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A Deep Dive Into "Pirates of the Caribbean" with Butch Peel

Pintastic New England·video·1h 21m·analyzed·Sep 4, 2018
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.029

TL;DR

Butch Peel deep dives Pirates of the Caribbean design, mechanics, and rules.

Summary

Butch Peel provides an extensive technical and rules deep dive into Pirates of the Caribbean, a new wide-body pinball game designed by Eric Meunier for Jersey Jack Pinball. The presentation covers cabinet design evolution (standardized post-Dialed In! layout), detailed mechanical construction (playfield mechanisms, magnets, diverters, bumpers), electrical architecture (5V RGB LED system, new sound board, ATX power supply), and complex rule set features including skill shots, multiball modes, chapter qualification shots, and character powers.

Key Claims

  • Pirates of the Caribbean is the first wide-body game using the new cabinet design established by Dialed In!, and this cabinet design is now standard for all future Jersey Jack Pinball games.

    high confidence · Butch Peel, speaking as Jersey Jack Pinball representative

  • Eric Meunier is the youngest designer to create a pinball machine for a major manufacturer in a very long time, and is in his 30s.

    high confidence · Butch Peel directly states this about the game designer

  • The game uses a new sound board for the first time at Jersey Jack Pinball, featuring 5V RGB LED lighting requiring only standard commercial ATX power supplies instead of custom 4V supplies.

    high confidence · Butch Peel describing technical specifications of Pirates of the Caribbean

  • The prototype uses a three-ring assembly for the spinning mate mechanism, but production versions have been changed to a single spinning disc.

    high confidence · Butch Peel explaining differences between prototype and production playfield

  • Eric Meunier worked as an operator's son, gaining hands-on experience servicing games, which influenced his design philosophy toward ease of repair.

    high confidence · Butch Peel biographical context on designer background

  • The Hobbit (Standard Edition) remains the heaviest pinball game Jersey Jack Pinball has produced.

    high confidence · Butch Peel comparing weight of Pirates of the Caribbean to prior releases

  • Pirates of the Caribbean features the game's first use of playfield rails instead of metal tubes for structural support, improving upon previous designs.

    medium confidence · Butch Peel stating 'Eric went back to the play field rails' as a positive design choice

  • The game includes hidden magnets, posts, diverters, and multiple loop shots designed to create deep, complex rule interactions.

    high confidence · Butch Peel detailed mechanical walkthrough showing multiple hidden features

Notable Quotes

  • “You can tell this is a new guy, because he's taking chances. He's doing things that are different, things you've never seen before.”

    David Thiel (quoted by Butch Peel), Jersey Jack Pinball sound designer@ 5:42 — Describes Eric Meunier's design philosophy as bold and unconventional, highlighting risk-taking as a generational trait

  • “True to Eric went right off and did whatever he wanted to do. And he was given that attitude. That's what's kind of cool about the company.”

    Butch Peel@ 6:11 — Establishes Jersey Jack Pinball's creative culture allowing designers freedom despite management suggestions

  • “The Hobbit (Standard Edition)'s still the winner and champion of the world. Holy cow, that game is heavy.”

    Butch Peel@ 9:12 — Acknowledges The Hobbit as the heaviest Jersey Jack Pinball game and references personal physical toll of servicing it

  • “All roads lead to this scoop here from the subway, except this shot, of course, which is a separate little subway piece on its own.”

    Butch Peel@ 15:51 — Describes playfield routing design emphasizing central scoop as hub for most shots

  • “Once we finish one game we say I know I can do better and you're starting that one so that's what's great about it.”

    Butch Peel@ 22:43 — Philosophical reflection on pinball design evolution and continuous improvement in the hobby

  • “Pizza and pinball, and pinball guys go really good together.”

    Butch Peel@ 4:21 — Casual community observation about pinball culture and social engagement

Entities

Pirates of the CaribbeangameEric MeunierpersonButch PeelpersonJersey Jack PinballcompanyDavid ThielpersonDialed In!game

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Jersey Jack Pinball conducting detailed technical and rules presentations at pinball community events (Pintastic New England) with manufacturer representatives directly engaging enthusiasts in mechanical walkthrough and rule explanation

    high · Butch Peel presenting comprehensive technical and rules deep dive at Pintastic New England; annual tradition of deep dives on new games; Pizza and pinball community social engagement

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Prototype fork mechanisms did not function reliably, necessitating replacement with virtual lock system, indicating mechanical complexity challenges during development

    medium · Butch Peel stating 'prototype, those fork mechanisms really didn't work very well, so they're disabled in the game now'

  • ?

    design_innovation: Playfield design includes novel shot mechanics: uphill roll to vertical up-kicker, dual diverters for left turnaround with maelstrom connection, upper flipper 'snatch' mechanism when blocking backhand shots, and integrated bumper/slingshot frenzy zone

    high · Butch Peel explaining unique shot sequences like uphill subway, dual-purpose diverter slots, and integrated Tortuga bumper/slingshot feature

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Eric Meunier's design philosophy emphasizes bold risk-taking with novel mechanics, enabled by Jersey Jack Pinball's culture of creative freedom despite management suggestions to simplify the design

    high · David Thiel quote about 'new guy taking chances'; Butch Peel confirming designer was given freedom to pursue his vision despite being suggested a simpler standard body design

  • ?

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.244

0:00
. Sure. Every year, Dave says in our newest game, he wants me to do a deep dive into it, and that's kind of up to interpretation what deep dive means. We have a couple of different areas that we can go into. Some of it the making of the game, some of it the rules and how to play the game a little bit because it's very deep and complex. And then we have a game here that we can kind of open up and look under the hood and talk a little bit about how it's built. So that's kind of where I'm going to start. This game, you notice when dialed in we changed our cabinet design. So the boards now are up in the back box. They used to be in the bottom for wither bottles and hummock. Where they ought to be, as somebody in our company says all the time. So the next game after, I'm sure everybody was thinking, well, was that cabinet with dialed in just a one-off thing, or is that the way it's going to be from now on? That's the way it's going to be from now on. So this cabinet is a wide-body version of the dialed-in cabinet. So it has the volume controls in the bottom here at the front of the cabinet so you can adjust the volume on the game before opening the coin door without even being able to open the coin door. Operators, of course, can disable that so that no one can change the volume outside. Then it would work just as a volume control for your earphones when you plug in there. The back box has all the boards in the back.
1:45
So our driver board's on the bottom. If you guys can see that, yeah, the driver board is down here with all the blinking lights. That's showing it's got good communication between that and the CPU board. The CPU board is up inside the metal box right above that up in this area. And off to the side of that is a new sound board that we've got for this game. It's the first game with a new sound board in it. And then off to the left on this side underneath this metal is the ATX power supply.
2:17

  • The game is based on five Pirates of the Caribbean movies, each with its own wizard mode.

    high confidence · Butch Peel explaining rule structure with five movie-based chapters

  • Pirates of the Caribbean features an action button with multiple functions including gold collection, chapter qualification, and multiball activation.

    high confidence · Butch Peel describing action button mechanics and uses

  • “It's a pirate thing, I guess. I can't argue that. It's history and everything.”

    Butch Peel@ 29:33 — References the traditional 'pieces of eight' concept in pirate lore connected to game design

    • The Hobbit (Standard Edition)
    game
    The Wizard of Ozgame
    Pintastic New Englandorganization
    Daveperson
    Jackperson

    operational_signal: Designer background as operator's son directly influenced mechanical design for ease of servicing and operator convenience; volume controls in cabinet bottom accessible without opening coin door

    high · Butch Peel explaining Eric Meunier's experience with operator work influenced design approach; cabinet design feature allowing volume adjustment and headphone connectivity externally

  • ?

    product_strategy: Pirates of the Caribbean features extensive hidden features including multiple magnets, diverters, posts, nested loop shots, and multiball modes creating deep rules complexity comparable to The Wizard of Oz and The Hobbit

    high · Detailed mechanical walkthrough documenting hidden magnets, posts, diverters, nested loops, color-coded bumpers with leveling system, and multiple qualified multiball modes

  • ?

    product_strategy: Pirates of the Caribbean prototype-to-production changes include: three-ring spinning mate mechanism changed to single disc; fork mechanisms disabled in favor of virtual locks; smaller upper flipper shot opening enlarged for production; Y-shaped subway replaced with modular design

    high · Butch Peel explicitly noting these changes and explaining reasoning (ease of repair, shot difficulty adjustment, assembly challenges)

  • ?

    product_strategy: New cabinet design standardization post-Dialed In! establishes architectural template for all future Jersey Jack Pinball releases

    high · Butch Peel explicit statement: 'the bottom line is that this new cabinet design with the different head on it, the different coin door that has no controls for volume and for a headphone and things like that, it's in the cabinet now. All that's going to be standard from now on.'

