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Episode 73 – Inside the mind of Lyman Sheats

Head2Head Pinball·podcast_episode·2h 25m·analyzed·Dec 10, 2018
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.036

TL;DR

Lyman Sheets discusses his legendary coding career and design philosophy in extensive Head2Head Pinball interview.

Summary

Head2Head Pinball interviews legendary pinball code designer Lyman Sheets about his career, design philosophy, and recent work on major Stern titles including The Walking Dead, AC/DC, Batman 66, and Metallica. Sheets discusses his approach to code balancing, the extensive licensing work on Batman 66, and his philosophy of avoiding repetitive game design patterns. He emphasizes the collaborative nature of modern pinball development and his commitment to continuous improvement through playtesting and community feedback.

Key Claims

  • Lyman Sheets worked 100% of the code on Attack from Mars, Medieval Madness, Monster Bash, Spider-Man, AC/DC, and likely Metallica with minimal late assistance

    high confidence · Sheets states 'I'd say, you know, Attack of Mars, Medieval, Monster Bash, Spider-Man, ACDC. I'd probably even say Metallica also. I had some help for, you know, maybe three weeks right before the game was put out.'

  • Batman 66 required Sheets to review approximately 55 hours of TV material (120 episodes × 24-25 minutes each), with over 80% usable for the game

    high confidence · Sheets: 'There were, I think, around 120 episodes of Batman, the TV series, over three years. So each one's about, I think, like 24, 25 minutes. So, I mean, it's, you know, it's pretty close to, like, I'll say 52 hours or 55 hours of material to go through. And then of that, I think we could use maybe a little over 80% of the material.'

  • Batman 66 was originally intended as Premium-only, which influenced Sheets' decision to incorporate extensive video content

    high confidence · Sheets: 'I didn't realize at the time, you know, kind of like what the company was doing with the LEs and the super LEs. And that, I mean, I just thought it was like, well, okay, it's going to be a premium only and so on.'

  • Batman 66's villain select screen design has remained unchanged for approximately two years since initial release

    high confidence · Sheets: 'That villain select screen has been in the game in that same form, I don't know, probably like for the last two years.'

  • Batman 66 took longer than any previous game Sheets worked on, despite being a 'studio title' with fewer allocated resources than 'Cornerstone titles' at Stern

    high confidence · Sheets confirms it's 'easily the most amount of time I've spent on a game' and notes 'Batman was like the first studio title' with less resources than Cornerstone projects

  • Sheets had no dedicated art support on Batman 66 and handled video asset acquisition independently in addition to programming

    high confidence · Sheets: 'I was off by myself. I was pretty much my own, as far as the video assets go, I was pretty much my own art support in terms of getting content into the game'

Notable Quotes

  • “For me, it's because the games are not like Attack from Mars, very simple, straightforward, pretty easy to balance the game out. There are a lot more rules in the games today, and the scoring is a little bit more, I'd say, like, you know, less linear.”

    Lyman Sheets @ ~8:30 — Explains the increased complexity and difficulty in balancing modern pinball code compared to classic games

  • “I really loved that theme, and for me, it's just a complete departure, theme-wise, from some of the stuff I had worked on, you know, in the past, like Metallica and Walking Dead are pretty serious kind of... And I was just looking and embracing an opportunity to work on, like, a more humorous, funny, kind of lighthearted game.”

    Lyman Sheets @ ~22:00 — Reveals Sheets' intentional design philosophy of varying game tone and theme to avoid repetitive design patterns

  • “One of my biggest fears is like just sort of falling into a rut where it's like, okay, I did this game and then I made that game and I made this game and then they all kind of like feel the same or play the same or, you know, whatever it happens to be.”

    Lyman Sheets @ ~40:00 — Core design philosophy statement about avoiding monotonous game design across multiple titles

  • “For me, obviously, the more positive feedback you get from the game when you do something that's good. For me, I would always like the feedback to be kind of proportional to, like, what I'm getting on a shot or for an award or whatever it happens to be.”

    Lyman Sheets @ ~15:00 — Describes Sheets' approach to proportional audio/visual feedback design in code

  • “The Walking Dead is a really interesting situation... when it came out, people were sort of really focusing on the layout being a little bit brutal... but then you did this update that completely changed that game.”

    Ryan C. (Host) @ ~11:00 — References the famous Walking Dead code update that transformed reception of the game

  • “I want to know where my points are coming from. You know, when I play a game and I'm in multi-ball and I have five things going or whatever it is, I can maybe, if I'm not playing the game or if I'm watching somebody, I can at least see on Batman, I can see all the things that are going on and the scores that I'm getting from all of the stuff with the different, like the little mini TVs on the side.”

Entities

Lyman SheetspersonRyan C.personMartinpersonBrian EddypersonSteve RitchiepersonJohn BorgpersonKeith Elwinperson

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Sheets continuously monitors competitive play, streams, and tournament results to identify exploits and balance issues; relies on community feedback (particularly Kaylee and Keith Elwin) for identifying design problems

    high · Sheets: 'I can't go to all the tournaments... Just for me personally, I play the stuff that I work on... there are a whole bunch of other people who play the games... Kaylee is pretty good at just sort of sniffing out exploits'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: AC/DC experienced dominant single-song strategy (War Machine, Hell's Battles) requiring nerfs; Sheets confirms awareness and iterative balancing in response to tournament meta

    high · Host notes 'people were just, you know, either War Machine all day or Hell's Battles all day, and obviously those have, you know, been nerfed a little bit' and Sheets acknowledges this feedback

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Sheets expresses mild regret about Iron Man super jackpot audio feedback lacking impact relative to visual animation, suggesting potential future refinement

    medium · Sheets: 'if I had an opportunity to go back and, you know, put a few finishing touches on Iron Man, like, when I get the super jackpot on Iron Man, like, I'd like there to be, like, some big, huge sound when you hit the shot'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Sheets intentionally designs multiple viable gameplay strategies and modes to discourage monotonous single-strategy dominance; AC/DC specifically designed to enable song selection variety based on player skill/preference

    high · Sheets on AC/DC: 'I'm going to play Thunderstruck because, like, I can't hit shots. Or I'm going to play War Machine because I'm really good at live catching.' vs. earlier observation that players defaulted to single strategy (double-linked super)

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.437

0:00
Welcome everybody to the Head to Head Pinball Podcast. This is episode 73 and my name's Martin and with me... It's Ryan C. And Marty, there are a lot of people that work on games that have really important jobs. The artist, the designer, sound engineer. But there's one person that marries all these pieces together and it's the software guy. And in my opinion, that person is actually producing art as well. And it's pinball coding artistry. Today we have someone who a large portion of the pinball community regard as one of the greatest pinball coders of all time Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Lyman Sheets How are you going, Lyman? Hey, good, how are you guys doing?
1:10
I would also add one of the greatest pinball players of all time But, you know, why not? Those two things Yeah, maybe a while ago, I don't know These days, it feels more like work than fun, I guess, for me, depending on which tournament you're talking about. And there's so many of them, it's hard to... I don't know, it's hard to keep track of all of what's going on now. Hey, Lyman, 2018 has been a massive year for Stern. They've released a whole bunch of new games, and even though I believe you haven't really been the coding lead on any of these games, it has been a big year for you as well, because late last year we got the Walking Dead update, which was unexpected. This year we got ACDC, unexpected.
1:59
Right. A million Batman updates to get to 1.0. You're finally there. And then lastly we got to Metallica. So we saw you the other day on the Deadflip stream playing Batman 66, and you sat there with a pen and a pad and you were writing down notes. Right. Are games in your eyes ever complete, or is it a never-ending process in your mind to get there?
2:26
I think at some point they're complete. There are some games I know I probably never really want to do too much to. Walking Dead, I would say, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I don't feel like there are really any holes in the rules or the scoring or anything like that. You know, it's a pretty fun game and pretty reasonably balanced and everything else. But then other games, I guess, sometimes it's sort of like it's a tough balancing act when there's so many rules in the game. And then you just have to play it and play it and play it and play it. And then, you know, you find out, oh, okay, this person did this on it or that person did that on it. For me, it's because the games are not like Attack from Mars, very simple, straightforward, pretty easy to balance the game out. There are a lot more rules in the games today, and the scoring is a little bit more, I'd say, like, you know, less linear. For me, it takes a little more effort to, I guess, like, get things right. Are you doing that by watching streams, or is it watching people in person at tournaments? How do you reach that balance? Because, as you said, you might play the game to death and think, okay, this is a pretty balance, and then the Keith Elwins of the world will find an exploit. It's really everything.

  • Batman 66 Super LE customization feature uses serial numbers and service menu settings to enable personalized callouts and speech for individual machines

    high confidence · Sheets explains: 'It's default off. So that way, most people... There's a setting... you can go in the settings and turn it on, and the software will have in it track mode speech and game speech that's customized for the serial number'

    • Lyman Sheets @ ~33:00 — Explains design intent for Batman 66's LCD mini-display system to improve player feedback visibility

  • “I had accumulated a bunch of bug fixes and small miter rule tweaks and scoring tweaks and features... for Attack from Mars and Medieval Madness and Monster Bash. And, you know, they just sort of sat on my hard drive... And then right before Williams was about to close up... I asked Ted if, you know, like, hey, can we put this out?”

    Lyman Sheets @ ~28:00 — Historical context on preservation of classic Williams game code updates before company closure

    • Tony DeFeo
    person
    Stern Pinballcompany
    Williamscompany
    The Walking Deadgame
    Batman 66game
    AC/DCgame
    Metallicagame
    Attack from Marsgame
    Medieval Madnessgame
    Monster Bashgame
    Spider-Mangame
    Spike 2product
    Kayleeperson
    Tedperson
  • ?

    design_philosophy: Sheets deliberately varies game tone, theme, and rule structure across titles (Batman 66 humorous vs. Metallica/Walking Dead serious) to avoid design stagnation and monotony

    high · Sheets states: 'One of my biggest fears is like just sort of falling into a rut... I try pretty hard each time to try to do something new' and contrasts his approach with Williams' repetitive progressive jackpot designs (1986-1989)

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Batman 66 required extensive manual curation of 55+ hours of TV material with selective ~80% usability rate; Sheets served as primary asset curator rather than having dedicated licensing/art support

    high · Sheets reviews 120 episodes (52-55 hours total), selects 80% usable, and personally serves as 'own art support in terms of getting content into the game' alongside programming duties

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Batman 66 was primarily solo-coded project by Sheets with minimal external support, representing departure from typical Stern team resource allocation for Cornerstone titles

    high · Sheets: 'I didn't really have any other resources I could use on the project. I mean, it was pretty much just myself and Tony DeFeo' and 'It's easily the most amount of time I've spent on a game'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Batman 66 Super LE serial number customization allows personalized callouts and speech via service menu settings; represents innovative post-release content differentiation strategy

    high · Sheets explains 80 Super LEs receive custom track mode speech and game speech keyed to serial numbers; feature is default-off in service menu and populated via customer feedback survey

  • ?

    product_concern: Walking Dead initially received negative feedback for brutal layout difficulty; Sheets' code update transformed perception by balancing difficulty and accessibility while maintaining scoring depth

    high · Hosts and Sheets discuss that initial release was 'brutal' and 'had some negative feedback' until Sheets' update made it 'legendary'; Sheets explains playtesting real machines vs. perfect whitewoods revealed usability issues

  • ?

    technology_signal: Batman 66 extended development cycle directly attributable to Spike 2 LCD system as new technology requiring problem-solving and extended implementation time

    high · Sheets: 'here at Stern, we were bringing up Spike 2, the LCD system. There were, I mean, any time you bring up new technology, it's always, it takes a little longer. You struggle through some problems'

