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Pinball Party Podcast Ep 18: Scott Danesi

The Pinball Network·video·1h 57m·analyzed·Feb 3, 2023
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.029

TL;DR

Scott Denise announced as creative director of next Multimorphic P3 game, discusses audio design philosophy.

Summary

Scott Denise announces he has been named creative director of the next Multimorphic P3 pinball module. The episode covers his journey from high-stress consulting work to joining Pinball Life, his audio design philosophy (creating all sounds from scratch rather than using sample packs), his work on Total Nuclear Annihilation (TNA), and technical details about sound design, mastering, and his earlier Earthshaker Aftershock project using P-ROCK emulation.

Key Claims

  • Scott Denise is the creative director of the next Multimorphic P3 game

    high confidence · Official Multimorphic email announcement shared during podcast; Denise confirms it and discusses working with a dedicated engineer on the project

  • Scott Denise created all audio/sound effects for the next P3 module from scratch

    high confidence · Denise explicitly states 'I wrote everything in the game. Yeah, I did all the audio for it.'

  • Scott Denise never uses sounds out-of-the-box from sample packs, always modifies or creates from scratch

    high confidence · Denise states: 'I never use anything out of the box because my worst fear is somebody listening to a sound that I created or a sound that I put in a pinball machine and recognizing it.'

  • Scott Denise created all audio for Weird Al pinball including sound effects and wrote two songs

    high confidence · Denise details his Weird Al work: 'I created all of the sound effects from scratch. I wrote two songs for the game actually'

  • Scott Denise left his consulting/business intelligence job to work at Pinball Life

    high confidence · Denise describes career transition: worked in consulting and database design, gave one month notice to previous employer after 10+ years

  • Scott Denise uses Native Instruments as his primary effects/plugin choice

    high confidence · Denise states: 'I use a lot of native instruments native instruments is my go-to'

  • Scott Denise created a modified version of Earthshaker using P-ROCK emulation system

    high confidence · Denise describes Earthshaker Aftershock project: 'I installed a P-ROCK system into it with custom hardware' and 'reprogrammed Earthshaker from the ground up'

  • Scott Denise is primarily responsible for the TNA (Total Nuclear Annihilation) soundtrack

    high confidence · Host references TNA as 'probably what you're best known for' and Denise confirms he created 'the creator, the everything, the audio, all of it'

Notable Quotes

  • “You are now the creative director of the next Multimorphic P3 game.”

    Pinball Party Podcast Host @ Early in episode — Opening announcement of major news about Scott Denise's new role

  • “I wrote everything in the game. Yeah, I did all the audio for it.”

    Scott Denise @ Mid-episode — Confirms Scott Denise's complete audio responsibility for the new P3 module

  • “I never use anything out of the box because my worst fear is somebody listening to a sound that I created or a sound that I put in a pinball machine and recognizing it.”

    Scott Denise @ During audio design discussion — Reveals Denise's core philosophy on custom sound creation vs. sample pack usage

  • “It's not about the money. It's more about, like, enjoying what you're doing a lot. It's about having time to spend with your friends and with your family.”

    Scott Denise @ Career discussion section — Reflects Denise's values in leaving high-paying consulting work for pinball

  • “I took an Earthshaker and I pulled all the guts out of it... I ripped all the guts out of it. I installed a P-ROCK system into it.”

    Scott Denise @ Earthshaker Aftershock discussion — Details his ambitious emulation/modification project on a rare prototype

  • “I would happily make a third of what I'm making now doing something I love.”

    Pinball Party Podcast Host @ Career discussion exchange — Host relates to Denise's life philosophy about prioritizing passion over income

  • “I'm working with a team of a pretty significant team of very, very talented people... I've never actually worked on a project where I've got a dedicated engineer to help me through concepts.”

    Scott Denise @ P3 project discussion — Indicates the scale and resource allocation for the new P3 module

  • “The only thing, so here's exactly what I did on Weird Al. So I was in charge of making sure the sound package was all taken care of, right?”

Entities

Scott DenisepersonMultimorphiccompanyPinball LifecompanyTotal Nuclear Annihilation (TNA)gameWeird AlgameEarthshaker AftershockgameP-ROCKproduct

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Scott Denise demonstrated Earthshaker Aftershock project at shows to share with pinball community

    medium · Denise mentions: 'I brought it to some shows to share with people'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Scott Denise's core audio design principle: all sounds created from scratch, never using out-of-the-box sample packs

    high · Denise states: 'I never use anything out of the box because my worst fear is somebody listening to a sound that I created... and recognizing it'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Scott Denise transitioned from consulting/business intelligence work to Pinball Life as engineer/technician

    high · Denise describes leaving 10+ year consulting career, giving one month notice, joining Pinball Life under Terry

  • ?

    announcement: Scott Denise officially announced as creative director of next Multimorphic P3 module via email from Multimorphic's Jerry

    high · Host and Denise discuss the official announcement email; Denise confirms: 'Yeah, so check this out. Yeah, thank you so much.'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Scott Denise created custom audio/soundtrack for classic Earthshaker pinball, addressing original game's music deficiency

    high · Denise states: 'I hated the music in Earthshaker. Like, I don't know why. It just was like, but I love the gameplay... So what I did was... I reprogrammed Earthshaker from the ground up'

  • ?

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.351

0:00
The Pinball Network is online. Launching. P-P-P-Pinball Party. Oh. Hello. Two pinball parties in one week? We must have it figured out.
0:23
And I can assure you we do. This might sound a little different to those. who know this song. At the end of this episode, feel free to stay tuned and listen to the Total Nuclear Annihilation theme song, Neon Dale Edit, with Scott's approval in its entirety.
0:46
But let's not waste any more time on ceremony here. Let's party and start talking to the man himself, Mr. Scott Denise. Man, what good timing that we're recording today. Yeah, how crazy is that, huh? Yeah, aside from the crazy technical snafu you and I both had for a good, what, 37 minutes before we got to start this. Figure it out. I'm so happy that you're joining me, man. Thanks a lot. And I want to just start off right away because what a day. You are now the creative director of the next Multimorphic P3 game. Yeah. What the hell, man? It's super cool. Yeah, so check this out. Yeah, thank you so much. You bet. So this is really funny because we had this all lined up ahead of time, and you and I were just going to chat, and we were going to talk about, like, you know, whatever we were going to talk about. Yep. And I saw it, and, like, Jerry was letting me know, like, Jerry had no idea that I had, like, Jerry, the owner of Multimorphic, he had no idea that I had, like, an interview lined up for later this week. But he was like, okay, I think we're going to, you know, go ahead and, like, tease your name in the thing. And I'm like, or in the email. I'm like, when are you going to do that? He goes, I don't know, you know, like Wednesday or Thursday. I'm like, oh, all right, all right. I mean, Wednesday would be better because that would be really interesting timing-wise. Yeah.

Scott Denise @ Weird Al discussion — Clarifies scope of his work on Weird Al pinball, distinguishing it from the licensed music

Pinball Party Podcastorganization
Pinball Networkorganization
Terryperson
Jerryperson
Ericperson
Christopher Franchiperson
Bowenperson
David Van Nessperson
Native Instrumentscompany
Wavescompany
Spooky Pinballcompany
Adamperson
HSA Pinballcompany

technology_signal: Scott Denise using P-ROCK emulation system for Earthshaker Aftershock project, replacing original CPU with custom hardware and computer control

high · Denise describes: 'I installed a P-ROCK system into it with custom hardware... It's basically a circuit board that replaces the CPU in your pinball machine'

