# Pinball Innovators & Makers Podcast Ep 20: Dukes Of Hazzard w/ Jake Danzig

**Source:** The Pinball Network  
**Type:** video  
**Published:** 2024-03-05  
**Duration:** 72m 2s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pO47NCLLESQ

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## Analysis

Jake Danzig, founder of the Strictly Custom Pinball Facebook group (8,500+ members), discusses his origin story in pinball, the homebrew/custom pinball scene, and his personal Dukes of Hazzard custom build. The episode analyzes trends from ~400 custom machines posted to the group, identifying 25 themes that went into production, examining machines with multiple versions (Iron Maiden, Jaws, Led Zeppelin, etc.), and discussing rumored/speculative builds.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] Strictly Custom Pinball Facebook group has grown to just over 8,500 members — _Jake confirms current membership; crossed 5,000 at Pinball Expo 2022_
- [MEDIUM] Analysis of ~399 custom/homebrew machines identified 25 themes that went into production — _Dan Rosenstein's data analysis from Facebook group curation; acknowledged margin of error_
- [HIGH] At least four different custom Iron Maiden machines were made before Stern's production release — _Jake confirms directly; noted as example of multiple versions of same theme_
- [HIGH] Scooby-Doo production game became one of Jake's absolute favorite production games despite low expectations — _Jake states: 'the fact that i bought that and it has literally turned into one of my absolute favorite production games ever is really fortunate'_
- [MEDIUM] Mad Max had at least three different custom versions by different makers across different eras — _Dan's data analysis; Jake's reaction suggests plausibility but notes data margin of error_

### Notable Quotes

> "To me, Jake has been the lifeblood of the custom and homebrew world."
> — **Dan Rosenstein**, ~0:05:00
> _Establishes Jake's importance to custom pinball community and validates his authority on the topic_

> "I grew up in and around several arcades...Whenever I did see a pinball machine, I always made sure to play it, even though being a little kid, I had no idea what I was doing."
> — **Jake Danzig**, ~0:08:00
> _Origin story establishing early arcade/pinball exposure in Kansas City Midwest_

> "The biggest gap i'd say is when i hit my teenage years and became one of those crazy teenagers always out getting in trouble...There was probably about a 15-year gap of not touching a console game outside of maybe Street Fighter 2."
> — **Jake Danzig**, ~0:12:00
> _Explains gap in personal gaming history while maintaining arcade involvement_

> "My pinball adventure didn't really start until about 15 years ago...after that first Super Mario pinball machine I started buying just everything I could find. I mean literally everything."
> — **Jake Danzig**, ~0:16:00
> _Marks transition from collector to businessman; origin of Pinball Investments restoration business_

> "I'm actually either the right guy to ask that or the wrong guy, because thanks to really appreciating and liking all the mechanics and the art of them and the themes now, I love pinball from the 1930s all the way up to present day."
> — **Jake Danzig**, ~0:24:00
> _Demonstrates Jake's broad appreciation for pinball across all eras and themes_

> "The reason I did not make a Scooby-Doo pinball machine is because I had a very good feeling that a production game was going to happen on that...conversely, the Dukes of Hazzard, it kind of had its chance back in the late 70s early 80s and nowadays nobody was going to make that so the choice was obvious."
> — **Jake Danzig**, ~0:31:00
> _Explains strategic decision-making in choosing Dukes of Hazzard over Scooby-Doo for custom build_

> "When the Kineticist asked for their people's top five I was going to go with all just all five custom pins I really was. But the deal is, I'm such good friends with so many custom builders. If I did that, I'm going to be leaving a whole lot of people out."
> — **Jake Danzig**, ~0:50:00
> _Reveals interconnected nature of custom pinball builder community and Jake's diplomatic relationships_

> "If Stern, JJP, Spooky, Barrels, Multimorphic are listening there's demand for a Mad Max machine."
> — **Dan Rosenstein**, ~1:22:00
> _Market signal from custom scene analysis suggesting manufacturer opportunity_

> "That show came out when I was somewhere around five years old. So if you're a little boy at that point of time in the 70s and you're five years old, that just instantly became part of your life."
> — **Jake Danzig**, ~1:28:00
> _Explains childhood nostalgia connection driving Dukes of Hazzard custom project selection_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Jake Danzig | person | Founder of Strictly Custom Pinball Facebook group (8,500+ members); custom pinball builder; Pinball Investments restoration business owner; Kansas City area; builds/owned Dukes of Hazzard and Scooby-Doo machines |
| Dan Rosenstein | person | Host of Pinball Innovators & Makers Podcast; analyzing custom pinball trends; met Jake at Pinball Expo 2022 |
| Strictly Custom Pinball | organization | Facebook group (8,500+ members) founded by Jake Danzig; community hub for custom/homebrew pinball builders; evolved from picture-sharing platform to Q&A/build-progress community |
| Pinball Network | company | Media platform hosting Pinball Innovators & Makers Podcast series |
| Brian Sores | person | Custom pinball builder (Game Room Pinball); early custom builder Jake encountered; created Disney Cars custom machine (EM conversion) |
| Outpost Cordelia | person | Custom pinball builder; created high-level Black Hole (Disney) retheme with LCD screen and custom animations; influenced Jake's decision to work with them on Dukes of Hazzard |
| Ernie Silverberg | person | Homebrew pinball designer; mentioned as creator of League of Legends and Baron video game-themed machines |
| Scooby-Doo | game | Stern production pinball machine; Jake's second favorite childhood TV show; became one of his favorite production games; influenced custom pinball project choice |
| Dukes of Hazzard | game | Custom pinball machine built by Jake Danzig; based on 1970s live-action TV show; Jake's top favorite custom machine; childhood nostalgia project; represents demand for 1970s-80s era content |
| The Kineticist | organization | Media collaboration partner requesting top-5 pinball machine lists; published roundup with Jake and Dan's contributions |
| Pinball Expo | event | Major pinball industry event; Jake and Dan met in 2022; Strictly Custom group crossed 5,000 members by Expo 2022 |
| Stern Pinball | company | Major manufacturer referenced as potential opportunity for Mad Max or other custom themes; competitor in market |
| Jersey Jack Pinball | company | Premium manufacturer referenced as potential opportunity for custom themes entering production |
| Spooky Pinball | company | Boutique manufacturer referenced as potential opportunity for custom themes entering production |
| Barrels of Fun | company | Pinball manufacturer referenced as potential opportunity for custom themes entering production |
| Multimorphic | company | Pinball manufacturer referenced as potential opportunity for custom themes entering production |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Custom and homebrew pinball machine building, Strictly Custom Pinball Facebook group community and growth, Jake Danzig's origin story in pinball and arcade history, Analysis of custom pinball themes and trends (video games, sports, IP licensing), Custom machines that went into production (Iron Maiden, Jaws, Led Zeppelin, Sonic, Walking Dead), Rumored custom machines with production potential (Futurama, Mad Max, Slayer, Pokemon, Harry Potter, Zelda), Dukes of Hazzard custom pinball build story and motivation
- **Secondary:** Pinball nostalgia and childhood entertainment influences on custom theme selection

### Sentiment

**Positive** (0.85) — Enthusiastic, celebratory tone throughout. Jake is welcoming and generous with community credit. Dan expresses genuine appreciation for Jake's work. Both speakers show passion for custom pinball scene and its growth. No negativity or conflict detected. Community-building and encouraging energy dominates.

