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Inside The Mind Of Lyman Sheats

Silverball Chronicles·podcast_episode·2h 29m·analyzed·Mar 3, 2022
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TL;DR

Silverball Chronicles profiles Lyman Sheets' rise from tournament player to visionary pinball programmer.

Summary

Silverball Chronicles episode deep-diving into the life and career of Lyman Sheets, a legendary pinball programmer who revolutionized game design. The hosts trace Sheets' journey from college computer science student in Massachusetts to tournament player to Data East programmer, focusing on his early work including Tommy Pinball Wizard and his perfectionist design philosophy that would define games like Metallica, Attack from Mars, and Medieval Madness.

Key Claims

  • Lyman Sheets did not start playing pinball until college, discovering skill-based gameplay through Eight Ball Deluxe

    high confidence · Direct quote from Lyman: 'I saw a couple of guys playing eight ball deluxe, and they're absolutely killing the game, playing and winning all kinds of credits'

  • Sheets attended Northeastern University and majored in computer science, learning Pascal, Fortran, compilers, and AI

    high confidence · Hosts discuss Sheets' educational background and curriculum details from TopCast interview

  • Ted Espy at Williams rejected Lyman Sheets' resume because he thought Sheets was too academic and wouldn't handle Williams' deadline-driven pressure environment

    high confidence · Lyman learned this years later from Ted Espy, as reported in the episode

  • Sheets won the 1993 PAPA Championship while living in Virginia

    high confidence · Reference to Playmeter magazine article with black and white photo of Sheets holding trophy

  • Data East had six weeks to develop Tommy Pinball Wizard for Broadway production debut

    high confidence · Hosts state: 'Joe Kamenkow picked up the license to the musical Tommy, they had six weeks to get the machine up and running'

  • Tommy Pinball Wizard featured 21 hit songs sung by original Broadway cast members

    high confidence · Quote from game flyer: 'Did you know it features more music than any pinball ever? 21 hit songs sung by the original cast members'

  • One of ten Tommy pre-production prototypes fell off a truck during the promotional tour and was destroyed

    medium confidence · Hosts mention the incident but express uncertainty about the mechanics of how it fell

  • Sheets met Larry DeMar at Pinball Expo in 1991, a key industry connection

    high confidence · Hosts emphasize: 'The most important thing that happened here, Ron, was that he met Larry DeMar, who's one of the programmers at Williams'

Notable Quotes

  • “I saw a couple of guys playing eight ball deluxe, and they're absolutely killing the game, playing and winning all kinds of credits and playing back and forth. That appealed to me. There was skill in pinball.”

    Lyman Sheets (via TopCast interview) @ ~14:30 — Reveals how Sheets discovered skill-based gameplay and was drawn to pinball's competitive potential rather than viewing it as random

  • “College was hard, but one of the best experiences of my life. It's just a very fun environment. Anybody who has that opportunity to go to school and learn should definitely take advantage of it.”

    Lyman Sheets (via TopCast interview) @ ~24:15 — Shows Sheets' value placed on learning and education, reflecting his perfectionist mindset

  • “If you still doubt who is the best player in the world, don't ever forget the emotion that transformed into tears the moment he heard his name officially announced as the 1993 Papa World Champion.”

    Leonard Moscheritolo (Playmeter magazine, 1993) @ ~38:45 — Captures the emotional impact of Sheets' championship and foreshadows his future influence on the industry

  • “Lyman Sheets will change this sport as we know it because he loves it. There will never be a world champion better suited for the title and never one more capable of sending this great pastime on the right track.”

    Leonard Moscheritolo (Playmeter magazine, 1993) @ ~39:15 — Prescient 1993 prediction about Sheets' future impact on pinball before he began programming professionally

  • “I hadn't played in a long time. It's kind of hard to go back to play. It's kind of like riding a bicycle, but some skills take a while to refine again.”

    Lyman Sheets (via TopCast interview) @ ~31:00 — Demonstrates Sheets' humility and pragmatic assessment of his skills after time away from competitive play

  • “He flew back to the East Coast, and he happened to be sitting next to Data East's Lonnie Ropp on a plane, and Lonnie Ropp was one of the original programmers at Data East. And Lyman figured out that he had the skills the industry could use.”

    David Dennis (host) @ ~47:00 — Marks the pivotal moment Sheets realized he could transition from player to industry programmer

Entities

Lyman SheetspersonSilverball ChroniclesmediaDavid DennispersonRon HallettpersonData EastcompanyTommy Pinball WizardgameJoe KamenkowpersonLonnie RopppersonLarry DeMarperson

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Silverball Chronicles received strong Twippies recognition; second place finish in Pinball Industry Awards alongside Slam Tilt podcast, indicating growth and community validation of history-focused content

    high · David Dennis states: 'We've also got, of course, the archive for our shows in the backlog...we also picked up a strong second place in the Pinball Industry Awards with Civil Ball Chronicles'

  • ?

    community_signal: Lyman Sheets' family initially confused about his work at MITRE/government jobs, but understood and appreciated his contributions when seeing Tommy machine on Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade float

    medium · Hosts note: 'when you can point to something like on the float with the pinball machine and look what I've made...you can really draw that'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Early 1990s tournament scene fundamentally different from modern format: ~4 tournaments/year vs modern 4/week; top 8 qualification vs modern 16-32; no IFPA WPPR points; more head-to-head format

    high · Hosts discuss qualification structure: 'to qualify, you had to really finish in the top eight' vs modern 'usually 16, 32, if there's enough people'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Lyman Sheets' distinctive programming 'fingerprint' recognizable across games like Attack from Mars, Medieval Madness, and Metallica; community recognizes his code style as signature element

    high · Host describes discovering Sheets through Metallica: 'there was something inherently different about the way he codes a game...there's a fingerprint here that's very similar'

  • $

    market_signal: Recognition of Lyman Sheets as transformative figure in pinball programming and design philosophy; 1993 Playmeter article predicted his future influence before his programming career began

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.450

0:00
From unsolved mysteries to unexplained phenomena, from comedy gold to relationship fails, Amazon Music's got the most ad-free top podcasts, included with Prime. Because the only thing that should interrupt your listening is, well, nothing. Download the Amazon Music app today.
0:23
Well, the holidays have come and gone once again, but if you've forgotten to get that special someone in your life a gift, Well, Mint Mobile is extending their holiday offer of half-off unlimited wireless. So here's the idea. You get it now. You call it an early present for next year. What do you have to lose? Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Limited time, 50% off regular price for new customers. Upfront payment required. $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for 12-month plan. Taxes and fees extra. Speeds and flow after 50 gigabytes per month. When network is busy, see terms. The Pinball Network is online. Launching Silver Ball Chronicles.
1:07
Did you hear that? What? My, like, assistant went off on my laptop. I didn't even know my laptop had an assistant. Is it a paperclip? No, it's like a lady. Okay. Good, okay. I'll have to cut that out.
1:51
Hello everyone, I'm David Dennis and this is Silver Ball Chronicles. With me this month, like every month, is my co-hostess with the mostest, Ron Sinbad Hallett. How you doing, fella? Good morning. Yeah, somebody was at InDisc out in the California area and put on a clinic, didn't they? What's InDisc? InDisc is some sort of tournament out west. Oh, everyone just turned off the episode. It's a shame. If you want to listen to boring tournament talk, go listen to Joel Boring-as-Heck Engelberth's Triple Drain podcast. Yeah, I played some Sinbad. It was fun. So you were on stream while I was watching. I tuned in. And I saw you just absolutely lay down the law on the Gottlieb System One masterpiece, Sinbad. I love Sinbad. Such a great game. What was great is they started streaming us mid-game, and one of the guys in our group was like, oh, man, I don't want to be on screen. So I just looked at the stream and saw there was like 460-something people watching. So I'm like, don't worry, only like 460 people are watching. Look at you playing the mind games. I thought it was funny. You, the puppet machine right there. Hey, look at you. The best part was Lazarus on stream. It was. That, although impressive, the control you had was really impressive. And if you want to learn more about how awesome Sinbad is, go check out our Gottlieb System 1 episode. Stepping on Rakes, I think is what we called that episode. And it was one heck of a show, I have to say that. So you've been doing a boatload of tournaments. I guess you could say that. Yeah, you've been playing a lot of weeks, which is one of the reasons why we're a little bit late this month. The other thing is that we decided to change our topic just as we began to record, and I had to build out a whole episode. But I'll tell you, award season is upon us. We've seen all the Twippy voting is done. So thank you, everybody, who has voted for Silver Ball Chronicles in the Twippies. And, of course, if you wanted to split the vote, you voted for Slam Tilt as well. So thank you so much for all of that. And Slam Tilt, my other podcast. My podcast name will yell at me if I don't mention it. Yeah, yeah. Bruce, what's his name? My co-host, yes. Yeah, Bruce, what's his name? And the other fellow on Slam Tilt Podcast.

  • Lyman Sheets was known for an extreme playing stance called 'the snake' - getting very low to the glass with his face inches away

    high confidence · Hosts describe the stance; Mike Vinicore from Stern called it 'the snake' because he'd be 'slithering down there'

  • In 1992, Sheets was 'Mr. Second Place' - finishing just outside top position in all tournaments he played

    medium confidence · Hosts state: 'Through 1992, Lyman was Mr. Second Place, finishing just outside the number one position in all of the tournaments that he played in'

    • Ted Espyperson
    Pinball Expoevent
    PAPA Championshipevent
    Northeastern Universityorganization
    Steve Ritchieperson
    Attack from Marsgame
    Medieval Madnessgame
    Metallicagame
    Dallas Overturfperson
    High Speedgame
    Twippiesevent
    Slam Tilt Podcastmedia
    This Week in Pinballmedia
    The Who's Tommyproduct
    Marcus Rothkranzperson

    high · 1993 quote: 'Lyman Sheets will change this sport as we know it because he loves it. There will never be a world champion better suited for the title'

  • ?

    event_signal: Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade 1993 featured special autoplay Tommy Pinball Wizard machine on float with electronics mounted in cabinet; significant mainstream visibility for pinball and Lyman Sheets

    high · Hosts note: 'In 1993, in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, there was a special machine that was rigged for autoplay that had no back box'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Tommy Pinball Wizard licensed from Broadway musical, not original rock opera; featured 21 songs by original Broadway cast members rather than original rock music; tight production timeline (6 weeks) due to licensing coordination

    high · Game flyer states: 'Did you know it features more music than any pinball ever? 21 hit songs sung by the original cast members'

  • $

    market_signal: Data East promotional strategy for Tommy included taking prototypes on tour, placing machines at locations (Hard Rock Cafe Dallas), and coordinating with Broadway production; one prototype damaged during transport

    medium · Hosts discuss: 'Data East took the team to Texas for the Tommy promotional tour and brought the prototypes and placed them on location. Unfortunately, one of the games fell off the truck'

  • ?

    community_signal: Lyman Sheets' transition from government defense contractor (MITRE, Draper Labs) to pinball industry programmer represents significant career pivot motivated by passion

    high · Sheets worked at government-funded think tanks, then pivoted to Data East after recognizing he had skills the pinball industry needed

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Lyman Sheets recruited to Data East by Joe Kamenkow after meeting Lonnie Ropp on plane flight; represented significant talent acquisition for Data East during early DMD era

    high · Sheets met Ropp at Vegas convention, they connected on plane, leading to job offer from Kamenkow to 'immediately put him on his first project'

  • ?

    announcement: Tommy Pinball Wizard: Data East Version 3, released January 1994, 4,700 units sold; designed by Joe Kamenkow and Ed Sabula with software by Lyman Sheets (DMD programming), Lonnie Ropp, and John Carpenter

    high · Specific release details including unit sales, designer credits, and production timeline (6-week deadline)

  • ?

    technology_signal: Data East's DMD board architecture required separate CPU (6803) dedicated to display programming, creating complexity vs Williams' single CPU system; required Sheets to learn 6803 language in record time

    high · Hosts explain: 'Data East had its own CPU, which was 6803 language' vs Williams system with 'just one CPU on the CPU board' that 'ran everything'

