Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of the Wedgehead Pinball Podcast. My name's Alan. I'm a co-owner, Portland Pinball Bar Wedgehead, and I'm joined today by my co-host, Alex the Waterboy. How's it going? My name's Alex. As Alan just said, we're going to be talking about Super Pins today, the Bally Williams wide-body pinball machines made in the early 90s. And we're also joined by the other half of Wedgehead, Christopher Rhodes, local operator and, you know, legend, I would say. I don't know about that, but hey, I'm here. I'm ready to talk. All right, so the Super Pins is the trademark name given to all wide-body pins made by Bally Williams beginning from April 1993 through October 1994. They're extra-wide machines. These varied by different manufacturers and eras, but all the Super Pins were the same size. The standard pinball playfields at the time were 20.5 inches wide, and the Super Pins were 23.25 inches wide, so almost three-four inches wider. some of the earlier wide bodies from the 80s are like 27 inches wide like paragon so it's like six and a half inches wider than a standard machine and those are like super noticeable yeah when you walk up to one of those you're not like wondering if it's a wide body damn that's a big bitch like that's that is a big well the heads are all the same size the heads always say it's the cabinet and playfield width is what we're talking about moving it through a doorway everyone's like is it gonna fit and it's like oh the head does yeah the same size it just means are going to be heavier usually like way heavier way heavier i think the interesting part was because these started in 93 92 was when all the pins shot way up like the production went way up like that's after adam's family and you see games like fishtails and you see like all those games like everyone's designs went through the roof like they started selling the crap out of pinball and that's also kind of when they started making the games have a lot of different mechs and and crazy stuff in the games and they were selling big units so they came up to the conclusion they're like let's make them bigger so we can put more stuff in them and we'll market it as a super pin so every designer who was employed at the time they got to or were forced to make one and pat lawler got to make two of them so he's the only designer at williams that got to make two but the first one was and i think we'll just get into and start talking about each one but the first one that came out was twilight zone designed by pat lawler it was the first super pin and it was the only one not to have the upgraded dcs sound system that they used in all the pins afterwards so you still get some of that like kind of crackly like it's not you notice like the sound design is great because Chris Granter did it, but the GOAT, the quality gets better in later Williams games, and it's the only one that doesn't have it. Maybe that's how he talked his way into getting a second Super Pen. It's quite a bargaining chip. Twilight Zone was the first game he designed after he broke the all-time single machine sales record held by 8Ball. Previously, with his game Addams Family, released in 1992, which sold 21,270 units, best-selling pen of all time, Twilight Zone ends up becoming the second highest selling game of Pat's career with 15,235 units. It was based on the Rod Serling sci-fi TV series from the 1960s and was the last of Pat's infamous four game hot streak that started with Whirlwind, then the next year Funhouse, then Addams Family, then Twilight Zone. Which like those four games in a row is nuts. Yeah, good run. It's also his most highly rated game on both Pinside and IPDB. It's actually the number one game of all time on the IPDB list. kind of makes me respect that list more than pin side i respect it way more than pin side but they're both inside they're both flawed because like inside's the cult of the new ipdb is like ancient yeah ancient so it's like if you combine them both you'd have like a good list it's super ancient i was talking to greg dunlap about it and he was saying that's like one of the first websites that was out there oh yeah it would make sense when you look at it it looks like it was develop midnight so awesome i love it i love every piece of it it's funny though that people haven't gone on and just spammed godzilla reviews on there because they could but they don't like and it's because i think most casual guys don't make it past pin side that kind of stops them talk about twilight zone like what do you guys like about it or dislike about it it's got my favorite shot in pinball on it the gumball shot i love hitting that outer loop that outer loop this up that noise yeah and it's so good man and it's got a cool little mech there with the gumball machine so that is kind of like it's a fun payout for that i just take the way the sound integration in that game is we ranked them all and twilight zone is definitely the highest for me because just the sound integration of the game is amazing the way that i don't know i like the magnetic upper play field yeah because everybody's like oh the magnets are screwing up this game well there really are magnets in that game that you know operate it so it kind of it lets people believe that magnets are ruling the world yeah it's kind of awesome you know like the multiball is somewhat you know points but you got to do all the modes yeah you know like it's it's pretty balanced scoring it's kind of like they took pat's success from adams and they actually made it work a lot better like it's a lot more balanced than adams family feels it's not just blowing through rooms on the mansion it's like you got to go through the door but you can get points other ways yeah trying to go around the door is not probably the easiest tournament strategy so it's like there's a lot of there's a little more nuance than adams i think it's excellent i mean i don't think you're really gonna fight you're gonna find certain people that don't like it just if they don't like pat lawler games because it is 100 of pat lawler game yeah but meaning that it's it's choppy like it's choppy and a stop and go and like it's no nascar you know yeah it just means it doesn't yeah it's like it's just like it's one of those games it plays like funhouse you know it's like stop hit a shot grabs the ball holds the ball moves it across like it is that's definitely true of twilight zone but very odd flipper placements angle shots like it feels claustrophobic like a lot of his playfields do yep it's four flippers upper playfield with the magna flips on it so is that technically a six flipper game then we giving it to him no i'm gonna say four yeah i would give it say yeah maybe six it's just kind of funny to have an upper play field with no actual physical flippers on it yeah and it's like if you play that thing