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Scott Danesi - Episode 33

JBS Show·podcast_episode·59m 11s·analyzed·Jun 28, 2024
Buzzsprout-15323583
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.032

TL;DR

Scott Denise on music, pinball design philosophy, and the TNA success story

Summary

Jamie interviews Scott Denise, musician and pinball designer, discussing his creative background, journey into pinball collecting, and design philosophy. Scott details the creation and success of Total Nuclear Annihilation (TNA), his work with Spooky Pinball and Multimorphic, and his unconventional approach to pinball design that prioritizes intentional chaos and artistic vision over technology-driven complexity.

Key Claims

  • TNA first run sold 550 units, exceeding the breakeven projection of 50 machines

    high confidence · Scott stated: 'The first run was 550' and earlier discussed that 'if we could sell 50 of these...then it would break even'

  • Rick and Morty playfield intentionally features chaotic left side and normal right side to reflect the show's aesthetic

    high confidence · Scott explained the deliberate asymmetrical design: 'The left side of the playfield on rick and morty is really, really wacky. I purposely pulled all the shots out of the normal spots...look over to the right side...every shot is exactly where you want it to be'

  • Scott works full-time at Pinball Life while moonlighting on game design projects

    high confidence · Scott confirmed: 'My full time job is at Pinball Life and it still is. Like nine to five. I am at Pinball Life working on just stuff for that company.'

  • Multimorphic boards were the primary option for custom control systems before widespread alternatives

    medium confidence · Scott noted: 'Jerry was the only option for custom control boards at the time when you wanted to program your own game. where it wasn't much else out there besides like free wpc and some other...assembly things'

  • Terry at Pinball Life financed initial TNA parts to mitigate Spooky's financial risk

    high confidence · Scott explained: 'terry at pinball life um put up a lot of the parts up front to make this happen right like acquiring the p-rock system everything for spooky so spooky wouldn't be out a ton of money'

Notable Quotes

  • “I don't have any collector games back there i do have a cactus canyon le back there but i i got the le because i just really like the topper and the side rails and something the way it looked um but we play the crap out of these things”

    Scott Denise @ mid-episode — Reveals Scott's philosophy on pinball machines as functional art/entertainment rather than investment collectibles, contrasting with collector culture

  • “That night, like sealed it for me that I had to sell every single arcade machine that I had and buy only pinball machines.”

    Scott Denise @ early-episode — Key moment describing Scott's commitment to pinball; the epiphanic moment that drove his collector pivot

  • “I didn't think about others besides like my closest friends I know what they like as well and I just took all that stuff and I just just put all of that together in a pinball machine and I just didn't care what anyone else thought about it”

    Scott Denise @ mid-episode — Core design philosophy: audience-agnostic creative approach that unexpectedly resonated widely; reflects design authenticity over market research

  • “I'm basically telling Jerry, let's not use all the technology that he's built. Right. And I was like, I was really nervous about that.”

    Scott Denise @ late-episode — Shows willingness to challenge technology-forward design paradigm; pitching minimalist approach to Multimorphic founder

  • “They are absolutely and i know for a fact that people do collect them as pieces of art”

    Scott Denise @ early-episode — Affirms pinball machines as legitimate art objects, echoing wife's agreement after Met museum visit

Entities

Scott DenisepersonJamiepersonCharliepersonTerrypersonJerrypersonSpooky PinballcompanyMultimorphiccompanyPinball Lifecompany

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: TNA first production run (550 units) significantly exceeded breakeven projection (50 units), indicating strong market demand for Scott's design vision and Spooky's manufacturing capability

    high · Scott stated TNA 'first run was 550' and earlier noted 'if we could sell 50 of these...it would break even' and second run was 250 units

  • ?

    community_signal: Multimorphic and Pinball Life demonstrated early support for custom game production: Jerry enabled P-ROC adoption in homebrew community since 2008, Terry financed parts inventory to reduce Spooky's manufacturing risk

    high · Scott noted 'Jerry was the only option for custom control boards at the time' and 'terry at pinball life um put up a lot of the parts up front to make this happen right...so spooky wouldn't be out a ton of money'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Scott's design approach prioritizes intentional artistic vision and personal aesthetic over market research or broader audience appeal; surprised by TNA's success suggesting authentic, niche-focused design unexpectedly achieved mainstream traction

    high · Scott stated: 'I didn't think about others besides like my closest friends...I just didn't care what anyone else thought about it...And I guess more people than I thought liked that vision...I have a really bad imposter syndrome, so I was like this can't be real'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Scott intentionally designs chaotic left playfield on Rick and Morty versus conventional right side to reflect show's aesthetic; represents deliberate asymmetrical design philosophy prioritizing thematic coherence over symmetrical standards

    high · Scott detailed: 'The left side...is really, really wacky. I purposely pulled all the shots out...The right side...every shot is exactly where you want it to be...rick and morty is such a chaotic show that i wanted to make chaos but not have every single thing be chaos'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.178

