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Keith Elwin - Pinball Expo 2018 - Pinball News

Pinball News (Pinball Expo 2018)·video·42m 29s·analyzed·Oct 23, 2018
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.030

TL;DR

Keith Elwin discusses his path from homebrew pinball builder to Stern designer through Iron Maiden.

Summary

Keith Elwin presents his journey from building a custom South Park pinball machine in 1998 to designing Iron Maiden for Stern Pinball. He walks through his design process, prototyping techniques, lessons learned, and philosophical approach to balancing competitive depth with casual accessibility. Key insights include his evolution from reverse-engineering existing hardware to intentionally designing playfields around themes and rule sets.

Key Claims

  • The original custom South Park game took approximately 2,000+ hours across two years to build and almost ended his friendship with his brother

    high confidence · Keith directly states 'basically, you know, not every single day, but there were probably a couple thousand hours into this' and mentions the project 'almost stopped being friends'

  • Iron Maiden was designed with the playfield first, then themed around existing mechanisms (rocket launcher/sarcophagus), whereas his second Stern game will be designed with theme in mind from the start

    high confidence · Keith explicitly states: 'This will be my first game where I'm designing the play field around the theme instead of the other way around' and 'I looked at the mechanisms...I think I can theme this layout to Iron Maiden'

  • George Gomez offered Keith multiple licenses to choose from, and recommended Iron Maiden after Keith initially expressed unfamiliarity with the band

    high confidence · Keith recounts: 'when George hired me he called and said, there's a couple licenses, what do you think?...he called me the next day and he's like, well how about Iron Maiden?'

  • John Benjamin (voice of Archer) was interested in doing a pinball machine based on the Archer game after seeing Keith's homebrew Archer machine

    high confidence · Keith explains: 'Jason Sudeikis...came up to me one day and he's like...John Benjamin, he wants to do a pinball...I showed him yours and he loves it'

  • Keith used plumbing solder and a torch to construct wire ramps, a method he learned works reliably for prototyping and has lasted thousands of plays

    high confidence · Keith states: 'We used plumbing solder, the silver solder, and a torch. Amazingly, that works great. Those ramps have been on there for thousands of plays'

  • Iron Maiden intentionally avoids an upper playfield; Keith states he is not a big fan of upper playfields and doesn't plan to include one in future games

    high confidence · Keith says: 'I'm not the biggest fan of them. I won't say I'll never do one, but I don't plan on it anytime soon'

  • The original Archer game used MPF (Mission Pinball Framework) with a video mode that was abandoned one month before a show when Keith's brother switched to Skeleton Game software

Notable Quotes

  • “The irony of this picture is that shirt I'm wearing was given to me by George Gomez.”

    Keith Elwin@ 1:39 — Shows early connection to George Gomez before joining Stern; establishes historical context for his career path

  • “It basically was a massive undertaking, and we almost stopped being friends.”

    Keith Elwin@ 1:15 — Illustrates the challenges and personal cost of homebrew pinball machine development

  • “Your game doesn't suck, which at Stern, that's considered a high compliment from him.”

    Keith Elwin@ 36:54 — Characterizes Steve Ritchie's personality and the culture at Stern Pinball

  • “This will be my first game where I'm designing the play field around the theme instead of the other way around.”

    Keith Elwin@ 30:25 — Articulates a major design philosophy shift for his second game; demonstrates iterative learning from Iron Maiden

  • “When you're first playing Iron Maiden, you can do really well just by shooting the bozo shots up the middle...But as the game progresses, those start going away and you have to start shooting the outer shots.”

    Keith Elwin@ 39:29 — Explains deliberate design strategy to balance casual accessibility with competitive depth

  • “I was like, hey, that would be cool if he shoots him. If you shoot him through the chest, it drops down into the bottom of the subway. But again, it didn't work as well as I would have liked.”