right you're bouncing it up there you can stay up there for a while too yeah i don't know it's very satisfying when you make it through the hole too i don't like talking about it i'm regretting where i ranked it before we started recording like that came in too late yeah i've already threatened violence with this with that being said i'll give the wedgehead pinball podcast award for the best mechs and toys for the working gumball machine and clock ceramic power ball which we didn't even talk about awesome in the upper power magnetic play field so of the super pins we're going to give each one an award and twilight zone gets best toys and mechs and voted best amongst everybody that you pulled well we'll get to that later we'll get to that later not everybody i just want to talk creative not everybody hold on spoiler alert the next game that was released was indiana jones the pinball adventure this was designed by mark ritchie sold 12 716 units which makes it mark's second best-selling game only about a thousand units shy of his previous game fishtails at 13 640 units which was released the year before and is right during that big pinball upswing after adams family it's also his highest ranked game on both inside and ipdb so out of mark's whole career it's his highest ranked game strongly disagree with that personally same but we're talking super pins yeah we are talking okay i'll yeah i'll keep it focused on that um so what do you guys think about indiana jones i mean that was one of the first games that i wizard mode i did the wizard mode in when it was out like in i it was like probably like 95 or so like then i was playing it i think because you said it came out in 93 yeah yeah i used to wait for the bus here in portland to go down to psu and finish up my degree and it was at this place called coyotes they're the odies i know it's called coyotes like wiley coyote like and the woman who owned the place was an olympic snow skier oh and they would sell this texas toast that was 25 cents a piece how are you going to be an olympic skier and name the place coyotes and not something like you think she had skis and medals up in the place okay yeah you would get this texas toast which was like a piece the thickest piece of white bread think of like a tokyo sandwich or something like oh yeah yeah and she would grill it and it would be 25 cents and it was like when you were wow it was like that's where you would go and play pinball and eat texas toast and so you're just loaded up on toast playing indiana jones you're like the carbs and finish it out indiana jones what do you think about the gameplay you're like that toast man and that's what i mean it reminds Like I said, it was the first game I got the wizard mode on. Finished all modes in it, you know? It's definitely a mode-based game. It's got some really cool... Like, again, the mechs on this game are really cool. The idle lock is insane. That little spinning lock on the right side, you mean? Yeah, dude. Yeah, how it spits out, goes across the little cat. Oh, it's really cool. And the sound on this is also excellent. Again, Chris Granner. Path of the Dead, pretty sick. Or what are the... Sorry, I'm thinking of the... What's that upper playfield called on it? I'm thinking of Lord of the Rings as the shitty. It is a path. Path of Adventure, yeah. Okay, Path of Adventure, yeah. Lord of the Rings kind of did the same thing, but it's... Yeah, George Gomez. It's not movable. Yeah, George Gomez, that hack totally stole that. Hack. But it doesn't even move, so it's, like, really hackish. No, it's just... Lord of the Rings, garbage. Garbage game. Not a super pin. Not a super pin, that's why it sucks. Mediocre pin. No, I think Indy's fun. I gave it the award for Best World Under Glass and Theme Integration. And part of that, some of the mechs, like the Idle Lock, it's got the sculpted kind of mountains around it. So it looks like a little temple. It's got the planes. It's got the gun trigger. I don't know. The art looks like it. The sound looks like it. It feels like Indiana Jones when you play it. Like the whipping when you get the reels. I was about to say that. When you get the bonus multiplier, it cracks the whip. When you get all the lanes up top, it pretty does. You actually get the call-outs from the movies. Like you cheat Dr. Jones. Yeah. And you get like, I hate you. I hate you. Yeah. It's fun. I think like, I love Indiana Jones. I love the movie. So like that theme is like top, top, top, top tier. It's really, it's that theme. It's a big theme and it's executed well. I think a big part of that is why people like the game so much and why it's so valuable. Because for being like, they made 13,000 of them and it's still a really expensive game. I think it's overall the most expensive. It's probably the most expensive Ballywilli. Then by Twilight Zone is like right there. I think it's the most bleached out of all the cabinets. Yeah. That cabinet. That cabinet is all. To find one with the original good cabinet, good luck. Part of my reasoning, I'm not a big Indiana Jones fan, and part of that's because. The game or the. The game, the game. Okay. Talking about pinball, it's a pinball podcast. Okay. A lot of the time you see them on location. Gary Stern would tell you that theme matters, bro. It does. It does. and I like the movies but I'm not ecstatic about them but a lot of the ones I've seen on location are broken and that's a recurring theme a lot of super pins if you have you know less than excellent operators you see a lot of super pins hopefully we don't know anything about that no the you know the only operator in this room being the world's best operator yeah that's why it's kind of funny it's just one of those ones that it's like the first couple times I played it I'm like this is a thirteen thousand dollar pinball machine like it's garbage because the locks are disabled you know shit like that yeah like if if the stuff doesn't work like the path doesn't work if the flippers are too weak so you can't make the very steep ramps yep if you know like then it does lose it the mode hole start is notorious like it's so hard to get flippers strong enough to make the ramps but not bounce out of that bouncing out of that hole like i've seen all sorts of stuff stuck in the back of that hole yeah prevent it like little pieces of foam and stuff like that yeah there there a lot of like different ways to so it like it not to me the best shooting of the super pins but the theme integration is next level I really love the When you ripping those ramps though then it like It fun and I love the captive ball that goes up vertical You smack it, it goes boom, and then it comes back, and it hits the ball back at you. Like, that is fucking cool. It's got all the video modes, too, which you guys have covered. Yeah, and I think that those are all pretty good. They're