Episode 132: Nightmare Before Christmas pinball

Pinball Profile·podcast_episode·21m 26s·analyzed·May 27, 2018

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.029

TL;DR

Homebrew Nightmare Before Christmas pinball machine achieves critical acclaim at Allentown Expo.

Summary

Jeff Teolis interviews Mark City (Mark Inc.), a programmer and homebrew pinball designer who created a fully functional Nightmare Before Christmas pinball machine over three years. The machine was a major highlight at Allentown Pinball Expo with 300 players, features 35 modes built on Mission Pinball Framework, custom-welded ramps, hand-drawn artwork, and plays like a cross between Pat Lawlor and Steve Ritchie designs. Mark discusses the technical and artistic challenges of building a homebrew machine and expresses interest in potential commercial manufacturing if someone pursues the licensing.

Key Claims

Nightmare Before Christmas pinball received 300 players over two days at Allentown Pinball Expo
high confidence · Mark City directly states: 'I had about 300 people play the game over the two days'
Mark City has been developing the game for three years as a hobby, approximately two hours per day
high confidence · Mark states: 'It's basically been my hobby for the last three years, probably a couple hours a day'
The game features approximately 35 different modes with three mode trees
high confidence · Mark explains: 'I have like about 35 different modes in there. There's three different mode trees'
The game uses Mission Pinball Framework as its programming foundation
high confidence · Mark states: 'I created it on top of a platform called Mission Pinball Framework'
Multiple people at Allentown attempted to purchase the machine
high confidence · Mark confirms: 'There are a few people that actually had their wallets out there trying to actually buy the game at Allentown'
The machine plays similarly to designs by Pat Lawlor and Steve Ritchie
high confidence · Players told Mark: 'it's kind of like a cross between a Lawler and a Steve Ritchie game'
The game is approximately 99% complete, with remaining work on metal apron, back glass, videos, and animations
high confidence · Mark states: '99%. No, it's tough to say. It's pretty close' and lists remaining tasks
Custom ramps were enlarged approximately 110% during the scaling from prototype to final version
medium confidence · Mark explains: 'I think they enlarged like 110% or something like that'

Notable Quotes

“It's basically been my hobby for the last three years, probably a couple hours a day.”
Mark City @ ~7:45 — Indicates massive time investment in homebrew development
“I realized that some of the shots that I thought were working in the simulator didn't work out in real life because the physics was off a bit.”
Mark City @ ~12:15 — Highlights critical lesson about translating digital simulation to physical machine
“People were telling me that it's kind of like a cross between a Lawler and a Steve Ritchie game.”
Mark City @ ~52:30 — High-level design compliment comparing machine to legendary designers
“I don't have the fortitude to actually approach and negotiate a license and all that stuff. And I don't want to get into any kind of manufacturing myself.”
Mark City @ ~48:15 — Expresses openness to commercial licensing but unwilling to personally handle manufacturing
“When that came back, it was like this shiny, amazing thing. It's like, oh, my gosh, we made this thing. And it looks like a real play field, right?”
Mark City @ ~36:30 — Emotional milestone moment in homebrew development process
“It feels like a real pinball machine.”
Allentown players (reported) @ ~46:00 — Community validation that homebrew achieves professional quality

Entities

Mark CitypersonNightmare Before Christmas PinballgameJeff Teolisperson DavidpersonLinoleumpersonChris AsickpersonIan HarrowpersonAllentown Pinball ExpoeventLondon Ontario Pinball League (LOPL)organization