    Keith Elwin@ 20:29 — Demonstrates iterative design philosophy and willingness to abandon mechanically interesting but functionally poor ideas

Entities

Keith ElwinpersonGeorge GomezpersonIron MaidengameArchergameJohn BenjaminpersonJason SudeikispersonStern PinballcompanyZombie Yetiperson

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Iron Maiden includes intentional LCD screen tutorials and attract mode animations designed to demonstrate gameplay to casual bar players, not just cycle high scores

    high · Keith describes: 'showing you how to play. It's showing you scenes from the game...to the people's interest. It's like, oh, what mode is that from?'

  • ?

    community_signal: Stern Pinball culture includes competitive players (Zach, Tim, Lyman Sheets referenced context) involved in playtesting and rules refinement to avoid scoring exploits in released games

    high · Keith explains: 'I played the game to death when it was first playable and I invited Zach and Tim...I think there are enough guys at Stern now who play in the competitive circuit that I don't think you're going to see too many games released nowadays with glaring scoring bugs'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Keith's tournament playing experience primarily informs score balancing and competitive rule design; acknowledges that other aspects (upper playfields, action buttons) are software programmer's domain

    medium · Keith states: 'my tournament experience in designing a game, I'm not sure that really applies other than to score balancing the rules'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Keith's second Stern game will be designed with theme integrated from the start (designing playfield around theme and rule mechanics) rather than retrofitting theme to existing playfield, representing evolution in design approach

    high · 'This will be my first game where I'm designing the play field around the theme instead of the other way around...I had kind of a base rule set in mind when I designed the game, rather than design the play field and then try to think of a rule set later'

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.127

0:00
Thank you, thank you. So basically I've been talking about Iron Maiden a lot at shows and I think I've kind of reached the end of what I can talk about it since I only have one game under my belt. So I thought I'd mix it up and talk about how I got here, like the process, how I created it, my other tinkerings as you can see on the screen there. And we'll I have about 20 slides and feel free to ask questions before I move on. So this picture is from 1998, right before the Sega South Park came out. My friend and I had this great idea, hey, let's build a pinball machine. And we took, I know you guys are going to cringe, but we took a Popeye and pretty much destroyed it to make this. And this was a pinball fantasy show, 1997 or 98 or so. They had this custom game competition, so we thought it would be really cool to enter it and see what we did. But this ended up being a massive undertaking, and we almost stopped being friends. It basically was a, it ran Popeye software and, I'm trying, man, this has been so long. Popeye software with some minor tweaks. So I basically designed a play field around the Popeye rules. And the irony of this picture is that shirt I'm wearing was given to me by George Gomez. I'm there on the left.
1:54
As you can see, it's a very beautiful game. Zombie Yeti knocked it out of the park. So, yeah, basically we took a South Park calendar, chopped it up. We painted the play field white. It was a nice shiny white. We stuck these pictures on it and then we said, hey, we should clear coat this. And whatever clear coat we used just turned the thing kind of this greenish brown color and it was very ugly. As you can see the mini play field, that's what the lower play field used to look like, that white. So by the time we brought it to the show, it was quite a sight. As you can see, it has a mini playfield shot, kind of like a clear ramp, but no sides, kind of like transporter up to the top. There's a scoop for it to drop down to the upper left flipper.
2:47

high confidence · Keith explains: 'originally when we took the first show, we had MPF...My brother had a lot of problems with it and he switched to skeleton game literally a month before we took it to another show'

  • Iron Maiden includes LCD screen tutorials and attract mode animations designed to engage casual bar players and demonstrate gameplay without showing just high scores

    high confidence · Keith states: 'So we had the idea, okay, we'll put this tutorial in just to help people...showing you how to play. It's showing you scenes from the game'

  • “I have a lot of respect for the people who actually do this for a living now. It's just the routing. Certain wires can't go by. The optics can't go by. Solenoids.”

    Keith Elwin@ 18:26 — Shows appreciation for specialized trades and complexity of professional pinball wiring

  • “I think it's important to have a balance of both. Steve Ritchie type, you know, ball's always on the flipper. But I realize that the casual player, they're never going to look up the screen when you do that.”

