise | person | Homebrew builder in Wisconsin area; created Total Nuclear Annihilation; provided encouragement and mentorship to Ed Owens |
| Pinball Expo | event | Major pinball event where Ed Owens and other homebrew builders are setting up machines in vendor hall |
| Jeff Teolis | person | Host of Pinball Profile podcast interviewing Ed Owens |
| Pinball Mayhem | organization | YouTube channel co-created by Ed Owens and Jeremy Edgema showcasing homebrew builds and pinball modifications |
| Stern Aerosmith | game | Commercial pinball game by John Borg; cabinet used as donor for Ghost in the Shell homebrew |
| Mark | person | Homebrew builder creating Nightmare Before Christmas pinball; sharing booth at Pinball Expo with Ed Owens |
| Jeremy Edgema | person | Co-creator of Pinball Mayhem YouTube channel with Ed Owens; also building Hot Rod homebrew for Pinball Expo |
| Jack Danger | person | Homebrew builder creating custom pinball machine; working on stainless steel ball guides |
| Pinball Life | company | Parts supplier for pinball machines; Ed sourced homebrew components from them including Denise's scoops and spinners |
| Dennis Norman | person | Played Ed's Ghost in the Shell game and provided design feedback |
| Greyhounds the Race Home | game | Ed's first retheme project (8-9 years before this interview) using Big game cabinet; themed around Greyhound rescue |
| Kill Bill | game | Custom arcade game created by Ed Owens ~14 years ago using multi-game platform; themed after Quentin Tarantino film |
| Midwest Gaming Classic (MGC) | event | Pinball event where Ghost in the Shell survived with ~350 plays over a weekend; Ed also debuted Greyhounds retheme there |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Homebrew pinball design and construction, Community mentorship and knowledge sharing in homebrew pinball, Ghost in the Shell pinball playfield mechanics, Design iteration and prototyping methods
- **Secondary:** Pinball Expo showcase and public playtesting, YouTube content creation for pinball education, Barriers to entry for homebrew builders
- **Mentioned:** Custom arcade cabinet creation

### Sentiment

**Positive** (0.85) — Ed is enthusiastic about homebrew building, grateful for community support, and optimistic about Pinball Expo debut. Jeff is encouraging and genuinely interested. Minor nervousness expressed about Expo performance, but overall tone is celebratory and supportive of the homebrew community.

### Signals

- **[event_signal]** Pinball Expo positioning itself as showcase venue for homebrew games, with dedicated vendor booth space and multiple custom machines on display (confidence: high) — Ed states: 'Dave and Rob at Expo was able to give us a spot in the vendor hall' with at least 3-4 homebrew games planned
- **[sentiment_shift]** Strong emphasis on feedback loops and iterative improvement; homebrew community values constructive criticism and public playtesting (confidence: high) — Ed prioritizes negative feedback, mentions Dennis Norman's pointers improved upper playfield, and adjusted based on Expo player feedback
- **[community_signal]** Scott Denise's mentorship and encouragement directly motivated Ed to start his homebrew project, exemplifying the knowledge-sharing culture of the homebrew pinball community (confidence: high) — Ed recounts Scott saying 'you should do it. There's community. There's help' after expressing interest in building a homebrew
- **[content_signal]** YouTube as primary education and documentation platform for homebrew pinball techniques; Pinball Mayhem channel publishing weekly videos on builds and modifications (confidence: high) — Ed mentions posting stainless steel ball guide videos for other builders; weekly publishing schedule with Jeremy Edgema handling editing
- **[design_philosophy]** Ed's iterative design approach: starting with low-tech pencil sketches and full-scale drawings rather than CAD, then adapting based on what works mechanically during physical prototyping (confidence: high) — Ed describes using pencil drawings, T-square, and triangle for full-scale design; changed upper playfield size after left ramp 'worked too well'
- **[market_signal]** Homebrew pinball as accessible hobby with low barrier to entry; multiple pathways (retheme, custom cabinet, full build) and community support systems enabling broader participation (confidence: high) — Ed emphasizes 'I think if you wanted to, you truly had the drive, I think you could do it' and lists multiple resource options for different skill levels
- **[technology_signal]** Homebrew builders accessing commercial parts through established supply chains (Pinball Life) and learning from documented examples (Jack Danger's ball guide videos) (confidence: high) — Ed sourced parts from Pinball Life and learned stainless steel techniques from Jack Danger videos; Pinball Makers website mentioned as resource

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## Transcript