2:08
Today is Wednesday. Yeah, man. And I was at the grocery store. I had no shit. I had a jar of peanut butter in my hand, and I was like looking, and I got the buzz from like your message. I'm like, oh, I thought maybe like, oh, he has a cancel or something. And you said, did you check out this shit? and clicked on it. And yeah, like, my God. And like, I was in the way of these two ladies because I was like reading your email and they're saying, excuse me. And I kind of like zoned them out because I had earbuds in too. And yeah, so you fucked up these ladies shopping experience, by the way. But yeah, I clicked on the inside. Yeah. And it was just, you know, correct me if I'm wrong, but the email from Multimorphic was kind of just a single line that you're the next creative director of the next game. No more details really, right? I mean, can you tell us anything? There's no details. Like, I can't tell you basically anything, but I can tell you, how about this? We can squeeze everything that I'm allowed to tell you out. Let's squeeze it. How about that? Let's squeeze it, yeah. Which is not a lot. It's not a lot. So he sent the email. He's like, hey, Scott's going to be the creative director on this next module, right? So from that sentence, we've already gathered that I'm doing the creative design process of the module, and it's going to be an actual physical module, right? Mm-hmm. Just taking it apart, you know, that's that. Yeah. Okay.
3:33
I really can't share much more than that besides the fact that I'm working with a team of a pretty significant team of very, very talented people. so it's really neat for me to do that.
3:53
You know, with the Spooky stuff, I'm kind of on my own a lot. You know, with Spooky we have Eric doing really great programming and everybody else doing engineering with me and, like, all this other stuff, right? And, like, Bowen making sure we don't mess anything up and, you know, David Van Ness doing all this other cool stuff. And there are really good teams in that stuff, But I've never actually worked on a project where I've got a dedicated engineer, okay, to help me through concepts and things. So that, I hope, isn't too much information.
4:28
But, yeah, I was like, so Jerry's going to listen to this podcast. He's going to take apart every single thing. He told me, he's like, hey, man, he's like, you can't say anything yet. You can't say anything yet. I'm like, okay, okay, well, okay, fine. Well, you know what? No guarantees. You know, I'll do my best.
4:46
Can I ask something that I think I know the answer and everyone else probably does, and if you can't answer, I totally get it. Do you think it will have anything to do with the audio of this game?
4:58
Let's see. Is Jerry listening? Jerry's listening. So, yeah, I wrote everything in the game. Yeah, I did all the audio for it. Oh, okay. So that's it. Yeah. So that's it, though. That's as far as we can go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, the audio's all done. No, I had, I had, yeah, I mean, that would be weird, actually, if somebody, if I, if I did a game and then had someone else do the audio for it, it would have to be like,
5:25
that would be really strange, actually. If it was like Trent Reznor, then maybe, like, all right. Okay, well, you know what, let's, let me take that back. If it was, if it was like Trent Reznor, then I'd be like, by all means, yes, please. Sure, man. Do that audio. And then let's, let's hang out at my house and play pinball. Oh. And, you know, that would be great. They always say don't meet your heroes, but I'll tell you what, man, I don't care. I want to meet that dude. Yeah. Do you want to meet him now or, like, tapeworm, or, I mean, like, late 90s? I want to meet him now. Yeah. Straight up right now. Yeah. Yeah, because I don't think I can keep up with him partying like he used to. No.
6:03
So. Yep. Yeah, you know, because I don't do drugs or anything, so, except for the, you know, random THC once in a while because it's legal here in Illinois oh sure yeah but you know yeah I'm not a druggy guy I don't really drink too much good for you same here man I don't drink yeah yep I did plenty of what I needed to in high school and now I'm very similar as you I just I like to build stuff I like to be motivated you know so I can't keep up with Trent Reznor as well but now I bet you now I could party with him now and have a good time yeah now he's probably going to bed at 8.30 he's an adult you know what I mean and he's the same way yeah just like me 8 o'clock 8.30 you know whatever give or take Joel Engelberth one thing he says congrats by the way in a text I was going to see if you wanted to join for a quick couple minutes but he always gives me shit like oh it's past 6pm are you in bed like well I wake up at 5 I go to the gym I do music shit I do work like you know I'm like you I build shit I'm busy like you gotta go to bed to do that stuff I can't stay up and drink until 2 a.m. Yeah, exactly. It's tough, man, especially if I'm up really late doing stuff. The next day is kind of messed up for me. I mean, I need that next day. I need that motivation. I need the drive. Yeah. Well, not to make little of the P3, and I know you probably can't say anything else, but that's exciting. Nothing against their last games, but, I mean, you did have something to do with some of their old stuff. Weird Al, right? I mean, it was all the, so correct me if I'm wrong, I was at the Pinball Awards, and Weird Al did win for audio, but was it, you had everything to do with things outside of his music, is that correct? Yeah, correct. Okay. Yeah, yeah, so I took, the only thing, so here's exactly what I did on Weird Al. So I was in charge of making sure the sound package was all taken care of, right? Okay. So I created all of the sound effects from scratch. I wrote two songs for the game actually I believe they're both in there now the high score music's in there and the oh man where did they stick that other last track I'm blanking now where they stuck that track Michael's going to listen to this and yell at me can I ask let me pull on that thread you mentioned earlier you made some sound effects from scratch someone who is an audio person myself walk me through that tell me Are you doing, like, are you micing yourself bashing some celery? Are you using patches and MIDI? Yeah. Or what are you doing?
8:37
Yeah, so this is really, this is cool because there's a lot of different stuff that I did on Weird Al. A lot of it was field recordings that I've just had and done.
8:48
You get real, I used to go to, I'm just going to rant and tangent on, and I apologize. And my brain is going to be scattered all over the place because, you know, ADD stuff. Same. I'm the same. So I've got all these field recordings of when I go to different places. Back in the day, there was a lot of circuit bending going on, and I was really, really into it, and I would go to these circuit bending festivals, and I would just grab my microphone thing, record a bunch of stuff, tons of recordings. So I got all these different weird sounds and stuff, right? So I got a big library of things to start from, And then I usually put in things like, I've got like glass cracking sounds and stuff like that that I start with. Those are actually like the more organic stuff that's very specific is probably from starting from a pack that I have of just pre-recorded things that I didn't actually record. But I usually take that stuff and I take little bits and pieces of things. I never use anything out of the box because my worst fear is somebody listening to a sound that I created or a sound that I put in a pinball machine and recognizing it. Like, that would just devastate me. Normal people would be like, whatever, you know, it doesn't matter. Like, you know, people at, like, J.J.P. and Stern and all the big guys, like, they'll pull from sample packs sometimes. I know that's not always the case, but people do that, and it's totally fine. It's legit. It's the way that people do that. It really is. But you're a creator. I wanted to create everything from scratch. Yeah, I want to make it exactly the thing that, because I hear it in my head, right? I'm like, I see the thing on the screen, and then I hear it in my head, and I'm like, okay, I have to make that thing into the, you know, make the computer make that sound that's in my head. So I start with different sounds and try to do stuff, and yeah, it's really interesting. Um, there's something in Weird Al that actually, like, messes me up a lot because I went to, when I was at work, I brought my recorder with me because there's a lot of different sounds like, you know, forklift sounds and door closing and slamming sounds and walking upstairs and clicking on and off circuit breakers. Like, there's really cool stuff just all around you all the time that people don't realize. The sounds are very valuable for someone like myself. but I recorded our dock door closing so it's like a chunk like it's a big steel door that closes like normal you know with a handle on it so it does that like and that's in Weird Al and I did not process it very much at all I put a reverb on it and that's it nice and when I hear the door closing sound in the game when the ramp expires when the ramp goes back up it expires out it like messes with my brain because I think I'm at work you know it's like a noise it's the exact sound that my brain hears like when that closes it's so cool but yeah there's a lot of that stuff do you have you mentioned reverb do you have a plug-in brand of choice are you slaves are you waves what's your experience so I use a lot of native instruments is my go-to are you using the hardware too I do use hardware, and I will get to that, but the hardware is a little differently. I don't use effects. I don't use hardware effects or anything. Okay, yep. So, yeah, so basically I use, yeah, mostly native instruments for effects and stuff like that because their effect libraries are just amazing. I did have things like Waves back in the day when they had, like, Ultra Maximizer and stuff like that that I would use for mastering. for now though what I use to master now is I went and I taught myself this whole mastering chain and I'm going to learn to master my own music and I mastered TNA myself and then I mastered the Sysmo parts myself as well and I don't think I did a good job but my buddy Adam showed me that you can send your stuff off to a guy to master it, a professional, and it's not expensive. No, it's not. It's affordable. And they do such an amazing job that you are now completely on par with all the kids nowadays slamming their compressors as loud as they can go. You are. Your sound is that or better. And it's great. So now I have completely switched to mastering and doing final stuff like that to having someone help me with it, which is pretty crazy. That's awesome. I remember when we were doing our last album and they were like, for mastering it's like seven bucks a minute kind of on average. And they're like, you know, when we got all the edits done and I didn't even get mastered, but you know, for those out there who don't know what mastering really is, like don't get fooled when someone says it's remastered. Like mastering is really just bringing up to, I'll say, radio levels and you're getting it to the layperson loud like everything else. You're squashing the shit out of it when you're saying compressor. Like you're bringing the highs down, bringing the quiet stuff up. But mastering, there's an art to it, but usually when you find a mastering preset for music or a band or whatever, you get the multipressors, you get the limiters, you get everything set up. Usually the rest of that same artist's song is kind of just plug and play, hence why it's usually pretty cheap comparatively. But I'm the same way. I used to beat myself to death over mastering, because once you get the mix, and it's like, alright, now I got it. I got all the compressors, I got all of it. Then you master, and it fucks everything up. It does. All the dynamic range is fucked. Yeah, it's totally screwed up. So what I do is I used to mix and master at the same time, which was a blessing and a curse, man, because it's a blessing because I can kind of like tweak something in the mix while the master is running, like while I'm doing the mastering chain, and sort of get it to sound like a little bit better the way I want it to, but end up just actually destroying it, which is why the TNA album is so overcompressed.
15:04
Is it? I regret nothing. That album sounds very good to me. It's like the grunginess of what's happening with those compressors, because I'm running multiple compressors on all sorts of different channels on it to get this grungy, crazy sound out of it. And I think it was 100%. I wouldn't actually fix any of that. No, I wouldn't either. Let's just get into TNA for the start. We skipped all the way, probably what you're best known for to a lot of people, Total Nuclear Annihilation, the creator, the everything, the audio, all of it. I, and we're going to review it in a little bit. Let's see how hard you are on it, how much speed you give it. But I, when I heard the, so I'm going to say snare drum just because I'm not an electronic whatever, but when I'm hearing the snare hits on that album, I can hear the double compressor. I know we used to use that for exactly what you said, like just that little kind of 90s grunge distortion. You just double compressor it, sometimes vocals too. And it's such a sweet sound. It's soft. It's not hard. And it just gives that, like, you could put a distortion kind of bit crusher on it, but you're going to lose all the fucking dynamics of it. But, yeah, we would do outboard, like, 76 compressors, and then we would double it up, sometimes triple it. But, yeah, like, I'm not the art of compressors when it comes to, like, analog music. I'm fucking terrible with it aside from vocals. But I've seen some drum masters in the studio just, like, layer compressors on compressors for the exact same reason. And Beastie Boys use the shit out of them. But, yeah. And Nirvana, too. Nirvana was the Nirvana. Never Mind was the fucking, like, pinnacle of using those compressors. Their sound was, I remember it on the radio. It was louder than everything else, man. It was just louder. It's still just as clear. It's not clearer. It was so great. Yeah, it was so great. And Dave Grohl's drums on there still to this day. They're super punchy. And then, you know, you go to, like, Queens of the Stone Age, and it's just like, well, let's take all the highs and lows out of them. She has like a telephone the whole song, but still incredible. All right. I digress. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, aside from compressors, which we probably lost many, many people, TNA, total nuclear annihilation. So I've owned the game in the past. I heard about it when I, well, not when I first started playing pinball, because that was 20, 30 years ago, whatever. But getting back into the hobby and you hear about it and all that, and it's like, okay, you see it and like, all right, it looks like a pinball machine. And then finding out that you fucking did everything. and then I heard the soundtrack or heard a couple sounds like, alright man, just the main theme fucking incredible, dude no joke, I listened to it in the car before I even got the machine, before I've talked to you anything, it is a fantastic album I hear influences, I won't say influences for you because everyone's got their own thing I'm sure people would hear certain in mine but I have a very strong love for Random Access Memories Daft Punk's album and not that yours is Daft Punk, but there is so much of that melodic electronic in there where it's not just the hard... I get hardcore synth wave or any of that where it can get to the point of it's show-off music. Same with in metal, you get to Meshuggah, you get to Tool, you get to all that, or jazz, whatever. But yours, at least for the TNA, it's like a pop album at the same time, in my opinion, in the best possible way, because I fucking love catchy shit. So I could just give you compliments all day on that album, But, man, when I had it in the home and realized that, yeah, I'm not hearing a lack of resources, like maybe Stern or maybe not JGP, no offense to them, but the big-ass subwoofer, the amp in there that, you know, don't touch. Yeah, I fucking touched it, and I was like, I'm going to tweak this thing and make it sound awesome. Did you follow the guide that I did that I wrote up for that, for touching the amp?
