Episode 96 - Pinball Composer w/ Chris Granner

Wedgehead Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 21m·analyzed·Aug 18, 2025

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Analysis

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TL;DR

Pinball sound legend Chris Granner ranks greatest soundtracks and shares industry stories.

Summary

Chris Granner, legendary Williams pinball sound designer, presents his ranking of the greatest pinball soundtracks in history, discussing the technical constraints of the Yamaha sound chip era, the evolution of audio design from Pinbot through Funhouse, and sharing anecdotes including recording Arnold Schwarzenegger for Terminator 2 and collaborating with designer Pat Lawlor. The presentation emphasizes how pinball audio shaped game design philosophy and celebrates unlicensed games that allowed maximum creative freedom.

Key Claims

Marcel Gonzalez created pristine audio archives of System 11 pinball soundtracks by isolating Yamaha chip output from mechanical noise
high confidence · Direct credit given to Marcel for pioneering soundtrack documentation technique
Arnold Schwarzenegger initially refused to record voice lines for Terminator 2 pinball, saying he wouldn't do substitute voices
high confidence · Granner recounts detailed anecdote with specific dialogue and Roger Sharpe's intervention
Fred Young was selected as Terminator voice actor after responding to voiceover shop audition calls on a Saturday morning
high confidence · Granner describes receiving four Arnold impression calls between 9:00 AM and 9:15 AM
Addams Family soundtrack missed top five by one vote, placing at number six
high confidence · Granner explicitly states ranking in presentation
Pinbot was fundamentally important because it taught Williams that the job is 'to bring a machine to life'
high confidence · Granner describes Pinbot as 'the game that is his pilot's gift to us' and most important game Williams made
Twilight Zone was originally intended as first Data East game but hardware/software weren't ready
high confidence · Granner discusses Data East version with original MIDI studio recordings on DAT tape
Funhouse's Rudy head mechanism appeared on bill of materials at $35 but actually cost ~$100, a major cost overrun revealed only during sample run
high confidence · Detailed account of manufacturing compromise and Pat Lawlor's decision to upgrade despite controller protests
Fishtails is Granner's personal favorite game of all the soundtracks he composed
high confidence · Granner states 'that's my favorite game. I just love that game so much'

Notable Quotes

“This is the most important game that we've ever made. This game is his pilot's gift to us. This is the game where we learned that our job in making games is to bring a machine to life.”
Chris Granner @ mid-presentation — Philosophical statement about Pinbot's foundational importance to Williams game design philosophy
“Get the extra ball! My god! Fred, you nailed it! We all nailed it!”
Chris Granner @ Terminator 2 anecdote — Describes the moment Arnold Schwarzenegger's voice recording exceeded expectations
“Fuck you, asshole! I don't know how many people have a T3? A T2? Got a C2? You have to fuck you assholes, you know?”
Arnold Schwarzenegger @ post-recording — Arnold's off-character ad-lib, demonstrating his personality during recording session
“If we don't get him, we don't have the Terminator's voice in the game. Why are we doing this again?”
Steve Ritchie @ licensing crisis moment — Designer's reaction to Arnold's initial refusal to participate
“We have to like completely—we have to do it the other way. Have to make the other decision. We're gonna throw the kitchen sink at this thing. We're gonna make the coolest thing we can possibly make.”
Pat Lawlor @ Funhouse development — Design philosophy shift that led to Funhouse's revolutionary approach
“You're fucking kidding me? You're gonna make me spit? There was nothing he could do. They totally got him. They totally fucked him.”
Chris Granner @ Funhouse bill of materials discussion — Describes how manufacturing constraints forced controller budget override
“We're looking for something where if somebody goes, 'Ooh, bitchin,' that's what we're after. And if it's an if—like Funhouse, like Pinbot—that it's a machine coming to life, we do that.”
Chris Granner @ conclusion — Summarizes Williams' design philosophy and ongoing goal
“This was the first game that I did where there was nothing about what I was doing where I was faking it.”

