American Pinball Update - 2024

Pintastic Pinball & Game Room Expo·video·58m 50s·analyzed·Feb 7, 2025

Analysis

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TL;DR

American Pinball honors late designer Barry Oursler's final game, Barry's Barbecue Challenge, detailing its development journey.

Summary

American Pinball presents the development story of Barry's Barbecue Challenge, the final game designed by legendary designer Barry Oursler before his death from cancer. The presentation covers the game's evolution from the initial 'CarHop' concept through completion, emphasizing Barry's rapid design process, the team's commitment to honoring his vision post-mortem, and specific mechanical innovations like 'bash locks' developed collaboratively during production.

Key Claims

Barry Oursler designed a complete first draft of Barry's Barbecue Challenge in approximately one month
high confidence · Direct statement: 'Barry the machine had a complete game first draft done in a month' and corroborating detail about hiring Barry in August 2021 with initial design work completed by November 2021
Barry Oursler was hired by American Pinball after Deep Root Games collapsed, with David Fix ensuring immediate health insurance coverage to enable cancer treatment resumption
high confidence · Detailed narrative: 'David fix reached out to him...when we found out that the whole deep root thing wasn't going so hot...David fix was very adamant and he went to war with HR and said we're not going to wait where this this man's getting health insurance on day one'
Barry Oursler died as a result of complications from resuming chemotherapy treatment after his health insurance was restored
high confidence · Statement: 'unfortunately he had a bad reaction to resuming chemo and we lost him because of that'
American Pinball abandoned its entire multi-year production roadmap to prioritize completing Barry's final game
high confidence · Narrative: 'literally crumpled it up threw it in the pile...that's we're finishing this game does anyone in this room think we should not finish this game that he has that he has given us and they just silence pin drop'
The speaker (junior designer) recreated Barry's original playfield design in Visual Pinball (VPX) using precise dimensional overlays within three days without being asked
high confidence · First-person narrative describing importing Barry's drawing into VPX with exact playfield dimensions and recreating every element; 'I literally recreated every single thing on that drawing in VPX'
Barry's Barbecue Challenge's initial design included drop targets on the upper right orbit that caused ball hang-ups and were repositioned to a 'space shuttle position' as one of only two mechanical changes made post-design
high confidence · Detailed explanation: 'we moved Barry's drop targets from the position on the upper right orbit...to the more classic space shuttle position...it really wasn't working like it was a ball hang up'

Notable Quotes

“this game coming out is the completion of a 40-year Arc of my life...Space Shuttle was my first pinball game I ever played”
Speaker (American Pinball presenter) @ Early in presentation during CarHop design discussion — Reveals deep personal motivation for completing Barry's game—connecting original inspiration with culminating project
“I don't want to hear it go to the doctor...can you design me a game with spinners on the ramps? Barry's like all right cool let's go”
Speaker, recounting David Fix's conversation with Barry Oursler @ During hiring story — Illustrates Barry's professional composure and rapid design capability even during health crisis
“literally crumpled it up threw it in the pile...that's we're finishing this game does anyone in this room think we should not finish this game that he has that he has given us and they just silence pin drop”
Speaker, describing team decision-making moment @ Post-death response section — Defines American Pinball's core value: honoring designer's final work over commercial schedule
“there is a really upsetting rumor that Barry did not design this game and that is just...Why why you how could you know why would you know...podcasters will say whatever they can to get clicks and then they repeat it as if it's fact”
Speaker (American Pinball representative) @ Mid-presentation addressing rumors — Direct community controversy acknowledgment; calls out media practices in pinball discourse
“I literally recreated every single thing on that drawing in VPX...shots work it it's like I just walked up to a game and it's just functional”
Junior designer speaker, describing VPX recreation @ During technical development section — Demonstrates validation of Barry's design through simulation technology; junior designer proving value
“Barry would have loved that”
Dennis (mechanical designer), after junior designer fixed obvious post positioning errors @ Late in presentation during post-mortum design refinement — Suggests Barry's design philosophy would have approved of specific corrections

Entities

Barry Ourslerperson American Pinballcompany David FixpersonSteve BowenpersonBarry's Barbecue ChallengegameDeep Root GamescompanyDennis

Signals

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business_signal: American Pinball abandoned multi-year production roadmap to prioritize Barry Oursler's final game as primary next release
high · Team decision narrative: 'we had a lineup we had like this game is next this game is next this game is next literally crumpled it up threw it in the pile...all right well Barry's game is next...we're all agreed we're going we're going full on we're going to finish Barry's final game'
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community_signal: Rumors circulated claiming Barry Oursler did not actually design Barry's Barbecue Challenge; American Pinball explicitly addresses and refutes these rumors
high · Direct address: 'there is a really upsetting rumor that Barry did not design this game...podcasters will say whatever they can to get clicks and then they repeat it as if it's fact which is the problem'
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event_signal: Pintastic Pinball & Game Room Expo featured American Pinball presentation on Barry's Barbecue Challenge development with playable machine in free play area
high · Event context: 'Pintastic Pinball & Game Room Expo' presentation with machine 'in the free play room in the back corner and in my opinion that is the best playing one I've I've had my hands on'
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design_innovation: Bash locks feature developed as collaborative solution to preserve classic saucer mechanics in modern rule sets
high · Designer explanation: 'that's when I just came up with the idea for bash locks which is what they later got called...it was just a way that we could make it so that if a ball was locked in a classic saucer we could still keep it as a shot that you could hit'
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Transcript