 it's time now for another pinball profile i'm your host jeff teolis you can find our group on facebook we're also on twitter at pinball profile email us pinball profile at gmail.com please subscribe on either itunes stitcher or google play joining us right now from wisconsin getting ready for pinball expo is ed owens ed how are you i'm doing great how are you jeff I'm fantastic, and I appreciate you reaching out to me and letting me know that you're going to be at Expo, and we'll definitely check you out. Why is Ed Owens going to Expo? Well, if you've been to the Mid-Gaming Classic in April, you might have seen his little homebrew pinball machine, Ghost in the Shell, and he's bringing it to Expo. So we're going to talk about Ghost in the Shell, and why in the world, Ed, did you try to make a pinball machine? Well, about eight years ago, I ended up getting an old game and re-theming it, sanding it down and making it something which was completely different. I enjoyed the process, and I thought, you know, that's fun, but it's not my game. It's nothing that I can put my name on the art or really I'm the mechanical guy. What was the game? It was originally a big game, and I turned it into Greyhounds the Race Home. I work with a local Greyhound X-Racing rescue, and I thought that would be a great theme and something I could take to some of their shows and show off and get people interested in pinball and greyhounds. That's so funny. You've gone from a big game where they hunt tigers to saving greyhounds. I think it's brilliant. Well, the play field sucks for hunting tigers. But if you look at it, you've got those three tic-tac-toe boards which make perfect houses for trying to fill up and bring your greyhound home. So you rethemed that, but it wasn't enough. And because you're that savvy, and I'm so, so jealous, you can hear it in my voice, that you can let alone fix a pinball machine, but make a pinball machine. And you said, that's not enough. I want to start from scratch. So am I safe to assume you started with CAD? No, actually. A lot of people do start with CAD. I didn't have a chance to turn around and learn it. So I started with just pencil drawing on some 8 1⁄2 by 11 paper. I made about a dozen drawings of different options and playfields until I kind of focused on my main feature and what I wanted to do. Then I took out a T-square and a 30-60-90 triangle, taped it to my table, and started drawing it one-to-one scale, able to look at my shots until I was happy with what I had. Did you know the theme before you started, what you kind of wanted to do, or was it just more the layout? If you ask me, when I finished Greyhounds, I wanted to do a different anime theme. When I started on this, I did have the theme in mind of Ghost in the Shell. I'm a fan of the anime and the standalone complex series. There's a lot of material there for me to work with when I get around to the audio call-outs and the video. So for me, it was a no-brainer. You're staying away from the movie Ghost in the Shell, I assume. Yeah, I enjoyed the movie, but definitely I didn't think it gave the, it wasn't as good as the original anime or the standalone complex series. So I'm going to jump all over here because, again, I know nothing about making a pinball machine. Are you going to be using a dot matrix display? Are you going to be using an LCD screen? What's going to be on the backbox? In the backbox, I'm going to be using an LCD screen. Right now, I got an old Dell monitor. I also have a bunch of laptops I'm ripping apart for the 15-inch screen, which will probably not in there by Expo, but I am going to be changing that out after Expo to a smaller screen slightly. It gives a lot more space, and it works well with the software framework. Were you inspired by maybe other shows, whether it be MGC or Expos, where you saw people make their own games? I mean, I know close to your neck of the woods, Scott Danesi, he obviously did that with Total Nuclear Annihilation. A friend of mine and somebody you know, too, Mark and City with Nightmare Before Christmas, which I think he's going to be at your booth there at Expo. Were you inspired by some of these other people or is there somebody maybe I don't even know about when it came to building your own game? Well, you hit the nail on the head there. If you notice, I said it was eight, nine years ago when I did Greyhounds and I wanted to do a custom theme. but a lot of time passed until I got started with my project, which was not this summer but last summer when I really decided to dive in. And some of the deciding factors of me diving in was not just being inspired by Scott's game, but if you ever have a chance to meet him, sat down and, you know, I didn't know the guy. He didn't know me. I said, hey, you know, I kind of always wanted to build my own homebrew game. First thing he says, you should do it. There's community. There's help. It easy Well it not easy for him He just said you know gave me a lot of positive encouragement and got me started on the right track And that just a five conversation we had the first time I saw TNA I'm looking