  • ?

    manufacturing_signal: Jersey Jack Pinball establishing modular design approach using interchangeable components (vertical up-kicker/trough pieces shared with The Hobbit; scoop design variations; opto switch boards) to reduce complexity and improve serviceability

    high · Butch Peel noting reuse of The Hobbit vertical up-kicker/trough assembly; similar scoop design to Dialed In! with directional variation; consistent opto board architecture across games

  • ?

    technology_signal: Jersey Jack Pinball implementing new standard hardware platform: 5V RGB LED system eliminating need for custom power supplies, new sound board, ATX power supply, improved connector design, and standardized cabinet architecture

    high · Detailed technical walkthrough of new power, lighting, and board systems; explicit statement that this cabinet design is now standard for all future JJP games

    • For the first time yet, we've got RGB LED lighting now that's all 5 volts. So we don't have to have a special power supply like we've had in the past that has 4 volts for the RGB LED running all the lights in the game. So everything in this game runs off of 5 volts and that's a lot easier to get a just a beefier Commercial off-the-shelf ATX power supply nothing special about it and it'll still run the game
    2:46
    So we've got a solid-state hard drive is over on the left side or on the right side over here above the the in this area above the
    2:58
    My pointer show kind of does not Like point over here It's hard to do. So the bottom line is that this new cabinet design with the different head on it, the different coin door that has no controls for volume and for a headphone and things like that, it's in the cabinet now. All that's going to be standard from now on. And this was the first white-body game that came along after the new cabinet design. So that's what we're doing.
    3:34
    So the pivot and swing out monitor is kind of nice. I can pull it out and bring it your way there, and I can set it over to one side here, and I can lift the play field up. I can move it to the opposite side and put the play field up and still be able to see it. I can push it out to the side where I can be working on something and look at it. So it's going to be kind of useful in looking at the manuals for the game online on the game. I write the manuals in case some of you didn't know that. So it's one of my main jobs then, and representing the company at these shows and all the jack around. We'll be on again, what, 6.30, Jack? It's time for the . Oh, OK. Yeah. And we'll have a lot more people then, won't we? Because one thing I've learned is pizza and pinball, and pinball guys go really good together. So that's going to be fun. So this whole monitor swings back inside here and mounts up inside the back box and is latched with a couple of latches, one on either side. And then the head can fold down and the monitor will stay up above the back glass and all. Go ahead and put the back glass back in here. Just to kind of cut down some of that glare that comes off the back box lights. It's like being in the headlights right here. Just like that up in there. All good. Always put your back box lock keys back onto the hook right when you take them out. All right, so the game itself, this was designed by Eric Meunier, a young, what is he, 20-something, Jack, or is he 30 yet? He's 30, I think. Young guy, anyway, by the way. The youngest guy that designed the pinball machine in a very long time. Working for one of the major manufacturers. He came into this, David Thiel, one of our guys that does the sound, made some cool comments about him. When he first saw the play field layout, he says, you can tell this is a new guy, because he's taking chances. He's doing things that are different, things you've never seen before. And a young guy will do that. It's more likely to poke his nose out of the tree line than somebody who's old to know that when you put it out there, somebody will whack it with a bat. So he's done some really cool things. He was told that maybe we'd like to have a standard body game and make it kind of simple and all that. And true Eric went right off and did whatever he wanted to do. And he was given that attitude. That's what's kind of cool about the company. And then come up with this monster of a wide-body game. It's got a lot of stuff in it. You can see when I lift the play field up in a minute or two here, what all's underneath. It's very similar to Wizard of Oz and Hobbit. There's just not going to be very much room underneath there for anything else. It's pretty well crammed and jam-packed. Eric worked as a slave laborer, I think he calls it, to his father who was an operator. So he got to work on games a lot. He got to go around collecting the monies, that kind of stuff. So he put some operator kind of thinking into ease of repair working on the games. The whole entire play field back here in the back. Oh my god, I can't believe I just said whole entire. I hate that. This entire play field back here comes off with a single thumb screw at the back. You twist it off. It's back behind at the very end of the play field. You lift it up now. you undo a thumb screw, which turned into something you have to use, I think an Allen head in it, because it ended up being a little further down than he anticipated. But you take that screw loose, you pull it out, and the whole play field then comes back towards the back panel and then lifts up and out of the game. After you've taken 45 connectors, it lifts underneath, of course. There's no getting around that, right? When you put stuff on the play field, there's going to be outposts, there's going to be lights, there's going to be coils, there's going to be switches, all those kinds of things. It's not wireless. That's right. It's not a wireless play field. We don't want that. Those coils are easy to get to, like if I drive something over the peninsula there. What's that? And those coils underneath the play field, are they easy to get to? Well, the only coils really under the play field are the flipper coils. We had to do a different type of mounting brackets. You know the old Williams games had a three-way coil mounting bracket where you could mount lugs up with lugs left, lugs right, and had to notch in all three sides of that bracket that goes on there. We only had a one notch bracket because all of our lugs were straight up. So this one of course has to have lugs over to the side so that it gives more clearance under that rocking ship rather than having to stick down and poking into plastic to do the things and breaking off the tabs. But yeah, so the coil, once you flip that out, it plays you a little with the coil. The mechanisms are right there. The coils are no more difficult or easy to get to than they were on the way.
    8:47
    So yeah, up on top of the mini playfield up there, there's a motor that rocks the playfield. It resides under the back of the playfield here. Kind of pull this out maybe and show you guys some here. Look under the playfield. A little bit about what's above.
    9:08
    Is it the heaviest game so far? No, I don't think so. I think Hobbit's still the winner and champion of the world. Yeah, it always will be. Holy cow, that game is heavy. That play field is heavy. I used to have one of those sympathy things on my elbow, too. It was from the Hobbit elbow from lifting that play field up and over. This is a prototype game. Keep that in mind as you look at any of the sculptures, any of the artwork, any of the mechanisms, assemblies, all that kind of stuff. It's a prototype game. It still has the three-ring assembly for the spinning mat, which we all know has been changed to a single spinning disc. The software on one of these games, I believe, is actually still running the three discs independently. The other one is running the newer version of the prototype software, which runs the two center discs at the same, as if they were one, and then leaves the outer disc completely still all the time, which emulates just having a single disc and a little extra bumpiness around it. The play field, of course, will come right up to the end with that new single disc.
    10:16
    So one of the main things that sticks out to me right away is Eric went back to the play field rails, so those tubes will be underneath this play field also, which I think is a big plus over these metals. These things are just screwed in with a single screw and it's just too much weight. So that's a really good thing. As I look down through the play field, there'll be a smaller mech in here. It only has a single motor. That's where the spinning disc will go. So there's one game that has the older software that'll run different directions. There's only two of them working now, aren't there? Yes. Okay. And they're still bidirectional. I mean, they can turn left or right. They can turn variable speeds, all that kind of stuff.
    11:10
    RGBLEDs, like I said, are all 5 volts now, but they're still run off the same type of boards that this bag board down here at the bottom runs all the columns back to the CPU. It has a USB that runs all the way back to the CPU, plugs into here, and then out from there, we use the I2C to talk to all of the individual boards. The big boards are all connected to one another via this series of ethernet cables here. So one of those goes out to one of the big boards. I've done a little, you know, when you have a board that has just a few lights instead of running an ethernet and all the circuitry to there, you can just run a cable from one of these back to one of the bigger boards that does have an ethernet cable. So you have some flexibility there. And of course, we figured out a long time ago and making those light boards whatever funny shape they need to be to get under the inserts, you just do that because trying to run all the wiring like we did on Hobbit, all these single little light boards with doubles and triples, man, it just makes a trunk down the center about that big around, and it's not easy. So Eric's just trying to use a lot of existing parts. Things like down here in the bottom is a vertical up kicker that puts the ball up onto the upper play field. And this guy here has a chute on the top side of the play field that basically turns like that and sets the ball up onto the upper play field. But the under part of it, and this is where it hooks into the subway in this metal trough, is all the same vertical up kicker and trough piece that we had in Hobbit. So it's interchangeable with that. This is very similar to the dialed in scoop, it's just it comes off the other side. So the ball comes in, on dialed in, the ball comes into this side of the scoop. On the tail, our Pirates of the Caribbean, it's going to come in on the right side. So just simple little things like that. But if you remember here, the same opto boards that we've used ever since Wizard Voss, there's three of them in this game, one, two, and three. So that tells you that there's 24 switches, opto switches in the game, lots of optos, plus what's in the ball trough, which isn't counting that 24. So lots of optos everywhere. This is the fork mechanism here. This is what's going to kick the forks up through the slots in the play field so that when you make a shot into that chest lane, it makes the ball do a quick U-turn, coming bouncing around when you make the ramp troughs and stuff, the ball bounces up into the, to the chest. The prototype, those fork mechanisms really didn't work very well, so they're disabled in the game now, so the fork's never come up right now, but when you shoot a shot through there, when you're about to multi-ball qualified, you shoot a shot through those chest length, and it's meant for lock, you get a virtual lock, and so then you pump three balls out, and you get three types. Works just pretty much the same.