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that works I'm keeping it so um for anyone who has an IT background we joke that after a couple of years in that industry you get an IT Aura where things just start working when you walk by she has a game tester Aura where things just start falling apart but in a good way and a reproducible way it's the most useful thing ever um Casey Roder has commented on many occasions she just walks into a room a game will do a thing and he's like I've been trying to reproduce that for 3 days and you did it in 3 minutes and uh I'm pretty sure he's the reason that she uh she got fire um not fired you're wow well you're the intern now you can fire me for that super fire um our our organization is very upside down so the interns are actually at the top level I got my interns coffee not the other way around they were for a week right there was technically I got fired um our our our old intern Luke fired me it was great um so Steve put together our slides for this week um we have uh we have a couple of stories to tell we're going to tell the story of Bario's barbecue um how it all came together um what it meant for us as a company and US individually and uh we're going to share you know our interactions with the legend Barry who unfortunately is not here so well we are happy to be here in his stad and to present his final work as a complete as we could make it and we hope you enjoy it it is in the free play room in the back corner and in my opinion that is the best playing one I've I've had my hands on so uh do go check it out um and if you want we we'll also go over some of the the goals and rules because I've heard a few people say that once they understood their goals that game made they they liked it a lot more so sure you wna you want to kick off the slides or whatever we got going on next slide please all right how well can we see that yeah that's good that's good so uh there's the original uh close to the original car hop uh design that Barry and I were working on once we were um talking about it uh so this is about I think I think it's it's dated November 2021 but we started talking about this in August of that year where we were um I mean basically me I'm hoping to try to get this as close to space shuttle as possible without it being space shuttle because nailed it thank you awesome thank because um space shuttle was my first pinball game I ever played so this game coming out is the completion of a 40-year Arc of my life so that is one reason why I'm especially proud and grateful that this happened so this is called CarHop uh it's code name CarHop I mean we know there's a CarHop game that exists so it would not have been able to come out with that name um but you can sort of see in the design compare it to what uh well we'll get to those in the later pictures but to what uh vario barbecue challenge ended up being um so and you can kind of see a little of the the space shuttleless in here but the anomaly would be the drop targets right where we attempted to do something which uh yeah things some things just don't work out but hey you got to try stuff where we put the sweepable drop Targets on the right the far right and an attempt to do like a sweepable Target into the hole at the top it's sort of like a combo like a long distance combo on that way but uh we'll talk about how that ain't a thing in a few other slides okay so Steve I can't help but notice that this does not say food truck anywhere no it does not say you care to describe the relationship between berio's barbecue and the and the rumored food truck pin absolutely none not none whatsoever so maybe I could draw maybe one thing the fact that a star rating exists well the designer was clearly hungry that's about all I got um was hungry man he liked him some food and who doesn't this has nothing to do with Voldemort's food truck okay this has nothing to do with that everyone seems to every think that whenever they walk up to it they're like oh like it's not a hard leap to go from food truck to barbecue it's like actually those two things are completely separate and have never had any overlap whatsoever um we would tell you in this fun little presentation if it did but instead we're going to going to show you the original drawing for CarHop right which was what Barry made for us completely um started and finished this drawing while working for API um during the short period that we un that we had him right um so I guess we could start by telling maybe we don't have to get into all all the nitty-gritty like teary stuff that we did last time but I mean only it won't be Terry it'll be more inspirational yeah okay all right so the the the timeline kind of went something like this um Barry got hired by American pinball David fix reached out to him right when we found out um that the whole deep root thing wasn't going so hot and we decided to pluck a few people out of the out of the whirlpool as it were so you know it's SW we in the drain and we're just like let's get Steve Bowen out of there and put him on dry land and let's do the same with Barry um so unfortunately uh Barry had been diagnosed with cancer and he was running through his chemo treatments while he was at deepr root and his health insurance was not it last existent at deep root and so he unfortunately had to stop his treatments and so when we hired him um David fix was very adamant and he he went to war with HR and said we're not going to wait where this this man's getting health insurance on day one um go Barry go get your treatments I don't want to hear it he was like no don't give me special treatment don't give me special treatment it's like I don't want to hear it go to the doctor um and while you're at it can you uh design me a game with r Spinners on the ramps Bar's like all right cool let's go that was that was the scene F said did give me a game with spinners on the ramp and he just said okay and came up with the rest of it um and so what was it what it take him like a month two months not even we weren't even talking very much uh before we finished with with this thing yeah it was not even the man is a machine a month later he gives us an almost this this drawing from nothing like not like it wasn't napkin doodle then iteration iteration like it's give me a game with spinners on the ramps a month later this is turned in so um unfortunately we we've had to dispel a couple of really upsetting rumors to us I'm just going to stop like just get this out