    Keith Elwin@ 41:58 — Articulates tension between flow-heavy design (Steve Ritchie style) and need for stop-and-go to keep casual players engaged with screen content

    • Steve Ritchieperson
    Zach Sharpeperson
    Timperson
    Markperson
    South Parkgame
    Popeyegame
    Metallicagame
    Whitewatergame
    82 Arcadeorganization
    ?

    design_philosophy: Keith intentionally designs Iron Maiden with progressive difficulty curve: casual players succeed with center/middle shots early game, advanced players forced to execute outer shots later as modes disappear

    high · 'When you're first playing Iron Maiden, you can do really well just by shooting the bozo shots up the middle...But as the game progresses, those start going away and you have to start shooting the outer shots'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: George Gomez presented multiple license options to newly hired Keith Elwin; Iron Maiden was recommended as better fit than initial options discussed

    high · Keith recounts George calling back the next day with Iron Maiden recommendation after initial license discussion

  • ?

    community_signal: Keith Elwin describes iterative design approach where he builds physical mockups (cardboard, foam core, CAD prints) before committing to playfield designs, testing shot angles and feasibility by hand

    high · Keith discusses creating cardboard mockups with graph paper measurements, foam core prototypes, and acrylic ramp prototypes before finalizing designs

  • ?

    personnel_signal: George Gomez recruited Keith Elwin to Stern Pinball and offered him choice of licenses for his first commercial design

    high · Keith recounts being called by George with multiple license options before recommending Iron Maiden

  • ?

    announcement: Iron Maiden has an update planned with bug fixes, scoring tweaks, and additional light shows

    high · Keith states: 'We have another update planned, yes. A lot of bug fixes, a couple tweaks to scoring, and some more light shows'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Archer homebrew project switched from MPF (Mission Pinball Framework) to Skeleton Game software one month before a tournament show due to video mode compatibility issues

    high · Keith explains: 'originally when we took the first show, we had MPF...My brother had a lot of problems with it and he switched to skeleton game literally a month before we took it to another show'