18:56
No. I mean, if you hadn't have done that, like, you do that, and you can actually get some really good sound out of that system. Well, myself and another audio engineer, I showed him, because the other pinball machines, he came downstairs when I was fixing the Godzilla ones, because the woofer in the bottom just sounded like ass, you know, paper, like whatever. And right next to it was TNA. And I was like, listen to this shit. And I turned it on. He looked at me like, holy fuck. He's like, yeah, man. So I popped it open. I'm like, it's got a subwoofer in a box. And he's like, where's the crossover? What's the crossover? I'm like, I don't know what it's crossed over. He's like, well, what do you think? It's like 60 or 80. I'm like, fuck it. I'm like, go get your draft live. Yeah, I was like, let's go measure this shit. Let's get weird with it.
19:33
Yeah, man. I mean, top to bottom, impressive. I mean, at least gameplay audio, we'll talk about it later. But man, can I just ask, how did that start? Were you just, because you work, okay, I'm like you, I'm a scatterbrain, but okay. If you're now a creative director of a game, are you still going to be at Pinball Life? Or do you have another time? Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay, so yeah, let me explain that. Yeah, you know what? I got this question today from a really good friend. They're like, you didn't leave Pinball Life, did you? I was like, oh, hell no, man. So that's my, I love my job, right, my day job at Pinball Life. Yeah. I would probably say, if I had to say what I do over there, I'd probably say I'm the engineer and technician of, like, everything that is technical and complicated. Okay. So I manage our, I do all the engineering stuff for mechanical and electrical stuff. I do the maintenance and running of our laser system. I do, like, you know, all this other ridiculous technical things. I even manage our information system. I build our business intelligence reporting applications and that kind of crap. Like, it's nuts. I hope they pay you well. Jesus. But I, you know, it's enough, you know. It's not, it's pinball, right? Yeah.
20:50
You know, it's not. Sure, I could make, like, way, way more money going back to doing what I did before, which was consulting and business intelligence design and database design and stuff. Yeah, I'll hire you. Way go back. Yeah, like, but, dude, at some point in your life, you kind of realize, like, you know, it's not really about the money. It's more about, like, enjoying what you're doing a lot. It's about having time to spend with your friends and with your family and all this other stuff. And, you know, with that other stuff, I was just, I was way too stressed out, spending way too much time working for somebody else. Can I, that is exactly where I'm at about a month, a month, about 18 months, two years ago. Same thing, dude. Like, I work in software and, like, you know, software pays well, all that kind of shit. I'm an engineer in software, all that. Yeah. But I'm still sick of it. And that's the only reason I started doing this podcast. No offense to anyone else. It's like, oh, fucking you're great. Yeah, well, I just wanted to stop doing what I was doing and get back into audio. So I'm hitting it from all angles, from music to all the – and that's just all I'm doing. And you've been the most excited person I've talked to, or I've been the most excited to talk to you more than anyone because you kind of have done all of it, including the music. So, yeah, I feel you, man. It's not about the money. It's about time left with people you love, doing things you want to do. I would happily make a third of what I'm making now doing something I love. So I'm trying to. I'm trying to get out of it and into audio.
22:16
It's tough. I mean, it's really hard to pull that ripcord. Did you do it slowly or just stop? No, I slammed it, dude. I freaking parachuted, man. Hell yeah, dude. I went like this. So this is what happened, right? So I was doing that work, stressed out a lot. Yeah. I was in pinball already. I was a hobby. I was a hobbyist of pinball, right? And I'm, like, tinkering with machines. I'm like, man, I love this stuff. I love the engineering. In college, I took a bunch of mechanical engineering and electrical engineering classes, but I don't actually have a degree in mechanical or electrical engineering. My degree is in information system design. But I was able to take all those extra physics classes and engineering classes and all sorts of crazy stuff, like learn solid works back in college. I learned CAD in high school back in, you know, 96. Sure. So it's like, yeah, I'm actually, like, pretty old now. I was born in 82, so that's where I'm at. Oh, me too. Exactly. Yay! Fucking A. All right. Yeah, exactly. 82 is a great year, man. Dude, it's awesome. So, yeah, that's awesome. Yeah. So, yeah, so I learned all that stuff and, like, carried that out through my whole life. I've always tinkered and built things ever since I was, like, a small child. So, you know, when I started just doing information systems, I was doing that because I was like, oh, it's a good, solid job. It's interesting. enough, you know, make some money. It'd be great. You think that's what life is about. And then all of a sudden it's like, you kind of realize you're like, dude, like it's not like it. I mean, money helps you be sort of happy, but if you can't even enjoy that, it's a tool. Yeah. What's the point? Yeah, it's a tool. Exactly. You have to be able to use it properly. So it's like, yeah. So yeah, I just, uh, I was talking with Terry. I had been friends with him for, you know, a little less than 10 years at that point. And yeah, I, he was like, yeah, you know, we've got this, we're looking for a guy to come do our SolidWorks stuff, you know, and help with our 3D printing and stuff like that. And I had been already doing SolidWorks and 3D printing on my own, just tinkering and stuff. So I was like, I'm like, you know, man, I wonder, I'm like, how much are you paying for this thing. Yeah. You know, I'm like, I wonder if I could do this. And he told me how much he, he like, he gave me the thing. He's like, this is how much we're looking to pay somebody for it. And I'm just like, Oh, let me get the wrong back on the shelf. Yikes, man. I'm like, Oh my God. I'm like, I'm like, all right. Well, I sat down, like talk with my wife about it. And, uh, and we decided, you know, let's just do it. She's like, she's like, Hey man. yeah you know what she's like it's fine it'll be okay we'll we'll make it happen we'll make it work she's still got a job so it's still like she's we've got that stability in case something weird happened yeah you know good for you god bless her heart too fuck yeah i just freaking gave him like i gave him a i've been with the company at 10 for 10 years at that point i'm at 11 yeah yeah i gave him that's about the limit like yeah dude and you're sick because we're the same age, so it's like, there's something about like 35 where you're like, uh-huh.
25:25
Yeah, it's like, yeah, and you're just like, okay, so yeah, it's pretty crazy. So I gave them like, instead of a two-week notice, I gave them like a month notice because it was, I was pretty integral in that company I was at because I helped, I was like number the seventh employee of that large, large company. I'm in a very similar boat. So I kind of helped them build this whole thing, so I had to kind of get out. So that's what was so hard. I had to leave these people, man. Yeah. Like, I had to leave my family. That's tough.
25:56
But you get over it once you realize you've got to focus on you a little bit, man. You've got to kind of do stuff for you and not for other people as much. I wish I could say more, but if anyone in my company is listening, I just want to say much more. But I live that... Yeah, dude, I get it. Yeah, fuck. Yeah, you've got to be careful with that stuff now. Yeah. They're going to come after me, man. They're not coming after you. I'm giving the weird advice here. good well I'm in the same boat I just need to pull the ripcord and maybe maybe oh yeah yeah you just have to have a plan I mean all you have to do is just kind of plan it a little bit and then you can just you can get out of there you know I still I still send these people Christmas cards so uh you know it's it's fine it's fine everything's fine um but yeah I ended up taking that so to go back to what I was bringing up or why pinball life and one shout out to pinball Life. I buy almost everything. Yeah, why are we even talking about? So I'm up in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, which is, I think, are you down by Chicago-ish area? Yeah, I'm about 45 minutes west of the city. Okay. So I'm about four hours north of you probably, but yeah, I buy all my stuff from Pinball Life, everything that I can. I love everything there, but what I was going to ask is, so how did TNA start? Was it once you started working at Pinball Life, like let me tinker or did it did this did it start as a seed before that walk me through that uh yeah so that's an interesting question because it started in my head as a seed before pinball life um before i started working for terry like before i made that transition i took a two-week break and i was I was working on Earthshaker Aftershock like before I quit. So I started that. I don't know if you know much about that privately. No, sorry, I don't. So I took an Earthshaker and I pulled all the guts out of it. It was, okay, so it's Earthshaker prototype number two all serial numbered together. It was restored by a guy the HSA pinball was beautifully restored. Everything clear-coded, perfect every way. You know, I got this beautiful Earthshaker. So I'm looking at it. I'm playing it. I brought it to some shows to share with people. People are like, yeah, it's great. It looks great. That's awesome, you know. And I'm like, but I wanted to make this thing a little more special because I hated the music in Earthshaker. Like, I don't know why. It just was like, but I love the gameplay, you know, everything else about it. The layout's great. So what I did was I did what any sane person would do, and I took this prototype number two, which only, you know, is very special and only exists in one place, and I ripped all the guts out of it. Of course. I installed a P-ROCK system into it with custom hardware by some other of my friends overseas and some, like, custom, all this crap. I ripped the back glass out. I put a piece of clear glass in it so you could see all the electronics that I put into it. I screwed an auto launcher to the bottom of the prototype XR7 playfield with screws, you know, as one does in a prototype XR7 playfield. Uh And I reprogrammed Earthshaker from the ground up Can you tell me I heard P I heard people talk about that Tell me like I don't know what it is because I think I can assume what it is. A little hardware. It's basically a circuit board that replaces the CPU in your pinball machine and allows you to plug a computer into this circuit board that now gives the computer full control of that pinball machine. Does it do, is it like an API? Does it have like hardware like translation or what's it? Yeah, so it does a ton of hardware processing for you. So like flipper buttons and stuff, that's all handled on the hardware side. And your computer just says, hey, activate the flippers so that when you hit the buttons, it does the flippy stuff. Right. So there's a lot of cool stuff going on there and it's a lot of safety features and watchdogs and stuff on there so you can't like really mess anything up too bad. Okay. But you have to run something on the computer that tells the machine how to act when a certain switch is hit. Like, what does it want to do? You want to fire a coil or do you want to do something? You want to play a sound or animation or whatever? So it allows you to completely start over on a pinball machine. It's super cool. Yeah. It's been around for many, many years. I think I put my first P-Rock in something in 2010 or 2011. But it's like something that a layperson could, it's not like, hey, you have to learn C++ or Java to, like, program this thing. It's, oh, when you hit X switch, hit Y flipper. Like, it's that. No, it's not that easy. Okay. It's actually, it's difficult. You made it sound much easier. Okay. Yeah, it, I mean, yeah, there's a lot of framework out there, a lot of frameworks that do exist now to help you with that. And there's a lot of communities out there that are helping other people homebrew these games. But basically, it's a homebrew platform to allow you to make a game from scratch. I just didn't make a game from scratch. I took an Earthshaker and put new music rules, light shows, all sorts of crazy stuff in it. There are videos on YouTube of, you know, when Jack Danger came over to my house and played Earthshaker. There's me demoing stuff, like different things that I was working on at the time. You just have to kind of search for that. I guess you can just search my name and then Earthshaker Aftershock, and it should come up.