of the way um rumors happen with every game people talk people are bored they have to speculate but this one really upset us and so we wanted to make sure we we put this right down um there is a really upsetting rumor that Barry did not design this game and that is just Why why you how could you know why would you know why would we lie I me the most ridiculous thing in the world were you in the same room with us when we were talk I mean there must maybe you you had bugged the room you had bugged our phones when we were talking about the game and even if You Were Somehow right the the impersonation level that a designer would have to do to pretend to make a Barry game is is ridiculous why would we bother with that it's just it's stupid please stop repeating it um we can we will show you his original drawings and we will tell you all the stories of everything he had involved in the project um I know none of you in this room are saying that but podcasters will say whatever they can to get clicks and then they repeat it as if it's fact which is the problem you can speculate all you want just don't pass your speculation on his fact so as we said Barry the machine had a complete game first draft done in a month um and then at that point is when he had started going back to get his chemo treatments cuz his health insurance was back and unfortunately he had a bad reaction to resuming chemo and we lost him because of that um I was actually about to meet him in a week I have never had the pleasure of meeting Barry and Steve did and I'm very glad that got to happen oh I'm I'm so glad to hear that I want to I want to check out that recording at some point um I remember I was in one of my several trips to Chicago before actually moving out there I was in a meeting with a supplier about standup targets we were getting a new uh supplier for standup anti- Loft anti-sway targets that we were going to use in some of our upcoming games and I at the time my favorite breakfast place was wild berry it's freaking delicious and I'm eating my pancakes and I see David fix get a text message and I just see his heart and eyes just sink and he says oh no and he just stares at his phone for like 30 full seconds and I've never seen that man rattled you can mess with him all day you can do whatever you want you can throw him under the bus you I have never seen him shaken like this and I just said David what's wrong I and I completely i' forgotten our supplier was even there like at this point I feel actually kind of rude later on but um and then we found out that we had lost Barry yeah really because when I I had got the call from Kathy right and I was being prepared to to to share this news and I'm I know I know where I was I'm in that office where Mates is now that's where I was sitting and I'm like well here we go I have to you know get myself together you know stay stoic get professional to you know break the news The Fakes and talk about what we're going to talk about and um all through all through that you know once I had processed that and all of a sudden I'm like you have that I guess you can call it the old crap moment where it's like wait a minute that means I'm game designer now I need a lot of help so immediately at that point I start hurriedly getting notes of everything that I was going to ask Barry about that we were going to discuss the drop Tarts we're going to discuss the ramps we're going to we're going to discuss discuss our initial rules that we had with it you know I refly start typing it down so I don't forget because if I forget anything it would just break my heart if I forget everything that we talked about certain things that I know he wanted were in literally in green text on the rules said as these are Barry's words these will not be touched he ran to his office and he shut himself in there for two hours we thought if we it weren't for the glass doors we would have thought he was upset he was just frantically scribbling down everything he could remember Barry said to him right in fact so once and once I you know I I was satisfied with that and then and and once we broke the news and everything and we had the team meeting we discuss what going to do with that and then that's when the idea of a tribute game began to manifest uh in my mind and in the team's mind I'm so glad that the team um accepted it and really pulled us off so after that to continue my little timeline after that breakfast was when we got back to the office and uh we called the big team meeting and we broke the news to the rest of the team unfortunately some people hadn't heard yet and uh that was Barry was a very dear friend zophia comes to mind specifically um and so after after that I think we we can advance to the next slide cuz I just want to see some of the cuz I go through some of the iterations of it just so we can get get to get get more modern see this is with this is the car hop with more uh more of the inserts filled in right yeah more of the inserts filled in you can see car hop coming together you can see there were uh Burgers and Fries I think in there yeah B Burgers and Fries and things that we you're going to be doing three levels there definitely some rule of three happening there um and uh you know one of the things I discuss with bar is what is a medium Burger what does that mean you know cuz that's a little weird so that might have been that was might have been one of the first changes we work on as far as grammatically and gameplay like but uh and the uh and just I just want to get to a certain point in this go to the you can go to the next one a little bit more of a iteration where some of the bonus lights going because this was going to be a very a very simple game oh yeah that was going to score in the hundreds of thousands you know we're talking about maybe we're going to do a 7-digit display really take it old school you know do a dot matrix so you know right you know let really take it back to old school and do and and do it that way so you see I think it was right about that time while we were in the planning stages that Pulp Fiction came out we're like well they just did it I we can still do it but like now the throwback is not ours um so you say you want to go to the next slide yeah the next one is the last iteration before we get to your VP right right I'm not there yet I'm not there yet I know but I want to take you there so that when you get to the VPX we slowly transition over this was the this was one of the last versions