    • It's got this locking mech on the left. There's a drop target. You shoot it in there. It was basically recycled Popeye parts.
    2:55
    That's how all that worked. On the motorized three bank, I actually bought that. That's pretty much the only custom or off the shelf part I bought was the motorized three bank. You can see the dumb idea I had for the mini play field. My friend's like, you're the only ones who can make that shot across there. I was like, no. Then when we took it to the show, nobody could shoot that shot. Lesson learned. More beautiful artwork. There's the three bank in a down position, feeds the upper play field. There is a huge orbit from the upper left flipper. The left ramp is from Popeye with a modified Twilight Zone wire ramp attached to it. The game shot okay. It was a wide body. I'm not a fan of wide bodies. I was never a huge fan of how it shot in the end. It was important lessons to learn. I pretty much routed all this by hand. We did everything by hand. There was no such thing as P-rock back then. Whatever rules
    4:18
    are in Popeye, that's what we had to use. It was a challenge. It was fun. I learned a lot and from this I wanted to try to do it again someday. And someday turned into about 15, 20 years, right around when the P-Rock system came out, I started talking to my brother, hey, do you want to make a pinball machine? And he's like, no, no. I don't know. I'm busy with work. I don't want to do it. It's tedious. Forget it. So I kept I pounded him and finally he retired. Then he was like, I'm bored. Remember that pinball idea you want to do? Let's do it. Great. What should we do? At the time, Archer was season two. It was at its height of funniness. I don't know if any of you still watch it. It's not nearly as funny anymore. We were both really into it. We knew all the jokes. The theme of this game just makes it so. We couldn't resist. So I started catting.
    5:25
    As you see, this is a first pass and pretty much the only pass. So I had this idea. I wanted a game. I wanted four flippers. I wanted just tons of loops, ramps, everything that flows together, car chase scenes. I tried just to make what I thought would be just the fastest, most
    5:55
    interesting shots you can make. We had all these grand ideas, like every loop, combo, ramp, orbit, it would just be some kind of car chase. It was just supposed to be a high energy game. Here's a shot map I made that basically took the CAD file and put it in
    6:16
    just to make it easier for when I had the Archer blog. And this is actually the second version of the CAD file. Some of the shots have changed. I originally had, if you can see here, the up-down ramp. There were actually drop targets under it. So the idea being you knock down the drop targets, the ramp lowers, and you shoot the shooting range target in the back. That proved to not work very well, so that got scrapped pretty quick. So it begins. This is the poor man's way of making the game just a visual of how the shots are going to look. So basically I printed out the CAD file and I measured out, you can see there's some graph paper all over the place and I measured out some of the shots, some of the widths just to see how I liked it. So it's basically the famous Dennis Norman foam core. This is my version which is mostly just cardboard. Some authentic Congo parts at the bottom here. So once I laid all this out, it's like, okay, this looks like this will work. This will There's the foam cardboard mockup of the drop target ID I had. There would be a hole in the middle where you could shoot the scoop in there or you could knock down one or three drop targets to lower the ramp. The problem was the ball just kept getting stuck. Even though it was routed out behind it, the ball just kept getting stuck. I can't do this. I get another angle. My homemade captive ball area there. I had a bunch of Stern stickers from some event. I used those for size references. The spinner is this big, so that's how I made my cardboard spinner. Targets are that big, same thing. The big target there for the very target. just a convenient way of knowing I have the sizes right. Again, we're the same. This is Whitewood number one, and as you can see, the only holes that were drilled were for the scoops and the slingshots. This was just basically, those I knew weren't moving, and everything else we did by hand. The flipper holes, we just put these in for reference. This white wood never really, it flipped, Helense didn't flip, but basically had flippers but nothing else. This is basically just what we call the geometry check now at Stern. You put together your first white wood, yeah these shots work, so that's all this was. Very bland looking, but it served its purpose. Yeah, the whole cardboard, it was just, because you can look at it in a CAD file and say,
    9:34
    okay, that looks fun, but then when you build it in 3D, it was like, oh, I can't make that shot. So the whole purpose of the, you know, the whole cardboard mockup is just to get a visual, you know, you can look at the angles. There's actually, I did throw a ball around it. Obviously not very hard, but it's just more for a reference. I think that's what a lot of designers do. You can print it out, it's flat, it's 2D, you can't really see anything. It's just visual more than anything. Here I originally stole a police force skill shot Here, I originally stole a police force skill shot target, a shooting range target. So the original idea on the left side, I was going to have a wine glass or a beer bottle, martini glass, whatever Archer drinks. It was going to be a big lumbering spinner type thing, kind of like a mini me on Austin Powers. After shooting it a few times I was like ugh because of the shot angle it just didn really work You get like two spins Okay that not satisfying So I got rid of that pretty quick