    14:07
    Lots and lots and lots of deep rules in the game. You can see the wiring though is really not too horrible underneath here. A couple of main veins, a lot of these are neck cables, a lot easier to plug in. All the big boards and little boards plug in with these nice positive lock connectors. A lot of the things, like I said, we learned early on in the Wizard of Oz, some of those locking connectors can really be a pain. They lock really well. They won't let those things come off at all. These work a lot better. They have a positive lock to them, don't have, it's more like a friction lock, not a positive lock. So again, you just pull them out and they'll pop out. We have kind of an interesting shot down here. I don't know if you guys are able to see all this because I'm pointing at it here. But this plastic here, you can see my finger hopefully under there, this guy is an uphill, I'll kind of back out a little bit and show you that. The ball actually comes in lower on the play field and rolls up the play field to the vertical upticker. That's kind of an interesting shot. So enough of a tilt on that so that it will roll uphill in the game. That's a pretty steep little subway. The other pieces of the subway, this is a prototype game again. We found that trying to snake all this Y-shaped one-piece clear plastic subway in there, once you've got all the wiring and everything, is a real pain. to try and pull it out afterwards, just the same kind of pain. So what they did was come in here and lock this plastic one off here and then make a single metal piece that hooks back up into here so when the ball goes into the mat area, it's dropping into a metal channel that takes it into the main subway and drops it. So all roads lead to this scoop here from the subway, except this shot, of course, which is a separate little subway piece on its own. So this is a diverter hole up here. kind of interesting because it's below the Maelstrom ramp, you can't see it, and it works as a, for the left turnaround lane, it works as a diverter on the playfield. It can knock it into that subway hole and then when it goes inside the Maelstrom ramp and spins around it drops into that same hole. So if we look at that from back above now. I think we can maybe see better that way. So right up here is a diverter for dropping the ball into the maelstrom ring. And right down here below it is a diverter for making this left turnaround loop that knocks it into that same hole. So it's kind of cool. The ball goes up this left side. I really like that shot. When you make it really smooth, it sends that spinner just flying. It goes up there. The ball does a U-turn and comes back down. It sends that spinner just flying. It goes up there. The ball goes a U-turn and comes back down. In fact, if we can kind of split with my computer now on the spinner, I can kind of show you some of the stuff here. So there's the computer. So I'm just going to go over a few of the features there. The hidden features, in fact, of the cards and carry-on. And I like all the cool transitions, so bear with me. I'm trying to use every single transition that the PowerPoint makes to do that. So let's underneath all that stuff on the play field. There's a whole lot under there. If you strip away all this stuff that's on here, you'll see the loop on the shot I'm talking about. You're going to shoot up this left side. You're going to send this feeder going crazy. And a real good shot, a solid shot will come up here, go all the way around this post that's in there. hit the switch and come back down. It can either be diverted into this hole. You guys see where I am? I'm in your way. It can either be diverted into this hole or just allowed to come back out again. And it makes a nice smooth feed back out to the flipper. I think it kind of comes out to the right with that really sharp turn in the flat rail right towards the end. And ready for another shot right back up there. A weak shot of course will come up and spin the spinner, which sometimes that gives you qualifier for that shot, which is called the devil's triangle at that sign. And sometimes you need to make it all the way up around the loop in order to get credit for making that shot. Back in the main playfield area, up under that trunk, that's where these fork slots reside. So that's where the fork comes up and looks kind of like two of Wolverine's claws when they come up out of the playfield there.
    18:37
    The trunk itself sits in this area here. there's your open chest, low chest, I guess it is now since the trunk is open all the time. You have an upper flipper here. The new prototype playfield has a very small opening for this shot, the production playfield, which is what's depicted on the screen here. Much larger hole, so it's a little easier to make that. I find that on a lot of games, we have the upper flipper, and when you're trying to backhand, I like to try to backhand some of the shots off the playfield, and it seems like the upper flipper ball is blocking my shot because it's up in the way. This one is kind of cool because when it blocks it, it snatches it and pulls it back into that hole. So it's a way to make that shot that's really kind of fun to mess with. And it's easier to shot than the prototype. Yes, and it'll be easier than the prototype, sure. This is the opening for the scoop on the side where it kicks out the ball and feeds it nicely through the return lane here for a nice smooth return to your flipper.
    19:34
    Can you get down here a little bit So you guys can all see. So up under in this area up here is where the,
    19:41
    I think I have some of this listed out here. So yeah, we have plenty of things up under there. That's the turnaround shot. Hidden loops, so loops within loops. There's a orbit shot that goes around the outside here. There's an inner loop shot that uses about 75% of the same flat rail, but just makes it a little tighter for the upper flipper to loop over and over again. And there's parts in the game where you can make the shot, loop the shot over and over again and then drop it in the hole and you get more points for having looped it a couple of times first. If you hit the gold targets over here, if you loop it around first a few times and hit the gold target it makes for a multiplier on how many pieces of gold that it gonna throw up on on the screen and I talk a little bit more about that There the hidden diverter there that knocks the ball into the subway which will return you here There's hidden magnets. There's a magnet underneath this part of the play field. I can lift and show you this here. So down in this area is the area we're looking at. And so yeah, you can swing out there a little bit. There you go. So right down in here is a magnet that's underneath that's routed out, kind of thin in the play field so that you can get a lot of action on the ball. There's also a magnet up above right in here. I don't know if you guys can see that, but it's right alongside that vertical up kicker. That one's actually got a pole exposed through the play field so it can grab the ball because up above up there, that same hole that drops into the vertical up kicker and puts you up onto the play field, there's points where the game of the ball can grab the ball, drop it in there, and kick you up onto the upper play field from just making an orbit shot. That's kind of cool. Go back to the other one, please.
    21:37
    Take five, dude. Alright, and then we've got hidden posts. There's up posts here, up posts here. So you've seen when you send the ball up into this area here, an up post comes in and then it kicks around and does a chapter selection, a random chapter selection off of all the switches and movie targets up in here. It keeps the ball in this area bouncing around with that magnet that's up under the plug field. We call that the buried magnet. So the other up post here can catch a ball in the orbit and tee it up for you for a shot with your upper flipper. Or in one of the modes even, you actually use this very multi-ball. You end up dropping a ball onto there and it holds it and you need to shoot it from down here like a like a Newton ball. And not get ball back over for a big score. But yeah, that's not for mortals. mortals since for if it's mortals it's with the glass off you know where you can try so something I'll probably never get to make that shot but it's kind of cool that it's there and something to strive for because that's that's what pinball is right as soon as we finish one game we say I know I can do better and you're starting that one so that's what's great about it there's four pop bumpers and a slingshot kind of integrated together for a kicking frenzy over here in the Tortuga area so the ball kicks off the slingshot here three pop bumpers and then has a pop bumper way down below. And there's modes that I'll talk about in a little while with the play field here with these triangular inserts where it treats all of these as one kind of integrated feature with the four pop bumpers and one slingshot. And of course, we have an extra flipper up there. I like that. That was cool. So a few of the important shots. We want to talk about rules now. and we're switching gears here. I put play through the artwork on this because it's probably easier for us to see it here and be able to point at it than kind of use the camera over there. No offense, take another five maybe.
    23:41
    So we got skill shots. You always have cool skill shots and we have multiple skill shots. One of the things you can do is send the ball up lightly and drop it into this hole here where it comes off the top of this and falls into this hole. And that way it drops right into that vertical up kicker goes up to the black pearl mini play field up above. So it'll kick on back behind here. The vertical up kicker shoot is in this corner. So it drops the ball right in here and drops through one of these two, depending on which way the ship is rocking at the time, drops through one of these spinners up there. And then of course you're up on the play field already. You're doing the seasick thing and trying to keep it up there. It's kind of a fun way to start a ball. So it also advances one step towards your black pearl multi-ball when you do that because the skill shot takes one of your objectives out of the list and kind of crosses one off the lens he goes to the next, which I'll go over in hideous detail here in a moment.