with some of more of the things filled in uh the idea of the radial system as far as the bonuses Playfield act started to come in as I'm starting to integrate more this is right yeah this is more more this is this is still us talking about meanwhile I'm trying to integrate some more barriness in this game because I love his games right because he was going I mean you know really he was going to come to American Football was going to be barri in I he was going to help me um teach me the bar system and the philosophy I mean you know that was one you know I was really being to learn from this man how he's able able to design so quickly games that make sense games that are easy to learn and hard to master and so I was so looking forward to you know it beyond the three plus years we worked at Voldemort's being able to um deepen my knowledge and relationship with him in that way so that's really so I want to get to this point so that you can continue with with that so anyway we we so we get to the the the the meeting unfort the break the unfortunate news is broken to the rest of the team and we we kind of dispersed for about an hour so everyone could collect themselves and then we realized all right we only have a lot more meetings that we have to have cuz just like Steve had his moment of okay like now that my emotions are starting to process this has a lot of implications that we like unfortunately I we need to deal with um so you start going through that and so we had the final team meeting of the day where we it became very apparent that all of the plans that we had had and we had a timeline going out in what like 6 years at that point like on paper ready to go we had a schedule and everything that carefully crafted schedule was completely thrown out the window that day we we had a lineup we had like this game is next this game is next this game is next literally crumpled it up threw it in the p in the pile and like all right well Barry's game is next like that's we're finishing this game does anyone in this room think we should not finish this game that he has that he has given us and they just silence pin drop so it was just all right we're all agreed we're going we're going full on we're we're going to finish Barry's final game and uh we'll figure out what the rest of our plan is later we'll we'll put it all together um so that's what we did uh we all broke we dropped everything we were working on for the other games and put them put it on a shelf and um we all started frantically studying all the information we had and I had a long meeting with Dennis that day about um and Sophia about how much if anything we were like what we were going to do so we realized we've been handed a first draft and that's all we had so we had that and we had and we had the rules which were very halfhazard and introductory at that point so you know this was this was uh yeah me after scrubing everything down basically rearranging all the Lego blocks we had that I was going to talk with Barry about and and this is when again when the tribute format started yeah through germinating in my head and you'll see how that progresses as we move forward Soh so we had we had the mechanical and design had a meeting we're like well we don't have him anymore so this is all we're ever going to get so what's our plan and the very first thing we all agreed on is we need to make our first Whitewood exactly as Barry has designed it not a single change even though we all see some obvious things that are not going to get they're not going to stay like there are a couple posts that are just in like not correct positions but we don't care we're going to we're going to put this together exactly as he designed it so we can all play it and then we will decide how much to change how much to add like what needs changing what would be like in this what he would want us to change or add to it because again he this is a game that he had only taken one pass at and like for all we know he had Grand plans to add like a second play field or three we don't know like don't know we had and we hadn't got to that point in our discussions either so yeah this is again this is going to be one of the things we were going to discuss when he got to join me we were going to go through the through the iterative process but this is what we had at this point and we had to see what we were going to to work with so as we created the game as as it was written and we started discover okay we know this is probably not going to work okay we really can't do this I mean we can get into the drop Targets on the right oh yeah we'll get there yeah so so this was also supposed to be the game that I was supposed to be mentored on so the schedule and like Barry was actually told we have a junior designer he's very talented he made his own game but he doesn't know anything about the industry or proper practice Etc and we want you we want to bring you in to like take him under your wing and start teaching him how to do this the right way and from what I heard because I know again I unfortunately never got to meet my mentor uh he was very excited and couldn't wait to start working with me me and so this I was going to be part of the design process on this game from day one we were going make all the changes I can tell you that he was excited so you don't okay I I believe this I'm just I unfortunately never got to see it would be ultra confirmed yes so we we ended up breaking for the day it was a very somber day and coming in the work the next day and was like all right well now we have to actually get started on on this big project and that doesn't have to be a bad thing so I'm I'm still a new designer who has very little experience in this I'm still just a Homebrew guy have I've just started I I just got my own office like I I barely even have access to the systems I'm like you know what I do have one thing I can really contribute with right now and that is something I've talked about a lot in The Homebrew seminars which is visual pinball bpx um I have a drawing I have access to this drawing it is accurate I literally so I go to my office cuz no one needs me for anything I just started and they're all frantically working on other things I'm like you know what I'm going to be useful and I took the drawing took Barry's drawing and I imported it into VPX as the Playfield background so I set in the exact dimensions for the Playfield and I cut I cut the drawing so it was exactly pixel edges so it would line