Ep 73: Big Bad Bart with Josh Sharpe

TL;DR

Josh Sharpe on completing Cactus Canyon with Lyman F. Sheats Jr. and designing for mass appeal.

Summary

Key Claims

• Josh Sharpe has been involved with the Cactus Canyon Continued project longer than Lyman F. Sheats Jr. was announced, with his relationship to Doug Duba dating back 20 years through Raw Thrills vendor work.

  high confidence · Josh Sharpe explaining his involvement timeline: 'I was involved long before Lyman was, actually. so my relationship with Doug Duba and the CGC team goes way back to like medieval I mean he's been a vendor for us at Raw Thrills for 20 years'

• Cactus Canyon Continued code will ship complete with no incremental updates planned, representing a significant departure from modern Stern practice.

  high confidence · Josh Sharpe: 'we are hopefully with my experience and Lyman's experience and the few other people that we've had play it, you kind of do the best you can and go with what you feel works best and just be confident that if we're enjoying what we're doing, which we are, that we're confident people are going to enjoy what we put out'

• Matt Coriale and Tom Corfman pitched the original Cactus Canyon concept during a competitive pitch period when Williams was pivoting resources to Pinball 2000, with Correal being the only designer to present something substantially developed beyond basic concept sketches.

  medium confidence · Josh Sharpe: 'all of these engineers had an opportunity to pitch a game... I think Matt was a programmer, and I think he may have been the only design team, if you will, that pitched a game idea where it was – because he's the programmer, they actually had something that was way further along working'

• Rob Berry, the original Cactus Canyon music composer, has volunteered to record new pickup lines for Bionic Bart and the new code version.

  high confidence · Josh Sharpe: 'Rob was the voice of most of the people in the game. And he has volunteered to do some pickups if we need it. And so there may be some stuff in Bionic Bart that we may tell him to throw a couple of new lines on there'

• Cactus Canyon Continued ruleset incorporates unused speech quotes and content from the original ROM that were never applied to the unfinished game, discovered through the CGC design document.

  high confidence · Josh Sharpe: 'all of the sounds that are not used in the ROM and like the CGC document that I ended up getting like has the list of every possible speech quote. And it's crazy to think like there's so much content that wasn't used'

Notable Quotes

• “when working with Lyman, the idea of the goal is to make a game that is as wide of a demographic... don't make games for me. I'm going to play anything because I'm a crazy pinball nerd. You know, it's like pinball is like pizza.”

  Josh Sharpe @ ~25:00 — Articulates core design philosophy: prioritizing casual appeal over hardcore player preferences, fundamental to Cactus Canyon Continued design strategy

• “There's something about the games from whatever, even throwing in System 11. Like there's something – the charm of these games, like they were made – the games were made to make money on location to casual players, right?”

  Josh Sharpe @ ~18:00 — Explains the 'Williams charm' design philosophy distinguishing 1990s games from modern pinball, central to understanding Cactus Canyon's design approach

• “the tree trunk you know back in the 90s and what the cgc team did was add some branches to that and what lyman and i have done is filled in every leaf possible on that tree”

  Josh Sharpe @ ~45:00 — Describes the iterative completion layers of Cactus Canyon—original design, CGC base game, new Sharpe/Sheets ruleset—acknowledging respect for original vision

• “pinball rules, a rule is a rule and a rule is kind of nothing unless you dress it up to entertain the player”

  Josh Sharpe @ ~20:00 — Core design philosophy: rules are secondary to emotional/entertainment value through presentation

• “I've known him since I was 13 years old. He's kind of my competitive pinball mentor. So he, you know, he was at my wedding. Like I've known the guy forever and we talk pinball a lot.”

  Josh Sharpe @ ~52:00 — Establishes long-standing personal and professional relationship between Sharpe and Lyman Sheets, grounding their collaboration in deep mutual trust

• “you have to understand. That's like a player's game. Like I never really thoroughly enjoyed it until I realized that you have to dig a little deeper into that game”

  Josh Roop (host) @ ~28:00 — Contrasts casual vs. hardcore game experience, illustrating the design tension between accessibility and depth

Entities

Signals

• ?

  design_philosophy: Josh Sharpe articulates the core design tension in modern pinball: balancing casual player appeal (broad demographic entertainment, quick modes, visual feedback) against hardcore competitive player preferences (deep rule stacking, complexity). Cactus Canyon Continued explicitly designed to maximize broad appeal following Lyman Sheets' philosophy.

  high · Sharpe: 'the idea of the goal is to make a game that is as wide of a demographic... don't make games for me' and 'every decision you make has to please as many people as you can'

• ?

  product_strategy: Cactus Canyon Continued will ship with complete, finished code with no planned incremental updates—a deliberate departure from Stern's rolling update model. This constraint influences design methodology: developers must achieve confidence in single version before release.

  high · Sharpe discusses designing with knowledge that 'we get one shot at it' and the team is aiming for a 'complete fully functional game that's going to have everything in it'

• ?

  design_innovation: Josh Sharpe conducted extensive archival research into original Cactus Canyon design intent by consulting original design team members via Zoom, analyzing unused speech content, studying original design documents, and reviewing 20-year-old Pinball News articles and expo seminars to inform new ruleset.

  high · Sharpe: 'I was able to steal my dad's Rolodex and talk to all of the design team members' and details about discovering unused speech quotes in original ROM and CGC design document

• ?

  historical_signal: Cactus Canyon discussed as exemplar of 1990s Williams design philosophy: location-oriented, casual-player-focused, bite-sized entertainment modes versus modern narrative-driven games with extended story arcs. Sharpe articulates this as 'Williams charm.'

  high · Sharpe: 'Williams games are really – you're making some shots on a play field... then you're entering a mode that... takes you to 10. It's quicker. It's like a bite-sized Snickers bar'