all pretty good. I really like the Well of Souls. That was always my favorite part of that game. Yeah. Getting the six ball, multiball, or whatever it was. And then you could really just work it over because you get those drop targets down. And just boom, boom, boom, boom. Just collect maximum points. Yeah. It's a well-regarded game for a reason. Like, it's one of the best. I mean, this is what people think about when they think about 90s Ballywilliam games. So the game that followed it was Judge Dredd. It was designed by pinball Voldemort, John Trudeau. Nobody wants to talk about it. We'll talk about it in a future episode about this guy, or you can Google it yourselves in the meantime. It sold 6,990 units. It was his third best-selling game of all time after Bride of Pinbot and Creature from the Black Lagoon. Both good games. Yeah. Both very good games. And what do you guys think about Dread? I don't think too highly of it. It's confusing, man. That game is really confusing. Like, I think the way that they intended the lock to work on it, they disabled it. Like, only the prototypes work the way that the lock actually should. Oh, and the spinning disc? Yeah, they made a mod that you can buy for the Dead World because it's got this giant planet that's called the Dead World. It's got these big plastic spinning disc pieces that spin around it the whole time, and the game was supposed to lock balls, and those balls would be locked and spin around until you started the multiball. And in the final production version, that doesn't work. It spins, but it doesn't do anything. and they somebody made a mod the dead world mod brings that big central mech eight back into the game and it does make it more fun that's cool yeah like that part is cool there's all those loops up top which you know i've owned one and i've played it a million times i'm still not even really sure what they fucking do you know like like there's a little flipper up there and those those loops and it's just like and the way those drop targets work in front of the hole like in the hole is kind of off-centered but like it just it's goofy to me i think it lacks fun in in its like basic form this is what i think is a good example of why there's some people in the hobby in into pinball that hate wide bodies wide bodies for people that don't like them i think there's good and bad ones so it's not like i hate wide bodies or love them i think that some people refer to them as like they're bloated there's they're like they feel floatier because the ball has more lateral movement side to side because the play field's wider this game is a good example to me of like there's a lot of shots they don't necessarily feel fun he does try to change the lower third of the play field with the the center lane is actually the out lane and it goes around the left and there's a kickback and there's stuff in it but i don't think it's fun to play personally i don't think really a lot of people think it's very rated very highly of the super pins yep it's one that i've not played much and i'd like to like if you guys had one on the floor somewhere i regularly go had one i would try to play it more because i feel like i should give it more of a shot than i have but it just doesn't pull me in so i remember it being really dark too yeah like it's super dark super dark and like the theme of it like i don't really understand who dredge tread yeah he's a comic book character like and the thing is which i think we're going to talk about the best part of the whole game which is the art like the artwork of the game they went comic book style the artist is kevin o'connor who's been a pinball artist forever he did like the black knight games he's done a bunch of games and i think it's fucking unreal like from the back last to the play field the cabinet art is so sick it's like in hopper and in it's got this like crazy like like plastic like gold eagle topper yeah it looks super like cautious like yeah it's definitely a third right yeah like it's like it's like it's meant to look because judge dread is supposed to be like judge jury executioner like he's like a total fascist state and so it's just like the art package of it incredible like which is why i'm going to give the award for best art package to kevin o'connor for his art package on judge dread because especially that cabinet art where he's riding the motorcycle and the bullets are flying past him it's cool dude it's so good the art is We cannot talk about the final animation in it, though. Oh, yes. It is the best. It's like the grandma sitting on the porch. I got a rocking chair. Drive-by comes by. Then she pulls out a shotgun. Yeah, she goes, boom, boom, boom. And that gives you your match. That's the best animation maybe in any dot matrix game ever. I don't know about that. The other one to me is like it's either that one or the one I always come back to is the replay of the drumming fish in Fishtails. Dude, a fish planted drums that rule. It's so good. I love when we all just love that. We're all like, oh, yeah, it's got to be the fish. Stop it. Yeah, that's S tier. I really like the extra ball in Creature. Just the, like the. Yeah, that's a good one. Like claws just could like bring it. Creature has some cool animations and stuff. Dread was kind of an odd theme for them to go all in on a super pen. Just a comic theme. It didn't even have the movie out yet. I looked this up because I guess it was extremely popular in the 1990s. It had a really big resurgence. And the 90s were when comic book companies were printing a shitload of comic books because the first generation of the classic comic books were selling for crazy money. So this is the era where they started printing unique, like, foil covers and alternates. So comic book culture became really big in the 90s. Yeah. So when was Judge Dredd originally made? Like, is it like in the 70s or something like that? See, I didn't go that far. Like, this is a pinball podcast. It's a pinball podcast. It's like, I just know because I thought the same thing. I was like, what a weird theme. Does that make sense to the judges? I mean, they made a big budget movie. The Sly Stallone movie came out like a year or two after The Pen. Yes. Or was it maybe Judge Dredd? It was inspired by The Pen, obviously. Yeah, based off of the hit Pen Moments. You played The Pen, now see the movie. True, so true. The game after that was Star Trek The Next Generation. Oh, yeah. Designed by Steve Ritchie, the king, who if you want to know more about Steve or Mark, who we mentioned, you can listen to our second episode where we talk about the Ritchie brothers. It sold 11,728 units, which is big, very big for pinball companies. But it doesn't even crack his own top five best-selling games since he was basically the king of selling games. Dude, yeah. Steve's a fucking stud. No one does it