    10:45
    So here I am building up these ball guides are aluminum strips that I bought at the hardware store. So basically they come in, I think it was three foot lengths, and they're really easy to work with. So I recommend it. anyone's doing a homebrew, you just use these. They're cheap, you bend them by hand, and they can take the abuse of a pinball. I don't know if anyone's played Archer in the other room, but most of those ball guides are just aluminum fabricated ball guides. Here I started adding the right ramp. Never mind the Twilight Zone crossover ramp. That South Park. I originally had the ramp kind of doing a reverse button hook. After shooting it a few times, I just didn't like it. It's just slow, boring. I wanted something different, but as you can see, it was very useful. I only did this once on this one ramp. This is like a particle board. My brother and I just cut it out. We took some more of these aluminum ball guides and made that. You'll see in the later slides I found a better way. And this is kind of a placeholder for the rocket launcher mech. This is from a fun house. I took this, it's almost like a tube that's used on the shooter lane. So I used this to the rocket launcher would look. I would shoot this to see if it would actually knock the ball all the way out, not into the back panel. As you can see, one of the bigger differences
    12:40
    you'll notice on Iron Maiden and Archer is no drop targets. What this did was it gave me more room here for a very target and this mini loop. But it was the, I don't
    12:58
    know, I just didn't like the way it shot again so that's why when Iron Maiden came around I decided to put drop targets there and just kind of make these shots a little tighter but I think in the long run it was worth it. Now you see some really nice shots. I'm going
    13:17
    rough prototyping of the right ramp. Got some wire form coming down here and this ugly little plastic little drop off ramp here. So I found that I got a sheet of acrylic from Home Depot for like five bucks and this was a great way to prototype the ramp that's much better than the wood here. So basically, just cut this out. I think I used just a jigsaw with the
    13:48
    metal blade. Cut it out to the shape I want. Use the aluminum guides and a lot of duct tape. It works. So as you can see, I mean it looks terrible, but when you're just prototyping the shot and the ramp and how you want it to work, it's great. Here's the drop target mech I was trying to do for the center ramp. As you can see, there's a hole back here so you can shoot it. You can thread the targets into the scoop or you can knock down one of three targets to lower the ramp. Like I said, it just didn't work how I wanted it to. That got the axe really quick. Here is a picture where I put the very target. Now this was a challenge. I know a lot of you have played very targets on Safecracker and the ball, it just gets stuck. It just gets stuck. So I tried everything I could including putting a Newton block from Metallica on the very target which actually made it some great kinetics but it still, it would not stop the problem of just gravity grabbing the ball right here and not letting it go all the way down in the hole. So I struggled with the very target for some time, tried different angles, attached different things to it. Now it's still on Archer, but when it came time to do Maiden, it just, it was going to be more trouble than it was worth. So that's why this became just a stand-up target. It wasn't cost-cutting like everyone says. Now here we start out building the wire ramps. So we made these custom little wire
    15:33
    blocks with our measurements and we slid the rods in there. We used plumbing solder, the silver solder, and a torch. Amazingly, that works great. Those ramps have been on there for thousands of plays and they're still in one piece. Again, if you're doing any kind of prototype ramps, I talked to Mark with the Nightmare Before Christmas and he swears by it and I agree I've had not a single problem with these. You can see the left ramp is now in and I fully made that out of the deluxe hand sheet. Right here, just a long sleeve of plastic, two sides, some glue and some little ribs. And that lasted through the entire first show we took this to. It was a really smooth ramp. And I don't know, I kind of miss it. I kept it for the longest time. It was the first complete prototype ramp I built. You also see the way Archer feeds the rocket launcher here to the VUC and the up-down ramp here. Now I cheated a little bit. The play field is about an inch longer than a standard play field. So I cheated a little bit, which then took the ability away from me to load it the way I do in Maiden, which is behind the back panel through here. So in reality, when we went to Stern and we put the play field back in a standard pinball size cabinet, it actually gave us the ability, which I originally wanted to do, was have the ball feed back through here. Any questions so far? I know this is riveting. Now here's my least favorite part of the project, the wiring. So now that I work at Stern I
    17:55