up and then I used that as a background and I literally recreated every single thing thing on that drawing in VPX which I believe is next on that the next that be the next slide yeah okay there we go nice um yes and that's what I worked on for the next three days I didn't bother telling anybody because everyone was too busy to talk to the new guy at this point um and I I got it all designed right down to the te right every every insert everything I didn't get all the pro any programming really done for it I did end up programming a multiball just so we could see it's important to see how a game plays with multiball um and then when I finished this uh and I had shot it I was like oh my God this thing like shoots even in VPX with no with no adjustments and nothing changed whatsoever like all these shots work it it's like I just walked up to a game and it's just functional so I brought this to the rest of the team and I was I had to explain what it was they had no idea what they were looking at I'm like just just trust me like it's a Sim it's a physics simulator it's like 95 to 99% accurate depending on the situation yes Lynn backhands don't work that great where is he whatever he doesn't need to be [Laughter] here um but it lets everyone in the building see and feel the vision before we ever even build it so they get they're not even started thinking about building one and I have something they can play so they like they already know that most of Barry's work Works um so I think we have a short video on one of the slides is I didn't link it yeah I didn't link it because I was afraid of how much that would I since I'm sending a I didn't put video there I'll probably post that on our official yeah we can put that there but there's a slide of it at least a slide we get we can get the next one I think is is it the next no then we get the closeup to the three bank so this is this is the closeup not specifically of the three bank but just to show you the overlay of the like his original drawing to like where each of the posts sends it up so you can just see that I'm putting the the light in VPX right over his lights I'm putting the posts right over his post the dotted lines mean something's underneath the Playfield so you don't have to pay any attention to that that's the drop Target mechanism um which color is which so green green things are entities in VPX so your ramp specifically so um and then there's a few so the black and white yes where it says like light mystery and everything that's what Barry Drew you can't really see it that well but like that Target that's above light mystery there is a VPX entity Target there if I were to click it it would light up blue but it's a it's a wire wireframe black and white um but some of the entities in VPX have color so that's why you can see them so well so like the the insert lights I made them white but like you can see how they have like the circle of Aura around them like each one has its own it's poorly traced because I made the circle by hand like it doesn't marry matter um and all the all those white rubbers are are VPX entities too so um yeah we can keep going yep there's just more of a complex you can see the pop bumper entities like the just the blue and white rings overlaid with his um along with his ramp routing and his Scoops and just you can see the process of overlaying exactly in what is normally a freehand do whatever the heck you want program um and it can follow a real drawing very quickly so yeah this was what I worked on for a couple days you can give me the next one one yeah there we go so there I had a short video of of playing it um however when you when you do it this way in VPX you can actually get the blueprint to be the Playfield image so that's how it was done um so when you play it you can literally see his drawing as if we had glued it to the Playfield and this is what I brought to the team um at this point it was when I got to this point you can see I didn't even delete all the default posts on the side right this is when he heard you ran around the office said Steve come in here right now it still says Cosmic lady on the apron yeah right okay let's play this and here I am for the next whatever it was minutes or hours flipping this thing and I'm like yeah this is feeling really good I think it was that point Steve I think it was that point David fix walked into the office like what are you two doing it's like well you come over here and look and you see and then okay now sit down just on my screen is Barry is the is the game he's been looking at he's like the hell is this let's go I'm like what do you think I've been doing nothing for the last 3 days and he invites so he at that point he invites everyone in the office to come to come see it and zophia saw it and Dennis saw it they they Dennis wasn't really sure what he was looking at but like he he could tell what it was once we explained it to him and he like kind of just wandered off to his office to go work 2D again poor guy um I I tried to get him to understand VPX but he just never really could and that was fine but zophia was like this is amazing how could this you can already play this and it's been two days like I'm like yep they can so um yeah that was really fun part of the journey and it was also fun as for me as a like was supposed to be a a mentor or whatever whatever you even call that and uh just to go over every single line and every single post that he had placed was kind of a weird experience but it was it was good and I actually learned a lot from it was mentorship it that's what it was it that's what happened it was it was I actually learned a lot um there and and I I I like to think he would have been proud of me because actually as soon as I had finished this I made a second version where I fixed some obvious mistakes um where like I said there were just some posts that weren't in the right spot like at that specifically the Right Scoop like was way too closed off for no reason so like you I was able to move the posts back change the wall a little bit doesn't close the other Shot opens that one wide up and Dennis was like oh yeah good job Barry would have loved that so I have one question sure did he design the table before he knew that he was mentoring you no I no that's he knew he knew that he made mistakes so he can intentionally teach you I doubt that but maybe I also cannot confirm or deny that that's seems like a lot of work just to just to screw with your new intern I

