# Episode 92 - Programmers: The Unsung Heroes of Pinball **Source:** Wedgehead Pinball Podcast **Type:** podcast_episode **Published:** 2025-07-21 **Duration:** 50m 41s **Beat:** Pinball **URL:** Buzzsprout-17485531 --- ## Analysis Alan and Alex of Wedgehead Pinball Podcast host Greg Dunlap to discuss the critical but underrecognized role of programmers in pinball machine design. The conversation covers how programmers influence rule sets, choreography, shot design, and overall game feel—often with as much creative impact as lead designers. They examine how deep rule sets have become necessary for home sales but create complexity that can obscure gameplay, and draw parallels to film editing and modern video game design to illustrate the programmer's essential 'nurturing' creative role. ### Key Claims - [HIGH] George Gomez stated that the lead programmer on most pinball machines has roughly the same amount of influence over how a machine turns out as the lead designer does. — _Alan references direct conversation with Gomez on the Wedgehead show; specific attribution to George Gomez statement._ - [HIGH] The shift toward home pinball sales (rather than purely location-based play) has driven the trend toward deeper, more complex rule sets in modern pinball. — _Greg Dunlap explicitly connects home sales economics to rule set complexity, drawing parallels to video game industry evolution from arcade to home console._ - [HIGH] Programming can save a playfield that players don't think is fun to shoot (example: Jackbot's redesign of Pinbot by Larry DeMar). — _Greg uses Jackbot/Pinbot comparison as primary example of software transforming playfield perception; both hosts agree._ - [MEDIUM] The dot matrix programmer role at classic manufacturers was originally given to junior team members partly to ensure they wouldn't cause equipment damage ('not set anything on fire'). — _Greg confirms statement is 'a little bit hyperbolic' but validates core concern; cites real example of Adams Family power magnet fire._ - [HIGH] Modern pinball complexity often obscures gameplay because information can no longer be communicated via playfield inserts alone and requires display lookup. — _Alan expresses this concern; Greg concurs, citing Jurassic Park as example where rule interaction is unclear despite multiple rule readings._ ### Notable Quotes > "George Gomez a lead designer told us on this very show that he views the lead programmer on most pinball machines to have pretty much the same amount of influence over how a pinball machine eventually turns out as the lead designer does." > — **Alan**, early in episode > _Sets up the core thesis that programmers deserve equal creative recognition to designers._ > "Software can make a bad play field fun, right?" > — **Greg Dunlap**, mid-episode > _Directly supports the claim that programming has transformative creative power independent of physical design._ > "I think that any product needs a visionary, basically... the person who brings together all of the other visionaries and puts them together in a way that makes their vision come true." > — **Greg Dunlap**, mid-episode > _Frames the lead role (designer or programmer) as curator/integrator of multiple creative visions, drawing on film analogy._ > "We're starting to see that happen in pinball as well, because the people who bring games home don't want to see the whole game in a week. They've paid 65, 75, 10 grand for this game." > — **Greg Dunlap**, later in episode > _Explains economic driver behind shift to deep rule sets; key market signal._ > "I shouldn't have to look up at the display to find out what's going on; I'm used to seeing it all right there in front of me laid out." > — **Alan**, later in episode > _Articulates player frustration with modern rule complexity exceeding playfield communication capacity._ > "I equate... that the original star wars movie was said to have been saved in the editing room... without richard shu paul hirsch and marcia lucas that original movie wouldn't have really been that good either." > — **Alan**, end of episode > _Proposes direct analogy between film editors and pinball programmers as underrecognized creative forces._ ### Entities | Name | Type | Context | |------|------|---------| | Alan | person | Co-host of Wedgehead Pinball Podcast, owner of Wedgehead pinball bar in Portland, Oregon. | | Alex | person | Co-host of Wedgehead Pinball Podcast, described as 'water boy in his basement studio.' | | Greg Dunlap | person | Former pinball dot matrix programmer, now frequent Wedgehead guest (4+ episodes), candid industry commentator. | | George Gomez | person | Lead designer at Stern Pinball, cited as believing lead programmer influence equals lead designer influence. | | Larry DeMar | person | Legendary pinball programmer credited with redesigning Pinbot as Jackbot, exemplifying programmer's transformative power. | | Dwight Sullivan | person | Stern Pinball programmer; mentioned as collaborator with Steve Ritchie, noted for game choreography work (Ghostbusters reference). | | Steve Ritchie | person | Legendary pinball designer quoted on lead designer as 'dad' of project; games noted for speed and layout, choreography varies by programmer partner. | | Barry Ousler | person | Legendary pinball playfield designer (Junkyard, Whodunit); known for designing playfields then stepping back from full project involvement. | | Lyman Sheets | person | Legendary pinball programmer, anecdote about placing sound ROM upside down; known for rule set work with Steve Ritchie games. | | Wedgehead Pinball | company | Pinball bar in Portland, Oregon co-owned by Alan, mentioned as having Jackbot and other machines on floor. | | Pinbot | game | Classic Barry Ousler-designed game with 'uninteresting' rules; used as example of playfield that software can improve. | | Jackbot | game | Modern rework of Pinbot by Larry DeMar; cited as example of programmer transforming a game into 'an absolute blast to play.' | | Whodunit | game | Barry Ousler playfield, but feels like 'a Dwight game' according to Alan; used to illustrate programmer-led design direction. | | John Wick | game | Stern Pinball game marketed as 'Tim Sexton game' but designed by Elliot Eisman; example of credit misattribution. | | Dungeons & Dragons: The Tyrant's Eye | game | Referenced as exemplary modern deep rule set with good tutorial/progression; uses carryover progress and mode locking for clarity. | | King Kong | game | Recent Stern release; pigtail ramp with 'biplane sound effect' cited as example of choreography enhancing physical layout. | | Ghostbusters | game | Stern game; multiball start in storage facility cited as example of great modern choreography moment. | | Jurassic Park | game | Modern pinball game cited as example of overly complex rules that obscure gameplay despite repeated rule reading. | | Attack from Mars | game | Classic game; super jackpot shot and multiball start choreography cited as examples of excellent programmer-designer coordination. | | Godzilla (SEGA) | game | Referenced for spinner mechanic that appears non-functional; used to illustrate importance of programmer bringing mechanical elements to life via coding. | ### Topics - **Primary:** Programmer role and creative credit in pinball design, Deep rule sets vs. playfield accessibility in modern pinball, Code updates and post-launch fixes as design tool, Choreography (lights, sounds, display timing) as programmer domain, Home pinball sales as driver of rule complexity - **Secondary:** Comparison of pinball programming to film editing and game design visionary roles, Classic vs. modern pinball design philosophy differences - **Mentioned:** Hardware safety and