    appreciate the cabling department more than ever because this was a pain. So I had two different wiring harnesses. I had one from a Congo and episode one. And I tried to use, I tried to wire it because this is using a P-rock with a Bally driver board. I was trying to keep with the wire colors that they used.
    18:16
    So I stripped all these wires out of here, matched them up, put them in bundles. And it was just a freaking nightmare. A lot of respect for the people who actually do this for a living now.
    18:29
    It's just the routing. Certain wires can't go by. The optics can't go by. Solenoids. There's all kinds of things you learn when doing this. So, like I said, never again. Again, more wiring mess. The prototype rocket launcher, aka Sarcopagus. So I ended up using the original could lock two balls, and it used optics. I don't have a picture of it, but underneath all this is is a PinBot visor motor. It lifts the mechanism up and down with an off-the-shelf hinge right here. This was just supposed to be a prototype. I never expected it to last very long, but it's still in there working now. I never really had to redesign it. It worked great. And I, that's my favorite mech, my first mech I designed.
    19:34
    Now this is the second Whitewood, where we had started to have some inserts. The right ramp now button hooks around to be a lot faster than the original was, which was very slow.
    19:50
    Now this is when we first dropped the play field. So my brother was actually developing the game, working on the software in just basically an empty cabinet. So this is the first night we dropped the play field, the second white wood into the cabinet. And he did all the display work, he wrote all the system stuff himself. So this was kind of an exciting night for us to actually play the game that we've been working on for like two years at this point. Again, just more iterations of the center ramp. Tried having it go through this guy here. I was like, hey, that would be cool if he shoots him. If you shoot him through the chest, it drops down into the bottom of the subway. But again, it didn't work as well as I would have liked. So I thought I would come up with something different. These are a little out of order, sorry. So for the inserts we used a, on the second white wood, it was just one sheet of plastic that we lasered to fit the routing here. And we, oh they're nice and diffused, this is great. And we went with it and then when we put clear coat on them the inserts turned clear and you could just see right through them. So that was a mistake but you know it works It a lot easier than trying to buy off inserts Again building more stuff The left ramp here, the old button hook, had a car attached to it. We're going to have it on a motor, so when he goes around this ramp, the car is spinning out. It was going to need some cool effect, but then there's just no room for it. So it ended up a car on a spring, as you can see. The prototype for the bullseye. So basically all this was some Lexan keyboard switches. So we got the bullseye, middle, and the two outer.
    21:55
    This worked very well. And it is still in the game. It hasn't broken yet, which I'm surprised. They had a lot of problems with the wires breaking off in the back. So when we did the bullseye target on Maiden, we ended up using spoon switches with the metal plates and they were much more robust. We tested them for a million cycles, balls smashing into them. We didn't have any problems. Definitely recommend that design over keyboard switches, which suck. Here we are getting some lights, so we're taking some beauty shots of those. These inserts basically just clear overlays like you would an overhead projector. I just printed those out and clear-coated them on there. As you see, they just say Mission 1, Mission... We didn't really have any direction with the rules at that point. It was more about building. Here it is, taking artwork from the show. I just downloaded, printed out on the transparency and then sprayed the back with a white, kind of a lacquer plastic paint. And this actually was very good light distribution through the art. Krieger's van, he had so many different vans, I had to pick one. I got some water slide decals in the van and decided just, I had nowhere in mind to put it so I just kind of stuck it over there in the corner and that's where it's been ever Ever since. Getting the arch ready for the first show we took it to. So we had to make up these, this is a poor Congo apron. For those wondering why I destroyed a Congo, I didn't, it was already destroyed. So it was basically a board and an empty cabinet and a couple of playful parts, including the arch.
    24:12
    So you guys mocking up the back glass for our first, actually our second show, sorry. OK, this is, I'm still frustrated by this. Um... So this was supposed to be... I used to work for a company that did... We would get custom, like, headers for video games, and they used the transparencies. And I thought, okay, I'll just use these guys. So I made this art print... and I sent it to them. And they... This is, like, literally a couple days before the show, They took them a week and then they came back to me and said, oh, we can't do that. It says Archer on it. So I ended up, they would brand the transparency for me minus everything in the middle here.
    25:09
    So what you're looking at here is not what's in the game right now. All this had to come out and be replaced by basically just a poster.
    25:18