31:35
Yeah, so I started with that, and then I was like, I kind of caught the bug of like, wow, I can actually do this? Like, I should try to actually build a full game, because I was getting pressure from some of my other friends, too, of like, dude, you could totally build a game. Just do it, you know, like one of those things. and I'm like, you know, I'm like real bad at peer pressure, I guess. So I started. You can say no to drugs, but you can't say no to pinball. Yeah, I mean, it just depends what it is, you know. So did you think that from working on Earthshaker that the bottleneck was the actual programming side of it? You thought you had the hardware and everything else. So was that the eye-opening moment? I wasn't too, well, the problem is I, the problem, I say it's a problem. The problem is I have a good understanding of hardware and software, so I wasn't really intimidated by any of it. I was more just intimidated by if I could make something cool or not.
32:39
So that was my test, right? So I'm like, can I make something cool with this Earthshaker, right? And for me, I thought it was cool. Like, it was a simple rule set. It expanded a little bit on what was already there in Earthshaker. I just kind of replicated sort of how Earthshaker worked, but with, you know, tweaking it a bit. I used new vocal call-outs. I had my wife actually record the vocal call-outs for me. Awesome.
33:06
It's really neat. The whole thing runs off of, like, a Raspberry Pi, which is kind of neat, too. And then, yeah, the light shows. I was consulting with Dutch Pinball at the time. Okay. And they let me use their light show generator.
33:24
which is, I don't know, this was a big thing back in, like, 2014, and, like, 2012 and 2014, somewhere in between there. This was huge. Like, Dutch Pinball made this light show animator that was, like, Hardware? Software. So it was a software application that was, like, a flash animation generator where you would take a picture of your play field, map out where all the inserts go, and then you could, like, you could swipe, like, animations over it, and it would translate that into a file that you could program into your pinball machine and make it do those light shows. You must have used that in TNA, because, like, the lighting in TNA is second to none, where I can just see that it was, like, created from, like, a visual standpoint first, where things just, like, organic. I don't know. I don't want to. Is that? Okay. That is, yeah, 100%. So those light shows were generated using the Dutch pinball framework, which is super cool. and that was all done with permission, obviously. Yep.
34:27
So, yeah, super cool stuff. I mean, working closely with those guys was a lot of fun, too. But, yeah, that's how that kind of started. I proved to myself I could make something fun. I brought that to shows. I brought it to different places to share with people. Yep. And then, you know, I was like, okay, well, I want to build a game from scratch. Let's do, let me see if I can do everything on it. And I gave myself a one-year timeline. It was in the, it was in like November of 2015 when I said to myself, like, hey, I'm going to make this game. I barely have an idea.
35:11
I'm going to do all of it. and I have to have a playable version by Expo 2016. And that's what I said to myself. And I was like, it was so aggressive.
35:23
And I did it. I pulled it off. Yeah, so Expo 2016 was the first time the world got to see it firsthand, like in real life.
35:33
And it was just unreal to me. I didn't think people were going to really like it because I built it for me. I was like, I want, I love the older games, like the 80s style games and I wanted this particular thing and I wanted to do RGB light shows like full RGB light shows in this thing the way that I wished Jersey Jack would have done it in Wizard of Oz it's not a big knock on Jersey Jack they had this technology and it's insane on Wizard of Oz and people were It was the most advanced lighting system in a pinball machine to date, right, when that game came out. But in my opinion, I think they overused it, which would be expected because it's new and fresh and insane, right? So I was like, you know, I would love to show myself and show other people what you can do with a full RGB system by using it only when it matters. you know, when you're playing TNA, there's lights blinking. Yeah, that's, you know, it's not rainbows everywhere. No. It's not like, yeah. But sometimes. Sometimes. I mean, why is no one else using, maybe they are, but like I still see it enough, like the RGBGI. Like it's, you know, nothing is there. They're not very bright.
36:56
But I don't care. They look so good. Oh, man. So for, I went through a lot of iterations to try to get RGB lights for the GI on TNA. bright enough to where they could actually act like GI. That was really tough. I ended up going with a very, very bright, specially designed 10-millimeter LED. It's an RGB LED that we had to have custom made because I just couldn't find anything. Yeah, we had to actually get it manufactured.
37:31
So it's a pain. But if you look at that thing, we've got, you know, there's tons of replacement parts for those, because we made so many of them.
37:41
But, yeah, I couldn't find anything bright enough. But I did finally. But it's not easy. Do you have anything to do with the TNE 2.0 being re-released, or was it kind of just like they consult with you, or was it? I do, yeah. So there were talks with Spooky about re-running it again. They wanted to run it in between their Halloween Ultraman and Scooby-Doo. So I was like, okay, you know, no problem.
38:11
You know, we agreed on a, you know, like timelines and stuff and how many they were going to sell and everything. So that was really cool.
38:21
What I didn't realize was the cost that it was going to come out at, unfortunately. and I had a lot of people very upset, including myself. I was a bit upset about the fact that it was so expensive, and I did ask them about it, and it was like, you know, they just kept saying, like, hey, it's just, you know, prices have gone up on all this stuff, labor has gone up, all this other stuff. They just kept saying that stuff. But, you know, I don't have any, I don't work there. I don't have any insight into anything like that, so I just have to trust them, you know, and I can't tell them, like, no, you can't sell it for $9,000. You can't do that. You have to sell it for $7,500. I can't say that. Like, that's, you know. Yeah. You know, I, yeah, for me, like, and honestly, I just, I get a flat, I will get a flat royalty for every TNA that is sold. And that is it. Yeah. I should buy another one. Are you proud of TNA? Very, very much. Yeah. Good. It's basically like, it's everything I ever wanted in a pinball machine all put together, and I believe it's done right. It's done really well.
39:32
You know, I probably would have put a faster computer in it, maybe. To solve what? To solve the video issues I was having. You can't tell by playing it at all because I've disguised every sort of problem that happens in there like really, really well. Yeah. I'm hiding it, but it struggles to play those full screen videos when there's a million other things happening. And I'm also running the light shows at 30 frames per second. So every single LED, 107 of them in TNA, is updating itself 30 times per second. So it's very, very intense what it's actually doing with those light shows. And I'm able to get those really nice fades and everything too. Let me ask you an even maybe dorkier question. Video files on that, what are they? MKV, MP4s. Okay. Yep. Yeah, I'm running straight MP4s on it. Yeah, it just doesn't like to run the full screen stuff while the light shows are doing crazy crap. And why is it that that sounds like very high quality wave uncompressed? Maybe it's not. I mean, maybe it's just really well. Oh, the audio? Yeah. Versus like a Stern or everything else. Yeah, because the MP4s aren't containing the audio. The MP4s are only doing the video. The audio is running on a separate channel completely. Yeah. Okay. So it's got its own little thing. But it's all running on one core, which is, like, it's running out of Python. So it's doing all that processing, including video, audio, everything is all running from one core of the CPU. Jesus. Which stinks. Because that's why I wish I had a little more power for it, because I could have, like, been a little sloppier with my code. I wouldn't have had to, like, write such efficient, like, little tweaks to it. All right. Well, let's save that for a little bit when we review that fucker. Sure. Let me, I am not, what do you call the music? I'm much more of a rock, punk rock, metal. It's the music that you make and listen to other than synth wave and electronic. I say electronic. What is it kind of, what's the genre? What's the genre of it? Well, I just say like I listen to mostly electronic music. Okay. But there are a lot of other exceptions that I do listen to. I listen to a lot of 80s music as well. Right. Yeah. Like what, Van Halen? awesome, by the way. Van Halen's great. Listen to this. Eddie Money made a lot of really good hits, dude. Yeah? Yeah, it's pretty great. It sounds crazy to be like, ah, he's just like one-hit wonder guy. No, go play his top hits. You're going to be like, I know that song. I remember that song. You'll be like, alright, Eddie Money, you're alright. And then watch that shaken music video because he's absolutely just hilarious in that. It's kind of like Fountains of Wayne. where people are like, oh, Phones of Wayne, Stacey's not. I'm like, yeah, sure. Yeah, but? But have you heard the song That Thing You Do? Or have you heard, like, their arms into certain music records? Like, oh, shit, they've made a lot of, like, yeah. Unfortunately, oh, God, Phones of Wayne. Yeah, it's cool. So, yeah, I listen to a lot of that. I do, I listen to a small range of, like, punk rock and stuff, too. Nice. Like, SNFU and Husker Du and stuff. They're pretty good. Do you know the band Counterpunch out of Chicago? I don't but I should write that down probably yeah the bass player recorded with us last time but fantastic oh that's cool um okay so I asked that for those out there who know electronic music what's your favorite artist I guess maybe it's not electronic I'm just assuming favorite artist oh like what I'm listening to like right now the most sure um probably an artist called Black Sun Empire um that is a drum and bass duo that uh make some absolutely sick drum and bass music. They're really, really talented. Okay. Yeah, that stuff's awesome. I've been listening to a lot of, like, that really, like, so simply it got kind of overplayed for me.
43:52
And I listened to a ton of that, like, back in, like, 2014 and up. But I've been listening to more of, like, the hardcore, like, cyberpunk stuff, too. Mm. Um, those, and honestly, what's weird about that is that they're almost all one hit wonders making these songs. So I couldn't even tell you like a good artist to go listen to like, you know, good quality cyberpunk music. It's because they're all, it's random, man. And like, it's these kids in their, in their bedrooms making this crazy stuff, you know? Do you like, this is what TNA reminds me of the music when I first hear it, like gut reaction right when I hear it is some of the stuff off the Drive soundtrack. Do you know the song, you have Night Call by Kavinsky? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's the synth wave stuff that I kind of burned out on, though. Yeah, that's what I thought you were going to say. I wanted to put that song in TNA when I had it. Like, I want to put this song in it. Not as the main theme, but just in there, like maybe like Reactor 4 or something, you know, some shit like, you know, because it just seemed like it fit so well. That's a song I like to listen to. Same with TNA. Like, at night, on the highway, by myself, put it on, crank it. That's my thing. Just cruising music, man. Yeah. Oh, god damn. It's great. Yeah, there's something about that 100 BPM stuff. It's really good. Did you ever listen to The Network?
45:21
Green Day is kind of the band that they didn't say was them, but they did like this 80s kind of... No, I did not. No. Ah. I should probably look that up though. They wear masks and everything so they don't call them by their names but it's Green Day with a keyboardist.
45:36
Yeah, at the network. But it's the same shit. Alright, I need to get that out of the way because I don't know shit about Synthwave and all that but I'm sure a lot of people who are out there do want to know what Scott Denise is listening to. Yeah, go listen to some Blackstone Empire. You'll see what I'm talking about. It's pretty great.
45:53
I went and saw them in concert a couple years ago and And I've been to hundreds of raves in my life, okay, which are underground warehouse in a field, in a barn. Yeah, like anywhere. And they purposely at raves bring in the largest sound systems they can, right? Because you're in the middle of nowhere. It's like it's this illegal thing. They want it as loud as possible for you. But I saw Black Sun Empire, and they did a show over at Sound Bar in Chicago.
46:30
And it was the loudest thing I've ever heard. Louder than a Tool concert. Oh. And it was so loud that my earplugs, my actual, like, musician earplugs that bring everything down by, like, 15 dB. Yep. My ears are ringing through those at the end of the night. Jesus. I'm like, I damaged my ears through my earplugs. And there were people there, there were people there with no earplugs on. The last show, you mentioned it, the last show that I saw that pissed me off about a live venue was Tool, because they were playing at the Target Excel Center in Minneapolis. And to me, I can't listen to Tool in a big center like that. I need good acoustics, because Tool, like, you know, you get the metalheads who go like, oh, it's fucking metal. like, no, it's really good music that just happens to have a lot of metal in it. So when you can't hear it. Yeah, it's very intricate. I mean, it's prog rock at its finest. And that one was the same thing. I had the earplugs like, can't hear shit. Maynard actually blew his voice out, so they had to cut the set in half, but I've seen him a few times. But that was the best time I ever saw, I guess it was Perfect Circle, but at the Quest in Minneapolis, Prince's old bar, very small venue. And when Perfect Circle first came out with like Nine Inch Nails and they were touring with them, same thing, they weren't telling anyone. So we went there and like, oh my God, this is fucking Maynard. And what the fuck is this? But it's a lot better acoustics. You could hear it and it's fantastic. But that's a place like 300 people versus...