    • 3:52
    I can't go to all the tournaments, and I can't go to all the locations and watch people. Just for me personally, I play the stuff that I work on, And then I can kind of get a feel for, like, okay, this is fun, this is not fun, this is too much work, it's too easy, too hard, this score is way out of whack, whatever it is. And then beyond that, there are a whole bunch of other people who play the games with different things that they're thinking about when they're playing. And sometimes I've seen, like, oh, I never thought anybody would play the game that way. Keith seems to be pretty good at it. And some other people, I'd say like Kaylee is pretty good at just sort of sniffing out exploits in the game. And then, you know, they're also usually pretty good about saying, hey, you know, take a look at this and you might want to do something about this or whatever it happens to be. So it's really a combination of all of it. So obviously you've got to take the designer's layout and build code around that. But do you find the process of the fact that the inserts and the direction is there, do you find that restrictive? Or do you like that and go, well, great, that's it. At least that's a definite, nothing can be changed. Now I've got to get creative with that. It really depends on the game and the designer. I know that when Brian and I worked on stuff at Williams' Attack from Mars, he was, you know, pretty clear on what he wanted to do with the game. And then a lot of the scoring stuff and the rules and whatever, you know, I would fill in some of the blanks. And then some other projects like, say, ACDC with Steve Ritchie, it was a little more like kind of loose parameters for making the game. And we also had a little less time. You know, I think maybe I had like four months from when I got the Whitewood to when they started shipping the pros in January of 2012 to kind of make something happen. So it really depends on the designer and the schedule, the team, and how much time we have. I know, like, for Walking Dead, we were just from the very beginning, John Borg, myself, Tino, Mike Kizavat, we all just sat in a room for probably a good two weeks to a month and just hammered out the whole design, you know, pretty much of the game. And then from then on, it's just implementation. And some other games have been a little bit more, I guess, you know, along the way, figure stuff out, like ACDC and Metallica were kind of like that. Well, then I just want to quickly touch on Walking Dead, because I think that, I mean, as we said before, people do hold you in high regard and, you know, everyone really does enjoy your rules. But The Walking Dead is a really interesting situation because, and I'll be respectful because we all love the game now, but when it came out, people were sort of really focusing on the layout being a little bit brutal.
    7:01
    You know, the code scheme was there, but then you did this update that completely changed that game. How did you do that? Like, how did you know what needed to change to all of a sudden take that game from something that was being, you know, and had some negative feedback to all of a sudden becoming just this legendary game? How did you do that? Right. So the more I played the game, we had some challenges getting the game out and with the software or whatever else, just with the content and everything we had planned. But the more I played the game, the more I realized, I mean, I ran into all the same situations that everybody else did. And to do that, it's easy to get a whitewood and a game and set it up perfectly and whatever else. But then, you know, you go out onto the location and the ball feeds badly out of the bumpers or, you know, you shoot a ramp and it's maybe not like that smooth or whatever it happens to be and you experience. You just have to kind of experience some of the same frustrations that everybody else experiences with the game. And then once you do that, I mean, for me, I brought, I really tried to bring the game a little closer to people where it wasn't maybe so hard to get into something that was entertaining and also had, like, pretty good scoring potential. So, like, the modes became a little bit more of a focus on the game, and they were pretty easy to, you know, pretty easy to get into, to like the modes, and then kind of choose which one you liked. And I really liked how they turned out because there are a couple of them that you probably maybe want to play during multi-ball, and then there are a couple of them, like, say, CDC and Arena, that you really just want to focus with single ball play and work on them with just one ball out. And I guess, like, barn mode is somewhere in the middle. And just to have, like, a little bit of that balance, to bring things a little bit closer for everybody, and then have a balance where it isn't all one thing. so just have to play it and listen to people, that's really it. Talking about Barn, I mean, there's like Moose on the Loose from Big Bug Hunter and Rider Banshee on Avatar and at kind of like a core level, those modes, they're started differently, they're kind of more started kind of like CDC at Bicycle Girls, sorry, but when you're in that mode, you've got a certain amount of time to hit a shot as many times as possible, but for some reason when I'm playing those other two pinball machines, I'm not sure if it's the scoring or the sound or the light show. It kind of seems really boring. But when I play Barn, at its core, it feels like it might be the same mode, just hitting the shot over and over again. Right. And it feels really good. So I don't know what you're doing there. Like, do you know the difference yourself? You coded the mode, so... Yeah, sure. For me, obviously, the more positive feedback you get from the game when you do something that's good. For me, I would always like the feedback to be kind of proportional to, like, what I'm getting on a shot or for an award or whatever it happens to be. I'm trying to think of a good example maybe of something, you know, that might be out of whack or something. I mean, you know, I guess, like, if I had an opportunity to go back and, you know, put a few finishing touches on Iron Man, like, when I get the super jackpot on Iron Man, like, I'd like there to be, like, some big, huge sound when you hit the shot, because right now there's an animation of, you know, Iron Monger getting destroyed and whatever else, but, like, it just needs a little bit more for what I'm getting. So there's the feedback. Can I mention another one? I know the Tron pinball machine was kind of a collaboration with Lonnie, so I'm not sure who's in charge of this, but it's the light cycle, the three-way combo that you need to finish the mode.
    11:25
    Usually the sounds from the second combo is more than the payoff for the third. It's a weird kind of like ju-ju sound. I'm like, okay, yep, that was it. that was me getting that shot after five minutes of multiball. Right, right. That's one as well. But it's hard, right? With multipliers and stuff these days, like on Walking Dead you can get a multiplied shot of, say, a million, but you can get a multiplied shot of half a billion if you really blow it up. But is it hard to program machines for fanfare when multipliers are involved?
    12:04
    A little bit. So just getting back to that mode and whatever else, the multiplier thing is also part of it too because, I mean, I think like part of the excitement of playing some of those modes is like in the back of your mind while you're playing it and you're getting the points and everything else. And all of those modes, I think, you can keep playing them as long as you want. And then, I guess, with the exception of, well, CDC you can finish, and Tunnel you can finish, and Arena you can finish. The other two, Barn and Riot, because they both go into the bumpers, and sometimes you don't get the ball back right away, whatever. Those run eventually timeout. But, I mean, just from a scoring standpoint and a game standpoint, once you get the feedback right, it's just, for me, it's in the back of my mind. Like, yeah, I'm going to build this up to, like, 15 million, and then I'm going to shoot the ramp, and then I'm going to hit the shot for, like, 150 million or something. Also being able to keep playing the mode. And so even though you may not, say, get to the wizard mode in the game, whatever, you could play a mode, say, for a couple minutes and get a huge score just by itself. So just to finish up with what you were asking about barn and what I think about, or at least the modes on the game, like when I start one of those, I'm just like, yeah, I'm going to blow it up and I'm going to get $200 million off of this thing. well so then let's move to Batman so Batman we saw recently the code get to 1.0 congratulations it obviously took you time and you know there's a lot of reasons people have sort of speculated that you know you are a bit of a perfectionist and you really wanted this to just be the most amazing game but talk us through the time it took and I guess the detail you went to to get it to where it is and whether you're still really happy with where it is. Sure.
    14:25
    Well, it was kind of a surprise project, meaning it sort of came up as a project that the company wanted to do. And the way things are scheduled here at Stern, there are people working on chorus zone titles and there's a pretty rigid schedule for when those are going to come out and then when people are going to start working on them and so on and so forth. And then when the game came up, the company wanted to do the game, and there was some discussion about resource allocation, and it was offered up to me to work on. I was actually on a different project, but when it came up, I took it. I really love that theme, and for me, it's just a complete departure, theme-wise, from some of the stuff I had worked on, you know, in the past, like Metallica and Walking Dead are pretty serious kind of, I don't know what the correct word I'm looking for is for those games, but they aren't, say, lighthearted games. And I was just looking and embracing an opportunity to work on, like, a more humorous, funny, kind of lighthearted game.
    15:49
    But, you know, here at Stern, we were bringing up Spike 2, the LCD system. There were, I mean, any time you bring up new technology, it's always, it takes a little longer. You struggle through some problems and get them worked out and whatever else. And then I didn't really have any other resources I could use on the project. I mean, it was pretty much just myself and Tony DeFeo, who was working on the Spike 2 stuff, the rendering. He worked on a good chunk of the game content, the graphics. I guess as it pertains to other teams at Stern who work on Cornerstone titles, there are a lot more resources that are allocated for those projects than, you know, Batman was like the first studio title. So is this the game that you've spent the most, you know, like the largest percentage of the code is just from you? Yeah, probably. I mean, the other games that I've done like 100% code on, I'd say, you know, Attack of Mars, Medieval, Monster Bash, Spider-Man, ACDC. I'd probably even say Metallica also. I had some help for, you know, maybe three weeks right before the game was put out. And it's easily the most amount of time I've spent on a game. Yeah. And so we're kind of curious to know why is that? Is that because it is a new system? Is it because you've got video assets that you also need to synchronize as well? I'm curious to know whether the Rotisserie mech as well required extra coding for that to be reliable.
    17:44
    Most of it for me was having to just go through the material and pull out the things that I wanted to use for the game. part of that was a function of the licensing. We had so much material available to us. There were, I think, around 120 episodes of Batman, the TV series, over three years. So each one's about, I think, like 24, 25 minutes. So, I mean, it's, you know, it's pretty close to, like, I'll say 52 hours or 55 hours of material to go through. And then of that, I think we could use maybe a little over 80% of the material. And then for me, I didn't realize at the time, you know, kind of like what the company was doing with the LEs and the super LEs. And that, I mean, I just thought it was like, well, okay, it's going to be a premium only and so on. So for me, I wanted to use as much of the material as I could because when I was a kid, I mean, the things that made me happy when I played the game and I saw the material was, like, remembering all, like, the kind of funny stuff that happened in all the episodes. and I wanted to use as much as I could, and I was off by myself. I was pretty much my own, as far as the video assets go, I was pretty much my own art support in terms of getting content into the game, and then also all of the programming for just something that had a lot of material and was pretty aggressive or ambitious game design. Was it all, you know, the code is where it's at and you've got the major villains, but a massive part of the game now, of course, is the minor villains and there's so many to choose from, there's so much strategy. Was that always the path you were going to go down or was the only kind of concrete thing because of the inserts, the major villains, and then everything else came after that? No, I mean, the design was pretty much set as far as what you see today at 1.0, all the way back to probably when the game was first put out. I mean, that villain select screen has been in the game in that same form, I don't know, probably like for the last two years. So for me, it's trying to come up with the storylines and the content to make the entertainment for the game. And then the rules and the ideas for what the minor villains do and everything else was pretty much figured out, I'll say, between, you know, like a year and a half to two years ago.
    21:00
    Okay. How about the Super Alley? So people have been kind of wondering, you know, since they bought the Super LE, that there's those call-outs. And in the most recent update, I believe, it said, you know, please send your serial number to this. How does that get implemented? Is that people going to have to enter in some code when they're, like, in the service menu to activate the call-outs? Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah, we've actually gotten pretty good response from people sending in the information. So that's been really good.
    21:35
    And, you know, for me, the information that I had, just the reason or the back story behind all of it was I didn't know who ended up with the games. You know, I could see, like, oh, okay, you know, serial number whatever went to France and this one went to Canada. And I didn't know, you know, who ended up with the games. So, yeah, so there's a setting. It's default off. So that way, most people, I mean, there were, I guess, 80 Super LEs, so a pretty small number of people out of the total number of Batman games who would be affected by it. So it's default off, and then you can go in the settings and turn it on, and the software will have in it track mode speech and game speech that's customized for the serial number of the Super Alley. Okay. So the next software update, I guess, or whenever it comes, will just have like a table of contents kind of thing and say, okay, well, if this is your serial number, your name is Lyman. So when it gets to that stage, say Lyman. Yeah. Yeah, okay. Yeah, that's how it works. Okay. No, so what I was going to say, so, you know, Ryan mentioned before that you were taking notes the other day when you were looking at it. Yeah. I'm just curious, you know, at 1.0, for you, that really indicates that I won't say necessarily the game is 100% complete, but the structure and theme of the rules, that's it, right? What you're going to get is there. How solid are you with it? There aren't any big holes in the game as far as what I wanted to do with the structure of it and the implementation.
    23:36