    So if you're looking at the back glass and wondering, that looks strange, that's why. So instead of just the one nice transparency piece, it's a poster with the transparency. Again, we're taking it to the show. This is my brother sanding the Congo art off, giving it that lovely black cabinet look. The spinning car got replaced by Archer. There's one scene from one of the shows where they're shooting at each other, so I tried to duplicate that. And we got little Archer action figures and the bad guy. And they're both on springs, so if you shade the game violently enough, you'll see them move around a bit. Now the final stages, like I said, these are out of order, sorry. The ramp making, here we made a little keyhole for the ramp exits. This stuff, this is a copper brazen rod, which is very hard to work with. It's very pliable, very springy, and we had a lot of trouble getting this keyhole right. A lot of us got cut. This thing uncoiled on him and snapped on his finger. We were kind of in a bad mood by the time we got these ramps done, but they work and they're still together. Here we are with all the bends. As you can Here we are with all the bends, as you can see, the silver solder, plumbing solder.
    26:53
    Here we are test fitting the ramp. It works. Then we painted it black to make it a little less ugly.
    27:01
    And there it is in place. And this was the last time I have worked on this game. This is the night before we took it to Pinnagogo. And right after Pentago I got contacted by George and said, hey, I want to see this game. So that's kind of the state has been in since. Someday I would like to go finish it. We had a third Whitewood planned. Someday I would like to revisit that, but now that I'm busy doing this for actual work, who knows. And that is it. So any questions? Iron Maiden related or otherwise? It took about two years. We, for him it was kind of a weekend project. He'd work on it a weekend, sometimes late at night. For me, I usually, it was very relaxing for me to come home after work and work on it for, you know, an hour or two. So, basically, you know, Not every single day, but there were probably a couple thousand hours into this, yes. And that was just on my end.
    28:25
    Yeah, so Jason Sudeikis, he's a friend of mine, and we would hang out at 82 Arcade in L.A. He came up to me one day and he's like, it's John Benjamin, he wants to do a pinball, I showed him yours and he loves it. If this goes into production he wants to do The Voice. I was like, no, we're not doing it as Archer. He's like, ugh. So yeah, it's John Benjamin's side. I don't know about anybody else on the show, but he definitely saw it and I thought that was awesome.
    29:03
    So the question is... Yeah when George hired me he called and said, there's a couple licenses, what do you think? And then I told him what I thought and then he called me the next day and he's like, well how about Iron Maiden? And honestly, I hadn't listened to the band that much. And I was like, okay, I'll think about it. And then he called me back. We got Jeremy on art. And I was like, okay. So I said, yeah, I'll do it. So I kind of looked at the mechanisms. I was like, I think I can theme this layout to Iron Maiden. And I think it worked out well. I mean, the sarcophagus was perfect for the rocket launcher. The only thing that, honestly, in my opinion, that maybe stands out a little awkwardly is maybe the bull's eye target, but it looks fine. I was happy the way it came out. What lessons do you take from your approach to your second game design? So this will be my first game where I'm designing the play field around the theme instead of the other way around. So I'm really excited for my second game. It's pretty much in a can design-wise. Right now I'm working on the rules. We just had a meeting and found out what assets we're getting. So I'm really excited for my second game. It's going to be fun to, I don't know if this has been done before, but basically the rule set, I had kind of a base rule set in mind when I designed the game, rather than design the play field and then try to think of a rule set later. So the lessons I learned, it wasn't really a lesson, but it's just going to be, like I said, I'm really excited to be able to, Say, like an archer, how does that fit in? How does that relate to Iron Maiden? I would
    31:21
    stay up late at night racking my brain about that. Now I don't have to worry about that. I'll think of a rule and now I'll think of a cool device to go with it. It's not really a lesson but just more. I been using so the question is CAD software I been using Illustrator for years I used to do websites I done flyers stuff like that So the original Yeah the original was done in Illustrator I had all the Illustrator files when George hired me. He said, well, we're going to have to get you used in our software, it was pretty easy transition. So pretty much any CAD file in any vector program, it was just basically learning the keyword commands, which was the tough part.
    32:30
    Anything else? I think so. This will be an experiment to find out. I mean, I can relate to the software guys when they have a play field handed to them and the designer says, okay, do something fun with this. So I thought, okay, this will be a nice way to find out, hey, if I actually design the play field around some important elements in mind, hopefully the whole package will be more cohesive and get done quicker. We have another update planned, yes. A lot of bug fixes, a couple tweaks to scoring, and some more light shows.
    33:44
    So my tournament experience in designing a game, I'm not sure that really applies other than to score balancing the rules. So I played the game to death when it was first playable
    33:57