    24:42
    Okay, so we have the goal targets here with the action button. A lot of people don't realize, but you need to use this action button in the middle of the lock down bar here.
    24:58
    It has several uses. One of the first uses is this collect gold. So when you shoot the ball and it launches around, comes to this upper flipper up here, if you put the ball into these gold targets here, gold chunks of pieces of gold are thrown onto the video screen there, and you collect them by slapping those buttons. one slap for each piece that's on the screen. And you're trying to collect 50 pieces of gold, which is a set of old user settings sort of thing, to get the Tortuga multiball. So you can keep making, you know, collecting the gold. And you'll hear the call-outs, and you'll see there's a flasher up here, and there's a flasher over here that sparkle with white and yellow. And you'll hear the guy say, gold, slap the action button as quick as you can, you know, things like that. And you're supposed to smack around until those lights go out, you hear that, which tells you you're empty and you're wasting your time. So if you, on the ball launch, if you want to collect gold, you send it around here and you shoot in the gold target. If, however, you can send it around this loop two, three, four, five, however many times, and then hit the gold, the whole screen will just cover with gold. You'll be slapping it up like crazy. One of the special powers of one of the players is that it automatically collects all the gold on the screen with one tap. That's kind of a nice feature. We're trying for that multi ball to choose that character and then you just have to slap it one time and not try and pick up, you know, 20 pieces doing this while the ball is draining. Because I am horrible about deciding when to reach off my clipper button and which clipper button to reach off. It always comes right down on top of me. So the interloop shots are multipliers then. So once, twice, three times and then into these will get you a really good goal for you to pick up. Right, right. And then the other skill shots, one of the skill shots is to drop the ball into here, send it around this loop several times, and then into the map hole. That's a super skill shot. Or directly into the map hole is a super skill shot. And again, it applies a multiplier for your points in a certain mode in the game for how many times you go around there before you put it in to the mat hole. So lots of things going on. And the last skill shot, I kind of forgot to mention this, is to drop it into here, because these pop bumpers now, every one of these lights around these pop bumpers in this sling, they're going to have a color code to them. And whatever color all of the triangles is at is what level they've been raised to. You need to raise each pop bumper up one to get to the next level. Every single one of them has to be hit. And then this mystery light will light up here, and it'll be color coded as to what level they're at, from one to 10. And your mystery value for shooting the ball into there will be appropriately much better award on level 10 than it would be on level one. So you want to build them up, build them up, continue to build them up. And hitting this one down here is kind of a, it's always the one lagging behind, because these other ones are hitting and moving around and change the color like crazy, but in order to raise the whole level up one, you gotta hit this one also. However, there is a little help there with this button here. So when the ball goes and rolls over this little roll over button, it raises the entire level up one of all of the popovers. So you can kind of get that one by bouncing around in here, just nudging and getting it to pop out this hole over here. Now of course, when you drop it in here on a skill shot, it actually raises the level of everything up one also as an award for that skill shot, for making that skill shot. Which, congratulations, you pulled it hard enough to drop the ball off the end of the wire ramp. Woo, I'm so good.
    28:45
    Okay, the Chuka multi-ball starts in that same hole there. When you get the 50 pieces of gold, you send it into here. This one will be lit up and it will be flashing and you'll start a three ball multi-ball there. It's kind of cool, a lot of fire and action on the screen.
    29:01
    Chapter qualification shots. So every one of the main shots on this game is marked with one of these arrows, kind of like they used in F-14, this U-shaped rear end arrow. So every one of those has a major shot in the game, and each one of those is also used for some of these pieces of eight that I'm gonna talk about in a little bit. There's nine pieces of eight, go figure.
    29:29
    So you might have pieces of nine, but it may be a lot more sense, but I don't know. It's a pirate thing, I guess. I can't argue that. It's history and everything. So you get the movie. There's five movies that the game is based on. And so every one of the five movies has its own wizard mode down here at the bottom. And then it has qualifications. You play some of these multi-balls and things for right up above that. So every shot that is a movie qualifying, chapter qualifying shot, is marked with a skull and crossbones. So you'll see them on the play field in several locations here. And they have skull and crossbones on them. And they're also color coded for the five different colors that go down here. There's like a purple and a teal and like a sea green and a red and a gold. So five different shots are some of those pieces of eight shots. When you make one of those shots and you'll hear the guy on the, you know, talk about, you know, qualifying or shot, shot you'll see something pop up on the screen. On the LCD display there's an area above each of the five moving places that will light up a little, one of the circles in there and let you know that one of those chapters is qualified. So then after you've made a bunch of these chapter qualification shots, when you shoot the ball up into the area up here and you've got shots that are qualified around the play field, chapters that have been qualified, that's when it tracks the ball, bounces it around, bounces off the all these movie things and bounces off the ones in between to activate the magnets, basically, to keep it in action. And then it shoots a cannonball out of one of those on the LCD to tell you which chapter of which movie you're starting. And then along with each of the chapters is, you know, the participants of that. So where was I? Okay, so we got people all over the play field. All these shots per person have the triangles that have their name in the triangle. So there's Will there, and then Jack is the one up here at the top. Captain Jack, not Jack Brannery. The women, there's Barbosa. So you'll need to make some of these shots in order to finish that chapter. And those people will be sprung out across the top of the LCD screen, and then as you make one of the shots, they'll kind of check them off, and you have a timed mode, of course. It's not a mode, it's a chapter. Sorry. Sorry, Keith. It's not enough to do, but you call it a mode, it's a chapter. So once you finish getting all the pieces of the chapter, all the characters in that chapter, then that chapter has been complete.
    32:05
    So you're playing chapters. You're trying to make shots. The shots of these little triangles will be lit for whoever it is that you need to make. They'll be blinking and telling you that you need to make them still to go out and complete it. Pop Bumper's mystery level, I already kind of explained that. So let's talk about the Pirates in-lane awards. So on these six inserts down here, the P-I-R-A-T-E, and so when you finish spelling pirate and you use your lane change with your flippers, whenever the ball's coming down the ramp, you know it's going to hit this one. So you move an unlit insert to this side and finish spelling pirates. That, shoot this target up here, it'll light up when you finish spelling pirate. and you shoot that target and it will award whatever it currently says on the LCD right down here. And of course in between there you can punch on the button on the lock down bar and you can look down at the, while you're holding a ball or something, the action stop and look and see on the compass screen there what's going to be awarded for the pirate. Even though you haven't spelled it yet, you can change it and say I want this award and had it ready for when I do make that shot, when I do finish completing it. And of course if you complete all of these and do it several times, you know, you basically every time you complete one and you don't collect it, whatever award was lit down there on your LCD goes away. You basically wasted that award because when you start, you spell it again completely then it overwrites the last one with whatever selected there now. Whatever wasn't there, it wasn't collected, it never gave a chance to collect it again. Escape the locker ball safe. As the ball is coming out of this out lane right over here, we have a post that we'll include in the production games, a rubber ring if you want to put it on there, it makes it a little easier to do this, but you need to give the game a healthy shove when this metal post is next to the ball and knock it back into your shooter lane. There's actually an opening in the gate right there a flat rest. You can do that. Down at the bottom here are your warning shots for your tilts. Tell you how many tilt warnings you have left so you guys would like to shake and know how much more you can still shake and still get your bunch. Okay, so this one we need to, there we go, there's a lot of multi balls here. One for each of the movies. movies this is on top of tortuga multi-ball on top of all the wizard modes and all that these are just along the way sort of things you'll do to qualify and get towards some of these wizard modes personal black pearl that involves the mini play field up here so when i shoot the ball and it pops up onto the upper play field up here or i shoot the ramp and send it up between the flippers and into here and play it then i'm working on trying to to get the the person's black pearl mini multi-ball actually qualified. So first thing I need to do is shoot through the spinners in either direction, one or both. If you shoot a weaker shot that only goes one, you still get some credit for doing that. But shoot it through there. You can multi-loop that over and over again until the lights turn green. These are lit spinners, so they have RGB LED boards in there, and they provide a