Signals

?
event_signal: Allentown Pinball Expo 2024 featured homebrew Nightmare Before Christmas machine as major highlight; confirmed to return at Pinball Expo in October
high · Jeff states it 'was the highlight of Valentine' (Allentown); Mark confirms: 'We're thinking of taking it to Expo in October'
~
sentiment_shift: Nightmare Before Christmas homebrew machine received extremely positive feedback at Allentown Expo with 300 players; multiple attendees reportedly tried to purchase it
high · Mark states: 'Most of it was overwhelmingly positive because people were just so amazed' and 'a few people that actually had their wallets out there trying to actually buy the game'
?
design_philosophy: Mark City incorporated design elements from multiple classic machines (Circus Voltaire's center target/ringmaster, upper ramps, various ramp configurations) into a cohesive Tim Burton-themed homebrew
high · Mark explains: 'I basically wanted like, oh, a center target kind of bad guy, a bit like the ringmaster from Circus Voltaire' and lists various ramps and elements from classic games
$
market_signal: Tim Burton IP in pinball gaining traction: Nightmare Before Christmas homebrew successful; separate commercial Beetlejuice pinball rumored in development
medium · Jeff mentions: 'There's a big rumor is there's another Tim Burton movie that might be being made into a pinball machine in Beetlejuice'
?
licensing_signal: Mark City interested in commercial licensing of Nightmare Before Christmas but unwilling to personally handle manufacturing or licensing negotiations

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.064

0:00

It's time for another Pinball Profile. I'm your host, Jeff Teolis. You can find our group on Facebook. We're also on Twitter at Pinball Profile. Email us pinballprofile at gmail.com, and please subscribe on either iTunes, Stitcher, or Google Play. It's a pleasure to be talking to somebody I've known for a few years. In fact, the first time I ever played pinball, he was not only in the league, he was one of the guys running the league, and you probably saw him if you were at Allentown. Mark in City joins us. Hey, Mark, how are you? Hey, pretty good. It's good to be talking to you in this forum, because I talk to you pretty much every week. We're both on the London, Ontario Pinball League, the LOPL executive, a league that Mike Dimas created. And I think we're now in our eighth season. You're kind of the webmaster for the league and statistician. But forget all that great stuff. I mean, that's obviously valuable to the league members. You're more valuable for other reasons. And everyone in Allentown just got to see exactly why your baby, you brought the Nightmare Before Christmas pinball machine. How fun was that at Allentown? It was amazing. A lot of really good feedback. I had about 300 people play the game over the two days, so pretty cool. I'm pretty connected to the pinball community through all the people I talk to on Pinball Profile and the people that contact me. I've heard hands down it was the highlight of Valentine. And I know you're too modest to admit it, but really people were going overboard about this game too. And let's go way back. What made you decide to make a pinball machine? I don't know. It's always been a passion of mine. way back a few decades ago. When I was 14, I actually tried to make a pinball machine, but I had like zero skills at the time. It was just a piece of plywood with some nails and some rubber bands, and I had some mechanical flippers and a little marble that I bashed around. And that's always been in the back of my mind to actually make a real pinball machine. So the opportunity kind of came up because there was someone on Pinside that was advertising to take whatever seam you could come up with and start drawing up a layout. The guy's name was Linoleum. And so I sent him a few rough ideas that I wanted on it, and he threw something together really quick, and I just basically took over what he started and just went from there. What were the ideas he gave you? I basically just kind of said, you know, I kind of wanted like, oh, a center target kind of bad guy, a bit like the ringmaster from Circus Voltaire. You know, just basically different elements from different games that I kind of wanted to incorporate. And so then he sketched up a play field and started throwing a few pieces together with the spare parts that he had. Like, you know, basically I wanted like a nice orbit. I needed to have a few different ramps. And then basically a few different elements from the movie had to be included. Like I wanted a bathtub because I thought that would be a really cool multi-ball block. We incorporated that into it and stuff. Different things like that. So that's the first part of making this game. Yeah, so it was just kind of like sketching out the idea. And then I took that initial layout, I copied it into a future pinball, like a simulator, and tweaked a bunch of different ideas. And then I went from there. I took the blueprint from the virtual, got a piece of plywood, put it down on the plywood, started cutting holes. That's probably not how they're doing it at the big companies, correct? I mean, part of it is. Yeah, I'm sure they have some CAD software that they, you know, like different elements that they could probably just like, they probably have like a toolbox of different pieces that they can just plop down. Like here's a flipper, here's a, you know, a shooter lane, you know, various things that they could probably just take from their older projects and sort of like shuffle things around a bit. Because as great as that computer layout is and you've got the print out there and you're ready to cut holes on a whiteboard or piece of plywood or whatever the case may be, you don't know if that ramp is even makeable or if the geometry works out. Right. So once you start drilling holes, you're pretty much stuck to it, aren't you? Well, you can always plug them up. Did you do that? I didn't actually do that that much. My initial layout was a little bit kind of like, you know, a little bit like Twilight Zone, you know, where you shoot through the pop bumpers over on the side. I kind of had like a layout like that initially, and then I wasn't happy with it. So I moved the pop bumpers away to the back of the playfield. So that wasn't something that you could easily just patch. So I used just like it was a whole new piece of plywood that I used for that. But that's like a pretty major change. But other things, if your post is off by an inch or something, you can just plug that hole and move things over. It's more of the ramps you're pretty much locked to, right? Yeah, I think so. And the other thing I discovered, once I went from the simulator and I started making my first whitewood, I realized that some of the shots that I thought were working in the simulator didn't work out in real life because the physics was off a bit. So I basically took the lesson that I learned from that.