### Signals

- **[event_signal]** Strictly Custom Pinball Facebook group reached 8,500+ members; crossed 5,000 at Pinball Expo 2022. Evolved from picture-sharing format to interactive Q&A/build-progress community. (confidence: high) — Jake confirms membership numbers directly; Dan cites pre-interview stats check
- **[sentiment_shift]** Strong nostalgic preference for 1970s-80s TV shows and film IP in custom builds; unavailability of commercial versions drives custom projects (confidence: high) — Jake chose Dukes over Scooby-Doo because 'Dukes had its chance back in late 70s/early 80s and nowadays nobody was going to make that'
- **[competitive_signal]** Analysis suggests 25 themes from custom scene have already entered production, indicating healthy pipeline of validated IP concepts (confidence: medium) — Dan's quantified analysis; reflects feedback loop between custom builders and manufacturers
- **[design_philosophy]** Video game IP dominates custom pinball themes; 7 of unique themes analyzed were video game-based, reflecting Gen-X audience nostalgia and builder interests (confidence: high) — Dan identifies video game prevalence; Jake confirms Super Mario Bros, League of Legends, Futurama, Zelda, Pokemon examples
- **[market_signal]** Custom/homebrew pinball scene is major source of innovation and IP themes for commercial manufacturers; serves as talent pipeline for designers (confidence: high) — Dan states: 'This is where innovation and new blood comes to pinball...We've seen many folks that did customs and homebrews end up working in the pinball industry'
- **[market_signal]** Mad Max has strong demand signal with at least 3 different custom versions by different builders; potential commercial opportunity for manufacturers (confidence: medium) — Dan's data analysis identifies 3 Mad Max variants; positioned as recommendation to Stern/JJP/Spooky/Barrels/Multimorphic
- **[market_signal]** Boston-area sports teams dominated custom sports-themed machines across basketball, football, soccer, hockey (confidence: medium) — Dan's analysis of ~400 machines; Boston Bruins specifically mentioned multiple times
- **[personnel_signal]** Custom pinball community is highly interconnected with builders maintaining friendships and collaborative relationships; affects public preference statements (confidence: high) — Jake explains avoiding ranking top-5 customs due to close friendships with multiple builders; would feel exclusionary
- **[product_strategy]** High-level rethemes of classic machines (e.g., Black Hole with added LCD, animations) attract custom builders and influence project selection decisions (confidence: medium) — Jake cites Outpost Cordelia's Black Hole retheme as inspiration for Dukes methodology
- **[licensing_signal]** Multiple instances of same IP receiving multiple custom interpretations (Iron Maiden 4+, Futurama 2, Led Zeppelin 2, Alice Cooper 2, Star Trek 2, Stranger Things 2, Super Mario Bros 2+, League of Legends 2, Hitchhiker's Guide 2) (confidence: high) — Jake and Dan catalog multiple examples; reflects builder interest in popular franchises