power management in boutique manufacturers ### Sentiment **Positive** (0.72) — Hosts express deep respect for programmers and acknowledge their underrecognized role, but also express concern about modern rule set complexity creating accessibility barriers. Greg is candid and balanced in his perspective. Mixed appreciation: enthusiasm for programmer creativity tempered by nostalgia for simpler, more transparent rule sets. ### Signals - **[community_signal]** Wedgehead Podcast dedicates full episode to programmer recognition and role; indicates broader community conversation around designer vs. programmer credit. (confidence: high) — Episode title 'Programmers: The Unsung Heroes of Pinball' and sustained 50+ minute discussion. - **[design_philosophy]** Modern pinball rule complexity now exceeds playfield communication capacity; players must consult display/rules rather than understanding via inserts. (confidence: high) — Alan: 'I shouldn't have to look up at the display to find out what's going on... I don't know how the dinosaurs work' (Jurassic Park example). - **[design_philosophy]** Successful modern rule sets use mode locking and focused progression (Dungeons & Dragons example) rather than concurrent multi-track progress to maintain clarity. (confidence: medium) — Alan praises D&D for 'straightforward on the surface' approach with mode locking that 'focuses your attention' despite deep underlying mechanics. - **[design_philosophy]** Shift from coin-op arcade rule philosophy (2-minute games, points-driven) to home console game philosophy (progression-driven, accessible depth). (confidence: high) — Greg's extended video game industry analogy: 'you cannot take Robotron and sell it on a cartridge for $60... coin-op arcade games are made to be played in two minutes or less.' - **[design_philosophy]** Modern deep rule sets driven by home sales market economics; programmers forced to create 'weeks of gameplay' content rather than 2-minute arcade experiences. (confidence: high) — Greg Dunlap: 'I think we are where we are because of the trend towards home sales of games... people who bring games home don't want to see the whole game in a week.' - **[personnel_signal]** Programmer-designer pairing quality varies significantly; hosts note Ritchie pairs successfully with both Lyman and Dwight despite some friction, suggesting programmer choice impacts final game feel. (confidence: medium) — Discussion of Ritchie/Dwight chemistry and impact on Ghostbusters choreography; contrast with potential friction between them. - **[product_concern]** Classic era safety/oversight: dot matrix programmer role originally junior-level position partly designed to prevent equipment damage. (confidence: medium) — Greg confirms anecdote about 'not set anything on fire' role; validates with Adams Family fire example and coil-locking power management risks. - **[technology_signal]** Code updates and post-release fixes now treated as essential design tool; hosts note 'where's the code update' as common player refrain. (confidence: high) — Alan: 'they need to fix the code, where's the code update, where's the code update right, which is all programming work that needs to be done.' --- ## Transcript Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Wedgehead Pinball Podcast. I'm Alan, your host of the show, one of the owners of Wedgehead, a pinball bar in Portland, Oregon, in case you do not know by now. But I'm joined by my co-host Alex, the water boy in his basement studio. How you doing, Alex? Oh, I'm doing great. I'm doing particularly great because it's my turn to plug the coffee account. You know, you go to KO. I don't think I said the URL last week. We go to KO-FI.com slash Wedgehead podcast. You throw us a few bucks. You know, it'll go towards our next trip following the Colorado trip. And you get an invite to the discord where you can come and yell at me about my hot takes on pat lawler games yeah which he has some spicy unpopular takes devolving as you know there's there's tribal factions yeah it's turning into a survivor-esque situation speaking of survivor a big fan of survivor and a big fan of every just a very positive pinball guy he loves all the games we're joined again by our good friend a long-time contributor at this point, Mr. Greg Dunlap. Greg, how are you doing? I'm doing good. I gotta say, you guys sound a lot different at 1x. Greg listens to this show at 2x. I do 1.5, but it's definitely like, I'm like sitting here, wow, man, you guys are talking slow. Yeah, you're like, this coffee read is taking forever. Every time I listen back to an episode, if I force myself to listen to my voice i have to skip through that coffee read in the beginnings i'm like i get it guys but you know it's important i mean the good part about 1.5x is that sometimes you'll like include a clip of uncontrollable urge in there and it really cranks the bumper music is like on meth yeah right yeah well we're happy to have you back greg you know what they say to make a dunlap you got to break a couple gregs so we had to do back-to-back episodes oh my god well today's episode i'm entitling pinball's unsung heroes the programmers you know as we know designing and producing a pinball machine is a massive team effort and it's never done alone but today we're here to discuss the massive yet under-recognized role that programmers play in the creative design team of a pinball machine and for the last 35 to 40 years of pinball's history pinball has needed programmers. The switch to solid state games in the 1970s necessitated that. Over that time, the role and prominence of programmers has grown exponentially alongside the scope and workload. If you're listening to this, you probably have some idea of a programmer's role in a pinball machine team, but you probably will still be surprised by the overall scope of everything that requires programming in a pinball machine. The stuff that everyone talks about constantly online is the sexy stuff like rule sets and wizard modes but their roles include systems operations animations lights timing sound effects and music cues to coincide with moments in the game that react to the ball's current position and in stern's case this also includes insider connected and all those achievements you know accounts and badges that the games get nowadays topper coordination topper modes expression lighting a lot of shit you probably don't think about at all like how flippers feel come down to programming yep and george gomez a lead designer told us on this very show that he views the lead programmer on most pinball machines to have pretty much the same amount of influence over how a pinball machine eventually turns out as the lead designer does but it seems like the typical online discourse usually just revolves around a game's launch and negatively covering the topic of this code is bad or they need to quote fix the code so that's That's why our friend and former pinball dot matrix programmer Greg Dunlap is joining us once again to have a little more of a nuanced discussion about pinball programmers and their role in pinball development. So welcome back to the show, Greg. Are you ready to talk about this weighty subject? Oh, yeah. We all know I'm the unsung hero of the WebTed podcast. That's how I would consider it. You're kind of like the third member of the group, you know? Well, we have a lot of repeat guests. Everyone seems to love our buddy Ty Palmer and his takes on only playing games with one or less ramps. Greg may have come into the lead position right now, though, with four episodes. What I love with Greg is I love that you worked in the pinball industry. You're very passionate about pinball, but