better. But it is, however, it's his best ranked game on IPDB. Really? Yep. And it's his second best ranked game on Pinside. Ironically, on Pinside, it's second to his other later Star Trek game that he made for Stern. Oh, yeah. We usually call it Stern Trek. Yep. Interesting. Stern Trek is ranked higher than... Dude, if you look at the Pinside ratings, you'll just have an aneurysm. It's all recency bias. You guys, I don't know a lot about Pinside, and there's a reason, I think. Yeah. I think Stern Trek's a great game, though. it's not that it's bad i don't think it's his best it's like a game of all time dude it's like if you tuck next gen and trim the fat no it's like having to spider-man take that back it's like spider-man you put a bunch of you know started is like stickers on it's like it's like spider-man kind of genuinely trimmed down with a bad movie as a theme we talked about that in the steve ritchie mark ritchie episode where the criticisms against steve is that he makes very similar playfield choices a lot and some people hate that well that's not true with star trek next gen for star trek was the first time he did that layout yeah because that's the first time he does the hyperloop ramp right that's upper flipper repeat warp ramp warp ramp yeah because everyone calls it the warp ramp yeah that's that side ramp that you can loop over and over the card maneuver like there's a lot of the big kind of his hallmarks came from next gen it seems like the modern richie yeah i you know i kind of forgot about next gen until we put it on the floor at wedgehead and then it's like getting back at it again it's like it's fun and it's really good that was my experience with it too like i had played it when i first got into it when i first got into pinball not that long ago but a few years now it was considered to be one of like the big bargain like this is what you should buy if you're willing to work on games yourself because it can have problems with all the optos and stuff yeah but it was like by far the best bargain because when I got into the hobby a few years ago I think you could get them like three ish grand what three four no they were cheap are you serious they were cheap maybe it's Sioux Falls maybe Midwest prices Midwest made a lot of them and people it just had a bad reputation at the time and it's like since then they've definitely bounced back they're still cheap compared to like a Twilight Zone or Indiana Jones it is cheaper than those which I cannot believe it's it's every bit as it's knocking on the door of Twilight Zone for sure that's why and you're like it's yeah so I mean the reason why I like it so much is because it's fucking hard so fucking hard dude and that's what makes a game fun it's the hardest of the super pins yeah it's right like it's like it does a good job it's like it has those orbit shots that you really want to nail and orbit shots on a wide body are way harder to me because they're later on the flipper than an arrow and they have a little bit further to go those extra three inches sometimes it just exactly go all the way around like well it's got to go through the spinner on the on the left side too yeah it's like it's sick and then like it has the super mean he's used that in some other games but where he makes the top of the sling fatter and angled towards the outlanes yeah it's got some of the meanest outlane situation possible the slingshot shape is like not a triangle right like it's a trapezoid yeah it's got like it's got like a two inch section on the top of it the outlane yeah it's just amazing i saw him talk up in uh in seattle about it and somebody was like how come the outlanes are like the question like was of course 10 minutes long and it was like why are the outlanes so hard on star trek and basically he was like well you can get some nails and put them in the thing and that's how you could fix it like that was that was like he was just like fuck you like quit crying dumb question just play it like it was it was he was just like get some nails like that'll fix it yeah you can close off the outlay that game's sick i think the what what would you say are like the criticisms lobbied at it usually would be that it can it has all the problems with the opto so again bad operator if the game's filthy the opto seem to hang i think with the paddock or whatever it's called the where you go through the tunnel it can be a little bit exploited for all the video mode i hate because it's so exploitable yep because all you have to do you can choose it off the plunge if you want in standard settings we disabled that that you can choose it as one of your skill shots but still if you hit the ramp three times then it's lit at the right orbit and then if you memorize the path you can get two or three hundred mil at the easy way and get an extra ball and like i wish you could just disable the video mode at least in tournament play or something because it's just a lot of games you could disable the video mode that'd be a nice yeah hey you were the one that liked video but i mean i like the upload talk we've already covered i know but i would say that star trek to me i think most of the hate if people hate it is like you're either a home guy that doesn't know how to fix games and that game probably does take a little more tlc over time i mean generally that's another reason why we like having it at wedgehead because everyone always good luck yeah everyone just goes good luck keeping it running we're like yeah that we'll keep it running like because we care enough we're gonna make sure it works give us a challenge yeah but i think it's like i think it's just hard dude i think it's just like the fact that it's hard makes people dislike a game more or less because like even if it's less sensitive of the setup it's like it's fucking hard no matter how it's set up like even guys that put like silicone bands on it and stuff it's like it's still hard like like short of putting nails into the play field you're not yeah make it too much easier but i think the sounds i think the callouts i think the art like the light show it's another dwight sullivan coded game i think he gives you really good moments the cannons that move back and forth oh super cool it's funny because it's like richie took the opportunity to do a super pin and he's like i'm gonna just like put more of the shit I like into this game. It's not trying to reinvent the wheel. It just worked really well. I like that thing a lot. I love that game. I mean, we'll get to our rankings at the end, but it'll be high up for me. So I'll give the award for best rules and code with the only caveat being the video mode was exploitable but that was of the time But I think Dwight Sullivan the main software engineer on that game did a kick job because you can go for warps you can go for multiball or you can go for modes to get to Final Frontier All of those things are worth a lot of points if you do them right, so you have three truly viable strategies, and it just depends on how you want to play, and I love that. If you do modes, it doesn't pay to time out the modes either because you get the holodecks. Some people do. Some people do just to get to Final Frontier to make the run. Your Final Frontier is so much bigger if you have it. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I think it's coded very well with the exception of the video mode. I think it's the best coded of all the Super Pins, so that's why I'm giving that the award. Now we're going from a high point to a low point. This is a game we talked about on the podcast before. It's Popeye Saves the Earth through the pop spinball guys out in Boston Defended as their die on the hill game. So since we recorded that episode, or you guys recorded that episode, I wasn't on it, I went and played a Popeyes, and that game is every bit as shitty as the internet will lead you to believe. It's garbage, man. There's not much to redeem it. It's a horrible theme. It's a horrible layout. They fucking tried their best to do something unique with all the fucking plastic in there. It's like, goddamn, like enough plastic to fill a landfill, and that's the only place that game belongs. The postal carrier at Wedgehead is so pissed because we're actually getting physical hate mail about it. Yeah. Okay, so Popeye was designed by Barry Ousler, who's a great pinball designer, but also collaborated this time with Python Anghelo. I'd like to blame Python for how badly this game turned out because I know Barry can make good games. I was going to say, Barry has made some of my absolute favorite games of all time. Yeah. He does make Dracula. He made Bram Stoker's Dracula. so the guy knows what he's doing he did some cool shit it sold it only sold 4217 units and again this is still like in the time where they're selling big units so this is like this is bad so it's like really the first flop and it probably only sold the 4200 units because they were forcing distributors to buy it if they wanted a mortal kombat arcade cabinet which everybody wanted oh wow that's cool yeah so like they made them take them to get their allotments of mortal kombat games which they then sell and make one i should do that yeah it is a flex you should implement that model with pinball and be like if you want to play the new game that just came out you got to go play like five games of like a classic first no we got to be like you got to get a certain score on a class like you got to be like you got to play single option you could break 2k i like that people do whatever they want i just like them this is organ forcing popeyes on operators is the funniest shit possible it's very funny i mean i bet they just bought them and put them right in the warehouse that's what they supposedly a lot of them just got used for parts and stuff like it's interesting yeah because like you said it sold like shit even with that it was about half of judge dread which up to that point was by far the least well from what i have understood i've talked to old operators here in oregon and they said that twilight zone they couldn't get rid of all those like they were practically giving them away i think that they but there's a difference between the olden days which still happens somewhat but it's like the olden days the manufacturers would make the games they'd sell through distributors so distributors are like car dealerships and then operators would buy them so it's like the games that are made all they have to do is sell to their distributor and then distributor has a warehouse of games that they're selling to operators and now they sell a lot to home collectors as well but all the manufacturers trying to do is make them and then sell them to a distributor wholesale so that's what the numbers are referring to but i think what happened is it was coming off of adam's family It's Pat Lawler. So they made more than they probably should have in Twilight Zone. So then they were sitting around in the warehouse. That's, I think, that's kind of the story I've always heard. Is it like, yep. Because I've heard that too. I meant to ask that earlier, but we already talked about Twilight Zone so much at that point. Yeah, I definitely have heard that. I've heard it from two different people. Yeah. Kind of funny. You hear some old school stories about people getting new and boxed Twilight Zones for like 2K or something like back in the day. so yeah curtis out at a pinball portland pinball repair has his receipt still from when he got his yeah that's awesome yeah because i've seen that online just guys saying like you could buy a twilight zone new in box six years later kind of thing yeah they were just sitting i think they just they overproduced them they were trying to get ahead of the curve because they're like oh there's gonna be another adam's got another adams on her hand and it wasn't quite that wasn't quite what could be well it has become that it has become that absolutely that's why it's funny to look at some of them in retrospect it's just like movies man it's like some movies are big hits when they come out like jurassic park and then remain big hits and then there are other movies that are cult classics that sleepers it's like and that's what yeah very much so do we need to talk about this so popeye was just it sucks man i think we all think it sucks like yeah we already got an episode in the can yeah megabyte trees that have been wasted in the making of that Yeah, you can go back and listen to that and make up your own mind. I went back, like Alex said, we went out and played it, and it's worse than I remember. I will give the award for Popeye Saves the Earth as the only game that actually ruined somebody's career, because it was so bad. This was Python's last game at Williams. He had worked on a prototype that was never going to get released called the Pinball Circus, but Python was a big mainstay at Williams, and this was his way out, and then he goes over to Capcom, sinks that company. yeah he kind of like yeah that's kind of funny to think about we'll talk about more about python he deserves his own episode because he's a very fascinating character the next game was demolition man oh yeah designed by my man dennis nordman who needs his own episode because i'm a big dennis nordman guy it sold 7,019 units it was based on the fucking fantastic movie starring sylvester stallone wesley snipes to sandra bullock it was his second isoing design after whitewater the year before at 9,008 units, which is my favorite game of all time. And I think both the movie, which has now become a cult classic, a movie that I unequivocally love. Has become a cult classic? Yeah, in some people's minds, I guess. The movie is sick. I'm not taking