    But obviously there are light shows that I need to do. There's probably some more score balancing that I'd like to do. and I would say probably every single game that I've worked on, I mean, I did it back when I was at Williams. I mean, I think like right before Williams was about to close down and I sort of got wind of, well, okay, well, pinball is going to go away. I asked Ted because I had accumulated a bunch of bug fixes and small miter rule tweaks and scoring tweaks and features and whatever. for Attack from Mars and Medieval Madness and Monster Bash. And, you know, they just sort of sat on my hard drive, and every once in a while I would burn a ROM and send it to a couple of friends and whatever and just make sure everything was, you know, in the best shape it could be. Yeah, sure. And then right before, you know, Williams was about to close up and all that stuff was going to go off into some big warehouse never to be seen again, And I asked Ted if, you know, like, hey, can we put this out? You know, I did all this work, and I'd like people to have it, whatever. And so the compromise rather than doing a full release, you know, back then was like, okay, you can put it out, but it's free play only. And then, of course, people figured out, like, how to make it not free play only because that's what people do. And, yeah, but I would say that with all of, I mean, I really enjoy what I do, and I want to make the work that I do, I want it to be as good as it can possibly be. So I always try to listen to people and take notes and try to make things better. Okay, so that's an interesting thought because I want to know whether do you have all these rules, ideas constantly going in your head, or is it that you get a new project and then you go, okay, now I need to think about it? Do you actually have some ideas sort of brewing around in your mind already? Yeah, it's a little of both. I know for Batman specifically with the LCD, the main thing I wanted to do, not so much with the game, but with the LCD, is that I want to know where my points are coming from. You know, when I play a game and I'm in multi-ball and I have five things going or whatever it is, I can maybe, if I'm not playing the game or if I'm watching somebody, I can at least see on Batman, I can see all the things that are going on and the scores that I'm getting from all of the stuff with the different, like the little mini TVs on the side. and so going into that was one of the things I really wanted to do because you know I'm probably about as bad as anybody in trying to figure out a new game unless I can like what my friends and I used to do back in I don't know forever ago is we'd go out and play a game and take turns watching each other play it and we'd figure it out very quickly so but sometimes as far as rules go So it depends. I know on Metallica I struggled a little bit because ACDC was super easy because I had taken a break from pinball for a little while, and I had gone to tournaments and I watched, you know, people play some games, and it's like, okay. And the thing that really bugged me was like, well, everybody just plays this game this way. And, like, you know, it might have been Avatar or something.
    27:22
    You know, everybody just goes for a double-linked super. And then, like, you either do that and win or you don't do that or whatever. And so for me, like I said, going into ACDC, I was like, how do I try to make an understandable, reasonably understandable game, but where I can sort of choose how to play it, where there could be some debate about, like, okay, well, I'm going to play Thunderstruck because, like, I can't hit shots. Or I'm going to play War Machine because I'm really good at live catching. Or I'm going to play, you know, Rosie or You Shook Me All Night Long because I drain a lot with the ball saver on and I need the ball up top or whatever. You know, whatever the discussion would be. and so having some downtime and playing a lot of stuff that was out there and saying, like, you know, I want to try something a little different, and I want to try, and here's this problem I'm trying to solve. So that comes a little easier, and then, you know, something like Metallica where, you know, we had a lot of multiball in the game and a couple other modes, and then I was kind of like, this needs a little bit more, and it took me a while to figure out, you know, like the crank it up stuff and to develop it and implement it and get it to the point where it's like, okay, you know, I think this is pretty good now. Well, it's cool because, you know, people sort of, you know, the Lyman touch, right? The stuff that you do is just great. But it's actually kind of nice to hear that this stuff isn't necessarily easy for you either. Like crank it up just all of a sudden wasn't there and you just, you know, dreamt it up immediately. You really had to work with ideas to implement something like that. Yeah, I guess this probably comes from just watching some of the things that have happened in the industry over the years, just like kind of experiencing it firsthand and studying it in the early 80s and just sort of like what companies do during good times and bad times.
    29:40
    One of my biggest fears is like just sort of falling into a rut where it's like, okay, I did this game and then I made that game and I made this game and then they all kind of like feel the same or play the same or, you know, whatever it happens to be. And I try pretty hard to not have, say, like a string of games come out where they all sort of, you know, like feel the same. Because, you know, I sort of watched Williams do it. When I first started playing pinball in the mid-'80s, I played high speed, and I loved the game, and I loved the feature in the game, the progressive jackpot, and then, you know, it took me a number of years to kind of realize, like, wow, you know, like, every Williams game from, like, 1986 to 1989, I think maybe, like, Riverboat Gambler was, like, one of the last ones, every single one of them had a progressive jackpot, and it was, like, kind of like, okay, and I think the same sort of thing happened in the early 90s after Adams Family came out, is that, like, okay, every game. It's got, like, yeah, modes, and I got a wizard mode, and, but, you know, it's a game, and people get, you know, forget about just games. This is, like, everything. People get tired of it after a while, the same thing, and so I try pretty hard each time to try to do something new, and that was hard on Metallica. It was easy because John Borg didn't want to make ACDC, and I didn't want to make ACDC. A lot of other people wanted us to make ACDC. In the end, I'm pretty happy with how Metallica turned out, even though it was a little more of a struggle. And I like that people can enjoy those two games and they're completely different and they play totally different. And I don't know, I like that. Yeah, I've got them both. I've got Metallica and ACDC and, you know, like you look at the play through and you say, okay, we've got two rams and two all the hoops. Yeah, but I mean, the strategy changes all the time. And like with ACDC, did you ever, you know, as you said, you choose your song based on maybe the situation you're in or what your strengths are. Did you ever think of kind of maybe locking people out of that mode once they've done it? So, you know, like, there's a strategy involved with when you choose that song, or do you always want people to... Because, you know, for a while, people were just, you know, either War Machine all day or Hell's Battles all day, and obviously those have, you know, been nerfed a little bit, but, like, when I play the game, for example, I've, you know, I usually used to go wizard mode hunting, and, okay, I'm going to play this game until I get to the wizard mode, and then you sell it. but maybe it's because I enjoy playing ACDC so much because of the music. I think it's the perfect bit more machine music-wise to really enjoy it. But I've never once said, I'm going to try and get to the wizard mode. Maybe it's too far away, but have you ever thought of maybe, yeah, locking people out of those songs or maybe giving people larger rewards for, you know, cashing out those songs and playing a different one? Right. So, okay.
    33:16
    All right, where do I start? Yeah. You can tell me I'm completely wrong and that's a horrible idea. I don't want to try and sort through all of what you were saying. So back to the music. Like, it is the perfect music for what that game is. It's very high energy, get your, you know, adrenaline going kind of music. And with the rules, kind of like what I wanted to do with the cannon and the whole, I mean, it's kind of almost like back to high speed where, you know, you're building up this. It's not just sitting there for you to take, but you have to, like, do some work to build it up. And, you know, that takes a little time. And then, but like once you've spent that time to do it on the ball, once you're ready to cash that thing out, you know, you're in like the really nice part of the song that is really, you know, get you excited. So for the music, it's like, as far as music goes, I think it's probably my favorite music game, like for pinball. and then beyond that just with the rule set and how it developed it was kind of for me like a new road to go down because okay I'm going to pick my mode at the start of the game and then it's not like I have to well I guess I have to light it or whatever to be able to change songs but there were just three multi-balls in the game and the songs that you played, and just it was more, I guess, like of a, you know, old school kind of points game than, you know, a goal feature-oriented mode game. But I actually really liked that about it.
    35:07
    And so the other part of the game, I mean, for me it would be nice to have, and I don't know if it would ruin it. I always think, like, well, it's been out for so long and people like it, maybe I'd just leave it alone and not mess it up. But, you know, like right around maybe Song 6, you know, if there were, you know, some other feature like another multiball or something like that, I actually have it mostly worked up and implemented. I just have to decide, you know, like, is this going to ruin the game or not?
    35:44
    Well, I mean, that's why I said, I mean, I wasn't saying, kind of like, a mini-wizard mode along the way, but how much do you get when you cash? I think you get like a million points when you cash out a song, and I think it's progressive, but it's, you know, maybe a million and a half or 1.1 million. I'm not sure. As I said, I usually just play the same song over and over again. Yeah, yeah, sure. Well, there is a little bit of strategy in the game as far as changing over the songs during the multi-balls. It's, you know, it's not very well conveyed to the player. Is it the album one? Yeah, album and tour, both of those. Album is the one that people probably get but there like song bonus And so if you go through album multi like each jackpot is
    36:33
    there's associated like whatever album in order from, you know, like TNT all the way up to Black Ice. So then whatever song you're playing, if that song is on that album, then whatever your song jackpot is, when you get that jackpot, you also get that as a bonus in addition to the jackpot, and then it doesn't race that. Yeah, yeah. One of those crazy rules that only the... This was the one that Jordan Shredaway, one of our best players in Australia, a young player, he spent, I think it was probably about 45 minutes explaining the rules of ACDC to me, and in the end I went, okay, yeah, you know what, multi-ball and most. but he did explain the albums to me that the albums appear based on when they were released chronologically, and if you're playing one of those songs that's on the album, but there's so much going on in multi-ball, I couldn't even look up to see that, but it sort of, it leads me to... It just needs a feedback, it needs like a big sound when you get it, you know, and it also maybe needs, when you're choosing songs, it needs, you know, like a suggestion, if you're going to change songs, if you're close to whatever multiball, you know, it could tell you, like, how far away you are, like if you've already passed it and you can't get it or whatever. Steve Ritchie is still working in pinball, so it should be pretty easy to re-record some stuff, right? Yeah, absolutely. He's right next door.
    38:08
    So that leads me to the question around the complexity of your rules because they are complex and they are deep, But on the surface, you don't really need to understand everything that happens right down to the detail. But is that a challenge for you? You just touched on it now, conveying the rules to a player beyond the five lines that you've got with the card on the machine and the inserts. Because I think that's kind of what you've done. You've done that with Walking Dead as well. and obviously, you know, crank it up was added after as well. These things aren't necessarily spelled out. So how's the balancing game for you being able to implement these things while still conveying what you need to do to the player? Yeah, that part's difficult for me sometimes because for me, I think the games, well, so I guess the thing that I think What makes rules work for me, I mean, I guess if I had to sum it up, is that I need to know that the rules in the game, like, you know, like song bonus, you have no idea it's there. You don't know, like, I got it. I didn't get it. Whatever. You need to know that the rules there. You need to care about it. It needs to be something that you want to get and something that's valuable. and then, I mean, for me the last part is like, well, you know it's there, you want to get it, it's something valuable, and then at the end like you don't always get it every game.
    39:50
    And so for me conveying a rule, I want inserts on the play field so I can look at something and have cause effect. I could see the insert light up. I could make a shot and know that I collected this thing or I got this thing or I lit this thing or whatever it is. And to your point, you know, something like crank it up because it was added kind of after the fact. It's really just like having the design up front and saying this is what we're doing. I feel like Walking Dead, because we had a little bit more time with the game to flesh out the design and the rules and the inserts and everything. To me, that game does a much better job of conveying rules than something like ACDC or Metallica, which were made on a pretty fast schedule. For sure. But the thing that I've – the feedback I probably get the most about The Walking Dead is multi-kilts and, you know, going into horde mode. There's some people that know exactly what you need to do. Right. But the machine doesn't really tell you what you need to do.
    41:04
    No, it does not. I mean, basically, if you just go in with the mindset that if I get into some feature, whether it's a multiball or a mode, if I do it well enough, I'm going to get a multi-kill. If you're a good player, the good things are going to happen.
    41:25
    Yeah, or hopefully, I mean, my audits say on that game, you know, yeah, I guess if you say. intermediate players are good players, but I've seen some people play that game and they just hit the ball around and they managed to get themselves into Horde. So, yeah, but I see what you're saying. Is it mostly to do with display? Like, if you had an LCD screen for, you know, screen real estate for Walking Dead, like, you know, with Iron Maiden, you've got that, you know, the power features on the left-hand side. any time you can see you progress towards that. I see what you're saying. So all you're really looking for is, like, you know, if you make a shot for Barn, it could say, like, you know, two more for multi-kill or something like that. Yeah, yeah. So you have an idea of, like, oh, okay, this is what it – yeah, yeah. Totally fair. Yeah. And that's what I'm saying. It's not necessarily a criticism. It's that as you've got a layout and, you know, Walking Dead Prime example where you went in there and you added so much that really brought it alive, it's then you've got this whole layer of coding that's got to go into then to further explain what's actually happened rather than just focus on having an enjoyable experience through the new rules. Right. Yeah, it's tough too because when most people play the game, again, like they don't look up at the display. And for me, when I'm focusing on the ball, that's why I like doing things in inserts because that's where I feel like people's focus is. It's on the play field. It's on the ball. It's like looking through the glass at the play field, not, you know, like looking up at the display. Maybe if I get, you know, like an extra ball or I start multiball or something like that, like I'll look up at the display. And then most of the time it's out of sight, out of mind. And even if it's there, I mean, it should probably be there, but a lot of times even if it's there, it's just over people's heads. That's right. I don't notice it. Do you think it's now much easier with an LCD screen? Because there's some piece of information that you can now leave static on a part of the display because you've got so much real estate there.
    43:46
    Yeah, that's fair. But for me, I would still want the features on the play field. I mean, throughout development over the years, every time we've battled back and forth about how many inserts we want on the play field and we need to get another $5 out of the game to meet our budget or whatever it is. And then the thing I've noticed is that every single time we take an insert off the play field and somebody says, just put it in the display, then whatever that feature happens to be just gets people, it's not even a feature anymore. It's just like lost when it gets put up. But like what you're saying with the LCD, yeah, you can put all of that stuff up there. But then I'd rather have it on the playfield. To me, the game is the playfield. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I guess probably the one that does both really is Iron Maiden where, you know, let's say you're talking about the power modes where on the left-hand side it's got those countdowns. So, and they are persistent, plus it's also giving you an indication of what's happening on the playing field as well. Yeah, yeah, it's, all of that stuff is, I mean, to just be able to look in one spot and say, all right, I have the information I need. I mean, realistically, with the display, do we even get rid of the status report and the instant info? It's like, if you need to show that, I mean, maybe for replay scores and stuff like that or high scores. But everything else, it's like, I don't know, maybe I should either have an insert on the play field or some icons on the display that say, like, all right, you have two balls locked or one ball locked or, you know, whatever it happens to be, I shouldn't have to be hunting around and instant info for information. I guess it depends on what it is. I mean, the ball locks thing, that's an obvious one. But, I mean, with Metallica, you've got, like, so many multi-balls that you can't have a ball lock insert for, you know, four different virtual ball locks for four different things. And I guess the one, you know, one of the talents that people use all the time is their progression towards crank it up because you've got those four things that, yes, you've got the incident on the play field to know that when you've hit that one, but you don't necessarily know exactly how many more you need until you trap up and cycle through there. Yeah, you might want to know if you have one more captive ball to get it because then I'll just shoot it and I'll get my crank it up, or I have 10 more and I really want to start a multiball and make some progress on everything. So, yep. Well, you talked about the design process. So how, you know, obviously it varies from game to game, but after all these years that you've been involved in pinball, you know, like, do you wish that you could design maybe a pinball machine and, you know, create the code for it as well? kind of like what Keith Alwyn obviously didn't implement his code, but it was his baby through and through. So you're being kind of given these layouts, and then you have to work around it. How involved do you get, and will you ever want to one day design your own machine as well? Yeah, someday, absolutely.