0:00
I was walking by piece by piece, right, and I whispered to my wife, I said, don't you think pinball machines are a piece of art? They are, absolutely, and I know for a fact that people do collect them as pieces of art. Alright, finally, favorite pinball expo? Recently it's been Houston Arcade Expo because it's just one big party, everybody's there, no one's taking themselves too seriously. It's becoming the meet-up point. It was very risky. We're like, man, if we could sell 50 of these, which I thought was way too many, then it would break even at that point.
0:34
Hello, my name is Jamie Virtual, and you are listening to and or watching our podcast called Wormhole Pinball Presents. And today I'm really excited to be joined by a very special guest, musician and pinball designer, Scott Denise. Welcome to the Wormhole Virtually, Scott. Hi, everybody. Yeah, I'm glad to be here. This is really cool. And Jamie, I haven't seen you in a while i know it's been quite a while maybe houston i think it has been houston uh interesting the first time i met you was actually on stream i don't know if you remember this it was the 2022 uh space city open at the houston arcade expo and total nuclear annihilation was in the tournament and something went wrong with it and like the manager calling his bullpen the closure came in you came off stream and you fixed it on stream i don't if you oh yeah i think i remember that i think it was uh blown fuse or something yeah and we didn't have any fuses and i think we uh maybe this was it maybe we pulled it from you know this happened once at houston where we pulled fuses from like cactus canyon or something like cactus can you exactly what you did and like yeah they popped the fuses back in there and everything was fine yeah it was awesome it's pretty funny i I think there were a lot of tournament players that were kind of mad at me for that because they were doing well or something or not well, and then they had to go and play again. So they felt like it stirred up what could have happened. Well, they might have. Who knows? It's all part of the fun. I was having a good time. No, it was great. As you can see behind me, the Wormhole was actually closed and under a little renovation so please pardon our dust uh we like to go through renovations and you know it's our little museum here so with signs and all that good stuff so as always these interviews are very informal i love interviewing and i love pinball so why the hell not do a podcast so i could do both yeah absolutely and i also love uh informal stuff so there we go we're ready to go All right. I am absolutely fascinated with musicians and how they develop their craft, if you will. Right. Yeah. Did you study music in school? All right. So, no, I did not study music whatsoever.
Total Nuclear Annihilation (TNA)
game
Rick and Mortygame
Alice Coopergame
Wormhole Pinballcompany
Houston Arcade Expoevent
Earthshakergame
High Speedgame
P-ROC boardproduct
Bowen Kerinsperson
Eric Prupkeperson
David Bassperson
  • ?

    event_signal: Houston Arcade Expo emerging as significant community hub for pinball makers and competitors; marked where Scott and Jamie first met during 2022 Space City Open tournament

    medium · Scott noted Houston Arcade Expo 'Recently it's been Houston Arcade Expo because it's just one big party, everybody's there, no one's taking themselves too seriously. It's becoming the meet-up point' and that he first met Jamie at 2022 Space City Open there

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Rick and Morty pinball collaboration involved Adult Swim artist handling visual design; indicates licensing partner approval process for character/art assets

    medium · Scott noted: 'The artist was done by Adult Swim's artist. So all the art was done that way. And Charlie kind of handled all that.'

  • ?

    community_signal: Scott demonstrates collaborative generalist approach: contributes sound design, music composition, playfield design, and code assistance across multiple manufacturers (Spooky, Multimorphic) while maintaining full-time employment at Pinball Life

    high · Scott explained moonlighting arrangements: 'i can come home and i can moonlight for whatever i want to do right as long as there's no insane conflict of interest' and detailed work on TNA, Rick and Morty, Alice Cooper across multiple teams

  • ?

    community_signal: Scott applies formal pitch process to Multimorphic, proposing minimalist technology approach (static playfield, limited LCD/screen, no upper flippers) contrary to platform capabilities; reveals designer autonomy and innovative risk-taking

    medium · Scott recalled nervously pitching concept 'let's not use the LCD very much...not use the upper flippers...not use the screen sensing technology...just put inserts on the play field that are static' and worried 'this is going to go bad because I'm basically telling Jerry, let's not use all the technology'