forward to seeing this game at Expo. But I've seen some of the game on some of your videos on YouTube with your pinball mayhem. And you have a lot of subscribers on that, too. So you can have a good look at the raw ghost in the shell. And one thing I'm amazed is the left ramp, I think, is pretty cool. Maybe you want to describe that. Yeah, that's kind of the key feature. I designed the game around. I knew I wanted a couple few different things, and that left ramp was one of those that just stuck out. It's kind of a, I wanted to mess with the player a little bit with what you can do. So you first shot it, you look at it, you shoot it, and you don't know where the ball goes. It's a long ramp. The ball goes up, but when it hits the back, it turns around quickly, and instead of going into a subway or something, the ball comes underneath the ramp, kind of like a championship pub where you have that quick turnaround. It's going to turn around and come back to your right flipper. So you are able to, from the right flipper, hit the ramp over and over again. But if you hit where your left orbit normally would be, you can get the underside of the ramp and the ball will come back also to your right flipper. It's one of the modes I'm working on where you're going to have to hit that ramp multiple times in a row and be able to have that ball come back. So it's just a quick shot, but I think it can be learned with these modern skills people have. When I first looked at your layout, I saw the upper play field. I'm like, oh, you can get there two ways. Nope, no, you can't. No, no, there's one way up. I was thinking about putting the second way, but it looks like it's a hard shot. It's not the easiest ramp to hit, but it is still steeper and less shallower and longer than the Aerosmith ramp. So it is makeable. There's one way up, and there's an exit off to the left, which is kind of, it doesn't even give you points. I had to put a switch on there because the game just laughs at you when you go down that shot. Ed, you mentioned Aerosmith, and that's a fairly new game, a game I love, too, a great one from John Borg. Most people, when they do homebrew games, they use old cabs. You have an Aerosmith cab that you've made this game in. How did that come about? Well, two years ago at Midwest Gaming Classic, it was a brand-new game. and a friend of mine bought the game and it was one of those being played there. Throughout the period of the summer, he ended up with a cabinet that cracked early. The lower half was replaced under warranty. He offered it up to me for a decent price. I picked it up because that was the next push after that MGC was I picked up that Aerosmith cabinet. Oh, well, now I've got to build this game. I can't just start spending money and not build it. So I had a cabinet, I had an idea, I had inspiration, I had a hardware platform. So I ended up building in that cabinet. Hardware was available, all the side rails, the hooks for the play field. It actually made it easier working with a brand new cabinet that I could just call someone up or go take measurements off of and get everything bolted up right, pre-drilled, than trying to fit a ramp-style game into an older cabinet. So you've got a Stern Aerosmith cab. What about your parts? What are you using for that? A few of the parts, most of them are pretty much your standard Williams. I got a flipper mechanisms. I got some friends in our local group that were able to offer me up some good deals on used mechanisms I rebuilt. A lot of the parts I had laying around. I mean, I've been working on pinball machines for about 15 years, and through that time you collect older used parts that are still good, but maybe not ones that you want to use when you do a play field swap. A lot of the brand new parts I've been buying from Pinball Life. They have a homebrew section. Denise's scoops, I've been using both of those. And their spinners, there's just a lot of new parts available. Ed, I'm going to ask you a question. And anybody who knows me, please don't laugh at me, all right? I mean, I'm a little sensitive to this. But, Ed, can someone like myself, who knows a little bit about pinball, but knows nothing about fixing or certainly creating pinball, Could a guy like me learn this? And if so, how? Would I say that it's outside of the realm of possibilities? No. I mean, I think if you wanted to, you truly had the drive, I think you could do it. It's always helpful to have a good basis on repairing them, the mechanical and the electrical. And the more repair knowledge you have, the better. There's some pretty good websites out there. Pinball Makers has a lot of how to get started. It depends on how far you want to take it, too. If you can find a game, a donor cab, a plank, there's a homebrew that World War II that a guy's making where he took a game and sanded it down and decided to keep the inserts where they are, but he just changed the play field on top So you pick your level of involvement but it still doesn get past the great feeling