    47:02
    And, I mean, the projects I've worked on have been, you know, they've been all over the place, like Attack from Mars, that play field was pretty much done when I was assigned to it at Williams, and a lot of the stuff. Tron was obviously done when I came back to Stern in 2011 and worked on it with Lonnie, and then there have been some other games where it's been, you know, a little bit more collaborative effort. I mean, certainly the ones with Steve, we get involved early on, talk about ideas, things to put into the game. Same thing with John, Metallica. And I'd say, though, you know, Walking Dead play field was probably pretty much, you know, pretty much reasonably finalized when I was assigned to it. Walking Dead is probably the only game that, you know, to start a mode, you shoot drops on the left. You've got drops on Tron, which do a totally different thing, but was that hard for you to code around something like that? Because for me personally, drops on the left,
    48:17
    it's less inviting than a ramp or something, because I feel like I'm putting the ball in danger to get the game going. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff on those drop targets. I feel like the drop targets on Shron are, I mean, outside of the double scoring, there isn't really any reason for me to shoot the ball over there.
    48:41
    And then, but on Walking Dead, I mean, I love drop targets. And then on Walking Dead, it's, you know, I put a lot of stuff over there. It's like I'm going to light the modes over here, and then I'm going to have the items for the, well, on the premium and the LE, the walker bombs, and then also bloodbath. I mean, and, well, if I can't light a mode, then at least I should do something with the mode, so also getting more time when you're in a mode. So, yeah, and it's risky. There's valuable stuff over there, and I think that's maybe one of the things I really try to get into, you know, ACDC as much as possible. It's just the riskier something is, the more it should be worth. You know, like where, what's a good, oh, you know, a perfect example of a game that's completely in the opposite direction, Party Zone.
    49:34
    The left ramp. Yeah, the left ramp, yeah. Easiest shot, worth the most points. Yeah, and extra balls on it in the tournament in, yeah, Expo in 1991. Wow, that was, yeah. That was a lot of tournaments.
    49:52
    So then, you know, obviously you've been working on Batman. And I'm curious to know, obviously we saw a Metallica update come up, a significant update, where you sort of reduced some of the criteria by default to crank it up.
    50:10
    How is it that going from working on Batman with, you know, all that new code that's going through your head with the LCD, all the assets that you've got, then revisiting Metallica, it was a surprise to us. Why did you feel you needed to go back to Metallica to update it?
    50:30
    Well, I have a Metallica at home and I play it a lot. And when I play it again, the things I don't like or they're, again, like, fancy. You must be more of the game-getting-you-limons. Yeah, a little bit. So, I mean, for me, it's, I always feel, and to watch people play, it's so hard. There's so many different people who play now, tournament players and casual players and everybody in between. You know, for me, I guess, like, the sort of barometer that I use for games is that I want to be able to see the wizard mode in a game if I have extra balls shut off on my game. And then it's usually set up, you know, pretty hard. And for the time I had Metallica, you know, I think I got close to getting the fourth crank it up on my game at home. And it's like, well, I mean, I'm probably not as good player as I was, you know, 10 or 20 years ago. But still, and then, you know, listening to people about, like, hey, you know, we really like this feature, but it's a little too, you know, it doesn't feel right. It's a little too hard to get.
    51:48
    You know, so you make some adjustments and make some changes. But outside of redoing End of the Line, which I wasn't really happy. It was probably good that nobody got there anyway because I didn't like what was in there. and cleaning that up a little bit too. Now I really like it. It probably scores a little bit too much.
    52:10
    But, yeah, I mean, it's really just playing the game some more and just getting a feel for it. Like, does it feel good? Does it feel like it's too much work? You know, does it feel like it's too confusing or not satisfying? It just comes with playing the game and listening to people. With ACDC, you talked about people kind of choosing totally different paths to each other. And, you know, the one thing that people were doing on Metallica, especially in tournaments, was you start the game and you bash Sparky because you're a certain amount of hits away. And I guess we saw a progression in tournaments where people loved to put Metallica in tournaments, but they wanted to change it up. So they made Sparky harder and they put Crank it up a bit easier as well. And now you've implemented that. So, you know, when people start the game now, now that the, you know, the grave marker multi-ball is four hits instead of five, which doesn't sound like that much of a difference, but, you know, since the magnet kind of throws the ball back into dangerous shot, is that what you expect people to go for, or do you expect people to now say, okay, well, everything is kind of at an equal distance that, you know, go your own path? I think you can still kind of go. I mean, obviously the bigger points in the game are in, you know, the crank it up modes and seek and destroy can be worth a lot.
    53:34
    I mean, for me, I mean, I understand a little bit more. I don't, I mean, I saw some of what people were doing in the tournaments. It's just like, okay, put it down to five. But then, you know, it just sort of kind of negates all of the other points that you might get. Like, okay, I played Sparky and I got like 30 million or something, you know, or I played some of these other things and it's sort of just sort of neutralizing large parts of the game just to, you know, it's like, all right, why don't you just crank it up lit at the start of every ball and see what we do. You know, like, I just, I mean, yeah, I understand what people are saying, and then I think it's the right call, you know, to lower it. But I also feel like if people can't get there or whatever, I mean, sometimes it's just set up hard or you have a bad game or whatever, I would still like to be able to play some of these other features, even if I don't make it to the first one, and feel like, you know, like I don't think increasing Sparky harder is, like, the right call. I mean, I would even say, like, you know, maybe I should have lowered it, you know, a couple because the grave marker one, for me, like, I go for the grave marker now just to get a multi-ball and get some points on the board and then also be able to, like, usually by the time I'm out of that multi-ball, I have the crank it up lit. And it's a good balance between, like, multi-ball and single ball play, that kind of dynamic in the game. But, I mean, I would almost even consider lowering the Sparky at this point, you know, one or two maybe.
    55:12
    I mean, now I think sometimes I have games where, like, I get cranked up and I don't get Sparky. And it's, like, kind of the opposite of, you know, probably what people focused on before. We were talking to kind of tournament directors and tournament players, and I think it was, like, you know, Bo and Kieran were talking to, and he said he loves it because it promotes one ball play and one ball play means there's more risk and the ball times are generally shorter. So, I mean, that's what I like in, say, ACDC where I've got a big song jackpot and I just drained out of multi-ball and I cash it in or I lose it or crank it up where your base value of points when you're hitting all those shots is significant. So you want to keep on going but the jackpot is usually bigger than the points that you're accumulating.
    56:07
    The thing of simulation as well, there's no real cash out, so to speak, but that's also a one ball kind of intense game. Is that something that you're mindful of and that you're coding in?
    56:18
    There's a balance, obviously, because multi-ball is one of the greatest things that happens to pinball because it's so much more exciting for people that are new to pinball. How do you balance out those Multi-balls plus single-ball modes In games? Yeah, so I like Single-ball stuff, I mean, I don't think I'd do a game That didn't have Multi-ball, but I think You know, probably Around the time Of Well, okay, so I'll back up You know, like high-speed Was probably like I keep going back to this game. The first game that I really felt, you know, like,
    57:04
    multiball was like this big, cool thing, and then you got it, and you felt really good, but then you still had something to do, and that was kind of like the whole game. And over time, it's, you know, now I feel like it's kind of like, well, it's like multiball for everybody. Yeah, we're always in multiball. Yeah, and jackpots for everybody. And for me, I don't – you know, multiball, there's no real risk when you get multiball. It's like good players, they trap up, you know, they use their skills to pick apart the game. And for me, the intensity of just having a lot of points on the line with just one ball in play is like that's the rush and the adrenaline that I get when I play the game. So multiball. You can't just put that in there like, you know, as you said, you have to have multiball and stuff because, you know, your feeling when you're playing pinball, the adrenaline rush that you get, and my feeling might be similar, but it's not for a large percentage of players, right? Like the multiball feeling is bigger to them, right? Yeah, I think so. but just, I mean, obviously the majority of people are just maybe playing the game for entertainment value or they don't know so much, like, what am I doing? Did I just do something good or did I not do something good? And then maybe they relate their accomplishments when they play or however they feel when they're playing to, like, seeing things happen on the game. And multi-ball is, like, kind of one of them. You know, like when I played Adam's Family and the Fang Hand comes out. Like, you know, that was super cool and things like that. And then multi-ball is sort of like in that category also. But for me as a player, I play, well, we all play for value. So as far as playing for value and score, the single ball stuff, that's when it's on the line. And it's like, I either get this thing or I don't. And if I don't, I'm done. Right. So it's interesting you bring up Adam's family as well, because that's a good, for me, example to juxtapose against the point I'm going to make. So with Adam's family, you're either in multi-ball or you're trying to get your modes. And sometimes the modes are worth something. Sometimes they're not. You ignore them and you just go back into multi-ball. Whatever it is you want to do, right? Yeah. But have a look then at your machines. And Ryan and I were talking about this before. We've had this conversation with a lot of people. Some people refer to it as layering. I refer to it as combining, meaning there are two things that you can do. Any number of things that you can combine, it then becomes a new experience. A very simple example is, you know, multiple and modes with The Walking Dead, right? So some multiples work better with some modes. for example. So are you intentionally and therefore having to test all the different combinations of what people can be doing to bring these things in to determine how much excitement there is or how much satisfaction? Or are you just creating a platform that says, all right, everybody, you've got the sandpit, go and play. You will find your excitement whichever way you like. I try to As best I can plan it a little bit Ahead of time I mean I guess using Walking Dead as a good example What are the Big I mean like probably the best You know multi-ball stack in that game With a mode Would be like Bloodbath Which gives you I think points for switches And Riot which gives you points for switches and wall walker, which gives you points for switches. And then if you can stack and, of course, bloodbath. Double scoring. Yeah, double scoring up top, and you can get the add-a-ball for the bloodbath. And then, I mean, it's for the riot shot. If you can make the riot shot and get the ball into the bumpers or actually hit the spinner, which, you know, I know that shot isn't really worth much when all that's going on, But, yeah, I don't know. I like kind of setting stuff up like that and then, you know, seeing what people do. And, you know, sometimes it gets out of hand, but I can always go back and make a few changes or a few tweaks.
    61:56
    But is that what you're looking for when you're watching people play, is to see what situations they get themselves in and whether that has translated into something enjoyable.
    62:08
    Yeah, I think a lot of people, well, I mean, there's entertainment value of just the game by itself, whether it's a mode or a toy or a multiball or whatever it happens to be. But then, you know, a lot of people, they go out and play games and figure out games. And for me, it's just, like, kind of fun to see what people figure out, like, when you say about layering or stacking or whatever. It's like, well, if I get this, this, and that, you know, then I blow the game up.
    62:42
    I enjoy seeing stuff like that, you know, seeing people. Like, it's part of the fun, you know, to figure out the things that you can combine for better opportunity, I guess, or better entertainment. Just back on Metallica for a second with the latest code update you added the super spinner, I guess it's called you know, you hit the four picks and then both orbits are lit for one rip, is that the rule? Yeah, yep and I think the pose stays down too so you can... Yeah, it goes all the way around and if you happen to, I don't know if you can but I mean, it's yeah, if it comes around you could probably just keep shooting the shot. It stays. As long as the spinner is still spinning, it's still active? Correct.
    63:36
    Is the sound that it plays exactly the same as the normal spinner sound? Or is there a super spinner sound?
    63:43
    There is a sound that I had that I ended up not liking. because the sound that's there is, it's got a lot of low frequency. Yeah, it's really good. If you have a subwoofer, it's like doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo. Right. And what I really need is one that's, like, bigger than that one.
    64:04
    So it's, like, more bassy? You wouldn't increase the pitch? Yeah, a little bit. But I had some, there were some rifle sounds and gunshot sounds and stuff that I tried out, and it just, I mean, it was almost like I wanted to swap the sounds, Like, I wanted the normal spinner sound to be just like a quiet gunshot, and then I want the super spinner to be like the normal spinner sound that's there. It's hard, right, because, you know, what you hear on your PC when you're just playing the sound on its own is probably completely different than, you know, when a Metallica song is playing and there's all these other things going on, right? Like, and even though you're not the sound engineer, you're the one who has to put all that stuff together, right? so it must be hard to choreograph all of that plus the light show and whatnot.
    64:55
    Last question on Metallica, and I could just probably take the glass off and figure this out myself, but since we've got you on the line...
    65:02