this slander from y'all. I like that we have, yeah, we have him outnumbered for once. Normally you get into these conversations with Alan one-on-one. I don't know if anybody online is like, oh, cult classic. I think cult classic is so different for age. Like, you know, like, because I'm 50 years old. And how old are you? You're like 35. Yeah. And you are 16. Yeah. So it's like cult classic means, like, for me, like, it would never get cult classic. Like, because I remember when it came out, like, the movie came out, it was like, are you fucking kidding me about this movie? It's cool. It's funny, man. I've seen it a while back. I like Wesley Snipes. So, you know, it's cool. It's corny. i mean it's campy dude it's high camp it's action cheese i fucking love that shit action cheese like it's it's action cheese well regardless of the fact the pinball machine is fucking fun as shit the pinball machine has probably some of like the flowiest best feeling ramps in all the pinball like when you are nailing those they're so long because it's a wide body and they're like so swoopy because bally williams didn't ever they just let dennis nordman do whatever the fuck he wanted yeah and it's so sick it's also got a very cool little mech when it's actually working with that cryo claw yeah which ours worked yeah ours always works in that thing you get to like select whatever you kind of like prize pay out you want it's like you can get into a mode you can lock a ball with it you can just like yeah you just go you get basically you can go straight locks in the game or you can play the modes yeah for all the modes you can play the modes and which is both your strategies they both kind of pay the same and they both kind of pay the same and it has two wizard modes i didn't even realize that because there's the main multi balls which are through all the locks and then there's like the cryo prison multi balls at the final one i forget which one's the final multi balls and then it's like the multi the main multiball and then there's if you finish all the modes on the cryo claw that's a demolition time it's second wizard mode so it's a deep game it's fun it's pretty well balanced it's not 100 balanced but it's it's pretty well balanced and it's super fun it's super fun it's just one it's like when you could just turn the video and sound and everything off and just flipping that thing as a whitewood it would be a blast yeah the shots feel so good i think it gets dragged down by its theme which i think is a shame because i love the theme but i can't hear down that translate is the most remade translate out of any trend note the story of that though no okay so the story of that is anytime you're doing with licensors you have to get licensor approval and when you're doing with actors themselves they get other approvals so like i forget who what studio made demolition man say it's universal or whatever you have to get their license because it's their ip but then each actor owns their own likeness as their own ip so even if they're in the movie if you want to portray them that's not in something that they agree to beforehand like stills taken yeah for the ip you have to get their them to agree on it so what happens is the first couple wesley snipes like thought he looked too crazy and he didn't want to look like a bad guy even though he is a an insane psycho probably worried about getting cast he's the bad yeah and he wanted to make sure that he was just as big as stallone so then they had to make the three of them like equal size like him and sandy a good glimpse of like when people complain when a game comes out they're like oh why they should have done this and it's like dude the hoops they have to jump through yeah that's why games end up the way they never know what they have to really go through yeah like of course we all want to see every character on you know we all have shit we want to see and you know like there's a reason it doesn't happen i think all the back glasses should be left but i mean like i was just like leave your work alone let it be what it is like that's a different episode that we're gonna do which is like on alternate back glasses as part of like modding games i could get into that one but that that's there's a lot of meat on that because i I think everyone, whether you're for alternate backlashes or against them, everyone has strongly held opinions. What I was going to say is my biggest criticism of against Demoman would probably be Watch your mouth. The two captive balls or captive shots on the left side. The whole left side. The whole left side is kind of just a waste of space. No. Cryo Claws up there. Alan's like, no, no. You know why that's good, though? You know why that's good, though, is because when you're trying to fucking save a ball and you hit it into that left side you know you're in deep deep that's true so it's like it has it has a purpose the car crash even though it's a cool feature met doesn't do a whole lot but the other one the eyeball one rent a scam baby the eyeball one is one thematically appropriate and two you can get an extra ball through there okay yeah okay like and it'll start and explode lamps hurry ups on all the shots so it is worth points it's just about it's risk reward dude you became like a coward so you don't want to like i think it's a very fun use of like prime real estate on a pinball machine agree if you can i'm just saying that's my biggest score really well by not hitting the ball over there but you know like i just kind of turn off like my thinking that you to hit it over there there's there's reasons to shoot it over there yeah whether you're not you like it there are reasons i will say so ending up on demo man the award for best flow of all the super pins with unlimited combos i think it's the best shooting of all of them yeah didn't even talk about the upper hand upper uh oh that's what i was gonna say it's probably a big which you have to play with some people hate that you do but i love that every combo you make and this is a flow game where you want to hit shots in combo it doubles your combos yeah so Like, it gives you a totally different play experience, and it pays you for it. I don't like that, personally. Me neither, but I think... I'm not going to, like, hold it against the game. It's like they tried something different. It's thematic. It's whatever, but I don't like it. You know how they were kind of talking about how Popeye Saves the Earth was kind of like, oh, it drew people in because it looks different. Like, it's a boat and the thing. Like, I think those handles right there is another thing that people who don't know anything about pinball are like, what is this? And they want to go over and grab it like it's an exercise machine. You know, like, and they're in. It's like Tony Little Gazelle. They're into it. So it's like. I want to