Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Wedgehead Pinball Podcast. I am Alan, host of the Wedgehead Pinball Podcast and one-half owner of the Portland Pinball Bar Wedgehead, of which the podcast is named. This week, we're doing a special episode, a series where we invite a guest on. We call it Die on this Hill. And the series entails the guest having to defend a game that is quote-unquote bad, but that they unironically love. I'm joined by my co-host, Alex, the water boy. Yeah, happy to be here again with our friend Jess DiNardo down in Houston, Texas. Jess, what game are you going to defend for us today? Meow, meow, meow. Bad Cats. Yes. You won Bad Cats. Meow, meow, meow, meow. So Bad Cats is a game made by Williams in 1989. It's a part of the groundbreaking System 11 games. That's what we refer to as the board set. It's the first kind of series of games that really had everything that modern pinball still has. It's everything you need, and this is it. Yeah, you don't need anything more than a System 11. System 11s included games like Whirlwind, Spur Taxi. High Speed, F-14, Roller Games. That should be a die on this hill game at some point. Yeah. Roller Games kicks ass. So this is a System 11 game, but it's not quite as well regarded as the other System 11 games. Unfortunately, it was designed by pinball legend Barry Oursler with Python Anghelo's art package and overall theme vision was Python's as well. And sound by Dan Forden. It currently ranks number 179 in the Pinside Top 100 list. And I have a couple fun facts for the games before we get started. Programmer Ed Suchocki, I hope I said that name right, shares this story about Bad Cats. He says, Dan Forden and I had several discussions about the music and sound effects for the game. at the time I was a fan of the band Alice Cooper. I felt the game would be right with the music style to their tune Gutter Cat vs. the Jets. There's a section that has that West Side Story feel to it and I thought that it would be great in the game. Dan went and created a version of the theme for the game. The flavor of this inspiration could be heard during the activation of the spinning of the playfield wheel as well as some other shots on the game. Interesting. And then Mark Ritchie told us, who we covered in our second episode, Mark Ritchie said that he had a slight role as a singer for the audio track in the seafood segment seafood so he's one of the people that has the callouts the seafood callouts so good so good so you one of the voices in there is one Mark Ritchie I'm pretty sure it's the yeah and so now I want to cede the floor to our guest Jessica and I want you to tell us why bad cats is a great game okay first of all i have to give people a little background because when we were talking about this the very first game i thought of was rogo but nobody knows what robo is when you said let's do bad cats i said no one thinks bad cats is a bad game bad cats is a wonderful game that's a common theme i feel like with these games a lot of us are like wait this game i love other people don't love it that's why i brought it up to you jessica because I know you love this game so much. Like so much. Like you don't just like that you love this game. So I was like, why don't you do Bad Cats? Yeah. I love this game. I don't know what there is to not love about this game. So I finally got a Bad Cats. I own a Bad Cats. Lucky woman. Yes. Thank you very much to my friend Joe, who let me talk him into selling it to me after Allentown. When you intro'd it and it's like, it's designed by Barry. various games are incredible classics like you look at his catalog of machines and his work is just amazing it's super fun and then you have python's bizarre outlandish wonderful like full on visions for the art packages of games you look at it from above and you're just like this is an entire world genuinely a world yes like it's all in here so the game is gorgeous it's funny it's ridiculous it has that animated backlash so good there's the woman with the broom and the cat and it's just there's so many great little details like you look around and you look at this art the art pops the art is crazy there you always find something new to look at it's heavily detailed yeah a lot of python's games are python's got a i like python art packages most of the time off-putting to me, but very captivating. They are very captivating. What do you say the theme is of this game, Jessica? Yeah, for those that aren't aware, what's the theme of Bad Cats? I would say that it is felines behaving in a manner unbecoming. That is a great explanation. Yeah, that's exactly it. Okay, so tell us more about Bad Cats. Why do you love it so much? Bad Cats just sticks in your head and it makes you want to play it again. It's a game that you want to play with friends. It's not necessarily the game that you like want to put in your tournament because people who are very tournament focused aren't necessarily in love with the game. I know because of scoring balances or whatever. But I think someone came out with a like an updated version that makes it better for tournament. Because people do actually like it and want to be able to play it in that way. Like the call outs. I had friends who had never played it before when I got it who came by who recorded some of the like sound call outs and stuff to put on their phone for like they're just like this is great the whole package people are just like what is this so there are a lot of novelty things like you have the cat who's like fishing and there's a spinning wheel that has all the different fish that he can catch which is basically like extra ball or