    • 4:22
    We also picked up a strong second place in the Pinball Industry Awards with Civil Ball Chronicles. So my objective of joining TPN and manipulating everybody into creating an award show and then giving myself an award is almost complete. So I'm very excited for that. How about you, Ron? Second is cool. Second is first place for losers. According to Skull from No Fear. We've also got, of course, the archive for our shows in the backlog, in the back catalog. If you want to check that out, go over to silverballchronicles.com or search for us in your podcatcher with Silverball Chronicles and you can go back and listen to some of those old episodes. Please be warned, the first few episodes, pretty rocky. Second episode is all about Stern Electronics, because Ron made me do that one to boost up the value of his machines. And then after that, it just generally goes up in quality.
    5:21
    Of course, you can swing on over to Facebook, to facebook.com slash silverballchronicles to chat with us. I toss up some posts every now and then, and it's wonderful to hear from you. If you've found us on a podcatcher, iTunes, basically anything but Spotify, because I can't get this on to Spotify because of some really annoying background stuff that doesn't really matter, feel free to leave us a five-star review. That way we can be found by a bunch of other people. You can't get on Spotify? That's weird. Yeah, it's some sort of background thing where it tries to pull, like, the album art or something. It doesn't work, but every other podcatcher does. I thought you were going to say background check. Like, you know, some kind of thing. They let Slam Tilt on there. Yeah, well, the bar is fairly low over on Spotify.
    6:09
    Darren V. over on This Week in Pinball's promoter database, that's thisweekinpinball.com slash silverball hyphen chronicles, says, great podcast highlighting the historic and memorable events of pinball. Ron and David make an excellent pair going through pinball's most memorable events, leading industry figures and eras of pinball. These in-depth reviews of past games, significant events, and unusual tidbits scattered throughout pinball history make this a unique pinball podcast. Not seen since TopCast, where I steal a lot of our content from, by the way. David's extensive research, wow, thank you so much, and Ron's history in the hobby, eh, combine a wonderful podcast experience. Each person brings a unique flavor, spelled incorrectly, and banter between the hosts of a memorable listening experience. I would highly recommend this show for anyone new to the hobby and listeners interested in a specific era, company, or creator. So thank you very much, Darren W. Very good. You're awesome at research, and I'm awesome at just being old. I'll tell you the Lazarus on Sidbad was epic back in 2022 I'm old that's my Ron voice yeah I'm sitting here with my heating pad on, my ice pack on my back, so this is my normal setup, I'm ready to go do you have reading glasses on? yes I have my bipocals on down on the nose So I can read the, oh, no. Also, I can read these awesome show notes you have with all the misspellings.
    7:58
    So let's jump into today's topic, Ron. There are many stars inside the pinball industry, but few create an emotional ripple as large as Lyman Sheets when he passed away. Lyman Sheets gave so much to pinball and always wanted to give more. A perfectionist who was often too hard on himself, Lyman was always looking for ways to improve the code on his games.
    8:24
    Lyman F. Sheets Jr. was a dominant tournament player who joined the industry as a programmer when the dot matrix revolution began. He worked to evolve pinball rules and strategy well beyond what came before him. Lyman was a master of balance and deep tactical scoring, all while keeping the casual player excited. This month, we dive into the mind of Lyman Sheets. What's your first memory of Lyman Sheets, Ron? Like his code or a machine or the first time you knew of him? Uh, honestly, probably the TopCast interview and just seeing him at a tournament with that weird stance he had. Yeah, so my first memory, because I've been in the hobby for quite a few years now, not as many of you because you're old, but I didn't know who Lyman Sheets was for the longest time until I played Metallica. And then I was like, man, this game's something crazy. And the person next to me was like, oh, it's a Lyman Sheets game. And I'm like, well, what the heck does that mean? And he's like, oh, man, all my favorite games are Lyman Sheets. And then, of course, he would explain who Lyman Sheets was. At that point, I was like, wow, okay, I get it, because there was something inherently different about the way he codes a game that I didn't know it was somebody... I didn't know on every one of those games that I kind of enjoyed. Metallica, Attack from Mars, Medieval Madness, where I was like, okay, there's a fingerprint here that's very similar. Lyman wasn't one of those guys who started playing pinball at the age of three or these teenagers that dominate the tournament scene nowadays, Ron. In fact, he didn't pick up pinball until college. Lyman says, I saw a couple of guys playing eight ball deluxe, and they're absolutely killing the game, playing and winning all kinds of credits and playing back and forth. That appealed to me. There was skill in pinball. So the first thing I think when a lot of people get into pinball or play pinball or whatever, they think it's very random, right? They think it's the person who can keep the ball from going down the drain longer is better. But Lyman almost immediately could kind of identify that there was a certain level of skill and knowledge that you needed. And I think that that inevitably led to a lot of his programming changes. He wasn't good, apparently, in his first little while. And he watched and played a lot to improve. And, of course, he played in a place called Framingham, Massachusetts. Massachusetts? Massachusetts. I'll say. He played in Framingham, Massachusetts at Fun and Games. I wonder if that's still there. There's a place that's in Massachusetts? Massachusetts. Massachusetts? Wow, I didn't know the Canadian pronunciation of Massachusetts was so difficult. It's a hard word, man. Just think of the song, The Spirit of Massachusetts is the Spirit of America. Oh, you've probably never seen that commercial. No, I have no idea what that is. So I'm sure that that, or some evolved. There's one of those play centers out there that's still there that's a big deal. I can't remember what it is. If you know what it is, or if you know if Fun and Games is still there, shoot us an email, silverballchronicles at gmail.com. And I'm thinking there's probably a lot of different arcades named Fun and Games. It seems like that would be a common name. Yeah, yeah. It's like Flynn's Arcade. I'm sure there's a billion of those around.
    11:55
    Lyman went to college at Northeastern University. where he majored in computer science. Is Northeastern like a big university out that way? It's not small. I think they have a lot of famous alumni. Computer science professors, they mostly came over from the math department at the time. Because back in sort of the 80s, late 80s, 90s, a lot of the computer science, I don't know, programs and structures were being developed. So there was a lot of introductory material because, of course, a math teacher is going to lean on what they know, which is, of course, math. And he said he learned a lot of basic data structures, Pascal, Fortran, compilers, artificial intelligence, databases. I know those are words. Ron, you're in IT. Do you know any of those words?
    12:49
    Well, basic, Pascal, Fortran are languages. Because, I mean, a compiler is, you know, you compile code. Artificial intelligence is just AI. And databases are pretty self-explanatory. Yeah, okay. So those are things that people that know a lot about computers know. Mm-hmm. Very cool. So he's learning computer things. Good for him. What did you take in college, Ron?
    13:16
    What did I take? Micro-computer systems management, computer programming. Cool. Yeah. So what was your experience? I didn't really have much of an experience. I mean, I went to classes, then I went home. There, good for you.
    13:33
    Quite boring. Well, Lima says, college was hard, but one of the best experiences of my life. It's not like I was this big college party dude or whatever, but it was just a very stress-free, relaxing time for me. It's just a very fun environment. Anybody who has that opportunity to go to school and learn should definitely take advantage of it. I think if I could do absolutely anything I wanted to do in life, I'd probably just go back to school full time. It's just a very relaxing atmosphere. You get to learn. To me, that's one of the best things in life. Never stop learning.
    14:07
    My university career was not absolutely stress-free and easygoing. I struggled. I really had to work really, really, really hard because I'm not naturally very good at reading or writing or things like that. I really had a hard time. So when I read something like this, it's like, man, this guy really just cruised through computer science, which is not easy with, like, a bunch of professors who are major math-oriented calculus folk. So already I can sort of peel from this old TopCast interview that Lyman is pretty laid back and really, really intelligent. So he would play Whirlwind, Earthshaker, F-14, and of course, the game that he loved the most, Steve Ritchie's High Speed. Ron, High Speed comes up over and over and over again as a massive inspiration for a lot of these programmers and designers. It does. Lyman actually has Steve Ritchie's High Speed. The actual game that Steve Ritchie bought and owned for years was sold to Dwight Sullivan, who then sold it to Lyman Sheets. So as most of the computer math nerd folk, Lyman would gravitate towards the tournament pinball scene. So his friend Dallas Overturf was the 1980 Connecticut state champion. And Dallas would, of course, go on in later years to play at Expo and a lot of those big tournaments. And one day, Dallas was asked by some of his tournament friends who LFS was, because these initials were on a lot of machines in the area. LFS is Lyman F. Sheets' initials that he would put on any game where he would set a high score. So if you notice on any of your machines that some of the default high scores are LFS, that's for Lyman F. Sheets.
    16:13
    Lyman met a lot of these folks around 1988 who said that he should come out to some of the state championships and he should also come to this new thing called Pinball Expo.
    16:27
    So back in this day, Ron, it's very different, of course, the tournament scene that it is today. it was about four tournaments a year. Nowadays, it's almost like four tournaments a week. Or, in the case of the Pinball Collective in Rochester, four events in a day. And you didn't have to chase IFPA Whopper points back then either. No, they didn't exist. So tournaments back then were more simple, I guess, a little more straightforward, a little more head-to-head as opposed to all these crazy different formats and stuff nowadays? Well, the Pinball Expo, the tournament would generally be on whatever the new game was that was coming out. So a lot of times the players hadn't even seen the game ever. Interesting. Very cool. Lyman would graduate from university and he would work a couple of years at Draper Labs in Cambridge. he would also go and work in Norfolk Virginia for MITRE a government-funded defense contract research firm it was a very academic environment he actually worked in the Langley Air Force Base which seems kind of fancy for a person who's only ever heard of Langley from spy movies he had a lot more free time with a job as opposed to going to classes all that time and this is where Lyman decided to finally play at Pinball Expo in 1991, but he hadn't really played pinball in a long while and was very much out of practice. Lyman says, I hadn't played in a long time. It's kind of hard to go back to play. It's kind of like riding a bicycle, but some skills take a while to refine again. We went out to Chicago and had a great time. It was a lot of fun. I played in a tournament, but I did not qualify. So at the time, to qualify, you had to really finish in the top eight. We're now like what's qualified usually, Ron? 16, 32, if there's enough people. And they have multiple divisions, which they didn't have then. Yeah, so you've got like A division or B division based on where you fall, right? So there's multiple levels of final. Basically, if you didn't finish top eight. And in this interview, Lyman actually said that he basically just missed out on the top eight. So here's a guy, hasn't really played a whole lot of pinball in a couple of years or a couple of months, at a practice, you know, and he just barely doesn't get into the top eight of everybody who's come to Chicago in the industry. Like that's, you know, that's some serious skill level. The most important thing that happened here, Ron, was that he met Larry DeMar, who's one of the programmers at Williams, while he was at Expo that year. Making the key contact of Larry DeMar, of course would pay dividends later on. Lyman decided he needed more practice. So after that, he went back. He played a lot more on location. He decided to buy his own Adams family because he wanted to play and practice on it. But all of the machines on location were usually crap. They, of course, had, you know, they were leaning. They needed, you know, flipper rebuilds or the ramp was broken or something. But he didn't want to deal with that. He wanted his own machine. So somebody just kind of going out and buying their own machine in the early 90s was a pretty unique thing. You probably got it from an operator. I doubt if he would have got it from a distributor. Through 1992, Lyman was Mr. Second Place, finishing just outside the number one position in all of the tournaments that he played in. One thing that's particularly interesting, and we've seen a lot of this since Lyman's passing, is the Lyman stance. Can you kind of describe that a little bit? There was almost multiple stances, but they generally were him getting extremely low to the game with his face almost on the glass. Yeah, so his butt is a way out and his face is a way down. It looks very uncomfortable and something that if I tried it, I might not be able to get up after like five minutes. He was incredibly methodical when it came to playing. He'd catch the ball. He'd wait. You know, he didn't play on the fly. So he's down there. He's catching that ball. He's got his face to the glass, and he's just aiming it up just exactly where it needed to be. And he just did that. Where I think a lot of players, myself included, tend to be a little more like no patience. So we're always moving it. This odd position that he would play in, Mike Vinicore, who's from Stern, would actually call it the snake. Because he's like slithering down there. Very cool. Cool man. So while living in Virginia, Lyman won the 1993 Papa Championship, which I believe back then, I think it was in New York City. So what's Papa? The Professional and Amateur Pinball Association. Yes, and that was started by?
    21:24
    Roger Sharp and Steve Epstein. Right, who were really sort of the tournament gods at the time. They were the ones that sort of tried to gather it all together for their excitement to play pinball. Papa was a really, really, really big deal until 2020. See, Williams sent him out to Las Vegas to do demonstrations on their games. He played Twilight Zone, Creature from the Black Lagoon, and Dracula, so people could see all the features. Really, really, really cool. So that kind of one of the things was that he was so good, and he could, you know, see these, like, wizard modes and fun things and blow up the scores and play almost effortlessly. They decided to bring him out to display his games. It's kind of funny, right, when you watch a lot of the players nowadays on streams, like when Stern does their reveal streams, we're talking like top 25 players of all time showing you the features of the game. And then you get somebody like myself there. It would just be a train wreck. I wouldn't be, like, nobody would want to buy the game because it would look so bad because I'm not very good. Or they could get somebody like Ron and he could just put on a clinic, right, Ron? Oh, yeah, sure. So there was a really cool piece that Leonard, oh, good Lord, what is this guy's name? Leonard Moscheritolo?
    22:47
    Ah, let's see. You're Italian. You get this. Moscheritolo. That sounds good. Hey! Come eat the salami! Oh, boy. I apologize to all Italians. There was a great little article that he had written, and I think it was in Playmeter magazine back in the early 90s, where it spoke about Lyman and winning the 1993 Papa Championship. And there's this old, like, black and white, like, 90s photo, it's fantastic, of Lyman holding the trophy. And he just has this massive smile on his face. One of the things that I found particularly interesting about this piece was that it has a couple of really kind of neat quotes. One of them is,
    23:35
    If you still doubt who is the best player in the world, don't ever forget the emotion that transformed into tears the moment he heard his name officially announced as the 1993 Papa World Champion. Then next down here it says, Lyman Sheets will change this sport as we know it because he loves it. There will never be a world champion better suited for the title and never one more capable of sending this great pastime on the right track. So why I read that, Ron, is that back in 1993, before Lyman has done anything, It's already kind of plant. He's already planted those seeds which generally say he's going to do something special in pinball. And boy, oh, boy, did he ever. So one of those aforementioned Vegas trips, we was doing a demonstration for Williams. He flew back to the East Coast, and he happened to be sitting next to Data East's Lonnie Ropp, who he met at the Vegas convention. And Lonnie Ropp was one of the original programmers at Data East. So Lyman figured out that he had the skills the industry could use, and it dawned on him he could help make pinball machines. So he sent his resume to Larry DeMar at Williams and Lonnie Ropp at Data East.
    24:59
