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Ep 144: Keith's Revenge

LoserKid Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·50m 22s·analyzed·Aug 28, 2024
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.035

TL;DR

Keith Elwin unveils Jaws the Revenge 8-bit mode: Nintendo-inspired shark revenge gameplay with upcoming boss fight.

Summary

Keith Elwin discusses the newly released 'Jaws the Revenge' 8-bit mode for Stern's Jaws pinball, explaining its origins in his desire for quicker-playing rule sets inspired by classic Nintendo games like Contra 3 and Mike Tyson's Punch-Out. The mode features a standalone shark-themed challenge with multiple gameplay stages, multiplayer support, and upcoming features like the 'Shark is Broken' topper mode and a Quint boss fight. Elwin details the mode's mechanics, difficulty tuning, and integration with the main game.

Key Claims

  • Jaws the Revenge mode was inspired by Keith Elwin's ADHD toward pinball and desire to play quick games, particularly influenced by childhood experiences with Contra 3 and Mike Tyson's Punch-Out

    high confidence · Keith Elwin directly states the genesis of the mode and its design philosophy during the interview

  • The mode was originally planned to release closer to Jaws launch but was significantly delayed; the team reduced shark teeth costs across the board to compensate for the delay

    high confidence · Keith explicitly mentions the mode 'took way longer to come out than we'd hoped' and details the compensation decision

  • Jaws is the first shark-themed pinball machine and one of very few water-themed pinball games ever made

    high confidence · Keith states directly: 'I can't think of any other shark-related pinball machine' and emphasizes this as a primary appeal of the theme

  • The 8-bit mode implementation was backwards from typical development: assets came first, requiring 8-bit UI, animations, and backgrounds before rules could be built

    high confidence · Keith explains: 'Normally the way we do it is like we'll implement the rules and we'll add the assets later. Well, this was backwards'

  • Quint boss fight is not yet implemented but will be added in an upcoming release; difficulty will be dialed down once Quint is added

    high confidence · Keith confirms: 'Quint will be the final boss. It's not in yet. He should be in soon.'

  • Elizabeth Gieske designed 'The Shark is Broken' topper mode, inspired by the real production troubles during Jaws filming; a bug was intentionally kept in the design

    high confidence · Keith describes Gieske's creative process and acknowledges finding out on stream that a glitchy effect was actually an accidental bug she retained

  • The mode supports one-handed play with 5X scoring multiplier when action button is held; both flippers must not be pressed simultaneously or player tilts

    high confidence · Keith provides detailed mechanics explanation of one-handed mode activation and flipper detection

Notable Quotes

  • “This was born out of my ADHD towards pinball... Sometimes I just want to play a really quick game. Which is why I have so many older games in my collection.”

    Keith Elwin @ early in interview — Core explanation for the design philosophy behind Jaws the Revenge mode

  • “Yeah, I have this idea. I'm going to play as the shark, and it's going to be goofy and stupid, and it's going to be action button based. So I just wanted something to be total opposite of the main play – lighthearted, dumb, and you're not doing stuff you would normally do in a pinball machine.”

    Keith Elwin @ mid-interview — Articulates the deliberate contrast between the side mode and main Jaws gameplay

  • “Well, there's not much you can draw because we're in the ocean. It works.”

    Keith Elwin @ discussing artwork — Shows how creative constraint shaped the final aesthetic of the game

  • “Yeah, we just spent a boatload of time making this 8-bit mode. Yeah. If you guys haven't noticed, there hasn't been many updates lately, and that's why.”

    Keith Elwin @ discussing development timeline — Explains why main game updates have slowed—all effort went into the 8-bit mode

  • “Up till two weeks ago it was awful. So you can ask anyone who played the beta... Yeah. And even like a week, up to a week before the stream, before we got, you know, all the rules in – like the multi-ball progression stuff, the little bonus game in there, and everything – yeah, it was very just, 'Oh, this is all I do forever.'”

    Keith Elwin @ discussing rushed final development — Reveals last-minute nature of the release and iterative development under time pressure

  • “I think even now, I think the match you'd get to is stage seven without reaching 10,000 bounty. So when Quint does get in the game, you know, that's where you'll be at.”

    Keith Elwin @ discussing boss difficulty — Indicates intentional difficulty tuning and future balancing plans

  • “Bounty hunters are coming after you.' So we enter this stage where it's a showdown versus the bounty hunter... you're just, you know, working down their health until you can finally destroy them.”

Entities

Keith ElwinpersonJaws the RevengeproductJawsgameStern PinballcompanyElizabeth GieskepersonMichael BernardpersonGeorge GomezpersonJerry Thompson

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Jaws the Revenge mode released via livestream event with community participation and real-time developer commentary

    medium · Multiple references to 'the stream' where mode was revealed; Keith learning about design decisions during broadcast suggests live audience engagement strategy

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Strong positive reception from podcast hosts and content creators for Jaws the Revenge mode; Josh Roop endorses as essential play experience

    high · Josh: 'If you don't own a Jaws, get out there and play it... It's all I'm playing on Jaws right now is this mode. It's insanely cool.'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Elite competitive players (Karl D'Angelo) rapidly exhausting challenge mode content, requesting additional difficulty/complexity features

    high · Keith notes D'Angelo already reached high stages before official release; D'Angelo messaging requests for additional Pin Quest-style challenges

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Josh Roop notes contrast between dense artwork (Deadpool, Godzilla by Jeremy Packer) and restrained ocean aesthetic (Michael Bernard on Jaws)

    medium · Josh praises Bernard's ability to 'fill the space' without being 'busy' or 'barren'; Keith confirms intentional design conversations about ocean theme constraints

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Keith Elwin intentionally designing alternative rule sets as standalone modes on existing machines to accommodate different play styles and time commitments

    high · Keith states concept originated during Godzilla development; specifically designed Jaws the Revenge as opposite of main game (action-button based vs traditional pinball)