    • 2:53
    Now, with a little. Well, I'll put a caveat to that. So I started in junior high. I joined up with a choir. So I was just a little kid. I'm like, you know, I needed something to do with someone. I don't know if it was one of my friends or somebody recommended that I join up with choir. And I was like, sure. You know, I'm like, I don't like singing or anything, but I'll do it and see, you know, see what happens. Right. It's a community of people and it should be fun.
    3:29
    And from there, I started I was never good. I'll tell you that much. But I started really getting an appreciation for all this music writing and the chords and all this stuff. And I developed I developed an ear for music to the point where I could I didn't know any like scales or chords or anything. But if someone gave me a note, I could come another note next to it that would sound really good with it. And then a third one. And I could do that. And just from just like by ear being like, oh, that's cool. And I was able to do that because in choir, you have a bunch of people singing, right? And it's not just one note, it's multiple notes. So my part might be, you know, three steps up or five steps up or something. So it's like, it's just different, right? So eventually you get this, you know, ear for it and you get really good at it. So that's like actually how it started. I was also in band for a while where I played clarinet. So I kind of also, I didn't do that. That was like such a short-lived thing for me. I don't even really remember much of it. But yeah, the choir thing, I did that all the way through high school. At the end of high school, I called it quits.
    4:43
    But during high school in, I think, 1996 was when I actually started getting really interested in electronic music and started really digging into how electronic music was made. I had some really cheap computers and stuff where I installed software called Acid Pro, and I started sampling and doing all sorts of crazy stuff, and I ended up putting out a CD in 96 or 97.
    5:13
    Actually, I'm thinking that might have been 98, actually. But I put a CD out with just a bunch of sample, like, remix sample stuff that I did. And I had a couple tracks on there with some of my other buddies who were also experimenting with stuff, and we ended up giving a bunch of those away to a bunch of people in high school. I actually did find one of those recently, and it's terrible.
    5:35
    It's awesome. Yeah, it's neat. I did rip it digitally, so I got most of it. Some of it was scratched up.
    5:44
    That would be your first album. What was your really first commercial? The first real album, like the one that actually hit streaming services and the real deal thing was Component Breakdown. That was in 2008.
    6:01
    And yes, for me, it's hard to hit dates properly. I might mess up. It's in 2008. It's around 2008 that happened. And that was an album where I was experimenting a lot with breakbeats and doing some more interesting things than the normal techno stuff that I was doing.
    6:22
    But before that album, I did put out a vinyl in 2005. And I did it because I wanted, at the time I was doing a bunch of raves and I was really heavily involved in this rave scene. so I wanted to put some of my music I wanted to be able to play some of my music we didn't have mp3 players or cd players or anything like that the rave scene had technique turntables in-ear mixers and that's it just tons of sound equipment so you have to figure it out yourself so I was like well if I want to play my music I have to press this on vinyl so I saved up a bunch of money uh one of my other buddies pitched in a little bit and we uh got a full lp like stamped and done i think i made 500 copies of it so that's still floating around actually and uh i think i found the last like 20 of them and i put them up for sale on uh on pinball life actually and a bunch of people bought them yeah that's really cool i don't know why people bought it because it's cool. That's why they bought it, because it's really cool. How would you describe your music to someone who hasn't heard it yet? Oh, man. Well, it depends on what era, because I went through a lot of, like, I went through a lot of strange changes throughout my career. So I did a lot of, like, early on I did a lot of sampling, because that's nice and easy. You start understanding how things are done. And then I went right into, like, really hard techno, because that was what I was doing at these raves. and then from there I started branching out and doing more of the breakbeat stuff and doing more syncopated you know like just different drum patterns and stuff to make it more interesting and then man I don't even know I'm still it's still a very techno style that I do um but i've explored more lately with more syncopated stuff in drum and bass so faster basically fast breakbeats so that was a resistance album did you grow up in a creative environment i mean was creativity encouraged in your house and art and all that no absolutely so to give you a background on my like home history which is this is this is really cool um my dad is an architect uh very technical person and my mom is makes pottery for a living so she is a professional artist and has been for ever like even before i was born and still does it to this day which is pretty impressive um and yeah my parents were always letting me do things like take apart electronics and you know listen to music loudly in my room you know that kind of stuff and we'd always do just yeah they would whatever i really wanted to do they would try to nurture something right until something stuck but i had add real bad and i still do for me you know so i was all over the place with all sorts of different stuff um but uh yeah eventually uh you know i i think it all worked out really well actually because they you know they they did their best to kind to nurture what I wanted to do and humored me at the time. So yeah, that was, uh, yeah, that's, that's really, uh, I'm really grateful for that. That's awesome. My wife and I just came back from New York city, uh, literally just the other day. And we went to the Met, I think I'm sporting a Met hat. Yeah. And the museum of modern art. And I was walking by piece by piece. Right. And I whispered to my wife, I said, don't you think pinball machines are a piece of art and she's like you know she she goes yeah they really are i mean do you agree with that do you think they are just absolute pieces of art they are absolutely and i know for a fact that people do collect them as pieces so to me personally they're money-making machines that are really fun to play right so for me i i'll play my games i don't have any collector games back there i do have a cactus canyon le back there but i i got the le because i just really like the topper and the side rails and something the way it looked um but we play the crap out of these things and i don't like my my niece and nephews come over and i'm like they're they're like stepping on them and stuff and like and i'm like i just don't care i'm like they're just things to have fun with you know but there are a ton of people that do collect these as art pieces Tim's one of them of the Wormhole here because we're in the process of this huge expansion project here in Houston I've talked a bunch on the podcast but we're building a museum and it's truly a museum of art and we view the Wormhole itself as an art museum oh absolutely and that's really cool too because what's interesting about this stuff is it's kinetic art I don't know if you've ever been to some contemporary museum where they have things that are more kinetic so it's not just um you know like it wouldn't be just paintings or sculptures or whatever i've i've been to a lot of these when i was a kid and it just fascinated me like i remember specifically um there was one thing it was a glass case right and you can't get into it uh and what's happening is there's a big chain going around the top side of it and it has a piece of metal hanging off of the chain right and this metal is moving around inside this thing and there's different magnets and things and spinny stuff that this ball is hitting and interacting with as it moves around and it's just this total kinetic thing that's it's very strange like it'll stick to a magnet for a while until the the little pulley system pulls it away and it flops off and it goes and hits something because it has a lot of velocity like the really cool things like that um like the like the ever seen one of those strobe light things like where it's like a ceiling fan with a strobe light you know and they got timed exactly perfect to do an animation in 3d those are super cool but yeah that kind of stuff is crazy that's what a pinball machine is it is you know i mean so what got you into pinball was it the combination of the music art video games everything that a pinball machine is yeah well when i was younger my dad um picked up a pinball machine and it was actually the pinball machine he had in high school um his buddy was holding on to it out for him and then he picked it up and he uh cleaned it all up got it working and we all would play that which one which game it's capersville and i still am eyeing he will not give it off but it's i don't know if you've ever played capersville though but it's it's super cool it's an old em it's a valley em uh but it has a multiball on it. It has two ways of getting multiball, which is really interesting.