7:26

Yeah, anybody into electronics will know. So what happens is it ends up sending sort of like a reverse current back, and that ends up blowing up your transistor. So I did have one of those mishaps, but I've got that all cleared up now. I'm going to get all this translated later for me, but Mark, it is something to see. And this isn't the first show you brought this game to. In fact, I've seen it at other shows in the whitewood form. What was the first show you brought to? We took it to Chicago a couple of years ago, to the Chicago Expo in October. But the sad part was that I actually had the layout complete and everything, and it shot really well and everything, but it was a complete whitewood. Even my ramps were made out of white paper. So unfortunately, when people walked by, they would just see this, and they couldn't imagine what the game was or what the theme was and everything. So a lot of people just kind of ignored it. But now we've taken the time over the last couple of years to do up all the artwork and everything. So now it looks like a complete game now. So that initial time at Chicago was pretty good. We actually met up with a whole bunch of other homebrew people. So it was good to exchange ideas and work with them. People have been following you on Pinside, too, under Mark Inc. And, again, some of these parts are easy to get access to, but there's some things you had to make, I assume, custom. Like, how do you get the ramps done? That was a bit of a challenge. The prototype started off, I had this really thick cardstock, sort of like poster board, cut the bottom of the ramp to the curve and the shape that I wanted, and then, you know, like two-inch sides, like long strips of paper, and then just duct tape to hold it all together. And it actually held up pretty well. I was using it for a year, year and a half, and no problems. So I basically, it's kind of like what the other designers were using, like styrofoam board. There's the different boards that they could just cut different strips of stuff and use crazy glue, glue things together. And then once you work out your prototypes, then you can move on to metal or plastic. So yeah, what I did was I made my prototypes. Then I took those, I passed them off to a friend who actually drew up the CAD drawings for those. And then they got passed to another person who took that and had them cut out of a big sheet of stainless steel. And then from there, I got these pieces back, bent them into shape, and then I had another friend that helped me weld them all together. Have you ever stopped to try to figure out how many hours you've put into this? It's basically been my hobby for the last three years, probably a couple hours a day. a lot of time in programming and uh we spent a lot of time doing the artwork my partner david actually drew out like all these different characters all the there's like if you look closely at the game there's like a nice little brick pathway and stuff like that he actually hand drew every one of the little bricks david's amazing uh yeah when you told me that i already knew that but i was like wow that's uh that's pretty amazing that's quite a talent you did a really good job we're really happy with it sad part is that when you're working in photoshop and you're looking at this stuff, you sort of imagine that people are actually going to see this detail. But then when you get it printed out, it's like that thing that was on the screen that was a couple inches wide turns out to be just a tiny little speck. But we know the effort that went into it so we really happy with it And it was easy to maybe either buy or I don know if you 3D printed them the toys The actual characters they toys that you can buy or used to be able to buy I haven't been able to find them. Half of my character sets are missing because back in 1998, they put out like a part one and part two. So I only managed to find part one, so I'm missing a few of the key characters. Which ones do you need? We'll put it out here on Pinball Profile. What do you need? I need my Sally, and I need a Shock, and a Lock. Sally, shock and lock. If somebody has that, contact Pinball Profile and we can get them to mark because this game is something to be seen. Talk about the programming itself. I mean, that, again, everything's Greek to me, but where do you start with something like that? Is that your expertise? Yeah, well, that's what I do for a living. I'm a programmer, so I didn't really have to worry about that. I kind of built it up on top of a platform called Mission Pinball Framework. It's basically got all of the basics, like the trough handling, the ball count and all those different, you know, the basic modes like credits and all that kind of stuff. That's kind of built into it. And so then what I do is I created a bunch of modes on top of that. I have like about 35 different modes in there. There's three different mode trees. So you