points or bonus or whatever so you have these things you have a dog house that you can get the ball into and you can collect stuff there's like a trash can that you can empty for points or things like that or if it's already empty it's kind of like oh well the center ramp is fully repeatable it's like a very satisfying shot to hit over and over again and every time you hit it up until a certain point value it goes meow the meow meow it's true it's incredible and you cannot stop it's so good and then it sticks in your head you can't stop saying it like any of the call outs you're just repeating non-stop it's a game that you can just like hang around have a couple drinks have a lot of laughs with friends playing this game i don't know i don't get tired of it like i understand there are some very repeatable things in there but they make them so that they're satisfying to do 100 i mean I just would keep playing the game for the sounds alone. It's just amazing sound package on it. And I think you right And it just sticks with everybody Everybody that plays it thinks it hilarious It great Yeah I think it brings joy to people It easy if you focus on a robot brain of like the scoring imbalanced That's true. However, man, it's fun to fucking play. Like, it really is fun to play. Some people will be like, oh, the sound callouts are annoying. The sound callouts are amazing. Yes, they are. Yes, they do have that devilish, like, they will stick in your head for the rest of your life. Like, you will go to your grave hearing these call-outs. But I just, and I love, Python has this thing where, like, almost every character on the game is a cat. And they're all different types of cats. And each cat looks like its own unique character. Yeah. Like, they don't just look like a guy that drew a bunch of cats the same way and then just made them different colors. Like, their facial features are different. they have personalities not seen the game some of them are realistic cats some of them are realistic cats wearing clothes some of them are anthropomorphic cats like you would see in like the musical cats a huge variety yes the musical cats that's what it seems like especially that rewind those weird looking human cat there's the one there's the human cat down by the right flipper that is naked except for the boots and somehow when you put an animal in boots but nothing else it makes them look extra naked to me like when i put my dogs in boots and it just kills me i'm like every time i see it i'm like what the hell man like the game it's fun to play but it's fun to just look at like it's genuinely like i said it's very captivating you're like the art package is unreal it's a good example i don't think a good pinball machine needs to be like pretty by any means some good games are beautiful like jess i know you have a stargazer and something i mean maybe that's yeah biased towards that game but i'm like that's a really good looking art package it is very thematic and everything you're like that looks good as a piece of art bad cats not really a piece of art but it's like something i want to look at more it's great i mean it is a piece of art though i love the like what i love is the inserts of the cat's eyes like above the flippers in in between because it's like yes in the middle of those all like multipliers like bonus multipliers but all the inserts are like their eyes there's and so there's like three of them kind of crowded it's just everything's insane man when you look at it like i'm just looking at a picture of the playfield now in like the amount of inserts in like the different levels of the playfield and just the amount of stuff jammed in there really good use of inserts really all around oh yeah that was python's big thing apparently he uh gotten some some pretty heated fights later on at capcom and before it kind of led to his end at williams was like he just didn't want to like compromise his artistic vision and so like he wanted them to like spend the money for tooling to make custom shape inserts and people come and he's like what are you out of your mind like these things cost us pennies to make now we're not going to spend tens of thousands of dollars to get new tooling made to make different shapes to do the same thing but he's an artist man python's an artist we talk about him a lot on this podcast because a lot of his games come up in this segment for some reason. We do talk about Python a lot. We do talk about Python a lot, and we need to do a whole episode on him because he deserves better, and he does have some games that are really well-regarded as well. It's not just games that would qualify for this segment, but unfortunately, the reason why you're here having to defend this game is there are people on the internet that disagree, and I found some of those reviews, and I'm going to read them to you, and I want to hear your reactions, okay? Okay. My worldview is about to be rocked. I don't want this to change you. Never change. You love bad cats. Bad cats kicks ass. Nothing could change my love for bad cats. I'm just going to be the cat in the boxing clubs, and all of the inside people will be the bulldog. All right. So the first one I have, Deputy Drain says, there are some fun shots to be had here, but the sound effects are so jarring. It's not a lie if you believe it. So he hates the sound effects. He said some shots are fun to be had. And the sound effects are jarring. And you're like, what happened to you? What was so, what jarred you? What cat related trauma. What did it deliver that wasn't promised? Yeah, I think it over delivers. I mean, maybe that's why he's saying it's like, it's