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.151

0:00
thanks for tuning into loser kid pinball podcast i am josh roop with me my co-captain as always scott larson and we've done this already once or twice did i say it was episode 144 uh you did now so that's great perfect scott we have a special guest on today that's going to talk about his most recent game and uh about the new code that just dropped if you're going to buy this game, where are you going to get it? I'll contact Zach and Nicole Mini at Flippin' Out Pinball. They can definitely get you hooked up with the jaws of your choice and see what they have. I know I personally just ordered a black and white Godzilla that I'm putting at my friend's house, and so I'm really looking forward to seeing that in person. So if you want to get your pinball needs, just go ahead and contact Zach and Nicole Mini at Flippin' Out Pinball. Awesome.
0:51
Well, we have the legendary Keith Elwin on with us today, and you've dropped quite the juicy little mode on this Jaws game called Jaws the Revenge. Where did this even come from? This is pretty epic, in my opinion. I love 8-bit. I love the nostalgia, so this is right in my wheelhouse. Whoa, where to start?
1:13
This was born out of my ADHD towards pinball. As you can see, I love older games yeah uh i think they're you know they're great for you know playing with people you know playing a quick game um and so when i was making godzilla i was like man this i love godzilla but i don't always have like a half an hour or 20 minutes to dedicate to playing a game sometimes i just want to play a really quick game which is why i have you know so many older games in my collection so it was kind of born out of that where i just like you know it'd be fun just to have an existing play field with a totally different rule set, a much simplified rule set.
2:00

  • Michael Bernard's artwork on Jaws was designed to balance fullness with restraint, avoiding the packed aesthetic of Deadpool or the barren feel of a typical ocean theme

    high confidence · Keith discusses design conversations with Michael Bernard about ocean aesthetic constraints and solutions

  • The mode was released as a livestream event with community engagement; Keith was unaware of certain design decisions until they were revealed during the stream

    high confidence · Keith mentions learning about Elizabeth Gieske's bug-to-feature decision 'on the stream' and references George Gomez's promotional video

  • Jaws was chosen from multiple licensing options presented to Keith; he initially worried about the dark, gritty tone but grew confident as he studied the film

    high confidence · Keith states: 'I was given a couple choices and I chose Jaws' and explains his initial concerns about theme suitability

    • Keith Elwin @ explaining mode mechanics — Details the progression system and gameplay loop of the central challenge

  • “Yeah, of course. Yeah. Don't worry. It'll be in. He's like, 'I'm bored. I've already beat the main game multiple times, and now I've beat the side mode. I need you to put more in.'”

    Keith Elwin @ discussing competitive player feedback — References competitive player Karl D'Angelo driving continued content requests

  • “You got there already? I thought I made it hard enough that you know mortals wouldn't be able to easily get there.”

    Keith Elwin @ discussing player skill — Humorous acknowledgment that elite players quickly exhaust content difficulty

  • “If you don't own a Jaws, get out there and play it at an arcade. Just get linked up with it because this is a really, really fun mode. It's all I'm playing on Jaws right now is this mode. It's insanely cool.”

    Josh Roop (host) @ closing assessment — Strong endorsement from podcast host indicating mode quality and replayability

    • person
    Josh Roopperson
    Scott Larsonperson
    Loser Kid Pinball Podcastorganization
    Flippin' Out Pinballcompany
    Godzillagame
    James Bond 007 60th Anniversarygame
    Contra 3product
    Mike Tyson's Punch-Outproduct
    Konamicompany
    Circuit Citycompany
    Karl D'Angeloperson
    The Shark is Brokenproduct
  • $

    market_signal: Shark teeth currency system adjusted: 10 teeth for multiplayer Jaws the Revenge vs 20 for video mode; reduced across board to compensate for delay

    high · Keith explains compensation for late launch: 'we don't want to frustrate people who spent all their shark teeth playing the video mode'

  • ?

    community_signal: Elizabeth Gieske intentionally incorporated accidental bug into 'Shark is Broken' mode as design element, showing creative problem-solving in constrained timeline

    high · Hosts discover on-stream that glitchy flipper effect was unintentional bug Gieske retained; represents pragmatic design approach under time pressure

  • ?

    product_strategy: Jaws the Revenge mode significantly delayed from planned launch; released much later than anticipated, justifying shark teeth cost reduction

    high · Keith: 'the mode took way longer to come out than we'd hoped... we'd hope to have this pretty close to launch'; team reduced shark teeth costs to compensate

  • ?

    product_strategy: Jaws the Revenge 8-bit mode released as major code update addressing Keith Elwin's desire for quicker-play alternative rule sets on existing playfield

    high · Keith explains mode concept, mechanics, and development timeline; mode now live for community play

  • ?

    product_strategy: Quint boss fight confirmed as upcoming addition to Jaws the Revenge mode; difficulty will be rebalanced downward once boss implemented

    high · Keith confirms 'Quint will be the final boss. It's not in yet. He should be in soon'; explains intentionally high current difficulty will be 'dial[ed] down a little bit'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Unconventional development order (assets-first instead of rules-first) created significant mid-development problems requiring substantial 11th-hour fixes

    high · Keith explains backwards workflow required building 8-bit UI, animations, backgrounds before rules; notes mode was 'awful' until two weeks before release; took week before stream to finish rules

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Keith Elwin selected Jaws from multiple licensing options presented by Stern; theme choice driven by novelty (first shark pinball) rather than existing IP saturation

    high · Keith: 'I was given a couple choices and I chose Jaws'; 'There's very few water-themed games... I can't think of any other shark-related pinball machine'