    and I invited Zach and Tim. Hey, what do you guys think? Is this too much? I think there are enough guys at Stern now who play in the competitive circuit that I don't think you're going to see too many games released nowadays with glaring scoring bugs, exploits. So exciting times now. Absolutely.
    34:32
    That might not be in my control. Yeah, I wasn't, you know, Archer wasn't designed with an action button, so Iron Maiden didn't have one, but as a start button on location, they're great.
    34:50
    So it's all up to what the programmer does with it. Yeah. I can't help that. How do I feel about upper and lower play fields? I'm not the biggest fan. I think, if you're going to ask me, my all-time favorite upper play field is going to be Whitewater because the ball just goes in there and it goes right back out. Nice flow. Other than that, I'm not the biggest fan of them. I won't say I'll never do one, but I don't plan on it anytime soon.
    35:36
    Yeah, so originally when we took the first show, we had MPF and the game had a video mode, the Krieger YYZ video mode. My brother had a lot of problems with it and he switched to skeleton game literally a month before we took it to another show. So he ported all that stuff over. He didn't have time to get the video mode ported over, which is a shame because it's great. So yeah, the skeleton game is running right now. Any other questions? The next presentation is Steve Richard. Say anything to prepare us for that. Bigger, more. So Steve's office is right next to mine. And so, as you know, he's a little hard to hearing. So when he wants to listen to his music, I can hear it. That's what I'm going to say for Steve. But Steve's a great guy. One of my first days in there, he took me in and he's like, hey, any questions? Let me know. I'll help you. Your game's great. That's the first thing he said to me when I started there. Your game doesn't suck, which at Stern, that's considered a high compliment from him.
    37:03
    Any other questions? Yes. I was about seven or eight years old. So I grew up playing like right when solid states were taken off. I used to play Frontier, Black Knight, Firepower.
    37:45
    If there's a free play on an EM, I would play it. But if not, I mostly stuck to the solid state games, Flash Gordon, Skateball. There weren't really that many elements in Archer. There was one thing I did take, which was from Solar Fire, where the letters are scrolling and you hit the target and you spell things. When you get to the second level of Mummy Multi-Ball, I copied that. The mummy letters are scrolling and you have to actually spell it. If you hit one that's already flashing, you don't get the letter. That's an element I definitely stole from an old Solid State game. Other than that, not too much. I'm a huge fan of spinners, and that comes from all the spinner games I played in the day. So every game you'll see from me will definitely have at least one spinner. So the question is basically pinball collecting versus public bar people. Yeah, I think this license, it really divides people. Oh, I hate their music. People say, oh, I love their music. So yeah, I get both. So I knew this was going to be a little bit of a challenge. So what I tried to do is just make a game that had a lot of depth but approachable for a novice player. So when you're first playing Iron Maiden, you can do really well just by shooting the bozo shots up the middle. You get your mummy multi-ball, you get the ready letters, you start the modes there. But as the game progresses, those start going away and you have to start shooting the outer shots. So by designing the game that way, I was hoping that the casual player could at least feel like they got their money's worth and would keep playing it rather than this music sucks, I don't like this game, I'm playing something else. So. . That was a plan from the get-go because we have these new LCD screens. So the question is about the tutorials that are in Iron Maiden. We have these LCD screens and when the game is just sitting there in attract mode, so you go to a bar and you see Buck Hunter sitting there. Is it just, you know, it's not just going through high scores, it's actually showing you how to play. It's showing you scenes from the game. So we had the idea, okay, we'll put this tutorial in just to help people. And also, if you notice Iron Maiden sitting in attract mode, it's going through like different screens of the game. That's to the people's interest. It's like, oh, what mode is that from? Or what's that from? It's kind of like you see in a video game, a track mode. So that was all that intention. Just give it more luster when it's sitting in a bar rather than just going through scores. Can you tell me what it was like working with sound engineer Jerry Tossett on your latest game? No, because he was never in. I never saw him. Hey, Jerry.
    41:11
    Anything else? Hopefully Expo next year. All right, looks like I'm getting kicked out of here for these other Stern guys, so. One more. In terms of gameplay, maybe more a fan of that flow, being able to stop and go, or being that clear style?
    41:46
    Kind of a mix of flow and stop and go. I think it's important to stop the ball sometimes. If you were to ask me personally what I would love, it would just, yeah, flow, flow, flow all day, Steve Ritchie type, you know, ball's always on the flipper. But I realize that the casual player, they're never going to look up the screen when you do that. So I think it's important to have a balance of both. All right. Thank you.