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yeah I did have one afternoon with Dennis like that Dennis gave me one of them he said what's wrong with this and like had me list everything wrong with it he said I did quite well on that one so um so that's kind of that doesn't that's kind of the end of my story when it comes to the beginning of Barrios um I was involved in the development from the the a very early on thing and then around halfway through I was branched off to work on my own title um which is now I think we're confirmed as that's the next one so there it is um yes yes it is I I don't have any any other information on it but it is it is the next game we're going to be releasing um so my my earliest contributions were working with Dennis when we decided to make the two small changes to the game that we actually ended up making which is as Steve mentioned we moved Barry's drop targets from the position on the upper right orbit whereas the uh it's the multiball release shot to the more classic space shuttle position it's the space shuttle position yes that was that was not done just because we wanted it there it was done because it really wasn't working like it was a ball hang up and it you couldn't hit them on purpose and Barry's vision of being able to hit some drops on the way out of the scoop did work but more often than not it was not pleasant for the player like it would hit one down but then in feed would be awful and like it was just we made some very small changes there was that one and then I we we were you me and Dennis were in his office and we were discussing how it it's a very simple game and that's fine but for a code and rules perspective you were struggling because the saucers in the classic Barry Style game as soon as a ball is locked in them that shot is lost so we have three sh space shuttle exactly if there's a ball in a lock and space shuttle I mean like you don't even aim for it because of lock steing you don't need to hit it but like now for a more modern rule set you can't do anything with that you can't make that a mode shot you can't do anything and like we while we do have enough shots we could have worked with it was just unfortunate to lose those shots and I just I don't remember what inspired me I just just kind of looked at it and went huh what if we do this and um that's when I just just came up with the idea for bash loocks which is what they later got called um what is there a slide for that there's I don't think there a SL SL for that specifically I'm bad like that it's there's one that points it out cuz there one that points out the entire flyer with the plate with that so we have that that that later became a marketing thing but it was very it was just a way that we could make it so that if a ball was locked in a classic saucer we could still keep it as a shot that you could hit and uh I I tried to explain my idea of a teardrop shaped um saucer to to Dennis and everybody in the room and Steve got it immediately he knew exactly what I was going for I I was fine with I was just making I was just do it so that I can chest so I can shake the heck out of it and make sure I can't Dracula the wall in there you what coming from from the very beginning I the first thing once once it passed that I'm like let's go that my shots back absolutely Dennis was struggling with um understanding what I was trying to tell him cuz I was like way too excited and animated and like you like I never do hold on let me drink some caffeine yeah let's yeah have some more all right let's go um and so he he's getting frustrated and fixed like Ryan just go build it just just go in the lab and build it and I'm like all right fine fine so I went and found uh Hot Wheels field or something that had like a a classic um saucer that we already had and I just started in with the uh jigsaw making it into a more teardrop style and uh using a file to get the edges down and I was like look at this if we do it just like this the ball sits there but then if you hit it it will briefly roll backwards off the switch and then back onto it right and stay and stay in there 99% of the time time until I play it until Bri plays it breaks it but that's okay because it happens so rarely but it's fully detectable so we could do something like Roller Coaster Tycoon used to do where if it failed to move the locks it would say oh no not two at once and give you a secret multiball that that's the only way you could do and there was there was that was a full coded mode it had jackpots and stuff but you could only get it by accident so now that lets us I don't think what in their game but that's planing not yet but it like if you knock a ball loose we're going to have a call out and like two ball multi here you go yes like you you just couldn't wait could you or something like that I don't know that will happen yep but it's it's so infrequent but like every time you bunk that thing it just rolls right back and right back on the switch and so now when you so the the easiest way I show people this is when uh I put in a two- player game and I lock a ball with player one and then I die a drain and then I die yes exactly um and player two will notice that they don't have that lock there's no lock there's no proper lock stealing you don't you haven't earned that but it's blinking and if you just bash that ball one time now you have your lock and it goes solid so but we also if there is a ball in there unrelated um you can collect fireworks that way so we got a crazy light show and the game vibrates and you know you did something Y and fireworks is a Barry reference but we'll just move on it is a there's a reason why it's called fireworks so yes but go ahead um and then I I I still remember this because I don't think I'm ever going to hear it again and when I finished when I finished this and we decided to go with it David like ran off for a little while and then he came back and he's like Ryan I don't I never get to say this but I really don't think that's ever been done in any game before ever like this never happens it's always been done in some game it's always been done in some old got Le has done everything um like or in some way or something similar it's like Oh you mean like this game oh I've never even played that game I didn't know that but he was like no this one's actually truly original good job so it's a small thing but I'm never going to hear that again so I want to I'm happy about it so and I'm glad for the The Avenues that reopened up in the rule set as well because I'm going to look forward to pay you you're already going to get paid to hit it you're already being paid to hit it but I'm looking forward to paying you for hitting it out and then paying you again for putting it back in okay so it's there going to be three levels of payment available to you as far as your score for doing those actions that's going to really help expand strategy and other things you know and there's implication with the playful X and I should just stop because I'll start rattling all about the rules and we haven't got there yet so go ahead but we're about to get there so that that was one of my biggest contributions to the game and then again fine-tuning a lot of the things fine-tuning the skill shot with Dennis and moving a bunch of walls to make things as smooth as possible um but it was at that point where um we reached the point where I was going to Pivot on to starting my own project and I worked on mine for I don't know the probably the rest of the duration of barbecue I was more of like a consultant than an actual designer which is why I'm not like on the very top with Barry and Dennis and Steve I'm I'm more of a consultant in the middle although I did find out yesterday that I was actually on the apron credited I didn't know that I told you before I didn't know I was on the apron that's what I told you that's why I I know and it's all your fault that's why I came in the office and then said no you're on but I thought you I thought you meant software like name is on the screen and then he shows he's like oh it's on it's right here CU I wanted it there why um so at this point it becomes more of a jack steveen zophia show right yeah I I would guess I guess we go to the next one what is the next one I think it's where we start getting monor okay yeah this is where we get into hello mini LCD okay this is uh some of the things that I've uh once