    • So that was an idea I had towards the end of Godzilla. And then when we were talking about doing Jaws, I was like, oh, I want to make a simple rule set. We're probably not going to get any assets, so this will be perfect. And then Jody's like, here, and he dumps all these assets on me. So I'm like, okay, so I've got to make a lot of modes to use up all these assets. So, you know, I kind of just, all right, whatever, you know, I'll make a simpler game later. And then when, you know, Bond 60 actually kind of came out right after I started Jaws. And, you know, the response was like, oh, this is great. I mean, I could play a game in 10 minutes. I had a lot of fun. So then I just got thinking, what if I just make an entirely different rule set on the same, you know, based on the same play field, using different assets, you know, just its own thing. And that's how it was born. Nice. Now, did you grow up, so I grew up playing Nintendo, and this feels like a classic Nintendo Entertainment System game. Is that kind of what you're going for here? Yeah. I mean, I used to, there was a Circuit City down the street from where I grew up, and I used to ride my bike down there, and they had a Mike Tyson's Punch-Out, On display modes, you can play. It was like two and a half minutes or something. You can play it. I would go down there every day, hang out there, play that. Finally bought my own Nintendo.
    3:26
    Yeah, I've had pretty much every Nintendo product since. But yeah, it was definitely inspired by my childhood.
    3:34
    Nice. I will say it seems like with Mike Tyson's Punch-Out, when I first saw this mode, it totally reminded me, at least the vibe, of the training. You know, when he's going from the circuit and he's, like, running.
    3:49
    Yeah. One of my favorite games was Contra 3. So I pretty much just took that intro and rewrote it for Sharks. Nice.
    3:59
    That is awesome. Yeah. If you're a Contra 3 fan, you probably recognize the, let's attack aggressively. That's straight from Contra. Okay. Is there a way of doing the up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A code? Because that would be awesome if you could get 30 guys in there. Yeah. Infinite power up. You never lose health. You just get to go right through the game. God mode. Yeah. Oh, my goodness. I don't know if you can confirm or deny, but the Invincibility song reminds me of Rally X from Atari. Is that where that came from, or is that different music? You know, I have no idea. I say, hey, Jerry Thompson, I need some Power Up things, and he sent me a few different things that he bought, and I was like, this one.
    4:44
    Yes. Yeah, I don't know exactly where it came from, but it sounded – it had a very, I thought, very Mario vibe. Yes. It's kind of what I went with. It's kind of what I was looking for. Yeah, and it sounds great. It sounds perfect because it's like you're just intensely in this game, and all of a sudden it's like, boom, you know you've leveled up and you've got some power now. Yeah, we've got all the RGBs, like, you know, cycling rainbow colors, and it's like, yeah, this song's perfect. Yeah. well i've got i've got to ask too so i was listening to triple drain a couple days ago and joel asked a question on there i figured well i'll ask you and see if you can you can answer this but how did these concepts get green lit like in other words these games don't have modes like these so what was the thing that like convinced the higher-ups say yeah we're willing to invest in a project on this oh you just i mean there was no convincing i just hey i had this cool idea um so my pitch was john's is you know it's a very dark game it's a very serious game obviously has little sprinkler elements of humor with you know quint singing dancing being drunk whatever but all in all it's a very serious game and i remember early in development um elizabeth was like man this game's so dark can't you know can't the swimmers ever win and i was like well no because we can't modify the assets to make that happen so that's kind when I got the idea. It's like, well, you know, if we make our own, you know, little 8-bit things, we can do whatever we want because, you know, they don't look like anything. So, you know, we're not using anyone's property to do anything else. And so that's kind of why it's its own little standalone mode and not built into the game. But that's how that started. And like I said, I pitched that early on and then when the game was released, I think George made a video saying, you know, turn the tides and play as the shark. At the time, I had no idea what we were doing.
    6:44
    That's how last minute this thing was all cobbled together. I was like, yeah, I have this idea. I'm going to play as the shark, and it's going to be goofy and stupid, and it's going to be action button based. So I just wanted something to be total opposite of the main play where lighthearted, dumb, and you're not doing stuff you would normally do in a pinball machine, which is constantly having to hit the action button while juggling multiple balls.
    7:12
    Oh, I love there's a purpose to hitting the action button. It just made me chuckle. I'm playing this and I'm like, Tildas is going to hate this mode. Yeah, that's what I was just wondering. What's Jeff going to say? Yeah, yeah. I think he's boycotting it.
    7:29
    You're going to have an action button mode champion or something like that now? Those chomps, yeah. I think he's just going to wear a strap on a hand to his belly button so it just goes up and down, just hits it all the time.
    7:44
    It is fun to trap up and use your chin or belly or whatever. Yeah. Well, I love it because my son loves this game. We're never getting rid of Jaws. It's his favorite. He's now into sharks. He wears sharks something every day to school. It is what it is. And so the other day when this code came out, I'm like, buddy, you hit the action button. So I guess I was kind of cheating. I don't know. So I'm playing the game, and he's chomping. He's like, yeah. He was way into it. He's just – these people. That's a team-up mode, Josh. Team-up. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. He was giddy. Yeah, that's definitely a team-up mode. I know Josh – I mean, Jack and Kyle were joking about that on the stream. It's like, you hit the action button for me. It's kind of like a co-op. All you do is chomp, and I'll swim to different beaches. How's that? Yep. Actually, this is a really good way, though. There's a lot of games, as you said, there's a lot of your games that tend to be a little longer playing. And basically repurposing the existing game that you have so you can have like a party mode or a challenge mode or things like that that you can do with four buddies really quickly. It's like, hey, in some ways you do like a speed run or a competition or who can get the most points in two minutes or whatever, like unlimited balls, something like that. And so it seems like a smart way to transition toward the next phase of pinball because a lot of us have run out of space in our downstairs.
    9:10
    And, you know, so if we have different ways of playing the games and that's actually a great option. And you guys already started that with, you know, the you can jump to, you know, jump to a mode or, you know, the escape from Nublar, you know, things like that. And so this is a great way of continuing expanding the asset that you already have. yeah yeah this is i i wanted to gear this towards multiplayer so uh you know the mode costs shark teeth to play but only player one gets charged so if you want to play with your buddies that they don't even need to log in they can you know they can join a four-player game with just you know as long as one of you is logged on and charged teeth the rest you know is free well it's nice too because it's it costs less teeth too it's only 10 teeth versus 20 yeah yeah um And so if this mode took way longer to come out than we'd hoped, we'd hope to have this pretty close to launch.