48:00
I'm sure someone's tracking. Yeah, that's so cool, man. All right. So this next segment, people want to get to know your balls. All right. We're getting to know your balls. So this has been evolving lately. It was always just kind of asking people questions about pinball, what you prefer, this or that kind of stuff. We've started to put in a little more personal questions. We started last week, and Greg and I started asking some fear stuff, and Greg Bone looked at me at the pinball awards. He looked at me like, I'm afraid of everything, and the whole room just got like, oh, shit, this is getting dark. So I put some really depressing piano music to it and brought it darker. But anyway, let's get going on this.
48:47
Do you prefer location or home play for pinball? Oh, heck yeah. This is an easy one. I prefer being on location and playing because putting money in a game is way more of an investment of your ability to play that game. You need to really focus on what you're doing, right? My buddy and I put dollars in that thing. it's like our money's on the line we gotta keep that ball alive we gotta get on it we try to keep playing this thing so it's a lot of fun it's also really cool to play the games on location too because sometimes they're broken and that is a fun thing to try to play around so let's say that there's a bunch of targets on, you're playing Dracula right and there's a bunch of targets that are busted and you can't get the multi-ball started because you can't like the castle locks so you got to change it you got to change up your strategy now you got to be like all right those targets don't work so i i got to get just mist going and i got to get you know the coffin lock going because that's sort of working or maybe the ramp doesn't lift you know and you just got to like spam the ramp a whole bunch you know i don't it's it gives you a different perspective on how to play it. Like, your left flipper's dead? Good luck. Yeah, you know? It's like, try and play through it.
50:07
It's the only time where playing a broken game is kind of fun, because at home, it's like, alright, we'll take the glass off, you know, fix it and do that shit, but... Yeah, that's lame. Just leave it. Yeah, well, on location, I don't give a shit. At home, my god. Alright, going to the other side of the coin.
50:23
Steve, if you want to answer this. What is one of your biggest fears in life? Fears? Okay, so a serious answer to that. I am actually afraid of something very strange.
50:36
And I can tell you why I'm afraid of it, and I think I know exactly where it came from. Okay. I have something called submechanophobia. Okay, I figured out there's a word for it recently. Okay. In fact, recently, I mean like maybe six years ago. But I don't like mechanical things underwater where they shouldn't be.
50:58
Okay, so... Interesting. I give you some examples of things that freak me out, and I give you some examples of things that don't freak me out. Okay. So, swimming pools don't bother me. Okay? Those are mechanical things. Those are mechanical bodies of water, sort of, I guess. Sure.
51:16
I... Swimming in the ocean and seeing... while having my goggles on and seeing the man-made concrete structures that are on the bottom of the deeper part of the ocean there to keep the waves under control freaks me out. I want to get away from that.
51:39
I don't know why. And I know where this came from. The ultimate scary thing was we were swimming in a quarry in college, and we were trying to, we were diving down deep to see, like, because the water was decently clear and we were trying to dive down to see who could, like, dive down the furthest and it got really cold, you know? Like, if you've ever been here in swimming, like, that where you can, where it's, like, super, super deep and you can go down and it actually starts getting a little darker. Yeah. If you go down and then it, like, you pop back up, it's kind of fun. Well, we were swimming down there and I'm diving down and it's getting cold and at the bottom of the goddamn quarry, there's an old rusty, like, backhoe that had fallen in there a long, long time ago. Oh. And I saw that and I'm like, fuck this. I'm like, I am out of here. I never went back into that water. Like, I'm like, I'm not going in there. No way. I don't know what it is, but that was the first time I realized, like, that's an irrational fear. that is something that I just don't think I can get over, and I don't think I really even want to try and get over it. I don't care.
52:49
What's it called again? Submechanophobia. Man. So, yeah, like, sometimes if you see, like, pipes and crap going down into water, that's a little creepy. Yeah. Like, that bothers me a little bit.
53:04
Like the Hoover Dam intake ports. Yeah. That's awful. Imagine swimming by that. Screw that, man.
53:13
Screw that. All right, well, let's bring you up a little bit. What's your favorite era of pinball? Oh, man. All right, good. Okay, let me snap out of that for a second. Okay. Not thinking about water. Not thinking about Hoover Dam. Swim up.
53:26
My favorite era is, like, it's totally the 80s stuff, maybe the early 90s stuff. I really love the creativity that was going on back in the 80s, and I have a really good respect for that. I think it kind of shows, too, with what I put in TNA. I wanted to kind of recreate something of that era with modern technology. So, yeah, definitely my favorite era, for sure. Okay. Do you have any horror stories from the secondary market, buying, selling, trading, any of that kind of stuff?
54:02
Okay. So I have, this is going to offend some people, and I apologize ahead of time. I mean nothing by it, okay? But the horror story I have is I went to go buy a Tron pinball machine, right? Which is an amazing game, right? Yep. I'm in the market for one right now. Perfect. This is the year 2020, right? The pandemic's kind of doing its thing, right? Yeah. I'm going in, you know, I'm going in to buy this game. Guy took some pictures of it. Looks really good. I'm like, dude, that's awesome. He was asking a decent price for it. You know, it sounded great. I'm like, okay. You know, I just sold some other games. I got some money here. I'm going to go pick up this Tron. And the guy was super nice. Had some really nice games, right? Like all these games lined up.
54:56
And I went in there. I took one look at the Tron. And I'm like, I'm looking at it, and I'm like, man, something's not right here. Something's not right. I'm looking at this thing, and the play field looks brand new on it. Okay. And he didn't say anything. He didn't say anything about brand new play field swapping or anything like that. But you could tell how shiny it was?
55:20
Yeah, I could tell by the wear and the scoop. That's the first thing I looked for. Because Tron, that scoop gets just hammered on Tron. So you can tell about how many plays are on the actual play field. So I saw that. The scoop looked new. I'm like, okay, there's something funky going on here. I'm like, did you buy this game new? I'm like, where did you get this game from? And he's like, oh, I got it brand new from Stern. I unboxed it myself. And I'm like, well, did you play field swap it or anything? And he's like, no, no play field swapping or anything. It's just, you know, I just don't actually play my games. Yeah. And I'm like, I'm like, I kind of, my, my head's like tilting a little bit. And I'm like, really? Uh, okay. So I, uh, he's like, well, you know, I mean, sometimes I like turn them on and like let the grandkids play them, you know, and then like, you know, turn it off. Um, and I'm like, okay. So I like pop it open real quick. I'm like checking the audits on the thing and it had 50 plays on it in like 10 years. Wow. Yeah, I'm like, what is what? I'm like, alright, well, sold. Okay, here's the money. Yeah, here's the money. But I'm like, I'm horrified by this, though, that you haven't even really played the game. Like, it didn't occur to me yet at that point in my life that there are people out there that collect pinball machines that don't actually play them.
56:52
And it was a big shock for me. It was, you know, I always thought people were, like, kind of kidding when they would joke about that kind of stuff.
57:00
But, yeah, this, he's like, don't you want to, like, pop it open or anything? Like, take the glass off it or something? I'm like, nah, it's good. I'm like, I don't care. Yeah. Because I don't even care if it works, dude. I'm like, I don't even care if it has a CPU in it right at this point. Yeah. It's like 50 plays, bro. Yeah. Yeah, 50 players on the thing. Behind you? It's the one behind me. There's a camera going on back. It had all sorts of mods on it, too. I had to take out some of them because I'm not really a mod guy. Well, what about the ramp lights? You got the ramp lights on? So it didn't have ramp lights, but I did track down the guy that actually built the ramp lights and got myself a kit. Those are completely non-existent anymore. I know. I'm trying to buy Raymond Davidson's right now. He's tickling me with it. Yeah, but I, so, Doc was saying, is it all Powerballs and that thing back there? Yeah, yeah, so that's, well, yeah, I mean, it's actually my favorite game that's not TNA. It's right now to play. God, you're making me want to know more. Fuck. Yeah, it's such a good game, and I actually, I have a, like, when Pinball Browser was new, I made a Tron, like, I made a Tron version of the software with, like, all Daft Punk songs in it and all Daft Punk remixes. so it's all like 100% Daft Punk junk in there. But yeah, with the Power Balls in it, you can't play it. So never play Tron If you get a Tron don even put Steel Balls in it man Seriously throw them in the garbage Go get yourself four Power Balls put them in there from the beginning and don look back Tell me why It the only way to play that game It's just, it makes it chaotic.
58:42
It's very fast, and it's just way more fun with those Power Balls. Fuck! God damn it! Ray Day, bitch! It's a completely different dynamic when you're playing. Yeah, it sucks. And I know the Power Balls are expensive, so that sucks too. But I'm sorry, not sorry. It's worth it. You know what I mean? Now, yeah. Yep. Yeah, now I get it. Okay. So what's beyond Tron? What's something in life you're grateful for?
59:04
Oh, man, dude. Wow. It's going to sound super stupid and corny. I apologize ahead of time. But I am very thankful for the people that supported myself and like all the projects that I'm working on. There are tons of people that are, you know, putting their hard-earned money into stuff that I'm making that is, like, that I wouldn't personally be able to do because of money, you know? Like, I cannot buy a $9,000 pinball machine, but there are people that are doing that. And that's, it's very humbling, and, yeah, it's really cool, and I do really appreciate that. no that's not corny that's a fantastic answer it's super corny but yeah thank you for all the people that helped me yeah thanks I'm really appreciative for real it's crazy it's super crazy it's nuts to see those things out in the wild it's crazy I get it when you make something and someone actually wants to spend money on it just feels weird and positive in style yeah Yeah, like if someone buys my album, like I get a notification that someone bought my album. Yeah, that's crazy.
60:23
Oh, God, fuck, dude. That I'm appreciative for, and that's crazy that people, I mean, it's very validating because of how much work goes into this stuff. But at the same time, it's just like, you know, anyway, I'm super appreciative and very humbled by that. So when you're playing pinball, do you like hitting ramps or spinners better? Oh, come on, man. You've seen my games. I'm just kidding. Ramps. Yeah, spinners. Fucking ramps. Spinners all the way. Nah, forget ramps, man. Ramps are just there to add money to the game. No, I'm just kidding.
60:59
Jokes. But the spinners just feel so good, man, on a game. They're so fun, especially when someone lights the spinner. Like, you put a really bright insert underneath the spinner, and while the spinner's spinning, it flashes. and then it, yeah, I got that, I got that thing from Steve Ritchie, man. I did that in TNA where that inserts right into there and it just like, like colorful crap. Yeah.
61:25
Yeah. Steve is the king of that stuff. What's something, I guess it could be pinball related, it doesn't have to be. What's something you want in life?
61:35
Ooh, something I want in life. Oh, man. so I personally strive to have a very peaceful life I just want like peaceful stuff right so like my house is we set it up to like where everything's pretty peaceful and like stress-free and we try like my wife and I try not to like bring stress home uh except for like when we're I'm but you know I'm working on stuff um it kind of goes against all the stuff I create because I create stressful, intense music, stressful, intense pinball games, yet I just want peace.
62:15
So it's kind of funny. But, yeah, if I had to say something that I want in life, I would have to say peace because it's just,
62:25
it feels good to be in a peaceful area, right? I think most people kind of want that. Yeah, this is not a lie. My wife convinced me to see a therapist like two years ago. not because of like, oh shit, fucking crazy. Just you could use it. Uh, and I knew why. Yeah. And the thing she asked me was like, what do you want? And for me, I just, I just want peace. Like, I just want this to stop. Like just creating, creating nonstop. So at home, like I, my biggest problem is shutting it off. I just fucking can't do it. I can't relax. I can't not create. I can't, you know, just, so I, I totally, dude, when you say it, I'm shaking my head. I get it. I fucking get it, dude. I think people with attention deficit hyperactive disorder do just strive for peace because peace is very hard to get in their brains. Can't get it. Yeah, it doesn't exist unless you force it to exist.
63:25
And it's very, very hard to do. But, you know, over time you can learn to deal with it better. yeah um do you get this when you're making music when i'm making music um and i'm like not a song that i'm like really like i can't figure it out and i'm really forcing it but one that kind of you know when they write themselves and you're in it for like eight i'll go like eight hours straight if it's one that's like right inside our guitar bass vocals drums mixer like it just keeps coming keeps coming i don't eat i don't think i don't need anything i just suddenly it's like eight hours later i'm like oh and that for me is peace like i'm just focused on this thing and it just pours out and I'm not thinking about shit. But if I'm not doing that, then I'm like, I got to be, you know. Do you get like that when you're in the groove of writing a song? I do. And that's actually the hyper-focusing of like ADHD that I suffer from, as I'm assuming that you do as well from that. You know, my therapist thought so. They did the test twice and I'm like right on the border. It's kind of like, well, I can control it if I really want to, But I also can't well. Yeah, it's difficult.