of a board with nothing but two flippers and some in classics a pile of electronics underneath the play field You plug in the computer, you press enter, and you can hit flipper buttons, and it works. That is pretty cool, Ed. And that's one thing I like watching in, again, your Pinball Mayhem videos on YouTube, is when you see the raw ghost in the shell, you can see where the ramps are, the upper play field you can see where the drop target bank is going to be the pop bumper when you're playing that nice piece of wood with all that sharpie over it it's still got to be pretty gratifying i guess the one thing about playing it versus looking at it on a computer is you get a better sense of the geometry and once you put it together did you have to rearrange some of the shots because the geometry might not have been there oh oh yeah definitely the uh right side I ended up reworking the scoop quite a few times and the metal guides. I did move around. If you look at it at Expo, you're going to see there's definitely a bunch of holes where I ended up moving some of the ramp entrances around. In general, I have what I have drawn, but originally, actually, no, I don't. No, I changed the whole upper play field. It was twice the size as it is now. So, yeah, it did change a lot through building. I can work with metal pretty easily, and this is just cheap, cheap metal. I had left over from a fridge, so I was able to make my first version of my prototype ramps and my ball guides and everything out of metal to allow more accurate testing of my shots. And then as things finalized, I upgraded them to stainless steel. I think I saw that in one of your videos, too. I thought it was a great lesson, in fact, too, and we'll link that here on our Facebook page. Definitely, definitely. Me and about the time I started this project, one of the driving parts of me with Pinball Mayhem is a buddy of mine, Jeremy Edgema. He was doing videos, too, and the two of us just kind of had a couple videos. Hey, here's something cool on Pin's side. I'm like, you know, I'm going to be doing this homebrew, and we've got some mods to install on my Rob Zombie, and you've got some videos you're doing. Why don't we just get together and form an actual YouTube channel? He did his research, and together we're able to get a video posted every week. He's really been the driving factor of trying all the editing, so I can't take any credit for that. It really made me more professional on it, but it's nice to kind of have that constant form. And, hey, here's something I learned and we've picked up in the last 10, 15 or more years. Let's just make a video and teach the world it. So it's kind of a really cool experience, and to have someone to help you with that is great. with the ball guides. I know, I kind of mentioned, I know Dead Flip, Jack Danger is doing a series or he's building his own and he's going to edit all of his videos under what he does. So you can take what I do, take what he does, take what other people do and be able to build your own. And I noticed he has a lot of those stainless steel ball guides. I'm like, you know, I figured it out. I've learned from some other people what to do. Let's just make a video, put it out there. I shot it over to him so he can use it. and share it with the world. Ed, what's the hardest thing that you've come across in doing this? Or maybe, uh-oh, I've got to start from scratch. You talked about maybe the upper play field. Maybe it was too big and maybe some wasted space on the lower level. I don't know what the reason for that was. But what was the biggest change you had to make? And if you were to do it over again, I would have done this. The hardest part or the biggest change? How about both? The hardest part for me is art. If you notice, there's a lot of badly written Sharpie on my play field. I have a vision in my head what I want for art, but to have the patience to sit in front of a photo program and do the editing, even my back glass, I'm not super happy with that. But that's probably about six hours of editing and putting stuff together to make it work. But I would say for me, the hardest part is the art. The largest change I've made is really relating to the upper play field and the ball lock mechanism I have. Right now, it's a really, really fun, rewarding shot that when you hit it, the ball actually curlicues up towards the top, up away from the play field, and then comes back down. Before, it was going to be more of a revolver-style lock, but I changed that out to make it faster. and the upper play field was originally going to be the full width of the back, allowing you to kind of hide those lanes a little bit more, but be able to shoot the ball up to the upper play field a second way. As I started building it, I realized the left forearm, you do something like, wow, this shoots really well. I don't want to mess it up by changing it all. And so I kind of rolled with the punches that way. This isn't your only homebrew game, although first in the pinball field, You