can start, you know, a mode from each one of the different trees. Like I have, there's like the holiday section. So there's seven different holidays. So you can start each one of those. And once you've completed those, there's like a wizard mode for those. And all of those things They're basically just different sections of code, and they all kind of trigger each other. You complete one mode, then that enables the next mode, and so on. And I had a friend, another one of our friends from the league, Chris Asick. I basically gave him a list of all the different modes and different ideas that I had started and a few rough sketches, and he just took that and he fleshed it out. He basically set up all of it. He came up with the different ideas for the holidays and for the character modes and stuff like that, And so then I've just taken his structure, I've gone and tried to program it all out. It's a work of art, no question about it. And it's more than that. It's a fully functioning pinball machine that people want to play. And you've got programming, you know, you certainly know that like the back of your hand. You said, you know, you were able to acquire some of the toys and you said wiring is pretty simple. No, it's not. But for you it is. And then obviously you've had some help with the whiteboard and everything. So what was the hardest part of all this then? I think some of the physical stuff, like the ramps, not having welded stainless steel before, that was a bit of a challenge. And actually, when you go from like a prototype to the physical thing, there's always like, there's issues where things kind of like are not exactly the same scale. I think going from my prototype to the finished ramps, I think they enlarged like 110% or something like that. Like there's things that you get frustrated with and you kind of want to redo, but that kind of stuff. and then actually making, like cutting the play field. I'd never actually used a router before. There was a bit of a learning gap there, but I went through and figured out. I made myself templates for the arrows and for the diamond shapes, for the rectangles. It was so nerve wracking as I was going through this, the process, because here I am with this play field, about 90% of the way through with all these cuts. And then every new insert that I had to put in is kind of like, uh-oh, I hope it doesn't mess up this time. But fortunately I made it through without any major mishaps. And then actually figuring out, okay, so I've got this blank play field. How are we going to get the artwork on there? So I had different options about, you know, I have to clear coat everything. Are we going to do a direct print or whatever? So I ended up getting the artwork printed on a piece of clear vinyl. And so we glued that down and then we clear coated on top of that. You kind of know what the final outcome is supposed to be, but you don't know the steps to actually get there. So learned a lot of things, challenging stuff. I remember when I first saw that vinyl go down, that clear-coated vinyl, that's a big wow moment. And that must have really been an eye-opener for you, too. Like, wow, this really looks like a pinball machine. Exactly, exactly. And then the next step, we sent it off to a friend to clear-coat it. And when that came back, it was like this shiny, amazing thing. It's like, oh, my gosh, we made this thing. And it looks like a real play field, right? Yeah, there's been a lot of those amazing moments along the way. How close are you to being complete, Mark? 99%. No, it's tough to say. It's pretty close. The programming is mostly all there. Now there's a lot of basically adding a lot of videos and different animations, probably tweaking some more of the sound effects. With the physical stuff, we still need to do, I still have a paper apron, like the bottom arch. That needs to be turned into metal. And we have some ideas of some cutouts with some lights underneath. and the rule sheet and the game title and that stuff, and also the back glass is paper as well. So we want to do that in some sort of like a plexiglass kind of, like a translate of some sort. One of our friends, Ian Harrow, jokingly suggested to you, you know, it would be great if there was like, you know when you go up a ramp halfway and it comes back down? Wouldn't it be great if there was a half-ramp multi-ball? Yes, I have actually implemented a half-ramp multi-ball. I think that's so neat. Yeah, so what happens is, yeah, if you go up the ramp and you don't make it like I think three or four times in a row, it'll start a multiball mode called the half ramp multiball. And the funny thing about that is that to get the jackpots during that mode you have to actually make the ramps You get points for going halfway up the ramp as well You can only suck for so long You eventually have to make it But that's so funny that you've done that. It's a nice little training session.