    10:07
    So kind of make up for that, we decided to just reduce across the board the number of shark teeth. We don't want to frustrate people who spent all their shark teeth playing the video mode because that was all they had. And so that was a decision we made. They had tons of problems with the shark during the movie, but in addition to it, they actually had an earlier jump scare.
    10:32
    And when they were testing the video in audiences, they actually found that when he jumps out of the ocean to get the chum that he's putting in, it actually became less of an impact when they had the earlier one. and so they took that out but it's it it's an interesting thing about you know building a scary movie it's like you have to you have to time it so it can't just everything's a jump scare yeah yeah like in jaws 2 the entire time you're following the shark yeah and well i mean i actually think it's a solid movie but it's just more online what we expect from a you know action monster movie rather than jaws 1 which i think is more of the you know buddy intense Bond movie for its time, which was a great movie for its time, for sure.
    11:28
    I think if he made that today, probably people wouldn't have the patience for it. No. More like Jaws 2, which is kind of just action, action, action. You're seeing the shark. That's probably more of a modern movie. I actually liked Jaws 2 even more than Jaws 1 just because it was a little different. Also, it was him convincing that, hey, there is another one out there. And people were just kind of blowing them off. So that was an interesting tidbit for the movie. And, of course, you have kids in danger. So, you know, I think a few kids got eaten. And helicopters got eaten. I mean, come on.
    12:06
    I just knew I had to do something with that scene. So, oh, man, that was just so epic. Does the shark bite the cable at all in your game?
    12:17
    We have the assets. So we still have three more modules coming. Okay. For sure, you'll see everything you're expecting to see. That includes biting cables slapping widows you know everything that you think should be in the game will be in the game What about the terrible underwater scene when you know Jaws comes and breaks through the glass
    12:44
    I can't remember which one that was. You're just like, really? Jaws 3, yeah. We took all the Jaws 3 assets and threw them into our little kind of, you know, the challenge modes. It's not the challenge modes, but when you replay a mode, we threw them in there just to use them. I was going to say, I've seen it, but yeah, you have to complete all the modes once, and then when you go back through, you see them again. Yeah, I had no other use for those other than, you know, hey, check it out. Here's some assets.
    13:14
    So I'm going to ask the question again because I'm assuming because this is saying take two. So I'm just going to ask the question. Okay. Keith, you guys revealed a new mode today called the shark is broken. Where did this mode come from? where did it come from? Is it exclusive just to the topper or is this going to be added to the game later as well? It is exclusive to the topper. It's its own standalone challenge mode.
    13:37
    And I put Elizabeth Gieske in charge of this mode and one of her favorite things about reading up about Jaws and the lore of Jaws is all the trouble they had filming this. And so her idea was like, hey, wouldn't it be cool if instead of being in the movie or being the shark, that here's this third take. You're on the movie set. You're trying to get this thing to work. And her imagination just kind of ran from there. And so you'll see they're trying to record, but it's just a black screen with static until they get the shark moving, and then all of a sudden the assets start working. So yeah, it's kind of a brilliant take on a different view that I don't think has been done before. No, I agree. It's way cool. And I love how when she's getting these little glitches, as you guys were revealing in the stream today, it was like, oh, I ran across this bug, so I decided to put it in this mode. I just found that out on the stream. I almost complimented her. It's a really good glitchy effect you put there. She's like, oh, thanks. And then on the stream, she's like, yeah, that was an actual bug, but I liked it so much I just kept it in there.
    14:39
    It's like the pop bumper flipping the mini flipper. It's like, yeah, I'll throw that in there as well. That really messes with your mind. It's like, wait, what? I didn't – wait, I can't do this. What? Yeah.
    14:50
    People try to time it out and everything. How do I use this to my advantage? Yeah. OK. Speaking of the the Jaws, the little mechanical thing, you know, at Universal Studios when, you know, back in the 80s, they have the ride where you go through and Jaws comes out of the water.
    15:06
    If you remember back in the day. So Jason Bateman, if you know the actor, he was on Silver Spoons and they filmed on that lot and they actually had to go talk to him because there's like, hey, when you guys are on break, you and Ricky Schroeder go down and you're like playing in the pond. With the shark coming out and it kind of ruins the ride for people because they're seeing two kids just swimming around and the shark jumps up and like, oh, OK. Yeah, I remember the original iteration of that ride. They called him Carrot Tooth because he had such goofy teeth. Yeah, there's actually a Columbo episode, too, where they film there. Yeah, that's awesome. OK, one thing I was noticing in the stream is there's a one handed mode. So is this just activated when you hold the center button, or do you have to, like, start from the beginning? Yeah, when you press start, if you hold down the action button, you enter the one-handed mode, and I believe it's 5X scoring. And in order to flip, you have to be holding down the action button. So right flipper or left flipper, if it senses both flippers, you just tilt out. Ah. Oh, so you always have to. So, okay, so you can't really swap unless you're doing the whole Indiana Jones idle swap thing. You can't put your gut on the action button and use both flippers. It'll sense that.
    16:28
    So long as you're not holding the center button. Because there was, like, multiballs you went into as well. Well, once you get the shark working, which means it brings it up to 100%, then, yeah, it restores power to both flippers and you play as normal. And then once that multiball lands, you enter back and the shark is broken again. and then you've got to do the repairs. That's the percentage you see on there as you're making shots until you get to 100 again. Are you also going to have a mode where you can't trap up, where if you hold the flipper it just flips and then goes all the way back down? No, but I told her she should do a mode where you have to use the action button to flip the upper flippers. Oh.
    17:03
    So will you get to the shark is broken through the startup menu, or will you encounter in the game with the topper? No, it's strictly a challenge mode. Um, so you enter the, to the menu. If you have the topper connected, it'll, it'll show up. If you don't have the topper connected, you won't say anything. So, um, don't have to be online or anything. It just has to have a topper connected.
    17:26