made a Kill Bill video game. Do you want to explain that Yeah It was shortly after I got into pinball coin hobbies probably about 14 years ago I originally started with a meme like a lot of people do where you have 500,000 games on a computer running on two garbage cans and a computer monitor. And I'm a Quentin Tarantino fan, and I thought, hey, you know, I shopped around at a few vendors, picked up a used cabinet for cheap, and I'd like to do a Kill Bill. and I was doing a lot of, for work, doing a lot of things with printing. So I was able to design and I did all the graphics myself for it. It ended up being a nice multi-game platform where the theme kind of flows and even the menu system I had on there for a while was a yellow background. Kill Bill Volume 1, I have O-Ren. The cartoon version, maybe something with anime with me, is on the back glass. so uh it was it was quite fun i mean i like to have nice things of course like we all do but if i can make them custom to me you know that's even better my kids love video games but i don't think i'm gonna let my kid play the kill bill version especially when you get to the buck mode i think i'll pass on that nice it's one of my all-time favorite movies i just think it's the greatest revenge movie ever and the music is absolutely perfect so that's interesting that You made that game. I have a feeling you're going to have a lot of people there say hello to you at Expo, especially after hearing here on Pinball Profile. But it's always neat to see people make games, and your ghost in the shell is no exception too. Are you a little nervous about having it there? And fingers crossed everything goes well? Yeah, yeah, I am a little nervous. I was happy that Dave and Rob at Expo was able to give us a spot in the vendor hall to set up our games. It survived a Midwest Gaming Classic with a few ball jams, but that's related to the wood being really construction-grade plywood. It's not supposed to be here at this level right now, but it made it. And no computer issues whatsoever. So I was really happy with that. We got about 350 plays in a weekend, and just a few minor things broke. Of course, there were some problems with it, which is great. That's the one thing. I want people to come and talk to you. If I can inspire the next person to make a game better than mine, great. That's what it's about. It's about sharing. But the thing, too, is if you don't want to tell me in person, go on Pinside or go on YouTube and say, hey, drop me a note. Say, hey, I played your game, but I didn't like this about it. Because as Mark said, when you interviewed him a while ago, unless we have negative feedback or constructive criticism, we can't make our game better. And so that's why even I got to talk to Dennis Nordman, played my game, and he gave me a few pointers. And a few other people said, hey, this upper play field just sucks because I can't get the ball up there. Well, I came back from MGC, and I added a piece of plastic, a gate, and another piece of plastic to it, and boom, now the upper play field is really playable. That's great. Now, is the goal to maybe have a lot of pinball companies out there, maybe have someone grab this? And that's how it started for Scott Danesi. What do you think? Well, I wouldn't be opposed to it. I mean, I'd love someone to come up to me and say, hey, you know, I love your game. I'd like to work with you and be able to turn it into a final game. If it isn't Ghost and Shell, that would be a little sad. But, you know, I'd love to be at that level. I'd love to, you know, think that somebody is at that level. That's not driving me, of course. I'm going to keep on making the better and better game. But to be able to see a production Ghost in the Shell game would be really cool. Well, the place to be seen is Pinball Expo. And, Ed, you're going to be there with your Ghost in the Shell game. Wish you the best of luck. I'll make sure I stop by and jump on the Pinball Mayhem YouTube channel with you and say hello to your fine subscribers. Appreciate you coming on the program today, and I definitely wish you the best of luck. No problem. Thank you. And just to give a shout-out, at the booth we're going to have Mark with his Nightmare Before Christmas, and Jeremy with Hot Rod. So we're going to have at least three custom games, and if I don't get another person, I'm thinking about even bringing my Greyhounds game. So I'll have another four custom games and one booth there. So definitely take a look for us, and any one of us will be happy to talk to you guys. I imagine you'll be very popular at Expo. Ed, we will see you there. Awesome. Thank you, Jeff. This has been your Pinball Profile. You can find our group on Facebook. We're also on Twitter at pinballprofile. Email us pinballprofile at gmail.com. And please subscribe on either iTunes, Stitcher, or Google Play. And make sure you check out Ed Owens at Pinball Expo. I'm Jeff Gilles.

_(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 8ffaefe9-e884-4535-bcb3-6a1c37c51542*