you've been out of it for so long that you're not afraid to give us information that I don't think anybody else would give us on record. I don't think I've given up anything that's unfair, but maybe so. I don't know. They're a little more candid than anything else. Candid. Yeah. You're candid in a way that it's hard to get when you're working for a company and there's lots of, you know, millions of dollars on the line. But you said something to me once that has stuck with me since that your role as a dot matrix programmer was given to the junior member of the team back in the day and that it was primarily so that they would, quote, not set anything on fire. Now, I want to know for the show, was that a metaphorical statement or was that literal? because sometimes with the boutique manufacturers, I feel like we see stuff explode on their boards or try and catch itself on fire. And I was wondering how much of that is just a poorly designed board or series of boards and how much of that is actually just poor power management by an inexperienced or overworked programmer. It is a little bit hyperbolic, I would say, but you can definitely catch things on fire. Like I have seen once Ted Estes showed me a photo of an Adams family that had caught on fire because the power magnets had locked on while the game was on at a bar when nobody was there. And so, you know, it does and can happen. These are, you know, mechanical devices with motors that generate heat. And so, you know, that stuff does and can happen if you're not careful. And there's all sorts of weird stuff that can happen. Like I remember one time Lyman put a sound ROM in upside down and when he turned the game on the sound ROM shot across the room and into his wall so it's like you know whoa it is a little bit hyperbolic but you know and it could be you know poor electronics design or it could be poor mechanical design or it could be you know a programmer did something dumb it's definitely possible it's possible through programming to cause a machine to catch on fire sure you could just say to uh a game like I'm going to lock on every coil at the same time yeah and that game will start smoking so that's what i've always wondered with like we see this in the modern era usually with boutique games and they have you know i don't want to lay the blame on anybody but like obviously to me a combination like you can have like if you build something completely bulletproof you can make it so anybody can go like the way that i'm using like i'm doing a homebrew right and they have that board set and they have mpf configured the mission pinball the framework that you program it in in a way that you literally couldn't set it on fire no matter how bad you are at programming like there's protections in place now that i say that maybe you could just start increasing you know your pulse length on coils and and just get one stuck on essentially but you'd have to like go out of your way it's like once you start going with the training wheels off then then the potential's there i think yeah yeah that's interesting the other thing i'd always heard I think Steve Ritchie had my favorite quote about programmers or not about programmers, about designers. And he basically said that every game needs a dad and that the role of the lead game designer outside of what most people associate, you know, the physical layout of the shots and mechs is to be the dad of the project. And to see that they provide leadership and direction for the game from the beginning concept all the way to the end when it's on the production line being produced. I always like this analogy, and I'm wondering if it wouldn't be fair to call the lead programmer the mom of the project. You know, somebody that in a perfect scenario works hand in hand with the dad and creatively burst the project as well as nurtures it throughout its development. Oftentimes doing as much or even maybe more work than the dad, but getting overall less credit for it in the long run. What do you think about that, Greg? I mean, I think I use this quote all the time in my own work in, you know, non pinball software engineering. I think that any product needs a visionary, basically. And I remember I once heard someone talking about, you know, the tour theory in film. Right. And they're talking about Alfred Hitchcock. And they're like, you know, Alfred Hitchcock had the person who was the costume, the designer and the set designer and all of these things. And all of these people brought their own vision to the project. And it's like, how is it how is it fair to give a tour ship to one person? And, you know, the point that was made was that the costume designer is going to choose three costumes. But Hitchcock's going to choose the one he wants. And if he doesn't see the one he wants, he's going to tell him to go back and bring back more. Right. Yeah. And that, you know, this is the person who brings together all of the other visionaries and puts them together in a way that makes, you know, their vision come true. and I think that is a necessary role in any project. I think you can share it in two people, but once you push it out beyond that, things get more and more difficult. And as George Costanza always famously said, this is why I hate writing in a group. But I think that when you look at it from the perspective of pinball, I think it's often very, it is different from game to game. And sometime a game can have multiple dads in different phases. Like Barry Ousler would famously draw a playfield and then kind of just walk away. He was not very involved in the games at all. So I know that on Junkyard and Whodunit, like Barry did those playfields and he did them alone. But Dwight did those games from scratch. and and so you know depending on what part of the game we're talking about the dad as it were may be different and i think that you know when you look at some of the games that are out today i think you kind of start to see that kind of divide a little a little more commonly and i think that's kind of what you're talking about where it's like this person is the dad over here and this other person is the dad over here and what they bring together can be really great i think it's interesting you brought up whodunit because i just happened to pick a whodunit up recently and that game does not feel like a Barry Oursler game it feels like a white game and you look at it physically you're like okay this game's got more in common than you would think with something like dracula it's like there's a ramp in the same place there's an orbit where the other ramp would be there's a scoop in the same place there's a three bank sometimes in the middle in the same place it doesn't play anything like a you know those are such drastically different games It's very, very interesting to see when a programmer gets to kind of take lead of a project like that, what they do. I think another one that's kind of worth mentioning is John Wick from Stern. And I'm blanking on the actual designer's name right now. Elliot Elliot Eismin. Elliot was the mechanical engineer originally, and then he did the full design of that. He's a playfield designer. When they launched that game, they did not say it was an Elliot game. It was a Tim Sexton game. And I don't think they've really talked about John Wick much since then. obviously we all know it's an elliott game and tim sexton didn't do it but when they like put out the promo material it was like tim sexton presents this new game so it is interesting to see when they kind of give people the credit for the vibe of the game the overall direction well i think that for so many players you know what makes or