    Williams didn't call because, as Lyman would find out years later from Ted Espy, Ted didn't hire Lyman because he thought he was too academic from his work experience and wouldn't do well in the deadline-driven Williams pressure cooker. That's a good point. We spoke about sort of the shark tank in a lot of our other episodes where, like, there's timelines and pressure and you got Steve Ritchie yelling at you. You got guys like Pat Lawler who are just demanding perfection on a timeline and pushing the envelope with mechanics and programming. Like, you've got all this pressure, pressure, pressure. You know, Ted Estes kind of assumed because Lyman spent all this time sort of being an academic thinker and a cushy government kind of funded job, he wouldn't be able to do that. That was when Joe Kamenkow called, and he flew Lyman to Chicago, and Data East offered him a job and immediately put him on his first project, The Who's Tommy Pinball Wizard. Based off of the Broadway play. Yes, the Broadway play, the licensed rock musical theme, because nothing says pinball like a musical. Well, this one I'd say, yeah. Yeah, totally. This is totally different, because it literally is about pinball. January 1994 this is a Data East version 3 it sells 4,700 units designed by Joe Kamenkow and Ed Cabella I think it's Cabula I think it's Sabula is it Sabula? I think it's an S designed by Joe Kamenkow and Ed Sabula this is art by Marcus Rothkrans dot animation by Kurt Anderson and Jack Liddon Sound and Music by Brian Schmidt Software by Lonnie Ropp Lyman F. Sheets Jr. and John Carpenter because this was the time of his career when he just wasn't doing that great after the thing. Yeah, I don't think it's that John Carpenter. Interesting Brian Schmidt because he moved over from Williams. The artist of this, Marcus Rothkranz, who is the sort of famous slash infamous painter art guy. He did a lot of the work for Daddy East at this time, and I'm going to have to tell you, not my favorite artist when it comes to pinball art, but this time pretty, pretty good.
    27:20
    Pretty, pretty, pretty good. Music and Lyrics by Pete Townsend. It's based on the 1969 rock opera Tommy by The Who. It premiered in July 1st, 1992, in the famous musical area that everybody knows in the United States, San Diego La Gioia Playhouse. But eventually it ended up in Broadway. Broadway in 1993. It did London's West End, which is very fancy as well, 1996. And then it would play again in London's West End in 2015. It actually won five Tony Awards. Tony Awards, of course, only second to the Varney Cup.
    28:05
    Okay. Nothing? No one's going to know what that means. So, of course, all the rules are Lyman's, right? He's on the thing. This is his first machine. He comes in, he killed it. No. But Lyman did a lot of the code in that Daddy's time. No. He was hired to do all the dot matrix display programming. Okay. So he didn't do the dot matrix art. He didn't do the game rules. He just did the dot matrix display programming. So when Joe Kamenkow picked up the license to the musical Tommy, they had six weeks to get the machine up and running, and Lyman needed to get that DMD working. Of course, at this time, Ron, everybody knows the DMD at Data East had its own CPU, which was 6803 language. I have no idea what that means. and Lyman had to learn that programming language in record time. I believe that's the chip, 6803. The CPU, it had its own CPU as opposed to the Williams system, which it just had one CPU on the CPU board. That ran everything. Data East needed, they had a separate one on the actual display. Yeah, it's like it wasn't smart enough to tell it to do both things. They needed two. Which if you had to, like if you had new code, a lot of times you have to replace the DMG code also, which is kind of a pain. Yeah. So we'll talk about the Data East board set in greater detail when we eventually do our Data East episode. And shout out to one of our viewers who helped us out with a lot of the research on that, so thank you so much. And we'll break that down because the Data East board set was somewhat interesting. It was somewhat ripped off and then kind of morphed from there. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. But I'll tell you, the excitement of being in pinball, I mean, he was no longer in a government-funded cubicle.
    30:02
    Lyman Sheets was out and about doing some really cool stuff in the industry that he loved so much. Now, this game made its debut at the Hard Rock Cafe in Dallas, Texas, in October of 1993. Three. Daddy, you slew the team to Texas for the Tommy promotional tour and brought the prototypes and placed them on location. Unfortunately, one of the games fell off the truck and was destroyed. Yeah, so that's a bummer. I don't know how it falls off a truck, but I don't know, you're loading it or something? Or you're in some sort of, like, Texas cowboy shootout, and you're, like, escaping in your U-Haul truck, and it just falls out the back like I've seen in a lot of those American movies? So there were 10 pre-production prototypes that were made for promotional use in conjunction with the off-Broadway production. These prototypes had six pop-upers and EM chime units. I played one of these. Yeah, cool. What's it like? It's totally different, right? It's a totally different game. It's different. The interesting part is the EM chime unit. So if you've ever played Data East's Time Machine, which had an actual chime unit in, So when you went back to the 50s, it would play the chimes. That's cool. So the same thing here. They had a chime box in the game, and it's cool. Yeah, so Lyman is embedded in all this, right? He's taking trips.
    31:26
    He's taking the machines around. He's setting them up. He's not sitting in a cube. He's out and about doing fun things with fun people. In 1993, in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, there was a special machine that was rigged for autoplay that had no back box. All of the electronics were actually mounted in the cabinet, and it was on the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade float. Lyman's family was really happy that he was involved in something like the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, because they understood now what he was doing. Of course, when you're working at MITRE or a think tank, you're in a cubicle, there's something kind of inherently mysterious about that. But when you can point to something like on the float with the pinball machine and look what I've made and look what I'm working on, you can really draw that. He would speak to that in that TopCast interview, which I thought was really, really cool. You'd have to meet Peter Townsend, who, of course, was one of the integral parts of the Who. and he even signed Lyman's Tommy instruction card, which is pretty awesome. Can we talk a little bit about this game itself?
    32:41
    Sure we can. It has a cool topper. It has a very cool topper. It's like the Bean from Chicago. It's basically the topper is a large silver ball that reflects a, what does it say again? Does it say just Tommy? I'm trying to remember what it actually says. On the ball? On the ball. It's written on the top of the back box and reflects off the ball. Cool. And also the other idea is you would reflect off the ball because you are the player. I've played Topper. Never seen the Topper. Oh, you've never seen the Topper. Oh. Never seen the Topper. I assume they're all taken off or broken or fallen off or scratched up or something. Yeah, no one down east probably. Probably broke.
    33:21
    It's true. I mean, there's so many down east games where you see the Topper is either missing or broken. I mean, what's the last time you see an Adams family that didn't have the Topper? Yeah. Yeah, totally.
    33:33
    For people love when we read the flyers. So Tommy, the Tony award-winning smash hit is coming to a location near you. The Who's Tommy Pinball Wizard by Data East. Did you know it features more music than any pinball ever? 21 hit songs sung by the original cast members. Oh my, so it's not actually the licensed music from The Who. Well, it's licensed music. It's just from the Broadway show. That's the only bummer about it. It's like, man, I really wish it was actually the Who. Wow. And this comes through the super fancy BSMT 2000 Deluxe Digital Sound System. In stereo. Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. I assume the BS stands for Brian Schmidt. Actually, the BSMT probably stands for Brian Schmidt. Because remember, he was at Williams and he left to go to Daddy East. Yeah, so if you know that, let us know. Silverballchronicles at gmail.com. I would assume that's what it stands for. So I don't know about you, but I got a feeling that 94 is going to be a good year. According to the flyer, yes. Yes. Wasn't it a good year? I can't really remember 94. The interesting thing about the Tommy design is that it is kind of a mirror image of the Tales from the Crypt design that John Borg did like the previous year. Yeah. So it's like we got to get this done in six weeks. We need a play field. it's kind of flipped and they reused in Tales from the Crypt they had the tombstone mech just a large tombstone that you bash and it comes down so they kind of repurposed that and in Tommy it's the mirror it's like the same mech I really like that tombstone mech it's kind of neat Tommy also has the blinders yeah what are the blinders so Tommy the character is what He's that blind and dumb, but he can sure play some mean pinball. So he wasn't very good at math? I never understood the dumb part. I think it's because he doesn't talk. Oh, right, of course. I actually knew that, folks. Don't email me. So on Tommy, inside the apron, they have these blinders that you don't realize are even there in a certain part of the game, which I can never remember when, because they hardly ever come out. It's kind of like a fan, right? It, like, fans out over the flippers because he's blind. So you can't see the flippers, so you're playing blind. Look at that world under glass, huh? The thing is, I've played Tommy a ton of times. I think I've only seen the blinders, like, twice. I think there's a mode that you can turn them on all the time. I don't know why you'd want to play a game like that, but I guess it's kind of a fun gimmick. If this being a fun gimmick, I would think I would have seen it more. It's like if you had Thing in Adam's Family and he came out once every, like, 30 games or something. Or Balrog that never comes out. Yeah. So he's got to come out all the time. It's also got this really cool, like, Tommy was during the Second World War, right? The theme of the movie. Well, I think it's the First World War. It changes depending on the original album. It's the First World War. I think in the movie, it was like the Second World War. It moves around. But in the game, I believe it says like 1918 or 17 or something at the beginning. So it's supposed to be World War I, which makes playing pinball even weirder because they really wouldn't have existed in the form they are. Yeah, so it's got like a 1940s dogfight in the back. Confusing. It's confusing. It's cool, though, I've got to say. It is very good. Like I said, the art actually works really well in this style. It's very, very cool. It's very yellow, though, really yellow. It has a molded plane with working propellers in the back, which is cool. It's very British-y because, of course, the Who were part of that sort of popular British invasion era. It got the Union Jack prominently displayed on the plate Very cool It a great little game Have played it a lot Like is this a tournament darling kind of game Is this something you see often You see it in tournaments a lot, yeah. If you're going to see a Data East game in a tournament, Tommy's one of the ones you see a lot. Okay. Very cool. It's very Addams Family-y in that you hit a shot to light a mode, you start a mode, you time the mode out. You start to the next mode, you go through all the modes. It's got a really cool side flipper shot. It's got an amazing orbit spinner. Orbit spinners, yeah! Right? So, you know, the game's pretty good. I've only played it a couple of times because it was on location, and the one that I was playing was kind of flaky, so I didn't want to waste any extra money on that. But very, very cool. I really enjoyed it. I think it's a very cool game. But Lime and Sheets, of course, only did the DMD programming. This machine, beyond the machine itself, actually plays a very integral role in Silver Ball Chronicles, Ron. It does? It does indeed. When I first was in the hobby, I want to say six months, maybe eight months. I'm, of course, listening to various podcasts, as one does. And I discovered Pinball Profile episode 199. This was titled Pinball Wizard Turns 50. And this specific podcast actually influenced me to think about creating Silver Ball Chronicles. And I spent some time kind of writing some stuff down after listening to Pinball Profile, episode number 199. Lyman Sheets spent some time with Jeff Teolis, the host of Pinball Profile. and they spoke about the album Tommy turning 50. And then they spoke about the pinball machine Tommy. And because of this sort of historical conversation that Jeff Teolas was having, I thought, man, there could be a space for a really cool history-oriented pinball podcast. So Lyman Sheets and Tommy actually led to Silver Ball Chronicles. So that's the kind of ripple effect that somebody like Lyman Sheets has in pinball without even knowing he's having it. What inspired you to start Slam Tilt with Bruce Nightingale, Ron? Uh, I can't really say that. And Bruce was my only choice. After Tommy, Lyman would work on WWF Royal Rumble and Guns N' Roses. He would do the same DMD animation programming. But after he had learned all the ins and outs of this programming language, it started to become very tedious, right? Lonnie had written a program to sort of help speed along the programming, and Lyman, I guess, would get bored, which tends to be a common theme with Lyman, right? It's like he kind of gets bored. Around this time, he appears on the Today Show. Super cool. I'm going to include that in our show notes. There's a bunch of these old VHS recordings on YouTube of Lyman being on the Today Show or doing various media hits where, of course, they ask all those dumb questions and they say things like pinball wizard. But it's pretty cool. I like the Today Show. Isn't it Brian Gumbel? Yes, it was. Yeah, yeah. At one point he's playing the game. It's like, look, I don't even know what I'm doing and I'm killing it. Like Brian Gumbel. Like, ah, what a tool. go do something about sports on HBO Brian Goble the Data East code it certainly wasn't the Williams code of the time was it? it's sort of like a almost a joke amongst pinball players kind of how shallow or boring Data East code is well I mean come on they had so many games it's not at Williams level I'll grant you that so what like what's I know Joe Kamenkow would tell you hey what company survived so there you go So Lyman says, I was very appreciative of the opportunity to work at Data East. What I take away from my experience was there was a lot of headaches, and I felt like we could have done more to improve our games. I think Joe had the right perspective on it, which was we make machines, we employ a bunch of people who have fun with what they do, and we make money at it. We all get to enjoy our time with our friends and family, and that's what's important. I assume he means Joe Kamikow by that, Joe. You can see here that Lyman is really saying, like, we could be pushing ourselves further. You know, we could be working harder and putting more into these games and making these games great. But that wasn't, and to some point, isn't the business model of Data East. They were about getting machines on the line and getting them out and getting on to the next one. And I can see that that might be frustrating for a perfectionist like Lyman Sheets. He would work on Richie Rich, which was a one-off promotional game for the Richie Rich movie starring... Oh, who was that? Macaulay Culkin? Macaulay Culkin, yeah, that's right. from Home Alone. I remembered a movie thing.
    42:36
    And he would work on Maverick, which was really kind of the last one that he worked on. And that's where he started working on those larger DMDs and the system behind it at Data East. Yeah, the big DMD. I actually like Maverick. It's not bad. But Lyman was ready to move on from Data East. So in terms of being challenged, Lyman wanted to move beyond DMD scripting. He wanted to be challenged and learn new things. A new system for a large display was fun, but he wanted to do game programming. So, so far he's been at Data East for a few years, and he hasn't actually programmed a game yet. Lonnie Ropp and Neil Faulkner were really the game programmers at Data East at the time, and really at Stern now. Kevin Martin, he was hired to come in to do programming. Well, Lyman noticed that there was not a spot for him to do the game programming. Right? He was the DMD programmer guy. And he was very much at a crossroads. He had a decision. Does he go back to Virginia to go back to his old job at MITRE, or does he try to go or do something else in pinball? During Lyman Sheets' funeral stream, Roger Sharp speaks to how conflicted Lyman was at that time and how really difficult it was for Lyman to make the decision. Does he continue to struggle and fight at Data East? Does he go on to do something else in pinball? Or does he just call it a day and go back to Virginia? So Lyman says, I was young, you know. I fought forever. So I called Ted Estes at Williams. He interviewed me for a second time and offered me a job. I think part of that was the fact that I had worked for a pinball company for a year, and everybody in the industry knows who does what. I suppose people there were a little bit more comfortable hiring me based on the fact that I had picked up and moved out to Chicago, and I had worked on a lot of things, sort of proving to everybody that I could do the work. Lyman really proved himself in that sort of 10 to 12 months that he was at Fatty East. He was willing to take the risk. He moved, he showed himself that he could actually do it, and he wasn't some sort of soft, cubicle government sort of employee, right? Like, that's what they were concerned about. And he basically proved that he wasn't. But this is when sort of the industry started to contract in 94, 95. The industry was selling 9,000 units. Data East, of course, Jurassic Park was selling like 5,000 units, and they were kind of struggling to do that. Now the industry was basically selling 4,000 units, right? So sales are starting to sort of crater. Lyman was a little bit scared of going to Williams because he felt like, and Williams was, the big time. And there would be a lot of pressure. The games that he played in college were all Williams games, the ones that he loved the most. And he was going to be a small fish in a big pond. He was excited because he felt like this was his opportunity. This is his last chance to do what he really came out to Chicago to do, program games. First day at a new job, got to be a big deal. Yeah, it was his first day at Williams. After getting lost on his way to the factory, Lyman finally made it, and the first person he met was Steve Ritchie. That's got to be rough. You get lost, and then the first person you meet is Steve Ritchie, who is quite intimidating, actually, even in his 60s. Steve came out and says, you're really here. It seemed weird to Lyman because it's a big deal person. Steve calling Lyman a spy and joking that he just made him feel kind of comfortable there. Steve was a big deal person. And he basically, Steve joked that Lyman was a spy and made him feel comfortable. Oh, I could doubt it, you spy. I just got that. So Lyman shared his office with Ted Estes. So they, of course, jammed into this one office together. And that's where he learned the ropes of Williams programming, along with Louis Kozarich. Kozlerich. I can never get that guy's name right. Of course, he joined around the same time, and it was quite nerve-wracking, apparently, because they had to learn on the game Jackbot. Oh, man. Louie and Lyman worked on Demoman with Ted from his cubicle, and after a fire in the game and some embarrassment, they finally got the game out the door. Imagine being the programmer and having something go wrong and creating a fire. That's got to be pretty ego-damaging. There was a big learning curve. After finishing up Demoman, Lyman did a lot of test fixtures for Theater of Magic. Ron, for people who don't know, what's a test fixture? A test fixture? A test fixture. I don't know. What is a test fixture?