too much, too many cats behaving unbecoming or whatever Jessica said. I mean it's a pretty jazzy soundtrack I don't know how you consider that to jarring songs are fantastic like Dan Forden oh yeah what's the seafood tune that it goes like seafood or whatever right yeah yeah it goes yeah and I think that's the Mark Ritchie part so good man that shit just yeah that game just kills me every time I play it's an amazing feeling by the way Mark Ritchie yeah have to throw a little Mark Ludd in it we got to hang out with him at Texas Pinball Fest and he was so cool. But for the listeners if you haven't already listened listen to our episode number two we cover Mark Ritchie in detail. I'm going to keep going with these. The second one is a username One Taste and they said I was shocked to see Barry Ousler design this one dimensional game. Well the jerk store called they're running out of you. One Taste or like no taste. Damn. Amen. Told him. next alright Chris Whitey says plastic system 11 game but not on par with Diner Taxi or Whirlwind in my humble opinion sounds and music don't do any favors even for 1989 tough to find a nice one just like all system 11's the game seems to have it's niche following but the pin side ranking pretty much says it all this time you know we're living in a society we're supposed to act in a civilized way. You know, when you let rankings of other people sway your rankings of things. But also, when you're talking about, okay, the guy ordering a hot dog and an iced tea in diner is a better sound call-out than bad cats? I don't understand. Are these all dog people? Cat haters. Yeah, it's possible. Very possible. Yeah, I will say that the diner call-outs haven't aged well. They're pretty casually and not so casually racist. But I think that's a really fun game, Mark Ritchie design game. I want to put it right next to my Champions Pub. It was common in the 90s. I mean, that was par for the course. Okay, but I will, I mean, Taxi does, like when you have Tenbot going, Taxi, Taxi, Taxi, and like his very monotone, cute voice. And then Gorby with like the weird, I'm like, okay, there's a lot happening here, but it's great. And you love it. And that sticks in your head too. He's describing Taxi and Whirlwind. Yeah, those games are excellent. Like stone cold grade A classics. It's kind of an insane thing. And so if he's comparing it to that and he goes, well, not on par with those. Okay. That doesn't mean it's bad. Like if it's not, if you don't think it's on par, it still could be a good game. All right. Next up we have Caucasian Two-Step. He shows up on this show a lot. He's rated more games than anyone on Pennside. I think he rated over a thousand and he not afraid to say it like he thinks it is but he lists a series of pros and cons and he starts off by saying bad cats is a better game than police force however most games are better than police force another python game another crazy art package but he says the pros artwork is great the fish bonus is a cool build-up shot in combination with 10x scoring can mean big points. Fish bonus kicker across the top of the playfield into the bumpers is nicely done. The left ramp is a premonition of Bram Stoker's Dracula all the way around the playfield. This game has lots of character and the theme is incredibly well implemented. The back glass animation is hilarious. Find the butterfly tattoo on the woman in the kitchen for extra bonus pinball culture points. The cons. What is it with Ousler Python and their rule sets from this era? It's a two and a half shot game. Fish bonus is often more valuable than the jackpot. Bad cats can take time to spell and the drop targets are dangerous with the Ousler trademark outlanes. Left ramp, five shots for two million? At least it's not a complete game eraser like police force. Oh wait, the 20 million point shot on the last ball. I completely forgot about that feature of the game. Maybe I meant to do that? At the same time, who forgot the multiball in this game? The Takeaway, a fun game for the kiddies, but not a player's game. This game was formerly in the collection for the girlfriend. Meow, meow, meow, meow. She loved it. I got a lot of problems with you people. Now, you're going to hear about it. So what do you think about that review, Jess? I mean, there's a lot to unpack here. It sounded like very positive. He starts off positive. He starts off saying he loves the art package. He likes the fish bonus is a cool buildup shot. And he thinks the theme has lots of character and is well implemented. And he loves the backlash animation. Yeah, and the left ramp. Yes. Left ramp is great. I mean, it's not like, it's not a score stealer at the end. And everyone has a chance to get the 20 mil. You know, it's not like only one person can do it. Everyone has a shot at it. It's like Billionaire's Club and Pride. Yeah, that's true. You all have a chance to get there. If it's the same for every player, it's not like a mystery award that's going to break the game. Mystery award or progressive jackpot, because they were doing progressive jackpots on this era of System 11. That's like Mike Gripe against Taxi and stuff. You can change the settings, and you should change them. Yeah, because by default, it does have a bonus that builds and carries over between games. so you can walk up to it which actually i've seen at finberg like people looking at values that are on games to choose player order oh wow yeah so everyone has a chance at the 20 so that you know ball three if you can keep hitting that left ramp you can do it so this guy just needs to play better yeah fair enough i'm gonna go on i mean yeah i agree