breaks a game is the rule set and not to downplay the physical layout because the importance of shots feeling good to hit is definitely a huge part of what makes a pinball machine enjoyable to play but it always ends up coming down to the rule set 100 right like does it have enough to do is it balanced is it exploitable in one note i know some programmers like we've already mentioned dwight sullivan but also larry damar lyman sheets lonnie rock they seem to get a lot of credit or blame for the rule sets of a lot of their games. I also know that, as Greg was saying each creative team is different and I been told that in every interview I ever listened to So the variance of like how how much a individual designer is involved with like the rule set development and that aspect of it versus how much the lead programmer is. But I think in general, like the lead programmer has a lot of influence, at least with the designer on how the final rule sets come out. But I just want to ask Greg about how much he feels like a programmer or some of these programmers that he knows and worked with has to do with the final rule set and balancing and how it comes together or doesn't come together. You know, the example that I have always pointed to on this is and I'm probably going to get flamed for this. I don't think pin bots are very fun game. Like I think that the rules are uninteresting and the play field is not very fun to shoot. and I have never really liked Pinbot, but man, when Jackbot came out, that game rips. That game is so much fun. And I think a little bit has to do with modern hardware and sounds and stuff, but a lot of it has to do with Larry. And Larry took this game and re-envisioned it entirely into something that is an absolute blast to play. And that is what I always look at. Software can make a bad play field fun, right? Now, I think there's another example of can a good play field be ruined by bad software? And we've talked about lots of examples of that too, you know, like places where, you know, a game, as you say, is very one note because of the scoring design or, you know, in our last episode where we talked about the games where they were rushed and you know a game like say wheel of fortune 24 or csi you know or yeah or wheel of fortune may have been much more interesting if it had more time to put more polish into the software and rules and when that that jackpot thing has always been the thing that stuck with me that like you know i think i think that software can save, you know, playfields that people don't think are fun to shoot. Yeah, I agree. I was never, I am like a pretty big fan of a lot of Barry Osler games. I was never very impressed with Pinbot. And I remember when Wedge got a jackpot on the floor and I ignored it for like the first week it was there or whatever. And then Alan was talking to me, he's like, oh no, this game's like really fun. You sat, you played a game with me or whatever. This is fairly early on when we had first kind of started knowing each other. That's like such a good example of just being like oh this feels like a 100 different game well you also get the unique perspective of like in the modern era relatively modern era the dmd era the exact same play field more or less yeah with the same theme but just with a whole new rule set and seeing how transformative that can be well yeah and but we get to see that nowadays too because they release games and people are like, eh, James Bond, eh, and then they keep updating it, and all of a sudden people are like, well, bam, actually that game kind of rips. And so it's like, we get to see the impact of code in the modern day in a way that we never got to see in the past outside of the jackpot or pinbot thing, because a game would come out, it would be finished, and then it was finished. That was it. It was done. no warts and all yep it was done there's a lot of examples of this nowadays that we can point to and you can see it executed well and poorly uh there's the pedretti remakes of some of the bally william games uh which i would personally say don't add anything to the experience some people might disagree if they played those original games to death maybe and then likewise i like i had a stern galaxy that was running um aftermarket code on an arduino that was done by i camel over on the east coast for anyone with like an old uh galaxy or kind of any of that era this guy i camel on the east coast he has a little way to piggyback an arduino in there for like 50 bucks you can get new code on them it's fun and it was like something like galaxy that felt very stale and like the right half of the play field is useless and everything having different code in there made it completely feel like a different game you played it completely different than you would normally play galaxy oh yeah sure because like if you make those if you make those star targets on the right, for instance, worth shooting at, then now you've got something to do from the left slipper, you know? Exactly. And it's like, or if you make it so that the spinner shot, when it's, when you've got Galaxy spelled, is worth a lot less, it disincentivizes you from banging on it all day, right? And so I think, I think those are the kinds of things that, you know, really make all the difference. And that's why when you compare a game like Galaxy to a game like Frontier, same era same you know general constant you know conceptual framework in playfield design it's one it's one of the reasons why frontier is so incredible and galaxy is a fun game to shoot but it's got some problems yeah exactly and i think this is you know transcends into the george gomez gave us a nugget that i wanted to talk with you here about programming but he was describing how us as players will often tell him that oh a shot feels smooth or it's satisfying and how he likes to challenge the players that say that to him to think about the why that they think a ramp shot is smooth and then he would elaborate and he said obviously there's the physical aspect of it which he has control over but he's like there's also sound effects like choreography as well as points as a feel-good currency being added to your score that all make that same shot feel different during different moments of the game and that has a lot to do with how the programmer makes everything kind of dance together my example of this is like you know spinners are pretty cool but they only become something sublime when a programmer knows how to light them for big points or lets you rip them to cash them in where it has an awesome sound paired with it yeah you know what i mean like a spinner on its own not worth any points no lighting effect no ability to like juice it for 10 for 10 times its value like it's fine like but it's not special like the spinner on my godzilla the sega godzilla and you're like i don't know what i i'm looking at it right now i'm like i have no fucking idea what the i don't know if that spinner is even hooked up to anything it doesn't make noise i didn't realize until i had the glass off the first time i'm like oh shit there's a spinner in this game and what do you think about that greg what do you think about the the aspect of like choreography of like moments and teaching a player how to play a game i think that george is right to an extent i mean there are shots in pinball that feel extremely satisfying and would feel extremely satisfying on a white wood you know um and you know i think particularly in um metal ramps it's almost like you can hear the little swing as the ball goes around the thing you know or whatever yeah no i can't but it feels that way and i think there are things like that that