64:39
But, yeah, that whole obsession thing is your brain just hyper-focusing on something. But what's nice is that when I try to explain to people what goes on in someone's brain with ADHD, it's like imagine a bunch of different televisions that are on inside your brain. Like, you close your eyes, there's a bunch of televisions, right? You don't actually see this, obviously, but, like, you have one big television in front of you, which is what you are currently doing, right? Like, I'm currently sitting at my computer talking with you, but I have all these other televisions on that are surrounding the big television, and they're all really interesting crap, right? And I'm constantly, like, looking away from the main television and looking at the other thing and looking at that and, like, going, oh, yeah, that thing. And then looking back at the thing I'm supposed to be doing and then forgetting what I was doing, right? But then you want those televisions to shut off the other ones so that you can just hyper-focus. And what happens is with the ADHD is it swings really hard one way or the other. Every single person has multiple things they're kind of thinking about at the same time. but it's really large swings in that hyperactivity versus hyperfocus that really cause problems for people with ADD and ADHD.
66:02
So it's crazy, man. So, yeah, all I want is peace. Fucking A, long way out. See, I went on a tangent because of all the televisions in my head going up. No, I can roll with all that. I'm the same way. It makes for some interesting, creative people, though. It's a double-edged sword. Yeah, some of the most creative and smart people that I know are, like, way worse than myself in terms of ADD, in terms of, like, all sorts of crazy crap that they're doing. Yeah, some of the best people I know have that same issue. So it's just a thing that happens.
66:43
When you can focus on a game, what is your favorite moment in a pinball game? oh favorite moment in a pinball game how about my favorite moment that has happened to me in a pinball game yeah even better how about that cause like everyone can say like oh yeah show time on Adam's Family you know but then I've got something really interesting we had at work for a while because my boss is funny he bought a Thunderbirds okay You know, like it's a bad pinball machine. It's bad. Yeah, it's bad. For a number of reasons, which we could talk about sometime.
67:28
But we had it there, and we're like, okay, well, let's play it. We got it. Let's play it, right? So everyone knows, like, the whole international rescue, like, spell it out thing. It's, like, really, like, it's kind of funny. So we're all just kind of like trying to spell international rescue, which is basically impossible because the game just like is so the geometry is all messed up and it's like just not right. And it's hard to hit that ramp shot and all sorts of stuff. So it's like we're getting through this thing and it's international rescue gives you like 20,000 points every time you spell a letter. Right. Okay. And I'm playing this thing. I'm really far along, dude. I'm through international already. and like my buddies are standing around with me like co-workers and they're like oh my god i'm like i'm like i gotta do this dude i gotta do it i'm getting 20 000 points 20 000 points i'm hitting it i've got like one letter left you ready for this one letter left get it i shoot up the ramp it goes all the way around right i get i spelled international rescue yeah it's like now what happens, right? I'm like, so excited. And I'm like, what's happening? I'm looking at the display. I'm looking at the play field. I'm doing this. All the lights go out on International Rescue. The display pops up and it says 20,000 points.
68:51
And then it starts over. That's it? That's it. God! That's it. That's what it does. Fuck. That's what it did on the game that we had. It did nothing. Nothing at all, except it, I mean, it qualified the light for international rescue. I mean, I don't know. Did you feel anything, though? Dead inside? No, I felt amazing, because if it would have actually done something amazing, like, that would have been, you know, the fact that it's just such a crappy game, and it had to do nothing. Like, it really did have to do nothing. Otherwise, I would have been really upset. Yeah. I mean, so it was perfect. Favorite game to play right now? favorite game to play right now that's not TNA and I know this is so stupid sounding but I actually do play I do play TNA the game that I play the most by myself is Tron, Powerball Tron god damn it not regular Tron with steel balls because that's cheating Powerball Tron with the Daft Punk sounds in it which if you're Tron let me know I'm gonna and I'm gonna. God damn it. My whole day has been consumed by trying to piece together trons with multiple people.
70:11
It's fine. Take your time. Don't rush it. I've been trying for like three years. Okay. All right. Well. Yeah. I'm at that point where I'm like.
70:22
It's like either you find one and it's gone in ten minutes or someone lists it for like way over and they're like, yeah. I'm like, dude. Fuck all I have. And you're like, no, dude. Dude, you're like selling it for like a real price. Yeah, don't be inhuman. What's wrong with you? Yeah, come on, dude. I just want to throw Power Balls in this thing. Yeah. Okay, so do you have a least favorite game right now? Yeah, Thunderbirds. Sure. There you go. Nice. Yeah, yeah. Easy.
70:48
Okay, well, that was getting to know your balls. I'm long-winded, too. Sorry. I got like long-winded answers for everything. I hope you're ready for this. I love all of it. I'm not even going to – so far, I'm not going to edit anything. I think a lot of his conversations, people love it. I'm having a great time. Let's review Total Nuclear Annihilation.
71:18
So this game, I don't know if you know this, was created, designed by Scott J.C., who did a little bit of it. Man, is there anything you didn't do in the game? Yeah, there is something I didn't do. No, there's a bunch of things I didn't do. I did not create the Linux operating system for the games. No shit. Okay? So I didn't do that. What branch are you running, by the way? Do you know? It is running a custom distribution built by a buddy of mine, Jimmy, who owns 86pixels, who does a ton of other pinball stuff. He built the Wizard Blocks recently. Yeah, Jimmy's awesome. so yeah he did the Linux operating system it's called Pinnix actually it's designed to run as efficiently as possible and only run what it's supposed to do so anyway I did not do that I did not create most of the animations in the game were created by David Van S and then we used a bunch of other like cool stock video stuff from his collection.
72:32
Obviously all legit stuff. But yeah, there's some just neat things in there. I did not do the artwork on the game. That artwork was done by Matt Andrews.
72:46
Oh yeah, fantastic. Yeah, so I gave him... I was like, hey man, I'm a terrible... Just by the way, I'm a terrible art director, just in general. and I'm not getting any better at it.
73:00
I don't know why, but, like, artwork for me is very hard to, like, put into words and put into examples. So I was talking with Matt about this stuff, and I've worked with Matt now for years on different stuff. But when we were doing TNA, I was like, hey, I want, like, this loud 80s synth wavy looking crazy thing with these fonts and this, that. And I'm like, I don't know what that looks like. I'm like, but we need to do, like, the back glass needs to be very detailed. The cabinet needs to be simple. The play field needs to be kind of in between, you know, because I didn't like overly complicated play fields. Yeah, good call. I'm like, the side of the cabinet needs to, and I sent him a picture of the old Valley Midway cabinets with the big pinball on the side. Oh, yeah. Do you remember those? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like Spring Science and the 6803 games.
73:53
So I sent him a picture of one of those, and I said, I want a big old pinball on the side as, like, an homage to these old ballet games.
74:01
And then, you know, and that's what he did. Like, actually, it's buried back there. But it's, yeah, it's a big old pinball on the side, obviously.
74:09
The back glass was, I wanted him to make a nice detailed back glass with a female character on it because I wanted to give Matt a little bit of redemption from the Magic Girl stuff that he was working on before that. So he was helping John Papaduke with that Magic Girl artwork, and he does such good work. I wanted to make sure that he, like, kind of was able to just let loose on something cool like that and really spend some time. The people see the back glass most anyway. You know, you're not really paying attention to the play field too much when you're playing the game. When the game's standing there, like, in an arcade, you see the back glass. Like, so that's where we wanted to spend the time. It looks fantastic. It's awesome. I love the way it turned out. There's all sorts of crap hidden in it, too. Like, ridiculously funny things hidden in it.
75:02
Is it a lot of personal stuff, or is it things that are all personal? Yeah, some of it's personal. Let me just look at it. There is a picture of a guy standing at a computer inside one of the reactors. It's supposed to look like he's in the reactor. Okay. He is looking at some code, and that's actually a screenshot of the code that's actually in the game. off my computer, so that's kind of cool. My Fiero's hidden in the back last too.
75:31
There's like a thing... I'm turning around away from my microphone, I apologize. No, that's okay. There's a little radioactive container that says parts from Terry on it. That's an homage to my boss who donated a ton of parts for my prototype.
75:47
For the white wood and stuff, getting it running. Yeah, there's all sorts of junk in there. Yeah, just dig around in there, guys. Just go find stuff. Okay. So outside the art, the Linux, the... Yeah, what else? So the code base that I started on is written by a guy. It's called Skeleton Game, which is basically a sample game to kind of get you running and get you started. And I used that as a starting point. but I just totally destroyed it. Like if he saw what I did to it, which he kind of did, he'd shake his head at me at how much I just like hard-coded everything.
76:29
I didn't use his framework the way he envisioned people using his framework. I basically was just changing the framework to make it like be TNA, which is great for the, you know, which is great for me because it's, you know, it's TNA stuff, you know, it's real easy to see where things are. But, yeah, that's, yeah, so he did that. Michael Ocean did that. That's the guy's name. What else did I not do on that game? I did not do any assembly on any of the games. Oh, you built a prototype, right? I built the prototype. I built two games, though. I guess that's a lie. I built two games. I built the Whitewood, and I built a prototype with artwork on it. You know, someone once, I forget what game I was trading. it was a high value like a Lord of the Rings something you know everyone wants I don't remember what it was a few months ago someone in Chicago offered me up a TNA Whitewood oh yeah yep yeah it's gone now that's actually that headed to Berlin I think no shit yeah it's gone now man it got shipped overseas well as much as I like I may never see it again I like the Whitewood the history but I mean the art is too good to like not have the full color on that in my opinion yeah exactly that What's cool, though, is that that Whitewood game has a 600-watt car stereo system installed in it.
77:53
Yeah, so there was a reason that that game got a lot of attention. It shows it's because it was just absolutely louder than everything else.
78:03
And that's already a loud-ass game. Yeah, it's loud for sure. That was the reason, like, one of the reasons it got a lot of attention.
78:15
It's loud, like color-wise and sound. It's loud, yeah, color-wise and sound and everything. Yeah, it's just a loud game, man. Yeah, but that's about it. Everything else on it I did.
78:25
Yeah, all the engineering, all the engineering, all the wire layouts and stuff, all that stuff was done by me. All right, there's one question I'm going to ask you after all this about it, but I'm just going to write it down. All right, let's talk about, so I go theme, gameplay, rules, visuals, and audio are my reviews. It's out of 10. Pick a number out of 10.
78:48
Yeah, and then it's, you know, and we go from there. So theme, why don't you start? What do you think? What do you give out of 10? Okay, can I tell a story before we start this? Yes. Do you care if I tell a quick story? Not at all. I put in, so I built this game as a game that I wanted for myself and for my friends to play dollar games on, right? That was the ultimate goal of that Whitewood, was to build a cool game, proof out some cool concepts, show people how to use RGB lighting properly, put some kick-ass sound into it. Because I've been writing music since 1996, electronic music. My early stuff sucked really bad, but I got a little better at it over time. So I was like, I'm going to put this in a game. I want to do all of it. It was just a fun thing. So I go on Pinside when the game gets released. and, you know, have you ever looked through Pinside Reviews? Oh, God, yeah. Have you ever seen any of that stuff? It's like a cesspool of crazy crap, right? People flagging each other all over the place. Oh, yeah, they flagged me. Because I reviewed Godzilla Premium, like, 8.9, and since it was under 9, I got flagged. Like, all right. Yeah, yeah. Cool. Yeah, isn't that weird? So I put a review in for TNA when it got released, and I put all tens on it. Hell yeah. All tens. Yeah. Straight up down the board. And I wrote in the review and I said, I know this looks weird, but I think I am the only person on the planet that can legitimately say, this is all goddamn tens for me. Yeah. And immediately it was flagged by a ton of people.
80:34
