Scott is a co-host of the Loser Kid Pinball Podcast who has been active in the pinball community since at least 2019. He is a competitive pinball player, machine co-owner (Dragon Fist and others with Zach), and attendee of major pinball events including York Pinball Show and IFPA tournaments. Scott is also co-founder of Pinball Map, a Ruby on Rails platform for locating pinball machines, and has professional programming expertise. Additionally, he is the father of competitive pinball player Jared August.
No aliases
Scott purchased three new games in 2024 but not Harry Potter due to space and design preferences
Evil Dead took from November 22nd through end of March to sell out after launch
Evil Dead secondary market prices are commanding $3-4K premiums above retail due to scarcity and strong gameplay reputation
Jared's father, introduced him to competitive pinball at Embrew tournament
Co-host of Loser Kid Pinball Podcast alongside Josh Roop; participated in Stern factory tour approximately one month prior
Co-host of Loser Kid Pinball Podcast; co-captain alongside Josh
Co-host of Loser Kid Pinball Podcast; currently in Guatemala as anesthesiologist doing cleft palate surgery; absent for this episode
Competitive player in tournament bracket; mentioned with match results
Audience member who volunteered to play second demonstration game with progressive presets
Forum user who commented on Star Wars Jabba's Hut design looking like 'glowworm' (referenced in discussion of mod anticipation)
Expert: merged definition Expert: merged definition
No linked glossary terms
Fran Lab's Evil Dead unit showed playfield chipping within 50-100 plays despite Scott's unit showing no such damage after 300+ plays
Spooky shipped a replacement shotgun shell protector to Scott within 2 days to the UK
Evil Dead experienced main board transistor failure and cracked shotgun shell protector during gameplay
Evil Dead is Spooky's best game by a considerable margin and holds its value better than any other Spooky title
Wheel of Fortune has no wizard mode because the code was never finished
The aesthetic/visual design of Wheel of Fortune (the 'wet' look) is ahead of its time and works well with LED lighting
Stern was experiencing layoffs and financial struggles around 2007 when Wheel of Fortune was in development
Regional expansion around 2010 was entirely community-driven, not proactive outreach by creators
First version took three months of intensive software development using Perl
React Native rewrite around 2018 unified iOS/Android code and enabled seamless cross-region experience
Automated test suite was critical factor enabling long-term maintenance and confident code changes
Scott plays pinball every other Thursday at league only
Theater of Magic is underrated and entertaining for casual players despite competitive perception
Scott scored 12 billion points on Attack from Mars at The Standard in Portland and currently has the high score
Scott recently went through a divorce and now has more free time to play pinball
JJP's Pirates of the Caribbean has excessive multiball-heavy code that makes it less enjoyable to play.
Keith Wellwyn games have code that is too deep and complex for Scott's preferred playstyle.
Back to the Future has been a long-standing pinball game rumor without official confirmation.
Scott bought a Star Trek Premium machine that had light board problems, which led him to meet Neil and become deeply involved in pinball restoration.
UK pricing for Venom and other new pinball machines is prohibitively expensive compared to US pricing.
La Via Estrangiato consists of 12 parts and was originally intended as a single continuous recording
The Rush playfield layout is very similar to X-Men but differs in shot quality due to code design by tournament players
Rush retained complete ownership of their music rights independently, unlike Led Zeppelin with fragmented rights
La Via Estrangiato is a completely made-up song title, not Italian or Spanish
Raymond Davidson (the #1 ranked pinball player) confirmed that Rush pinball shoots really well
Scott and Griffin will not play a pinball machine until it is fully restored and working perfectly
Flight 2000's original stock code has only 5 bytes of free memory
Scott from Penn Stadiums has alternative UV lighting options at better pricing than Stern's $279 kit.
Scott from Penn Stadiums arranged speaker's travel and expo access as sponsorship
Scott from Penn Stadiums is providing travel and lodging assistance
Scott originally created PIN Stadium Lights to solve his own lighting problems on his personal pinball machines
Ryan from Comet Pinball approached the Buffalo Pinball sponsorship positively, acknowledging PIN Stadium's complementary role
Factory GI lighting sits approximately quarter-inch above the playfield
PIN Stadium Lights generate their own Wi-Fi signal independent of a home network
Trent Augenstein encouraged Scott to bring PIN Stadium Lights to the Ohio show, leading to a pre-order of ~100 units that sold out in couple of weeks
Scott now works at AWS and is exploring migration of Pinball Map infrastructure from Heroku to AWS
Android-specific styling issues in React Native include default underlines on input boxes that don't appear on iOS
Pinball Map app 2.0 is approximately 60-70% complete in development
Google Maps API enforcement has caused millions of embedded maps to display 'development purposes only' messages on websites
React Native migration will include automated testing, unlike the original native apps which relied on manual testing
The original Pinball Map backend was written in Perl, later migrated to Ruby on Rails
Scott's first Android app was a Zardoz tribute application before building the Pinball Map app
Regionless map integration will allow locations to be added anywhere in the world, not just within established regional boundaries
Big Game was the transition point from old-style to new-style Stern flipper mechanics
Co-host of Loser Kid Pinball Podcast; wears Loser Kid branded shirt
Co-captain and co-host of Loser Kid Pinball Podcast; interviews Pokemon design team
Attended York Pinball Show; co-owner with Zach of Dragon Fist and other machines; critical of playfield conditions
Patreon donor who funded this episode's immediate production; possibly Scott Larson but identity unconfirmed
Co-founder of Pinball Map, professional programmer, built platform on Ruby on Rails, co-hosts Mapping Around podcast.