are really cool i think of like the um the side ramp shot on king kong recently where it goes up and does that swirl and comes around yeah just like feels really awesome you know i think i think that stuff is very very important but it's also true that like shots that feel good can be feel awesome when you look at what what you're really talking about is choreography right yeah like the bringing together of the lamps and the sounds and the display i think of like the super jackpot shot on high speed getaway oh my god you you so good thing and it goes boom boom boom boom boom you know and it's like everything is flashing and it's just like feels incredible or like when you start multiball on attack from mars and the the the lamps like slowly build from the bottom of the playfield up to the the spaceship and then it explodes and screams multiball and all the balls start firing out like all of that stuff is like really it's it's true all of that stuff like fires together to make the most incredible feelings you know i get the billion hurry up on attack from Mars and it's great because I did something that I had to set up very carefully and executed on it and got a billion points. But if the game doesn't scream, oh, baby, that's not the special shot that it is today. And, you know, so I think I think that's totally right. And I think it's something that a lot of the programmers take a lot of care in, you know, like what else? Oh, in Safecracker, when it does the flashing lamp effect, then everything shuts down and then the token drops right you know stuff like that yeah yeah it's all all of that stuff is like is really really important and i think there are definitely games that do it better than others you know and i think i think that special moment like if we talk about that super jackpot shot is a little bit lost in pinball today you just like built everything to that one thing and you nailed it and the game goes crazy and you're like this is so awesome and i do i i feel like i you don't get That which is not to say that there aren't really fun things and great things done technologically and choreography wise and modern pinball. But it's just like I think in part of it, I think has to do with deep rule sets, which I know we'll get to and all of this stuff. But part of it is also because those are the games that I learned how to play. So they're very special to me. But I don't know. I feel like there's a little something that's lost today. You know, I feel the same way. I think George is kind of underselling the importance of the physical layout. because there's only so much you can do with the choreography to make the shot specifically feel good. But I do think, like, the little twirly ramp on King Kong, I think that pigtail ramp feels better than the pigtail on Godzilla. Yeah. And I think that's entirely because it makes a little biplane sound effect when you hit it. Mm-hmm. It's like, meow, and you're like, oh, yeah, and it just, meow, and you're like, oh, yeah, that's the ball. I personally think that there's a lot of Steve Ritchie games in particular. Yeah. Like, I love Steve Ritchie, and I love the speed and the layouts of his games, and I feel like they are very smooth. But the difference between his best games and his lesser games usually all come down to, like, choreography. Like, what Greg is talking about, the super jackpot. Like, I feel like him and Lyman work together very well, and him and Dwight work together very well. But him and Dwight were, like, it sounded like they were kind of oil and water, but I felt like they both got the best out of each other because of it. Yeah, for sure. I think so. Yeah. And like I feel like Dwight still does. Like I think the super jackpot or the multiball start on Ghostbusters in particular is one of those great moments, like the storage facility where it's like, wow, wow, wow. And it just goes red. We do get it. But like you said, in the modern era, it does seem like players expect the games to be programmed with very deep rule sets. So I want to talk to you about the preponderance of deep rule sets in modern pinball, what you think about them, and why do you think we are where we are? I think we are where we are because of the trend towards home sales of games. And if you look at the video game industry, this same pattern presented itself. Like, you cannot take Robotron and sell it on a cartridge for $60 to people to play on their PS4, you know? they require a level of depth that you could never attach to a a coin-op arcade game because coin-op arcade games are made to be played in two minutes or less and that worked back when you know you know we had i had an atari 2600 was my first gaming console it was just supposed to replicate the arcade experience but over time that's changed a lot and i and you know also you know like we were playing space invaders for points back then and you're not playing breath of the wild for sport for points you know right and so like the whole concept of what video games are and what it means to play them has changed entirely and i think we're starting to see that happen in pinball as well, because the people who bring games home don't want to see the whole game in a week. They've paid, you know, 65, 75, 10 grand for this game. They don't want to see the whole game in, you know, five days, 10 days, whatever it is. And I think that a really big part of what is happening with the rules And I also say that I don I not necessarily against the deep rule sets I think it the complexity of the way that different elements come together that leaves me lost these days. Like I've read the rules for Jurassic Park a hundred times, and I still don't know how the dinosaurs work. You know, it's like, there's, there's just like stuff in there. And I think some of it is that there's so much information going on that you can't communicate it on the inserts anymore and that's a thing that really bothers me about modern pinball because i shouldn't have to look up at the display to find out what's going on i'm used to seeing it all right there in front of me laid out but i i think there's just a lot of like like that complexity is the thing that kind of bugs me about what's going on these days i agree with that i think we i keep coming back to dungeons and dragons i mean like this is a really good example of how to do a deep rule set and a big part of why I like it so much is because there's so much shit to do, but it's very straightforward on the surface. You're like, you just start a mode and then you play through the mode and then you kind of just keep working through modes. It kind of locks you out of, I mean, you can play Dragon Multiball with a basic level mode, but, you know, it regularly locks you out of doing other stuff when you're in something. Yeah. So it focuses your attention to... Yeah, it's not like making concurrent progress on like 30 different things at once and you don't know how any of those are affecting your scoring. It's very interesting because I'm kind of with you. I'm like, I don't necessarily mind deep games, and I actually really like a deep game with carryover progress like D&D now, but it's just when there's too much going on, it becomes difficult to keep track of. My take on it is I enjoy pinball at the length of a song, and I'm a location player, and so I want to be able to walk up to a game and kind of know what I'm supposed to do. And I don't want to just session one game for weeks at a time and really learn it and then start at the bottom of that mountain and climb up every single fucking time and then get locked into really long games where I still didn't see everything. And so I have to start