something like that like that doesn't feel like that's not like a scoring exploit or anything i think it just makes it one note i i think it's like you're like oh so the other stuff isn't worth doing yeah but that's just like when we played gilligans and it felt that way the first game where only one of us hit that whatever i can't remember any gilligans link oh no oh the kona yeah so we got that kona jackpot right zoe's listening it is so disappointed in you and then the next game we both got kona jackpots and you're like uh-oh looks like all the other shit did matter yeah it's kind of funny because it's like that's the thing when you can both do it then suddenly you're like yeah it doesn't lock you out it doesn't lock you out from doing it and it's yeah all or nothing so what hit the shot all right 1984 kid says well to sum it up bad cats is too open of a play field with not much going on rules seem dull with nothing that make me want to come back the best feature is the animated back glass i could drop you like a bag of dirt more bad cats for the rest of us he's not buying one so it's like yeah i don't understand so if you if you don't like something maybe this is why I don't go on pen time because I don't understand the basic philosophy is if you don't understand something no one's forcing you to spend time doing it or playing it or talking about it so there are so many other games that he played that I'm sure that he would very much enjoy yeah well you would hope so yeah I'm sure he doesn't enjoy them either yeah I guess it's possible that he just there are some pinball enthusiasts out there that seemingly kind of hate everything. They're so enthusiastic about a thing that they hate. They're just very, very, very, very selective about the thing that they supposedly love so much. Stranger things only. Kronos says, one word to describe this game, average. He says, art, probably the best thing about this machine. A little busy, but cute, and I felt it was decently done. The Backlash has a variety of light-ups, flashers, and even a whimsical animation of a woman hitting a cat with her broom. It's so good. He says, audio, average. The tunes wear on you, and they're annoying before long. There's not a lot of variety in the sound, and the sound's almost like a harpsichord. Not a lot of speech at all, but I do like how seafood is melodied when making that target. Yeah. Clayfield, he says, fair at best. The artwork is interwoven decently into the game, but nothing spectacular about the lighting. A couple of decent ramps and something much like a Gottlieb very target, although not nearly as cool. On the unique side, there's a doghouse and a mystery wheel, which is a roulette type wheel and therefore not all that unique after all. Gameplay. For the few willing to give this a try, despite its cutesy theme, it will get old quick. There's just not much here. And what is here has all been done before. There's anything wrong with that? I don't like that one. I just like that. He's like trying to say like for the few willing to give it a try despite the theme. And you're like, buddy, you're not getting this. You're not getting this. People love cats. It's the best part. Yeah. Again, I'm just always blown away by the pin side guys that are like theme sucks. Game sucks. Yeah. And you're like, well, the theme doesn't suck. No. Like the theme. That's just hilarious. I wish we got more games like this now. To be honest, I wish. yeah man i wish we could get a game where the theme is like cats behaving unbecomingly like i want that if someone made bad dogs instead of like avengers and that's not a slight just like instead of one of the things that you know we've had multiple versions of yeah i want bad dogs and i will say that there are companies that make the boutique games and they go unlicensed theme but they just no one's quite got it they don't have a python there they don't have somebody that's like we're going to make this overall vision that you need. It's like, there's something missing that used to happen at Bally Williams, especially cocaine. Yeah. Well, there was also a freedom. I think it was like, it must've been like Larry DeMar or somebody there that was like, it's just Python. Python's like the secret sauce there. No, but there's, there's more of them too. There's other games that aren't Python games like white water. Yeah. That's like medieval madness and stuff. Yeah. It's like, that's such a good overall package, like comedy it like it doesn feel dated even since it came out it kind of a timeless game and yeah i don know we don get that with original themes now So it funny to see someone hating on it Yeah dude I love I think the theme awesome and the art awesome Also I think it insane to call the sound average Yeah. I would rather them say it's shit because it's like annoying or something than say average. Nothing about the sound package is average. He also says the play field art is average. I'm like, what are you talking about, dude? The play field art is insane. People are like, oh, it's busy. I was like, you've never seen a Python game. Yeah, that's true. For a Python game. It's restraint. Yeah, it's really very minimal. And like no lighting. It's like, it's just funny to hear. It just shows like the different perspectives of some people. Because it's like, we're sitting there going off on how incredible the insert work is on it. And this guy's like, boring lighting. And you're like, well, what the fuck were you expecting? There's no RGB. I was going to say, it doesn't have RGB LED. It looks so awkward next to my Wizard of Oz. Yeah. Yeah, the guy must just not like cats. I got two more left. So