color. When they go green, I know you've completed that, and then move on to the next which is these two load and cannon targets here and here so thankfully they took when we first took this game to Expo you had to hit both load and cannon otherwise you didn't get a chance to drop the ball in there and shoot the cannon now they made it a little easier for us mortals and then you just have to get one of the other load or cannon so hit that and this green light will light here that gate will open so you can shoot the ball up into this hole, load the cannon, and while the playfield's rocking, you take aim at the ship, which is on the opposite side here. It has a hole in the side. You'll get some credit for hitting the ship because it's on a switch also, and you'll get a lot more credit for putting it through the hole in there, which has an off-go in it and reads it as it drops through. So, yeah, very, very cool, interesting shot. It's fun to do. It's very satisfying when you get it. I think I've done it a couple of times so far, not very many. It's very difficult to do. And of course, like I said earlier, if you start using your skill shots to jump through some of those stages, your first skill shot will qualify the spinners. The next shot will qualify the load and the cannon. And then the next time, you can try and put it in. So you can take some of that difficulty away and make it easier to get there. Once you get into the shot, you make the shot, you either hit the ship or you basically make the shot and then you start the multiball. And the multiball is a three-ball multiball. And while you're playing multiball, you're trying to get the ball back up onto here, load the cannon again, shoot holes, shoot the ship for a jackpot, shoot through the hole for a super jackpot, all the while keeping two or three balls going, yeah, good luck with that. But, I mean, you start to see why guys catch the ball and just hold it very multiball, right? And you're like, that's so fun, come on, let the ball be wild. They're trying to do some of these more involved things. That's Curse of the Black Pearl multiball. Dead Man's Chest is the second one. So Dead Man's Chest is hit the load chest targets here. Very similar to what you do with light locks on sides of ramps and things like that with the dead end up there with the white water for starting their multi-ball. Shoot the two targets on either side and then shoot the ball right up in between. In the production games, like I said, these forks will be kicking up in the actual, it'll be a physical lock that brings the ball up into the chest and the chest will be propped open and you'll be able to see how many balls you've physically had locked so far.
    38:03
    So as those games, this game and the other one are working right now, the forks are disabled and we're just shooting up through here, making a virtual lock each time we do that. So let's see, make that one time, shoot the ball through there, you got ball one lock. Do it again, light, load, chest, shoot it through the middle, you got ball two. Third time you do it, starts the dead men's chest. Multi-ball, during that multi-ball now, you're at the very beginning of multi-ball, these targets around here, and they're labeled two, three, four, and five X. These little targets on either side of the rank here. And they're not in a two, three, four, five, six, they're like two and three and five and six. And the most difficult one is the six X. Whichever one of those you hit with the ball first determines how many jackpot shots you're gonna have to shoot at during that multi-ball. So if you hit the two X, you got two jackpot shots that we lit up. And they'll be randomly on these big arrows So you'll get four, there'll be four of them. And they'll be shooting at those. Once you collect all of the however many you've lit, then you can shoot up the chest lane in the center here and get a super jackpot. So that's the goal there.
    39:15
    At World's End, multiball is a fun one also. This is the one that I think, yeah, World's End is the one where they pick up the 90 pieces of eight. So you collect all these different items on the main shots on the play field. When you've collected all of those, it lights the movie two, which is the green one, I'm sorry, movie three, the red one, which I think is the maelstrom ramp here, for to start the multiball. When these little skull inserts are blinking, that means you have a multiball ready to start with the next shot you make on those. So that's very important when you see them blinking to try whatever you can to make those shots. And then they are one, two, three, four, and five. So just keep that in mind. It's because sometimes you qualify multi-ball and you don't realize you've got to qualify it. If there's a blinking like a little pinball at it, shoot at it. Try and make it. So once you make the Maelstrom ramp, and it's going to be Maelstrom ramp for jackpots on there, And I believe the super jackpot is a shot, if you made a jackpot shot on a maelstrom ram, is to shoot nothing but this body hole
    40:28
    behind this Tia Dallin-like character. So that's your super jackpot. On stranger ties, stay bear with me, there where I multi for we almost through this So the fourth multi is on this inner loop here And so this is the fountain of youth shot You make that shot five times It a user thing so somebody can have it set at more or less You require five times right on default, though, non-consecutively. You can't shoot this five times in a row and get your multiball set up. It's got to be one shot. Now if you shoot three times around here, you get one of your five checked off. Then the ball bounces around and gets back up here and you shoot two more and now you've got two. You shoot five times the next time, now you've got three. You have to do that five times, make shots up here, non-consecutive shots around this loop and then it'll like this for the next shot to start the on stranger tights multi-ball, which is a real crazy one. This is the one that has the Newton ball. So now during multi-ball, we got three balls, I think two balls. This is a two-ball multi-ball. It's the only one. Everything else is a three-ball. But this two-ball multi-ball, when you've got this going now, you're going to have to try and shoot the inner loop here for a jackpot shot. If you are able to shoot the orbit and then the combo through the inner loop, that's a double jackpot. Shoot the, I'm sorry, that's double jackpots through the chest length. and through, that gives you a double jackpot. So through the chest lane, feed the upper flipper, make the loop right afterwards, double jackpot. Shoot it through the orbit and make the inner loop. That's a triple jackpot. And then it'll like this again for the next shot through there. We'll catch that ball right there, and you can try and new volley around the top, get your super jackpot.
    42:24
    Good luck. You're going to need it. So dead men tell no tales. multi ball is on this left turn around loop shot. So you're gonna shoot the ball at this left turn around and all you need to do is tickle the spinner to get progress towards that. It needs a lot of tickling. This is gonna take about 75, I think, on the something in that range on the default to the spinner times. And so if you send it around and it goes 30 times, you get 30 spins, thankfully. You don't have to do it 75 different times. But yeah, you shoot through here, make that shot over and over again until it qualifies the multi-ball, the light comes on here. You'll make another shot up in there and the diverter will drop the ball into the subway and you'll be starting the, takes it into the devil's triangle and the ball disappears and then it pops out over here and you start your multi-ball. During that multi-ball, you're gonna shoot these shots over here on the side and you'll need to make a full, to start that multi-ball will require that full shot. You can't just make the spinner and expect to start it. You're gonna have to get all the way around the top. So you make super jackpots, or jackpots on, I think, I can't remember what the jackpot is on that. I think the jackpot is a different shot than the super jackpot is making this full shot again, once you've got all that taken care of. So that's all the multi balls that I know of. Well, yeah, what was all that again? Final artwork on the game, I don't know if any of you have seen all of the artwork on the final game, but it looks a little bit different than what's on the prototype games.
    44:10
    There's a much smaller hole there. And down at the bottom. And there's some of the detail in that area. It is on the pizza. It doesn't sell a lot more detailed unless you order a really detailed pizza. I guess maybe it has a . So some kind of fun facts about Pirates of the Caribbean. That's really the Gibbs character, Kevin McNally, is his name, real life voice. We hired him in a couple of real long sessions where he came on and did a bunch of pinball sayings for us. Really cool to hear his voice and know that's actually him. It's not somebody that's trying to sound like him. It's the real guy. Features you don't see very often on games. Kind of interesting in this game. That's uphill subway shot where the ball goes up at one point on the play field and it drops in a hole. You generally expect it to come down somewhere below that. It comes all the way up onto the upper play field. It's very tough. About as uphill as you can get. Kind of cool.
    45:15
    The rubber stand-up extra ball shot. So, I go back and forth here. The extra ball shot is actually this rubber right here. This shot here is shooting between the pop bumpers there and hitting this rubber. Not one of the pop bumpers, which of course is going to send it off, but trying to get it into this little lane right here, which is kind of interesting. Usually that's a target shot. Tilt warnings. Tilt warning warning lights. So now you've got the, telling you how many tilts you have left. So if you've got two red lights there, you're good. If both of those are out, next one's going to tilt you and beware. Early design features and changes. I'm going to show you some of this stuff in the making of stuff that I'm going to go to next. But the star map, chapter select and start was kind of an interesting thing to begin with. Eric's first design, and I saw it very early on, he had a three-bank drop target like in the Elf drop target in Wizard of Oz. He put those right in front of that area that allows the ball to be trapped. So he had three drop targets right here. He had to knock those drop targets down. Of course, he could set them up as many times as he wanted to make you have to knock them down. And so you could send the ball up in here. And then it actually had, it would trap your ball in front of those drop targets. there was an exposed magnet hole like this on the playfield. It would grab the ball there, and then it had a captive ball behind those drop targets that actually was in its own area. It would start kicking around. And so they started thinking, you're gonna have to hold the magnet there, and you're gonna have to have the additional expense and everything of drop targets, all these sorts of considerations, holding a ball on a magnet while it bounces around a captive ball inside here. a little different it's requiring much more parts more complex so you just simplified it quite a bit by hey let's if you're going to trap the ball and then why don't you use a ball in play to bounce around and make that shot that's kind of a cool um thing that it came up with so the target ship cannon load feature was quite a bit different too.