like, I just don't like that. I do like that. So the modern video game analogy that Greg was alluding to is I do think that like if we're going to get these deep rule sets, I do like what Stern did with D&D because that was a game that I didn't understand until I got an insider account and then I played through it. And then I was like, OK, this game's fun. I mean, the scoring is fucked up. Like, it just doesn't doesn't make any sense. Scoring doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. disabled because you're playing it for progression like you would in a modern video game like you would playing zelda like greg was saying it's a little bit weird because it still kind of has its vestigial tale of like it has points and we expect the points to matter on a pinball machine but it can't really matter on that game in a real way because you'd be impossible to balance that game in a way where it's like every time you go up logged in or not the point the pounds you know the scoring's balanced i don't know it's interesting but you know i equate like how a game in the especially in the modern era i think we're getting increasingly more and more this way but it's i think that programming is so important in the modern era and a lot of pinheads are realizing it that's why you hear all the calls for like they need to fix the code where's the code update where's the code update right which is all programming work that needs to be done but the original star wars movie was said to have been saved in the editing room right and that that film wouldn't have become the massive cultural icon that it ended up becoming if the editors hadn't sculpted that movie into something great and i feel like i see that parallel with the programmers on pinball machines especially in the modern era like the designers seem to get a lot of the glory like george lucas gets with star wars and of course it wouldn't exist at all without lucas but without richard shu paul hirsch and marcia lucas that original movie wouldn't have really been that good either like modern pinball in particular seems to follow this model very closely as the layout is done and then it's oftentimes shipped with beta code or that's what you know dorks on the internet like to be like derisively call games right if it's not 1.0 it is by definition like pre-release and then it is kind of sculpted over time into something much different and hopefully better than it was before like we talked about with galaxy or or many other games like Theater of Magic is one that sticks out to me is it just turns into shoot the left orbit shot over and over. It's like, but one small code update to rebalance the scoring exploit would make that game fantastic again. And that's what we get in the modern era. And I just wonder, are pinball programmers getting enough credit? And do you think that they do adequately sculpt a game in our final experience of them, Greg? I think that, you know, again, I think it takes a village and they do. All of those things are, you know, true. They definitely, you know, sculpt. And we've talked about ways in which they can sculpt a game into something different. But I'll also say that, you know, like in the case of Theater of Magic, I think that any game with looping shots is going to be more subject to being able to be exploited than a game that doesn't, as just a simple example, right? Right. And so, you know, you have to work harder on those games to make sure that those things don't exist. and when I look back at where pinball players were and how they approached the game at the time that theater of magic was was made I can't fault them for designing it the way that they did because this whole concept of do the one thing that's worth points and is safe and don't do anything else it wasn't really a thing you know right um like when I think of the first time when I found that meta really starting to appear in the pinball competition community it was at papa six when people were playing the dog video mode on junkyard and that was like the first time when this idea of like grinding on a game's exploitable feature really was something that like made it into my mental model of how we play pinball how much of that is your fault directly as the founder of tilt forums is that is that your fault it's not like when junkyard came out i tilt forums didn't exist when junkyard came out so i mean these these game exploits have been going on for a long time before i started to up for him so don't blame me okay i think there's a lot of things that go into it and the software people are definitely part of it but you know it's also hard to tell because i don't know on theater of magic you know jeff johnson was the programmer on that game and i don't know how much input he had into the rules and the scoring and stuff versus john or the other people who are involved so that's part of it too right it is always hard to parse i just feel like the programmers get a lot of heat right not that the designers don't they do but everyone today seems to accept the fact that oh yeah like stern made this game but don't worry it's gonna be better next year and stern does support their products very well and they will change that game year over year and support it well after its original launch date well after its by sale date i mean they also will rerun games which is something williams would never do or other pinball manufacturers never did in the past which i think is another innovation that we didn't talk about with gary stern that i think he deserves a lot of credit for which is like the ability to retool a manufacturing line to rebuild old games like allowing a game to find its audience or like in this modern era update the code and all of a sudden it's like well i want a james bond now yeah you know and they're people like starts like we got you pal you can buy james bond right fucking now like and that is that's that's amazing it's huge and they're really the only i mean i know jersey jack did it they kept running uh they've run multiple versions of stuff but nobody else really wizard boss like american has done multiple runs or so they say they're probably just the same ones sitting in the warehouse right yeah it's just a fascinating change but i want to kind of talk to you about we've talked about programming and i just feel like they get i wanted to do this episode because i just i it was a conversation that always seems to come up where it's like i feel like and i'm not a programmer but i just feel like programmers get all this heat but i don't feel like they get enough credit they get credit but it doesn't feel like enough so i wanted to talk about this and i wanted to talk to you because you've worked with a lot of these people but it's like what are some examples of a perfectly programmed game to you greg i think that metallica is a particularly well programmed game i think that one of the things that i love the most about metallica is that its features are mostly very accessible but you have to be so skillful to be to successfully implement them and there's also a thing in metallica that i really love and i know this goes against one of the things that alan hates about pinball but everybody in a game of metallica is like one crank one really good crank it up away from catching anybody else almost know how far how far ahead they are like if you're behind by a billion points in world cup soccer you've got a problem because your only your only way out of that is to grind your way all the way to the final match and succeed right yeah and if you're behind by 50 million points and crank it up you start for whom the bell tolls you start to x scoring and