see a little muscle man with a long blonde ponytail, like, play one. All right. So now we're going to get to the final game, the final Bally Williams super pin road show, a.k.a. Funner House, the unofficial sequel to Fun House. This was also designed by Pat Lawler. Like I said at the beginning of the episode it was he was the only designer that got to due to it sold 6 units So remarkably less and seems to be generally regarded as a let down especially after the four games he did in a row like i mentioned before but what do you guys think about roadshow well like i always say it's no nascar so you know it's far from pat's best game but i don't like it i don't know for some reason it's one that i should play it more but i hate the theme i think it's what it's god awful looking like the two heads again that's a bad use of space to me i just i don't like it it feels congested on the upper left side and like that's where you got to shoot that's the only place you it feels like you're shooting and there's obviously upper flippers and stuff to shoot the two heads but overall i just don't like how it shoots i've never played it long enough to figure out the rules yeah i can see why operators don't put it on location much because i can't imagine it earns very well what do you think rose it does earn pretty well you know what that game some people like it it has the daily high score which yeah people love playing it because they're like i got my name on now all jersey jacks do that So it has that, and I think the game is good because it is gimmicky, and it's fun, and I think it's pretty funny. It kind of has the one drunk construction worker who's always being lazy and can't wait until it's Friday and it's time to party. It's got the casual racism that's in a lot of those. Yeah, that defines that era of games. I guess it does have that. But I do know that we have a guy that works with us, Anthony, and it's one of his favorite games. He loves that game. Rhodes has one. I have two. And he has two, and he's basically going to combine them into making one perfect one. Could you put four heads in it? We want to rebrand it as Rhodes Show, so it's branded after him. Yeah, that would be an alternate. That's an alternate backlash we're doing, yeah. But I think another thing that Rhodes Show has is you're trying to get across a map, which is really hard. You're trying to get across the country, which is really hard to do in one game. and you can continue your game on. And I think that's something that I think the Super Pins did. Yeah. One of the ones where you can continue your game. For one credit, you can add an extra ball. You can also earn a lot of extra balls in that game, like all Pat Lawler designs. It seems like once you learn how to earn an extra ball in a Pat Lawler game, he lets you do it every ball if you want to. I think the game's fun. But, you know, it kind of has that. So it's like continue on the adventure. Continue on the adventure. like add on instead of like i guess start all the way from the beginning again you know like it's like i want to see what this game does i want to see what all the animations are i think the rubber spear i mean come on yeah you can you can get souvenirs the souvenirs you always gotta buy the rubber sphere yeah and it allows you to trade them if you want you never trade them you always keep them because they go to your bonus and stuff i think that road show trade the rubber sphere the rubber sphere always buy the rubber sphere it's a great purchase i think that road shows really underrated. I do think it's a lot of fun. Like I said, my friend Anthony, it's one of his favorite games. I was just like you. If you would have asked me this 10 years ago, I would have said exactly like what you said, and then I would go out and play it with him, and he taught me how to play it, and what was going on, and I was like, okay, this game's fun. I do think it's fun. It's very unique. It's a Pat Lawler game. I do think it's fun. I don't think it's as good as maybe all the other Super Pins that we mentioned or the top tier, but it's definitely firmly right in the middle it's a fun game i like it maybe i'll come around on it if i actually put time on it ever we're gonna try to put it put it in wedgehead at some point no way i'm gonna withhold it on anthony he asked me every day he's there he's like hey did you bring roger did you bring roger he's doing it he's withholding it out of spite i know it's like he's like i love just kind of dangling it in front of him i was like i got two of them right next to each other i think the word that this deserves of all of it is most loaded game bang for your buck game it's got to be the most complicated mechanical game ever built i think like the two working heads you have two rudy heads which is already very complicated plus it's got the moving bulldozer they're honestly just copies of the other moving heads so it was like for them it was a no-brainer sure but it's just like that's a lot of stuff to just add in parts and manufacture and just like the extra plunger with all the extra stuff again taken from funhouse uh it's got the earthquake it's got the shaker motor in it it's just like they're so the first game with the shaker motor no no or yeah or shaker another pat lawler game yeah which makes sense theme wise it's just loaded man it's just loaded i mean all these super pins are loaded twilight zone is probably the second most loaded game of all time that's a big part of why this like these games are so iconic i think and it's always kind of like the gold standard in like every like we did that boutique episode and a lot of boutique companies when they start up they think they're going to be like the bally williams super pin equivalent jersey jack that's what they want it to be yeah they came out with wide bodies they're like we're going to load them and it's like they couldn't do it they almost went out of business trying to do that they had to go get more investor money or whatever yeah and it's like the pinball brothers with a or highway whatever yeah alien it's like everybody wants to do this and it's hard to do right and even bally williams watching their numbers kind of drop off over the run of these games it's like they could see this wasn't equitable they quit doing it yeah so it's it's kind of interesting it's like this like little golden era of games yeah it only lasted about a year you know yeah year and a half it was an interesting experiment we got a lot of cool games out of it definitely well they're still trying to come up with new mechs that are going to keep players interested look at that yeah you know like yeah with uh the way that it stages balls on out of ramps you know like i think they're they're foo fighters kind of had some stuff in it that was never been done before i think they're always trying to come up with