we were discussing what what else are we going to have on this game that makes this game more than it is this is where the mini LCD screen comes in right and I'm starting to uh think of some ideas of what I could put on there to help the player not have to look up at the screen wasn't it originally going to be a seven segment yeah it was seven seg it was going to be a big seven segment then it went to maybe DMD and then once that didn't happen then I'm like okay let's continue to make this more of a utility by putting the Mini screen in there because I wanted this in there so that you could look at the you have something always staring at you like those two those two became nicknamed as the two big numbers there were three big numbers for a thing but I got rid of one so those are the two those are the two big numbers that are always staring at you most of the time and their implication in your scoring are very key but you notice that Top Line is changing up there you like it's it's it's like JW targets cook the side dishes and then it'll switch to shoot saucers to defeat Gator D who is one of the characters in the game so what that is doing is giving you a tool tip so that you always look down and see what do I do now I could just look down I can see my score my score is up 100% of the time that score bar is always there because I never want you to not see your score I always want you to see it as much as possible even if for some reason the top screen is is covered I want you to at least see your score especially for tournament implications and competitive play um the other boxes around there with just my trying to figure out what else I could put down there and not have it look too annoying or busy or whatever ever uh to try just to give you a guide and showing you what you what what important information I could have down there for you at a glance to avoid you having to look up at the screen as much as possible because you're playing pinball I mean you don't really have a lot of time to look up there because you got balls running around and you're trying to not die so so I wanted to put as much important information as I can there so I think we can go to the next one I believe I think I continue with that yeah so I'm just continuing on with the idea of what how I'm going to show you what the multiball value is um what what does the ladder mean as far is when you're in multiball and you're climbing the ladder of greatness which is based on what you do during game play you know literally send a grill to space and we're saying Gilla space but that's part yeah so up there you see the mo the mode timer counting down you got you still the the top tool tip layer up there is telling you what to do shoot jackpots these many jackpots are left to get to the top and all that so and your score again always visible and I'm just working out just small notes of what this number means in the middle that you're looking at you notice you have the big number in the middle you got a number that's up above you that you can't quite see cuz you can your visualizing You Are Climbing you're basically climbing a ladder imagine like I guess Who Wants To Be A Millionaire barbecue grill Edition yeah right but really I mean I guess I guess I should give them this Barry game ref since we're here right oh we should do that let's do cuz cuz I I can't I can't I couldn't I couldn't does I want to make sure we hit everything it's at the end I have to reveal them alline but oh we do but yeah I have to we can't do this we can't do the Family Feud one yeah we can do it the other way we can show them the games and they can try and point it out I like that exactly so I I I do want everyone to appreciate you all now heard Steve Bowen talk about rules for about five minutes now you understand why excited I am to have him doing my rules I I could never reach that level of enthusiasm in detail so I am so happy that you were the one leading my rules team so uh so I think we go to the next one I think it's similar okay what you're seeing is a p what was going to be the top of the ladder right this is the ultra jackpot it's one of the big prizes and so um I don't know if you won't be able to play to play this unless if you really know what I'm I'm referencing this game from this ladder is a reference to one of my favorite multiballs in all of pinball the jackpot multiball thank you okay jackpot that is it right jackbots multiball is maybe my favorite I have to think of the before that okay um and so the difference is they say since you know the jackpot multiball what is the first jackpot amount in multi in in jackbots what's the first one what what number do you start off at it is that is correct it is 50 million and then you go up the ladder 50 75 100 one and it explodes in your face one one fit right with the space shuttle 150 one the 200 two so the first amount is 50 million in this game the first amount is what you bring to the table whatever it is that number that one of those two big num staring you in the face the whole time that one so whether it's 1 million or 30 million I had it up to 70 million and I was kind of scared of the rules you're a monster it was awesome I was kind of scared I was like is this imbalance and I'm like no because you still got to do it like don't start it at 40 million and make one shot I mean don't do that you know I've started with 40 million and made one shot and then I started with 8 million and made 10 shots so it's that's that that's that's all on you it's a big risk reward thing but that's the thing it's like your it is your Who Wants To Be A Millionaire ladder is where you start as opposed to the 50 million so if I if I started at 5 million and you come up after me you know I started at 5 million you're going to want to go for six million 7 million 8 million because what's the difference 5 million becomes 7 and a half million becomes 10 million becomes 12 but if you started at 10 million 10 million becomes 15 million becomes 20 million becomes 20 all and all the way up so I'm showing so when you get to multiball look at you'll see the big prize at the top we dangle it right in front of you 500 million then we start driving down meab bucks Progressive at the top and then all the numbers on the way down is your ladder that you made good luck and very bottom is that number you saw that you chose to start whatever it is 3,578 240 okay there you go all right good luck go up the left I still remember being told about this ladder and then being told that we're going to be going to space with it I'm like how we wait I thought we started with a grill how you going to get a grill the space and then I come in after like a week being somewhere else and I see that Jessica our graphics artist has literally just turned some hot sauce bottles down and we're just using them as Jets and I'm like all right cool send it Yep this Grill's going to space going to space and uh there's in a future update there might be something waiting for you up in space if you can manage to get that far maybe so uh I I highly I highly anticipate that some of you might know what that is through context so's try to sco a little bit forward um because we are we are you're running up so let's go to we always we always end up running up so let's get you to let's get to some trivia and I don't want to miss this so um I'm going to I'm going to actually toss it over to our our new newest employee and I I want to know a couple of things and this is actually just personally I want to know this what do you do all day because I bring you to work she breaks things I BR I bring you to work broken you sign in right now you don't have to do that anymore which is cool and then I don't see you for the rest of the day I have no idea where you're where you're going what you're doing I'm in the lab swearing and and burning myself and lighting fires and you're in the code dungeon that we call it um with Steve and Casey and also swearing I hear a lot of swearing coming from in there that happens as well um so what is what is your new role in American pinball um like they said I do a lot of test playing so I've been doing a lot of test playing with barbecue um so I'll go with in and I will work on whatever they want me to do for the day so if they're looking for bugs I try to find bugs um or for testing things we try to do a lot of testing so something that really I've been working on are the