    Gotcha. Okay, cool. okay when when jaws was was pitched so here's the question i know there's lots of ways that themes come about were you in a meeting where they said these are the potential licenses and you said i want jaws or did you come to them and say i really want to do jaws um i was given a couple choices and i chose jaws okay and honestly i was a little worried because i I wasn't sure how well it would work as a theme because, like I said, it is so dark. It is so kind of gritty, and it's more of a buddy movie than it is like an action movie. But the more I studied it, the more I was like, you know, there's a game here. And so I threw my hat in the ring and said, yeah, I raised my hand for this one, and the rest is history. hand so when you're choosing a game like what uh i guess what elements go into you selecting to say yes i think this can be a pinball machine well in this case that the really appealing thing is this theme has never been done and there's very few water themed games there's very few you know shark games you know it sounds stupid to say that i can't think of any other shark related pinball machine so that was you know a huge thing for me it's like you know i you know i don't always want to do something it's already been done a hundred times it's nice to take a fresh take on a fresh license uh that was the number one thing and then of course we'll just like well what next do we make around this and you know we just talked about i kind of wanted you know the playfields notion that's kind of a given i want to have a shark under it and then the boat on top of it And that's how the whole design started. Well, and credit to Michael Bernard. I mean, the artwork on this is amazing. Like, it's not, like, it's not busy, but it still fills the space while filling. Like, that it is full. You know what I'm saying? I mean, looking at, like, Deadpool and looking at Godzilla, it's very packed. Like, Jeremy Packer does a fantastic job with that. But Michael Bernard was able to make it feel like an ocean but not make it feel barren. Yeah, yeah. We had a lot of conversations.
    19:42
    This is obviously going to be a lot of water, but I think at the bottom of the playfield, we can probably do something unique. Then the top half of the playfield with the shark fin and the shark are, it's going to be water. We can do some variants on the plastics and stuff.
    19:57
    I actually really like the artwork on this. I think there was a limitation of, well, there's not much you can draw because we're in the ocean.
    20:06
    It works. so i can't remember scott asked this earlier or not but how close are we to 1.0 and what's preventing it from being at 1.0 well we just spent a boatload of time making this a bit mode so yeah if you guys haven't noticed there hasn't been many updates lately and that's why yeah and up till two weeks ago it was awful so uh you can ask anyone who played the beta they're We're just like, yeah, this is all right. Because normally the way we do it is like we'll implement the rules and we'll add the assets later. Well, this was backwards because we had all these 8-bit animations. We also needed an 8-bit UI, 8-bit background screen, all this stuff that went into the standalone mode that we had to put in before we can even start on the rules. So when we first just got it functional and we put it on beta here at Stern, everyone was like, oh, yeah, this looks cool. But, man, it's boring. And it's like, yeah, we know.
    21:04
    We'll get there. And even like a week, up to a week before the stream, before we got, you know, all the rules in, like the multi-ball progression stuff, the little bonus game in there and everything. Yeah, it was very just, oh, this is all I do forever. And it's like, yeah, we'll get there. Don't worry. And sure enough, you know, the 11th hour, we got everything in. We're trying to get in. We're still missing a couple things, but it'll be in the next release.
    21:28
    Okay, so walk me through the mud. I did see the stream, but for people who haven't seen the stream, describe what the mode is and how you actually, because there's different lanes that you choose and how you eat things. So walk me through the mode.
    21:44
    So the idea of the mode is the word gets back to the sharks that Bruce has been killed, and they are mad. and they are so mad that they are teaming up the Mako, Thresher, Tiger, Hammerhead, and they're led by the Great White. He was like, hey, Bruce was killed. Let's go get revenge on these bounty hunters. You know, they're all hanging out at Amity. Let's just go get their attention. Let's, you know, let's just start wreaking havoc. So you start off. It's just a normal day. You have five shots, the main shots of the game. they all represent a beach and these are all labeled on the playfield themselves so you start off uh at the pond and there's already a swimmer there so as soon as you launch you'll see the action button start flashing he's like oh there's a swimmer there so you start hitting the action button and you'll start chomping on the beach goer until uh you chomp them enough to make them perish and then for every you know every shot you hit you move to that beach. So if I shoot the middle ramp, that means I'm moving to the north beach. If I shoot the right ramp, I'm moving to the east beach. So wherever you see swimmers, and you see these on the inserts too, the beach goers, you also see boats, which are represented by the color arrows. The mode lights are used to show you the position of the shark. That shows you where you are. And if you see the beach closed, that means there's a police boat on that beach, and there's no swimmers to be eaten so you have to destroy that police boat to open that beach back up so you're just kind of swimming around you're going to these different beaches you're chomping on beach goers you're destroying boats well the more you do that the bigger bounty you build and once you get a big enough bounty then you start attracting bounty hunters and this is a completely different stage so after your bounty reaches a certain level you'll get this whole timer timer warning hey bounty hunters are coming after you so we enter this stage where it's a showdown versus the bounty hunter. So now you're in a stage where there's these roving green shots, you have the green shots.
    23:52
    Ideally, if you combo them, they do twice as much damage. But you can also just shoot the boat itself, Ben Gardner's boat in the middle. And you're just, you know, working down their health until you can finally destroy them. And the higher rank you are, which is, you know, Mako Thresher, Hammerhead Tiger, Great White, the bigger rank you are, the more bounty boats that will come after you. and you also have things like power-ups, so if you knock down the drops or in the pro, if you complete the stand-ups it'll light one of the shark tower targets that roves around, when you hit this, you're now invincible, not only are you invincible but you get like one chomp kills, so in the case of the bounty hunter, when you're invincible, you don't take any damage and each green arrow you hit or the bow does double damage okay, nice you're just kind of making your way through. You're just wreaking havoc on Amity. Your ultimate goal is to get your bounty level up to $10,000 to lure Quint out after you. So Quint's the boss level? Quint will be the final boss. It's not in yet. He should be in soon. We kind of made it artificially hard, so you should probably... It's really hard just to get your bounty to $10,000, but once we get Quint in there, we'll dial down the difficulty a little bit and give you a chance I think I got to level four which is four balls and every time you drain you lose health yeah and yeah and i think i was only at like 3 500 or 4 000 on bounty i was like how are you going to do this like six balls it's like impossible well but one of the uh you know one of the key things is knowing when