Entities

Chris GrannerpersonMarcel GonzalezpersonNick WoodmontpersonBill PeraudpersonSteve RitchiepersonFred YoungpersonRoger SharpepersonLee Orloffperson

Signals

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community_signal: Pinball audio archival movement: Marcel Gonzalez created pristine soundtrack documentation technique using System 11 test board isolation method
high · Granner credits Marcel's 18-year effort to extract and preserve Yamaha audio from mechanical pinball noise at Pinball Expo
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design_philosophy: Designer-composer feedback cycle: Steve Ritchie and other designers initially rejected audio elements that later became signature parts of games (e.g., Whitewater Dr. Dude mode)
medium · Granner recounts designer skepticism that resolved when audio elements were heard in context during testing
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design_philosophy: Fundamental Williams design principle: successful games 'bring a machine to life' through integrated audio-mechanical choreography (Pinbot as foundational example)
high · Granner describes Pinbot as 'the most important game' that taught Williams this core design lesson
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design_philosophy: Williams design philosophy evolved from cost-cutting incrementalism (1988-89) to ambitious innovation after Funhouse's success; Pat Lawlor championed 'throw the kitchen sink' approach
high · Granner describes years of 'quicker and cheaper and less interesting' games before Funhouse reset strategy to maximize coolness factor
?
licensing_signal: Licensed games imposed significant creative and technical constraints; Terminator 2 required negotiations with talent representatives and limited flexibility in voice direction
high · Detailed anecdote about Arnold Schwarzenegger's refusal to do substitute voices and multi-day negotiation process through movie production company

Topics

Pinball audio design and Yamaha sound chip capabilitiesprimaryWilliams pinball game development history and design philosophyprimaryLicensed vs unlicensed game content and creative freedomsecondaryPat Lawlor's game design influence and collaborationsecondaryVoice acting and audio recording for pinball gamessecondaryManufacturing constraints vs creative ambition in pinball productionsecondaryPinball soundtrack preservation and archival techniquesmentionedArnold Schwarzenegger entertainment licensing negotiationsmentioned

Sentiment

positive(0.82)— Granner exhibits genuine affection and pride for past work, celebrates collaborators warmly, shares memorable anecdotes with humor and enthusiasm. Some nostalgic reflection on technical limitations of earlier era, but framed as positive constraints that drove creativity. Emotional moment when discussing Pinbot's designer importance suggests deep respect for the game's legacy.

