thanks for tuning in to the loser kid pinball podcast we are on episode 116 i am josh roop with me my co-captain as always scott larson and scott did you see on facebook that zach many is promoting a like share and win post if you take a picture or something you've bought from him and you put it in his comments even if you haven't bought something from him he's giving away free stuff right now and who doesn't want free pinball stuff right yeah no i absolutely i'm gonna take i i shared it because even though we're we're sponsored by him i still want to win and there would be no conflict of interest whatsoever definitely i'm going to take a picture of my foo fighters because that's what i got in the last week or so but yeah check him out flipping out pinball with uh zach and nicole many awesome awesome company we love dealing with them So Scott, we have some awesome guests on today. Will you please tell us who is joining us today? Well, first off, I would like to say part of my pinball memorabilia display, I'm going to pull out two of my favorite things that I have. And the first one is my cassette that is Total Nuclear Annihilation. And the best part about it is when I packed it to come home after Scott gave it to me, it got crunched a little bit. And so it has the crack in it, which is that is anybody who grew up in the 80s. That's every single one of your cassettes. And I also have this one, too. So I do love that this has the retro feel. And our guests definitely rule the 80s vibe. This is Scott Denisey, who in his day job, he works for Pinball Life. And in his Batman nightlife, he actually designs games. And along with him, we have Michael Ocean, who has done a lot of coding for games, especially these homebrew type games and these other games. That it's basically anything that's not Stern and Jersey Jack, like the high volume people. This is our area here. and so we are super excited because they are doing a reboot well not a reboot they're doing a soft relaunch of a game that we have heard about but now it is time to push it to the front we are talking about final resistance with scott and michael anyway clap clap yay ready to put a applause in there for you yeah yeah yeah all right hey thank you guys so much for coming on so first thing we are going to talk about final resistance a little later but i still want to get the background a little bit let's start a little bit with a recap from scott because people are familiar with what you've done you you not only do music on the side but you also did total nuclear annihilation you did rick and morty and now this is your third iteration so tell me about like working at pinball life and then saying hey i just want to build my own game like oh yeah that seems like where it started right yeah so it's so pinball life is kind of separate than all this stuff so i go to my uh nine to five right okay right and it's just you You know, it's just in the same genre of what I like to do outside of work, which is crazy. So, you know, I just, you know, in 2015 or something like that, when I first started doing like when I first started building that homebrew, I had already been part of that homebrew community and this homebrew family that we had for many years at that point. Uh, and you know, there's specific people in our little homebrew family. They're like, Scott, just build a whole game, like do the whole thing. Like you can do it. Like all of us are doing it. Like, look at this, let's just do it. And, um, it was at that point and I'm like, you know, I could probably do this in my spare time. Let's see, like when I get home. So, uh, you know, I just started attempting, I just did it. I just set myself a deadline for a year and said it has to be playable. like even in its basic state a game playable at expo in one year from right now and uh that's uh that happened and uh there's uh if it wasn't for that homebrew community honestly i wouldn't have wouldn't have made that uh one year mark so if at all i might have given up who knows but uh yeah so that's that's kind of where it started i've done a ton of different stuff then leading off of that and just kept kept with it designed a couple more games and now i focus a lot uh a majority of my time is now focused on audio and uh just sound design which you actually got to do for weird al right i did yep so i got to take weird that was cool actually because i i got to take the uh the audio that we already had and from all of his different albums from all over the years right every single one of these things is mastered differently uh just because technology has excelled uh well he started in like the late 70s yeah i mean we had the oldest songs i mean michael what was the oldest song that we had in weird l i don't know which one that is i i'd have to go back and look through my balona yeah my balona yeah so i mean i had to go through all these and just remaster all of these songs and then um so they're all equal in in how they sound loudness wise and equalizer wise and it's just you know so that was really fun to do actually going through and remastering something that someone had mastered that actually went to school for that kind of thing because I did not go to school for mastering audio so that was great and then doing all the sound effects for it was a lot of fun and uh coming up with everything from scratch on it was just really really uh really rewarding scott's being super modest like about what it's not easy i mean you know that game is nuts right you've got a we've got so many different songs and so many different environments and we just kept saying scott can you make a sound effect that totally works in when it's played on top of this one song but it could also be played on top of a different song and the mood might be completely different you got this right and scott would be like yeah yeah no problem i've got this And then he did have it, and it was awesome. Well, that was when I learned that you have to make sound effects in key. So sound effects, you've got to kind of know where they're going to play, because if they're not in the right key with the background music playing, it could sound really terrible. Have you considered using, like, the Batman things where it's like pop, bow, zing, and you can just put something up on the screen? Yeah, you can just put it over everything and it doesn't matter? Yeah, yeah. I mean, sure. Slingshot sounds. No, I think he's saying the pop, bow, and zing have to be in key. So if you're in the key of C, your pow has to be in C as well, you know? Okay, so I do want to bring in this is your first full game for Multimorphic, which is a different philosophy than building an entire game where you have control over the entire play field Because the whole point of Multimorphic is that you buy, in some ways, it's like buying a game console where you buy the main system. And the whole point is you can buy these modules that are more affordable. You don't have to buy like a whole $10,000 game. You can actually get it for a reasonable price and you can swap it out. So how did that affect your design process? Oh, it's a big time, big time affection. So listen to this. So when I originally was talking to Jerry about this game, and we can go into detail about this now. We're going to probably talk about this later when we dig into Final Resistance a little bit deeper. But when I went to him with this idea of a game that would convince some of the people that just couldn't, that just latched on to certain little things about the P3 being different than a wood-plated pinball machine. I said, well, the things that disturb people or that are putting off people on this thing are easily fixable. It's not anything wrong. It's just they're not used to it. So things like inserts being persistent, right? a big thing in final resistance because those inserts that you see on that LCD are there all the time. It's pretty great. Yeah. Things, you know, things like I just, I brought back the, the two flippers just using the two lower flippers, right. Just to make it easy, like for someone. So they don't have to think about an upper flipper at that