new stuff like i don't think it's necessarily as much like motors and you know like like visual kind of yippee-yoh kind of i think yeah i mean every pin is trying to give you that they just these games used to give you multiple gimmicks in the same game and now it's like now it's like you have you have one yeah right like it they they do feel three thousand dollars more to get a preview to get a second you get a two small mech yeah yeah yeah that's that's the bally williams super pin era a very interesting time in pinball it's sort of like during the big resurgence and boom in the early 90s then they decide to kind of double down and make these wide body pins i think it's very interesting that every designer working there got to make one yeah so you get to see how every designer that was working there what their wide body super pin would be yeah it makes you really glad that Barry Oursler didn't have more budget on his other games or just didn't have to work with python on them but so i'm gonna go through to end the episode were they making other games besides yeah and said they made other games in between but i'm gonna go through and we're gonna give each of our rankings and i also reached out to our previous guests on the podcast and i wanted everyone to rank their super pins on their seven of them and i want everyone to rank them from best to worst so i'm going to read everyone's list so that every listener out there can get a an idea look into our minds of like what we like and what we don't like okay because they they do vary quite a bit and i'll start with mine my rankings are demolition man number one which is obvious controversial controversial i'd say but it's the one i like the most i think it's the best flowing game like i said i also like the theme and i just think demolition man rips like i just think it's so much fucking fun to play number two star trek Next Generation. Again, I love how brutal it is. I love how hard it is. I love Steve Ritchie. That's why we did the whole episode on him. Number three, Twilight Zone. One of Pat Lawler's best games. I agree with the consensus that if it's not his best game, you're really splitting hairs as far as like maybe like Funhouse a little bit better, maybe like Adam Sandler, but it's epic. Number four, I put the other one. I put Roadshow at number four on my list, which I think is high for most people's list number five i put indiana jones i love the theme i don't think it's the most fun to shoot which is the only thing that holds it back because i do think theme integration is really good number six i put dread i don't think that game's very good i think six and seven are both bad and popeye at seven i think it's like one of the worst games i've ever played even after being told that it's not i i still i don't like it all right so alex what's your list I gotta think about it for a second I would probably do next gen at number one right now anyway Twilight Zone would be those are kind of a toss-up they're both very iconic games to me they're both like classics for a reason you just gave me a different list I know that's we started that's how I'm thinking I'm like as we talked about I kind of like her changing um after that probably Demoman then Indiana Jones then I guess Roadshow just because I feel like I don't know it well enough than dread than popeye okay and that like popeye yeah man like the list you gave me right before we started was demo man star trek twilight zone indie dread roadshow popeye i thought about demo man a little more and i think i don't want to gas it up too much because i see how it's affecting your ego over there alan i mean here's the thing is what's what's interesting is about the pins if you look at the pin side list demo man is the second lowest right above part of why like my reaction when we did the list the first time i was looking at that and i'm like fuck that Like, it's so good, but I'm like, Twilight Zone and Next Gen, that's hard for me. I do like Demo Man a lot. Okay, so what's your final list? Sorry. I don't know, man. You're going to ask me? I'm going to give you a third different list. Yeah, okay. Okay, going on. All right. All right, Rhodes-y. Mine is definitely Twilight Zone, Star Trek Next Generation. I'm going to go Indiana Jones, and then I'm going to go Demolition Man, Roadshow, Judge Dredd. I think that's kind of like general consensus or more close to the general consensus of the normal guy. You're just a regular old guy. Just an ordinary dude. All right. So I got Zoe's list. As listeners remember Zoe Vrabel. She was on the Howdy Partner episode. Good friend of the show. Her number one was Twilight Zone. Her number two was Demolition Man. Her number three was Roadshow. Four, Indiana Jones. Five, Star Trek Next Gen. Six, Judge Dredd. Seven, Popeye. So I think the big surprise is that Star Trek drops out of the top three. Yeah. And that roadshow makes the top three. Yeah. Greg Dunlap, who we talked about on the episode interviewing about a pinball programmer, his list is number one, Twilight Zone. Number two, Demolition Man. Number three, Star Trek. Number four, Indie. Number five, Roadshow. Number six, Dread. Number seven, Popeye. I mean, not surprising here. All right, then I'll get to the two guys that came on this podcast to defend Popeye. I'll get to their list. I'll start with Ty Ueda of Triple Knock and Ball. And his number one is Star Trek Next Gen. Number two, Twilight Zone. Number three, Demolition Man. Number four, Indiana Jones. Number five, Popeye. Number six, Roadshow. Number seven, Dread. So he didn't go crazy. Yeah, he knew what to push there. Yeah, so I think it was measured. I was expecting to see it top three or four, but he puts it at number five. And finally, Daniel Radin, who operates as Our Lady of Pinball and is the other half of Pops Pinball in Boston. He ranks them as number one, Twilight Zone, number two, Star Trek, number three, Popeye, number four, Indy, number five, Roadshow, number six, Dread, number seven, Demoman. He puts it dead last. Yeah, he's just like spite ranking it for you. No one in the world genuinely believes Popeye is better than those other four games. Well, Daniel does. No. That's what some people do. I think in his heart of hearts, he knows what he's doing. Send all the hate mail. I'll give Alex's home address. I'm kidding. But anyway, this has been the Super Pin episode of the Wedget Pinball Podcast. I think we had a nice long talk about super pins. Four super pins, two okay-ish pin, one that's technically a pinball machine. Yeah, I guess that's fair. Until next time, go out, find some super pins on location, play them, and then you can let us know either on our Instagram, following us at at WedgeheadPDX, or sending us an email at WedgeheadInfo at gmail.com. Until the next time, good luck. 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