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## Transcript

 The Pinball Network is online. Launching Pinball Innovators and Makers Podcast. Now, Sugar, before you get yourself all head up, things just happen to be different in Hazard. Hi, and welcome to the Pinball Podcast focused on the innovators and makers who are crafting homebrew, custom, and re-themed pinball machines. the technology that makes these personal projects possible, and the companies helping with these journeys. Custom pinballs are a deeply personal and technically challenging undertaking, requiring time, money, knowledge, and most importantly, the desire to make it happen. I'm Dan Rosenstein, your host. Join me, and let's go under the playfield and see what's needed to make a custom pinball possible. Meets all you never saw Been in trouble with the law Since the day they was born Straightening the curves Flattening the hills Someday the mountain might get them But the law never will Making their way The only way they know how Hello, pinball innovators and makers. It's episode 20. Before I started to go under the play field on the podcast, I reached out to a few key pinball folks to get their virtual blessing, and one of the most important people I wanted a blessing from was Jake Danzig. Jake is the founder of the Strictly Custom Pinball community on Facebook, where I've been following many innovators and makers on their journeys, including Jake's own with his beautiful Dukes of Hazard machine. To me, Jake has been the lifeblood of the custom and homebrew world. I met Jake at Pinball Expo in 2022 when my daughter asked him to sign her autograph book, which had a picture of him from his volunteer work on the Facebook page, and we have been friends since. Though it took over a year to align schedules, I'm very excited to have my friend Jake on the show. Welcome, Jake. Hi, I'm Dan. How are you? I'm doing great. Look, I'm super excited to have you on the show. It's been way too long in planning to make this happen. And so I really feel that we're going to have a great show for the innovators and makers listening. You excited? I'm good. Yeah. All right. Let's do this. So let's start off where we start off with every interview. I know you've said it a couple of times before, but why don't we start with your origin story? How did you get into pinball? Well, it depends on how far back you want to go. All the way back, Jake. All the way back. As far back as you want. I grew up in and around several arcades. There was a lot of them around where I live. The vast majority did not have pinball, but whenever I did see a pinball machine, I always made sure to play it, even though being a little kid, I had no idea what I was doing. What part of the country was this? It was in the Midwest, basically Kansas City. Okay, perfect. Yeah, so I played, I was kind of an arcade rat, and I played everything. Arcade games, pinball, skeeball. If it was coin-op, I was amazed by it. What was it that amazed you, that drew you in? With the arcades or with pinball specifically? Both. The arcades was just being around the arcades, just all the games. It was a lot of fun. sometimes friends there sometimes my little brother so um it's where we like to be and regards to a pinball um got much bigger into that much later on in life but i was always fascinated with the mechanics of it you know i can remember being a little kid and um going to the shop and taking my dad's peanut machine apart just to see how it works and then putting it back together and I did that several times he always got mad at me for it when he found out I was doing that but I ended up getting my own gumball machine and doing the same thing did the peanut machine work each time you put it back together or did it work by the time you put it together last time it always worked when I put it back together very complicated but that's awesome now you you had mentioned when I asked the question about your origin story you said do you want me to go real far back or more more recent so it sounds like there was a there's a period of time where where there was a a gap why don't you walk me the listener through that well the biggest gap i'd say is when i hit my teenage years and became one of those crazy teenagers always out getting in trouble um i never really left the arcades but i stopped playing home console games until sometime in my 20s. There was probably about a 15-year gap of not touching a console game outside of maybe Street Fighter 2. So I always still stuck with the arcades though, even though a lot of them were closing down and the majority of them by that time didn't have any more pinball in them. Also taking you back a little bit further, when I was just getting to be a teenager one of my local arcades was malibu go-karts racing and arcade and uh they were open when i was a little kid and my favorite machine that they had in there to play because i didn't really care too much about the go-karts but of all the arcade games and stuff they had in there to play my favorite one by far was baby pac-man now things started slowing down they started moving games out but they were still open and i show up one day and baby pac-man was gone and i was just kind of heartbroken and i was somewhere around i don't know 15 at the time but um from that day on i just kind of felt like there was no more point in going back there and they ended up closed down shortly after the baby pac-man left you were you were sad about that um how did your pinball adventure continue my pinball adventure didn't really start until about 15 years ago i was working alongside another guy who happened to be a pinball and arcade collector and i knew he was doing that but i had not actually a house yet and i was trying to buy a house before starting a collection of any type and I kind of failed so he offered me a Super Mario pinball machine asked me if I would want it and these days it would be an absolute giveaway price so he asked me if I'd want that and I said absolutely anyways after that that first Super Mario pinball machine I I started buying just everything I could find. I mean literally everything. Early solid states, EMs, late models, any pinball machine you could find or I could find, I would buy it. And then just practically overnight, I found out that if I cleaned them up a whole lot, did a shop out on them, got them working, that basically overnight, it just kind of became a business as well. So there was a lot of other people that were willing to buy them, just not broken. Right. Is that where Pinball Investments comes from? That's where the business came from. Where the name Pinball Investments comes from, however, that's a long story. It actually, believe it or not, it has absolutely nothing to do with investing in pinball machines. I'll tell you that at another time. Most people don't even believe me. If I tell them the story, they're just like, yeah, right. It's about investing in pinball. It's like, OK, whatever. Whatever. All right. Well, so of those machines that you purchased and just everything you could round up, what did you find were your favorite machines? Were you also playing when, as you fix them up, were you really fixing them up, turning them around? Where was your time and focus? Oh, I was always playing them. I would play them until the day they sold. And that's kind of the beauty about this hobby slash business is, you know, it's not like a regular investment, quote unquote, that you're just sitting on. No, it's a game. You get to play it. So what did you find are your favorite types of pinballs? older ones, newer ones, any specific designer, you know, specific era? I'm actually either the right guy to ask that or the wrong guy, because thanks to really appreciating and liking all the mechanics and the art of them and the themes now, I love pinball from the 1930s all the way up to present day. I'm right there with you, Jake. I do have a couple of my favorite machines, but in general, I if it's got a ball it's rolling and whether it's got flippers or not I I enjoy playing it I enjoy the art I enjoy the history and I I very much enjoy the the the mechanics I'm right there with you is there is there any specific era that you gravitate to you know late late ems early solid states anything like that um well there is right now but like I said I appreciate and just love all pinball. Sure. But here lately since I'm trying to up my route operations game, I'm really enjoying the late model games with the LCD screens with themes that really get people gravitating to them. So I mean I love all pinball but I can tell you my top two games, my favorites right now is obviously the Dukes of Hazzard and Scooby-Doo. And we'll, why don't we talk about Scooby right now? You know, you have a beautiful dog, Jesse. Why don't you talk about, you know, Scooby-Doo, your interest with it, and how it came to be that you owned a Scooby-Doo machine? Well, it's kind of funny, and it kind of goes hand in hand with the Dukes of Hazzard. I've ran that, the Strictly Custom Pinball Group, and I know we'll talk about that in a little bit but I ran that for several years even though without actually building any custom game myself so one day it finally hit me is like it's time to get something done so I don't think the admin of a group like that should not be without one himself it came down to two very obvious choices for me and that stuff that really meant a lot to me in childhood. My two favorite TV shows, one animated and one live action. So there was the Dukes of Hazzard and then there was Scooby-Doo. The reason I did not make a Scooby-Doo pinball machine is because I had a very good feeling that a production game was going to happen on that at front sooner or later anyways. And conversely, the Dukes of Hazzard, it kind of had its chance back in the late 70s