    The Metallica super skill shot where you hold down the left flipper, it goes all the way around, it lights one lane, and if you hit that, it'll start your hurry up to light that whole lane for, you know, the whole crank it up thing. Right. In tournament mode, is that the same for everyone? Because it's a random shot, and you don't know until, I guess, it hits the top loop and, you know. Yeah. Sometimes it's the left ramp where it's just like, it's impossible for me to get, because I don't know how to, like, bounce past it over and control it enough, but. Yeah, so in the old code prior to, what's the code now, 1.8? In the old code, it would always just be the left orbit. unless you had already finished the hurry up for the left orbit, then it would be the grave marker. And if you – oh, it just worked from left to right for what you still had to finish up. In the latest code, what I did – so it will always be on the arrow that's blinking where you'll get your items.
    66:10
    Oh, you know before you – okay. Yeah, you'll know before you – yeah, It's one of the things that bugged me because I, not so much for tournament mode, but just playing the game, like, out of location or whatever else, I'd be like, well, which one's it going to be? And then it's like you kind of have to figure that out while the ball's coming at you, you know, whatever. And I'm like, I don't know if I like this. So, yeah, so I changed it so that it is, it's on the arrow, it's on the blinking arrow. So when you start a new ball, wherever the blinking arrow is, then that's where your super skill shot for the hurry up is going to be. Okay. So I've just got a bit of a segue then with that because there's another game that's got that same mechanism, and that's Star Trek, right? So you hold down the right flipper, you can do the warp skill shot. If you hold down the left, a random shot is lit for the super skill, right? Okay. So you were going to work on Star Trek and then got moved on to something else, if that's correct?
    67:18
    Yeah, I was originally supposed to work on Star Trek, and then I was asked to work on Metallica. Right. So everyone knows Star Trek is my favorite game, and I love it. Love the layout, love the theme, etc. But I can't help but wonder what a Lyman-coded Star Trek machine would have been. So I'm not, and no disrespect to who coded it, because I still think it's a fantastic game. But just off the top of your head, one or two things that you would do with that layout.
    67:57
    Well, that layout, I really enjoy that layout. The game plays super smooth, and it's a great game to shoot. It's very player-friendly. You can, the ball just goes and makes shots. It's a pretty easy game to play.
    68:19
    So, you know, for me, I think there are a lot of similarities with that game to Star Trek Next Generation. and a little bit like, you know, the shots and the layout and everything.
    68:35
    I'm not sure exactly what I would have done with the game. I know Steve was a little more hands-on with the game, and, you know, he wanted the modes and the captain's chair stuff and Kobayashi Maru. I mean, I think, I mean, I don't know. I think everybody who worked on the game did a nice job on it. Sorry, it doesn't answer your question. No, it's the worst question ever. It's the worst question ever, Marty, because you're pretty much saying, how could you... Well, it's like, how can you... It's the worst question ever. Well, okay, it's like, how can you improve on the code that your co-workers did, you know? No, I know, I know. No, it's not trying to be like that, and that's why I didn't ask, how would you change the entire game? I'd just be curious to know your thought process looking at a layout like that and all the inserts, whether there was one thing that you'd look at and you'd say, this is what I would do because this is my style of thinking. It's absolutely no disrespect to who actually coded the machine.
    69:41
    Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, for the insert layout and the shots and everything, you know, let me think. You know, the one thing maybe is I know, and for me, it's pretty easy to make those outside shots. Like once I get through one of the modes and I finish, I'm like, all right, I need to get into the next mode. Like I want to progress through the game and whatever else. And then, you know, sometimes I think maybe for casual players, those shots are kind of hard. Yeah, they don't. A lot of them don't actually know what to do next. They just keep hitting the ass. It's like, no, I want you to get these two shots on the left because you're not actually in the next mode yet. Right, right. So maybe, I don't know, maybe if there were another something, I don't know if it would work on the Vengeance maybe, where you could, something a little easier to get the next one started. Yeah, cool. I mean, let's not forget that the way we're designing rules now is different to the rule sets four or five years ago. So, you know, we're looking at things like Guardians of the Galaxy having rules implemented that then get put back on Aerosmith. So that's kind of what I'm getting at. With today's mindset, what would you do with something historically? Oh, I see. Yeah, you know what I mean? And I use that as an example because it is my favorite game and I wonder what would be. But, you know, you've got a lot of other games in your back catalogue that had a lot simpler rule sets that, you know, if you had your time again, you could really complicate them up. Yeah, and I don't know if that's always a good thing to do. I mean, for me, it's, you know, two very similar games, Attack from Mars and Iron Man. Like, I love both of those games, and they are just, there aren't a lot of rules in either of them, and they're just fun. Like, they're fun to shoot. They're fun to play. And I don't know if I'm in the mood for a short game. Okay, maybe not Attack from Mars, but Iron Man. You know, if I'm in the mood for a little longer game,
    71:56
    Batman plays pretty long. ACDC can play pretty long, too. I have a Lord of the Rings. That one plays pretty long. I don't play that one too much anymore. Or it's a really fantastic game, but, you know, I just have to be in the mood to, I don't know, bring the pot of coffee down to the basement.
    72:22
    Yeah, so, but, yeah, I mean, I like the variety. You know, for me, it just gets back to not wanting to make the same game every single time. I mean, I'm sure people would just allow, just make whatever it is, make Attack from Mars, just make that every single time. Just give me and really what people are saying is like give me a game that people are simple and people like to play and you know and it fun and whatever else Like give me that every time And the hard part is like knowing that you can just make the same game over and over and over again.
    73:02
    I mean, talking about rules being, you know, kind of more complex, I mean, did that, you know, with Keith Johnson's work on, say, Lord of the Rings or Simpsons Pinball Party, was that a catalyst to start? You know, because he did that on White Star where, you know, I'm not sure how he did it because, you know, the amount of memory and space that you guys had back then. Right. It was kind of insignificant compared to the Spike system where you virtually got unlimited space. So, you know, was he the first guy that did that? And did you say, okay, well, now it's okay to do that because Keith is doing it?
    73:39
    Well, I think, you know, probably when Bally Williams closed in 1999. I mean, I had a good break from pinball, and after that I worked on video games for three years. And then when I was getting back into it, I mean, I love what Keith did with Simpsons. And, you know, some of the stuff that, you know, we were doing at Bally Williams obviously wasn't that involved and deep and everything else. And for me personally, like trying to go out and play pinball at a location in 1999, 2000, 2001, I don't think there was a single place in Chicago that I could go really to play pinball.
    74:31
    And, you know, for what he did on that game, like implementing the theme was, you know, he did a great job implementing the theme. And then all of the people who were still there, people who went to tournaments and still wanted to play pinball machines and whatever, it's great because you can't go out and play, but you can buy the game and have it in your home. And, I mean, I think you kind of want a longer playing game. I know when Midway was transitioning from coin-op games to consumer games, It's like, all right, so you're designing a video game and you're trying to make it very intense and fun for three minutes, and now you're trying to put 20 hours of content into it. I think the same sort of thing happened during, say, when Keith did Simpsons, Lord of the Rings, and those games that were done at CERN. I mean, I really think it was more of a case. I mean, Keith, in the end, really, I think he just made the kind of game he wanted to make.
    75:49
    And then I think we learned maybe at Stern about how our market was a little skewing more towards people buying games for their homes, like, you know, when we did Family Guy.
    76:05
    You know, it's probably a great game to put out on location. But is it a game that you would have for your family, you know, with the... Swearing and... Yeah, yeah, yeah, and all that. Partakes. Right. And then so we rethemed the game Shrek. And, you know, those two kind of groups of people seemed like kind of mutually exclusive. Like the person who was going to buy a family guy, you know, maybe wasn't going to buy a Shrek. I don't know. and it was maybe at that point where we started to figure out like, oh, okay, you know, we have all these people who just want games. They're buying games and they're putting them in their basements, you know, maybe the combination of, you know, I don't even know what, Internet or, you know, maybe some of the stuff that happens, you know, around 9-11 and just sort of a transition of people like going out for entertainment versus like going out, you know, or staying home for entertainment and now everybody just like goes to restaurants and they do maybe everything at home, I don't know.
    77:17
    Yeah. Well, you know, just on the complexity of rules, you know, multiply is a one thing that can kind of separate, you know, the average person to the good player if they understand the manipulation of multipliers. And I guess on Metallica, you've got, like, the 2x play field, and then you've got, I think, 2x in multiple. I'm not sure if there's anything else besides that. No, that's it. Yeah, on Walking Dead, you've got the 2x play field, and then you've got the shot multiplier that you control with your inlanes. Yeah. I don't think there's anything past that. On ACDC, you've got the 2x and 3x in the middle of the play field. I guess the riskiest kind of shot that's going to come straight back at you. Yeah. And I think if you combo, you can combo jackpots to make them worth a bit more or something. Yeah, you can combo all the jackpots. And then there's the super lanes on ACDC is also like a timed 2x shot. So you could, you know, like 3x times, you could get a 6x, I guess, on ACDC. Okay, so is it like Walking Dead where you can avoid it?
    78:23
    Yeah. How do you build that up? It's not a lane change. So, like, it's just one lit lane, but you can lane change it onto the outlanes also. So, you know, if you drain down an outlane with it lit, it will give you – it can give you double bonus for the first one and triple bonus for the second one, and then you're done. And that's on top of after, you know, like – So the way to – Yeah. The way to progress it is by cashing it in, which is the opposite of Walking Dead, where you have to kind of ignore it, right? Sure. Yeah, okay. Batman multipliers, I don't know, because we just got one on site, and I haven't played too much of it, but is there a general rule for you with play for multipliers that you use? Like, is there a limit you won't go past?
    79:10
    You know, does it have to be related to where the multiplier is, et cetera? I see. Yeah, probably just for me, a guideline would be, like, I probably wouldn't want to go past, you know, three or five, depending on the situation. I know Walking Dead was a little different. It actually went up.
    79:32
    Is it 20x? Yeah, no, it went up unlimited, but depending on what you had the setting, like you can set it based on the walk or kill. So normally it's every two. So I think you could, like, you could actually run out once you let Last Man Standing on your ball. You could have, I guess, like a 55x multiplier if it were set to every two. Every one, obviously, you get a hundred, but that one is, there's no guarantee you're going to cash it in. You're even going to go down the lane, and then after that, there's no guarantee, like, you're going to make the shot, you know. Yeah, and it's a lot harder on the premium and the alleys, isn't it, because you don't have that, you know, a lot of the time, that left ramp. Yeah, exactly. You can't see that right in lane as easy as it is on the pro. Right, right, agreed. So, yeah, I mean, for me, and I feel, I mean, I like, the biggest thing for me is, like, I like being able to get into a situation where I can get the scoring on a game going, like, pretty quickly without having to, like, get bogged down in a lot of stuff. And a lot of times, you know, multipliers, I guess that's probably why I like multipliers, because they also overlay on top of or they can run, you know, with other rules. You know, at a minimum, I think what I would want to do just with the scoring is make sure the scoring always goes up, you know, in a not so linear way. Like, just, I don't like things that, you know, are, like, always score the same thing. Like, that gets boring to me. You mentioned that, like, Roger Sharp was, like, maybe an inspiration towards that once. I think it was on the Slam Tilt podcast, he said, like, he said, you know, like, okay, if I do it again, make it worth more. Yeah. Because, you know, I don't want to be chopping woods.
    81:24
    Exactly. And, you know, it also, the two things he said, when I was at Williams and working on Attack for Mars, He busted into my office and, you know, with the big smile on his face, and then he just was like, hey, this is really important to me. And, you know, when I thought about it, I thought about some of the games, you know, that I played, even some of the games, you know, working on it day to day, you know, every time, I guess, you know, maybe you play, you know, a mode like Otami or something like that. It's like, okay, I get these points, and that's it. And then it really sank in, you know, and also to the point where, I mean, everything in that game goes up, you know, I guess to a limit. Total Annihilation is really the one that, you know, I get really excited about because I know you play it and you can get some good points on it. But it also made me think he's also, you know, he's always made me ask the question, what's next? You know, okay, I did that. What's next? What do I'm doing after this? And in the end, he said, if there isn't even anything else and I just have to do the same thing over again, just make it worth more. And he's right because I don't mind doing the same thing over again. It's like if I know my score is going to be bigger. and actually is part of the reason I ended up implementing, like, the victory laps and Attack from Mars for winning Rule the Universe, because, like, that mode was probably, like, the hardest thing to get to. And I know people, like, back in the day who would play the game for years just to get Rule the Universe. And then, like, I would get it at work, and when I finally got it, I'm like, yeah, I got it, and I won it. And then, like, it collected all the balls and it served the ball over into the shooter lane. And I'm staring at the game and I'm like, I have to do this all over again. Like, get all the blue lights all over again. And I was just like, I have to have something in here that I'm even more excited about.
    83:36
    And victory laps are, like, huge points in the game if you can just keep that ball going, like, after you win Rule the Universe. So, you know, after you get the portal and you've got, you know, after you get the portal and you've got that kind of vision. Yeah, there's, we're, well, okay, so a couple of changes I, you know, if I could, would like to make to portal. Well, one is, and I ended up doing it with End of the Line, and I really like it, is when you're down to one ball that it would continue because it's like you kind of get to that stage in the game and you're like, okay, I've got to do this stuff. And then, like, you drain out a multiball and it's over. And you're like, well, but wait, I just played like 25 minutes to get here and it's over. That's one of the changes I would make. But, yeah, the other thing I would hopefully do maybe with Portal is if you want it, you know, even if it's just like a victory lap feature like Attack from Mars and it just could be like, you know, Quora and Sam on their bike, you know, for like when they ride, they escape out of the world. Ride them to the sunset. Yeah, yeah, exactly, right. You know, that'd be fine. Just so, you know, there's something, you know, there's something there for it. But I think Portal, the way it is, like the rule, is I don't think anybody's, you know, I've come a couple times close to finishing it, but I think maybe if it still ran with one ball in the play field and then had something afterwards, if you want it, like it would improve it.
    85:14