    47:35
    So the shot up here, the game that we had in Expo was much more difficult. Like I said, you had to hit load and cannon. You had a different gate mechanism here that only, it had a spring loaded gate that you needed to shoot the ball through and it had a, kind of like the Krabian scared stiff, it had a lock mechanism holding that in place So when you hit it before, it was just cheep cheep, and I was off of it. And when the lock mechanism went away, then all you had to do was defeat the spring door to get through there. That was really, really hard to do with this thing rocking. You know, it took like a flying backhand off this left flipper to shoot it with enough strength. Because so many times it would get rejected. It would come halfway up in there, and that spring gate would tell you, no, that's not hard enough yet. And so that was a really difficult shot. So they made it where now it's a gate that actually comes down and the ball hits it until the end. It uses a spring and lifts it up and lets it under. So kind of a way to shock some. So a lot of things change on games. There's not a single first design I bet ever made that that's what we ended up producing. That's what anybody else ended up producing. There's a lot of changes that go on. And these three spinning wings was one of those changes. We just kind of, you know, you guys got to see and play the game real early on in its design and development. And we had to make some changes to it.
    49:00
    So the spinning targets are spinning pop bumper motors. Two of the four pop bumpers, there are motors inside the pop bumper that mount inside the body. And these guys will spin around. I forget I have the game right behind me, too. So there's a motor that can spin these guys around. There's one up underneath here. You can maybe come around. I'll stand on this side and walk everybody's view. They're not going to be able to see me. You see the spinning up above here, and then, of course, this big, tall guy here spins. So these two have motors in them that actually can spin around, and when the pop-mumpers hit, it sends these guys spinning around in circles. The original design for this one up underneath here was, let me just switch back to my other, was rum bottles and a decanter for drinking out of them. When we sent that to Disney for approval, they said, oh, we can't have drinking and rum and alcohol with our game. Have you ever ridden the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney? Have you seen them yet? Are they just happy, or they seem awfully klutzy? It's like they might be drunk. So what's wrong with it is they didn't want that in a pinball game. You see, there's a child's thing and something they didn't want to do. So what can we do instead? Guns. Much better. So that's what we did. Guns and money. You teach these kids early what's important. And then, of course, they have rapiers and swords and daggers and all these kind of things. They're okay with all of that. They'll run bottles from them. And once in a Jack's favorite line, why is it always the rum? Where's the rum at? He said that in every movie, multiple times. Once a movie, see exactly. And there's Eric. That's the guy that designed the game. And he was sitting here talking to Dave Steele, who's just out of the picture here. And I saw all these pinball-looking things coming up on the post for me for a second. He's thinking about his next game already. So I thought that was kind of cool. Okay, so we normally go to questions there. We could stop there and I can do some of the making of game after a couple questions if there's questions. Or we just go right into it. What do you guys, any questions, anybody?
    51:27
    Time's up. Moving on. There we go. Okay, good. All right, so making JJP's Pirates of the Caribbean. So here's some kind of cool stuff to show you how the game came to be.
    51:47
    This is kind of a look behind the curtains. So there's Eric on day one when he came off and his shop bought his light coming out from under the Christmas tree with your first play field there. That's what you get when you get a new guy, a young guy designing a pinball machine. you get pure exuberance and just joy at everything. That's all that avoidance play field right there.
    52:13
    So here's a video showing a little bit of the shop bot. We'll see if this... We don't need any sound.
    52:28
    We don't need it to be that realistic. We have that hearing protection. This is how, you know, you've come a long way from the old days where you used to have to cut all your own holes in the play field and, you know, your best tool was a big drill and a spade bit. Now these guys, the speed that they can make some news, the drawing goes right into the shot block. The shot block makes all the intricate cuts.
    52:56
    So then, here's one making a magnet cutout, for instance. And you know when you get done with that, I mean that man just slipped right in there and it was perfect. And none of that, oh my gosh, you're going to build this right in the center of the old home and do it all by hand and kind of got my bondo over there, but I don't do a very good job of it. So, come a long way from drawing to actually getting a plate field in your hand. So, one of the first things that you need to do with a game is figure out what your flat rails are going to go. So now you're deciding possible ball paths on the play field and then this the flat rails in conjunction with the rubbers and posts and things can then you know define your playing space on this big old piece of plywood. The whitewood underside has a few fewer wires than the ones we've got here you see of course but this is kind of how you start with that you know where your coils are going to be. You start putting in the assemblies underneath, and you're just running the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. You're not worried about things catching and all those other considerations of tangling and optimizing. Some of them might have a couple extra feet in here of wire when you made it. You're just getting it all powered up to where things can work, and you can actually then play it, pull it over, reverse it, play it, actually have a kick out balls, have auto launch, have flippers flip, have pop bumpers kick, all these kind of things, or scoop.
    54:35
    So, you can build your own ramp out there, you know, without having vacuum forming tools, which is how they make the ramps.
    54:44
    And incidentally, on the subject of ramps, the games, the prototype games here, you notice they have kind of textured ramps looking to them. The games that we produce, of course, will have crystal clear, like you're used to seeing, ramps. They don't have any texture to them, anything like that. They're perfectly clear, and, you know, details and everything on them, you'll be able to see them really well. And they'll light on them that causes, you know, the texture to show. So here's one of the first Maelstrom ramps that Eric had to construct. And so he puts together a few pieces of bins and some loose side around. And yeah, you just need a few clamps. I didn't even know Home Depot carried that many clamps. You'd be like buying out the whole town, you know, going around, I just need 14 clamps. And then so out of all that comes a mouse arm ramp. And when you needed to have a funnel in the center, you know, you've got this concept of a funnel. Go to Walmart and buy a funnel.
    55:45
    You can plug that in there, prop the end off a bit, and then glue it onto the bottom. And whatever it takes to get the look and the feel of the shot so that you can start making these extremely hazardous, I've got to poke an eye out on that thing.
    56:00
    Wire ramps. Thank goodness he's learned to solder a little bit. That's how you make a wire ramp for early on games. It's a prototype. You're gonna take and bend some of this wire, and you're just gonna braze it together, make the shape, and you get a little lazy when it comes to the back end of the ramp, of course. Very similar to what you see on this game right here. It's very cool.
    56:28
    So white wood in a cabinet here, can actually play and you do your switch testing, and you've got software running on it, and more than just flip type software, so that you can start putting some rules in and playing with some shots and seeing how things are gonna come together.
    56:45
    And then while you're doing that, you just keep on drawing and look at all the little notes. And this one's gonna be for that, all the inserts in this, how many inserts he had originally, holy cow. I don't think they make that many RGB LEDs either. There's a crazy amount of inserts. He was gonna rival Wizard of Oz on that for sure. And you keep on making notes and capturing ideas. So, like four different board shots like this that he gave me of different times in the development process where it's the same board in a race. But here, I want to do all these movies, multi-balls and things. I want to, you know, this is the shots I want to be able to make. I want to do these kind of things with a map and, you know, all the different locations on the play field and all the different shot ideas and important things to remember and all the different areas on the game mechanisms that are going to be activated when all that happens a lot of discussions going on somebody asked me a question in it was California all these shows start to run together after a while somebody asked me about you know there's your software guy work with your electrical guy or your mechanical guy, they do all this part work first and then they give it to those. This is a team effort from the very beginning. All these guys started the same starting line together and they all reached the finish line together. So along that path, we're going to come up with an idea of making pop-bumpers spin. So the software guys get to it, the game designer guys get to it, the electrical guys, and say, I've got this much room in a pop-up for now what can you give me a motor that will run off 12 volts and then I can I can stick inside this pop-up for a nice I start finding that stuff now he gets with the programmers and says would you rather have a separate kind of motor or you care for it to just be free spinning you need to know what stretching is we're gonna worry about switches and all these kind of software guys mechanical guys are drawn all that up and brackets required to put that motor in there that's just one little small thing everything in the finished game it's a pretty cool thing to see so all that stuff happens coincidentally, and they all get to the finish line at the same time. I told you I liked that one. So it's a playfield without inserts. Not ventilated, evidently. This is almost getting like a screen door now, it's got so many holes in it. But, he toned that down a little bit. But that's what you do is, then he started realizing probably as he's hand gluing each one of these in there, thinking out, this is a lot of inserts. So you glue all that down, you clear coat, and that's why you see some of the residue of the glue around here. But you sanded everything flat, and that's how you get some inserts in your next generation white wood. So everybody thinks, 3D printers are a great invention. Boy, that must have really revolutionized pinball design. Well, yes and no. In some cases, you can make some things, but something like a wire wrap with a 3D printer. Yeah, there's spaces and things break. No, not always the perfect solution. So not as useful as you might think. You're still gonna go back and bend some of that wire and braid it together.