bash locks so when we first implemented The Bash locks on the game um we were trying to figure out so if you are a second player going into your first ball and the first player has locked a ball you only hit the other lock so that you don't qualif if y your lock on the left so that's not your lock it's there you have locked your right ball we had to code so that when the ball's released you only got two balls instead of three balls um so stuff like that so it's a lot of sitting in and looking at barbecue and hitting switches and putting things where they need to be and recreating things to make sure that we can get the code right so that it plays well for all of you um so that's super fun and exciting we also look at lights and seeing um is this mode confusing to new players when I get up to the machine do I know what I'm looking looking at um so we changed the barbecue pit targets um so that they're a different color so that they're a little bit easier on the eyes so you can kind of figure out this is what I should be shooting at this is what I should be doing um so yeah that's what I do I do a lot of testing and then Steve and I literally talk for three hours about rules and get excited with each other and play the game and figure out what we could do better and the next thing I know I don't know how to play the game anymore I knew last week then these two happened and now I don't look at this they're wonderful explaining it to me though they're Wonder cuz well that they do they bring me and they're like all right what do you think is happening I'm like I trouble I'm not going to say anything right cuz I'm don't say nothing we just go play the game what's different Y and most more often than not I'm like oh I can I I know exactly what's going on because you color coded it or because I'm I don't know like it's it's been pretty good so all right comparison between iterations we have a later iteration of the battery drawing on top of now the the now uh with the LCD in there with the grid under there you can tell why the grid is there I mean hello space shuttle I loved your grid uh we we we fought really hard for that GD oh my as I said it was my first game it was my introduction to pinball so again so you can see the iteration on the left right we have lots of everything filled in we have the center circle which includes this is the meat Edition this is the barbecue meat Edition there was a cities Edition there was a cities Edition oh right that's actually one one story I wanted to make sure I specifically told in Boston um so originally uh the the design for the game the storyboard for the game was not a food festival it was a road trip so it was kind of like a road show where you would um advance to the next city where you would go up against a local and you would try to like either was it beat them in a cook off or it would be beat them a cook off or defeat them and some other other challenge which some of theic challenges came in like that yeah something like that would happen so at that at one point we actually had a bunch of cities listed off and I I I I was still involved in the in the vision at this point and then I later on the whole thing evolved so it all got thrown out um but I insisted that there be a vague town in the top right corner of whatever fictional country if we weren't using the United States if we were whatever was where I was going to go cook me some roast beef I insist and I and um I was like I will do the voice acting I don't care I will throw on my worst Boston accent and I will cook you up some roast beef with some sauce right and I fought very hard for that and I would have gotten it for you if that whole Vision hadn't just been changed and thrown out the window entirely that was on napkin drawings we we were planning on having a vaguely Bostonian guy I my in my head it was all literally I was going to go to and Bobs and be like just take a bunch of like pictures and stalk that guy um cuz he sounded exactly like I wanted him to and just we're just going to make a famous roast beef place um and I'm still I'm Still Holding Out for some DLC I want it now but now what you see on the left are are 12 fictional barbecue restaurants some with great great puns that Jack made I love Jacks are legendary did he ever make me a ro beef pun famous P I think you might have but yeah but see now you can see on the left you see the 12 and then you can see in the middle it becomes six because 12 is a lot it is I mean it's sure it's I mean 12 gives me some flexibility because yeah you got 12 faces on a clock I can link that one through 12 subtly teach you some things there but 12 is too many things so it now his it's six semif fictional barbecue areas not necessarily America not necessarily Earth places to visit to cook barbecue against these six people these six barbecue stars who are challenging you to be better than them in barbecue so you can see how things have changed in the middle we have you know the art the Dan Hughes art in here now great you know we have the the screen integration we have the modes in there on the grid and then on the on the right you'll see everything decked out as far as what everything is pointed to Across the flyer I I have a few copies of the flyer with me here I could show and if you want a little bit of AIT better closeup of it later I can show you that but yeah those are those are the iterations to show you you know what what what it was and what it became there we're still doing 12 things too cuz like in between your six modes you're also cooking up the food and it's different every time so it's just you're just leap frogging like all right cook me some food now do this mode cook me some food now do some mode right and you can't cook and do the mode at the same time can't do at the same time cuz you get judged when you start it right so so that's I think fig fig figure out figure out how to cook good food if you want good points so there it is get get your two side dishes drop targets finish your sauce bottle Spinners on the ramps right and make sure you get the spice the customer asked for as close to what they wanted as possible the judges are specifically asking for this flavor that's the meat that's if you get that we're going to pay you like 80 million the platinum trophy that's more you can get more more yeah and then it obeys the Doctor Who I shouldn't have said that cuz we're all right well that brings us into our trivia section it is we have like what 10 there are there are there are a strong 10 and a loose 12 and they're up there there they're up there so I had to do this reversed okay okay cuz originally I wanted to have them all the answers are up there now and now can you point out where they are in the game some of them you can see some of them you have to play to see and some of them are planned yeah all right so we got Doctor Who I just give gave you that one the Doctor Who rightor who it's on the right ramp okay L the Playfield multiplier system from Doctor Who every time you hit the right ramp you get5 Playfield multiplier and it slowly ticks away and it is just as fun as Doctor Who if you ask me except we don't take away your comboing ability every 10 shots right although if you hit 10 shots in a row you don't need anymore help done you done um so Tes you had your hand up first what's give me another one way to the right the saucer that's from who done it right that's that's one reference right and who done it also since you must go to who done it the skill shot is also there because that right because you can right right because then you can also control which one you can lit because you knce who done it it starts automatic and then you can stop it you can do it here too so I saw another hand up over here that is correct and also that's not easy one good job that's great and also the F the wizard mode is going to be based on junk guard because and I need to go go back a bit here because of one one of our meet one of Baran I's meetings you know where I'm and this after we were eating dinner with his family having fun talking whatever we play his awesome Dracula and his awesome looking junkyard which I then get to the wizard mode outer space I play through it and play through it in front of everybody beat beat crazy Bob from in outer space and Barry and his family are looking at it and Barry comes up and he says basically like what was that I had not seen that before