    13:17
    And the artwork are those pointy people. That pointy people art, you ever seen that? Yeah. But anyway, so he had that, and we played it. We had a really good time with it. And then I didn't think much else of it. I went off to college. Knowing I liked pinball, I played a lot of South Park in the bowling alley at the student center in Carbondale. And so that was kind of just kept me going on that a little bit. And then I decided after college, I decided that to really get into coin-out machines. I was really fascinated by arcade machines. Anything you could stick a coin into, I was fascinated by because I was like, these things are not supposed to be owned by people, right? By civilians, right? Right. So I'm taking it.
    14:08
    I thought, what was my first game? I don't even remember. It was an Arkanoid, maybe? I think I picked up an Arkanoid and I restored it really nice. And then actually before that, I built a Nintendo, like an actual arcade cabinet out of wood and put a computer inside of it and then just had a Nintendo with joysticks and buttons. And it was just an emulator. It was one of those like ROM things that's totally legal, you know. Right. But yes, I did that. And then I got the Arkanoid and restored that and just kept going from there Built a driving simulator as well And then you know Pac and all sorts of other stuff started coming in and out And then one day this like clicked for me one day I was looking around for arcade equipment just on Craigslist, right? Because that was the big thing where you'd find everything. And I saw a Williams high-speed pinball machine.
    15:08
    And I was like, I'm looking at it and I'm like, man it would be really cool to have a pinball machine like like in my house you know i'm like but they're so expensive like really really expensive so i'm looking at it it's 350 dollars i'm like i don't know man uh that's a lot of money you know and uh but i did it i went i was like okay i'm gonna do it i'm gonna go get it knowing nothing about how to move pinball machines just i know how to lift heavy arcade machines and i've got my brother who's really strong with me we go rest truck we go get this thing the guy's doing the someone else offered me you know 400 for it and i'm like well that person is not here so we're taking this and my brother's like yeah he said 350 right now i'm here it's like the guy's like okay so i picked up this machine had you know some playfield wear in the cabinet wasn't great i had no clue how to get the head to come down i saw that there was hinges there i couldn't get into the back box so we took the legs off of it stuck it in the back of my brother's truck with the head up but like against the you know actually just against the cab so like it wouldn't be terrible but oh man like looking back at that now it's like so easy to get in them you know but uh yeah so that was the first one i got i brought it home it smelled terrible like cigarettes which are great that's very nostalgic when you open up one of those um and uh i started kind of playing with it. There was a bunch of stuff broken on it. And I ended up calling local tech to kind of show me what to do because I had no clue what I was doing. I don't remember who it was or anything, but they came in, did some adjustments and things like the pop bumpers needed to be adjusted. And like some of the cables came unplugged and I didn't know where they went. But anyway, long story short, I got myself a high speed for 350 bucks. It was junk, but amazing. And my buddy came over like the night I got it. We got it running. The night it got running, the night it was running after the guy came in and fixed it. My buddy came over and we played it for like six hours straight, just having beers and having a good time with it. That's pinball. That's it. Yeah. And I realized right then, like that, that night, like sealed it for me that I had to sell every single arcade machine that I had and buy only pinball machines. That's awesome. I know you've told this story a ton, but real quick, if you can. Sure. How the hell did you design and build TNA? A little nuclear annihilation pinball machine. Where'd you buy that? When'd you build it?
    17:48
    It was 2015 I started doing it. So I was kind of mad. So, like, 2015 was interesting because before that I did Earthshaker Aftershock. I don't know if you have ever seen that or heard about it. But I built that thing as a software re-theme for Earthshaker because I acquired the Earthshaker number two prototype from Williams. So it was the second one off the line.
    18:18
    And like any collector of any rare, super clean, amazing prototype thing, I ripped it apart, pulled all the boards out of it, put a P-Rex system in it. I drilled into the play field and put an auto launcher in it. And what else did I do? Put some LED strips in the back, took the back glass out, put it in a closet, put a clear piece of glass in there instead. And I just, you know, of course, normal things, right? Right. So I built that one first. I redid all the software on it just to expose myself to how that software was made because I was fascinated with it. And then after that, a bunch of my buddies were harassing me to build a game because they were all building custom games from scratch, like actually building the games themselves.
    19:04
    But I was like, I don't know if I got time for that or the skills. So I sat on that for a while, and then Wizard of Oz came out right around then. And I saw them do, like, there was the first time I'd seen a machine with full RGB LEDs in it. And I was just fascinated by the fact that the computer could control all those LEDs. and I looked at Wizard of Oz and this is not a dig at JGP whatsoever, but sometimes when new technology comes out, like full RGBs in a play field like that, you overuse the technology, right? So Wizard of Oz is absolutely just rainbows constantly all the time and it's always changing colors and doing crazy stuff, which is fine because they're showing off the technology, I get it. But I was like, man, And if I could have that technology and I could program that to look like a normal machine, like have white LED, just make all the GI white and then all the inserts just a single color. And then like when it really helps blast a full leap of color through it, that's a different color, right? So just make an insane impact on something like that would be really fun to do. so i started thinking i'm like well you know i could just i could just build a game like and i there are no games out right now that are you know more simple games like you know cosmic gun fight or starlight or those old williams games that i really liked right the single level things and um you know so i just i can design like this and build it so i just started digging in and building stuff and putting things together in solid works because i'm a engineer guy so i put i did everything in solid works um and started you know i had i had some industry connections and i started building it and doing all this stuff i worked at pimple at that time too okay so yeah i had a lot of connections through that and then uh yeah one thing led to another and I built a pinball machine, a whitewood pinball machine with full RGB and just did just crazy light shows on it, but not insistently creepy. So it really makes an impact on it. And that was really what I wanted to do.
    21:29
    Then I also said, oh, well, this pinball machine needs music, so I could do that. So I started writing music for it.
    21:37
    But yeah, and then the rest of it just kind of kept going And I kept being obsessed about it until I was talking with Charlie one day and he was like, we offered to make a few and see if anyone wanted to buy it. That's what fascinates me, though, too, right? It's like, did they just acquire the rights to it? Or I mean, how does that happen? Yeah. So the way that works is so Charlie and I have a really good relationship.