early 80s and nowadays nobody was going to make that so the the choice was obvious i went with the duke's hazard now regarding scooby-doo i was going to buy that no matter how it turned out it could have been just a whole nother woe nelly rescan i wouldn't care i was going to buy it the fact that i bought that and it has literally turned into one of my absolute favorite production games ever is really fortunate and just mind-blowing to me i love everything about it uh the gameplay the code the animations and i'm not even one of the guys that's really big on code i'm just like i go with whatever but all the codes and the modes just go so well with that game it's just perfect for me yeah i you know i i knew you were a scooby-doo fan for quite some time before the machine came out. And when I learned that it was coming out, you and I had a conversation. That's actually when I learned the story of why you chose Dukes over Scooby-Doo. But I was super excited when I heard that there was a Scooby-Doo machine coming. And specifically for you, I've played it on location a few times and really, really, really enjoy it. So before we talk about the Dukes, I want to talk about the Strictly Customs pinball Facebook group. So how did you get into customs, first of all, and then why did you start the Facebook group? Well, I had noticed very early on when I started buying a lot of pinball machines, I started seeing some pictures here and there of games that even though I wasn't no professional by any means, but I could take one look at them and just kind of know those had to be custom they though there is no way that those were actually production made games and um shout out to a fellow builder brian sores of game room pinball one of the very first ones that i ever saw was based on disney cars that animated movie pixar movie uh that's one of the very first ones i ever saw i took a look at that i think it was actually on ebay at the time I was like, well, that's an EM. There's no way that's a production game. So yeah, I saw that and I saw some Sailor Jerry, the brand of rum. And they had several of those. I don't know, five or six of them. I used to use them as promotional material or something. So anyways, I saw those and I started seeing more and more and I started searching them out and I was just gathering pictures, hundreds and thousands of pictures. And then it kind of hit me one day. It's like, you know what, I got all these pictures and some of the data is like I really should do something with this. So I thought about it and I was like, well, I could make a website for it. That would be cool. But problem with website is there's no real, you know, interaction with the community. So then I thought, well, I could make either a Facebook page or a Facebook group. And this was six, seven, eight years ago, something like that. when the difference between Facebook pages and Facebook groups, it wasn't so largely defined back then. There is a big difference now, but back then I had a hard time figuring out which one to go with. It turns out I made the right choice. There's all kinds of group interaction now. Yeah, I'm absolutely loving it. The group has kind of turned in to something a little bit different than what I had intended for it. But the fact is that people asking a lot of questions and showing their build progress and stuff, it's actually a really good thing, and it's helping a lot of people out. So, you know, I'm going to leave it that way, obviously. My intention for it when I set it up was kind of a little bit more like how Instagram works, where it's just picture-based to show off the custom builds. But now with so much more interaction and people getting to ask questions and seeing how things work, yeah, it's a really good thing. So we're definitely keeping it that way, keeping the ball rolling. It's funny how you set out with one vision and it morphed into this other vision, and that's what's actually helped it grow. I looked at the stat right before our interview today. Do you know how many people are on the group now? Just over 8,500, I believe. Yeah, which is absolutely amazing. Just over 8,500. Yeah, it was Expo of 2022. We had crossed 5,000 just before Expo. And I was like, that was blowing me away. Honestly, when I set this up, it's a very niche group within a very niche hobby. I didn't think it was going to have more than 300 people. And it's because of the community that you created. And as I said in the intro, how you and I connected in the first place. And, you know, I've been interested in building a custom pinball for years and years and years, though, you know, I haven't I haven't taken the plunge to do that. And so I started this podcast. And that's why I sought you out is because it's a niche of a niche. And I want to see if you thought there'd be an interest and how to go about doing it. And so at the end of 2023, the Kineticist put out and asked to do a media collaboration and have each person who was collaborating answer the question, what are my favorite pinball machines and why do I love pinball? Jake, you answered that and I participated in the media roundup as well. While I did offer my top five pinball machines, I wanted to stay on brand and offer my favorite custom and homebrews, which I did. And you can see the Kineticist article. To do this right, I turned to the Strictly Custom Pinball Facebook group. And although not everybody building their own machine is on Strictly Customs it a great proxy And you Jake do a great job curating and cross machines from all corners of the Internet And in fact I just found out that you had a bunch of those pictures you know, queued up before you even started the group. As I compiled the data from the Facebook group, I noticed some interesting trends that I thought were worth exploring, offering insights into where the industry has been and just maybe where it is going. You and the listeners may notice there was never an episode 17 of this podcast published. The reason for that is I wrote it with the findings from my analysis of the Facebook group, but I thought it would be way more fun to discuss the findings with you. So I held episode 17. And instead of episode 17 on this episode 20, I wanted to have some fun with you and go through some of the analysis I found and just discuss it, have you make some guesses, just have a good time with it. Okay? Cool. Yeah. So the first place I want to start actually before I go through that is and understanding that you had no prep for this. Okay? what would you think but i know you've gone through the pictures recently or been going through the pictures recently do you have five favorites that you would pick out from the vast number and you know there were i looked at over 400 different machines 399 machines specifically um and i don't know if i caught every single one i tried to get every single one but it's possible facebook didn't even return all the pictures to me um what would you say were your would be your top five picks and you can pick Dukes of Hazzard a lot. Top five of custom pins? Yeah, custom, homebrew, whatever you want to call them. Oh, Dan, you're killing me. How about two? Could you pick two? Well, I am obviously going to say the Dukes of Hazzard. As you should. You can say that it is or isn't biased because even if it wasn't mine, just the fact that it's Dukes of Hazzard it is probably be my number one so so jake just for for full transparency i chose dukes of hazard as one of my top five so you have every right to say dukes as well um man there's so many of them i'll i'll try to spit out some for you but let me preface this by saying uh when the kineticists asked for their people's top five i was going to go with all just all five custom pins i really was But the deal is, I'm such good friends with so many custom builders. If I did that, I'm going to be leaving a whole lot of people out. And I just I didn't want to do that to them. So, well, Jake, I will give you an out. You can choose just one if you want, if you don't want to say another one. Well, I can spit out a few, but also there's so many of them now. It's hard to keep track. And I forget a whole lot of them. I can tell you this. There's two different Futurama pinball machines. The first one has always blown me away, and yet it went on to a new owner, and the new owner keeps making it better and better, and it's absolutely amazing. I always liked The Walking Dead, which actually a local friend of mine was building. I think he got a little bit disheartened because right when he was in the middle of building that is when Stern announced their production game. But it was a re-theme, but it had comic book art. He's also a Walking Dead comic enthusiast. So, you know, I always liked that one. I like Outpost Cordelia's Black Hole based on the Disney movie Black Hole back in the late 70s early 80s something like that that machine is actually one of the reasons why I chose to go with them to do some work on the Dukes of Hazzard they did a whole lot to that that's a very high level re-theme they took an early Solid State game and actually added an LCD screen and created some of their own animations for it. I was like, well, if they can do that, certainly they can do some of the ideas on the Dukes of Hazzard. Right. Some others, Nightmare Before Christmas, I've always loved, been following that for years. Fantastic machine. Oh, boy. Well, Jay couldn't be on the spot on this. Don't worry about it. You've gone above and beyond in offering just some of the great machines that have been made. One of the reasons the custom and homebrew scene is important to the pinball industry is because this is where innovation and new blood comes to pinball. Those making pinball machines in their basement wear the hours of dedication, of building, programming, soldering as a badge of honor