point. Right. Stuff like that, just to try and make some traditional pinball people more comfortable on the platform. because I think once they actually play this thing and give it a chance, they'll realize that there's so much more to it, and they'll start going back and looking at the other titles and saying, like, this totally makes sense now. I'm hoping. That's the hope anyway. So that's the ultimate goal that I wanted to do as a challenge to myself is make something where someone who just won't give the platform a chance yet actually does right and if it's one person then i feel it about that yeah well before we get further down final resistance scott i i want to talk to michael actually real quick and why don't you tell us kind of how you got brought in on this project and and how long you like how you even got to p3 we don't i feel like the community doesn't know you very well so let's well outside of homebrew but bring us in on that enlighten us and sure yeah thank you uh so way way back when in the in the era that scott was referring to when we were you know a small you know homebrew community there were a few of us who felt sort of empowered by you know we said jerry you know Gerry Stellenberg's p-rock board right so that p-rock board the p uh the pinball remote operations controller basically lets you take the CPU out of a traditional Williams or Stern game, drop in this new board that has a USB port, then you plug that USB port into a computer, and now suddenly you can make the game do anything you want. So you could drive the coils, and you could light the lights, and you could write your own logic. And so a bunch of us were just blown away by this, right? It's like, oh, I always wanted to make a game do something other than it was doing. And, you know, a lot of people sort of, you know, light up to this idea like, oh, I would love to tweak this one tiny rule of this game that I don't love. And that's not what this is, right? This is instead, no, you've got to do everything yourself from scratch. And so a lot of us were out there sort of just kind of feeling around, figuring out what was possible, but then also trying to like push the boundaries of what was possible. So at a time when most games were still, you know, DMDs, we were trying to figure out, could we do full screen color? Can we actually like make this work as just a bunch of, I don't know, ragtag weirdos and, you know, people building machines from scratch. And so my background is predominantly software with very, very little hardware. I teach computer science by day. And at the time I talked to my dean who was super cool about this. I was like, you know, if we got a pinball machine in the common area, we could like I could teach students how to program pinball and to be really cool and real time systems and embedded embedded system. And I was expecting this was going to go nowhere. But we got a T2. We have a T2 in the CS lounge. And for a number of years, I've had students like learn to program and make their own rules and do that stuff. But, you know, I was involved in this group because I was helping Dave Nelson with his Buffy pinball project, which I wound up writing all the code for. And I was, you know, helping Scott. And we were all kind of like trying to figure out how to get the software right. And I decided that since my skill is largely software engineering, I wanted to help sort of build another layer on top of the software that was already there to make it easier for people to make their own games. That became Skeleton Game. A bunch of people, a bunch of games, a bunch of companies actually wound up using Skeleton Game in-house. TNA runs on Skeleton Game. It was super cool. um but i you know in talking to jerry and you know he was like well you know you've done amazing stuff for the p-rock and your your help that community's been huge you know do you want to help with a p3 and i was like i totally want to help with a p3 i just felt weird like i didn't want to you know because i joke that we were all jerry's kids but also it was you know it's like he's the guy who's made all of this possible right and jerry from multimorphic is who you're talking about yeah oh yeah yeah yes exactly yeah not not jerry lewis yeah yeah so uh you know and and then i i got on board doing some p3 stuff and that was super cool um and then yeah wound up working on canon lagoon i worked on a lot of framework stuff behind the scenes canon lagoon is super cute and super fun if you haven't ever played it's fun i i liked it yeah yeah it definitely like scratches an itch where you're like okay just one more game like this game is obviously not for me and i'm too cool for it but just one more game and yeah and then the weird al opportunity came around and i was lead developer on weird al and uh got to work with scott again because he was on sound and uh you know scott was pitching this game and i think we very very quickly had a conversation that was like yeah i would love to program a game like i would love to program scott's p3 game whatever that game is going to be um okay and i think that's everything i think now and now it's now okay i've caught up now he's also being very modest also michael has done a ton for the community he's helped people all over the place not even just people building home brews and people who have Homebrews. He's also helped just the random P-Rock people that hop in on the Slack forums and or the Slack group. You know, they may just want they don't even have a P-Rock. I just want questions answered or something like that. Michael's going to hop in there and say stuff. So, yeah. And Michael knows hardware stuff. He knows what H-Bridges are. You know, he's he's good. I don't know what H-Bridges are. It's a joke between Michael and I. There is a, they make motors spin both ways. Okay. Yeah. So Scott was shocked when I knew that, by the way, Scott was like, why was like, you know what an age bridge is? Yeah. I was like, I know a thing or two, you know, it's a, it's a thing that, you know, not many people know. You know, I was this year's old right now when I found that out. And I guarantee there were people who would be listening that just learned that too. Yeah. Grab, grab your kid's remote control car. Right. Tear it open. there's an H-bridge in there. All right. Yeah, they won't be happy that you tore apart the car. I mean, you won't really. Yeah. I mean, it might not go back together, but it's fine. At least it's in there. Kids need something to talk to their therapist about. Okay? That's a good point. You'd rather it be that you took apart the car than whatever it's going to be, right? Right, right. What's your biggest regret in life? Oh, my dad took apart my electronic car. Or mom. What an H-bridge was. Yeah. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. that's funny okay so the and this is interesting now developing also okay scott i see your games behind you okay and you obviously have a lot of the games that you have been directly involved in what about you michael do you have any games of your own at your home oh yeah yeah what do you What do you got? What do I got? I got a P3. I've got a Star Trek Next Gen, which is a family favorite for theme and for layout. And maintenance. And maintenance. You get a lot of practice. Yeah. It's running. It's running. Oh, okay. I own a bunch of games, and the reason you own a bunch of old Williams games is so that way you've always got something to play. Right. Right. You'll have something that's working. All right. So I'm walking down the line. So I've got the P3. I've got Next Gen. I've got Stern Monopoly. Lawler games. Okay. Super fun. Roadshow. Also super fun. Also Lawler. What's next? Oh, Buffy. So the custom Buffy pin. Then, oh, Revenge from Mars. I feel like I might have another game. Is it weird that I've forgotten a game? I forget games all the time. Oh, I have a Judge Dredd that is running custom code because it was part of a project that I sort of abandoned. Oh. Yeah. Okay. That's cool. A lot of wide bodies. Yeah, that has a surprising amount of wide bodies, yeah. So you heard it here first the next P3 release is going