    22:04
    So what how that really happens is in this particular case, I don't know if this is the same way with other companies or not. but it's still my game and made by myself it's just manufactured by spooky because i have no capability to manufacture anything right even building one game for me and my spare time is next to impossible so spooky's like hey you know we could build some of these and then we can write up this thing where we'll sell them and then we'll give you x amount of dollars per game that sells and then you know if you sell 50 of them it'll you know it'll be great because then you know go buy some beer to go do this other stuff you know it's just extra right at that point i was like okay well i guess it can't hurt right so we talked about like bill of materials and where the money would come from for starting this up and terry at pinball life um put up a lot of the parts up front to make this happen right like acquiring the p-rock system everything for spooky so spooky wouldn't be out a ton of money to try and start this up and we planned um we're like man if we could sell 50 of these which i thought was way too many um then it would break even at that point okay and it was so it was very it was very risky they were doing this like terry and charlie and everybody who was excited about this was doing it as a favor to me to just get the game out and have some people enjoy it. Because there was a lot of people, when we bring the show, there was a bunch of people playing it and they really enjoyed it. So they wanted to buy it, but you never know what people actually are going to do. Right. Yeah. As a recruiter, I can't help myself. I ask HR questions like I wanted to get in. Did you get an agent? Did I get a lawyer? No, but I do have a lawyer. But no.
    23:59
    I was going to tell you, if you don't have a lawyer. Yeah, no, I definitely have one. A lawyer that understands pinball, which is even better. All right. So, yeah, so that all, like, that was how that worked out. And that was just a really good thing for everybody because we did sell more than 50. So Spooky was able to not lose money on that project, which I was worried about. because as a small company like that, it's really difficult to absorb something like that. If you only sold like 40 of them, but you have parts for 50, it's like 10 machines worth of parts is a lot of money worth of parts.
    24:37
    Do you know how many they sold the first run? The first run was 550. That's not bad, buddy. Which was absolutely... Did that just blow your mind? It did. It helped me a lot. I have a really bad imposter syndrome, so I was like this can't be real like something someone's messing with me like this right you know what I mean like this is like this game like this game is just everything that I wanted in a pinball machine I didn't think about others besides like my closest friends I know what they like as well and I just took all that stuff and I just just put all of that together in a pinball machine and I just didn't care what anyone else thought about it and I that's what happened And I guess more people than I thought liked that vision and liked that style that I had put in there, which it was so surprising to me, actually. So I honestly, I thank every single person that had faith in that project and bought the game.
    25:36
    Well, congrats again, because TNA is awesome. Thank you so much. It just really is. And then they ran how many more later? It was 250 after that. That's Peggy Cloud, too. So let me ask you a question. This is HR. I can't help. Does Spooky then hire you full time after the success of TNA? Or are you an intern? No, no, no. Yeah. So not even. No, not even close. So my full time job is at Pinball Life and it still is. OK. Like nine to five. I am at Pinball Life working on just stuff for that company.
    26:07
    Now, when I have an agreement with Terry, though, is my boss owns Pinball Life. that uh i can i come home and i can moonlight for whatever i want to do right as long as there's no insane conflict of interest it's fine right um but uh yeah so all that stuff like when you saw rick and morty come out right it was all done part-time like that not even part-time like it's just after hours and on the weekends and stuff um and that game was uh that game was crazy because that was just, I adjusted the playfield layout there, along with trying to help get everything together with the rules and all this other stuff, but that I had a team of people to actually do the heavy lifting, right? Okay. So I built a whitewood for it, and then passed over all the physical files for the actual game so they could make it. And then from there, I started working with Eric Prupke and getting the code done, right? and working on that stuff. Bowen came in and verified a bunch of stuff with us. David Bass was doing all the animations and all the display stuff. I ended up doing all the sound work for that as well.
    27:20
    And the artist was done by Adult Swim's artist. So all the art was done that way. And Charlie kind of handled all that. It was really, really refreshing. Yeah. And because for me, I could not do TNA again, and I can't. Right now, I wouldn't be able to do it. so there is a question everyone wants to know about rick and morty real quick right and it's what what's up with the left right man what's up with the left around why the torture scott i mean yeah well okay so so take a look like people listen to this take a good look open up like a good picture of that play field really quick and i want you to notice something interesting that i did that not a lot of people see the left side of the play field on rick and morty is really, really wacky. I purposely pulled all the shots out of the normal spots where they're supposed to be and where you expect them to be. And I moved them so that they're not where you expect to be. Now look at the right side of the playfield and you'll notice that every shot is exactly where you want it to be or where you would expect it to be in a pinball machine, right? The ramp's in the proper spot. Well, turn around from the spot. The orbit's in the correct spot. The Meseek's target's in the correct spot. There's like a little magnet a save over there there's a normal slingshot over there but then you look over to the left again and everything is chaos right it's a it's a very cool and unique thing that i had in my brain that i wanted to try because rick and morty is such a chaotic show that i wanted to make i want to make chaos but not have every single thing be chaos uh but that game though maybe it's a little bit too hard physically i don't know you know but i think uh i like it i'm very difficult we have one here yeah and we need to trap up if you're not trapping up you're going to be in a lot of trouble yeah well i've noticed that yeah you also worked on alice cooper's uh it didn't mayor castle yeah i did the sound effects for that so and i uh kind of just mastered all the original sounds from alice cooper as well on the music um you know i'm just trying to help out spooky as much as I could right I like to help people out that do need help right So that why I kind of jump around in a lot of different places because I just trying to help out people that I want to help at the time which is a really, it's a very privileged thing to be able to do, to tell you the truth. Like the fact that I can just hop around and I have these agreements with these companies like, hey, I'm going to help for a while and then I'm going to go help this person for a while, you know, and just kind of jump around.
    29:59
    It's really nice, you know. So, good segue, talk about your relationship with Multimorphic. How did that come about? Well, I've had a relationship with Jerry since 2008.
    30:11