16:18

There's a few other little hidden modes in there that you can only access through. There's like a little mystery target. You hit that a few times, and then there's like a little prize available. So there's a few modes that you can only access through that, sort of like neon multiball on Circus Voltaire. Okay, so 300 people were lucky enough to play it at Allentown. Were you asking for feedback, both positive and negative, to kind of maybe build on? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. People had some good feedback, yeah. Most of it was overwhelmingly positive because people were just so amazed that, oh, my God, you made this? It feels like a real pinball machine. So those are like, it's nice to hear that, but it's not. It didn't help us refine anything. But then there were a few people, like even industry people, I guess, that had some feedback. Like there's little things that you kind of grow used to, like you kind of know what the modes are. But if somebody's new and approaching this thing, a lot of times they need like a little more instruction. I noticed that like a few of our screens are kind of like people are just sitting there waiting and sort of like, okay, so what am I supposed to do? So like a little more direction. Like I have a lot of sound clips from the movie. There's about 300 different voice clips that I have in here, but it would be helpful to have an overall narrator that's maybe basically telling you, shoot for the left ramp. You said some industry people. Now, I think of some people that made their own little home games. One, Scott Denise, he comes to mind. I think of even Keith Elwin making Archer. Eric Minier obviously got the attention of Jersey Jack. Mark, if someone's interested in this game, what do you think? Yeah, that'd be really cool if I could get this manufactured somehow. But I don't have the fortitude to actually approach and negotiate a license and all that stuff. And I don't want to get into any kind of manufacturing myself. So if somebody wanted to take that on and pursue the license and stuff, that'd be cool. People seem to really enjoy it. There are a few people that actually had their wallets out there trying to actually buy the game at Allentown. Wow. And it's like, no, it's not for sale. Sorry. So yeah, I think there's some demand for it. And the big rumor is there's another Tim Burton movie that might be being made into a pinball machine in Beetlejuice. Did you hear that? Oh, that's cool. That'd be neat. There's definitely a lot of quirkiness to the Tim Burton movies. So yeah, I'm sure there'd be a good appeal for sure. So if you didn't see it at Allentown and you're not in London, Ontario, and you're not friends with Mark and City, how are we going to see this game again? We're thinking of taking it to Expo in October, if there is one. There is? Oh, excellent. So, yeah, we plan on being there. Good. Should have things even further on. So you've been working on this game for three years. You, before even Stern, had an LCD screen, correct? Right, yeah. I was really inspired by The Wizard of Oz. It had to be all RGB lighting. I wanted a big screen with a nice display and a lot of different diverters and different action. So that's what I went with. and it's a wide body as well. Now, does it play like a wide body? You know how some games kind of don't play like a wide body? No, it's not floaty at all. People were telling me that it's kind of like a cross between a Lawler and a Steve Ritchie game. Well, that's a nice compliment. Yeah, yeah, I'm really happy with that. Yeah, there's some really quick shots. There's a nice little loop that will return the ball right back at you and ramps everywhere. It plays really well. There's no dead spots, really. It doesn't feel like a wide body. You know how some of them could have, like, it seems like it's an eternity getting from the left to the right. It's pretty good. Mark, we're also coming up to a one-year anniversary. Do you know what that is? No. Oh, I remember very, very well. When you won the London, Ontario Pinball League, I know I was in the finals, and this Mark and Siddy came out of nowhere and blew away everyone. So a happy anniversary to that, and the finals are coming up in a few weeks. Yeah. Hopefully I'll do well again. Let somebody else win it once in a while, all right?