to be a wide body It going to be an expansion module that pushes the back out a few inches Yeah the good news is the module box is huge and heavy and hard to lift But the better news is that you can't physically fit it in your base P3. Yeah. Oh, my goodness. Okay. Now, Scott, I see your game's behind, but quickly go down what you have right now. All right. And so this is – so the P3 is first. Let me see if I can do this without looking because we have a camera running too right now. Let me see if I can do this. P3, I've got a TNA. Okay. Rick and Morty. Bride of Pimbot 2.0. Okay. A Tron that only runs Powerballs, and if you put anything other than Powerballs in your Tron, you are an awful person. And a brand new Cactus Canyon LE. All right. Yeah, that's actually a thing that's a little bit out of character for me, but I can explain. Right. Yeah, actually, I just barely completed my Chicago Gaming Company collection in that I just barely committed to buying a Monster Bash. Oh, awesome. So now I'm going to have at least all four of those, the classic ones. I'm not planning on getting Pulp Fiction But the four classic ones Because my kids love playing those So it's I like playing them too I'm trying to wrap my brain around the fact That Scott just said I have nothing but Powerballs in my Tron Trons are brutal as is What else can we do To make it a little more kick in the teeth Okay now Scott was involved Okay Scott you are At least partially involved in the Pinball Olympics am I right Partially, yeah. Yes. Okay. And so if anybody knows about the pinball Olympics, these are the crazy people who decide to hook up a treadmill and you're supposed to run as fast as you can while playing Junkyard. Okay? I'm just glad I didn't fall and scrape my face off. Well, we change the game every year, so it's not always Junkyard. So don't worry about that part. So it's fine. This time it's going to be Tron with Powerballs. It might be. You never know. I think the only games that don't rotate are Black Hole because it's always going to be inside that. carnival, whatever it is. The spinning tunnel. It's Orbiter 1, actually. I think Orbiter 1's in there now. Make me a liar now. I don't know, maybe. It would swap things around. Are you guys going to the Olympics this year? Well, I cannot make it to Expo this year because it falls right with our fall break and everybody wants to take that off. I could not get the time off. I think I am I'm taking my son with me so the agreement is is if you go you cannot go in the red room yeah yeah do not go to the back room but yeah the red rooms yes yes so the you said you were going to sign up for the treadmill challenge so I'm actually I wrote your name down here yeah Josh okay I did it last year I did it last year I about died yeah like legit I'm surprised you didn't you did not have a uh a defibrillator right there because Yeah, it's the most intense Olympic event that goes on. Glenn Glenn Waechter, a friend of the show, Glenn Glenn Waechter, actually practiced for like two weeks before because he specifically wanted to win that medal last year. I think he ended up taking second, right? It was close, yeah. I'm not going to lie to you. I actually started a multiball, but I was out of gas, and so I just pretended that I didn't know that I started a multiball, and so I let it drain. that was on the that was on the speed challenge because i am not a speedster so yeah that's that's great it's a it's an incredible experience we usually get uh you know uh a few people get sick doing it because you know that's just that's just the nature of the beast when you're running at full speed yeah uh trying to play you know whatever game we throw on there and you also design the medals right uh i do i design the medals every single year they're they're very uh they're very interesting medals i'll put it that way oh you mean the one from last year or the well see what we do if you notice the medals if you go back in time and look at all these medals is the there is the image that's on these medals is has something to do with something that family friendly that year friendly i'm just saying it's just something to do i mean with something that happened that year yeah i don't know what that would be you know i actually have about this years and really i i feel like the one from last year the house yeah yes oh really yeah oh yeah last year's was easy it was really family friendly it was a house with a setting sun behind it so yeah very that was a chinese logo right that was for a chinese restaurant uh it's like a it's like a japanese uh house with the sun setting behind it mixed with the deep root logo So, yeah. I mean, not necessarily. You see what you want to see. I mean, you can see what you want to see when you look at stuff. The year before that was like a – it looks like a wrestler to me doing like a front flip off the top turnbuckle or something like that. That was actually a picture of Jay, who is the main guy behind the Olympics, flipping, doing a front flip off of his Russian swing boat that he built. So he's got a pontoon boat with a Russian swing. I don't know if you've ever seen one of those before, but it's like got a flat bottom on it. Two people hop on it. It's on a rigid structure like an A-frame. And two people, one person in the back pushes, the other guy pushes back the other way, and they get going really powerful. When the person's ready to jump off, the person on the other side pushes really hard as they jump off. And you can launch somebody like an ungodly amount of feet away from the boat. Wow. I jumped off of it twice, and I'm not really scared of anything. You're still in orbit? Yeah. Yeah, I'm kind of done. I'm not the strongest swimmer on the planet either. I can swim pretty well, but not when you launch really far away from the boat and you've got to swim all the way back. I'm all right. You don't want to do a mile swim back? Yeah, no thanks. That's great. Okay, now I want to pivot now, and I want to talk about final resistance. So give me the pitch for Final Resistance. I am familiar with Scott Denisey games. I have certainly played games that Michael has coded. Give me the pitch. Tell me about it. All right, all right. So I will start, and then Michael is going to fill in all the gaps where I just completely drop the ball on the little details. So the pitch, ready for this? The pitch is, I'll talk about the storyline. Okay. The storyline, really quick, is I wanted to make a game that was based in the future, in a cyberpunk dystopian future. Okay. That, you know, where an alien spaceship is coming to invade a city. The city's already sort of, you know, it's a dystopian style thing where the government has, you know, not really paid attention to the city anymore. They're not really helping out. but uh the the people of the city have kind of kept it alive and and kept everything working themselves and uh now there's an alien spaceship coming in uh and invading this uh the city and it's up to the people of the city to actually save it and kill off these aliens and make them make them leave right okay so the uh that's the high level storyline of this thing and what you are from a player perspective is you're you are one of these members of the uh of the city and you're going through different types of waves in order to uh take out these aliens and take out these alien spaceships that are landing in so that's the high level pitch okay storyline now when it comes to final resistance being on the p3 platform uh this is where it got really interesting for me the p3 platform is is much different than a wood traditional uh play field right pinball machine the bottom third or bottom two thirds of the play field on a p3 are is an lcd screen right uh so that to me i look at this platform and i look at it like as a as something as like a challenge right can i go in and and make a game on this thing that can convince people who are very very traditional pinball people who have not really given the p3 chance yet can i convince them to come over take a look at this game play some games on it and actually fall in love with the idea that of this