and a first step in a long journey to become a pinball designer. We've seen many folks that did customs and homebrews end up working in the pinball industry in one way or another, many of which, some of which as designers. And we've also had major success come from the custom pinball scene. So let's start with machines that made it into production. OK, now, remember, I went through and the count that I had was three hundred ninety nine machines, different machines. Now, it's very possible, Jake, that I missed some. It's like I spent weeks working through the data set and compiling and putting it into Excel and working on it. And it's very possible also that some machines I may have looked at and thought they were two different machines. They ended up being the same. So don't take everything we discussed here with a grain of salt and broad brushstrokes. okay oh yeah there's no no i can i can quite easily see see where it can get confusing because there's two custom um uh jaws pinball machines they look so similar at first glance you think it's one game no it's two very different ones there's literally there's two different futurama machines there's literally four different custom iron maiden machines that all came out before stern's release so so you're you're on the right track pause there just for a sec okay yeah um so of the of the data based on the way that i collected it um community members so there were 25 themes that went into production by a manufacturer okay the machines that had 25 that went in to to production um yeah so um there were um there are at least four and potentially more um you've already said one that i didn't catch which was iron maiden so there's at least five um that had two or more versions of the same machine okay so like you said uh um you know future futurama is not a machine that's gone into production but iron maiden good example you said that there are four different customs of customs and homebrews of iron maiden so any machine that has two and above can you guess what are some of the other ones that community members have made where the machine has gone into production led zeppelin led zeppelin is one very good uh led zeppelin walking dead um Almost Sonic? Well, we'll talk about Sonic in a minute. So it looked like, at least from my research, Alice Cooper had two machines. Star Trek had two. Wait a minute. Alice Cooper? Yeah. I'm not sure I'm even aware of those. Okay. Like I said, let's take it with a grain of salt. Star Trek, according to, and I spent my time trying to make sure that we weren't talking about the same machine twice. like you said, with the Iron Maiden. And then Stranger Things, there were two made there as well. So those are the ones that I had noticed. Iron Maiden's a good ad. So let's go to rumored machines. You know, you and I have heard, as well as the community, have heard reasonable, incredible rumors over the years. You've already mentioned Futurama, okay? OK, so there were 22 of the 400 machines that I would consider a credible rumor. OK, in other words, I've heard something where there's a very good chance that this machine would get made. Futurama is one of them. What would be some of the other ones that you that you would would peg? Oh, and specifically, which ones have had two or more versions? versions. You said Jaws already, so I'll give you that one as well. Jaws went into production. Right, Jaws went into production. I wrote this all up before Jaws was produced. To be honest, I'm kind of drawing a blank, but I could always hold out hope for Slayer. I've never heard the Slayer rumor, but you're right. There were two or more of that. Pokemon was one. There were two machines. Yep. Legend of Zelda and Harry Potter, in addition to Futurama and Jaws. But Jaws is actually one that went invented. Oh, there is also Legends Ernie Silverberg based on a video game. Yeah. I'm drawing a blank on the name of it, but there's two of those. Well, he's got the Baron, right? Is that what you're talking about? Yes. Yeah, okay. There's another one based on the same video game. League of Legends. League of Legends. Yeah, you're correct. There would be two of those. All right. So of the unique themes, seven of them were video game themed. So there's clearly a push for more video game themes, which makes complete sense given the oldest Gen Xers grew up on video games, and as you said, how your origin story started. Oh, I have an answer for you. Yeah, go for it. Super Mario Brothers. Super Mario Brothers is another good one. There's at least two custom Super Mario pins. One of them is actually still in the works right now. Yep. So sports was another one, And specifically, one city among sports themes dominated the number of customs across all sports. That includes basketball, football, soccer, and hockey. What city dominated sports? Dallas. No, unfortunately, it was Boston. Boston. Yeah, across all of them. um it had by far more uh and and you know jake we're doing this for fun so no no right around it was it was boston like i kept i kept seeing awesome machines one after another different i definitely recall more than one uh boston bruins uh machines yeah um all right so one one one final one. Let's do a prediction. So, you know, I saw one machine that I've not heard a credible rumor. It's not truly video game based. It's never been brought into production. And yet, as far as I could tell, there were three different versions of this machine. Now, maybe it's two, maybe I was looking at the same machine from a different angle or different time frame. But just go with me on this, it at least was posted multiple times and looked like a different machine. It's based on a movie. Can you guess what it was? Goonies. So Goonies is close. Goonies, so as far, you and I have had this conversation before, as far as I can find actual pinball machines, it had less than this one. However, if you include virtual machines, Goonies by far dominates this specific franchise. Hmm. No, don't know. No worries. It was Mad Max. Oh, I knew that. Yeah. So, you know, unfortunately, you didn't get it. That's OK. There's no prizes here. But the fact that you had that reaction means that my data was not completely off. Mad Max, I saw as far as I could tell, three different machines, three different makers, three different eras. and you know it kind of makes sense the theme is fitting you know it's got futuristic cars amazing art depth of world building storytelling so here's what i'm saying jake if stern jjp spooky barrels multimorphic are listening there's demand for a mad max machine i will say that runners up there were a number of ferrari themed machines and at least two hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy machines that i saw hitchhiker's guide yeah i i personally i wasn't actually sure whether that it was two different games or it was one machine that has been morphing over time it's it's very possible that it's this like the enough of the machine looked different including the back glass and i was like this looks like a different machine but you're absolutely correct it very well well well could be all right yeah to uh to point out something there i do post a lot but i don't get to fully research or watch videos on everything that i post because i work so much and what i post a lot while i'm at work and while i'm at work i'm pretty busy doing other stuff but if i can find something worthy of posting sometimes i'll just post it up on the group and then you know I'll try to take a look at it later. So I don't always get things 100% accurate, but I got the general idea of what's going on. And that's the fun part of it, Jake. And we all thank you for it. All right, Jake, now that we played a little stump Jake with his own Facebook group, and we talked about how you started the Facebook group and your origin story, let's actually get into your own custom, the Dukes of Hazzard. So why don't you start from the beginning? Like, you know, I and the listener or want to know the whole story, like all the way from how you picked the theme to how you had it built? Okay. I'll start as far back as I can remember. I am going to forget a whole lot, but I'll do my best. So it was time to get a game going, and part of the reason why I decided on it to go ahead and pull the trigger or at least see what it's going to take to pull the trigger on getting it going is COVID happened. And I really thought that that was going to be a few weeks, maybe a few months, but no, it just never seemed to stop. So I was doing nothing but work. I mean, it was seven days a week, 12 to 14 hours a day, just nonstop. So I figured, well, if I'm going to be working this much, I should at least get something out of it, something I wanted. So I knew pretty much right off the bat that I wasn't going to be the only one involved, but maybe I could contract out quite a bit of the work. Some of the work turned out to be a whole lot of work and just finally go ahead and get this done. so um i chose duke's hazard for reasons we already discussed and uh it wasn't uh there was a little more to it than that it was also because i had ideas for the duke's hazard i kind of had a vision um of what i wanted it to look like and some certain ideas and aspects for the game what what was it about the show that drew you in originally um that show came out when I was somewhere around five years old. So if you're a little boy at that point of time in the 70s and you're five years old, that just instantly became part of your life. So I was all about it. Never could get enough of it. So absolutely. Look, I'm a huge Dukes fan. I was a little bit, you know, I caught it a little bit later than you. Maybe the final season's alive and then the rest in reruns. And you got jumping cars. You got, you know, cops and robbers. You've got, you know, bows and arrows. Like it's