    I was a big fan of his homebrew community that he started, and I helped build that really early on. Jerry was the only option for custom control boards at the time when you wanted to program your own game. where it wasn't much else out there besides like free wpc and some other uh like assembly things they were really hard to use so so but jerry had this whole thing so um what we did was uh i just was helping him the whole time and that what's interesting is with tna i built it with that multi-morphic system in it already so even building tna with spooky i'm helping spooky get another game out the door and multi-work selling boards to spooky at this point now which is really cool it's like a it kind of helped two people with one thing uh and then from there you know spooky got like spooky got really good momentum going like after like all these games and then i was able to take a break for a little while which i definitely needed because i you can't just consistently work after hours all the time it drives you nuts it's too much like it really is you got to do fun things for yourself and your family and things like that um so uh after that um i started doing some stuff for jerry and then you know i was like you know i have this really good idea for a multi-morphic a p3 game right i'm like i'm wondering like let me let me formally pitch it to you and you tell me what you think right and i'm thinking it's gonna go horribly because I'm saying, let's go ahead and not use the LCD very much. Let's go ahead and not use the upper flippers. Let's go ahead and not use the screen sensing technology very much. And I'm like, let's go ahead and just put inserts on the play field that are static and always there no matter what, even in practice mode. And I'm like, this is going to go bad because I'm basically telling Jerry, let's not use all the technology that he's built. Right.
    32:23
    And I was like, I was really nervous about that. But he's like, you know, that's it's actually a good idea. We need a contrast in what we're doing. Right. And I'm like, well, that's awesome. Well, great. So I pitched this whole thing to him with the ship and then, you know, the storyline and a final resistance and how it's still this cyberpunk thing that people like. And it's really aggressive and in your face, just like TNA is. and he was on board with it. So we came up with a timeline, got a team together of people. I got to work with an engineer at Multimorphic, a really good programmer. It's a lot of fun. That whole team was just amazing on that thing. But that's how that started. Final Resistance is one of my favorite game kits for the P3 platform. Thank you. P3 is in the vault. We have a vault, and that's where they go. that's getting a flipper upgrade so once cool once we get that new flipper upgrade uh it's hopefully coming back with a new final resistance that's that's our goal here so that's awesome very cool how do you design that in different is it different to develop a a game kit on the p3 platform different than building a standalone machine oh yeah big time uh it's it different because you've got a different set of limitations, right? So I have, there are things that are more limited on the P3 and things that are more unlimited on the P3, right? So it's a give and take versus traditional game. So let's say, for instance, the actual lower play field, right? On the P3, I can do whatever I want with the lower play field with art and with inserts and whatever, and I can change them on the fly. And I can make game modes that actually use scoops and stuff and the touchscreen capabilities.
    34:15
    So that's something in a traditional game you don't have the ability to do. You have to design a play field and you have to hope that you've got all the inserts in there for when you develop the software later on really further, you know, way down the line. So there's that. But with the P3, you also have a limited physical section in the back, right, where the actual play field is, which is about a third of the play field, which isn't a terrible limitation by any means. I was able to do some really cool stuff, really cool shots and really cool patterns with that confinal resistance there. So yeah, I mean, it's definitely different. I don't know at all how to code for the P3. So I was heavily reliant on Michael Ocean who was coding for that. I don't know how to do graphics or any of that kind of stuff. So it's, yeah, it seems a little bit scary at first, but there are a lot of people homebrewing on this thing right now, and it's totally doable. Yeah, we played Dungeon Door Defender here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mike, we just did that one. Lunatics, we played it. Absolutely. And we streamed it, and Michael came on the stream. It was really cool. So you know David Van Ness very well from your spooky days.
    35:33
    When did you get involved with Labyrinth? Let's see. That was probably. And was that when they were known as the Mystery Pinball Company at the time? Yeah, they were known as Mystery Pinball. So I knew what David was doing ahead of time on that.
    35:48
    And I helped him with some numerous back end things, you know, as he's spinning up this company. There's a lot of there's a lot of knowledge that I have for like how just how these companies function, what some companies do, what some companies don't do as well. so I'm giving advice like that and then working on uh helping with sound and stuff for them and just all sorts of random things for them just to help help get them going but again that's that whole thing where it's like I'm gonna help David for a little while and and help him because you know I I can choose to do that if I want to you know um but uh but yeah that's um yeah so yeah David and I have been friends a very very long time actually what an amazing launch of a company though barrels of fun they're they're top-notch just bored and we're really happy here at the wormhole that's such a good friendship with them so absolutely yeah david really knows what he's doing um he'll he'll pretend like he doesn't know what he's doing but he does so i'm just doing you know i'm just trying to do what's right you know like you're you know what you're doing what types of themes interest you most when they come to you and say hey can you help us with this or how do you pitch Scott Denise to get him to help you?
    37:06
    I don't know. Like right now I'm not working on anything, which is really nice. So that's just super nice. I'm taking a break. I'm working on some little things here and there. I'm working on some like little fun things for me. Like I built a little synthesizer module. Yeah, it's not pinball related. but you know so if someone wants to actually like come to me and pitch something to me I don't know you know it depends like Charlie hit it out of the park with Rick and Morty because I was like I don't want to make another game and like it took TNA was too hard like too much time took me too many years off my life very stressful I want to just have fun but then he was like well how about if I got your favorite cartoon that you watch all the time and I'm like ah damn laughing So that's how he won me over on that one.
    38:00
    But, yeah, I don't know. I'd love to try another unlicensed theme. Okay. But I don't know how far I can push that because I've already done two.
    38:10
    So that might be a little too much. I'm not really interested in rock theme pins, though. I'll tell you that. I was going to ask you, I mean, is there a genre that you would stay away from? So thank you for answering. Yeah, rock theme pins most likely. there's so many of those now there's plenty yeah you know you're good we're okay we're okay how did you develop wait wait wait i gotta hold on unless it's here unless it's who that unless it's slayer or something like that then we're then we're talking like that's the exception well you heard it here first slayer fear factory okay so i got a couple all right i take back what i said there you go um it's nobody's no worries i told you it's a very easy interview no worries how do you how did you develop the arcade tournament uh software that's on your website oh man that's a throwback holy crap um like how was actually a really cool story that yeah let me know that before okay cool so um back in the day in 2011 or 2010 even before that 20 2009 um i uh was going to a lot of tournaments at my buddy's house and we were having um we would just do really quick like uh score sheets you know for whoever got the highest score right you write your scores down and then we just add up the points and then whoever wins you know takes it and i'm like man i'm like adding up all this stuff and typing or like writing these scores out and doing all this math and stuff is terrible i'm like i can i can do this in excel right because i'm an information systems technology guy so like i i build databases for a living at this point and I'm like man I can do this Excel in like no time so I set up this Excel document that you would automatically type players names in and games and scores and it would automatically do all this for you um and that worked for a little bit and then I was like well like I can make it and then people were getting confused about it like breaking the like I don't know if you use Excel very much or anything but it's like you can break those formulas like CMC yeah you can Yeah, and it's just, like, constantly messing everything up. Some people are typing stuff in the wrong spots and breaking it. So, I was like, this is terrible. So, I decided to just pop open, like, the fastest coding language I knew how to do at the time was VB. So, Visual Basic. Yeah, it was, like, I'm going to technically go to Windows. Oh, perfect. All right, cool. So, Visual Basic. I don't think Visual Basic is still a thing anymore. No, I think it's now. Yeah, it's probably long. They're still doing VB.net, though. Yeah, I guess so. But yeah, this was even before .NET.