you have to panic and when you have time so um you You have to reach a certain amount of kills before the bounty hunters are triggered. So it'll tell you, it'll say bounty in, and you'll see a little number there. That's how many more people you can kill before the bounty hunters start coming after you. So you can actually play a little bit strategic. Like if it's a two-ball, multi-ball, you can trap up. You're not in any hurry at this point. And you can hit the chum bucket to add beach goers. If you hit the ramp on the upper play field, that maxes out all the beaches for all beach goers. So that's something you really want to do. and then once you have everything set up then you can start shooting shots and just chomping away and that'll get you a lot of kills and get your bounty up really fast How do you get health back? Because I was noticing obviously you take damage and stuff The things that give health back are if he rolls over the mini flipper lane and you shoot the harpoon gate that gives you health back if you destroy any type of boat that'll give you health back and if you graduate to the next level of shark you get all your health back and also the real on upper plate that'll give you some health back okay to get rid of barrels you have to kill the bounty hunters and we might have power ups do it too we'll see this game if you guys haven't tried this yet seriously if you don't own a jaws get out there play it at an arcade just get linked up with it because it is this is a really really fun mode it's all I'm playing on jaws right now is this mode. It's insanely cool. Yeah, it's weird to play the normal game. I'm like, oh, I don't really use the action button. Yeah. Can you get beyond six balls?
    27:07
    Six is how many are in the game. So anything past stage six will still be six balls. But you should, you know, when, I think even now, I think the match you'd get to is stage seven without reaching 10,000 bounty. So when Quint does get in the game, you know, that's where you'll be at. Nice. And does the Pro and the Premium both have six balls? Yeah. Okay. The only thing you're missing on the Pro is it's probably a little bit harder to light the power up because, you know, the drops you can sweep. And the upper play field, you can't do the power blow to the Bounty Hunter. So during the Bounty phase, if you shoot the ramp on the upper play field, it will take the Bounty Hunter down to 1% no matter where he is. And the Reel will heal you during the main play. So you're missing out on a couple features. The radio target and the life ring target will also add to your kill streak multiplier, which is to reach each kill you make without draining will keep building that multiplier. So everyone you eat, I think it's 250 points times the multiplier. So you can get that up to like 20 or 30. You can get some crazy values out of there. So are you going to stick a timer in this mode so that way Carl D'Angelo can do like another pin quest or whatever he calls it? and we can all attack this challenge and see who can do it the fastest. Yeah.
    28:30
    Oh, yeah, we could. There's no timers in it now. There's a timer that kicks in when you've tracked a bounty hunter. Yeah. But you can take your time to be in any stage. Obviously, ball one, if there's only one ball in play, you can really set up. You get the chum bucket, you can light up all the beach goers, kind of set yourself up. But once you get two balls in play, that's a lot harder to do. I agree. I really liked how Carl was doing like we did. Whoa, it was Avengers. It was the Black Order multiball, and it was whoever could complete it the fastest or the least amount of shots or whatever it was. So I don't know. I always like those little concepts that he's been dealing with these. You could do a limited number of flips like you did on Avengers 2. So you only have a hundred flips. Really hard not to do that in this game because I've done it two games on a row and I was like I don't want to you know I don't want to do a third game of course soon as you release this code Carl's messaging me hey I can't get to Quinn you got there already I thought I made it hard enough that you know mortals wouldn't be able to easily get there but well there he is but yeah Carl's in more or these are more than mortal yeah so good crime if everyone's gonna do it's gonna be Carl yeah of course yeah don't worry It'll be in.
    29:55
    He's like, I'm bored. I've already beat the main game multiple times, and now I've beat the side mode. I need you to put more in. Yeah. So we're making a couple of changes.
    30:04
    So right now, Shark Alley, we call it the little bonus game you play after every even level. It seemed a little easy, so we changed a couple of the cards. So we put like bathing suits on sharks and shark fins on bathers just to throw people off a little bit.
    30:22
    You know, honestly, the thing, what I look for is if the legs are dangling down, because obviously sharks aren't going to have those. So maybe if you have like a swimmer more plateaued than sitting. We're working on like, you know, the shark fin hoax swimmer, we put that in there. Okay. Just so if you see the fin and you hit that, oh no, that's not a shark. And we're just trying to mess with people because, you know, this mode is goofy, stupid. It's just what it is. The first time I was like six out of ten, I really messed up. But the second time I had it down pat. So, yeah, you're going to have to mess with us. Yeah, we're going to boost the difficulty every time you play it too. So, like the first time it's going to stay the same, but then that timer is going to reduce 100 milliseconds. So, you have almost no time to pick it out. So, that'll be tough.
    31:09
    Well, it's definitely awesome. I love this concept. I want to see more of this going forward. This is just – I think this is – it's perfect, and I love that you did the 8-bit. I know that, like, in Foo Fighters, there was the bot frenzy, which is 8-bit. That was amazing. I think people are craving 8-bit, and maybe – I don't know. That's just me, but I'm really – I'm here for it, and it's amazing. I love it. Well, people don't realize it's a lot of work to make something look 8-bit. But I kind of helped with the art of animations on this. And those guys gave me a bunch of artwork, and I animated a lot of it. But there were some things I had to create myself. And it's just like, man, this is a pain trying to go into Photoshop. Okay, now make this look crappy.
    31:54
    It's a lot of work. I had the special pixel brush I had to make. It's so much more work than people probably realize. And then some of the stuff I said is after effects. I just gave Rick individual frames as PNG files. That way it's really choppy. It looks something you would see, like 8-bit. Here's a little pop-up window with a crappy animation of a guy slam dunking. That was kind of our baseline to how this was done. Or like you said, Punch-Out. I think it's just two frames they play over and over. And it's just like, yeah, this is an 8-bit animation. It looks terrible, but people love it. I love it. It's very sentimental. so i don't know if you can confirm or deny but the ape animation of you at the very end you're wearing a hat is that a stern kimball hat or is that a loser kid hat uh i don't even know who made that or it's an awesome hat i will say that it looks whatever it is it is great it looks great fantastic the artist just grabbed something from facebook i don't know i was like huh joel's like it's loser kid i'm like i don't know it's a little like even you know what i'm just going to go with it. I'm just going to go with it. We're claiming it. Yeah, that's a good looking one. So we joked one time that, so Bond, Gomez's Bond, you know the drop