you cash that out and you are good and i love that about metallica because it just feels like nobody ever really runs away with Metallica. And, you know, the game is brutal. And, you know, from a play field wise, in Walking Dead is the same way. It really keeps you on your toes, which I think also helps a lot. It's not like you can jam Metallica for 20 hours or anything like that. So that's a game in the modern era that I think is really incredibly programmed. If you look back, I think that Larry's games are like, if you look at like Funhaus in particular is such an incredible game. just the way that everything is put together like the way the little things like the way that larry makes makes uh rudy's eyes follow where the ball is on the play field and all of the inner actions between like how rudy says different things at different times and players names for different players when you play multiplayer and also like the multiball sequence and when you get the jackpot and all of that like what we were just talking about from the perspective of you know of the way that and you know that chris granner soundtrack is immaculate and like just the experience of playing funhouse and the way that it all gets brought together is so just like satisfying and makes you feel really great and there's no real scoring exploits on funhouse which is awesome um and and i just feel like that game is just like it's really just like it's one of the few games i can look at and say i would not touch a single thing on that game well patretti did touch more than one they ruined John Yousi's art package they ruined larry damar's code it's interesting yeah they changed all the music i think it's interesting oh did they change all the music i think oh for the yeah yeah oh all the new modes of songs this is disturbing all of it but that's why i brought it up earlier because i'm like just changing things for the sake of changing things does not a good game make you know what i mean like for sure there's a lot of ways to fuck up a good game with code yeah even if you're trying your best and putting a lot of work in and making it more complicated and more features and everything that doesn't necessarily make it good what what's an example to you alex what do you think perfect game it's easier what a perfectly programmed perfectly programmed game it's easier for me to point to classics because they're less and it's sad because i don't know any classic programmer names like once you get into solid states but i i agree that anything that doesn't have a real clear exploit is like the gold standard for me as far as rules which would be something like you know like a frontier funhouse is a really good example there's no i've never seen someone in a competition playing a funhouse i don play a ton of competitive pinball i never seen someone playing funhouse and like cheesing something any game any game where there like a shot that a safe bailout shot and it gives you enough points that it just worth doing that over and over again i like they fucked up they should have somehow made it so if you hit three sequential shots the game fucking turns itself off you know that's what i would like to see but as far as i'm trying to like think of like a perfectly coded game i think someone will probably correct me but i really bram stoker's Dracula, as far as a DMD game, is like a perfect, simple DMD game to me. I like that you can get carryover bonus built up. That's like a fairly substantial bonus if you're in like a hard game. It's really kind of the same thing as Metallica, where you're like, just get in that triple stack, execute well, anything is possible. You're like, you're always within, you know, shooting range of another guy's score, it feels like on Stokers. A modern game that feels perfect to me is harder, because that's like judging like a perfect single player experience and you're like it's such a subjective thing i don't just i just don't play modern games and competitions i think rick and morty is beautifully programmed with the the scoring the way it's such a bonus heavy game the variety that they worked into their the this basic rules are simple because there's not that many modes so you don't need to know that much shit but the variety they added with the dimensions the light shows are coordinated really well the sound effects are executed really well it has a lot of big moments so i would honestly say for me and that's i'm biased because it's a game i know really well right so i know i'm like there's not really any flaws in the programming of rick and morty Eric Priepke fucking killed that thing bowen karen's on rules scott denisi on lights and music really good team behind that i would add just to get to the modern and to be to discuss something in particular and i'll use an example of a game i do not like me and greg didn't know that was allowed no for a game that's perfectly programmed oh okay yeah i think simpsons pinball party is perfectly programmed oh yeah and i hate that game i hate the way that game shoots i think it's and uh i like how it shoots i hate the way it shoots i hate it but that game with anything less than what Keith put into that, that game is not very good. In my opinion, and that's my personal opinion, but I think it's like it's getting all the actors, getting all the call outs. I know Keith wrote the script for all those call outs. So he was a big Simpsons nerd. That's kind of crazy. And it's sort of like, it's just like one of those things where it's got kind of like whodunit being a Dwight game. You're like Simpsons, a Keith P. Johnson game. Yeah. And it's and he deserves the credit for that. alien invasion wizard mode is one of the most fun wizard modes i've ever played i love the like trying to lock all the different balls in all the different regions it's got multiple wizard modes again but it's still accessible like it's complex and it's deep but it's it's still accessible if you want it to be like uh i i played that a lot trying to get a high score on it and i learned that game and i'm like you know i i will never like the way this game shoots but it's no fault of the programmer at all like this is a great game because of Keith P. Johnson i on simpsons i actually don't mind the way it shoots at all i actually i like the layout quite a bit except for the garage door is one of like the worst clanky bash toys yeah it feels like you're hitting a piece of tinfoil i i hate the garage door which is funny because i'm like yeah i do yeah it's so touchy too like it doesn't register half the time and stuff yeah it's all that's probably why i'm biased against it so many simpsons i played early in the hobby were just like half working pieces of shit i mean that could be said about lord of the rings or sopranos or any game you know like especially the games that get a lot of plays like games that get played you know you you run into like really run down janky versions which i think speaks to the quality of the game itself but uh I will also say that for me, it's like, I really love Whitewater. That's my favorite game. I love that game. I love the way it's programmed. That's because you're a big playfield multiplayer guy. That game, everybody knows, you're playing Whitewater, the whole strat is waiting until you get a playfield multiplier ready, right? I just love when people tell me their bulletproof strategies on Whitewater, and I was like, I will teach you a fucking lesson about how to play this game, dude. Like, I will teach you a lesson. I think a really good sign of a well-ruled game is that there's a lot of different ways to play Whitewater, and they're all valid strategies. And the best part