    Yeah. So who's meant to finish the wizard mode? Good job. I was just looking behind me no I they probably would be there but I think this was a conversation Ryan had recently when we were talking about wizard modes a lot of effort goes into designing wizard modes and obviously the what after but not that many people are going to get to it right that was end of the line on Metallica and then for me it's just fun to work on, you know, and I know some people are going to get there, and hopefully if they get there, they enjoy it. I think a good example of maybe a wizard mode that is probably more of like what you're thinking, like this is what wizard modes should be, would be like Horde on Walking Dead, where it's just like kind of achievable thing to more like the masses, the pinball masses, people who aren't, you know, professional great players or whatever. And then, like, it's very theme immersive and kind of intense and exciting to see. Like, it's cool when you get there and it's cool to play. And it just, like, it's more of an experience, even if you don't, you know, like, do well in it or whatever. So, I mean, if I could make wizard modes like that, I would make, not, I wouldn't make Horde every time, but something like that every time or try. Yeah, but on the flip of that, I'd hate to have that one-in-a-million game where I get right to the end in the wizard mode, and then it's a really lame letdown wizard mode. I'd also want that end experience to be reflective of the effort that I took to get there. Yeah, and that's, you know, kind of the hard part about the whole making game stuff is, and it's probably harder when you have to make, like, a pro model and a premium and an LE is, like, trying to make a game for everybody. You know, you have people at a location, and then if they just maybe have fun and have a good experience playing the game for the three minutes that they're going to play it for, great. And then, you know, you also have to put in all the depth for somebody who buys one of the games for their home because, like, it's their dream theme, and they're going to play it every day from now until, like, you know, the sun burns up all its hydrogen. I don't know. Well, is it easier then to make a simpler rule set? Because, you know, Iron Man satisfies people in that you hit the orbs a couple of times with the spinners and Iron Monger's up. And I had friends come over to my house and play that game that never played pinball before and they just didn't move to any other machine because they're battling this thing right in the middle of the playfield.
    88:08
    But at the same time, the most advanced player might never see, do I die multiple? Right. I think there's only footage of Carl D'Angelo doing it because it's that hard. but still the rules on that game are so simple. So, like, would you like to maybe one day make something, again, kind of like Iron Man, that it isn't that deep, but it still is very hard to get to the end? Absolutely.
    88:36
    I, you know, again, it just goes back to the game has to be fun, but then, I mean, I enjoy playing a game like Iron Man where you could have a fun game and a fun time on it in, you know, 10 minutes. And I just wouldn't want every game. I mean, if you make every game like Iron Man for now for the next two years, people will be sick of games like Iron Man. And then, you know, you want like a, I don't know, something that plays a little longer, you know, like a Simpsons or I don't know. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I know that as I get older and have more responsibility and value maybe my time a little bit more, I prefer games like Iron Man over, say, like, you know, a longer playing Simpsons or something like that. For sure. So tournament play obviously has now played a bigger part, I'd imagine, when you were first coding because really it was for arcades and that sort of network as opposed to tournaments now. How much of an influence does it have on your rules design? I mean, again, now you've got the three markets effectively. You've got the home market, the tournament market, and the arcade market. So do you have to factor all three in, or are you still just making a game that you want to play?
    90:10
    You know, I guess in, wow, how long ago was it? I guess it was 2007. I did, you know, something for Jim Shelberg in Pin Game Journal, you know, where we talked about stuff like this. You know, for me, just to start out, like, I just want to make something that is fun for people, you know, when they walk up to it to probably, like, satisfy the casual player. I mean, to me the game still is like going out on the street and the world is seeing it and all kinds of different people are playing it.
    90:44
    And then after that comes, you know, the scoring and the strategy and all of the stuff that, you know, say, like, tournament players and competitive players. want or expect out of a game. But, you know, the tournament stuff is great because I get to see people, you know, I get to see bugs in the game maybe. I get to see exploits in the game and all kinds of other things. And, again, like things I would never see. You know, like when I saw, what was it, Keith do that on the Game of Thrones at the Papa Circuit against Zach or whatever that was.
    91:31
    With the hand of the king. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, it's cool. You get to see stuff like that and go, oh, you know, and just see different people play the games. Yeah, I mean, really for me it's like just start out, make something fun, and keep working at it until you try to get everybody. I mean, you're never going to satisfy everybody, but you can usually get pretty close, usually.
    91:58
    You mentioned before Tron, if you ever get a chance to update that. I'm sure people, their ears perk up when they hear that. When you were on the Slam Tilt podcast, you mentioned maybe one day revisiting Iron Man as well. I'll never get this opportunity again, so I've just re-bought Iron Man, and I've been playing it a lot. a couple you can just write this on a piece of paper and throw it in the bin if you want I'm going to pull my notebook out how about that okay these ones aren't important but attract modes down it's one of the only games from the store that when the game is off you press the button and nothing happens okay there's no full orbit skill shot so you can short plunge and I believe if you kick over the spinner once it'll progress to mongus So that's kind of the only other option than plunging the top lanes. But most of your games, like Maniacal Madness, Attack from Mars, Metallica, Batman... Super Skull Shot. Yeah, Super Skull Shot. Something to, like, a risk or reward of... If you don't want these 250,000 points at the top, you've got an opportunity that you might miss. when you have bogey running and you have the iron monger up the super spinner animations on the screen will take preference over bogey scoring in terms of like D&D animation but it's worth like a quarter of what you're getting on bogey so your score is increasing but it's like it's not the most important thing and the last one is a code suggestion which I don't know if it's good or not, but when you have the Iron Monger up and you've got Super Spinner activated, when you hit those orbits, you're getting decent points. Yeah.
    93:56
    But most people will usually... It's a safe shot if you can live catch it and keep on doing it again. Yeah. I think it'd be an awesome rule if the Super Jackpot on Iron Monger is 3 million. Yeah. And you said, you know, the Orson is a bigger kind of fanfare for it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a feedback zone when you go in and get it. I think it'd be a cool rule if that everything you accumulate during, while Iron Monger is up and before you start multiple, in terms of, you know, the super spinner around the left or right orbit, would add to your super jackpot. So you can sit there and build it up if you want, But then the risk is if you drain or never get, you know, finish multiple, those points then kind of disappear. Gotcha. Okay.
    94:49
    Well, I got my pen out and my notebook out. Yeah, the one thing about the Monger right now and for me, you know, to go back to, I mean, one thing I definitely would change would be Whiplash, like the second Whiplash. I think the first one's like maybe five hits, and I think the second one is like 12. It's some way high stupid number that needs to come down.
    95:15
    For the monger, I know a lot of people in the tournaments, you get back to the people who can live catch, some people, that's all they play is monger. They shoot the spinner, bring the monger up, get the monger, and play. So to do that, it would just have to be balanced with some other scoring changes in the game. to maybe have, like, the risk spread out where you wouldn't want to play that feature, like, you know, even more.
    95:43
    Yeah, I mean, when I thought of that rule, it kind of corresponds to my skill level, which isn't that good. You know, I would hit the spinner a couple of times and, like, okay, let's get into multi-ball, where, you know, someone like Kaylee George would probably do that all day, right? And, you know, as you said, it wouldn't be balanced out. So, you know, that's the hard thing, right? I think of a rule and I think, oh, man, this is a cool rule. and you hear the rule and you're like, okay, well, someone's going to exploit that straight away. Yeah. I mean, but that can't stop you from, you know, trying it out. And then if somebody exploits it, it's like, okay, you know, you can always go back and say, all right, I'll balance it or I'll make some small change to it or I'll change something. I mean, I think that's part of why, like, when code comes out, the scoring kind of, you know, goes up. You know, you get a code update. It's like, oh, the game score is higher. It's because, like, there's some thing that people are doing, and they exploit the game or whatever it is, or they just do one thing in the game, and then you're like, well, okay, I'm going to make some of these other things a little bit more valuable. So then, yeah, so, yeah. Okay, well, I'm, you know, there you go.
    96:55
    So, yeah, I just, I don't have an Iron Man. I'd like to get one someday. But, yeah, I mean, they're really only a hip. I know the other thing that people mentioned was the extra ball. They wanted, you know. So hard. Impossible. Yeah, I think it's just on the mystery right now. And then, I mean, maybe a good place for it would be, like, the targets. Maybe if you complete the Ironman targets, you know, a couple times, you could light the extra ball.
    97:26
    A lot of that would have to be just restructured, whatever, because I think right now, like, you can't actually, once you start the fast scoring, you can't do anything with the, you can't complete the targets again until that mode's over with because I think it just says, like, okay, the targets are going to redo your time and increase, like, the Ironman fast scoring stuff. So, yeah, but that was the other thing. I know people were like, they wanted a way to actually, a deterministic way to earn the free ball. you need to clone yourself because there's all these ideas in your head and all these games that almost you know except for Walking Dead which is pretty much complete I think Metallica is pretty done at this point minus you know some bugs come up I don't yeah I don't know how do you juggle all that with say the next project that you know that you're being put on You know, most of it just comes from, you know, I'm here at work and I work on the next project. But like I say, when I go home and Saturday I'll get up in the morning and have some coffee, go down and play some pinball. And then I don't always go back and play, like, say, Metallica or ACDC or whatever. You know, it might be like Dracula, you know, or World Cup soccer or, you know, whatever it is. but then I'll play it, and once it's out of my mind for a little bit, I can just sort of refocus on it and say, all right, you know, yeah, this,
    99:06
    it's like the feelings that when I play the game are fresh again, like I'm playing the game as if it just came out or something, and then, you know, and then like, oh, this is cool, or this needs a little bit of work or whatever it happens to be, and then, you know, sometimes I'll just stay down there for another couple hours and work on some stuff or what. But, I mean, at some point, like, enough's enough, right? Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah, you could work on things forever, I suppose. But, yeah. Well, so then now that Batman's done, that's your big game,
    99:43
    what's the future for you now? Are you going to be working on a Cornerstone game? Eventually, I think so. There's another project I'm involved with That I'm working on That's not a Cornerstone game But Yeah I only really look at Or try to look at what's in front of me You know like right now And Do you like to pick What you're going to work on Usually yeah I do If I have the choice Sometimes I don't have the choice and then that's okay. But I don't know. I think people generally do better if they're into what they're working on versus not, I guess. So I would hope that everybody gets to choose what they work on.
    100:38
    How does it work then with the cycle that Stern's on with all the games that are coming out and the cadence is fairly regular now? So do you sometimes know that, okay, well, this game is in the pipeline and it's coming out six months from now, but I just started this game, or maybe they announce a game that's coming, and do you sometimes feel like you're on the bad end of the cycle and you can't do that, or would they delay that game because you really want to be on it? How does that work? I think it depends. I mean, I think the company has some commitments to things, and they're going to happen, and they do their best to match people up, levels of interest in working on different projects.
    101:22
    And, you know, sometimes the ship sails and you're like, well, okay, they'll get to work on that one. Somebody else does.
    101:30
    But in general, everybody here tries to get people working on the games that they want to work on. is it weird that um you know all those years ago at Belly Williams you worked with Brian Eddy um on Attack from Mars and Maneuver of Madness and they're kind of like heralded as these like these you know if you look on the pin side top 100 even though that's just the popularity thing it's number one and number two and they've remade it so obviously it's a good game and it's popular yeah um is it weird now that he's now in the same office as you and you know do you see him you and him working together in the future Yeah, I mean, I would hope that we would have an opportunity to work together again. I just think it has to be, you know, kind of like the right situation. I know, you know, I guess the best example is like when Brian, you know, Brian and I worked on, yeah, Attack and Medieval at Williams. And then after Brian left to go work on video games, Larry DeMar, who ran engineering there, was trying to get George and I, Gomez, to work on a game. And George wanted to work on some stuff that I was like, I don't want to work on that. And, you know, it took us a while to kind of, you know, come to an agreement on what to work on. But once we did, it's like, okay, we're going to work on this, and that game ended up being Monster Bash and one of my favorite games.
    103:11
    And so I think in regards to Brian and working with him, it would just have to be something like that. I mean, if Brian has some game he super really wants to work on and somebody says, do you want to work with Brian, it depends on what the game is. But I think we're both on the same page as to what games we like and what we want to work on. He wasn't brought in just to be married up with you again to recreate what happened in the 90s.
    103:48
    The magic. I, well, yeah, good. No, I think. I mean, bringing Brian and Keith to is that I mean, we're all we're all, are we old? No.
    104:12
    So, but I don't know. George is in his 60s, I guess. Steve is close to 70. I know I mean, we're old. We're old. We need some new people, younger people in here. How long do you keep on going for then, Lyman? Because obviously people really enjoy the work that you're doing and the last four games, as you said, you've set out to do something new and nothing seems like each other, right? People can say, okay, well, Horde is kind of like Crank It Up but that's when you dive deep into the game so how long can you keep on going for? Are you still enjoying what you do every day? Do you see this as being your forever job until you're sick of it?
    104:58
    So far, so good is all I can say. So far, so good. Batman was probably on the upper end of the amount of, how do I say this? It was a stressful project for me to work on. just the expectations people had with the game, the scheduling, everything. And then also for me, just the amount of stuff that, like, for one person, I think it was a little too much for me to track. Does that pressure come from the community or is it more internal? Like, everyone knows how long it takes to, I guess, program a game to that level. and you said you're pretty much working by yourself on that. So do you feel the pressure of maybe the community, like these people have bought the game and they want constant updates, but then you have to juggle that with the quality of the updates as well? No, I think it's just the pressure I put on myself to try to make something compelling that people like. and I mean, I guess I don't feel too much pressure from, you know, people outside or whatever else.
    106:29