What a joke. Yeah. So I'm like, come on. I'm like, you guys won't even let me let that fly, right? So for theme, let me answer that question. The theme is 100% 10 for me. And I want to know your honest things. Don't be swayed by me sitting here. I want to know what you honestly think about TNA. That's great. I want to see that. This is really good information for me. You know, I thought when I first emailed you, it was a couple months ago. Sorry it took so long. This was my first idea, but I didn't want it to do it until I owned it at home because for me, playing TNA on location once or twice is not enough.
81:11
And Doc and Kale convinced me, like, find one, find one, find one. I found one. I got it home. Sadly, I don't still have it, but unlike you, I don't have infinite money, so if I knew I wanted to play a different game, you know what I mean? And I can miss it. Jesus, it's one of the only ones that I want back. Do I want to pay full price for a TNA 2.0? No, but I want one.
81:31
Anyway, I'll leave it at that. So theme, I won't hold back, for real. I won't. All right, perfect, perfect. This is good.
81:38
And this one I'm not, again, I'm not holding back. I'm also not, yeah. Don't hold back. Don't trigger code. Don't do anything. Yeah. I'm not trigger coding. I'm giving a 10. Why? Do you have your internets in front of you if you Google something? I do, yeah. I can look up some stuff. So Google just this. Google Neon Dale Cosmic. and just go either to the website or Spotify. Look at the album art of Neon Dale Cosmic.
82:12
And when I was doing the album of that cover, it was the same thing in mind. I wanted 80s. I mean, it's very punk rock, you know, whatever, 90s shit. But for me, it's just 80s, and I was just thinking synth wave. Because we're both born in 82, obviously. So for me, I have this love for 80s. It's so sentimental to me. It's so, you know, the colors speak for themselves. Like, I don't necessarily think that if there's objectively probably the best theme in pinball, it's got to be, what, like Star Wars. You know what I mean? Best theme in the world, whatever. But to me, I like shit like Attack from Mars, medieval. I like pinball themes that are most badass. So Total Nuclear Annihilation, the second I saw it, it's like, holy shit, man. That's my colors. That's my jam. So, I mean, if you took away the music and everything, maybe it takes some of the theme away. But I like the simplicity of maybe just getting into the rules a little bit. Yeah, no joke. I think the rule, I think the theme is a 10.
83:11
Yeah. So, gameplay. What do you think? Are you at a 10? All right. I'm absolutely at a 10. I love the simple. And the reason I'm at a 10, I'll give you my reasons. The gameplay for me, I love Nintendo games. Okay. Leo. I grew up. We grew up in the same thing, so you're totally going to reminisce with me. So my dad brings home the NES system, right? It's like all my friends got it. I was late to the party, but you know what? It's fine. My dad brings it home. We're playing these games. They are very simple games, right? But they are really hard to master, okay? Yeah. So Mario Brothers, you're never going to be a perfect Mario Brothers player, right? Me. I'm never going to be that. But the theme is sick. I mean, the thing's simple. You know what you got to do? You got to get to the end of the level. You got to not die, right? And you can basically, like, you can jump on this guy. You can't jump on that guy. Don't fall in the hole. Just get to the flagpole, right? That's really it, okay? Yeah. And it's like, I love the very simple to understand games, but when they make those games very, very difficult to master, then that's when it becomes like I'm there, I can do better I can almost get there that kind of thing and that's what I was trying to pull off with TNA and I believe I 100% hit what I wanted to do on that Okay, so speaking of tangents I have one after I give you my score because I'm all in on what you're saying Let me tell you, so my favorite pinball games in general are things like this Black Knight Sword of Rage, Iron Man some of my favorite NES games or like Ninja Gaiden. Basically what you said, like simple to know, but like if you want to master this shit, you got to put in your time. You know, it's reflexes, it's coordination, it's that over and over. So this game, when I first heard about the rules, it intrigued me because it was like, oh, no, I got it. I don't, I mean, yeah, I like Godzilla. I like everything that has throw the kitchen sink at it, but there's something special about simple rules that you can tell someone in one sentence. But mastering it is a whole other thing. I will give gameplay an eight. Here's why. Rules of the 10, spoiler alert, rules of the 10, but gameplay,
85:30
I'm just going to be blunt because you said don't hold back. I wish I could put stern flippers in your game.
85:37
That feel. So they feel better, right? Yeah. And so the first thing I did when I got your game, I went into the menu and I tried to mess with turn it up or whatever because I don't know if it's the – so my biggest thing about games like Ninja Gaiden or Dark Souls or Mario 1, for example, I can only play those games on a CRT or an emulator with Run Ahead. I need no input lag. So in a game, you know, for me it's all about feel, and in TNA it was just, I love it, I still do, but I just, you know what I mean? Like there was this immediacy that I couldn't, when I read online of people talking about it, like I just couldn't get past it. I mean, I could get past it, but that is the only thing that's stopping me from a 10, is that I feel like I'm a little out of control, even though I know I have the skills to hit the shots. It's like there's something, yeah, maybe it's, I don't know. I'll leave it at that. Well, there are things you can do about that. So, yeah, the flippers themselves, I do think Stern's flippers feel the best out of any pinball machine. I agree with you 100%. Yeah.
86:39
The, I don't know if I qualify, I guess that's part of gameplay. I qualify gameplay more like, you know, the physical layout of the thing and the rules together. Oh. So I guess I'm kind of grouping all that together. Sure. The physical flippers, though, these are, I'm running some weird flipper code to try to get them to feel as good as possible. Because I screwed up and didn't put end of stroke switches on the flippers. Thinking that it would be, like, it was working fine in the prototyping phase and at shows and all this stuff. Everything was working great. So with production, I'm like, ah, yeah, just build it how I normally, how I did before, right? No questions asked, right? It was just built that way. And then when it started getting into other people's hands, like hundreds of them out there, it's like, oh, shit, I should have put end of stroke switches on there because then I could have hit them a lot snappier and not overheat them. Is that what it is? Okay. Yeah, they're overheating. If I make them any more snappy they will overheat because it doesn know exactly when it at its end of stroke And by the way it takes about 52 milliseconds for a flipper to flip all the way up But if I run the flipper pulse at 52 milliseconds, it will overheat like crazy.
88:01
So what, if I had one again, would you tell me to do to mitigate some of that? Is there anything in settings that could be worked on? I would up. People don't understand that. You go up, they're going to get mushy. Yeah. I really need to be more vocal about that. Yeah, you turn the flipper power down, and what's interesting is you're going to, it'll slightly slow the ball down, but it's not going to fade on you or anything.
88:28
Yeah, it's pretty interesting. Yeah, and also remember, too, there's no end of stroke switches, so if you hold the flipper up, I have to do something to keep that flipper up and not overheat.
88:40
Interesting. So there's a hold winding. There's all sorts of, like, crazy, crazy physics and math that goes into, like, trying to get a flipper to run properly at 48 volts. But these flipper coils that we're using, these Williams flipper coils, were not meant to run at 48 volts. They were meant to run at 70.
88:59
So it's very hard to get those, like, just right. So could you theoretically, like you, who knows this stuff inside and out clearly because you built it inside out, Could you mod it so it felt like Stern or put Stern flippers in there? Or is a lot of that in code? Nah, not really. No. No? Probably not. Nah, it's probably going to always feel a little different. It's a different flipper mechanism. So it should probably always feel a little bit different. I didn't even choose to, like, put code in for end of stroke switches, even if people wanted to put them in, just because I think I got it really close to being really, really good on the latest version of the software.
89:40
So it's as good as I think it needs to be. Is it exactly like Stern's snappiness? It's not, but it's definitely really, really good.
89:52
All right. Rules. But that's the only thing holding me back on gameplay. It's just that little bit of feel. I think I went on my rule tangent already. No. I grouped it with gameplay by accident. This is where I was going to go on a tangent of, I'm also at a 10 for those reasons when I said I like Iron Man, I like Black Knight Sword of Rage. I like Mario. I like simplicity. I like a break of just you know what to do. What the tangent I want to do is, like, I haven't said this in the past because it's almost like I've thought of, like, writing it down and doing it myself. I say do it myself. But I think the one thing missing in pinball code, and they're starting to do it, is just take a cue from roguelike games. You need something like Insider Connected to keep that persistence to a game. But if you know, have you played, I mean, you know, the kind of, you know, roguelikes and kind of, yeah. Yeah. Please do it in your P3 game. But having that, you know, like I'll just, let's use Godzilla, for example. I don't know. Just pick a game. Let's say in Godzilla, you made your way through, you know, one city. Great. And then, you know, so for everyone out there, roguelike is essentially a game that once you're done, you're done. But you always bring a little bit of progress to your next game. So games that kind of do this right now, Turtles does. You can kind of level up your turtle with Insider Connected. and that stays persistent. But games, I don't know why they're not doing this more. It just seems like low-hanging fruit. If you want a game in the home to have persistent overtime, let someone build up slowly in overtime, overtime, get these perks, and then tie it to their whatever online account or just local account they have.
91:25
I mean, Binding of Isaac, one of the most simple games of all time, but you can play that for thousands of hours. I just asked my wife. It was like 2,000 hours in Steam on Binding of Isaac because you just have, you know, the carrot and the stick. Just a little more each game keeps you coming back. And, you know, I don't know. For me, it just seems like a no-brainer. They got to start, they, people like you, putting roguelike elements into games, man. Shit. Well, how about this? Let me challenge you for a second on that. How about what if the little bit that the game was giving you was an improvement in your skill level that you could bring back the next time? listen to this for a second because yes pimp like tna is a very difficult game when you first play it and i have gotten better at it over time and i can still see myself the more and more i play it i am getting further and further and getting higher scores uh because of that and i'm just being funny really but like you know the roguelike thing are the skills that you're learning physically from playing the game. Like, I've seen people who didn't know how to drop catch learn to actual drop catch out of that left scoop.
92:40
Because that drop catching out of there is super, and like ripping the spinner right off a drop catch on that game is really valuable.
92:48
So, it's just like little dumb things like that. That's a very good point, and it's true. It is a persistent thing that you're getting better at. I think, yeah, and I know you're not denying this, I think there's more you can do. It's a cop-out, though. I was just kidding. Well, but it's true. It's a good point. Yeah. But, yeah, I just think there's a lot of opportunity there to keep, I mean, from an insider connected or people at home, a reason to keep coming back, even if you do fucking terrible. Well, yeah, but what about next time you get, like, one extra gold, you know, whatever you want to call it. You get, you know, a Mandalorian-y little Beskar every few games, something like that. but that aside the simplicity rules are a 10 my wife Dana there's two games that have been in this house that she would play without me saying hey you want to play a game with me where I've seen her just playing a game only two, Stern Star Trek and Total Nuclear Annihilation those are the only two so that is a compliment she doesn't play Godzilla, Jurassic Park Attack from Mars, every game has been through here and Total Nuclear Annihilation. She was born in 84, so very similar. The theme, like, right away, got it. And I told her I was talking to you today, and she's like, oh, shit, that's awesome. And she walked in here when I was remixing some of that stuff earlier and playing guitar. She's like, what are you doing? I know that song. I'm like, yeah, it's from TNA. Yeah, it's the TNA song.
94:15
That's awesome. All right, visuals. Are you a 10? Well, so let's define visuals now just to make sure I'm understanding. I kind of screwed up gameplay and rules. Um, visuals, are you saying the LCD has visuals? Are you saying light shows as visuals or the entire cinematic events that are happening?
94:37
So where others will do like, oh, back glass, art, side art, lighting. I just do everything visual. So kind of the whole package, lighting, back glass, side, like all the art and lighting in one. Gotcha. Okay. Yeah. A hundred percent. 10. Yeah. Okay. Got it. God, like I want to say 9 just to not say 10 It's fucking 10 You're in 9.5 I can't Name one thing you don't like about it That's what I was just trying to say Yeah The only thing I don't like about it is fixed in the TNA 2.0 We're not fixed I'm a fan of Black powder coat versus steel on the rails. It's not really a thing, but I like both. I like the way the steel feels better. Yeah, but that doesn't even take a half point because you can just horse a piece.
95:33
Jesus. Okay, yeah, no, 9.5. I found something. Some of the visual animations, that was the first thing that I was like, I would do, but after you explained some of the limitations, like, well, okay, shit.
95:46