    47:18
    So what that is is it's like they put something there and they get a ball to smash against it like a million times to see if it's going to hold up. Yeah. That requires programming, right? So you've got to program the flipper to flip a billion times, right? Somebody's got to do that stuff. And Theater of Magic has a lot of stuff on it that could possibly break, so I'm sure they needed a lot of testing. And they do that to this day. Stern has a room where they just have games running tests constantly. Yeah, that's where they set up a scoop, and they just keep shooting it with a ball to see if it bends. Congo, this is where Lyman was going to be a support programmer. The project actually went long. This is where Lyman was moved to Brian Eddy's team because Mike Boone, who did the shadow, wasn't available. Yes, I guess Congo originally was supposed to have an upper play field. It was a different design, and it got to a certain point where they just decided to start again. Yeah, start again, hack and slash. And that's when he got reassigned. Right, but to be reassigned to Brian Eddy's team, I mean, they would end up creating some magic here, wouldn't they? They would. Roger Sharp, who is a character that we bump into a lot in pinball, he and Lyman actually developed quite the friendship, specifically when Lyman was at Williams, because they would spend more time together being in the same building. They would go golfing. Now, Lyman, it was said, would hit 300-yard drives, but he would always be so hard on himself that the shots were not perfect. Roger knew that Lyman had troubles dealing with stress, and he always let Lyman know that if he needed someone to vent to, he was always there. Lyman could always go back to Mitre if things got too crazy at Williams, But Roger was always available if he needed that help. It's interesting because Roger Sharp could immediately identify that Lyman was a perfectionist, and he had difficulty kind of letting things go, especially when you're an amazing golfer. You just pick up the game, and you're amazing at it. You pick up pinball, and you're amazing at it. But yet, you're always really difficult and hard on yourself.
    49:41
    Tack from Mars was that Brian Eddy game. And we talked about that in our last episode, but that's the sci-fi alien invasion theme. It's December of 95. It's the Williams WPC-95 system. It sells 3,450 units, which is way, way too few. Designed by Brian Eddy, art by Doug Watson, dots by Adam Ryan and Brian Morris, sound and music by Dan Forden. And software, the only name on there, Lyman F. Sheets Jr. Now, the code on Attack from Mars, it's somewhat interesting and unique. Even to this day, it's still sort of heralded as a really great coded game. And this is Lyman Sheets first. So Lyman talks about collaboration on Attack from Mars. Lyman says, what happened at Williams was that Brian would be busy during the day, and then he'd go and leave whenever at 9 or 10, but he'd come into my office and we'd always talk about stuff. At Williams, we just wanted to design more stuff into our game as far as software.
    50:45
    At Williams, we just wanted to design more stuff into our game as far as software. It's just a lot of evolution and tweaking to take a game from something that is fair or pretty good to something that's great. There's the difference between Data East at the time and Williams. They wanted to push themselves further. They wanted to go from good to great. and you gotta say you're kind of let down with 3,450 units. Lyman himself would specifically say that he was indeed let down by that. He would work on Safecracker next, which is a Pat Lawler designs, very weird game. That's covered in our Pat Lawler episode, but he would say that Safecracker, you know, helping out on the display effects, he would also say that he wrote Assault on the Vault, which was a mode where you got to where you would get a magic token in the back of the game. There's a slot in the speaker panel where a coin actually comes out and rolls to you. So cool. Something unique, something strange, you know, not a major piece. But that's where we get into Medieval Madness, which is from June of 97.
    51:55
    Sells 4,000 units, so better seller. John Yosey, Greg Ferris on art, sort of the same kind of get the band back together kind of game. from Attack for Mars? Lyman says, Medieval Madness was probably the most fun I ever had working on any project because we basically had the same team as we had for Attack for Mars. Brian and I were going over themes, and we decided for whatever reason on the medieval theme. It was appealing to pretty much everyone on the team. My appeal was I'm a big Monty Python fan. I saw Holy Grail, and I thought we could do a lot with the humor. And we spoke about that again in our last episode, that Brian Eddy had a list of names specifically for Medieval Madness, and a lot of them were really, really bad. And the one that everybody sort of settled on that they didn't jump on and say was absolutely horrible was Medieval Madness. There was less pressure on the second game because he knew how to program that game, and he felt a lot more comfortable, but he still wanted to do better. He wanted to improve. The only issue that they really had was the catapult that went through a few different rules changes. Apparently, Lyman spent a lot of time changing the rules on that left catapult shot because the other ones were, and I quote, really bad. Now, in Lyman speak, really bad actually is probably really, really, really good. But there were still three reiterations of that code for that catapult. I find that pretty crazy. The downward spiral speeds up around this time, isn't that right? Yeah, around this time. 97, 98, it's really hurting at this point. The Capcom decided to no longer do the pinball division. That got shut down. Got leave. They made barbed wires their last game, and then they were out. Williams management really wanted the pinball designers to start making some interesting and new slot machine designs. Management realized that the pinball division, they were very smart, very innovative. They came up with a lot of really cool novel ideas, and they wanted to start leveraging that knowledge over in the slot division. nobody is happy selling a thousand machines in one year and of course your shareholders will start to bail on you lyman said the gaming business was perceived to be this sort of infinitely growing business that williams could take a little piece of and do very well and so there's a lot of people trying to get the pinball people involved in slot machine design so i worked on a slot machine between medieval madness and monster bash lyman and brian were going to do another game after Medieval Madness, but Brian knew the writing was on the wall. Brian loved video games, and he wanted to work on them and do more of that, so he moved over to the Midway division in a management creator role. So Lyman says, Larry DeMar had asked me if I was interested in working with George, meaning George Gomez. I didn't really know him all that well or talk to him too much. The most I got to interface with George was on the Exploding Castle in Medieval Madness. In the 11th hour, he saved it as a feature on the game because our mechanical people were having trouble coming up with a reliable, cost-effective Exploding Castle. Yeah, so that was interesting. I had never heard that before in a lot of my other interviews, that George was integral to the castle. George is like the mech saver. That's like not the first time he did that either. Yeah. Yeah, he's come forward to save mechs multiple times. He pops up every now and then, right? It's like, you need George Gomez to save something? You know, like, let him put on his cape and come on over to the area here, and then Super Gomez will fix it. Choosing a theme was really difficult because, of course, in this time they were doing those sort of hybrid, original theme, licensed themes, or they were coming up with kind of a knockoff theme or something like that. But Lyman made a deal with George that if he could agree on the theme that they were both interested in, that they would end up working together. Can you imagine nowadays, Ron, Raymond Davidson showing up to Stern? Yeah, I'm not going to work with you, Keith Elman, unless we both agree on the theme. Like, you kind of have a lot of balls to say that, right? Like, I'm not working with George unless we come up with a theme. Generally, you know, your boss says you're doing it, and you're like, okay. Well, no one does original themes anymore, so I guess it's easier. I guess it's moot, right? Now, Lyman would say, we're not having an easy time coming up with themes, because George liked robots and monster trucks and stuff like that. Like all the testosterone. Not as deep of a theme. But, you know, he's a guy, and he likes what he likes. I was wanting to do, like, goofy monster game. The sort of, like, fun monsters that you don't take too seriously. George said we needed a license. because we just did Attack from Mars and Medieval Madness, which didn't have licenses. Then, one day he comes walking down the hall, and he had this little brochure from Universal Studios Monsters. Popped into my office, he's like, I'm doing this game. I just felt like, hey, that was my monster idea. So there you go. The Universal Monsters playing at Universal Studios is where that theme came from. We talked about Monster Bash in our Pinball 2000 episode. We also talked about it a little bit in the last episode, but this is the Universal Monsters Party theme from July of 98. Sells 3,361 units. George Gomez on design. Art by Kevin O'Connor. Thoughts by Adam Rine. Vince Pontarelli as the sound and music and software by Lyman F. Sheets Jr. This has a very interesting mode called Lyman's Lament. Can you talk about that? Well, if I remember, there are two ways to do it. Either you hit the scoop an obscene amount of times, like 60-something times it'll start, or you can put in a flipper code, and then you do a – yeah, you put the right flipper code in the game, we'll say totally, and then when you hit the scoop, it will start Lyman's Lament, which is basically just a quasi – like the music has this scratching, like rap, but kind of bad. It's hard to explain. Actually, the music's kind of good, but it's just Lyman saying things, oh man, that's going to drain. Yeah, he complains about the game the whole time, and a lament is tragically complaining or being sad or upset or worried. That's really what a lament is, and it was more or less George Gomez's idea to stick this kind of secret mode in the game. Yeah, Lyman said, so Gomez, when I'm showing him disrespect, he thinks I complain a lot. I don't know what he's talking about, but he thinks I like to complain a lot. So he jokingly said, I'm going to put this feature in. It's just Lyman complaining about stuff in the game. George came in and hammered me saying, hey, you have to put this feature in the game. I was sort of forced to put it in. Yeah, he's kind of being shoved into an area, but he actually had to sit down and record audio for it, which he really didn't want to do. He really didn't want to record it, but he put it in there. You can tell it kind of bothered Lyman that it was in the game, in fact, when he's talking about it.
    59:26
    But I think it's actually a really kind of a neat piece of news. It's hilarious. It is one of the most amazing things ever. My favorite quote in it, I think if you tilt during it, he'll say, like, can't we all just get along?
    59:44
    While George was doing Monster Bash with Lyman, He was traveling to Pat Lawler's place in the night to work on the Pinball 2000 secret project. There was a lot of pressure on this game because George would come in in the morning and he'd work with his engineer on moving stuff on the playfield or designing the playfield. Lyman would do all his programming in the afternoon. They'd collaborate in the evening. And then George would travel all the way out to sort of outside of Chicago to work with Pat Lawler in the night. It was a pretty impressive time for George Gomez. So this, of course, gets us to when Williams shuts down, which, of course, is a tragic day that we always talk about. Lyman, he would go to work at Midway, and he all but stopped thinking about pinball. He stopped playing pinball, in fact, and he stopped competing entirely. And he was very much out of touch with pinball after Williams closed for three years. Lyman says, pinball always has ups and downs. For me, I needed a break from it. I had so much work piled on me and look at all the stuff that I did in less than five years when I was at Williams. In the year and a half, I was at Data East. Sometimes you get burnout. I think I needed a break to, you know, just kind of recharge and come up with some fresh ideas. What I find interesting about this, Ron, is you look at it. He's done three major games at Williams as the programmer, and he worked for 12 to 10 months at Data East. in the grand scheme of things that is not a lot of games he did i would say probably put a lot of himself into those he probably worked crazy long hours into the nights into the mornings he put a lot of his emotional capital into that but when you look at somebody like you know larry DeMar or Eugene Jarvis or some of those other programmers, Lonnie Ropp, they've done 20 or 30 games, right? They're like nonstop doing games. So I find it kind of interesting that he's burned out kind of so quickly at Williams on three games. Some of it probably, Ron, had to do with the work ethic at Williams and, you know, pinball basically collapsing. He probably just wanted to give up and move on for a while. He had a lot of internal struggle in such a short period of time. After three years, something was missing at Midway. Lyman was appreciated. He was working on new technology and everything else. But he said he really missed the creative aspect of working on a pinball machine, right? It's a little less predictable. It's more dynamic and fun. You're working sort of less to a computer game schedule, I guess, right? Lyman would call up Gary Stern and ask him if he were looking for help, and Gary said no, not right now. But they were working on a new hardware system, and they needed somebody to create a custom operating system. And that's how Lyman got his start back in pinball. That system would be the Stern-Sam system. Isn't that right? That is right. I assume named after Sam Stern. That's what I always assumed it meant. The White Star system was written in what was called an assembly language. Don't know what that means. And Lyman moved everything over to a C or a C++ standard with the new SAM system. Yeah, assembly language is literally, it's one step down from the hardware. It's like a series of ones and zeros. You ever hear that? Now, one thing that was also pretty interesting is they added USB code updates rather than switching out the EEPROM in the system. Yes, so finally after Pinball 2000, which allowed you to do code updates, we finally have a system, what is it, seven, eight years later that can do it? Yeah. Now, the first game that he would work on with them was Sopranos, which was originally going to be a SAM system, but ended up being on White Star. So what was the first Sam game? Here's a really obscure factoid.
    64:00
    It's Simpson's Kooky Carnival with a K, where they reused a lot of the parts from Simpson's Pinball Party, like Homer's big rotating head and Bart's on the skateboard. They had a lot of those parts left over, so they made a redemption game called Simpson's Kooky Carnival. That's right. Totally different. and it was not actually a pinball machine. I guess proof of concept, right? Like the bar's not too high if it goes bad, and at Simpsons it'll probably sell. The first pinball machine they did with that was World Poker Tour. That's right, and you can tell, right, that the game programming was very different in World Poker Tour. The next full game that Lyman Sheets would actually program is the absolute masterpiece, Spider-Man from June of 2007, which is the licensed superhero movie theme. It's the Stern-Sam system. We don't know how many units, but I think it was probably around 5,000, as per Steve Ritchie mentioning it in an interview one time. Designed by Steve Ritchie, Kevin O'Connor on art, dots by Mark Galvez, sound and music by the master, David Thiel. This, of course, is an epic game. We've got tons of discussion on this game in Steve Ritchie 3 in the archives over at silverballchronicles.com or in your podcatcher if you look for Silverball Chronicles. But what did Lyman say about Spider-Man? Well, just to put my own opinion in this, I always wondered how. So you have Lyman Sheets, and at Williams he does, in succession, Attack from Mars, Medieval Madness, and Monster Bash.
    65:36