platform right high level goal on this thing which is a very very tough ask because traditional people traditional pinball people really love the wood playfield static inserts everything that we we grew up on right sure uh and you know they may not give something that looks like something from the future uh a chance right away just because of that you know that when some people look at it and they think that it's a virtual pinball machine which it's absolutely not. It doesn't. However, I will say it does have a little bit of elements of like the like the Zen pinball games that I have played before that it has almost like a static play field. But there are animations that jump out at you. And so it's it's kind of a it's a nice bridge to to video games, but it's still pinball. And so I don't I don't mean that to sound demeaning. I actually think that's a positive thing, especially for younger players who are used to playing video games more than they're used to playing pinball. But that's what – when I looked at your game, that's what made me think about those other alternative things. I'm like, actually, this is amazing because a lot of times those Zen pinball games, you can't do them physically. But this is a way you can actually get a lot of those elements but still have a physical game. Correct. Yeah, we can do anything we want on that lower screen, which is really cool. And with the early P3 games, the teams did do some crazy, crazy stuff on there. And that's a very positive thing for people who will go and play the P3 and have a good time with it. But very traditional people who don't give it a chance can look at that really quick and go like, oh, there's too much going on. Right. And then immediately like not go like try and play something else. Right. So that is something I wanted to break and I wanted to get those people to actually go and give it a chance. So things like on Final Resistance, the static inserts, things like the score displays are in the back glass on this game. just like in TNA and just like in all these other 80s games. You look up, you see a translate, and you see your scores going across the whole bottom there. And they're always there. Michael's even done some really cool stuff with the refresh rates of those scores so that they roll. If you ever stick a camera on an old display or something like that, you can see it kind of rolling because of the shutter speed. he's emulated that so that when you look up at the at the screen for your score you can see the rolling effect going oh really i okay i didn't i didn't realize that was emulated because i'm in the background while i'm interviewing you i actually have your your play thing in the background and i noticed that i'm like hi i wonder if those are real like alphanumeric numbers oh thank you very much yeah legitimately i thought those were just okay so they must have laid a translate over so that's really impressive yeah it's really cool because that speaking of the back glass um the and this is just something that i i talk about a lot uh but the uh the lcd the multimorphic uses in the backbox of these things looks has such deep color depth and such like really such good contrast that you cannot tell when it's sitting in a line of these games behind I mean, you cannot tell that that's not a back glass. It's so strange to me because I always think of LCDs as gotten like the blacks are kind of faded. Yeah. You know, the colors are a little washed out. And if you look at it at weird angles, it changes and stuff. But that's not the case with this LCD and it's crazy. So that's very surprising and awesome that you thought that those were actual, you know, displays in there. And thank you again, Michael, for doing that. So, Michael, that was you. How was you doing that? It was, I mean, we had a really good, we have a really good team on this game. Rory, Rory Sanuda, who is responsible for a lot of the visual effects, you know, produced the alphanumeric displays. And then I went nuts programming them as if they were real physical alphanumeric displays. So that way we could actually control all of the segments individually. and you know i my the first game i play i remember playing pinball in the arcade was my my dad uh was cyclone and i was just like well i know it's system or yeah system 11 segments look like and they've got a role and you know sky remember scott being like no you don't have to beat yourself up it looks really cool yeah and and so i was like i'm gonna beat myself up if we're gonna do it We're going to do it. And technically you could turn it off, but I don't know who would turn it off. Why would you turn it off? No, no. You're going for retro. It's new retro. It is. It is. It's great. So going back to the conversation about like video game nature of things like this. Me personally, I like video game style. And I'm going to explain what that is in a second. But video game style rules in pinball machines. If you take a look at TNA, the way it is, it's a very linear rule set. It's kind of almost like you are, it's almost like a Mario Brothers style thing. Going through these levels, you're getting to the end, you're beating the end of it, and then you move on to the next thing and you keep going, right? I like that style. Not a lot of people do. Maybe they do. I don't know. I don't know how many people actually like that. But it turns out it was more than I thought. when I created TNA because I didn't realize, I didn't actually expect people to like it as much as they did because it was just some kind of wacky thing that I made. But we did the same sort of thing with Final Resistance. It is sort of like a video game, but very, very pinball. So there's elements of that video game style that you'll see in there. And this was this style of wave, the structure, that wave structure. It was pitched to me when Bowen and I were talking early on about what would make a really good rule set that really hasn't been, you know, done too much on pinball, right? We don't want to just keep going through start mode, collect thing, you know, start next mode, collect thing, right? You know, we want to make it a little bit different with things like power ups and stuff and wave battles, just like in a video game. So Bowen helped you with these rules, right? Yeah. So Bowen came up with the initial concept of the rules and was with us the whole time while we were going through this. And I leaned heavily on Bowen to, like, come up with all these other details. and then all the little stuff that wasn't filled in all the way, Michael took care of and was recommending things for all these other areas, right? Which is actually one of the most important parts because of how polished this whole thing is now because of that. So they worked a lot on rules. I mean, it's basically a Bowen and Michael combination at this point. And those are two people I trust greatly in that position. So it's like, yeah, this this thing turned out just absolutely amazing. But, yeah, the software is a huge, huge thing that this thing is. It's going to make it stand out a lot. Definitely. Oh, sorry. No, go ahead, Michael. No, go for it. I just say so. Bowen, Bowen Kerins. I mean, his knowledge of pinball is so encyclopedic and amazing that, you know, he can tell you what's going to be fun to shoot. He can tell you that might be too easy. People are probably going to abuse that. Right. So he can, you know, he can tell you, Oh, I, I, a very typical Bowen interaction for me is, Oh my gosh, what if we do this? I mean, has any game ever done this? And he can just tell you immediately. Yeah. You're not clever. These two games have done this and here's exactly what they are and when they came out and how they executed it. But he would do it in the, I mean, Bowen is like the nicest. In a nice way, sure. Yeah, in a super nice way, right? But it doesn't mean it's a bad idea. And just sort of like, well, this is what I had in mind for the rules. But if you want to change it, if you want to do something different, go ahead. It's like, well, no, I want to start with what you made. And then we'll see what happens. And, you know, super