targets in front, how they have the little Japanese symbol or whatever it is. With the line through it. We drew a line through it and our little eyes and stuff were like, look, Loser Kid's on Bond. And people still come up to us like, we can't believe they put you in Bond. I was like, yeah, yeah. The licensor made an exception for us. Yes, just for us. Those guys are awesome Yes we heard all about that The licensors were very forthcoming With all of their products Oh ninja shoes That's all I can think of now No it's ninja booties Ninja booties Yes Alright Keith We have you on I've got to ask We're probably about midway to your next game Are we going to see your next game in 2025? I can either confirm nor deny that okay but it will be coming out so okay you have another game you have been teasing I'm pretty sure that it has at least more than one flipper so no it's one flipper actually wow screw Italian bottom that way you can hold your beer and you play yeah exactly That would be a challenge, actually. A one flipper game. It's all action buttons. I know at least one flipper game and it was an old EM. There was one flipper on the right side and the other side was a pop bumper or something. I was like, wow, this is weird.
    34:42
    And both flipper buttons activated the same flipper. That would certainly be interesting. That's weird. Can we ask how many flippers are going to be on your next game? um you can ask um four four okay okay nice i i'm a big fan of multi-flipper games well i i think some of your best games have had four flippers well i i guess godzilla is the king so i mean well i had three flippers i got iron maiden over my shoulder here so yeah i will say This is probably my favorite layout.
    35:18
    Nice. Stay tuned. Okay. What's your favorite released layout so far? Avengers. Avengers? Okay. That is a great layout. It flows beautifully. I think that game is very underrated. I think it has the longest ball paths, like legitimately. Yeah. The way the balls just circle around, and it gives that feeling of motion, but it doesn't feel too frenetic. You can still hit shots, but the ball has definitely, I would say, unique ball paths, which have not been on any game.
    36:01
    In Bond 60, I designed that game in two weeks, and it's one of my favorite shooting games, too. So I think when I guess the crunch, it seems to be, you know, I don't overthink things. I was like, you know, this needs to work first time. And both those games didn't really get much revision from the initial Whitewood.
    36:21
    And Bond 60th is great. Actually, the first time I played it was when we came up there in May for the media thing. And that was, it really is a great game. Thanks. I mean, obviously software and everything, but I just kind of, you know, I know George was getting crushed with, you know, getting his Cornerstone game out, and he's like, oh, yeah, we're going to do a simple single-level play field. And I was like, hey, if you need help, you know, I'll do it for you. And then, yeah, a couple weeks later, he's like, you know what, it's yours. So I kind of paused what I was doing and, you know, knocked that out, and that the first whitewood was shot, I was like, wow, hardly anything needs to change on this. So I got lucky.
    37:07
    That doesn't happen too often when you make a whitewood and every shot just does exactly what you think it does because it's usually, you know, I got to move this, got to move that, change this angle, change that angle, realign the flippers.
    37:21
    So it kind of worked out, and thank goodness because I didn't have a whole lot of time to do it. When you're designing a game, shots are different if you trap up or you're hitting them at velocity. Yeah. If it's coming down. So how do you adjust for that and do you intentionally say well this shot here you probably really need to trap up versus no this one you really need to have some ball speed so you can hit that angle uh well so if you notice in jaws i have the uh ramp feeds feeding really close to the flipper and that's one of the reasons because yeah i didn't want the ball flying down the in lane because then that you know trying to shoot the ball at the middle off of that is going to be almost impossible so uh do the uh the late in lane feeds uh angle the flipper the flipper angle is higher, their resting position angle is a little higher. Jaws is the highest angled one I've done. So that should be friendly towards the middle of the play field and make kind of the edge shots a little harder, but there are no real edge shots in Jaws, like there was on Iron Maiden or Jurassic Park.
    38:29
    I do notice that just the way the flippers are positioned, it certainly affects the game. I'm actually one of the few people who have not adjusted my Attack from Mars flippers. So it's right next to Medieval Madness. So, you know, it's a very similar shot profile. However, when you jump from one to another, if you have the drop flippers, which Attack from Mars does have, it really does mess with your timing and your mind unless you're a much better player than I am anyway. Yeah, that drives me crazy if I go to a tournament and play a game that's supposed to have drop flippers and they align it with the inline because Steve Ritchie told him to a long time ago. That was the funniest thing I ever – there was some tournament I played in. I was like, well, Steve Ritchie said all his flippers are aligned. I was like, yeah, that's Steve. But it depends on, you know, the game designer trusts us. Each one of us, you know, goes through and figures out what angle to put those at a default before we ship. If you move them up, it really does screw up a lot of stuff. like if you drop the flippers on jaws good luck shooting you know anything up the middle yeah so i have one question i don't know if you can confirm or deny this one either one of these again yes one of these again okay gomez has named you king of the monsters since the licenses you've been dealt i'll deal with monsters or the vast majority of them will your next game stay in that lane are you going to straight to new territory
    39:53
    Both. Oh. All right. That's a good tidbit. It's a hybrid. It's ET, everyone. It's ET. Okay, ET. Okay, seriously? Just Google all the crap they sold for ET. There's zero chance they would be selling any of that now. I could not. Like all the – let's just say there's a lot of very interesting-looking swag that people bought that were E.T.-related that I'm like, I don't know if – I think someone would crusade against that nowadays.
    40:29
    Has anyone caught E.T. when he plays the shark? Oh, I didn't know you could. Okay. I mean, I have to look for that.
    40:41
    That's awesome. What would be great is if E.T. were in the basket and riding in front of the moon and the shark jumped up and grabbed him and just made him disappear. That would be awesome.
    40:53
    Yeah. I should say there's an E.T. Easter egg in there somewhere. Okay. There's also E.T. in whatever – which one of the Star Wars when they're at the Senate. Did you guys realize that? There's like an Easter egg in the Galactic Center. There's like a whole bunch of E.T.s down there. Yep.
    41:10
    Yeah. Yeah, they're from one of the galaxies or whatever. Yeah. I wouldn't be surprised. Yeah. Go ahead. I was just saying, I wouldn't be surprised if it's like when Mark Silk is talking, like his little dude, because it shows a whole bunch of different alien races there. Yeah.
    41:27