    40:50
    So I pulled that up. I started building this thing. And I started just putting it out there on my website for people to download. And so many people were saying good things about it that I just kept working on it. And I was just like for fun one time, I put a little donate button on the top of it. And I was like, no one's ever going to do this. Like at all, ever. But someone gave me like 50 bucks once on it. like i think two people have donated on that thing and i got 50 and i was like that is insanely crazy i guess i like i wanted to refund the guy but like no he was probably like this thing like that was very great yeah keep keep doing it keep doing it so i kept making more updates on this thing and it's just it uh it got really complex and now it like runs on multiple monitors so you could have like set up tournaments with projectors to show the scores and all sorts of crazy stuff um there was even a version that i made that has an internal network server in it where you can use your cell phone to like upload your scores there's when it goes to the main system and then it goes up to the projector and stuff and i was like it was pretty cool except it was like it run through the internet because i didn't want to have to pay for servers or anything right it's like i didn't have any money for that you know so i just ran locally through your local wireless network and there was just so many problems with it just like not working right and having all sorts of security issues so i scrapped it but it's kind of still there and some of the really old they're the latest versions of it but i haven't touched that thing since like 2012 or 2013 well it's on you it still works at denisee.com if any yeah it don't work and you Still donate. You know, he's got to. No, don't do that. Don't do that. Yeah, I don't even know what PayPal address that even goes to. Pretty old. And I don't even have the code to update that anymore, so I can't take that out. All right. So it's there for nostalgia. It's there for nostalgic purposes right now. I can't fix any bugs in it. I'm sorry. I'd have to rewrite it from scratch. I don't feel like it. You don't want to put it on the cloud?
    43:00
    No, I don't want to pay for stuff. I'd have to pay for the servers and stuff like that, and it just doesn't seem like a thing. Plus, there's all sorts of other tournament software out there now that blows it out of the water.
    43:12
    All right. Like Match Play, I think, is a really good one. Yeah. All right, let's play a rapid-fire question game that we have here. We've now rebranded it as the Hurry Up. All right, perfect. Thank you, John Spades. These are just hurry-up questions. Take as quickly as you want.
    43:29
    First question. which of the following movies would make a great pinball machine fifth element gremlins or goonies all right i'm just trolling you though should be i'm gonna go with uh i'm gonna go with none none we'll still let none because all three of them are great troll sorry i had to do it uh here's the real first question you're right what's it what's my favorite what's my favorite movie right that's your favorite movie out of those three movies i know right no it's not no no that's no worries all right all right first question first question thank you discord for some of these questions and donovan wade helped me write a bunch of these last night so better wisconsin sick happy days or that 70s show that 70s show because i didn't really watch happy days very much in 10 seconds or less profess your love for the mitch abishi Evo Oh man 10 seconds is enough man That thing is the ultimate rally car The ultimate horsepower to weight ratio car. Handles amazingly. Denon or Pioneer? Pioneer because Denon hasn't proved itself yet. What's your favorite song track you created or recorded? That's unfair. I have no idea. I can't say. I told them that that question was... Okay, wait. Final Resist soundtrack as a whole, I'm most proud of right now. Okay. And I think only because it's new. But if you haven't listened to it, go take a listen and tell me if it's better than ETI or not. You don't have to go there. Grab it from the streaming services. Don't buy it. Yeah.
    45:10
    Better 80s arcade game. Donkey Kong Jr. Spy Hunter. or Popeye. These were my favorite at a pizza joint, so that's why I'm asking. Yeah, the Donkey Kong Jr. is pretty good, man. Even though it's super repetitive, I have to pick that one. I liked Popeye. I didn't click enough of it. I put a lot of quarters into trying to save. Okay, I'm going to have to... It really is ridiculous. It's so funny.
    45:40
    Favorite Nine Inch Nails album? Downward Spiral only because the fun fact is, and sorry, this isn't a short answer, but fun fact, because I thought for the longest time that Johnny Cash wrote the song Hurt, and Nine Inch Nails remixed it, and it wasn't until maybe seven years ago that I learned that Nine Inch Nails wrote the song Hurt, and Johnny Cash did a remix, a reprise of the cover. There's a good documentary of the of whoever the major producer was that did that for Johnny Cash. All right. Which is a better TNA multi-ball strategy, work on the add-a-ball or work the grid? Work the grid, nonstop. Yeah, the add-a-ball is not worth it. The add-a-ball is there just as a little bonus, but that grid, don't ever touch that grid unless you have a ball save running or you're in multi-ball with more than two balls in play. I have a segment touch the grid I have a segment called shitty movie but great pinball machine examples are like Congo Last Action Hero, Johnny Mnemonic we've used those in the past here's three different ones best pinball machine out of these shitty movies Demolition Man, Terminator 3 or Judge Dredd it's so hard okay Demo Man is no Judge Dredd is the better layout and I only had to date on that because Demoman is very good but Judge Dredd's layout is way better it has like a triple stack wire form on it which I don't think has been done anywhere else which is very cool but the software was not great best movie out of those three uh probably oh man I don't know I can't I don't know own demo man probably demo man Wesley Snipes if I had to get Wesley Snipes is pretty great uh we know about your pay phone what other past analogies do you miss sir uh cassette tapes so that's a big one for me uh they are coming back which is super weird actually um but uh reminds me I should probably make fun of resistance on cassette tape these lights are great man it's so i have a long story about cassettes if you want to talk about that what's your mind me like that is all right it was like what does that taste all right so yeah yeah we'll pause that first so i had a uh i had a fiero for a while uh i'm into cars as well like as a little side hobby thing um when i had this fiero and it has uh it had a cassette player in it and i kind of restored the fiero back to its normal you know dock configuration right no aftermarket stereo that kind of stuff but the um the the tape deck was in there and i'm like well i guess i'm gonna have to get some tapes so i can listen to something other than the radio because radio's just not good anymore right um so i got myself a cassette recorder i recorded some like techno music on tapes and some blake tapes i got on ebay started listening to those in the fiero and i realized i started like collecting other tapes right so i got like um like some nine inch Nails albums and stuff like that.
    49:06