awesome. Super awesome to have Bowen sort of stamping out. And the Bowen Scott dream team is, is, is very real to sort of see them work together and the the respect and the difference in the way in which they work which is sort of like you know well Bowen if you to watch Scott be like I want this and I don want to back down on it Bowen's like, no problem. Bowen, I want this and I don't want to back down. No problem. And then collaborating in ways and then just sort of like, you know, seeding the, you know, I don't know, whatever, whatever the item is to each other. was really really awesome and yeah and i mean i've worked with scott a bunch but working with him uh in this capacity was really really cool i mean the uh i think what we made for the p3 here i think you could trick people right i think you could look at it and think like oh this is a regular wooden play field the inserts are flashing nothing wait how did the message come across the would like that to tell me that i've got a tilt warning right so it's very right those effects are very subtle well there's also a physical like there's a physical ball lock oh yeah yeah i mean it's all physical pinball right but yeah like there's yeah it looks like it looks like a game that like a standard game if there's a physical ball lock yeah yeah yeah and what's your physical ball locks game oh there you go yeah there's the there's the uh the cannon i'm looking at the spaceship yeah but then there's also the denisi lock yeah which are we not supposed to call it the denisi lock no you have to call it my shirt that i have i don't have it on says denisi lock on it so i think that's what we call it yep but yeah it's it's official it's the denisi lock you know who made that up do you know who started doing that who it was it was matt from uh the homebrew community one of the guys um matt bonama who actually uh he built the dead pin and then he built what was the other one doom you did that one if you track down a video of matt's doom pinball machine his homebrew doom it is the meanest thing you've ever like it returns the ball like practically it straight down like it's not straight down the middle but he's got he's got ball returns that are so viciously fast and every time i played it i was like how do you do this and just yeah matt's got a way of being like well i don't play better i don't know yeah yeah he's he's crazy speaking of brutal because tna definitely kicks you in the teeth and and rick and morty has that like 1980s you told us scott that it has that homage to like system 11s and it's got that 80s clunk that's still like it's great but it also is like very challenging with final resistance this is a two flipper kind of like a fan layout i mean this is as close well it is a fan layout yeah it's a flippers by definition yeah well yeah i hate to i hate to uh break it to you guys but every single pinball ever made as a fan layout yeah i just i get that Depends on where the fan is. But my point being is it becomes a challenge of this is more of a casual – this style is more of a casual play. You usually get more longer ball times. But you're not known for that. And so how did you approach like the brutality? Speaking of brutality with the Doom homebrew, it's like I know that the ball launcher – so what? Three balls and under a second, right? Something like that? Yeah, so it's interesting, actually, because brutality is a big thing that I harped on a lot. And Michael can actually probably just nod in the camera for us while we're talking about this. Nod knowingly. Yes. Yes. It's something I pay very close attention to because of how important that is to me. And that was one of the things when Michael brought up earlier, like, you know, if I if I say, hey, I really do need this to happen because of, you know, the level of hardness of this game needs to portray. The team did a really good job of going along with it and and working with me on that. But when I was designing the play field, there's a number of return shots to the flippers that are high speed. and there's a number of shots that are dangerous. So I think it was a good balance of flow versus danger in this one. Things like the high-speed shots that come back at you, there's a diverter on the right side on the right orbit. So the right orbit will sometimes act like an orbit or most of the time act like an orbit to try and trick you and make you feel comfortable. And then when you're least expecting it, that diverter opens up and it's a Yagov kicker, which kicks the ball back. You shoot it up the right orbit, it'll kick the ball back at you at full speed, faster than you shot it in there. And that's up underneath the ship there on the right side. The ship itself has a mechanism that I drew this mechanism up in SolidWorks, just kind of a mock-up, just to show TJ. TJ's the mechanical engineer over there and does all this really great engineering, by the way, which this game wouldn't even be possible without him. It's insane what he did with this thing. But I have this mock-up that I showed him where the balls will stack vertically so you can see them. So I'm a big fan of blocking balls where you can see them. Yep. And these things are stacking vertically on top of each other. And at the bottom ball, there is a knocker assembly. so that knocker assembly is um uh actually hits the bottom ball out right at your flipper and the next the two balls that were above it now drop down in position and that knocker assembly can fire again knock out that second one the last ball falls in position and knocks that one out and we discovered i said that i could do it i said it could launch all three balls in one second. And TJ looked at me and went, like, you know, I think you're underestimating the mechanism. I'm like, okay, well, what do we got? Let's see. So he fired it up and fired that mechanism back at us. And he was able to get all three balls out of that mechanism in 500 milliseconds. Wow. which is the fastest. We looked it up and we're trying to fight. We're like, it's the fastest ejection of three pinballs done to date. I have not seen anything faster. I can't think of anything faster. Owen can't find anything faster. So I think we're safe to say that one's the fastest right now. There's machine guns that shoot slower than this game. Wow. That's probably true. So it's funny when the stream went online, rather when the first video went up, people couldn't track what that was in the video. When the ship's cannon fires, they were like, did a ball just skip over the what? Because the P-3 has this wall of scoops, the wall and scoops in the middle. Yeah. And yeah, wait, wait, did the ball just ricochet off that? No, I think that's the cannon. And yeah, that cannon is fast. It's a great mechanism, and it shoots up and over the walls. So the wall assemblies can be up, and it will shoot it at the flippers. So that right there makes it really brutal on the offensive side. So there's other shots, too. On the left side, it's a lot safer, right? There's a ramp that's always open. It's not blocked by anything. There's a scoop there. That scoop is pretty safe to shoot, but when that scoop ejects, that is coming really fast at your right flipper again. Okay. So we've got crossover shots coming back at you from all over the place here. You got a spinner shot? Nice spinner shot, which is beautiful. Those inner orbits there, I'm going to call them inner orbits. So the spinner shot and the drop target lock over there, Those two are actually inner orbits. So when those shots are open, those will loop around. The right one loops around to the left orbit, and the left one loops around to the right orbit. They cross each other in the back. You can't see it, but it's a little magic trick of them crossing each other. So that's a super cool, interesting part of that layout. What else makes this game really brutal? and I can actually safely say this is the most brutal game for the P3 platform as of right now. I can't think of anything else that is more angry at you than this. That ship has a ramp underneath it and it also has a ball lock, an actual subway entrance underneath it as well. But