    I don't know if that movie holds up. I haven't seen it in so long. E.T.? Yeah. I don't think it does. I think I remember more from Mac and Me than I do E.T. I remember seeing it as a kid and the first time you see it everybody's emotional and I think they re-released it a year later and so I was a year older and we went and were like oh we want to see it and it didn't hit at all like everybody in the audience was like okay well that happened because back in the 80s when we didn't have VHS because everything was so expensive back in the 80s you'd buy a movie for like 70 bucks which if you consider that was like 300 bucks so that's why everyone like recorded the had a whole bunch of pirated uh recordings of of movies but um they would do these things they would re-release like i think star wars was re-released into the theaters like six times and of course we went every time but that was just it's it's really interesting growing up now versus then. Kids don't understand. Kids do not get the amount of depravity that we had to suffer through.
    42:42
    A lot of boredom. Kids aren't bored now. My kids have never been bored in their life, but I think most of my childhood was boredom. You know what? When I was a kid, I would take hammer, nails, rubber bands and go make a play field.
    42:56
    My childhood was spent either building things or tearing things apart to see how they worked. And everything was put together with like a Phillips head screwdriver. So I think every toy that I ever had, I took apart and saw how it worked and then put it back together. And there was usually some extra pieces that I never figured out where they were. Just like when you shop a game app. All these extra pieces. Yeah.
    43:21
    Well, awesome, Keith. We appreciate you coming on. Scott, do you have any other questions before we let Keith go?
    43:27
    Let's see. let me think about that because we did go through most of our questions yeah we went through all of our questions okay I do want to know what is the hardest shot on any of your games for you to hit the M target on Bond 60th oh okay that actually is it's one of those high it's a time shot and so you have to hit it at the right time so you can't just take a whole bunch of shots. Absolutely. To further illustrate my point of flipper alignment, I think that shot's at the exact same position as the far right ramp on Jurassic Park, but since these flippers are aligned much higher, that shot becomes way harder.
    44:19
    But, you know, that's what I wanted. I wanted a shot. You're not going to shoot very often, but when you do, but it's worth 3,000 points or whatever. Yep. Yeah. Okay, hardest shot now, I want to know, the shock that you love hitting the most.
    44:35
    It's got to be the O shot on the Jurassic Park. Oh, yeah. It's so hard, but when you hit it, it's just so satisfying. Oh, yeah. I would argue the smart missile, too, because I get that about every three, three out of 20 times, but when you hit it, you feel like an amazing player there. That's one of those shots where you look at it. That's not possible. And then you hit it and you're like, huh. Yeah, how'd that work? Your brain's like, that shouldn't work. Yeah.
    45:08
    But, yeah, there's great rewards to that. Nice. All right. Cool. That's great. Thanks again for coming on. That was awesome. Always fun hearing the behind the scenes. And also I do love just the little ways you guys at Stern are implementing playing games. And so there are different ways of doing things. And it's kind of like a party mode. It's like, hey, come over and play pinball as opposed to watch me play a game for 30 minutes. It's like, hey, we got three minutes each. My party game is Beatles because it's so hard.
    45:43
    It's like, okay, we've been playing these games. Now we're going to finish up on Beatles because we just get crushed. So you can see behind me All the games that are in my office All these classics 5.30, 6 o'clock When everyone's done working They all come here and they all play these old games Because you can play together Play quick, you're done, you're in and out So yeah It's something if we can bring back together Playing as a group Playing as friends Playing against your friends Just social game of pinball that we all remember from back then, I think it's important to try to bring that back. And I think you should do a Contra pinball machine where you can do each of the releases, like the original, the Super Contra, Contra 3. Oh, yeah. Oh, man, does Mode 7 effects from back then? Yeah. That game was awesome. I got to know then.
    46:37
    If Stern got a Legend of Zelda license, would you fight for that license, or do you think someone else would be more inclined to do it at Stern? I love Zelda. I think I've played pretty much all of them that weren't just exclusive on Game Boy or some of those mid-releases in the early 2000s, late 90s. But yeah, pretty much every major Zelda game I've played through. I did all the early ones once they got to where my son he plays he's gone through Breath of the Wild so many times and Tears of the Kingdom but he's like hey dad you need to play this and so I spend like two hours figuring out okay this is what I do and then I get busy for like two weeks and I get back on and I realize there needs to be like a reorientation mode when you get back on a game to say okay this is how you play it again it's been a while you want a refresher? hitting the wrong buttons. Would you like to go through the orientation again? I mean, that's a beauty when you walk up to Frogger or something. You don't have to remember where you left off. No, no, no. Absolutely. Yep.
    47:43
    Well, awesome. Thank you, Keith, for coming on. Before we wrap this up, if you love pinball and you love Nintendo like us, check out my shirt.
    47:53
    Pinball! It says pinball, and it's in the old retro NES font. You can get this at silverballswag.com right now, along with our Loser Kids swag besides the hats. If you want a hat, I have posted it on Facebook. We're going to be doing a run here soon because Expo is a month away, a month and a half away. So, if you want a Loser Kid hat, go on Facebook, Instagram, whatever your favorite social is, and you can sign up there so we can get you a hat.
    48:19
    Oh, and get the jersey. The jersey's awesome. The hockey jersey? Looks good. I can't wait for my hockey jersey to show up.
    48:26
    Last but not least, we have content creator of the episode. We want to shout out Wormhole Pinball. If you haven't been checking out their stuff, they're doing great jobs with the interviews and kind of showcasing what Pinball has to offer, and they're doing it on YouTube, so give that a check.
    48:41
    Scott, you got anything for us before I do our whole spiel? You know, I'm really excited for Expo, so please, if you guys are interested, go and sign up for Expo. I'm still trying to get time off, but I know Josh is going to be there, and I'm pretty sure Keith is going to be there. I'll be there. You have to challenge him to a Bond 60th game and see if you can beat him.
    49:02
    That's a fun multiplayer game, man. He would have to play one-armed. There's no way. Deal. One-armed challenge. Deal. If you can beat Keith at a one-armed challenge of Bond 60th, we will get you a hat. How about that? Absolutely.
    49:19
    The winner. Keith might not show up to Expo after the second day. I freaking love that game. I'll play it all day long.
    49:30
    If you want to get a hold of us, we are LoserKidPinballPodcast at gmail.com. You can also get a hold of us on all the socials, all at LoserKidPinball. If you want some of our swag, like I said, LoserKidPinball. Sorry, SilverballSwag, swag slash LoserKid. And, you know, all this shenanigans. If you want to watch us on YouTube, we're on YouTube now. Scott and I got new cameras, so we look a little – we don't look prettier, but you can see more definition. Our ugliness is in high def now. Yes, yes it is. All right. See you maybe next week. See you in one or two weeks.