    You know, three masterpieces, all-time great games in a row. When he goes to Stern, I mean, number one, he worked for Gary Stern before when he was at Data East, so he figured there was an in there. And it's like, no, we want you to program our OS. Like, okay. So he's literally there for years before he gets another lead in a game, which just seems insane. And as we'll be talking about as we go through this episode, I mean, he ended up being in like a partnership role where he wasn't a lead in a bunch of games. I think that was more because of the state of the company at the time. But still, it seems crazy it took this long to get another lead. Very strange. So what does Lyman say about Spider-Man, Ron? He says, I'm pretty happy with Spider-Man. We had a couple of rough spots, especially towards the end of it, because of the way the license was structured. We were allowed to use all three movies, but we couldn't actually get any of the footage from the third movie until the DVD came out, and they wouldn't give it to us ahead of time. I'm pretty happy with it. In the end, I think most people are happy with it. I probably made a few mistakes with it, but I don't know. It's still one of my favorite games that I worked on. I included this quote because I'm perplexed by it. Well, there's background on this. I should elucidate the background. Yeah, please. Is this from the TopCast interview? Yes, it is. Yes, because the timing of that, basically he was on Spider-Man. As far as he was concerned, there was still a lot of work left to do on the game, and he was taken off. Like, we've got to go on to the next game. And he was not happy. So on his own time, he basically continued to work on it. So a lot of the things you see, like when you finish a villain and the headline comes up, headline says Sandman Beached and all that, that was all added later. That was all done on his own at his house when he was working on it. At the time he recorded TopCast, none of that was out yet. And he was not happy that he was not allowed to continue on the game. It wasn't done in his eyes.
    67:40
    He would also do a spot on Head to Head Pinball Podcast with Marty Robbins and Ryan Say. And they would also talk in great lengths about Spider-Man because, of course, it is a masterpiece in my opinion.
    67:55
    And a lot of people recognize that. But Lyman was really hard. Like, he made a few mistakes. He doesn't know. It's still one of the best games he had. He's really, really hard on himself, Ron. Like, if he would have left it the way it was, it still would have been an amazing game. It's so good, in fact, Stern vaulted the pin in 2008.
    68:18
    They just re-released the design and the code, a couple of tweaks to the modes, but in general it's the same game. Yeah, different artwork. It's that good. And different call-outs, unfortunately. No more Jameson. He would work, yeah. So this is where he would work on Wheel of Fortune and Indiana Jones. Wait a second. Now, he didn't work on those, but he's credited on IPDB to work on those. Actually, during an episode of the world-famous Slam Tilt podcast, he spent a great deal of time basically debunking a lot of the things that he's tagged to on IPDB. Isn't that right? That's right. He said the next game that he actually spent a lot of time on was Batman the Dark Knight, which is the licensed superhero theme from July of 2008. It sells, I don't know, a couple of units. But during this time, Stern does not release any of their sales numbers. This is designed by George Gomez and Kevin O'Connor on art. It has Mark Galvez on dots along with Tom Krizivet. Kezavat. I even spelled it phonetically, and I still screwed it up, folks. Honest to God. This is not a joke. Sound by Ken Hale and software by Lyman F. Sheets Jr. This is based on the 2008 Christopher Nolan Dark Knight movie masterpiece, which Ron has not seen. I've seen it. Really? I've seen the one with the Heath Ledger as a joke, and that's the only one of the three I've seen. You haven't seen Jurassic Park, but you've seen Dark Knight. Oh, yeah. It was excellent. I'm Batman. I couldn't understand why he kept talking like this, though. Other than he's disguising his voice. That's about it. I'm Batman. It had a $185 million budget. It did a billion-dollar box office in 2008 in that summer. This was a big deal license. Like, I don't know if people understand now how huge Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight movie was. Oh, it was a big get. It was nominated for eight Academy Awards. It won two for sound editing, best supporting actor Heath Ledger as the Joker. it lost Best Picture to Slumdog Millionaire because the Academy hates action and comedy. Heath Ledger, of course, would sadly lose his life to a prescription drug overdose shortly after this movie was released, which now makes watching the movie even more creepy because Heath Ledger is completely transformed in this movie. It is something else. This was, Ron, the first movie I had ever seen in IMAX. I had recently moved to Toronto in 2008 to do my financial licenses after my university degree and my friend was like we gotta go to IMAX, I'm like what's IMAX he's like it's the biggest screen ever, it's amazing you gotta come see it, so we went and I saw this at IMAX and it was epic, it was so great this was also the first time I had Taco Bell because they had a Taco Bell at the theater and I learned that it was Nature's Drano. Okay.
    71:36
    This has some really cool toys in it, doesn't this game? Yes, but it's got the Joker reveal mechanism. It's like a cylinder that rotates, and it's just like a... Well, it has an action figure of the Joker. Just remember when it turns, it's like wobbling around.
    71:53
    It's got Scarecrow's crane. Of course, Scarecrow was the bad guy in the first Dark Knight movie. Yeah, there's no crane in the movie. Yeah. But it's one of those things that cranes are awesome, and they're always awesome in pinball, so they put a crane in. Everybody loves a crane. Yep. And then there's the teeter-totter, which is pretty cool. Yes. It's like a Hot Wheels Tumbler car. Yeah, it's got a Hot Wheels car in it, and it, like, fires up and the car rolls down. It's pretty cool. It's a great little game. It's kind of in that weird kind of mid-2000s Photoshop-y art era, which is kind of a bummer. And I know this was the game that was in the tournament in the Expo in 2008,
    72:41
    right before Stern fired everybody that upcoming Monday, after that weekend. And so I remember at the banquet, they had a presentation on the game with Lyman Sheets and George Gomez. And they talked about the issues they had with that ramp in the center. The one where you shoot the tumbler, right? It's the ramp in the dead center of the play field. And they had major issues getting it to work right. I remember that specifically.
    73:10
    It's kind of a cool game. I haven't played The Dark Knight. I have played the next Batman game, which we can talk about a little bit. But I haven't played a lot of this, ever. I haven't played this ever. Yeah, the crane is super cool.
    73:23
    I mean, if you play Batman 66, it's the exact same mech. It's a cool thing. The rotating cylinder, like one side is the Joker action figure, the other side is his face. It's pretty grindy. It's one of those long-playing games that's turned in in that era that you can stay on for a long time. Yeah, really designed to sort of be a home model kind of. And most of their games were long players at this point. Yeah, and I mean, the art, although during that era, it's actually pretty cool. The side art on the side with Heath Ledger as the Joker is really cool. They've got the motorcycle on one side. They have all the likenesses in there. They use actual clips from the movie, which are hard to see, but they use actual sound clips from the movie. It's a great little game. It's got a cool upper play field too, right, which is sort of Lord of the Rings-esque rollover thing. Yep, Gomez. Are you doing it? Yep, very cool. You know, it's a decent game. Would you own one? No. Why? It plays too long. Plays too long. Yeah. So this is when the 2008 financial crisis, just right after this would happen, and we'll talk about that in greater detail some other time, but everyone was worried at Stern that the company itself would survive. Everyone was helping out on multiple games to make sure everything was done to get it out. Everybody was just terrified they were going to be let go. You had mentioned a moment ago after 2008 after Expo of 2008 basically they let everybody go in the programming division except for Lonnie Robb and Lyman Yeah and I often thought they kept them specifically because they were data east I know Lyman was at Williams, but he was originally data east. The ones they let go were Keith Johnson, who originally started at Williams, and Dwight Sullivan, who originally started at Williams. Lyman said it was tumbleweeds in the office. We walked down the hall, and that's tough. Your friends used to be in an office next door, and now they're not there anymore. So Lyman was parachuted in where he finished CSI by Pat Lawler's design, George Gomez's NBA design, and Steve Ritchie's 24 design. Of course, him and Lonnie would tag team that. Now, when you look those up in IPDB, that's where you see a lot of programmers on those games, kind of in that sort of space, because they were just trying to finish up what they could after everybody was let go. because CSI, Lawler quit halfway through, so Borg finished the play field. And then, yes, Dwight Sullivan was supposed to be on 24, another partnership with Steve Ritchie, and then he was let go, so they had to come in to finish that one. Now the next major game that Stern would release between the fall of 2008 and the ones they sort of kind of finished up, let's say tidied up, with the other designers and other programmers through 2009, It was 2010's Iron Man, where Lyman and Lonnie worked together to finish, or to, from scratch on that game. That is the superhero theme based on the 2008 movie of Iron Man. It's designed by John Borg, dots and animation by Mark Galvez, music and sound by David Thiel, Lonnie and Lyman on software. This, at the time, was a bit of a joke, right? It wasn't a joke, but it was. I mean, it was the strip down, you know, tear everything out. No one was happy. This game was just the end of the end when it came to pinball machines. Oh, my God. They took the service rails out, Ron. They took the service. The first game with the pegs, whichever one hated the pegs.
    77:15
    I actually took the. So what are the pegs? Let's start with that. Well, what are service rails? Service rails are the things that are under most playfields from the Williams era, the 90s Williams era, all the way up through the Stern era. So you can lift the playfield, you can slide it out. So you can get to the back of the playfield. So Stern just cut out the service rails. Instead, they just put these pegs, which are basically like shooter rods. Almost like they're not shooter rods, but just these rods that come down that has the rubber that you would use at the end of a scooter rod. Yeah, just to keep it from scratching anything. And you can only pull the playfield out slightly, and then you just set it down. Everyone hated that. Ron, how bad is it that the company is in such dire straits that they have to take out service rails to keep the company rolling? It must have been bad. When that first came out and they saw that play field, it's like, there's nothing on this. Joke's on them. Have they seen a 2020 Stern?
    78:21
    Wow. But, yeah, I remember at Expo the next year, man, they roasted Gary. Because Gary Stern would always have, he still does, have his presentation at Expo. Usually gives it, like, Thursday, like the state of the company. And, man, they just, like, what is this? People actually, like, yelled that? I don't think anybody would have the balls to do that. Oh, yep. They have people asking, like, what is this stripped-down stuff? What is this? What's happened? Oh, yeah. Another thing that's kind of, you know, particularly interesting about this game is that it has a few moving pieces, but it's basically, what, like two ramps and some pop bumpers and a rising thing in the middle of the playfield. Like, if you looked at Batman, The Dark Knight, you have a crane, an upper play field, a rotating Joker toy thing, another crane on the left side that's like a ramp. 24 was their last full-featured game, as we know it. Yeah, and it's basically now you've got a thing that comes up out of the play field, and that's it. Which is basically, I think they repurposed the, what is it called? The one in Austin Powers. Who's the guy that pops up? Is it Dr. Evil or the other dude? Dr. Evil, yeah. Okay. The Dr. Evil bash toy. Yeah. Now, I'm a huge Iron Man fan. Like, actually, before, like, always an Iron Man fan, I have a lot of collectible Iron Man comics from Marvel back in the day. I love Iron Man. And I love this game. I've played this game quite a few times. And there's something just magical about this stripped-down, brutal ass-kicker, isn't there? This was one of the, if you ask me, like, what game did you hate that you eventually liked? It's this one. As the Iron Man I have downstairs will attest to. Not only does the theme just draw me in because I love the theme, it's kind of based on Iron Man the movie and Iron Man 2, the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Most people don't realize that's actually, in the code, that's the official name of the game. When it would boot up, it said Iron Man 2. The theme pulls me in, and then the gameplay. It just, I can't get enough of it. It's just, it's quick and fast and fun. Yes. On one ball, you're trying to fill up those suits. You're trying to collect the different Iron Man suits to get to the ultimate sort of mode, but you've got to do it on one ball? Brilliant. Very shallow, but the presentation is excellent. It's like Tron that way. We'll speak about that in a minute. It definitely started a – it's continued a trend back from the long-playing games to the newer, shorter-playing games. You were not going to play this thing forever. You weren't. You wanted to get in, get out. It's back in the bars. It's not in the house. Anything that we could do to increase our profit margin. It's got the iron monger that comes out of the play field. It has kind of a whiplash toy. It's got a couple of magnets. It's got three spinners, Ron. Three spinners. Two orbit spinners. That would be an LE now. Oh, three spinners. It's such a cool game. Such a cool game. And it's the, I think the play field is one thing, but when you can marry a play field and code together like Lonnie and Lyman did here, that's a big deal. The left four targets on the left side represent the letters iron, I-R-O-N, and the three targets on the right side represent man, M-A-N. But they couldn't do that because one of the Marvel requirements is the words Iron Man must never be separated from each other. Crazy. Iron Man needs to be together. It can't be on two separate sides of the play field. Or you can just get the decal someone was selling that you can just put over him for Iron Man. Then you're all set. This is where we get into episode 100. the Centurion Slam Tilt Podcast. This, of course, was co-hosted by Lyman Sheets and Greg Pavarelli, who's a New York City tournament player.
    82:45
    This was a really cool discussion specifically around Iron Man and the software. He was talking at this time, when this was recorded with you and Bruce Nightingale, he spoke about how he still wanted to update the Iron Man code at that time. He just can't let little things go. He just wants perfection, and it's got to be difficult. So I reached out to Greg Pavarelli, and I asked him if I could use a quote about his thoughts of Lyman Sheets and specifically Iron Man. Having recorded the Slam Tilt podcast was beyond special. We were all big fans hearing a legendary history of our friend in his own words. It gave me chills. Having played his Monster Bash number one and our mutual favorite Attack for Mars in Lyman's basement was remarkable. Every time his name displayed on my ringing phone, it was surreal. He cared about his work so much, he was always excited and asked for feedback. I will never forget battling on Ironman with him, game after game, in line qualifying for the New York City Pinball Championships. We strategized together, and he said he'd put my initials in the later high score update for bogey. He was the best at what he did, but an even better friend. Thanks, Lyman. Rest in peace. The code and the camaraderie that you can create while playing Iron Man is a pretty awesome thing, right? So it's brutal. It's fast. It's hard. You're battling back and forth. You're going through a bunch of these modes, and it just creates this sense of, like, tension. Guys like Greg and others were able to play that with the creator themselves. That's pretty amazing. And the funny thing about Iron Man, for a game that came out that everyone saw as this stripped-down, just bad thing, eventually became so popular that they vaulted it and did it again. And again. Which let Lyman update the code where he added some things like, for example, Whiplash. There was never any kind of fanfare for a Whiplash super after you hit him a certain amount of times. So that was added. Yeah, there was no celebration and likes. He added a super skill shot that wasn't there before. It was kind of like the opposite of being at Midway, working at Stern again. Yeah, Lyman says, at Midway, I was like, I want to work on pinball machines. Then after the layoffs in 2008, Lonnie and I are making a game like every three months. I just wanted to get back to when I was with Steve, make a good, solid quality game that has a little bit more in it. He didn't like the rush. He didn't like the pressure. He wanted to go back to, you know, the design team making a loaded game on a longer time schedule. I could say that that probably had a hard feeling on him. So this is when Lyman decided to leave pinball again, and he would work at WMS, or what was Williams, and he made slot machines again. he felt the games specifically after Family Guy were too shallow and too stripped out. And you can hear all about that on the Slamtail podcast and Head to Head podcast, which I've included in the show notes. But before his return, changes happened at Stern, i.e. investors came in, money was put in, and things like Transformers and Tron were made. I think Stern realized, like Tron LE, that they could charge more. and a new era is dawning. Is that from a game? To war!
    86:38