    I think it just comes internally from me just trying to, you know, make something cool. But do you like, we kind of saw it with, when we had Zombie Eddie on the show and he says that he puts the pressure on himself because he's fighting against himself and he feels like if he doesn't produce the best possible work and it's better than the last work, then he feels like he's failed.
    107:00
    Did you do a similar thing? It was weird to hear Zombie Eddie say that because 99.9% of people love his work, But, you know, if someone says anything negative, he kind of, I feel like he might take it personally and say, okay, well, and maybe he uses that for motivation. Like, maybe he's not really getting angry. But do you go through a similar process? Like, do you read feedback?
    107:24
    I always read feedback. And I don't get, you know, you kind of have to remove yourself from what people are saying and filter it. You know, some things people say in very positive ways and some people say things in very negative ways. You know, for me, I guess it's like, okay, is it ten guys who are like, I need a ball saver at the beginning of crank it up or whatever, you know, or is it like one guy complaining about, I don't know, something that's maybe not like such a big deal. So, yeah, I mean, I think you have to put pressure on yourself to do better continually.
    108:06
    Otherwise, I don't know, how do you get better? Or how do you, you know, try to work harder and learn? And, I mean, to me it seems like pinball has changed a little bit just since I got into it until now. I mean, just the sort of general makeup of players. There's a more kind of diverse group of people playing games now, casual players and more expert players. It's kind of tough to keep up with all of what's going on.
    108:41
    But, yeah, I mean, I try to listen to everybody. And, like I say, the pressure, I think, just comes from me. and it's kind of necessary. It's like I worry about it. You worry about like, I don't want to make anything bad and then so you constantly have to keep second-guessing yourself or trying things out or when things don't work, you have to start over and it's just part of the process. Well, I like that. We sort of now witnessed it twice in the last week first on Dead Flipper now today where Ryan going I want to give you some suggestions You like yeah okay here my notepad I want to take your suggestions That's a great attitude rather than feeling that you're being attacked because you put your heart and soul in this and some people can be very protective of this, whereas you're just sort of like, yeah, bring it on. I just want to get better and I want to improve and I want to have my next machine being the best that it can be. That's a good place to be. Yeah, I know that, I mean, if I weren't here, I would want the person here to, you know, take the same position. And because I'd be on the other side and I would be playing games and competing in tournaments and collecting, and I would hope that somebody would listen to me.
    110:08
    I don't know. I mean, not every idea is a great idea. And then I've put plenty of bad ideas into the stuff that I've worked on, and you just have to get it out of the game before the game, you know, leaves the building.
    110:29
    But, yeah, I mean, I hope people would, you know, would listen. All right. We've taken up about two hours of your time, Simon, but I've got just two quick questions from fans of the show, okay? Okay. One, Christopher Franchi asked me to ask you, it's very important, he said, how many dusty red shirts do you own?
    110:54
    You know, it's funny, I don't, I probably like three or four, and I own, I think, probably like three or four dusty black ones, and three or four dusty gray ones, and three or four dusty blue ones. So, yeah, I don't spend a lot of time with my dress or my appearance or whatever. You don't need to answer the question. It was just a joke. Yeah, no. It's fine. The last one is from a friend of the show and IFBA president, Josh Sharpe. And he asks, and it's a bit of a trick question, at your absolute peak, do you think you are a better programmer or a better pinball player?
    111:41
    Oh, that's a tough question. Wow. I don't know. I would – that's a tough one. Yeah, that's a true question. You know, I would probably say programmer. I'd say you're probably a programmer. Okay, well, you were also world number one, so that means that you're saying you're the greatest programmer of all time. Is that what he's saying, Lyman Sheets? Well, he said, well, no, he said, no, that's not what he said. He said at my peak, right? Yeah. That doesn't imply, like, yeah, anything, so.
    112:26
    Lyman, how many majors have you won? More than one? Let me think. That's the answer to the question. Two. I think four, actually, right.
    112:42
    Papa times three, and then one European. So, four. Awesome. Where are you off to now? You've got a reunion with the Bellelians crew? Yeah, just down the street.
    112:57
    One of the girls puts together Friday. It's always the first Friday in December. And it's right down the street. They used to have it in the city, and then it would take like, you know, an hour and a half to drive down there on a Friday night, and so I mostly wouldn't go. But this one's like, you know, half a mile down the street, and go by and get to see everybody. It's usually a lot of fun.
    113:21
    Awesome. Well, thank you very much for your time. Thank you for answering all of our questions. And most of all, like, on behalf of the community, you're very well loved, and it's because of the effort that you put into these things and how seriously you take it. And we hope that you never retire and you keep on going on and on.
    113:43
    As long as you're enjoying it, right? We don't want to get burnt out and, you know. There are good days and bad days, but for the most part, good days. I mean, I appreciate it very much, and I am happy that, you know, I get to do something that's mostly fun and that I enjoy.
    114:05
    It's wonderful. Awesome. Thank you, Ryan. Thanks. Hey, are you guys going to Pinnberg next year? I think I will be going to Pinnberg. Of course, I've got to wake up at 4 o'clock in the morning and get a ticket. That'll probably stay up for five seconds this year. But Dollar Gang's on El Terto. Yeah, totally. That's right. Or Hee Haw.
    114:28
    Yeah, what a shocker that was. Yeah, look, I'm hoping to. For me, my plans are now hoping to get to TPF, definitely Pemberg, if I get a ticket. Oh, cool. Yeah. Yeah, TPF, I hadn't been this past year was the first time I went, and that show is pretty cool. It's a big one, and there's a lot going on. Yeah, well, because what I like about it now is because the tournament is already sold out, if I was going to go, it would be the non-competition side of me that's going. And I hadn't been to a show in that capacity. So I'd be curious to just be able to just wander around and play machines and talk to people as opposed to being in that competitive mode. Right. That's where I'm at, at least right now. I mean, for me, I've spent so many years competing and standing in lines and, yeah, it's just so much more fun to, you know, talk to friends. Yeah, exactly, socialize and enjoy it a little bit. So, yeah. Well, if we get a chance to go, I hope to see you there. Yeah, and hopefully we get to play against each other again. Again. It's fun. It's always fun. It was good fun. Yeah. Thanks, mate. All right. See you later. Thanks, guys. Bye.
    116:01
    All right, so that was Lime and Sheets. Marty, what did we learn? Oh, Marty's not here. So Marty got called in for some work stuff last minute, and I'm pretty busy tomorrow running a frenzy, so the next best thing, I have the woman that I love.
    116:21
    Chanel. How are you going, Chanel? I'm great. and I am filling in for the irreplaceable Marty McFly this evening. I do have to apologise to everybody. Even though I am married to a pinhead, I know even less about pinball than John Snow. Chanel, so let people know a little bit about yourself. Pinball-wise, what are your favourite pinball machines that you've played? Okay, let me see. My favourite would have to be Medieval Madness. It's the one I play the most. Do you know who coded that pinball machine? Who? Lyman Sheets. What a legend.
    116:56
    Let me think. There was... I didn't mind Total Nuclear Annihilation. Yeah. That was pretty fun. I do like Wizard of Oz because I do like the theme, so I'm always going to like it, even though I suck at playing it. It makes my kids smile as well, so points to that. I also don't mind... Kiss, you're right. Look, anything that has good music, I like to, like, boogie while I'm playing. so if it has the good soundtrack I automatically enjoy it so things like Kiss and Metallica and ACDC, anything that's got oh, Tron, like the bass that was the bass one You never play Metallica? I do play Metallica, I just don't, look, the sparky noises annoy me Anything that's too grating and repetitive and you've got to get him in so he does his whole electrocution spiel and that gets old real quick but yeah, Tron's good I don't mind the other Josie Jack one, the original one with the telephone.
    117:56
    Oh, dialed in. That's it. Oh, yeah, you love that. That's pretty cool, yeah. We don't have that one, though. I've hardly played it. Okay, so on to the news, Chanel.
    118:07
    Deep Root Pimble. Deep Root Pimble, what do you know about Deep Root, Chanel? I just have got the most unfortunate name ever. Okay, and just for all the people... But then again, worse would be Shallow Root, I guess, so better with Deep Root, eh? I showed you their logo, right?
    118:22
    Was this the phallic? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's the butt plug, right? It's hilarious that it's not intentional.
    118:35
    Well, we don't know. Anyway, so Deep Root have been releasing any primal machines yet. They plan to do it at Texas Pimble Festival next year, and they had the plan to do the five days of Deep Root.
    118:58
    Five days. Where is hair happening there? Yeah. Me and Marty pretty much let all the laughs out already. That was a very great joke. Anyway, they announced this week that, well, they announced a lot of stuff previously that pinball is easy and they're going to disrupt the market by building better pinball machines, cheaper pinball machines, making pinball as easy. They released a statement saying that the launch has been delayed.
    119:26
    I'll link it in the show notes so you can read about it on This Week in Pinball. I don't usually like talking too much about it because, I don't know, they haven't done anything yet and I don't know what to believe because they made a statement saying they're spending $750,000 a month currently and now i don't know if that figure is true we don't know why would you release that statement is that so that everyone says okay you guys are serious or is it to try and scare your competitors saying wow this guy has a lot of money i don't understand what you're asking what do you want from me nothing i have no comment yes okay there's going to be a quick one um the monsters okay when are we going to see the monsters demotion well we've already seen leaked pictures of it. What does the Munsters theme mean to you, Chanel? Oh, that's childhood at my grandmother's house pretty much. That's her idea of a great show.
    120:21
    I personally prefer Adam's family, but look, man, that's for old timers. I don't know. Is there a big fan base out there for the Munsters? Yeah, man. You've seen the people I hang out with in Timor, right? Are they my age? They want to live there. It's a good time.
    120:37
    Right, okay. Anyway, the Munsters there's rumours that it will be So why are you cutting to a market that's literally on their last legs? They're so close to death now. Do you know what I mean? Shouldn't you be aiming like get some fresh meat in hand it to the new fans? Like what? Okay then Chanel, what are some current generation titles that you would like to see? Okay, from the top of my head here goes. The Fifth Element. That's not current generation. I don't give a fuck. I'm the fifth fucking element. That shit is mad, son. Yes. Oh, Rick and Morty. Yeah. Okay, wait. Wait, you can't just skip past the fifth element. What kind of playfield toys or, like, what do you want to see on the playfield? Well, look, they're going to have the four fucking elements. Okay, you're going to have your little wind finia and your fire and your dirt stuff.
    121:33
    How are they going to have dirt in a two-more-machine Chanel? I'm saying the four little pillars that you have to put the stuff on. they'd probably be a thing, right? How about Ruby? Multi-fucking-pass. Yes. Lily Dallas multi-pass. But how does that integrate? You can't just say that. How do you integrate that? I'm not a genius in terms of, you know, layout and design. I'm just saying the movie's got so many visual, cool things that the pinball creators would have a field day. Ruby Rod? Ruby Rod. It's super green. Everything.
    122:05
    Super green. Okay. Just everything. Corbin Dallas, like, the flight, you know, what do you call them? Flight stewards. Yeah. Flight attendants. Okay. With their, you know, cool purple outfits. I don't know, man. Like... Beetlejuice?
    122:25
    Yes. Yeah, so much yes. Yeah. I love Beetlejuice. Willy Wonka? Yes, Gene Wilder only. I thought you were a Johnny Depp fan, Chanel. I was a Johnny Depp fan when he was Edward Scissorhands. but not when he tainted Gene Wilder's name.
    122:42
    Gene Wilder came first. Do you know that Marty prefers the other movie? I can't believe we have him as a friend, Janelle. What do you think? I think... I'm going to refrain from commenting. I think Marty and I have to have some words after this. Harry Potterhead? Yeah, well, look, we know that's never going to happen. That would be... That's great for our generation. My generation grew up on Potter. So we would love to have Harry Potter. But that's not going to happen, is it? Well, she thinks that pinball machines are like CD and it's a gambling device for kids. They're not anymore, lady. Get with the times, dude. She's got a mobile phone game. If Dumbledore's gay, then fucking Harry Potter can be on a pinball, right? Dumbledore's gay. Just put it as a note at the end. Oh, by the way, Dumbledore's gay. Okay. Even though we don't see him gaying out with anybody, so. They should have Dumbledore multi-ball where you put the balls in his ass. Too far, Ryan. Too much. Just turn it down, Ryan. Okay.
    123:44
    No. Just what about like those old cool 90s? Look, my generation grew up on 90s action flicks, so they're like Beverly Hills Cop 3. Die Hard. Yeah, Die Hard, Beverly Hills Cop 3. Okay. All those great movies, anything but the Schwarzenegger. So everything after 1990. How about Toy Story? I love Toy... Look, it's not just because I have kids. Toy Story is Toy Story. I think it touches everybody in their special place.
    124:13
    Their inner child. Come on, everyone loves a good Woody. It's a great movie, and I definitely think Toy Story should be made. Okay, so out of those titles that we mentioned, Toy Story is rumoured,
    124:31
    Willy Wonka's rumoured, Beeplejuice is rumoured, everything else. Rick and Morty? No. that would be such a good pinball if they went balls to the wall with it like did not hold back no censorship yeah I mean what the hell is that that's like what was that that's a weird sound in my face um there's some dirt vomiting in his mouth that's what he does that wasn't a good impression I didn't have legitimate dirt vomit in my mouth okay my acting skills are not up to par I apologise yeah no we gave you monsters that's just not fair it's not fair you don't give a shit anyway oh look bro are you saying that you would I look it depends okay because it could be like a great looking pin and then play like shit and then nobody wants it okay it doesn't matter how great the theme is if no one likes playing it so what pinball machines do I have that plays like shit fucking what's that sea witch and quicksilver and everything made in like prehistoric era. Okay. That just does the ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. That's the soundtrack. Okay. Just bumper cars just going at it. I think it's right.
    125:55
    What did you say? Was it Guardians was not fun to play? No, it is now. It is now. But there was something that was like a good theme and then it would let everybody down. Star Wars. Okay, Star Wars Ghostbusters Oh, look Ghostbusters still has good music That's all it takes It's just like a nightclub It can be full of skis And the sticky floor But if the music is on point Then it's fire The nightclub is full of what?
    126:22
    Come on We interviewed the guy Who did the music for it Jerry Thompson Did he do the original theme song? No Well, they're not just Taking credit for somebody else's genius we don't have that much access to now it's not like he completely reworks the tune it's the same tune he did man he's a genius it's the same tune but like I said I would jizz in my pants if you brought a Beetlejuice home I just hope that it played good because like Lydia Dietz is my who's Lydia Dietz is Winona Ryder she's like the goth chick she was my idol growing up because she was misinterpreted because she's a misfit goth chick and that's exactly who I was. Did I marry a god?
    127:06