Transcript

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a special a couple of special thanks on the music that you're going to hear tonight is stuff that is that you can go to CG music net and listen to in the archives if some of you probably have done that the guy who put the tracks together that are there is Marcel Gonzalez Marcel showed up at a pinball Expo in Chicago God I'm going to say 18 years ago a long time ago you know 18 maybe 15 16 years ago something like that with CDs of the music of the games that he loved and he had taken he done some really cool things he can do here tonight I hope he had taken the system 11 test board and plugged it crumbs into it and fired off sound calls it that thing and recorded the output you know pretty much as directly as you could sound effects music tracks speech call-outs you know basically anything anything that would make you know zero to FF you know came up came out of the speakers and recorded it all and brought it into a digital audio workstation and assembled a hearing of the audio that the game play and and he did it in such an art and artful way and add a couple of really interesting touches that I thought I really liked a lot and basically it's made it possible for me to kind of like remember and have you guys still kind of remember what this work is like and and I have to stress that that you can't go to a game and play it and hear what he's done this is actually like a way to hear the soundtrack in in a more pristine way than the game would ever allow you to do you know unless you have some kind of like massive you know 3,000 watt system that you were able to completely overpower this the mechanical sound of a pinball game as you're playing it then you might be able to get to the point where you where you're hearing something like what he's doing but you know the all the mechanical noises are gone and it's now it's just it's just that the the Yamaha chip that made the sounds and they've been a little one hand arm drummer that we have our eight channels of Yamaha and one arm of drums and that's what we have right so anyway that's Marcel and so I always have to Thank You Tamar Selma to write whenever I do one of these things um Nick Woodmont you're gonna see later you're gonna see pictures of of the games that I have I have a box full of promo pics from Williams Bally Midway days so it's like just like the game itself on a totally white background and I went into work the other day and I'm just gonna drop these things in and drop these slides in and somebody said you I don't like make those things transparent I'm like I'm a sound guy how do I do that and Nick Woodmont I'm happy to say it's a wonderful video artist at Zynga Chicago and he took all of my pictures and removed the white and gave me transparent background so thank you very much Nick so this is what we're gonna do I sort of sit in you know talk about this slide before how we how we got there we're gonna do a little bit of we had an honorable pre mentioned just a minute ago when we were doing the sound test there's a couple of games that um that you know people did vote for but that didn't really kind of like even get into the honorable mentions and make it into the top ten really but they were but they were good choices and they were cool games and dr. Jude is one of them and the particular clip that I played earlier there's a there's a there's a certain style of music that I got to sort of like embrace and really push in my career as a Williams pinball sound guy and that is air guitar tracks okay so that when I sit around going all that kind of crazy stuff I got to say okay I know I can't play that I know probably Eddie Van Halen can't play that but my Yamaha chip can play it and if I stand there at all and and it's gonna work it's the thing right so what you actually heard the doctor dude double jackpot clip that you heard earlier that's actually like to me that's the pinnacle that's the peak air guitar track ever and so for air guitar dr. dude was the ship and it was just that was that was the way it a better way so that that's kind of like a an honorable honorable pre mention right the other thing that you heard a minute ago came from pin Bock which you know I will talk about that later but um the track that you heard was not my track it was a track written by my colleague Bill peraud who was how I heard about the job Williams in the first place in 1986 and he was there he was working there he wrote the basic operating system that was the Yamaha operating system that played all of this stuff and he was also he was something of a composer and he wrote this really crazy track as a first pass tune for pin Bob when I first came out and and Ken Fidesz Nina and Joe Dillon the head of sales walked into his office and we were all kind of like in his office I had been on the job for maybe four months I had done the road Kings soundtrack and and I guess we were working on jobs too or something like that and Bill was gonna go do Pimlott you know and so he had written this track and it is a wild incredible track there's all kinds of just insane things going on in it pin boppers I was a real revolution a really huge thing for us which we'll talk about in a minute a little bit more but Dylan walked into his office and he goes I'm in space but I'm not in deep space this is Joe you know Joe was a crazy guy sales man and and everybody's like okay you know and Bill was like okay well think about that and everybody walked out of the office it goes in space the [ __ ] is deep space I don't know maybe something more kind of like throw me you know he goes you want to try something and so I you know you're gonna hear what I tried and then we kind of went that way but his tomb is the high school a tune so when you get your initials when you enter your initials something like you're listening to Bill paratus track it's an immortal track it's an awesome awesome track and Bill is an awesome guy he's a great great guy okay so those are mines sort of like you know pre mentions so what I've got going on here is I got um we're gonna do there's three honorable mentions that didn't make