    60:04
    Here's a making of a vacuum formed subway mold. So this is for the little piece that we were pointing at before that goes uphill from that sinkhole up to the vertical up here. Oops.
    60:17
    It's supposed to click here instead. So this is a model of how the actual shop box is going to be set up to make this mold. And you notice at the very beginning here, it's working with a very fat bit, a big bit that's taking away a lot of material as it goes. And then about halfway through here, when he reaches the bottom, it'll switch to a much smaller, fine bit that then goes around and makes some finer work, which is about ready to start now. There you go. Now on that block, you're going to change bits and let it do this kind of thing. So that's how you get all the fine work. And this is using this 3D modeling tool is giving you the exact same representation of your ramp that you going to get out of a solid block of wood when you put it on there and program the shop bot in this manner. So if something were to go crazy here, you wouldn't even have to waste a 2x4. It would show up on here at the end of a big piece sticking out and you forgot something.
    61:23
    So, kind of cool. Modeling helps a lot. And that leads to this wooden shape of that branch. And this is after we got our vacuum forming tool all working. So you put a piece of plastic over that piece of wood. You heat it up to a certain temperature where it starts to fall around the shape of that wood. And then from underneath down here somewhere, you suck the air out of there and pull it as tight as you can against the mold all the way around. And of course all of that leads to this one little piece right here.
    62:00
    But it's able to make one that proves your point. You can make a ball roll uphill. It's kind of cool. So here's testing an upper loop shot. This is just something that you're trying to find out how little pieces of flat rail I can do. Somebody's saying, well, I want to make an inner loop inside this outer loop. How much flat rail do I have to have in order to make that happen? Can I get by with like an arc piece like here? like here. This kind of proves that you can.
    62:36
    That's hit properly. It'll go in. If it isn't, it won't. There's a sweet spot on the flipper, which, you know, that's what we as players learn to find out. What makes it go around and what makes it not rattle and move back out. You'd be surprised when you take a mid-playfield and put it on top of a large playfield like this and you say, I'm going to make that thing rock back and forth. How much clearance issues start to come into play. Things that you thought about were really cool, you're going to add on top of here all this bracketry, all of these sculptures, all of these cool add-on things, posts and lights and whatever, you know, spotlights and things. All of a sudden, you find you're very confined within the space of that piece of glass that goes overhead and whatever happens to be underneath those clay fields. So if you're gonna put on there a big cannon and you think, well, I'm gonna put this big old sculpture coming out from under there with a cannon barrel on it and all that, you find that you can tilt the clay field that much before your cannon starts hitting the main clay field. So you've got to shorten things, you've got to constantly be measuring making sure that your clearance is proper. And in fact, we had a really cool sculpture that went across the top of this piece, the railing piece over the top of these two spinners. And on top of that was a wheel for a big ship steering the wheel. And first time we put those on, they looked really cool until we stood the plate field up in there and chopped it off with this guy right here. It just didn't clear. So, well, I guess we won't be using those on the correction unit. So that's what your cannon looks like from underneath. It's got off goes underneath there to tell you when the ball's inside. And it's gotta be, of course, tilted back far enough that it can be moved forward and the ball not just fall out the end of your cannon before you shoot it. So it's gotta have enough tilt to it to keep the ball right there next to the plunder.
    64:36
    And very exciting when you get lights, of course. You get all your, the boards, these guys come in after they've set up all this, they've decided where all the inserts go. That's when the electrical guy's standing next to you and making measurements and taking the paper and putting it over that and saying, I need it to be here, here, here, and here. I'm gonna need the board in this kind of shape. And then he has to go out and have some of those made. The first five sets or something like that, very expensive and very time consuming to make. So as soon as those come in and you get to plug it all in and you get the guys programming it and you get lights, it's a very exciting time in development.
    65:15
    Spotting holes. So this is the top of the play field and every one of these little holes here a Screw is going to go in or a post is going to go in and so all of these things I'm sorry, this is the underside of the playfield. You got mounting holes here for the targets But this is the underside and all of these are going to you know a target to go for each of these pair of holes Here the target to go for each of these pair of holes up to here and right in here And then you've got you know all kinds of things underneath the flipper feet are these pairs of holes down here, so your flipper mesh are in there. It's just amazing, the spotting holes issue in and of itself. Once you decide during your development that you're going to move something, the spotting holes have to move with it. You can't just say, well, I'll leave the old ones there, because then the guys at the factory use those spotting holes to line everything up. You don't want Joe up there at the factory just picking up a flipper and making him say, That one's about right. You can screw it in. They'll do that. In my other job, the Russians used to do that back in the old days. We were constantly trying to do things like measure their signatures of their tanks. And they were notoriously variable, because I knew that the factory would just weld that plate on wherever he wanted. As long as it was fairly close. And no two of them left a light. It was maddening. It was like, we're making things into drawings and aspects. and it's gotta be just perfect, and measuring the millimeters, and this guy's just up there. Yeah, out there.
    66:47
    Crazy. But it's an interesting analogy, because you don't want that in pinball, you really don't, because everything affects everything. When you've got as little real estate to deal with underneath as we do, you can't afford for something to be wrong. And everything's moving, too, so you can't have pop-up where things are just slightly out of line, where the rings don't come through the play field, or it's rubbing on something very, very bad. This is how you mock up your sculptures to begin with. You just kind of get some of this foam stuff. And it's kind of funny when we had,
    67:26
    what's his name, Jack, did Whitewater, Dennis Nordman, when he worked for the company, he made an entire Wizard of Oz play field out of this foam core stuff. They- It's like the Seattle Film Museum. They call it Nordmanite on the history half, because Nordman would make this play field. It's three-dimensional. All the pieces are made to scale and everything. And it's just like a foam play field. But same concept. You can Xerox or print out copies of what you want your artwork to look at. You can grab a screen capture off of the movie itself when they're showing this chest and say, I want it to look just like that. And you print out a sticker and put it on top of here. So that's how you set up and get the look of how you want it. And all this stuff is going to go by the wayside. You're not going to have pitchforks and little dainty things sticking up there for you to cut your hands on. And you might as well not have printed that one out, personally. There's the old wheel that was up on top of there. Didn't make it. Actually, it got moved up on top of there because it would get smacked by the pinball. And same effect, no more wheel. And this is kind of a Terminator 3 version of this, like, shoot here, here, and shoot here. And it's hilarious to watch Jack and Steve Ritchie. Every time Jack walks up to him, he says, shoot here, and here, and here. And without missing a beat, Steve Ritchie says, I need your boots and your motorcycle. It's hilarious. The interaction. Like I said, we can all get along. We have a great time with the CERN guys. First printed play field. There it is in Eric's office. He's got a bunch of others. We can't figure out what game that is next there. It's ACDC. We can't figure it out. No, you don't get a t-shirt for giving that either. An animated topper. So here's the first time the topper was fired up for the collector's edition. on our rough seas, very, very rough seas. I remember that one. Try and hold onto the deck if you're riding in that ship. Everybody here on the main mass. Well, that's what you start learning. I got to run that motor a little less. I got to, you know, I want to get one that's a little quieter or whatever else. And of course, then you print the nice bottle. You don't have to build the shipping bottle. We will just vacuum form one and put it in there. There's the rum thing again where we were starting over the very first figure. And of course this guy was just going to put up his douches for fighting. Now he's reaching for a sword.
    70:12