That was one thing. I was like, maybe I'll take a crack at it and I asked, like, what format are they? I'm like, I wonder if I could sideload some of this shit in there. But the fucking lights, dude, are a 15 out of 10. I opened up the play field just, Jesus, dude. And look, I had to look at the RGB just to see because I had never seen that in a game so well done. I was like, oh, dude, you know, we look at something like Star Wars, which has some, Stern Star Wars, you know, some white, some red, some blue, and it mimics RGBGI, but it's not. in your game, that's all RGB, and that blew me away.
96:22
Shit. Visuals, and the art I said earlier. Speaking of these RGB things, man, have you seen a TNA with these fluorescent green protectors on it? Mine had it. Yep. It did have it. Okay, cool. So when it goes like multi-ball, and it fires off the blue freaking GI, dude. Oh, man. So was that always planned? It was by accident that I found that. No. Oh, that was by accident? Total accident. Yeah, yeah. Somebody was, oh, man, I don't remember who. Someone wanted, like, pink protectors or something. I was just going to make some pink protectors for it. And we were just, like, cutting them out of some other things. We were like, hey, put some green on there. I'm like, okay, cool, because our accent colors are green in the game, not on the play field, barely.
97:09
Yeah. So I put those on there and quickly realized that the really high-frequency wavelength of the blue light coming out of the GI bulbs, because it's very bright and very high-intensity, like very, very short wavelength,
97:28
it really acted almost like a black light underneath that fluorescent material, and it made the edges of that fluorescent material glow so crazy, like one of those laser tag arenas. I'm like, dude, screw it. We're putting, like, I don't care if it makes the color look a little weird on the plastics. We're putting freaking green on this thing and making it awesome. That's exactly when I saw it. I couldn't tell that I know the outlines. The first thing I noticed, like, wow, the edges really pop. And I was like, I wonder if this green was what, because I've seen pink and I've seen green, and since it didn't come default. Yeah, pink was a crap compared to it. Yeah, I was always curious your thoughts on that. Yeah, I mean, I love the color pink. Don't get me wrong, but like, dude, the green really reacts with that blue LED. Like, when I'm firing off that blue channel, it's crazy. Yeah, dude. So, yeah, like, for the remake version, the CE version, we, I was like, dude, just throw the green protectors on it from the factory. You know? Yep. So. All right. That was cool. That was a surprising artifact. So. This one is easy.
98:41
Audio. For me. Oh, audio. Yeah. It's a 10. How about you? All right. It's 10 for me. Yeah, I'm going to go with that. I'm going to go with a 10, too. But you know what? I wouldn't remaster it any other way. I'll tell you that.
98:53
Yeah. I am. It's gritty. And we can talk about compressors all day because I love it. But it's going to confuse people. Don't remaster it. people not listen to your podcast. Yeah, it's gonna make people shut off your podcast if we do that. So we'll just do that some other time. Yeah, okay. But, yeah, it's... So, and then I have an overall, like, so I guess we added up. You're at, oh, you're at a 10 out of 10. So yours is an A+. As you tend to, what am I at? 30? 48? 5? Alright. I'm also at an A.
99:28
It's an A game. Shit, I don't care who you are, the audio easily, I think everyone probably thinks it's a 10. If someone doesn't like this, they just, audio-wise, they're either just a stupid person, no offense, but you're a stupid person, or you don't have ears. That's the only thing I can think of. No offense, you're a stupid person? I like it. Yeah. Something interesting about the audio, actually. So, I, this was my first attempt at making electronic music, because I always wrote techno music or breakbeats before this, and that's a very specific style that's used a lot in raves.
100:10
Okay. And it's very repetitive. It's not really widely accepted to people outside of people that are really into it. But this was a challenge for me to create electronic music that was not too annoying, not too repetitive still melodic you can sit and listen to it but still gets your adrenaline going and gets you pumped up and this was the first time I did that so there's actually a song there's one song that I wrote actually before all of this and it's called Bleeding Neon I have that you can just look at it it's on my streaming crap right but that is that was my attempt at writing something like that wasn't like pure synth wave it wasn't pure techno, it wasn't dubstep it wasn't, you know what I mean, it wasn't something offensive, it was this combination of these retro styled things to make it and it was acceptable to people who don't listen to electronic music so, yeah it's really neat and it was a really good challenge and I stumbled upon this genre that I really really enjoy now and I It's so good, dude. I can't stop writing this kind of music.
101:28
You shouldn't. It's a tough thing when you, you know, like as a drummer, first and foremost, I always, if I'm practicing or listening, I'm listening to, yeah, tool stuff that has very, you know, a talented drummer, something that a lot of people will hear and just like, it's just all over the place or whatever. Or it's music that's just, you know, shit and it's like 7-8 or 16-4 really polyrhythmic shit and that's what I'm that's what I get off on as a drummer but when I am writing music yeah it's more of the struggle of like I also want to be able to listen to this and not just have like a listen how impressive it is because it's like you're just impressing the drummers out there or the songwriters yeah so I get that like challenging it's challenging as a musician to write good songs sometimes that are you know people think that's weird to say but But it's different.
102:23
You'll notice that as a drummer, you probably pick up on this stuff, though, that the drum tracks are very boring, actually, in most of electronic music like this, except for bands like Venetian Snares, Apex Twin,
102:38
Squarepusher. Or is that really? Squarepusher. Yeah, it's all crazy stuff. But Venetian Snares has some of the weirdest time signatures. but those bands are not widely accepted by people who don't listen to electronic music. If you were to throw that in front of somebody who doesn't listen to electronic music, they'd be like, that is noise and shitty. Exactly. And I'd just tap right into it, and it's like messed up. Yeah, it's crazy.
103:05
Yeah, so as a drummer, I have a story for you, if you would like, about how I annoy one of my drummer friends. This is probably going to annoy you too, but it's pretty funny. Okay. So I've been DJing since, like, we'll just say 2000. So 22 years I've been doing DJ stuff, right, with vinyl and everything. I have the ability in my head to listen to two separate 4-4 beats at the same time, okay? And I can tell if one is slightly ahead of the other or behind the other, okay? Okay. Which is a very weird skill that you actually, that all DJs learn over time. So I have this really good friend of mine that's a drummer, and we're hanging out. And to absolutely drive him insane, what I will do is we'll be listening. There'll be like a song on in the background, and I'll tap really loud on like a table or something like that. Like I'll tap on the downbeats, and then what I'll do is I'll slowly turn the BPM down on what I'm doing so it starts getting offbeat, but it's getting offbeat by an exact like slow. I'm like, I'm probably a half a BPM slower, and it gets worse and worse. I don't like that. I don't like that at all. Exactly. It's so hilarious.
104:27
And I love telling that story. I love messing with him. It's so fun. It's gross. It is gross. The TNA theme, you know, when you start the game, what is that song called again? The main one? the main theme song? It's just called Total Nuclear Annihilation. Okay, I still thought... When I was doing that thing earlier that for those listening, you'll hear the whole thing at the end when I started this podcast with when I was adding some of that guitar and stuff earlier that part where the triplets come in, you know, like two-thirds of the way through. I was trying to do a... it was kind of a 7-8 over that and it was trying to revolve so I was kind of doing it because you have to do the same thing slowly, slowly and speed it up to I was doing that way too much. I was like, I'm just going to do triplets. Fuck it. I give up on that. It was the same thing. I tried to revolve it back into it. Yeah. It's neat, man. It worked anyways. It's very cool.
105:24
Yeah, the last question I wanted to ask about your game. Since you have TNA and you enjoy playing it, I guess two questions. One, do you do anything specific to that? I mean, you mentioned the maybe turn down the flippers for people who want it. Do you do anything specific to yours? and two, how often do you destroy all the reactors?
105:44
Oh, okay. So let's answer the second one first because it's really depressing. I've never actually beat the game.
105:51
Oh. Never beat it. Well, same. No shit. Never beat it. I'm probably never going to, and that's okay. I've accepted that. I will die one day never beating TNA. Your own game. Yeah, I will never beat it, and I think I won it that way. I don't know what I would I don't know how I would feel if I was able to actually beat it I don't think I would like that I do try very very hard like it's not I mean it's just like kind of like it's like a grand finale to the project that I never want to see yeah you know what I mean super dark shit I get it man I try hard though trust me like I really try I know I'm never going to get there, but if it does one day, it would be cool. And I'll probably make an excuse.
106:42
I've gotten to six. So, I have beat five. I've gotten to six. I started six, got the extra ball, and still looked it. So, it's, yeah.
106:54
Not great. Because you start getting, your adrenaline starts kicking up a little bit as you go. And your body can just not keep up anymore. Your reaction times start getting crappy because your adrenaline is only good for so long, right? Before your body starts getting, like, you know, worn out from it. So it's very interesting. Yeah, so, yeah, any tweaks that I do to my thing? So question number one, what do I do to my game? That's a good question.
107:23
Hmm. I put Power Balls in it once. But I didn't feel like I... I didn't feel like adjusting all the kick-out speeds and stuff to make the ball not fly around and be annoying, so I just abandoned it. I'll attack that again someday.
107:46
But, yeah, I don't really do much to my game. I do put, I have a lot of prototype stuff in my game, like the TNA CE version of the shoot-again display and the reactor core display with the extra lights on them. I have those in my game because it's, you know, I was testing everything out and programming on it. The game that's sitting behind me right now is actually the game that I wrote all the code on.
108:11
I mean, I started the code on the Whitewood, obviously, but, like, I wrote all the production code on that game that's behind me there. It's pretty worn out. It's got some dings and scratches and stuff. How's that scoop? Yeah, the scoop's fine. Yeah, it's okay. Good. I mean, yeah. I guess I yeah I don't really care to protect it too much I want it to be used you know yeah I'm not a person that doesn't like not play my games you know what I mean like it's that's why that whole story about the Tron shock thing shocked me so much is because like I just yeah you know can't deal with that so I can see a P3 don't know what game's in it yeah I can't tell from here I see TNA weird Al's in it okay I see TNA. I see Rick and Morty. So three games you worked on. Yep. What's the one right behind that? Dr. Dude is behind that one. Okay. And then Tron with Powerballs. That was great. Yep. We got Powerball Tron back there. And then we got Bride of Timbot 2.0 behind that. Oh!
109:16
Yeah, which I also worked on that project, too. And then we got the Revenge from Mars back there as well. And the Bride of Timbot 2.0 does have Powerballs in it. Jesus. That's important. Powerball guy. That game is so cool looking. It's neat. It's very neat.
109:34
Yeah, I think Dutch Pinball did an amazing job with all that. All right, man. I'm going to end it there because it's been – I want some of these people wanting more. Thanks for joining me. Thanks for reviewing your own game with me. You gave it good work. Absolutely. Sorry I couldn't give it. Sorry I couldn't be a little more harsh on it. No, dude. I would not expect you to. I'm looking forward to whatever you do with Multimorbic and the P3 hopefully we'll have you on again when said game gets announced and released I want to hear more about it I wish you the best of luck in that game any last words for your fans out there? again I appreciate everybody I can't thank you guys enough for just straight up having the confidence in even buying TNA the first time I honestly thought it would sell a maximum of 50 units based on the people that said, I'll buy one at a show, right? It turned out to sell 550 of them, and then they're still ripping through. I think they sold maybe 200 of the last of them. There's maybe 50 of them left, but this is going to be it. There's no more TNAs going to be made after this.
110:48
But yeah, that's it. It's done. and then yeah I just appreciate everybody yeah thank you everybody awesome because if without that confidence like there you know I wouldn't have had the drive that I have today to keep doing more stuff you know I probably would have just gone back and done little homebrew things and just kind of hung out you know well I would speak for most people out there myself don't stop keep making games I'm gonna try thanks for joining me We'll talk to you later. Thanks. Yeah, thank you.
111:24
Man, Scott, thank you so much for staying up past our bedtimes together to talk. Hopefully we didn't lose too many people on music, but, hey, you can't win them all. Thanks again for lending your fantastic Total Nuclear Annihilation theme song to me to do a little of my own spin on it. Anyone out there who has not played a Scott Denise game, go play one. Go play Weird Al. Go play Total Nuclear Annihilation. Go play Rick and Morty. Or go play, coming up, Multimorphics, Scott Denise-y creative directed game, Unknown Title, pretty soon. Well, that's everything from the Pinball Party this week. I think two is enough for one week. Send in anything you'd like to the Pinball Party podcast at gmail.com. Stick around to listen to the full mashup of Total Nuclear Annihilation theme song and Neon Dale. till next time everyone we'll see you later
112:48
Thank you. Is the game Lion Man? Can you confirm that the game is Lion Man? I cannot deny or confirm any Lion Man anything.
116:58
Pinball party.