you know, there's pinball at the bar. You don't even know what a bar is like. I hear you, man. Like it's a it's a great show. Was there was there any specific aspect of you as a five year old that drew you to that show? Was it the orange car? Was it the jumps? Like what what was it about? About was it the killer song by Waylon Jennings? No, no, actually, there was no single aspect about it. It was just the whole show in general. And it's kind of really hard to explain because as a five year old kid watching that, all of that was real. It was real life. Like I literally wanted to move to Hazard County. like that's the way things really were there you know it's not until much later in life and you watch it watching it as an adult it's like yeah this is comedy and then you go back and watch it again and just realize it just good wholesome fun yeah so you know it it very different now from you know from watching it when i was a kid but i just had so much nostalgia for it i just loved it so much as a kid i can still say easily that to this day it's my favorite live action tv show ever did you did you watch it with anybody in your family or was it something that just you watched yourself um usually by myself but i did have a cousin right about the same age as me uh we lived far away though but it was like the dukes of hazard was our lives so we would watch it whenever we got a chance to visit each other so besides me and my cousin chris at the time a little bit later on i got my first little brother and then he would watch it with me some but he was very very young yeah my um the The reason I'm asking is because, like I said, Dukes holds a very special place in my heart as well. And my dad, you know, it would like most of the shows that we would watch would be like Dallas and Falcon Crest and Murder, She Wrote. And, you know, whatever my parents wanted to watch at that at that time, maybe a couple of years later as it was in reruns. But the one thing that my dad watched with me like that I felt was for me was the Dukes. And I would never see him laugh as much as every time the Dukes jumped the car. Like as soon as that car jumped and landed, he would just be laughing and laughing. And it just it just always made, you know, made a fun time for me. So for at least for me, that that that time with my dad was was was was a big, big reason why the Dukes is still such a such a such a big part of my life. It's good to know that you shared it with your cousin, your brother. So the the theme, how did you go from liking the Dukes to it? You know, you having ideas. What were some of the ideas you had for the machine? Well, let me backtrack just a tiny bit by saying that it really flabbergasted me that with all of the licensed themes that have came out since the 70s, the Dukes of Hazzard, you know, for people a little bit younger, don't realize the Dukes of Hazzard was a licensing juggernaut. Absolutely. like not maybe not quite as big as star wars but duke's hazard licensed everything from toys to lunch boxes to underoos just about everything but they only they two things they never did get was a comic book and a pinball machine so you know i i always thought they should have had one and well you know i thought about it long enough like well they didn't get one they're never gonna get one nowadays so if i want one build it myself so some of the ideas i had early on i i insisted on a wide body because there's seven seasons somewhere around 150 episodes there's so much material to go on i wanted a lot of space for a lot of artwork a lot of aspects of that i can't say i would do that again because moving around a white body is sometimes a little bit of a pain but at the time i wanted a white body i also wanted a game that was fun um and i had a paragon by the time i thought about turning a paragon into a dukes of hazard i had sold it about six months prior. The other reason I chose a Paragon as basis is I wanted something to spell out Hazard. Well the letter count in Hazard in the context of Hazard County is spelled with two z's. So Hazard and Paragon is the same letter count. So it all kind of made sense. So kind of went from there. once I decided to finally see about getting this going. One of the first things I did was talk to a few different artists. I settled on a local artist who just happens to be the art director for CPR, Classic Playfield Reproductions. I was considering some other artists for hand-drawn art, but I was really afraid of just how cost prohibitive that might be. Also, regarding the Dukes of Hazzard, it's one of the very, very few pinball themes that I give a full pass to for using photo realistic art like Photoshop, clip and paste because it's not based on a book or even comic books. And it's not even necessarily based on like the story of the Dukes of Hazzard. everybody remembers it from those specific actors so being photorealistic actually just goes with it very well absolutely so i talked to him and the price i was a little bit floored with but i was like well i really want this done let's see about it so next up i went and i talked to my cabinet guy and all i was going to have him do was just do the cabinet prep cabinet artwork He was on board, but he got a little bit busy. So thankfully, the next set of people I talked to was Katie Helm and Olivia Helm of Alpos Cadelia. And granted, not all these people are local to me. So I had that that was going for me. That was good. but originally I only asked Katie and Olivia for just one little thing and that was to change the audio I had a few ideas for audio because the way it was I could stand to play a paragon with the Dukes of Hazzard artwork on it and Paragon's rules but if the audio is going to be the same that was kind of a deal breaker for me I would just simply be playing a paragon with art from the Dukes of Hazzard. Right. And that just wouldn't fit well. So a couple of my early ideas was I was actually just going to keep it simple and go with bells and chimes. And that was not just because of cost. That's actually, to be honest, that's my favorite audio of any pinball machine. Like you could play the Gottlieb Pro Football from, I think, 1976. six yep and when you rip that spinner it just lights up both the bell and the chime box i don't get tired of that never that that's one of the best spinners in all of pinball to rip and all these solid state games with the um clip audio like from tv shows and movies or music like i got metallica behind me once you hear the same thing over and over and over no matter how no matter what the theme is eventually it gets a little bit stale but bells and chimes it's just music to my ears every single time so that's what I was going to go with but I also had one other really crazy idea that I just didn't realize how crazy it was at the time and that is we were going to add actual an actual Dixie horn to the inside of the cabinet that played the same tune from the General Lee well little me i didn't realize just exactly what that horn was or how they worked well it's an actual air horn with three trumpets well i like to i like the kiss principle of keeping things super simple well with one of those horns you got a set of three trumpets you got air hoses you got an air compressor you got wiring and a control box and then as it turns out i also didn't realize just how loud those things were yeah so once i heard about the decibel range something like 130 decibels or something like that i was like yeah that's not gonna work so we x-nayed that but we still put the tune in but it's just digitized it comes through the speakers. So anyways, what I was saying, that's all I was asking Katie and Olivia for. I wasn't sure that they would really be up for it, even though I knew what they did with the black hole and they restored a lot of arcade video games. They do really fantastic work, but just wasn't really sure that they would want to take this project on. uh turns out they said they did after a couple days but then a few days later they came back to me and they said hey we got some ideas and we'd like to replace all of the electronics i was like uh that sounds it sounds really expensive and it also sounds like it's going to take years to get this done i was like i'm not sure that's right well to their credit they kept twisting my arm about it for a while maybe two or three weeks and then one night I was like you know what if they took out all the electronics we put in our own system what could I do with this so I came back home I took a look at one of the paragons that I had in the garage and I looked down at it I was like yeah this would be nice and we could do multiball we could do ball save we could change the rules add in all different kinds of audio and then one thing hit me that is extremely unique and it's still one of my favorite thing one of my favorite parts of the game is uh and i coordinated this with both the artist and katie and olivia i said this lower left pop bumper that's down by the bottom left close to the flippers on paragon that's the beast layer so i told them both or told all three of I said, hey, this is going to be the Hazard County Jail. And since my reasoning for this is, well, jail is where you don't want to be, right? So every time you hit that pop bumper, instead of giving you points, it's going to take them away. The point is, don't go to jail. So they were all on board for that. And it's still to this day, including every single production pinball machine, there is no game, no other pinball machine that actively takes points away like that. There is at least two other pins I know of that if you hit the wrong switch so many times, it may take away a certain amount of points like the Bally Harley-Davidson that I have. once you hit the the right saucer it's a police officer police officer that keeps giving you a warning