    And of course, he has his nice guns. He has his nice guns. Makes the world go round. Those are really cool to watch come together too. And interestingly enough, another, when you start putting things on top of pop bumpers, and the pop bumpers aren't at the top of the plate field, guess what? You have clear tissues again. And all of a sudden, that guy's really cool, tall, hat, and everything. So we put the glass on right into his head. And you learn that kind of stuff when you build them. And you're like, well, this guy needs to be a little shorter. So plate field undersizers, there's the red prototype boards here. So when you see much more more of a rat's nest than what we've got over here These games prototype games are actually built out the factory by the guys some of our best builders up there so Engineers when they wire thing that's how they look up with stuff outside of there And we'll never work put that play field down you don't have to worry about that shearing off right now It's all for you know what I meant. That's what engineers love to do not an engineer myself so I can make fun But yeah, you see a lot of the wiring, a lot of everything in place, a lot of the same shapes of the boards, some of them tweaked just slightly. But yeah, the bottom of the plate field has to come along at the same time as the top. That old maelstrom, that's what happens too when you prototype. You start realizing that the guy that makes the decals and the artwork guy who's working alongside all those friggin' things are ramp flat. So all of a sudden, it's a maelstrom ramp. When you make one of those, then you look at that, and you say, well, we need to change that decal a little bit. You get the artwork guy in there, and you show him. And he's like, well, where did that piece of metal come from? And you're like, art guy, just listen. We need to have him moved up a little bit. OK?
    72:02
    First decal cabinet, that's Fernando Hurtado, one of our guys that handles the building material there in Chicago. He looks like he's having a good day. And maybe, I don't know. But he's proud of his cabinet there. That was a lot of fun. I actually was the first one to build a Hobbit cabinet and put all the details. I put them all on myself. I'm so proud of myself. They're in engineering. It was a lot of fun. So here's our prototype sculptures. They're just a little bit different. Some of the things you learn when you do prototypes is that the sculpture guy isn't very good at determining how you're going to attach his sculptures. he put screw holes here, here, and here, and said, that'll be great. You've got three screws holding that up, and you're like, wait a minute, Mr. Sculpture Guy, three screws into the edge of the plywood is not a good idea. Those are going to pop right out. They cause the playfield to split, all those kinds of things. So you find ways to put posts under here and mount things like they are on this game, where they actually feed through a hole and put a nut on top of it. All the learning process, and all this starts to come together. When these prototype sculptures are actually put on the game. That's when you actually, first time you've ever seen those on the game, when the actual pieces made from the actual folds, with the actual colors and all these kind of things, and you start realizing, geez, you know, the black pearl kind of looked green to begin with. It was like the green pearl, the purple pearl it was at one time too. These parts just looked purple when they were up against all the artwork and everything, so you have to change
    73:33
    adaptations to the, to the colors of the materials used and the size and clearances and everything all goes to right up to here was where that little wheel was that got broken off. You learn different things of plastic here. It didn't make much sense with no light there, so it became a solid piece of sculpture and it allowed a fascinating place for this one piece alongside here that didn't go through the side of the plate yet. That's the Devil's Triangle sculpture.
    74:06
    So just a quick note on what different games have in them. The standard game will not have this sculpture, for instance. That's one that's just left off.
    74:18
    The standard game will have stainless steel on the sides and a stainless steel lockdown bar, chrome legs. There's no topper for the standard edition at all. There's a topper for the LE. It's a laser cut one, kind of like Wizard of Oz, 75th anniversary. The CE, the collector's edition, of course, has the terribly rocking ship, the violently rocking ship. Which is one more awful. John Smoother's Seas. Strut Moms Stranger Ties, maybe. How about that? What else is different? All the spinning pop bumpers. The LE will just have pop bumper plastics on top of all four pop bumpers. and then spinning pirate, four barrel. That will be in the LENCE game both.
    75:05
    Again, nothing that changes the play of the game. We don't believe in doing that. We don't take stuff out of the game. We put more stuff in for the higher edition games. We don't take things out of the lower stuff. So your game will play the same whether you get a standard or a collector's edition and you want, and that's really important.
    75:23
    There's the hole and shoot here. So you're trying to put the ball through there. This ship. Does that have to stand on the ship? No, that's actually the bow.
    75:36
    That would be for Bertie. Anyway. I didn't know the mic was live. Sorry. So this deck up here is fastened to the back panel here. The ship itself is mounted on an arm. So in the back there, it's on an arm that moves a microswitch. So if you hit anywhere down in here with the ball and it doesn't go in, it causes the ship to offset a bit and you get a hit rather than a direct hit or a bullseye, we call it, to the center.
    76:10
    There's the CE cabinet. That's the difference too. The plastics, the clay field, the cabinet, the trans-like, all of those things will be different for the CE version, different artwork, focused more around the squid face guy here rather than Davy Jones, rather than Jack. Because some guys, like when I was doing those play field things where you did a third of the play field each time, I took a lot of pleasure in cutting Jack Sparrow's face right here. Jumping head, exactly. That's kind of funny. But a lot of people just can't stand jumping head, so there you go, how about Davy Jones? It's much, much nicer, right? Dream about that guy.
    76:47
    Also on the collector's edition, there will be a few less of these, but barnacles. and a different color scheme for the armor here. So it's a little bit, the black is on the LE version. This is kind of a sea green or dark, very dark green color. And these barnacles will be around there for you to, you know, snag your dress and your shirt on, cut your fingers on them, sure. I'll put a few less though. The art guy, when you tell him you want barnacles on something, holy cow, it's covered in barnacles all of a sudden. But wait a minute, just a few, you know. It would look like it's been underwater for centuries. That's the prototype game. All together. These are pictures of the very first game that we got all together. You see even the flippers were a different color back then. They're black with red rubber now. So, blend in with one of those things you learned. And you find out when you're putting the game together too, you think you've got all the common parts. Well, the common parts in engineering are yellow flippers, so we don't have the black ones even on hand. I think on the mini-playfield up here, Eric got so upset about that, he took his spray paint and made the yellow flippers black. They've got to be black on the black pearl, it's not the yellow pearl. And then, of course, that same picture again. What's next with Eric? Maybe we'll find out, I guess. He is working on another game. Did I say that on the mic? Yeah, I hope so too. Alrighty, so questions now. Line up here please. More questions? Oh wait, don't everybody jump up at once? I don't know if you can jump up so fast either. Are there any questions? them all. Is that what that was? Your presentation was the equivalent of a two-inch thing documentation. There you go. One of my coffee table manuals that if you drop on your coffee table, it'll break it.
    78:55
    That's fun stuff working for Jack. Jack, I can't thank him enough for giving me the opportunity. I'm one of you guys. Nothing special, no history with me being at pinball for 20 years or designing the greatest game ever sold or anything like that. I'm just a guy that loves pinball. Jack recognized that. There were a lot of other people out there that loved pinball and wanted to work for him. They all offered to help. Everybody wanted to help. I used to say that all the time, Jack. Everybody wants to help. Somehow I got in, and I praise God, and I praise Jack Bernieri for letting me in. I can't thank him enough. I love this job. It's the greatest job in the world. I wouldn't trade it for nothing. I feel like a lucky man. I'm a great spirit.
    79:34
    And I've been married 35 years. Thank you. Jack, unfortunately, is only here today, so he's going to molest him. You better do it quick. Well, 45 minutes from now. Oh, yeah. Get him out of here. Yeah, that's true. Get him up. Let me switch positions. I'll be sitting up here ridiculing you when you get inside the comments. That's why I do pizza comments. Time to distract. And that's pizza, yeah, which is really the main attractive there.
    80:03
    But if you see me in the game room or in the hallway, I love to talk to people. I love to meet new people. Anybody? Anything? If I didn't go deep enough into the nerdy, geeky stuff, I can go as deep as you like. Or we can stay on the upper level. We can talk rules. We can talk about anything. I just love pinball, and I'm happy as heck to be here. You can hang out at the after party also? Yes. And you get a chance. All of you guys, until you're friends, you get a chance. Go by the place, their box office, I guess they call it, over there. Any of these people moving games around, stop but tell them thanks. Thanks for doing what you do. Because without being able to put these shows, thank you Dave for putting all this together, and Derek, with all your hard work. It didn't quite work out as well as we'd hoped, but I think we came off all right. Don't you guys agree? Tell these guys thanks, you know, because we wouldn't have a place for like-minded people to come. All of us that love this pinball hobby. And Jack and I just jump off a plane, and we land here and hit the ground running, because all the hard work these guys made with setting up games and setting up the electrical equipment and screens and working through the hotel, you know, myriad of problems. And you know, it's a thankless kind of task. Everybody's having a great time, but it never hurts. You can never say thank you too many times. So thank you, fantastic for having me. Appreciate it.