the ship has the ability to drop down a shield over those two shots. and technically it's over five shots because it blocks three stand-up targets as well oh okay and when that shield is down it it bounces the ball back at the same speed as you shot it at it it's a ricochet yeah it's yeah it's very very uncontrolled when you have to shoot that shot and the software makes you shoot that shot yeah and we know which side you hit it at and it's brutal. I mean, that's when you have to shoot that shield. It's unpleasant. The style of this game, you definitely captured the 80s vibe, especially with the artwork. It actually makes me think of... There's like a role-playing game called... What's it called? Shadowrun. Yeah. Yeah, this looks like a Shadowrun. No, it doesn't. Okay. Never heard that before. I don't know what you're talking about. Okay. Hold on. I'm on my computer right now, so I'm going to double check. Let's see. Shadow run images, turn safe search off. Okay. All right. Here we go. I would grab my copy of the book, but I obviously still don't have one from when I was playing it when I was a teenager. Yeah, but no. Okay, but it's that futuristic cyberpunk. Yes. Dystopian. Yeah. Yeah, you definitely have to have the Mohawks in there because it's the 80s. And Mr. T was the rage back then. I mean, it still is, right? Yeah. So I do – I love the vibe. I dig it. And who did your art package? So Johnny Crap did it. Oh, okay. So the gentleman that did Jurassic Park. Jurassic Park. He did Jurassic Park for Stern. Yep. So he is an incredible artist. I actually traveled to Montreal where he lives and met up with him before this whole thing to kind of pitch it to him. It wasn't the sole purpose of the trip, but it was a very good part of that trip. I was able to meet up with him. He was actually in the middle of painting a mural on the side of a building, an absolutely incredible mural on there when we met up. And yeah, I pitched him the idea. I pitched him the art style and he, uh, he just, uh, he said, yeah, absolutely. I'd be interested in doing this. I think I can capture absolutely exactly what you want. And, uh, without much back and forth, he nailed it. Like the cabinet art on there is amazing. The translate art is amazing. The play field art, everything like he, he got all of this, like get it looking great. So having the art capture the vibe of the era is so important. And this is, thematically consistent with an 80s style game. So I love it. But not the 80s themselves. There's not enough brown here to be a true 80s. Yeah, so that's it. So there's two... Yeah, so I don't think it's... No, no, they pretend 80s when everything was neon. They pretend 80s. Yeah, exactly. Because I grew up in the 80s. I grew up in the 80s and everything was brown and like that for some reason everything was that smoked glass ashtray look. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was a little leftover from the 70s too. you know i had a little bleed over from that yep but yeah this is the this is the more like fake retrofuturism thing style right and since the story is actually based in the far future they're actually going they're actually like looping back around with the uh with the trends again so it's uh that's where we're at nice okay so i've been watching this radio talk to me a bit about these power-ups because i'm i'm seeing like right above your flippers you can you can gain some power-ups and then you can they ask you if you want to use them too okay yeah absolutely so the the easiest way to explain this is let's it's just like a smart missile right uh and it's actually fired off the same way as a smart missile right they slam in the launch button and all you do is collect these power-ups in various different ways throughout the uh software and throughout the game experience. And when you collect these, they go into your little inventory down there with those four little slots you got. You can cycle through those with a secondary flipper button. And then you just leave it on whatever power-up you want to hit. And when you're ready to go, you hit the launch button while you're playing and it catches in that power-up. So power-ups just do different things, right? So some of them slow down the time, right? So slow down everything, right? So your ball stay will slow down. your shot counter or shot timers will slow way down. The actual music even slows down, which is something Michael and I were working on. And I didn't know if it was going to be possible, but Michael did actually make it happen. So it's pretty great. It's super cool. It's super cool when you hit a time slowdown in the music, like literally like boom. Yeah, it's great. Okay. Have you put Power Balls in this game? I can't afford to put power balls in this game you can buy the cheap ones the fake ones no man you can't you see this for some weird reason I have a power ball in my hand sure these are the real ones everyone has a power ball sitting on their desk so I cannot afford 17 power balls to put into a multi-morphic game there's 17 balls in this game? Oh, we've got a mode. Yeah, I mean, we've got a mode that at max balls is 10. Wow. You can put 10 on the play field. It's a sweet mode. That increases the weight of the game by 50. All the spaceship? Yeah, yeah. So there's a mode. The balls do add some weight. It's true. But, I mean, you know, it's called pinball. You should have some, right? Yeah. We have this battle wave called Trapped where the walls go up. and the ball gets served to you from the cannon very politely. A ball gets flung at you very fast. Sure. And if you get the ball into the scoop within the allotted time, the game rewards you by shooting two balls at you very quickly. And if you clear both those balls, the game rewards you by shooting three balls at you very quickly. But if you don't get rid of those balls very quickly, it's still going to keep shooting balls at you. And as soon as you drain, then you have to tidy up the mode, basically. you've lost your opportunity wow because um like like some other uh awesome scott games uh the more balls you have in play increases your play field multiplier so if you can manage to keep all those balls alive while this horrific cannon is firing so it's very funny to watch someone try to cradle up balls and then the cannon just nails the flipper and you watch all the balls go it's still good but yeah you need it i mean you need those balls you need them yeah well i think also So there's a mode in here, too, and Michael, you're going to give me the actual details of this one because I don't know the exact number, but there is a swarm multiball in this game. And what it does is it will put up all of the wall assemblies again. And from the backside of the playfield, it starts dumping balls out behind the wall assembly. And I don't remember how many it dumps at the beginning. It's a lot. I don't remember how many exactly. But when it's done unloading all these balls behind the wall assembly, that wall assembly drops all at the same time and just unleashes the entire multiball at you. Wow. Nice. It's very crazy to see all of the balls from a multiball headed down towards your flippers all at once. Mm-hmm. It's a wild thing. And, like, pretty evenly, which is weird. Like, it's just like, yeah, they're all just kind of – because we've all seen – It's like a tidal wave of balls. Yeah, kind of. I mean, yeah, we've seen the balls do that same similar behavior in Stern Indiana Jones. This is the Indiana Jones 4, I guess they called it. Yeah. Or 3. I don't remember what it was. Yeah. The arc. Yeah, it was the arc. The arc. Yeah, the arc thing. The arc multiball. Yeah. Yes. And then they also did it again in Aerosmith. Mm-hmm. And then it was also in Gottlieb Waterworld. Oh. Mm-hmm. I remember the sink the D's thing. but it was only like it was only like up to four balls right so i think i i think aerosmith maybe went up to five maybe i don't remember exactly so like these these details i don't i don't retain but uh yeah they kind of all dump there but i think yeah i think the swarm multivolves a significant amount more than that i just don't remember the