after warning and then you hit it so many times he's going to write you a ticket and that ticket is going to cost you 10 000 points so there is that we're down the multimorphic also does have one at least one place where it takes points away from you if you don't do something there's a there's a dead easy shot right in the center at one point and if you don't make that shot it will take take take points away from you yeah so we got we got going with that idea and then um just taking a look at the play field here to remind myself of everything backing up i went back to the artist's house and i was absolutely insisting on having paragon spell out hazard well on the game paragon it actually spells out paragon in two separate areas one on big inserts across the middle of the game and then also on small inserts above the right saucer up very high to the top right of the play field well i went over the artist house one day and he had this game Flash vs. Arrow based on the two TV series and on the big inserts instead of spelling something out or having numbers he had actually pictures of the characters faces and it looked great I'm like wow that could really work so we spell out hazard on the top right but across the big inserts on the middle we actually have the top seven human actor characters for the Dukes of Hazzard that would be Bo, Luke, Daisy, Boss Hog, Sheriff Roscoe, Cooter the mechanic and Uncle Jesse yep I did one flash on there as well the Basset Hound but I really didn't want to give up a human character that was so integral to the story for flash so we did put flash on there just not on on an insert so jake um you you mentioned the choice one of the choices for paragon was due to the to the letter the letter um was there other aspects and then you you mentioned the the the the the uh pop bumper for the for the jail were there other aspects of paragon and the wide body were there other aspects of paragon that drew you to paragon for the machine yes at least one and i'm glad you asked because i about forgot it's that my original vision for this game and it yeah it's deviated a little bit but my original vision for this game was i was going to build it and make it look like it came from the factory in 1979 i wanted this to look like an official valley release okay It turns out it did deviate a little bit, but in a good way. It's even better. It's better than anything Bally would have made back then. So that is one of the big reasons why I chose Paragon. It came out in 1979, so that's kind of why I wanted to use that as a basis. So I played the game. It plays absolutely fantastic. It's absolutely gorgeous. The art, the audio, the theme integration. It's just a truly extremely well-done, well-deserving game for all the awards that you've won for it. And there's been many and all the accolades you've had. Is there a reason that you decided to go with an existing game layout and do some modifications compared to creating your own layout as some other designers do? I'm not saying one way is better than the other. I'm just asking the question, what drove you one way versus the other? No, that's a good statement. One way is not better than the other in regards to custom pins. It's just one way works for some people and another for other people. Absolutely. I'm kind of an engineer at heart. I can't create something from the ground up. But like case in point, I have a motorcycle background. I could build one from scratch, but I can take one and I can make it much better. I used to build race bikes. So when it comes to the custom games, the re-themes really fit me better, just especially since if I take a tried and true layout that's been in production, I know it works, then I know I'm not going to build something that's going to end up clunky or just flat out doesn't work. So the re-themes work for me, and they're kind of my favorite segment of the hobby. Yeah. And what's interesting about that, Jake, is that one thing I've definitely learned about following the Circli Customs group, doing this podcast, talking to people and talking to people, there's definitely no one way to skin this cat. And in addition to that, focus on the things that you are interested in and either you want to learn how to do or know how to do or a combination of both. And, you know, get help as you did to do the parts that either you don't want to do, don't know how to do or don't necessarily have the time to do. And, you know, you talked about the artists you talked about. It was Olivia and. Olivia and Katie. Katie, sorry. you got help from them what other parts of the machine did you get help on? Well there was my buddy Chris who was going to do the cabinet he got too busy so thankfully Olivia and Katie they took that on themselves and also to back up a little bit I was only asking Katie and Olivia for help with the audio but then they had other ideas and I let them run with that And then we were on a big approval process at first. They kept, they would show me something. I'm like, yeah, that's great. That's awesome. And then over and over. And finally, I just called him up one day. I said, hey, this is turning out so much more fantastic than I ever imagined. So from here on out, I just told him, don't worry about getting an approval from me. Just do whatever you think is going to make the game fantastic. And we'll go with that. That's, that's, that, that, that is quite the trust, Jake. um you you had mentioned i'm glad glad you brought it up they they have made the suggestion um and and politely push you to um update the board set from the original board set you mentioned multiball you mentioned ball saves what was the reason they were pushing it um in a good way pushing it um well one they enjoyed doing it but also too i think they really wanted to show off their skill set of what they could do and you know I glad it turned out that way and kind of a sidetrack from that is that um when I decided to do this I didn't think anybody would care I was gonna get this built and bring it home I wasn't gonna take it to any shows not that I was against it it's just that I didn't think anybody else would care one bit at all. But when they were getting real close to being done with their part of the work, they asked if they could get it over to Electric Bat Arcade for a public reveal. And I wasn't really big on it at first, but I was talking to myself, and I said, you know what, they've done so much work for this, and they're such good friends, they really want to showcase this. Absolutely. so I got it over there for a public debut I had to work that day but I stopped by for a little while to see how things were going I was absolutely just shocked everybody loved it they were having a big tournament on it and I just it blew me away so much because I seriously I did not think anybody would care one bit at all about this thing and and how did it hold up that that day at the electric pad were there any problems with it did it no it no absolutely no problems it held up just fine it only had one single little thing during that point in time and that is if you got a really high score the system would slow down a little bit so the gameplay would be just fine but then when it's tallying up your score after you drain the ball if it was a really big score you would get a little bit of slow down but other than that that was it jake did you make um any modifications at all to layout of any of the components on paragon or is it like if i took a paragon play field and looked at the the dukes it would be exactly identical uh the playfields are identical uh from what you can see. However, if you took it apart you might notice some differences. There are I believe 16 3d printed components within the camera and the one glaring difference you would never see because you would have to take the apron off and that is we had to cut a hole in the in the play field but it's covered by the by the apron so you don't see it. That hole had to be cut in order to install a a multiball ball trough. Aha. Okay. So you actually added a multiball ball trough in order to get the multiball trough. Yeah, because Paragon is originally a single ball game, which normally I'm fine with a single ball game, especially from the 70s. Yep. But when you play this and then you try playing a Paragon, I don't think you'll want to play Paragon again. This game is just so much more fun, especially with multiball. It's an extremely fun game And when you go and hit the start And you hear the horn From the general Lee It's quite the Memorable experience Now you talk about How did you work with the artist On where You talked about the jail And the faces for the shots What about the rest of the artwork on the play field How did that process go I gave him a set of ideas and then also a set of characters basically like top a characters that absolutely had to be on there such as bow luke daisy and then b level characters and then c and so on um managed to get all of the top level characters with one single exception Deputy Cletus who was actually Boss Hog's cousin, wanted him on there just about as much as Deputy Enos but to my surprise even though you can find thousands upon thousands of images on Google Images of the Dukes of Hazzard it's still from a TV show from the 1970s So when you take some of those images and then you blow them up to scale to fit them on a pinball machine, turns out they may look good on thumbnail, but once you blow them up, they're just unusable. So we went through thousands of images between books, magazines, and online and everywhere else we could find. We used everything that was usable anyways. So we got all but one of the A-level characters, and then we got, I believe, one or two lower-level characters. Part of that was actually my insistence on having at least one more female besides just Daisy. Like, I