the top five but I still had to do I had to have them in this deck because I have a story to tell about okay so that's that's really why um and so what I've got here is I gotta let you know I think maybe you can see there's a little sound icon there and I think that when I hit this button you're gonna hear the track that I want you to hear and then it will hit another button and then you'll see the game but I'm gonna delay that between those two things so that you can sort of like have some sense and if you know the work you're gonna kind of know and I'll see the looks of recognition but do me a favor and don't shout just in case right and and we'll just you know we'll have we'll have a little fun with it okay that's okay so what's fingers-crossed everybody [Music] okay we just wait listen for [Music] this is the first tune that only I Road that Steve Ritchie didn't have a hand in right I'm starting here gives a seven stuff the other tracks of the tuner floor [Music] so III have to include that slide and I have to include that game for two main reasons one is that Steve is speaking next and I had to have a Steve game on the list you know and and and it turns out that that you know that my work that the places where I got to like sort of like hit my peak happens just randomly not to happen on Steve's games you know there are other games that I've done that I that I feel like I've you know that for whatever reason it worked out I you know I just I did I did better the game did better everything about it was like a more positive experience this was the best collaboration that I had with Steve it was a remarkable a marvelous marvelous game no regrets at all Steve's a great guitarist I love working with him I'll work with him again in a heartbeat you know and we've done you know since this game we've done several things but this had to be the main reason that this thing this slide is here is so I can tell you my [ __ ] you a story and I don't know whether people know the [ __ ] you [ __ ] story but I have I have audio recorded audio proof that Arnold Schwarzenegger said [ __ ] you [ __ ] directly to me and now I'm going to tell you that story so we're doing this game and we're still early days with with licensed games right so how do you do a license can you you know you get a bunch of images and you get a bunch of you maybe get some some some story and script and stuff like that and you know what the movie is going to be about so we're doing all this stuff and and and and we need somebody from the from the from the from the license to do some voiceover for us and they're like well what do you need us to do and we said well you need stuff like get the jackpot and get the extra ball and stuff like that and like wait so you want Arnold as the Terminator to say get the extra ball what does that even sound like and I go I don't know get the extra ball or something like that right and so it was like man I don't know that seems weird and somebody at Carol Kelly the movie production company goes could you find a sound a lot and have him record the script that you have in mind or so quite part of the script that you've had and we're like ok so I call up a couple of voiceover you know shops in Chicago and I go I'm looking for an Arnold you know I'm looking for a terminator and they go oh great no problem we'll have somebody you know this is like Friday at five o'clock I'm calling them up it and so you know on Saturday at nine o'clock they waited so mine was pretty nice my phone rings hello and and hello mr. Brianna this is Arnold and I could tell that it wasn't really Arnold because but that was more or less but it sounded like he's talking like this at all of this is Arnold this is the Terminator so I'm like really great well it's a get the extra ball and they you went get the extra ball Wow okay well okay well cool um you know here saying I had a couple of other lines they would say a couple of other lines and you know it's okay thanks well thanks I you know taking it taking their names making a little note hanging up ringing rings again hello hello mister grandma its Arnold and so between 9:00 and 3:00 between 9:00 and 9:15 in the morning that morning I got four phone calls two of them I had on call waiting at one point and I had two guys going just a minute I got honorable on the other line hello mr. granite okay get the extra ball get the extra ball so this is going on and it's so weird and finally I picked a guy the guy that we picked was Fred Young and that was the first thing that he that Fred Young ever did for us and he then you know the rest for him his history he did you know game after game after game for stern you know he did you know all through the 90s he was doing tons and tons of work for them unbelievable man of a thousand voices super cool guy and he's going to get the extra ball well ice is that great you know because he like cracked himself up all this time this best thing about Fred so so we're like okay so Fred come into the studio and record this thing you know we had you know really haven't you've died just 10 or 12 lines or something like that and so he records the script and you know and I'm listening and get the extra ball get the extra balls like god there's something about that that just like I know they're gonna hate this they're just gonna you know the movie people are gonna hate this Arnold is gonna hate this and we're like okay well you know here so yeah this is this is what we're talking about this is what we have in mind you know so we send it off two days later we get back there bad news guys not only is all I'm not gonna do it you can't you can't hire a satellite to do it and we're sitting in Roger Sharpe office and Steve goes if we don't get him we don't have the terminators voice in the game why are we doing this again that was pretty much his reaction and I'm like yeah I'm kind of with him you know it's like I'm not sure what to do at that point you know or you know how I'm behind my back can I tie two hands you know so Roger goes like you know let me let me you know give me the weekend give me something to work on so we come back the next year on Monday or