    Well, you can see that that recovery had sort of started to take place again, right? Things are normalizing. It took a long time after 2008 for things to feel normal again, specifically in manufacturing. You could feel it when it was happening. Right around when Transformers, Tron came out, you could kind of see it coming back. So Lyman would leave. And he was not there long. Oh, he was not there long. At Williams. At WMS, I should say. That's right. Yeah, he definitely, he was, like, he was gone, and then he was back. Yeah, you could tell that he got out of that atmosphere. He just needed a break. So here's another example, okay, where Lyman is putting so much of himself into these things, and he's not getting what he wants out of it, and he gets frustrated, and he just believes. And then he gets away, and he realizes, man, I miss it. I want to get back. And that's when he heard Steve was working on something. Yeah, Lyman said, I heard they were looking at hiring Steve again. It's Steve Ritchie. It's Stern. Maybe I can work with Steve on a game. I talked to Steve, and he's going to get a game on Steve Ritchie terms. I'm like, all right, maybe we can work together again. We made ACDC. Yeah. So Steve Ritchie terms. Yeah. Steve Ritchie terms is very much like, I want to do what I want, but I want you to stay out of the way. And that was my Steve Ritchie voice. Very good. Thank you. And the announcement was made at the 2011 Texas Pinball Festival during Steve Ritchie's seminar, where at the end of it, he said, you know, I'm starting my next game Monday.
    88:04
    Lyman Sheets is coming back to CERN, and he's going to be working with me on this game. At this time, they were just finishing up Tron, and he pitched in on that. Of course, we'll cover Tron in another episode, probably one of the greatest pinball machines of all time. I take it you like Tron. It's because I own Tron, and I need to keep that value going up, brother. and of course we covered ACDC in length in our Steve Ritchie Part 3 episode.
    88:32
    But Lyman was really gearing up to work with Steve Ritchie on his next game, which was Star Trek. Jody Dankberg, who is the director of licensing, convinced Lyman to move over to Metallica with John Borg. Now Lyman was a big Metallica fan. Jody knew that, and he spent a lot of time to get Lyman to jump over to that project. And what happened was probably one of the greatest events of all time in pinball, which was the rule set and design of Metallica. And the artwork. That was the first game in, God, 15 years or something. We looked at the artwork and we're like, oh, my God, this thing looks incredible. It's not Photoshopped art. This is amazing. This is the 2013 Metallica pinball machine designed by John Borg, probably one of his best layouts. Dots and animation by Mark Galvez and his team. Software by Lyman F. Sheets Jr., Lonnie Robb, and Mike Kizavat. I think we got it that time. Good job, team. this is one of the first games that I've had an extensive period of time playing. James Hetfield is the lead singer for Metallica. He is a big pinball player, apparently. And by goodness, he wanted a Metallica pinball machine. He originally had an Earthshaker customized over to a Metallica pinball machine, And it was done by the artist Dirty Johnny, who did a lot of their band shows. Yeah, he's like their official artist. He's Canadian. Yes. He's from Montreal, I think. But I played that game. That actual Earthshaker? I played that Earthshaker. Was it cool? It was at one show. It was Earthshaker. It played Metallica. And James Hetfield did a lot of custom call-outs. So it sounded a lot like the Sir Metallica. A lot of, yeah, that kind of stuff. Yeah, a lot of the Metallica noise, right? Like, Metallica is very Metallica. Now, I listened to some Metallica in high school,
    90:48
    and that was sort of like late 90s, early 2000s, you know, time period, which is very much like when they were done, when Metallica was kind of done. So it was a lot of their quote-unquote classic music, back from sort of the Master of Puppets kind of album time and things like that. I don't have a huge connection to the theme of Metallica, but man, oh man, Metallica just screams the noise of pinball, right? It's like high energy, high adrenaline, lots of long, loud music. It was a perfect mixture for pinball, I think.
    91:25
    Now, this thing's got some pretty cool mechs, doesn't it? That it does, especially the premium. It has like a scoop that's a snake thing. and I don't know. I've never really looked at the mech and how it actually works, but it's kind of cool, right? You shoot in it, and it kind of, like, clicks backwards and then clicks out. It's got, like, this – how does that work? It's pretty cool. Which one? The Pro is just the scoop, and it just spits it out. Yeah. The Premium one, it just hits – I think it's an opto, so it knows you hit the snake, and it'll open the mouth, and then you go into it like a scoop. Cool. The original Metallica Pro is the snake, and you see it from the flyer. that we're looking at. The snake had fangs, but the fangs kept getting broken off, so they were removed. So later models do not have the fangs, which is weird because there's an actual call out where they say, look at the fangs on that thing. And I'm like, no, there's no fangs there. Yeah, one of the coolest mods you can get is like a sticker that kind of goes on the ramp. Oh, to make it look like the snake is. To make it look like the snake's tail is going up the ramp. So cool. Little details like that. It's got a cool captive ball. Exciting. Everybody loves captive balls. It's got a hammer that hits the ball into the play field. That's very cool. And the premium, it has, I would say, a very amazing, fun bash toy, which is called Sparky, which is like a dude in an electric chair who wants to get electrocuted. He was in the first game. He was in the first custom one, the art for him. And it was similar, like, he had a, I think in the DMG animations, he's wearing a shirt that says, Metallica sucks. And in the Earthshaker one, he had similar, like, he's the enemy. it's it has inline drop targets come on yeah instant amazing uh with a magnet in behind it which is really cool and a cross that comes up yeah it's it's a neat it's a neat game right but it does have a few things that doesn't really it doesn't speak to me one of them is that a lot of people talk about it being very wood choppy that the code is is like chopping wood right you have to shoot so many shots so many times. You have to shoot some shots so many times. But then once you kind of get through that first level of wood chopping, it really starts to open up and give you a lot of other options to play. Yes, and Lyman tweaked the rules on this a lot through the years. There were updates to this well after it had originally come out. Yeah, they did the vault. They did another code update. It happened in vaulted. Because when this would be in tournaments, people would always play it a certain way, so he kind of changed some of it to try to make it a little different. He was always looking for balance, right? He didn't want you to always play in one direction. But for somebody like me who's not really a great player, if I can get $35 million, I'm like, man, that was a good game.
    94:25
    Right? But that's like missing an entire digit, isn't it? You ever notice in some places the lock in the game is called casket, and other places it's called coffin? Ooh, yes. When Jody was negotiating with the band and the songs, they had this script that was written up, and the band actually recorded all of the call-outs before the code was actually created and in the game. I don't know if that's right. I'm trying to remember from our podcast. I thought he said that they had already had all the call-outs recorded by the time he came into the project. Right. That's right. I'm pretty sure that's... So then when they started to code, that's where these kind of small errors came from, where he would code, you know, casket, when the speech would say coffin. And there were a couple of these, like, little bits and pieces that would pop up, especially around the first iterations of the code. For somebody like Lyman, who I'm sure is the ultimate perfectionist, this probably drove him crazy. Lyman said there was speech that said casket, And then there was speech that said coffin. I don't know because I'm stupid or whatever. But for all the multiballs in the game, when you start cross, electric chair, or snake, it just says multiball. For whatever reason, when you start the casket multiball, it would say coffin multiball. And then he would call out casket. Everybody just had a fit, and I was like, yeah, I'm an idiot. He was really, really hard on himself. He kind of, like, lineman's really laid back, right? Like, he's just easygoing, kind of like, he's got that cool sort of, like, 80s nerd thing in his 40s that all of those tech guys have nowadays. That they were super nerdy, like, 30 years ago, but now they're just kind of, like, laid back and cool. But in the words itself, you can see that he was way too hard on himself for something that was not that big a deal. A lot of people also say that this is the ultimate risk-reward game. Would you agree with that?
    96:18
    It's up there. ACDC is up there, too. as far as the song jackpot holding off on it before you go for it. But the thing about it has the cool, cool crank it up feature, one of my favorite features, which is just keep building, and you've got to decide whether you want to cash out or not. Yeah, and it's like a mini wizard mode, but that mini wizard mode just sort of opens up to a bunch of different options. You kind of play the first sort of Sparky or Snake, and then you build up enough to then get into crank it up, which then has kind of like three modes. You play to a song, and they all have like you shoot the ramps or you shoot the orbits, right? And the cool thing about this era is at this time, Lyman was still playing in tournaments. He would be at the POPO World Championships every year. So whatever game he was working on or was out, he would usually show up with some new code for it, like, you know, ACDC. Here's some brand-new code no one has played yet. I'm going to put it in this ACDC so we would get to play it. You know, little things like when he added the multi-ball starts would have the train coming at you and it would actually give the call out and all that. The first time that was ever seen was in the Papa free play area. Well, actually it wasn't free, but the non-tournament area. He would just stick it in there and say, play it, go to town, see what happens, see if he can break it. Yeah, nobody else does that. Everybody just does their game and moves on. Or he'd bring code for Metallica, like, I'm putting this new code in here. He brought code for CSI one year, like some modified code. So there was some kind of bug, some kind of thing in CSI that made it like you couldn't use it in tournaments, so he fixed whatever that was. But I think he just did a version for Papa. I don't believe it was ever released anywhere. So if you happen to buy that Papa machine at their sale back in 2020, you might have experimental codes. I think just there's a few select people who actually have it. Wow, very cool. It speaks to Lyman, right, that he can't let projects sort of sit. I mean, it's not a horrible thing, but you can see that there's this pattern throughout everything he's ever done, that he minimizes his successes. He doesn't celebrate his successes enough. It's sad, right? Like he's heralded as one of the greatest coders of all time, And part of the reason is that he's always looking to improve, and he just never stops. I play Metallica in my league like a lot, and I'm not very good at it. But it has this feeling that is a little bit different, the risk-reward of, do I cash in the jackpot or do I keep building it? And I never notice that on a pinball machine. Even if all the other pinball machines had it before, I never noticed it, and I never kind of understood how it kept drawing me towards that. Like, in the flashing of the lights, in the call-outs, the game is programmed in a way that it pulls you to learn that code. Where a lot of other games, you kind of have to just figure it out, this one guides you. And it's the first pin I ever noticed ever did that. Just a masterpiece. And the Sparky Multiball intro sequence. Oh, my goodness, where the lights go out. It's a direct homage to Monster Bash, and it's unskippable. I love that part. Because us tournament types, you know, they like to skip over everything. Like, no, no, I worked on this. You're going to watch it. Yeah. And all the lights go out, and it blinks, and then the inserts all light up from the bottom to the top of the play field. And he's like, do it! Do it! Even before it starts, the lights dim slightly to kind of bring your attention. Okay, what's different? And then the lights in front of Sparky just flash like crazy, like hit this. If ACDC was like a watershed moment when it came to Stern and the restart of Stern, Metallica was the turbocharger for that, right? Somebody threw some gas on the fire, and it was Metallica. And it restarted decent art in pinball. Yeah. Thank you for that. I'd like to thank Metallica, the band, because they're the ones that said, we want our art guy on the game. Otherwise, it would have been, like, Photoshop stuff like ACDC was probably. We don't have any sales numbers for Metallica, but they renewed that license over and over again. Like, people that I know that don't even, like, play pinball have all generally know Metallica. And that blows my mind. I got my premium years and years after the initial run. They were still making them.
    101:03
    So why don't you still have that game? I do. It's at my dad's house. Oh. Your dad plays Metallica premium? Of course he does. That's amazing. I never asked him what his favorite song was, but I like picking Battery. Battery? I like Battery. That's a good one. I'm a sneak and destroy kind of guy. And, yeah, they were smart. They used all the music that you would want them to use, i.e. all the earlier stuff. Smart. Yeah, yeah. They didn't use any of that crap from... Well, they did have Fuel. But I kind of like fuel, so I'll give it a pass on that.
    101:30
    The silence says non-acceptance there. Lyman, he's known to program quite slow, right? One of the critiques he's always had was that his codes kind of linger for a little while, and then they eventually start to really open up and generally become heralded as amazing. And I would argue there are reasons for that. But, like, the next game we're going to talk about, there was big reasons why it took so long. The Walking Dead. This is the licensed television zombie series. It's from September of 2014. It's a Stern-Sam system. There's no sales numbers on this, but I think it sold okay. This is, again, designed by John Borg. The art is uncredited. Dots by Mark Galvez and his team. The Sound and Music is also uncredited, which I find interesting. Software by Lyman F. Sheets and Lonnie Robb. So the theme on this, this is based on the AMC television series of the same name. It is a post-apocalyptic zombie horror series, which itself was based on a comic book by Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore, and Charlie Adler. At this time, it has 11 seasons, 161 episodes. It also has a bunch of spinoff series, online web shorts, video games, and was quite the cultural phenomenon in 2010-2011.
    103:05
    I haven't seen it since season four. So I'm quite shocked that there are 11 seasons now. I assume all the main characters are dead. Are you a fan of the series? I've never seen it. You've never seen it. That is not surprising. It is a spike system. No, it's not. It was originally going to be a spike system. That system was under development, and this started a dual programming path where Lyman would work on the spike system and Tanyo Kleiss was working on the SAM version. Well, the spike system did not come to exist, so it ended up being a SAM game. Not fast enough, anyway. Although they did at Pinball Expo one year, they had two Walking Deads next to each other, one with the Spike system and one with the SAM system, just to show you how much less wiring there was in the Spike version. Yeah, they're moving from that sort of older version of an NPU and a driver board and a buttload of cable under the pinball machine. Now we're going to use note boards, and we're actually going to have stereo. It's going to be great. It's going to be like 1993 all over again with stereo sound. Is there anything you want to share before we get into it? Well, when you talk about how long it took, there was a reason. Basically, when Lyman first started working on this game, he was under the impression that they had the full license. So there's like really early prototype software out there somewhere that has clips, sound clips and stuff from the show. Oh, interesting. And then he found out they didn't have all that. And he was not happy. Lyman did not post on social media too often, But he did post occasionally, and he would post interesting things and then just kind of disappear for a while. He was the tweet and delete. Yeah, he posted something about them not having the full license, and not directly, but kind of insinuating how he was kind of pissed, and then it was gone. But, you know, because I remember everything that everyone posted on the Internet. It's one of my abilities. I remember that specifically. It's like your superhero ability. So I would imagine one of the reasons it was so far behind is he just had to start over. Like, oh, there goes that idea I had. Okay, it looks like I have to start this again.
    105:19
    Yeah, so, I mean, this was very much a dream theme for Lyman. This was right up his alley. He would say on the Head to Head Pinball podcast specifically that he prefers the Pro, but, of course, you know, he does a little more work on the Premium and LE models. He really loved the theme. He loved working on it. and one of the best parts of this game, I think, is its really difficult and confusing layout. It's really different. It's not like your Metallica, wide-open, flowy play field. Hey, Pinheads. I just wanted to let you know that when I'm not making cheesy jokes to make Ron laugh, I'm David, the financial advice guy. At Dennis Financial, our advisors strive to provide a return on life for our clients, not just a return on investment. The value of advice is something that we take seriously. A valuable financial advisor doesn't just provide investment and insurance advice. That's because an advisor takes the time to gather intimate knowledge about their primary client, understand their personal preferences, recognize their fears and hopes, and gain knowledge about their client's errors before providing financial advice. If you're looking for a more human dimension to your financial advice, Dennis Financial Inc. has you covered with advisors licensed in most Canadian provinces. We're also doing secure online meetings to engage with clients who need advice but don't necessarily want to wear pants or leave their house. Contact me via email at david at dennisfinancial.net for a free rate quote and a copy of our value of advice e-book or check out dennisfinancial.ca. Insurance solutions provided by Dennis Financial Inc., Canadian residents only. Ron, do you want to paint a word picture on this layout for everybody? Pain.
    107:08