don't want to just use seven different pictures of Daisy just because she's the only main girl on the show. I wanted at least one more. Right. So there was Lulu Hog, but we couldn't find any pictures of her. what we did find was a picture of the mail clerk. And, of course, talking to you, I'm going to have a brain fart. Miss Tisdale, Miss Emma Tisdale, she was in three or four episodes. Sweet little old lady, just the kind of old lady you'd love to death. So we got her in there, and then some of Daisy. Then we got basically all the rest. And I'll tell you this, though. Got to give big, big credit to Stu Wright of CPR. He runs this company, Mad Voodoo Pinball. Got to give him credit on this. All the A-level characters I wrote down on paper, gave to him. Guess what happened? I forgot one. one of the absolute main characters that had to be on there no matter what so without calling me or asking me about or anything he just put him on there anyways so at the beginning of every single episode you'll have a guy strumming a guitar and the only thing you see is his his arm and part of the guitar he put that on there that's Waylon Jennings Waylon Jennings yeah and it's on the far lower left side like in the outlane area and when I saw that I just freaked out because that to me that's kind of like my own personal Easter egg because I spaced it off forgot to tell him about it but he knew better and got him on there anyways and and that's why it's so important to work with people that not only want to get the project but understand the the you know when it's got an IP or when it's got a story what's actually important that's it's it's it's that type of passion that shines through. You had mentioned that Olivia and Katie at one point went to basically a fully autonomous mode where they, you know, you didn't have to do approvals with them anymore. How did that work with you? You've mentioned Stu. How did you, how did that work with Stu? Did, you know, was there an approval process working with him or did you also get to the same thing where he took, you know, he took the liberty? No, there was an approval process in place and I really didn't have too many changes at all. It was pretty darn straightforward. But also to his credit, I was going to go simple on the cabinet, just make it orange with an O1 on the side. And that wasn't simply me being cheap. It was just because I figured it's going to end up just like any other pinball machine I have, and that is sandwiched between other pinball machines. like once I get it home and in place you're never going to see it anyways right well I'm glad he talked me into the full art package so it's got instead of just really plain sides it really does have nice artwork on the sides now so it's kind of kind of a combination of orange black the 01 kind of a checkered flag look so um that looks great and then you have a boar's nest topper for it right uh yeah i do and he twisted my arm on that because believe it or not i'm really not so much into toppers i like everything of my games to be inside the game yep so to this day i think as far as production machines go i think i've bought exactly one topper and that's for scooby doo and there's there's four things that five things that make the general six things that make the General Lee very unique. Number one, the doors don't open. You got to go through the window. Number two, the car is orange. Number three, it's got 01 on it on each side. Number four, it's a classic Dodge. Okay. Number five, it's the horn. Okay. And number six is the fact that it's the General Lee. It's got the General Lee flag. It's got the southern flag on the top. And you have an Easter egg on the machine as well, don't you? uh regarding the boom boom room no regarding the top of the the machine does it have the the flag on the top uh not currently um the the the the decal that was made i'm not sure if uh okay yeah i'm not sure if the um he forgot to put generally on the size or whether that was It was an artistic design choice. But, yeah, I'm just not sure whether I even want it up there. You're not going to see it anyways. Sure. If I do, it's going to be behind the topper on the very top of the game. Exactly. And just since people are going to be listening to this and they're going to be wondering about it, I'm not sure if you're going to ask about it or not, but I'll just go ahead and say it. regarding the flag which is something i don't usually like to talk about because this day and age there seems to be two main camps people that say it stands for hate or people that say it stands for heritage well there is actually a third camp guys like me it means absolutely nothing other than it was simply an image on top of a car of my favorite childhood TV show and that's it. So I do understand that it upsets some people. And that's why when I went to the artist, one of the very first things we went over was that issue. And I said, hey, I'm not making a Confederate flag game. I'm making the Dukes of Hazzard game. So, you know, I'm not trying to go out of my way to upset anybody. But at the same time, I'm not going to erase history just to appease a small number of people. So I said, if the top of the car is shown, it has to be on there. So, and that's what I got regarding the flag. And believe it or not, the most amount of potentially negative comments that I've had about it were actually from very big fans of the show that they can't see the flag. It's literally on there like four or five times, but it's so small you can't really see it. Yeah. So they're like, I don't see the flag. That game doesn't count. Like, yeah, OK, buddy. Well, look, you there's no way for you to weld the door shut. So you've got you got to get as close to the authentic as possible. Look, I happen to agree with you on what you said to me. It's my my younger self and seeing, you know, the car and what what what it had. So I completely get where you're coming from. Listen, Jake, moving from Dukes, just as we as as we end, the interview um you have another custom as well that you occasionally show off um you have a special strikes and spares do you want to talk about oh yeah yeah it's basically there's a a game that looks like a pinball machine it technically it is but most people don't consider it pinball it's a bowling game it's made by Gottlieb sometime in the 90s um I love it to death. Well, some other guy commissioned an art package for it to change it to the Big Lebowski. They made that available. I got a set. I got it on there. So it's a Big Lebowski, but it's not the Dutch pinball, Big Lebowski pinball machine you might be familiar with. It's a bowling game. It looks like a pinball machine. It's super cool. I've seen you post about it a couple times, and You actually posted your most recent lineup on Facebook. I saw that and I saw that it was on there, so I figured I'd give you... I thought you was about to ask me about my next custom game. What's your next custom game, Jake? We'll talk about that another time. I'm not trying to keep it super quiet or anything. It's just that I'm not trying to count my chickens before they hatch because this project is just now starting and I'm trying to make sure that I can actually get it done before Expo and get it to Expo this year. So whatever it is, I obviously want to hear about it, see it and talk to you about it and obviously play it. That said, as we round down the interview, one thing I wanted to know is what have you learned and what would you take into your next project? I didn't even know you were working on another one. And so what are, based on your experience with Dukes, based on your experience with starting the group and watching it grow. What are you going to take into this next project, even if you don't want to talk about the theme? Oh, no, I can tell you a little bit. I think that unless it's an EM, changing out the electronics is pretty important. If you really want to go the extra mile, make it your own game, and it's still just a re-theme, you really got to add a little more to it than just art. well that's kind of the bummer of my situation is is that if i can get this done this next project done it's just going to be the 1.0 version for now there's no we may have enough time to deal with the art and make it a nice game it's still going to be fun regardless but uh the 2.0 with the new electronics that's not going to happen for probably at least another year um just running out of time right now. And that's the nice thing, though, about these projects is you can do a 1.0, you can do a 2.0. And in fact, you could bring a 0.5 and call it a 1.0 when you add the electronics that you want. Look, if Stern can release a 0.65 code or 0.70 code or 0.85 code, there's no reason you couldn't also. So listen, Jake, it's really been a pleasure having you. I want to thank you for everything you've done for the custom community, the homebrew community. I know that although I had seen customs before and seen people working on them it wasn't until I caught your group on Facebook that I really saw how although it's a niche of a niche as you said it's still a very cozy niche to be in and the people are great the projects are great and every single one of them has a story and I wouldn't be bringing this podcast to the listeners if it wasn't for you so thank you very much for everything you've done and inspiring me and thank you as well Dan I'm glad somebody started this podcast because there's just no way that I could. I really wanted a custom pinball podcast out there, but me doing it was just not going to happen. So I'm glad you came along. Thanks for joining the podcast. Thanks for listening. And I can't wait to see what you make. Thank you. Thank you.

_(Acquisition: youtube_groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 9e1419f6-bb92-4306-b87c-59943d3cdfbe*