whatever in Rogers you like okay you know what's his name Casals got Arnold out to his ranch and talked him down off the cliff and basically he's got Arnold's consent to do this thing is gonna do it but we're gonna do it in his trailer in between sessions because the movie was being shot right at that time you know so we're gonna do it in his trailer in between sessions I'm like great I'm going to the setting oh no no we're gonna have a real a real sound guy you know do it and the guy who did it was Lee Orloff he was the sound director for the film and you know like there was like $30,000 worth of microphones and you know what this incredibly fancy setup that they did put up together to do this second and think and they delivered to me add a tape with my script right with our script and so we've got the staff tape and we're coming down we pop it into the studio and the whole group teams in the studio we're listening this thing and it sounds perfect everything's great it's like oh my god this great and we get to get the extra vowel and he goes get the extra ball like my god Fred you nailed it we all nailed it it all sounded exactly like it was gonna snap and we just didn't know that that was what Arnold was gonna sound like well it turns out that it's really easy to do a Terminator voice get the extra ball that's really is exactly what it is you guys could all do it yourselves it would have been fine anyway so he goes through and he reads the whole script and Lee Orloff is amazing he's going away there was a truck I'm like it was and I rolled it back and turn it way up it was a truck I've never great Thank You Lee gets through the whole script everything's great beautiful okay Lee goes so anything else in Orono goes yeah and he drops out of character completely he goes [ __ ] you ass we don't yes and I don't know how many people have a t3 a t2 got a c2 you have to [ __ ] you [ __ ] wrongs you Jones oh my god see me afterwards you're like the first guy that I've met that doesn't know I figured that everybody add that it's a really cool thing anyway so that's my [ __ ] you guys I'm sorry hello just just had you know yeah I have to tell that story it's a good story um okay so that was the that was that was an oral luncheon number one this one isn't going to surprising again I don't think other than that it's only on [Music] I played that version of that theme because it was only at that moment where we finally got to the point where and not to take anything away from the the dozens of other magic moments in that soundtrack wonderful wonderful soundtrack for Alice family that was the place where we sort of broke through and somebody said oh we should do something that's sort of like Caribbean you know wouldn't that be fun you know and it's like oh we could totally do that it took me like an hour to put that together there was like no time at all and everybody's like oh perfect and it was that at that moment that we all started to really like fall in love before that it was just it was kind of weird and there was all these modes and it's like you know there was so much going on the outers family is certainly at the time was my best soundtrack and I never have nah I would never have not voted it in the top 5 myself it was never my favorite soundtrack and so the fact that it didn't make the top I'd fear was not something that I was going to put my finger on the scale about but so it didn't this was actually number six so missed by one vote to make the top 5 but it's a really remarkable as everybody knows it's a remarkable game and the soundtrack has an incredible depth to it and it we made significant strides in what the shape of a modern pinball soundtrack was by introducing this whole notion of modes and what a mode has to what how you have to introduce a mode in sound and how you have to then concluded so you have this welcome moment and you have a summary moment or something like that and and and and that structure and how much time each one of those parts of the presentation takes that's that that's my job that's that that was the job that I have this all and you know over and over again still to this day as the audio director for a social game company I'm still solving that problem every day that's that's the problem that I am I gosh to solve so so Anna's family super cool game didn't make the chocolate so this next one down a steep space [Laughter] um this this is the most important game that we've ever made this-this-this game is his pilot's gift to us this is the game where we learned that our job in making games is to bring a machine to life and that's what this game is about but its life there was a game that was that was that was made to be the thing that is in fact the most important thing about an interactive game and interacting the news and and that's what we do we bring a machine to life every game that you have on your pocket is a machine it's a little computer program and that said that and if you like it it's because somebody programmed it and somebody created art and sounds and everything for it and made choreography that made you go oh damn that thing is alive and that's what this game was it was the first one and that was Python that was his gift to us so we really missing him anyway thank you that's why I had to share that one I for some reason I always choked up when I tell that story I I haven't regretted my wife hee-hee the last time I saw him I want away from a conversation he was going in Chris one more thing one more thing and I'm like I couldn't take one more thing from him he was a really infuriating guy um but now he he moved the needle in our industry maybe more than anybody did so this one's for you man so that was those were my honorable mentions it's honors as much honor as I can bring thank you for your indulgence so this is number five [Music] the climate comfy [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so really you know the the story the stories one could tell about Twilight Zone obviously is that it was originally intended to be the first DCs game didn't work out because of the hardware and software weren't ready we had done a bunch of