exact number is it at least eight and i definitely not opening the code now to verify no no but it at least eight It at least eight At least eight is a great answer though Yes. Nice. That still seems crazy. You have to buy the game to find out just how many. There you go. Yeah, there you go. That's a good, speaking of which this game is, is shipping right now, right? Yeah. Yeah. This, this game is shipping now. There is, we've got a new, when this when this release, we've already shown another teaser video. Just, you know, it's basically the same, just a more accelerated version of the teaser video. Again, we're going to have people streaming this very soon. And it's going to just going to keep rolling off the line, which is great. It's really cool to see this thing happening. And I cannot wait to get mine. I don't have one yet, but I'm waiting for some customers to get theirs, to be fair. So I don't feel like I'm hogging the thing or getting special treatment at all. But I am so excited. It's pretty rad when you get a – if you own a base P3, when a new game comes out, you invite people over to play it, but you don't need them to haul it down to your space. Right. That's the problem with box opening. It's like, hey, do you want to lug this 300-pound thing down the stairs? Yeah. Yeah. You just walk the box downstairs and, you know, pop out your module and you pop in the new one and you load up the software. Yeah. It's pretty awesome. It is pretty awesome. I remember a bunch of the people were joking when Sorcerer's Apprentice came out. That was a whole new game for the Cosmic Kart Racing module. and everyone was trying to figure out which cars would fit the USB drive so that they could put the USB drive in the trunk or in the back seat, like where it fits. I mean, it turns out every car actually can fit that game in it. It was quite the discussion. Is it true, too? I remember when this first came out, didn't they say Final Resistance sold more units than Weird Al? I'm not sure on that I don't know for sure hey it's a great game the bottom line is if you have P3 it makes sense to buy all these all these modules because it's not the same as buying even like a home pin like a pin designed by other companies that are designed to be just home use only that's still more expensive than this yeah Yeah. And also a really cool thing too, which I've done is like my buddy's got a P3, but can't afford to just buy all the modules. So he's like, well, I can just lend you one of mine. Like, yeah, I'm just like, here, you can just borrow my Lexi Lightspeed. I don't have that one in at the moment. Here, just use that. It's cartridge swapping. It's old school cartridge swapping. It's cartridge swapping. Absolutely. It's not really, it's not inconvenient to throw these modules around because they just go in a backseat of a car, you know? Yeah. Yeah. they're super well built too like you guys have some of these on display at the expos and what not and I was dumbfounded with how solid these things are they're pretty sweet TJ the mechanical engineer does a great job just packing these playfields full of features if you've seen the Weird Al Museum of National Hilarity play field like on it's side it's astounding it's stacked Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah, it's stacked. Yeah. So if someone wants to get one of these games, how can they get it? They can just go to Multimorphic.com and they can order it directly there. It's right there on the website. How much is it going for? Let me double check. I think it was $34. Okay. I have to double check it again real quick just to be sure so I'm not telling people the wrong thing here. Yeah, that's the module price if you already have a base P3. Yeah. They're hitting up like, we heard Scott on Loser Kid. No, I see. Okay, I see. I'm on your website. The full game kit price is $3,400. Yes. And with a $500 deposit. And so that adds to it. Yeah, but if you want to buy just the base machine, that's $8,300. Like if you don't have the Nintendo yet, that costs $8,300. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you don't want to be the parent who comes home holding the Zelda cartridge. You're like, well, but I don't know. I just bought the cartridge. Did your parents ever do that to you guys when you were kids? Did you get a Nintendo for Christmas, and they give you the game first, and you're like, I don't have any way of playing this. And they're like, but wait. But wait. Yeah. I feel like that's a thing all parents used to do to mess with their kids when we were kids. Yeah. We were all confused. What the heck is this? Yeah. That's great. Our things seemed to be a lot more creative when we were kids. Yeah, yeah. You could just try something. Who cares? Yeah, what? We'll turn it off. They also didn't get spoiled because we all, like all kids nowadays, they're like, hey, watch this video on YouTube of these parents and kid interactions. So there's no surprises anymore. Like kids know what's coming. Yeah. They do know what's up. Mm-hmm. That's awesome. well we appreciate having you guys on is there anything else you want you want to talk about with final resistance maybe something the public doesn't know about it or or set right uh rumor that might be floating around like that's just not right oh is there are there rumors about final resistance that would be awesome if there were incorrect rumors but no i actually haven't seen anything that what's what's great is it's it seems to be getting really good reviews um people that have played it um which i'm very very happy about uh the the team that we had on this thing is just it's just crazy it was uh it wouldn't have been as good with without the team obviously yeah but it's uh it's a really great experience working on a team like this with people who are that skilled at least for me like i'm able to say like okay i've got this idea i want to do like all this crazy stuff usually i have to think about how exactly all that stuff has to be done um but in this case like mechanically tj goes oh yeah we can make that happen give me like a day or two and i'll have some like something mocked up in 3d he sends me over like some solid drawings and i'm able to like look through everything you know and then i go to michael and i'm like well how are we going to get the the audio to slow down right like what are we doing with that and michael's like oh yeah we'll just we'll just do it this way like you know it's really great so it and it just goes with the graphics too and everything it's awesome so yeah that was a lot of fun um they're really honestly there aren't any really any rumors or anything that i know about with final resistance it's tna 2.0 well okay so that's so yeah people have said that actually but it's not but it's not it is not it's not no so so this is this is pretty funny though because we're bowen uh understands how my brain works in a way that only a friend would understand you know yeah uh and he knows like when i'm coming up with these crazy creative ideas he's he sees me trying to like pull away from like oh that's too much like tna like you know let's let's stay away from that he sees that happening and he goes oh no no we're gonna we're gonna make we're gonna put the little homages in here to to tna we're gonna put in you know we will put the score display stuff in there we will have all this other little thing like the play field multiplier should run the same way right so it's familiar right so he kind of he understands that a lot and you know So people will notice a lot of similarities, little subtle similarities to TNA. And I think that's nothing but positive, honestly. But it's not TNA 2.0. It's a completely different story universe thing. The art is sort of similar, maybe, but a lot less pink. Oh, yes. Yes. The music is awesome, definitely. The music? Yeah. Are you going to be able to listen to the music online? Eventually, yes. Yeah. So there is that coming. The music, unfortunately, takes a very long time for me to finish because if you don't know how game audio works, game audio itself is written specifically for modes in a game or incidental music or