MJStyle4 says, a simple pinball game with a stupid concept was one of the worst games Williams ever made in the 80s. So please, a little respect. For I am Costanza, Lord of the Idiots. Wow. Whoa. I mean, that's a major statement right there. It's like the early 80s. They made a lot of games that weren't that good. They made some shit, man. I think really Steve Ritchie was making the only good games there for a time in the early 80s. Dude, I'm a big Ritchie fan. Yeah. But Bad Cats is better than a lot of Ritchie games. Whoa. Whoa. I mean, Barry Owsler is better than Ritchie in a lot of ways, man. You know you hurt the maestro's feelings. Whoa, whoa, whoa. This is getting off track here. This is getting off track. I was going to say, is this the final episode? Thank you for tuning in to the last episode of the Wedge and Vimba podcast. No, I love Barry Ousler, and we're going to do a whole episode on him at some point, just because he's a frigging legend that's made some amazing games. Some of the best. I love Barry. The final review I have, this person's username is can't have too many pins, but then they say this. Unless they're bad cats. Bad cats equals bad game. has to be the worst Williams game I have ever played. Obnoxious, foolish, not challenging, or fun. Backglass animation is ridiculous. Hard to believe it came from Ousler Python Anghelo. They must have really run out of ideas and stretched hard for this one. Lame, dumb, and stupid are adjectives that come to mind most readily. Makes you want to go play Gottlieb games of that era, which sucked too, but not nearly as bad as bad cats. Art bad, gameplay bad, execution bad, seafood bad. That was a hit piece. Wow. You saying you want a piece of me? When you started that review, I was instantly transported to like the Marty DeBerge reading Spinal Tap reviews to them. The review you had on Shark Sandwich, which was merely a two-word review, just said, shit sandwich. The first line, I was like, this is what this feels like. Oh, what's the other one? He's like, the gospel according to Spinal Tap. This pretentious, ponderous collection of religious rock psalms is enough to prompt the question, what day did the Lord create Spinal Tap? And couldn't he have rested on that day, too? I've never heard that one. that's a good one that's a good one oh so good dude i love the we had that we run into that with a lot of these die on this hill reviews or whatever when people work the work the title into like a shitty pun to slam the game oh yeah always funny to me and that's the thing with a lot of these reviews i like people being outspoken about games and having feelings and like hopefully that comes across in this like yeah get a kick out of this stuff we're not trying to hate on people with their feelings and i think bad cats equals bad games is about as good as the shit gets well it's like when we did no fear and he somebody said no fear equals no fun yeah you're like no fun every time i'm like oh yeah that's the shit like uh yeah i love it i mean there wouldn't i'm surprised there was only one it's true you know i think no one else was that clever yeah well and when he says that the back glass like the animated part of the back glass is ridiculous yeah it is but that's why i think it's really like why is ridiculous it's not ridiculous it's a realistic everyone needs to stop taking it so seriously smacking cats with brooms yeah sometimes especially when they're acting unbecomingly you have to smack them with the broom they don't they don't listen when those cats act up man they're stuff and worse someone might need to tell these guys that pinball is a god it's supposed to be fun it's supposed to be fun why do we have to live in a world without whimsy and fanciful worlds where cats rule the world these guys just grew up in you know puritan households and they just can't stand the sight of a cat being bad but it's like did these guys want they want barbed wire they want like hamela anderson like you know like okay but barbed wire is pretty great oh we gotta go back back for that one we need more of those system three or whatever we got leaves yeah leaves on die on this hill because that shit is so like there's so much going on in those games so hated we need more people to defend oh i want to do let's talk about it i love jim belsito is the reason i ever got to play barbed wire and he had run a location and i was like foolish i'm so excited yeah no all day okay okay maybe system three episode down the pipe at some point yes that's a good idea we should add that and we'll pencil you in to defend barbed wire if you want in the future okay because that that'll be a hoot i have a system i have a system three game that i want to defend. We won't mention it here. We'll mention it off the air, but it's something I want to do, and it's a game that I love. But I do want to end this by thanking everyone listening. Once again, to the Wedgehead Pinball Podcast, I want to thank Alex, my co-host. I want to thank Jessica DiNardo, our guest, for coming on and defending Bad Cats. If you're listening to this and you can find a Bad Cats near you, go play it and make up your own mind. We all think it's a pretty fun game. Jessica it's one of her favorite games and use the pinwall map and try to go find one and play it or the next time you're on a show put some time on bad cats you will not forget the sound you will not forget the sound and music on this game I promise you that and make up your own mind if you've never played before or you haven't played in a while give it another chance but for everyone listening until next time good luck don't suck Thanks for watching!