work on it already and I have written a bunch of the music including that piece for my synthesizer studio MIDI studio and you know recently thanks to Brandon Bailey who's here tonight we made a presentation a couple years ago in Chicago where I dug up that dad tape and we put it out there and now there are and I think you can get it you know what's the guy's name pin Sam the Nicholas pin sound was that what it's called you can get a pin sound board with those sounds in it so you have a pin sound for your Twilight you can hear the original stuff to be perfectly honest I you know I think of anything that comes out of my MIDI studio now I judge it on standards that are more appropriate for MIDI studios to be judged on and I've listened to the bass stuff which I made in 1992-1993 and when it really isn't you know it sounds kind of like Yamaha cheesy no not a synthesis of music written from slightly better synthesizers and so I don't it's it's not my favorite thing anymore for a long time this stuff all the stuff that we ended up having to rush to get together to to to get the game out on time after we had bailed and decided to just make it with the old hardware was stuff that I just like I kind of loathed I didn't like it at all it was like oh man this is not nearly as cool as it was but then after after pulling it together and pulling out all the tricks that we kind of knew about how to make a Yamaha sound track it turns out that it's it's part it's it's probably top two or three maybe of all the soundtracks that I've ever done it's a really it's an amazing body of work it's a really there's so much stuff there we whipped it out in no time at all I mean it was all written already all I kind of had to do was transcribe it but so it was it was it turns out that we did a really good job and and over the years it's really grown on me and now I actually like the I like the Yamaha version better than my than my early since version so now whenever I present The Twilight Zone I'm always presenting this version so yeah that's the thing okay so number four 49 games all lined up playing that song I was basically life didn't get any better than that for me this has always been my favorite my favorite that tune is my favorite tune that I've ever written for games and you know it was another Python game it was a silly thing that was originally gonna be called super Grand Prix that was the idea was gonna be a racing game and there's the the figure eight ramps we're gonna be like this big fancy racetrack thing you know and when somebody said oh we're gonna you know you know Python Kemeny said that's a terrible idea it's a [ __ ] idea you know we need to do something more interesting it's got to be more human it's gotta be all right so we get you know so what are we getting it's Santa Claus we get him Bobby contractility was way more human because we brought pin bot to life before so you know this is the same story and we keep on telling the same story anyway that was taxi and it was it was a magical game it was you know it's certainly marched big first big real breakout game and really proud to have worked on it's also kind of like you know it has a vague sort of reminiscence of little feet and stuff like that and at the time that was totally my favorite beyond it and and that's what you know kind of stuff that I like so this was this was the first game that I did where there was nothing about what I was doing where I was faking it and so so that's why it's important to me came out number four I would have probably put it number two so number three yeah [Music] [Applause] [Music] more air guitar this is drooling slide air guitars [Music] Dennis didn't like it [Music] he didn't like it and I have this thing that I do with designers should I go live with it early and almost without fail they'd forgotten that they didn't like a weakness for documents like I sort of got away Dennis he goes I don't like it in a week I don't like it take it out I'm like wow okay I can't remember even what it was like for one of the relief the first modes one of the first like single ball modes of the game I can't remember even which one it was it was like party / you know something personality not magnetic first wasn't that one it was the part what are the three characteristics was the heart there was the heart yeah so anyway so that was her doctor dude it reappears as as the heist as the energy or initials tune for white water white water was important though it would have made my list because of the main ten that main tune has nine stages for the midst nine stages of the river and we managed to get we've managed to do something that we that would be very hard to do now that you don't have a synthesizer making live music and that is start playing something and then play it again with adding a base and then add another since the men have a guitar and then have a second guitar you know and so we did that and it was easy to do with the synthesizer would have been very hard a very memory intensive to do if we'd have to track out each one of those things individually so that was important for that way too and it was really cool it's like sort of like my Bruce Hornsby period so everybody should have one of those for your composers you should have a boost horseman period okay there's nothing else to say keep on using I swear today to be I'm sorry by the time I get to the project [Music] [Applause] [Music] fishtails was was that what's the next game that I was gonna do that I didn't have to fake because it was like oh we're doing on bluegrass game you know we're doing a fishing and it's gonna be something country like common country boy from the western shore of the Michigan sea but whatever you know it's still you know I love bluegrass and and that was what that music was except when I got there it just seemed like you know we've gotten into that whole deep-sea fishing thing and it was like all we got to do something tropical so that was that whole thing but um it was like fishing really you sit on the bank under a tree with your pole hanging in the water and nothing happens for three hours that's fishing for me and and then I and