something like that. It's not actual music you can listen to. it's uh creating a song from something like game audio is uh it's very difficult and long process yeah so yeah so that you know it may take a little bit i wanted to release it when production started but uh you know the time didn't line up so it's gonna be a little bit but it's coming are we gonna see this game here at chicago expo is there other other places before that you'll see it as well i'm pretty sure we will i i'm hoping let's see it's october oh yeah there's going to be a lot of games out there yeah there's rumor that there's going to be one at pintastic over here in uh in massachusetts very soon okay yeah uh that show um yeah i mean for sure check it out check out uh i don't know when's gonna air relative to the stream that's coming out but you know this is the first time that i think people will be seeing the like full 1.0 release code so you know more modes more multiball stuff happening more audio tracks because there's more modes um you know the thing about the power-ups and think about like the video game nature of it is that scott very much uh we all felt this way a person who walks up this game doesn't understand the power-ups should be able to play this game and enjoy it and do well and it should be a super normal pinball experience but it's sort of like when you start to realize like oh lane management matters like i can get a cool thing right so it's sort of like oh if i can just kind of understand with these power-ups do, I might be able to get a little bit of a boost. I might be able to make stuff easier. There's a bunch of them. I don't think we spoiled them, so I think people can still sort of discover them and figure out what they do. There's only one where you'd use it and be like, oh, come on. Really? What? Scott, why is this in the game? Is that the one that I talked about in that panel? That is the one, yes. Okay, okay. Here's a rumor. The person who made this game might actually want to give you a power-up that causes you to lose your ball. Oh. That causes a nuclear explosion that destroys, I mean, you technically collect points for everything that's lit, but also your flippers go dead and there's a sweet earring that coincides with it because you just had a nuclear launch. Yeah. But the sales pitch for it is actually super dope. It is. The sales pitch for it, I mean, I don't want to steal it from you, Scott. Oh, go ahead. No, you do it, Michael. Do it. You got it. So Scott's like, you know, bone i'm never going to beat you at pinball but imagine just imagine like you know you know that like all i need are this many points to win you know to win this two-player game i'm going to fire my nuke i'm going to collect the points and i'm going to walk off that's like well yeah how do we not implement that that's awesome yeah so uh there's you know there's some big stuff there's some small stuff it's cool but it's just it's just seasoning right it's just literally you can walk up to the game not know anything about the theme and you could play it just like coin drop on location anything what i shoot the stuff that's flashing got it you know you could try really hard to not read things off the screen or read inserts which is somehow how we all approach brand new games right you wait in a line for a long time at a show you finally get up to it and then you don't read any inserts you don't read anything you just shoot what's flashing and you're like that was fun you can still do that you can still enjoy it uh and even though it's not tna 2.0 the tna vibes the tna vibes still there yeah yeah which is good that's a great thing yeah yeah yeah much like much like bowen you know i did the same thing jerry did the same thing it's not bad if if it feels like tna if this is how tna solved this problem that's a good way to solve the problem yeah yeah so it's super it's super fun i hope it's the next level it seems like it's the next level because it is a it is a different game in that there are locks there are vertical there are habit trails there there's all this kind of stuff in there so it it is it is a completely different game but the the feel of it feels very consistent with the vibe that you got from your first one if you're a purist who hates ramps, this might rub you the wrong way because it has some. But those folks aside, it's pretty dope. I think if purists are stuck on single-level playfields, then they're back in the past. They're certainly buying games for less than we are. Yeah, that's true as well. Well, cool. If you want someone to get a hold of you, Michael or Scott, how do you want them to get a hold of you? oh that's a cool question i don't know scott answers that question first all right if you guys want to get a hold of me ask me questions uh give me a high five whatever uh easiest thing to do is just go to scottdenisi.com and you can contact me through there um but if you see me at a show that's ultimately the most awesome way to uh get in contact with me because physical high fives work in reality, which is really great. And come to the Pinball Olympics. Oh, yeah. You guys will watch me blow my voice out every single year. I rarely make it through the awards ceremony without having to pass the mic off to my buddy because my voice completely shuts off. So it is worth it. So hopefully I'll see a bunch of you guys soon. I am very friendly, so you can talk to me anytime. Have ticket sales gone up for that yet? Not yet. They should be going up five weeks before the event. I think exactly five weeks before the event. And schedule the party bus because that is so much easier. Oh, yeah. Okay, Michael, how can they get a hold of you? I was going to say I'm not on social media, but I guess that's not totally true. if you have questions about making your own pinball games you could join the pin dev slack for slack for people who are making are interested in making making your own pinball games if you're not interested in that if you're interested in p3 stuff like so owners and fans and enthusiasts there is a there's a discord server that was set up by some p3 owners that i lurk on pretty frequently to sort of answer questions and help people get started programming if they're interested in that or just hang out there. Where else? I do go outside so people can find me outside. Sometimes it shows. I try not to. I prefer to be inside. That's where I keep my computers and my pinball. But yeah, I don't know. There are ways. Will you be at Expo as well this October? Maybe. Maybe. The answer is maybe. It's a tough one because familial obligations. expo is typically right around when my wife's birthday is so it's hard to be like happy birthday i'm out they got you a pinball expo yeah exactly come on who doesn't want that let's go to chicago we can hang out with scott i mean it's not all bad i take it okay thank you guys so much we really appreciate it best of luck to this i cannot wait to play it and certainly at the next show that i will be at i'm definitely looking forward to playing it and get on it does take a little bit of time for these things to come out so definitely if you're interested go and place your orders so they can start making these things more to the demand so if you want to get a hold of us you're welcome if you want to get a hold of us we are Loser Kid Pinball Podcast at gmail.com we're also on all the socials Facebook, Instagram, Twitter well X that throws me off every time now Twitch, YouTube all at Loser Kid Pinball. So subscribe to us on YouTube if you haven't already. We do have some content on. You can see our beautiful faces on there. But like last episode, you didn't get to see it. I had the Pinball Wizard home decor from Hobby Lobby. You can only see that on the video. It was wonderful. But check us out. And Scott, do you have anything else for us before we head off? You know what? Just be excellent. Make sure if you have kids, make sure they're safe going to school this year. And we cannot wait to see you guys at the next show. Definitely. All right. All locked. Ship attack multiball initialized. Jackpot! The enemy has prevailed. Join the resistance.