    And I realized there are songs that I had never really listened to on the more, like on Fragile on Nine Inch Nails. It's a long album. If there are songs on there that I had really never given the time of day, and with a cassette tape, you put that in your car, you really aren't going to be fast forwarding through tracks on there, like skipping songs. You don't do that. You just listen to the whole thing. Right. And it really makes you appreciate like what the artist did for that album. they like an album is supposed to be listened to from front to back it's not supposed to be like have song off of it and then just you know skipping the rest of the stuff you're supposed to just listen to all the way through and it it's very intentional his set tapes are very intentional and so is vinyl yeah if i'm sitting around my friends and i want to listen to some music i click on spotify and i can hit random and it's just gonna play music and i'm not going to pay attention to it whatsoever because it's just playing what I it thinks I like right what the algorithm is is telling me to like that time but the tapes and vinyl are so intentional that I have to actually walk over to where it's set up pick out something and say I'm going to listen to this right and stick that tape in there play it and listen to it all the way through because I'm not going to step back over there and skip any music and skip any songs right so it's a really interesting way to look at look at that stuff so when i'm in the bureau and i've got five tapes in front of me right yeah and i say i i have to pick between these five tapes uh on my way to work today uh and i'm looking at them and i at first you're like oh i don't want to listen to any of these i want to listen to you know something different like the prodigy and i'm like i don't have a prodigy tape in here so i pick monster magnet right it's just like done all right put it in and you actually i i feel like i made the right choice though by picking that you know like it was what my brain wanted out of those five choices and it it was great i felt like i made the right decision i've been listening yeah i've been listening to albums non-stop now and i like listening john spates and tim hood and the wormhole they're vinyl collectors so they got me and great being that and so now i just go to apple music and i'll just write the album from the start yeah you play the album from the start just all the way through the album let it stop don't let it what's the last time after everybody listened to dark side of the moon all the way through you're making a mistake if you haven't done it because it's i just did it the other night yeah it's it's an experience and then the artists do that purposely like when you lay out tracks for an album it's very very like it's it's critical to put those in an order that tells the story that you're trying to get across right and for like an example is like the tna soundtrack tells a story but i didn't have to do that when i created the album because i did that when i made the machine i made reactor one through nine tell a story musically uh as it as you get through the game so then when I did the album it was real easy because I'm like oh we'll just put the reactors in order on the album and be done there you go it's already there artists do it all the time it's not just randomly thrown in there alright two more questions we're back best sports related pinball machine out of these four I'm going to give you BMX Banzai Run Roller games or world cup soccer okay these are hard so i'm gonna go with i'm gonna eliminate some i do that way no you could do whatever okay so uh i'm eliminating world cup soccer because i had one i didn't find it terribly fun it was okay okay i know i know hold on though hold on that's my favorite case other things okay i i didn't find it terrible for some reason really oh man i'm sorry But I want... So I love older games, right? Just we're going to say that right now, right? So WPC era games, I like them and I really enjoy and appreciate them. But if you throw like System 11 games in front of me or early ballets in front of me, I'm going to go for those before I go for the WPC games. Okay. So World Cup Soccer is still a very fun game. There's no such thing as an unfun pinball machine. Okay? No such thing. I don't care if it's a Raven or what. Like, you get your buddies, go play Raven. It's amazing. You're going to have a fun time no matter what. Okay? It doesn't matter. Sick. World Cup Soccer. Get rid of that one.
    53:49
    BMX is really awesome. It's also very, very rare. So it's just like hard body, except less funny. And, like, you know. But I'm going to eliminate that one, too. but it is really fun. It's super, super fun. Two left. Roller games. I know. I'm going to have to eliminate roller games.
    54:13
    Also a very, very fun game. But yeah, Banzai Run wins that one out of all four of those. So Banzai Run is... Yeah, Banzai Run is super cool. It's very, very unique and the story behind it is really, really... Wow. We don't have to geek off on the story. Dude, I could geek on stuff like that all day. I love Banzai Run. And when we started here in COVID, I have a buddy that comes here, John Rue, and he never played pinball before. And so he comes and he sees this machine. It's in the corner. We put it in the corner because we don't want to move it because everything works. And when you move pinball machines, things break. And we're so freaked out about that magnet bringing it to the upper play field that we don't want to touch it. We just want to leave Banzai Run alone where it is. And he played it nonstop, and he just got addicted to Banzai Run. But the problem with it, it's not a great tournament game. We had to change a lot of things because they didn't flip jump all damn day. Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely. The same thing with roller games, too. You just shoot the wall all the time. It does random stuff. All right, well, Banzai's a winner. That's awesome. Banzai's a winner in that one, but it's, again, no unfun pinball here. all right finally favorite pinball expo or show to attend oh so the it used to be tpf and that's because it was just that was big that's where we all came to and then but recently it's been houston arcade expo because of how just raw and it's just one big party everybody's there no ones taking themselves too seriously, all having a great time. And it's becoming the meetup point for all my friends I don't get to see very often. Yeah, I kind of led you down on that one because it's my favorite. It is. Yeah, it's so it's so good. Yeah, it's going to be in this October. In fact, the exact dates are October 11th, 12th and 13th at the Houston Marriott Westchase. And I wrote this for ticket info. Go to Houston Arcade Expo dot com. What day are you performing? so that news is i can't go this year yeah it's one week before expo and now i have to get the uh we have to get the pinball olympic uh thing running hey though going to both uh you know the worm haulers so we're gonna get nice but uh get crazy give make sure to get your pinball olympics tickets okay we gotta do it we gotta watch for them they'll go they'll go on sale a few weeks before expo okay so that i will see you at expo in chicago then yep i will be there uh with the wormhole or so hey man thanks so much i'm sorry you're not performing this year at the houston arcade expo it's always been a great show you put on there but uh thanks for this this has been fantastic i really appreciate a lot of fun absolutely thank you all right where can people find you uh i don't know that we uh pinball if i'm in the back uh and just working away. But yeah, like if you need some information about, you know, what I'm doing, what I'm working on, it's the way that you can go to my website or, you know, I rarely post on Facebook, but if it's something important, I'll post something there. But, you know, I respond to emails. Well, Scott, thank you for your time. I really appreciate it. This was a lot of fun. Thank you so much. Thanks, brother. Thank you so much, Scott. Denise, man, I love doing these. And thank you so much for everyone And for the awesome IMs and emails we're getting at wormholepinball.gmail.com, it's really nice to hear that you guys are liking the podcast and liking what we're doing on the stream and everything we're doing here because we're having the time of our lives. So thank you so, so much. What's going on here is a little remodel, and that's why we're closed. We're under construction, and the place is just going to get better and better. It's just blowing my mind. So please follow us on all the socials, and SpaceCityPinball.com really is the best place to see. place to see when we are open and all of our upcoming tournaments. Next week, I am interviewing another cool dude. That's Ko from Quarter Drop Arcade. You can check him out on Instagram.
    58:30
    Awesome videos. Shout out to a friend of the program. I've always wanted to say friend of the program. Kale Hernandez from Electric Batcat. He sent us an email. He goes, hey, book Ko from Quarter Drop Arcade. And guess what? I did. So, I am booked solid with great upcoming guests for the next month and a half, so tell your friends about us. And that's it. All right, for Wormhole Pinball, I am Jamie Burchill. Oh, I have a new sign-off. It comes from our only rule here at the Wormhole. Don't be an asshole.