then I walk into the marks office and I see on the on a you know like some little drawing of a play field or something like that this little circle indicating a light and underneath the light it said stretch truth when live I'm like oh it's not about fishing it's about lying now now we can do something with that right so fish Neil said of course you would not believe it was this big guy right right or it was not it was this big man I'm not kidding [ __ ] we had to cut the end of that one but that was that was our friend here doing that voice and Jorge Pedro had got to go it was this big it was right and I did I said something like I told you it was this big and so we did all of that stuff and that was that was that was what the game really was about of course so that was that was pretty fun fun game and is actually my favorite game that's my favorite game I just love that game so much those boat ramps oh it's just magic and so number one this was your pick for number one it would have made my top 5 but I didn't have it at number one [Music] Oh it's really starting to annoy me [Music] so there isn't really much to say about fun house it was that it was a game that came along at a moment where we really needed it we needed a home run and we got a home run the best story about fun house that you can tell is that is that the Rudy had was a probably what would you say a hundred dollar mechanism or something like that that appeared on the original bill of sale as a $35 mechanism okay and they get an even at with a $35 Rudy head which was never gonna work okay but they managed the whole six together with Bag Balm and duct tape or something like that even with that the Bill of Materials was already like $100 higher than then anybody had ever you know and so the whole conceit about fun house was we'd been making games quicker and cheaper and less interesting incrementally quicker and cheaper and less interesting for about three or four or five games in a row and our sales were doing nothing we were just doing nothing we were stuck in this quagmire of 1988-89 just the beginning of 1990 you know and even games like doctor dude which started to have some things on it they were still going on oh you got six weeks to make this game or like can't make a game you know that fast so all that stuff was going on and Pat came in and basically said we have to like completely we have to do it the other way have to make the other decision we're gonna throw the kitchen sink at this thing we're gonna make the coolest thing we can possibly make we're gonna make something crazy a crazy toy and and that's what we're gonna do and then they realized how much it was gonna cost to make that head and and everything else that they wanted to put in the game and they went let's do a cheap version so you put a cheap version on the original build materials that's what we all built and it wasn't until we got to the to the to the not just the sample run just you know took the 150 or whatever they were gonna make when they got to that line and they'd already committed they showed it at a show and everything you know it's like we were making this game we have people were taking orders everybody is super excited about the game and they got there they went this thing is it's gonna break there's no way we can make this thing without it's going to break and and Pat goes oh John didn't we have another design for that thing oh yeah yeah here's one we think this will work a little better in Manufacturing it was $65 more expensive and neon the cats was going you're [ __ ] kidding me you're gonna make me spit you know there was nothing he could do what they totally got him it totally [ __ ] him you know did they just say push that they slipped it through and and the rest is history so we have this crazy game and that's how that's that's how we kept on that's how we kept on going that's how we kept on finding some way to lure you guys all into still being interested and you know I mean to this day we're still kind of looking for that same magic we're looking for something that somebody going ooh bitchin right we're looking for something where if somebody goes boo bitchin that's what we're after and if it's an if like fun house like pimba that it's a machine coming to life we do that we actually bring it to life we've done we win and it's a win-win for everybody we all win so that's my list thank you thank you okay I'll ask the first question as I said it would now when we look at your list there's a great preponderance of unlicensed themes which of course gives you the total artistic freedom when you think about the way games are done nowadays with that LCD screen just begging for so much investment or else if you don't want to create all that video and audio you get a movie and it's given to you and if you have to work with a movie knowing that they're gonna just use stuff from the movie on the video part do you think that would make your job much less fun I less fun would not be the the measurement that would that would concerning it wouldn't it it might be marginally less fun but more it would we would spend our time doing a bunch of other stuff then making them writing music and and making sound we'd be spending time working with licensers and we'd be spending time working with licensed partners trying to get approvals for stuff and we would spend all this other time doing stuff that's you know when you have to do that you know that I that's actually like kind of like what I spend my time but I spent a lot of time doing that stuff now and those people are my partners and you know we're making something together and and it's a thing that works it's far far less interesting as games than what I think that we ought to do I mean pin Bob and fish tails and taxi and black night thank you are there are IP that's the IP that we made up and you know and when it's not derivative and it does have personality it did come to life and you know it's it's far far cooler and far more worthy than to make a you know to make a game about a movie or game about a TV show or a band or anything else it's a you know it's not wrong to do it and I get why Gary