    Come on, bro. He acts like he doesn't know my past. And that's legitimate because he didn't know my past. I'm representing myself as something completely different when I met him. I let the freak out after he's already, like, too deep.
    127:22
    But, yeah, I would love Beetlejuice. All right. Moving on. Also, you know, Michael Keaton is the only Batman that matters. Hey, there's a Batman in my machine. With Michael Keaton. Really? But it's really shit. But shit. See what I mean? The theme doesn't matter, man. The theme doesn't matter. It does matter. You just mentioned all the themes that you want. It's the game is horrible to play. Okay. It has to be that beautiful marriage of a great theme. But then other people love... Look, dialed in, no offence, I don't like the theme at all. What is the theme? It's boring. I don't know, man. Ring and phones, aliens. It's like an Independence Day slash cartoon for kids. You know what I mean? I don't get the theme. It doesn't draw me at all. but the game's still fun because there's so much to do on it but yeah the theme's just boring what's Total Nucleus I can't even remember what it was called I was like the other Jersey Jack theme was the original theme what does dialed in it's like sounds what you call modem that's what it's about dial up internet in the 90s exactly Total Nucleus Annihilation what is that about TNA what's it about It's about a nuclear system about to go into meltdown. You've got to stop it. Pretty much the theme for most 90s movies, right? Like a bad guy is going to make the nuclear kaboom and you've got to stop it, except there's no John McCain and everybody else. It's just you and some really hot vegan chick.
    128:48
    Points for the hot vegan chick. Her name is Sarah Rose. Yes, Sarah Rose. You'd make the game, I'm going to be honest. Hi, Sarah.
    128:57
    But, yeah, that's all fun, though. Yeah? yeah it's got that sense of urgency and do you know what I mean it makes up for it like who doesn't not love a nuclear mount down like that's everybody gets like pumped like gotta stop it no one's like oh it just never happened you want to like make it go boom but um look I get nostalgia but it's got to be something that's not that far back like the only people that my generation know monsters are the ones that had to stay at their grandmother's house and could do nothing except watch whatever was on the television but the people that are our age usually aren't at that point in their life where to have the disposable income. The kids haven't... It's starting to get very popular. There are starting to be celebrities, as you know, like you said, Jeffree Star, and then there's that guy, Cole Sprouse off Riverdale, which is supposedly, you know, a big hit with the young'uns. Who? Yeah, you don't know because you're too old. He's into pinball? Yeah, just took his Victoria's Secret model girlfriend out to play pinball. But that doesn't mean that he's into pinball. He just... I'm just saying, it's getting coverage now. Okay. Like, it's so retro, it's back in. Okay. Back in the game. Who has to be into pinball, Chanel, for you to actually start getting into pinball?
    130:04
    It's never going to happen, is it? All the people I admire are dead, like Nicholas Tesler. Nicholas Tesler? Yeah.
    130:14
    Who's a contemporary person I admire. I don't know, maybe Elon Musk. I don't know, but he's a bit cray-cray too. So, to be honest, like, yeah. The closest you're going to get is wearing a Mrs. Finn t-shirt around the house, right? With no pants on. Yeah. Yeah, the Munsters. I believe it might get released before Christmas, and we'll see it at CES, and it should be in Australia before the end of January. Jeff Yollis. Chanel, you know who Jeff Yollis is, right? Of course I do. He's your boyfriend on the side. I don't know.
    130:47
    He's the one person that Ryan calls more than his own spouse. Jeff Yollis is going to run a little thing, the top 10 most intriguing people in pinball. Now, I can't... Is he including himself in that list? No. What if he could? Yeah, me and Marty were going to give... Marty and I. Marty and I were going to give our top 10s, but since he's not here, I just want you to list just everyone that you know in pinball. Players and... Anyone.
    131:18
    Crying out loud. Lyman Sheets. Yeah. There's Gomez. What's Gomez's first name? Oh, fuck. What's his first name?
    131:29
    It's Larry. No, it's not. I know it's not. See, if you say his name, I'll know it, but that's not Larry. Bob. No.
    131:38
    Yorgo. No. George. Yes. Okay. There's Franchi, the hexagon guy. Yeah. Oh, the manufacturer is obviously Jersey Jack. That's not a person. He's a literal person. Yeah, his name's not Jersey Jack. No, but I'm saying like Jersey Jack. I don't actually know how to say his last name, so I'll just call him Jersey Jack.
    132:02
    Crying out loud. Well, there was a guy that won the tournament that was plugging your t-shirt, so I remembered his face. Yeah. Do you know what his name?
    132:10
    No, I don't remember it. Do you know it? Oh, Keith. There was a guy with three balls. Was it Tim? Tim's texting, yeah. Him, yep. Two balls now. That's right. Unfortunate. He needs to find a new girlfriend.
    132:29
    Mrs. Penn. Yes. How many is that? Yeah, they're very intriguing people. There's also Marty. Yeah. There's the wonder kid from Down Under, Jordan.
    132:44
    That's all. Anyway, I'll link that in the show notes so you can give Jeff your suggestions. social media watch this is a new segment please don't do that again this is going to be horrible this is totally ruining our marriage I'm letting you know you have never listened to one of the podcasts have you for a reason for this exact reason I don't want to be less attracted to you than I currently am okay just keep it in the closet like Michael Jackson said Oh, I don't even... Okay. There's a video of Gary... Gary Stern. Do you know who Gary Stern is? Oh, of course I know who Stern is. Gary Stern? What does he do? As in Stern Pinball? Okay, yeah.
    133:28
    It's like the Godfather, right? Sure. Gary Stern was playing the Beatles' pinball, and... Yeah. Yeah, no, it's not funny if I only said it with money. He swore, and it was really funny. I'm going to leave it in the show notes. What was his... Which word? The F word. Really? Yeah. Anyway. The Lost in Space colour D&D is now out. Do you know they made it a... Lost in Space is in the TV show or the movie with the guy from Friends? The guy, yeah. They made a pinball machine out of that, and it is pretty average. Yeah, that's... No. Okay. That's sad on all levels. Okay. So this week, a new pinball machine from STR Pinball made its debut. Chanel, this is the pinball machine in front of you right now. what do you think of the colours? maybe the form? the sexy ladies on the sides? looks like Barney with all the purple yeah and it's got no ramps? yeah that's a let down I love me a ramp it's cheaper ramps are very very expensive you know I think it's a worthy investment to be honest they could have done that instead of highlighted the outstreet of the main girl in the middle of the playfield is that offensive to you? No, it's not offensive. I don't mind a sexy lady, but I don't know. That's what I just keep looking at. The light reflecting off her cheeks and then the trivial pursuit wedges right underneath her. And then biggest of all is why is Satan on the play field?
    135:04
    What has the devil got to do with drifting? He's just an angry Japanese driver driving through Tokyo. Please, they're the most polite people on the planet. Okay. You could run them over and they would apologise to you. Well, you haven't really been involved in the drag racing scene, though, have you, Chanel? That is absolutely true. I have not been a part of the Fast and the Furious lifestyle. We didn't get Harry Jukers. How did you do? Anyway, it's a single-level playfield. There's a couple of loops you can do. There's multi-ball. It looks pretty cool for what it is. This is not a pinball machine that is made by Stern or something that's going to be in mass production. and it's available to the people that ordered the Captain Nemo pinball machine. It's a collaboration between STR and them. We'll get, I guess, more news soon, but we'll link it in the show notes. There's a really good article on the pinball news website, and you can have a look there. This week in pinball, Chanel, you haven't done much. You played some Lethal Weapons Ring. That's right, and I got the song stuck in my head day and night.
    136:08
    Everybody dance now. yes I've been fixing pinball machines all week because the old certain electronic games aren't being nice to me at the moment and every time I fix an issue another one they only hit replacements they're so old they all like months of desktop I'm running five tournaments in the next eight days one tomorrow at pinball paradise with frenzy it's sold out Chanel are you proud of me I just wouldn't Wouldn't even ask me any questions right now. As you can imagine, that time Ryan's spending on these pinball events had to be taken from somewhere. You can guess who got the short straw in terms of parenting the children for the next week.
    136:53
    Yes, three tournaments on Sunday at our house. What do you think about 40 people coming to our house? No, mate. Well, anybody would think, like, no, thank you.
    137:03
    I don't know. He says it like I have a choice. Darling, is it all right if 40 people come over? As if I would ask your permission. I did ask your permission Can you get the fuck out of the house And not come back until the event's over Thank you That is literally what's happening I am taking the children and leaving While Ryan and 40 strange men Possibly a woman or two Have a great time at my place There's a couple of women coming Some sheilas, same With their spouses Who like pinball Ah, there might be one girl that's coming on her own. Just because she likes pinball? Yeah. Who's this? Ah, Jess. She's a rare unicorn indeed. Yeah.
    137:49
    Okay, um, that's pretty much it for the week. We're going to keep it nice and short. Um, I will quickly read out some emails. Chanel's just like, get me the fuck out of here. Um, quick shout out to Nick, our new Patreon subscriber. Can you believe Chanel... Nick! Can you believe people are giving us money? No, that boggles my mind. I don't know why you're paying these jabonis.
    138:13
    First email is from Shane Ribbons, and he said, do you know that Roger Sharp was a famous basketball player, and he linked Roger Sharp on NBA Jam, I think it is. And no, I've never seen that before.
    138:26
    Ezra, Ezra is a... Cool name, Ezra. I dig it. Ezra mentioned that in our last interview with Jersey Jack himself, he mentioned he's not too crazy about Keith Johnson investing time into wizard modes and that almost no one will reach. It reminded me of an interview Keith did in 2015, and he linked the interview. In the interview on the board game design podcast, Ludolygy, Keith Johnson described his coding style to board game designers from outside the hobby. When he told his host that he makes wizard modes that even the most good players will never reach, They asked him how his boss feels about it. He replied that his boss isn't a pinball designer and pretty much leaves him alone. It reminded me of a quote from a comic. If you're a mathematician, there are about ten people on Earth who understand what you do, and none of them have the power to fire you. Anyways, what Keith said always stuck with me, and I was amused to hear that the plot line had continued in some years since 2015. You don't really have an opinion on deep code versus shallow code, do you? I thought you were going to ask about the whole wizard mode. Is that what it is? You have to get to that. Yeah. There's wizard modes that even I haven't been to. But that's like a holy grail thing then, right? Only the worthy can get there. Yeah. So isn't that a cool thing? Why not have it? Yeah. Does it cost a huge, extraordinary amount of money to add that code of a wizard mode code, whatever it is? The thing is with Pinball Chanel is that a lot of people have egos and they only like games that they're good at. So they want to... Yeah, they want... Okay. Right. You know what, no, because there were games I played as a kid. Look, a figure is not the same as pinball. But there were some games that my brother and I just could not clock. Yeah. But that didn't stop us from continuing to play them.
    140:18
    But the game's premise was probably pretty simple, right? What game are you talking about? Too Much Space to Rage? No, we clocked that over and over, my friend. The ones we couldn't clock, Golden Axe. For some reason, we could just never get to the end. Okay. The problem that people are talking about, I guess, is the complexity of the rules. Not that it's a simple game that's hard to master. More that Pirates of the Caribbean offers you a... There's 120 different chapters. Kind of like modes. Isn't it more the merrier? Yeah. Maybe. Do you know what I mean? There are people that want to get to the... You know, all through all the modes. That's what they like. That's how they like to play. Yeah. There's people that just play to get a high score and there's people that play just for the fun of it. So I don't see what the harm is in adding all these modes for those who wish to try and complete them. The problem in pinball, Chanel, is that people only want you to like what they like. If they like a game and they don't like complex games, they want a bad complex game to say, oh, I don't like this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, then just play old games that are just simple. Are you saying that everyone should just get along, Chanel, and just like the shit that they like? Say it, Chanel. Say it. Just like the ship that you like.
    141:33
    We got an email from Rodan, who basically was teasing me for losing against him last week in Flip Frenzy, but Marty's not here, Rodan. Sorry, he's not going to read out your email. We got an email from... How do you pronounce his name? That looks like Thibaut. Thibaut, yeah. He wrote a long email about how much he loves Atlantis, and... Yeah. What's Atlantis? Like the lost city of Atlantis? We play a game called Slam the Top 100, and we have to argue which pinball machine is better. But we used up the whole Top 100 pinball machine, so now we're in the 100 to 200 range, and they're all shit pinball machines that I've never played. So I got Atlantis. From obscurity, right? Well, they're not that obscure. It's just there aren't many old games in Australia. Australia, mate. Email from Lyman.
    142:19
    Rodney. Oh, yeah, there's a guy, Rodney, who's coming to the foot frenzy. That's about it. So that's it for the week. Marty will hopefully be back next week. I hope he's still not working next week. This is probably the last time you'll ever hear from me. The first and last time. I will never listen to this podcast. You will listen. Never. You will. Never.
    142:44
    Subscribe, race on iTunes. We're on Spotify now. Did you know that you... Why? Why must you... Why? These poor people don't deserve this.
    142:57
    You're like a plague. You're spreading like a plague that no one asked for. Ah, that's what I was going to talk about. The Twippies.
    143:08
    So, do you know what the Twippies are? Yes. Unfortunately, I do know what the Twippies are. So, basically, it's a popularity contest that... Very sad. It's very, very sad. Self-congratulatory. Yeah. So, this year, instead of doing the voting kind of now and then doing it in December on Twitch. They're going to open up the vote on January the 1st and end it at the end of January, and they're going to do a live show like the Oscars at Texas Film Festival. What do you think about that, Chanel? It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. It's like they got together and thought, what is the most inept, inefficient, ridiculous way to do this? Right, here we go, bros, let's do it. Thank you, Sienkic. It doesn't make any sense to me, and that just sort of deflates the balloon of excitement and anticipation. How does it deflate the balloon when... You have to wait so blooming long. Are you saying that at the end of... It's like showing a trailer two years in advance for a movie. Okay. I mean, it's only 110 days away from now. Sure.
    144:11
    That's, yeah, it's an eternity. Yeah? No. Yeah, I don't know how I feel about it. I don't get it. I get the fact that they're trying to make it a big thing. Are they like, is everyone voting by paper ballot and they have to sit there and count the ballots? No. Do you know what I mean? I don't understand. It'll be an internet vote and yeah. So then the results will be instantaneous? Yes. So they're going to wait an additional how many months to announce it? The reason why they're doing it is because... What if someone dies before then and they don't get to know that they won the Twippy?
    144:43
    It's a tragedy. If we win the Twippies, are you going to throw the... You're a minimalist. Are you going to throw the thing in the bin? Oh my God.
    144:52
    I'll club you to death with it. No, look, I know you'll be excited to win it Let's not BS right now He's crushing it, but if he won, he'd be like I win I'm validated People care about what I say All the angst my wife has is for a good reason My life's purpose has been completely validated by anonymous people on the web anyway we're closing it up that's the head to head podcast episode 73 I'm Ryan C I'm Ron Burgundy stay classy San Diego Wales Vagina that was funny
    145:45
    bye