    Yeah, I remember this came out right around Expo, and I remember playing it the first time. I love the skill shot. It has a couple, because it had a couple of rollovers, which I hadn't seen those in like forever on a pinball machine. And you had to time them and get it in the right lane.
    107:26
    But then you start playing the thing and realize how frigging brutal it is. would go in the pop-upper area and just fly out and drain. It was like, man, this thing is just brutal.
    107:37
    And that was my first impressions of the game. Oh, and it had this big, fat well-walker dude. It's got this really cool bash toy, the barn. You bash the doors of the barn, and then the doors open up, right? Yeah, isn't there a dude's head in there or something? Yeah, there's like a zombie in there. And then in front of it is a magnet, and then there's, you mentioned it, There's the Well Walker, who's got this really weird, it's a really odd kind of toy. It's almost like a cover on a can, and then you hit this metal bit, and it jumps a little bit and closes. Yeah, I think it was some of their other bash toys, like Wolverine. They designed this differently, probably to be a little more durable, a little different. This game is cool, but it's not a Dave's putting it in his living room kind of game. I've got a bunch of little kids. Oh, yeah. It would not be good for little kids because some of the animations are extremely gory. But it's really violent. Yes, it's really violent. Because, you know, zombies kill people. Not that violence bothers me. Trust me. I'm all about violent video games and all that stuff. It's just, I don't know. It's just, it's really, it's like, I mean, I don't know. It's not a theme for J.J.P. I'll tell you that. This has a couple of recycled ideas, though, sadly. It has underneath the ramp on the Premium LE, it has like a bash toy. What is it called? The Bicycle Girl? Yep. Where it'll flip open kind of like those Stargate ramps, or there was the same ramp in Mustang.
    109:16
    And then you, you know, in this one there's something in the middle, though. It's not a shot through it. You bash a toy. A lot of people didn't really like that. I just don't know what's confused when Dave says Stargate ramp. He doesn't mean the game Stargate. He means the Gottlieb, like, ramps that flip up. This one on the Premium LE also has a crossbow shot where you can load left ramp and down in the apron. That's from Austin Powers. It's the same mech. It's like a gun almost. It kind of goes out. And then you can shoot kind of one of the shots if you have a good enough aim, which is pretty cool. and it also has a Teolas button in the middle of the game. It has an action button, yes. Yeah, where you hit the button and you can use, in the Premium LE, it has walker bombs. Yes, and as Lyman said, he preferred the Pro. Most people probably do prefer the Pro, and they'd almost like a hybrid of a Pro with an action button because the one feature of the Premium that you want is the walker bombs. The code was a mess. You had mentioned that they thought they had the license. They didn't. They were behind in schedule. They thought they had a full license, but they didn't have everything. Right. So Lyman was a little upset, allegedly, about that and a few other things. When the game was originally released, it was a bit of a mess. Lyman says, while we were working on the game, we didn't have a super lot of time to work on it. We had to kind of go in a different direction after the game was released, is my comment. For me, it's my life into it. I don't want to let people down. I want to be proud of the things I do. I kept working on it. Unfortunately, I got myself into a situation that I'd rather not be in again. In the end, I'll just look at the result. I will say that what happened, happened. I was happy I was able to finish up the game. As far as rules, strategy, and scoring, I think it's probably one of the best games I made at CERN. Yeah, so there you go again. There's Lyman basically saying, like, things didn't go the way I wanted it to, but I sort of rolled with it, and I'm happy with what came out in the end. I would say he did come out with probably his best game at Stern.
    111:21
    I haven't got anywhere on this game any time I've ever played it. I'm way too bad a player to get anywhere in this game. But when I look at the rule structure, when I see people like yourself play it, I can really see, yeah, there's some real serious stuff here. The way he uses the drop targets on the left side to collect weapons or food or medical supplies, and the way that that ties into the game, that's something else. That's a pretty unique way to come. It has one of the best modes ever made, Horde. People have said that. Why is it so great? You've got to play it. It's the intensity. I've never played it. I'll never play it, Ron. I'll never get there. Horde is just what it says. The dead, I guess I should call them the walking dead, not zombies. You know that's what they are. The zombies are all coming towards you, and each of them is associated with a certain shot, and you have to hit that shot to kill them before they get to you. So the DMV, they're walking closer to the DMV. They keep coming and they keep coming and it's harder and harder and you have to hit more and more shots. And on the premium you have the button which is the walker bomb So you hit it and it just kill all the walkers at once It give you just like a rest Yeah, but they keep coming. Like, I don't know if you can actually win. You will get bit eventually, but it's like the mini-wizard mode of the game. This is really where the term in Lyman we trust came out. Oh, yeah, I remember back before he was hired by Stern, when Keith Elwin, he would occasionally, it wasn't streaming, he would put stuff up on his YouTube channel, like these huge games of various titles. But one of them was Walking Dead. And then one time I noticed on social media, he took a picture of like a new in box, like in the box, Walking Dead. And he just said, thank you, Lyman, on it. That was like his comment.
    113:19
    Like I wouldn't have got this game. It was Lyman made me get this game. Yeah. Yeah, and you could always put your trust in Lyman. Even though the game starts off a little rocky or there's a little, you know, the bones are there, but it's not quite done, you could trust in Lyman that he was going to get it done and it was going to end up being epic, especially in the sort of post-Metallica era of Lyman code. He was all in, and he was going to do a heck of a job. And at this point, Stern was well aware of this attitude that people had towards Lyman, and I think they decided to take advantage of this with their next title. So they created this thing. So you've got a cornerstone title, and what's that, Ron? That's the main titles they released during the year, the ones that are all three versions, Pro, Premium, LE. They're going to keep making them on an active basis. They're what keep the building together, right? You've got four titles a year. Keep it chugging along. Then they bring in something called a studio title. Basically, there's a company called Kapow, which is owned by Joe Kamikow. And they have done studio titles, meaning he gets a big license and they do the game. Games like Batman 66, Elvira House of Horrors, which I don't think was Kapow. That was Wiz. No, that was Wizband. Oh, yeah. I technically, yeah. Greg Ferris and Dennis Norman. Then you had Beatles, which was also Kapow. But these are games that generally have smaller runs, and they'll have just a premium and an uber-super-LE, and that's it. Yeah, it's made to be something really, really, really special. And really, really expensive. And it started out as really expensive. Nowadays, it's basically the price. And they just haven't repriced them to the point of where they should be, which is a fortune. So that's just a pain in my butt. I don't want to complain about pinflation at the moment. But Batman 66 for me is really a bit of a dream theme.
    115:31
    I'm significantly younger than you. Really, old chum? And significantly younger than most of the target demographic for that theme. But I watched Batman 66 almost every day in reruns when I came home from school. so it holds a really like nostalgic heart tugging spot so when i first joined the hobby and started sort of you know looking at more of those things and stuff batman 66 immediately was like oh my god they've batman 66 and and this is the game where i'm like man i wish i had a batman 66 it's the one i've wanted for a long time i've chased it for a while but i've just never been able to find one priced right or found one in my region.
    116:18
    And now I'm probably not going to afford one. So I have to move on. Well, you know what? Lyman thought about Batman 66. And by Batman 66, we should explain it's the Batman show from, what, 1966 to 68. That was on Adam West and Burt Ward. The show that killed the Munsters. And Lyman says, I grew up watching this show. if we're going to do this, I wanted to be involved. There's just so much material to go through. I know it was going to be on a pretty tight schedule. Once I saw all the people we have as part of the license and hear all the things we can do, I was like, oh, what did I sign myself up for? This was also a Lyman dream theme, and then he realized he was in for a lot of work.
    117:01
    Yeah, and at least one restart. So Batman, you had mentioned, is based on the licensed superhero TV series from, I believe it was CBS from 1966. This is released in September of 2016. It is a Stern Spike 2 game, the second Spike 2, third Spike 2 game. It's designed by George Gomez, art by Kevin O'Connor, who did the play field, and Christopher Franchi, who did the cabinet side art and the center characters around the play field. This has LCD animations by Chuck Ernst and his team. The first LCD game by Stern. The Sound and Music by Jerry Thompson, and Software by Lyman F. Sheets. Here is another tie-in. When I joined the hobby, I was watching the Deadflip stream,
    117:58
    I would say within the first couple of months. There was Lyman Sheets and Mike Vinacore with Jack Danger in the Stern factory in front of the wall of microwaves in the break room area. and they were playing Batman 66. This stream is linked in the show notes and you can check it out on YouTube. You can actually see me chatting in the chat if you want to go back in time and be creepy. I really had a good time watching this and you can see Lyman taking notes off in the background on a little sketch pad. Like he's playing and I can't see anything that's not doing it. Like, you know what I mean? Like he's just playing with Jack and Mike And then he just will write something down on his notepad, like he noticed something in the code. Like, it's crazy that he could do that. This game was designed by George Gomez. It's a reimagining of the previously mentioned Batman Dark Knight game. Yeah, so it was like, George Gomez just wasn't quite comfortable with maybe the way Black Knight turned out, or he wanted to do something a little bit better, or tweak it. So he reused, what, like the lower third, two-thirds of the playfield? Yeah, he reused the crane, and he decided the crane wasn't a complex enough mech, so he made the turntable, which is really complex. The idea kind of of the studio title at this time was that it can't just have one mech, right? Like most of the Stern Cornerstone titles would have one mech. Well, this needed to justify the increased price tag. Right. It needed to have, it was, you know, what, $1,500 more than a regular machine? So it needed a little bit extra pizazz, and that was basically two mechs, one of them being huge. Can you describe the turntable? God, it's this gigantic mech in the upper left, which it rotates and it's different. There's like one part of it locks balls, another part of it has like a television screen, another, it's just, it's insane. Another one has like a spinner, like it looks like a bat cave. It has a magnet in front of it. When it rotates in one direction, you can shoot through it, and it exits kind of on the left. But on the other shots, it doesn't exit on the left because it doesn't open up that shot when the turntable is in that direction. You know what Stern says about the action turntable? Action turntable mini playfield. A rotating mini playfield that presents the player with several alternating targets and shots. as the Villain Vision TV set. Wow, I love that. The Villain Vision TV set. Target brings the TV show and Batman's adversaries to life directly on the play field. Magnet feature linked to Villain Vision TV set. Did you know that Batman 66 Pinball takes players on a feature-packed adventure through the campy world of the Dynamic Duo? I love this game. It's got what's called the Gomez Clunk. I don't know what that means, but I guess it means it's clunk. It's hard to believe there could be the Gomez clunk when he designed Johnny Mnemonic, which is probably one of the best flowing games ever made. I would say it's a good mixture of a game that can flow and a game where you've got to stop for a second to do up a couple of good shots. You know what I mean? I think it is a good, if not perfect, mixture of those two things. Now, if I'm trying to remember, I think they had three versions of it. They had the premium, the Ellie, and then they had the super Ellie, which had the topper with the bat signal light on it and the Super LE, Adam West would say your name. There was a lot of controversy at the time around specifically the SLE model. George Gomez would say that they took the inspiration for the Super Limited Edition pinball version of the game from Ford. Stern is primarily a manufacturer. They manufacture things, right? It just happens to be that they make pinball machines. And in the world of manufacturing, everybody wants to be Ford. Everybody wants to be Chevrolet, right? Like it doesn't matter what you do, whatever you manufacture, you want to be one of them. So you're always looking at them as being like the big brother or the example shining up on the pedestal that you want to be. At the time, Ford, I think the year before, had released the new version of the Ford GT. The Ford GT, if you wanted to get in to buy this super fancy car, you had to submit a video as to why you were quote-unquote worthy. And Gomez would say, and I think he spoke about this on Head to Head podcast, they took the inspiration for the SLE video. You had to submit a video as to why you should get the SLE. They took that from Ford. So a lot of people gave them a lot of crap about this. Isn't that right? Oh, yeah. Because the Super LE was like $12,000, $15,000, something like that. Plus they wanted you to say why you should get one. Yeah, you couldn't just pay your money. And they were on a time crunch also because Adam West was in poor health. so they knew he wasn't going to be around that much longer and they needed to record him saying all these names. So that's another reason for the time crunch on a lot of the stuff with this game. So there's 250 LEs and there was only supposed to be 30 SLEs. Yeah. And the 30 came specifically from Stern's 30th anniversary dating back to Data East. Then all of a sudden that 30 went to 80 I guess the reason was It was a celebration of Stern Pinball's 30th anniversary And Batman's 50th anniversary I think it was 30 And then they made it 80 to try to say Well, it's Batman's 50th anniversary So we're going to add the 50 to the 30 To make it 80 It was something like that It was like we need a way to increase the amount that we made Because we could sell these for $12.50 That was the actual reason I'm sorry, the MSRP was actually $15,000. Yep. This sort of what was special about the SLE was that Adam West would say your name because you had to sort of register that you had purchased it. So you submitted your thing. Adam West would say that. You'd record your name and it would be put in. So the code for your game would be custom to your game. So Jerry Thompson on a podcast, I'm quite sure it was head-to-head. correct me if I'm wrong anybody silverballchronicles.gmail.com where Jerry Thompson actually spoke about working with Adam West on the voice call outs the day that they showed up at Expo earlier that day they were doing the name call outs so if you don't answer the bat phone which is one of the ways you start a mode eventually Adam West will say like Ron pick up the bat phone and that was like the big draw that you would pay the extra money for because Adam West would say your name. Jerry Thompson would say this. Of course, Adam West was always oddly in character, like the character of Adam West in Family Guy. And he turned over to Jerry when they were doing their signing at Pinball Expo, and he said, Jerry, we certainly had a great day with those call-outs today, didn't we? Jan, Michael, Chris, Mark. God, it was great. We had a great day. I could totally hear him saying that so this was also one of the games that Mike Vinacore first started on and Mike Vinacore has become a staple at Stern Pinball Lyman would actually lobby quite hard to get Mike Vinacore who was at Midway and Williams before that a job working at Stern and the first game that he worked on was Batman along with Lyman
    126:11
    Mike Vinegar would say that Batman will go down as one of my top career highlights. Lyman went to bat for me, and I owe my career to him. Yeah, Mike was at Jersey Jack, actually, before he got hired by Stern. Lyman says, I wanted to do the thing justice. The thing about doing a licensed game is most of the time you only get one shot. I wasn't really sure what was happening with the game. I found out a little later that the company was wanting to do a little more expensive games, the Super LEs, the LEs. They were a little more expensive than normal. Then it just became like this self-fulfilling prophecy. I have to really make this game like a big game and utilize all of the material that we're able to use. And so it's been some days a lot of fun and some days, you know, not so fun, I guess. And in the end, I really, you know, I get one shot at doing it. So I want to make sure that I do the best I can. There he is. He's loading the pressure on himself. He's really saying that he needs to do an amazing job of this, because not only do the fans want it, but now we're spending so much money on these machines, the quality of the code has to be there. I don't think it's fair for him to put that much pressure on himself, but he did. And that's why this code ended up being absolutely amazing. originally when they were there to do the launch it was a box of lights so I was there and just from what I could surmise and what I've heard around through the grapevine I guess it was behind velvet ropes it was like in a track mode but you couldn't play it then at the seminar Gomez was like we have the game here but Lyman won't let me let you play it and I don't think Lyman was happy about that comment almost like he's getting thrown under the bus for the fact that it's not ready. But, yeah, it was literally a box of lice. It just had a track mode, and that was it. Ryan C. from Head to Head Pinball Podcast famously canceled his LE order after seeing the game at Expo. Man, that sucks.