wants to do it every time it's not you know wouldn't be my first choice I'm not excited about it I you know I know how to do it and I think I do a do a pretty good job of it but it's not something that wakes me up at 3 o'clock in the morning going I know what I'm gonna do so yeah it's a fair question and the video monitor we you know anything that takes the player away from the flippers and the ball on the play field is bad for pinball that's all [Applause] during the 80s what hardware and software did you use when you develop or compose the music and then at what point would you hear it on the Yamaha so we used the the hardware and software that we used was the hardware and software that we created that was that was in the game so we had we had development environments that consisted of a of a pinball sound board with a Yamaha chip on it and a some kind of emulator circuitry that ran the the operating system version of the operating system that ran in the game right and we were able to fire sound calls out it just the way that a game would fire sound calls at it what it was actually firing sound halls at was a little sort of like like a little sort of like an interpreted program that interpreted the note list that we created the note lists were things that look a little bit like MIDI instructions but we typed him in by hand so I would say note C for six and it would be a note at middle C for six ticks or Beats or whatever right and so I just would sit there and just go no no no or copy paste copy paste subroutine you know I found all kinds of you know she-she shortcuts to creating maximum passages and things like that or you know you build in loops and things like that we created parameter manipulation that are like MIDI continuous controller type things we had a language for that that we could do either in a segment that was asynchronous or we could do it as as just a move and put it inside of a loop and make things move he once accused me of writing a million a million notes per nanosecond and but that's how like all the cool like like the little bubbly sound effects and fishtails and stuff like that all that stuff is just like thousands about dozens or hundreds of notes being fired off very quickly in a very sort of a specific just kind of bubbly shape and you know it worked it just worked yeah that's so that was is that that they answered yeah you mean to tell me whirlwind isn't on this list well I suppose I could have made a case that world would deserved an honorable mention because certainly there was a lot of cool music in world one there's no question about it probably the the second the second greatest air guitar to never yeah lived and lived lives literally with the second half of the main came up Gaelic the first ball well yeah there was that was also I mean there are many there you know thanks so much for calling that out I mean it would have been hard to UM it is hard to not credit all of the ones that we did because you know having sort of just achieved a certain level of sort of skill with it because it took a couple of games to sort of work out the kinks of how you wrote music for that chip once we sort of have the the basic tool 7-pin Bott was kind of the first one before we really add it down from there on we really just have fun and and any of the games you know at 14 or fire or big guns or cyclone oh my god you know I mean any number of those games would have certainly qualified Earthshaker a wonderful wonderful game diner police force yeah it was a great list and world whirlwind actually had a world when there was one of those games that I was talking about before work where cap blew everything up with funhouse world witness was game he did just before that and it was the last one sort of what the last and best of those compressed the schedule make it less complicated make it more straightforward do the simplest thing it was Bill foots intruder was the programmer and he already had the whole game programmed like 90 to 98 percent level on day one of the project because he had just so many templates he done so many games in so many games so we have this whole thing done and all I had to do was just like fire assets out and so I sat in my office and just broke like a banshee and cranked out massive amounts of stuff and you know I write like two or three things in a day and send it up in the first thing the next morning I would go up and they'd be in the game then just be in the game they would just appear because that was how bill worked so that game that development for that game went very very quickly almost so quickly that it's like not memorable I mean it was memorable as and you know Stratos I forget the storms coming at Boone I returned to your homes with really cool stuff but yeah so I'm sorry I didn't make it make it listen did you vote if I had known it was there I would have voted for Shay well so especially with how you seem to be so had sleep in but and bring the game to life I know you didn't do the sound for this game but the Machine right of invite the second game in that what are your feelings on how Dan for I didn't did for that game I loved his soundtrack for that game yeah just that's easily like one of my favorite pieces of anything on that sound shift I've ever cared yeah damn damn damn killer I actually started on that project and Python and I had the our biggest falling-out over that project and I had to back off okay and I ended up doing the funhouse at the sent you know they have to say you know more or less at the same time so you know no real regrets and also because of what Dan did for that game you know he really did a wonderful job yeah myself and I love to study the sound hardware that goes into the sagginess because I've been playing pinball since I was very small so I love to study that hardware in the music that goes into all that so especially to see all of that I'm glad you made it glad you came for sure yeah I'm glad to see you here too for that thank you thank you thank you very much um are we stopping yeah I guess it's time yeah yeah yeah cram it all in but yeah here it is right exactly thank you so much everybody thank you