is that there's multiple ways to advance a dangerous raft class shot that you don't want to hit. You never want to hit the orbits. Oh, God. But you have to to progress the game, but there's ways around it, and I love that. It's a simple rule set. Zoe would prefer if you had to shoot every shot on the game, like a good game, Gilligan's Island. You do have to shoot every shot, but it gives you and it's the perfect amount of like it's more work and it's not without danger. But there's a way around things. I'm a lazy man. I should shoot left orbit and just pray. You go into that boulder garden. You just fucking pray. Like I thought it's in God's hands now. But conversely, I want to ask. OK, it's like, yeah, we can't end on a positive. No, no, no, no. Conversely, we got Greg Dunlap, the grumpiest man in pinball. We got to ask. We got to let him spew some fire. All right. We can't let the dragon not breathe fire on the show. So, Greg, what's a game that you enjoy, but you feel that is severely lacking in the programming department and that you wish could be fixed with different programming or rules choices? I'll say that something that's a trend, I'm not going to call out a specific game in modern pinball, is that I feel like in a lot of the classic Williams games, the games kind of told a story, right? Like in Adam's Family, when you play Tunnel Hunt, you're going to all of the things that are under the play field, right? Like they're tunnels, right? I love that. And I feel like a lot of games now are just sort of like, here's 10 modes and they're all variations of shoot the flashing lights. And then sometimes you can stack them. So they're all variations of shoot the multicolored LED flashing lights that are going purple and green and red, right? And I'm colorblind and I can't tell like what colors are on there and it really bugs me. So I think I think that's like someplace where where, again, we've lost something in the complexity that we've added to the games. I think that if you look back, a game that I wish just had like that couple of tweaks is Star Trek Next Gen, where it's just like, God, if we could just like make the video mode only worth 20 million instead of 250 million. Not let modes time out? all of pinball you know like right up there with lord of the rings and simpsons and twilight zone and it's just like it's like almost there it's so frustrating yeah those are the ones that i'm always like oh i wish i could get one more update you can yeah i will say you can adjust some of those settings as an operator and i did when we had our um uh star trek next gen but again factory default settings where you're normally going to run into yeah i made sure that you could not choose the video mode on the plunge yeah which you normally can't next gens you can you can shoot the right ramp bounce over shoot the right ramp and just like the video mode like you know i don't yes it's great that you can't get it for free but on the other hand it's like it's not like it's hard to get either yeah yeah i mean i don't know man we ours was set up pretty fucking hard like uh and so just having to like not be able to to plunge into it and get a safe yeah sure of course like most people weren't breaking a hundred on rake's kind of a high level player no i know i know i just mean like i played that game a lot and like uh you can nerf some of that stuff in the settings but again it's like sure if you have to change that in the settings that's the problem the problem with a lot of those is that that's a dwight game isn't it yeah and same with no fear and when you have just just need to qualify in timeout a mode to get to a lucrative wizard mode the game is broken yeah because that just means if you're playing in any kind of competition you're going to watch people cradle and time out and that is the worst again i wish that it could just somehow detect you were doing that and just kill the flippers and your balls over kill the flippers and your balls over right that's punishing because it's just like yeah But those are always the bummers. Well, because now Dwight, right, like he'll he'll program in his modern games. He'll program that the timer stops when you're cradling a ball. Exactly. You know, right. Right. Yeah. He's gotten smart, you know. And so, like, nobody would do that now. Nobody would let you do that. Now we do that back then because people would make fun of you. No, I mean, nobody would program that now. Yeah. Where where the where the timer doesn't stop. I also think that games are much better about understanding scoring balance now, too, than they were in the past, you know. And again, because players play a different way now than they did in the past. It's almost like, you know, when you talk about comparing Jordan and LeBron, right? I mean, the argument that I would make is that they're not both playing the same game. Right. And I feel like this is a little bit of the same thing. Like the expectations and the skill level of the players now is so different than it was back then. You know, the average skill level is so much higher than it was. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Which you told us repeatedly every time you've been on the show. And you can meet Greg in the discord and argue with him there. If you donate to our coffee account after this episode, KO dash FI dot com slash podcast. podcast you could join greg dunlap and distract him from his important day-to-day work as a programmer but i just wanted to thank you once again greg for coming on to talk about programming and pinball programming in particular and just sort of like where we're at with modern rule sets and sort of just talk about the role that programmers play because i think it's downplayed for sure it gets downplayed and i think it's kind of a little bit crazy because you hear a lot of the guys i know george gomez and repeatedly in interviews not just ours but repeatedly really loves to give a lot of credit to his whole team in general which is probably why he's so good at his current job at stern he was the guy that was like you know lord of the rings is Keith P. Johnson's game yeah like he's like i made that play field but like it's keith's game like that's his game you know and that's a lot of credit to give for one of your best-selling games one of most highly regarded games for you to go out of your way to be like, you know, it's actually Keith P. Johnson is really he deserves special recognition for his work there. And I think you can say the same thing about Larry DeMar and Lyman Sheets and Dwight Sullivan. You can you can say the same thing about a lot of games over the years. I just want to thank Greg for coming back on the show once again. And for everyone listening, go out and play some pinball on location and join us in the discord and let us know what your favorite pinball programmers are, some of your games or what do you think is the perfectly programmed pinball machine? And then Greg and Alex and I will all argue with you about it. Greg will tell you why you're wrong. He will tell you the grindy exploit strategy and ruin your favorite game forever. So all that content. That's just my God-given right as a white man on the internet. That's what we have discords for. Join us then. And until next time, good luck. Don't suck. I know you don't get a chance to take a break or something. I know your life is speeding and it isn't stopping. If you take my shirt and just go ahead and wipe up all the sweat, sweat, sweat. Lose yourself to dance. you _(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_ --- *Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: f0eb33b3-0910-44bb-93c2-791d145a1266*