    128:21
    If I could have an LE in one of these, man. I don't need a desk LE. I'm not greedy. Just the LE. I'd be okay with that. The game is completely the same from each model. There is no difference. SLE has the extra call-out and the topper. The LE also came with the topper. I thought it was just the Super LE. No, the LE also came with the topper. That's why the LE is the way to go, because it's got that topper. Now, that brings me to a fellow named Christopher Franchi, who is, I would say, one of the best, but his career at Stern was significantly short-lived. He did some amazing art and will go down, I think, as probably one of the best when it comes to photorealistic style in pinball. He could do a bunch of different styles, but for some reason he was sort of pigeonholed into sort of people, and when you had to do people, this is kind of the go-to artist. They were, again, way behind when it came to art, and George Gomez was not pleased with the way the characters were coming together on the cabinet and back glass. So in a panic, he went for a search, and that search came up with Christopher Franchi. who actually was very well known sort of in the Batman community, if there is such a thing, because he did a lot of, like, vintage lunchboxes. He did a DVD cover. He did a bunch of, you know, toy surprise box things. And he was brought in really quickly at the end to sort of just do the characters and the cabinet as quick as he could. And boy, oh boy, he did a heck of a job. What do you think? Yeah, it looks fine. It looks like Batman. I think it's amazing, personally. I think it is so good. So good. The other thing about that game, from what I could surmise from interviews with Lyman and George Gomez, one of the other reasons it took so long, the code, is because it sounded like they went into a certain direction with it, and after a while they kind of felt it wasn't working, so they just dumped it all and started again. So they did like a full restart on the code, which put it further behind. That's a lot of pressure. But I want to say that was released in 2016, Batman 66, which is right as, you know, a year before I sort of started in the pinball hobby. The code was quote-unquote finished in probably around 2018. So it basically took two years. That's about right. to tighten up that code. And it's a masterpiece now, right? You've got villains, you've got, you know, which are like Catwoman and the Penguins, the Riddler, the Joker. It's too complicated for me. I get lost on what I'm supposed to do. I think it's what the minor villains. Then you've got minor villains, right? And when to pick them and all that stuff. Yeah. You can freeze timers if you capture a minor villain. You can replay characters if you capture another villain. If you capture so many minor villains, you get a mini wizard mode. If you capture all the villains, you get a wizard mode. Like, it's great. The nice thing is that the footage looks so good because it was all, I mean, it was all originally filmed in 35 millimeter, like a movie would be, even though it was a TV show. I think I said this on our Gomez episode, but like the TVs of the time could not reproduce how good it actually would look. But now with the LCD there, it looks great. The extra ball animation is awesome. They had all of the everything. They had everything you could possibly want with Batman, but they did not have the Batman film, the Batman 66 film from the, I believe it was the summer of 67. Oh, they couldn't. Between season one and two. They couldn't use shark repellent. They couldn't use the shark repellent, and they couldn't use where Batman has the bomb and he's running down the, like, pier, and he has to throw it away. I thought that was in the game. That's why that's done in the animation. I thought that was in the game. The other thing we forgot to mention. It's in the game, but it's done drawn. It's not the video. They also had the gadgets.
    132:33
    I think that's what the LE. I don't remember if it was the LE or Super, probably the Super LE. But everyone had their own gadget.
    132:41
    Yeah, so the LEs were named after episodes. And I think the SLEs were named after the gadgets. And everyone wanted the shark repellent one.
    132:50
    I just remember like, I'll pay extra for the shark repellent gadget. Yeah, how could you not? Now, Lyman's last game at Stern was Elvira's House of Horrors, and we'll talk about that in another episode, likely during our Nordman episode.
    133:07
    But we will touch on, I mean, that was one of the, again, another studio release, and they're playing off the Elvira name, but I would argue they play more off the Lyman name. Like, Lyman's on this game. Yeah, they could get a higher dollar for Lyman code than they could for Lyman. I mean, his influence was so great. People were just like, you know, I know Batman took two years, but it's awesome. I know any game he works on will eventually be awesome, so I'm buying it. I don't care. I'm buying it. Whatever it costs, I'm buying it. And I think Elvira has horrors. It's fantastic. One of the last games I actually played a lot of before the world ended. And, again, we'll talk about that in a deeper period. But it was in the winter of 2021, I think it was probably somewhere around February, where news broke that Lyman had left Stern in the fall of 2020. This was probably one of the greatest, most well-kept secrets ever. Because nobody knew that Lyman was gone for the last six months. Even people within Stern? Even people within Stern. Which you wonder, like, how is that possible? But from what I could surmise, where a lot of the programmers, a lot of support staff, or maybe work a lot with other people, with Lyman, it was Lyman. You know, he's working solo on his stuff. So if he's not working with anyone and he's just gone, how would you know he's gone? You know, they update the code digitally now, right, with a USB stick. I mean, he pretty much finished Elvira for the most part. Yeah, another game that took like two years, took like a year and a half. It was said, it would eventually come out, that he left Stern because of timelines and workloads, that Stern, of course, is a machine, right? You've got to feed the machine. Things have got to keep rolling. You've got to keep selling machines. You've got to keep on to the next one. And as we've seen throughout this podcast, Lyman does not like a whole lot of pressure. He doesn't like a whole lot of doing things all the time. He doesn't like to be told all the time what to do and to keep pushing. So eventually he left Stern. It was in the fall of 2021, Ron, when it leaked that Lyman was working with Josh Sharp of Raw Thrills in development of a new code for Cactus Canyon. Assuming Josh Sharp was his beta tester. It turns out that CGC was looking to sort of create like a downloadable content style of model where Lyman could kind of do his own thing at his own pace, develop his own updated code for Cactus Canyon. Because he's from Valley Williams, he would know a lot of the feeling of those Valley Williams coding days, and he was going to release his own Cactus Canyon. It's a Chicago gaming company. So they released a Cactus Canyon remake with some updated code. They finished. They had employed, I'm trying to remember. I think it was Joe Sjobert and someone else. It was during one of Chicago gaming company's CGC seminars where they said they had worked on the code. So it was one of those deals where it was, because Cactus Canyon, if you remember from our previous, Oh, the last one. Our last episode. The code was never really finished.
    136:28
    So when CGC was going to do this game, one of the things, we're going to finish the code. So they did do updates to it. Like it actually has a match animation now. And they changed a lot of the display effects and all that. Like just minor tweaking stuff. But then this bombshell came out that it's also going to have for a separate fee, which still has not been disseminated what the fee is going to be. you can buy the Lyman Sheets code for Cactus Canyon. And I guarantee you that helps sell units. You know what? I think a lot of people bought this game day one in the expectation and anticipation of Lyman's. 100%. Even people who weren't into it to begin with would be like, well, Lyman's doing a code rebrand? I'm in. I'm buying it. And that brings us to January of 2022, where we had heard that Lyman Sheets had passed away. Ron, I had first heard about Lyman's passing in a Facebook group chat. You and I are in a group chat with a few tournament players and the Loser Kids from the Loser Kid Pinball podcast.
    137:42
    Yeah, I first read it on Pinside. It just said, it just said Lyman Sheath RIP. I'm like, I don't know what to say. And in this time of sort of social media and all that stuff, like stuff travels really quickly and you've got to always force it, right? You always got to take a breath and say, okay, is this really real? Is this what's going on? Well, it turns out the reason these posts were there were because of a post made by Penny Epstein, who is Lyman's partner of many years. That simple post sent massive reverberations through the pinball industry. And we're not talking just as friends and family and loved ones. Like, immediately, everybody in our chat was devastated. Everybody on Pinside started posting how devastated they were. It was really difficult because Lyman was 55, which is a really young age to pass away.
    138:44
    I don't know Lyman. I've never met Lyman. But as I had mentioned, for some reason there are threads through the creation of Silver Ball Chronicles and my love for pinball that have been interconnected with Lyman, which is really unusual. in fact John Borg would actually post on Facebook as well that he can't even describe how he feels I'm going to miss coffee runs with my friend Lyman this photo with a photo that was posted I was pulled over and received a seatbelt ticket from Elk Grove Village after the officer gave me the ticket I set my phone up to take a selfie and I said, who's a dumbass with a $100 cup of coffee? And then we just laughed about it. Lyman said I should have told him I was John Borg and I probably would have gotten out of the ticket. Then a moment of silence and we both broke out laughing again. In 2008, when everyone was worried if pinball would survive,
    139:56
    we all worked very hard and came out with Iron Man, Avatar, Tron and Metallica and watched it all come back. Lyman's work will be enjoyed for generations to come. My heart goes out to Penny.
    140:14
    And that's just one example of everybody who worked with Lyman and the fun and humor they had with Lyman during that time. And that I mean it was the initial outpouring and then we We had slam-tilted an episode, and a few days later, like before his funeral, when the obituary was released, because when someone that young dies, you figure, like, well, what happened? You figure maybe he had a heart attack. That's usually the first thing that comes to your mind. But when his obituary came out, it took a different turn. It certainly did. His obituary says, after a courageous and long battle with mental illness, Lyman died by suicide on January 19th, 2022. His soul is finally at peace. Lyman was a pinball software engineer whose accomplishments spanned nearly three decades. Lyman brought a wealth of knowledge in software design as well as gameplay. His visions of gameplay and rules were the result of many years as an avid pinball tournament player and enthusiast, and many of his rule sets serve as the backbone for modern pinball rules design. He loved watching people play and enjoy his games.
    141:35
    Please assist us in bringing awareness to the silent epidemic. Donations can be made to the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
    141:44
    What immediately struck me when I read that, Ron, was that the writer of the obituary wanted everyone to know that Lyman died by suicide. They wanted to bring awareness to the silent epidemic and the struggle that Lyman had his entire life.
    142:10
    That is difficult, because usually, if somebody were to pass away by suicide, you keep that quiet. You don't tell anybody. And we all just live on thinking he had a heart attack. But they wanted to make sure that people knew.
    142:26
    And that's why we're bringing it up in Lyman's episode today. The pinball community really came together after hearing this. Even tighter, I would say, than his passing. the Pinball Industry Awards played a tribute video at the beginning of the second annual Pinball Industry Awards even podcasts began speaking in a second round of episodes including yourself, Bruce Nightingale Jeff Chiolis, Martin Robbins the Loser Kid Pinball Podcast they all came out with various ways of talking about their own struggles with mental health to use that as a way to honor Lyman. Isn't that right? That is correct. Yeah.
    143:18
    Actually, Lyman's funeral was streamed live, and many in the pinball community attended that funeral. Many people commented that they had never met Lyman. They never talked to Lyman. But yet Lyman left an impact on their life because he brings them joy on a daily basis. Yeah, that was very difficult watching that funeral stream.
    143:45
    Because even a lot of the people who spoke at the funeral, I either know or know of. Collectively, everybody had a lot of difficulty accepting what had happened. Martin Robbins from the Final Round Pinball podcast, he would say, I think I thought the same as a lot of people. I wish I could have done something. Ed Robertson on the Loser Kid Pinball Podcast says, Lyman and I spoke pretty regularly about his mental health. I tried to be a resource to Lyman. I spent an awful long time after Lyman committed suicide worried that I hadn't done enough to let him know how appreciated he was and how loved he was. I'm sure a lot of his friends are having those fears right now. It's been really hard to reconcile. I battled depression for many, many years. I've never been at that intense level of the struggle, but I've spoken to a therapist regularly for almost two decades. Yeah, Jeff Teolis on the Final Round Pinball Podcast would say, as I reflect on feeling down and depressed and thinking of when am I going to wake up and feel better, I told this person everything that I was going through. This person told me, why don't you write down all the good things that happened during your day? It could be anything. The beautiful sunshine, a great meal you had, however big or small. Write it down. If you focus on the positivity, it makes it a lot easier. Ron, specifically for me, I moved to Toronto in 2008, like I said, to do my financial licenses. And it was certainly not the best time to start in finance. I'll tell you that. I struggled a lot, specifically in the winter of 2008 and 2009, to the point that I would cry daily. and I wanted to come back to New Brunswick and be a kid again and not deal with anything that was reality. And I'll tell you, the more we talk about the stigma, we realize that everybody struggles with mental health. Some of us win and some of us don't. If you would like to share some of your comments on mental health,
    145:55
    how the pandemic that we've been enduring for the last two years has compounded that sickness and those mental health issues, talk to a friend, reach out to people and ask them how they're doing. If you think they're being, if they're struggling with mental health, do whatever you can. Anything you want to add, Rob? Well, if you listen to the episode 181 of the Slam Tilt podcast, you can hear my story. I'm not going to repeat it here. saying it once is enough. Just in closing, the next time you randomly meet somebody on the street or a restaurant employee, a retail clerk at Costco, the IT guy at work, a repair person that you just happen to call, that person may be suffering just like Lyman. And remember, they may be having a bad day and they might be on the edge. So just take some time to be kind to every person you meet. Because being kind that day and saying something and helping somebody who you may or may not know might make all the difference that day.
    147:05
    Thank you, Lyman. Goodbye. Congratulations on winning the world championship. How old are you to begin with? 26. Now, is this all you do or do you have a real life? No, I have a real life. I'm a software engineer. All right.
    147:22
    Lyman Sheets is the world champion for the professional amateur pinball association. He'll defend his crown next week in the international championship here in New York. Lyman, good morning. Good morning. How does one become a pinball champion, a pinball wizard? Lots of practice, dedication, a good level of concentration. This isn't a sport, right? Yeah, actually it is a sport. There is a select group of people who take it very seriously and consider it a sport. And then the thing that hooked me was I saw a couple guys when I was in college play 8-Ball Deluxe. And they won like 12 or 15 credits on it, just played it one time. And then they had to run off to class. So it's like, oh, okay. And then I played the game and probably played out on 12 or 15 credits. I don't know, about 10 minutes. Something like that. But in that process, I understood what the appeal was. I mean, at least, maybe not to them, but to me. And then how, you know, I got kind of hooked on football after that. Each one, each game that I've worked on has been a big part of my life, probably at least a year of my life. And there are relationships and experiences and all parts of my life in each one of those. And it's, I mean, I guess in the end it isn't just the game, but it's also a learning process. But yeah, each one of those games are something that I take away from several things. Good experiences with people, working with people, all the memories from working on games. And then even just coming here, watching people play and get enjoyment out of them, that's the biggest reward for all. My name is Fly Machines I'm a pinball well I mean I'm a software engineer but I've been working in pinball programming pinball machines wow for almost 30 years while working on this I get involved way more than I feel like he makes rules, nah it's about story and engaging the player at an emotional level. And that job becomes a job that I can do this job and I'm going to do this job well.