The special when lit pinball podcast is sponsored by two brothers, artisan brewing makers of pinball, pale ale. At any point, did you think to yourself that you would want to make any followups to attack for Mars or medieval madness? Or did you think that those pins were finished as they lie in pinball history? Hmm. Never say never, I guess on any of that stuff, right there, they're popular themes or they're broad themes. I could totally see doing that at some point. coming at you out of st charles illinois the special when lit pinball podcast starts now thanks for hitting that start button and taking the plunge here are your hosts ken cromwell and bill webb hey what's going on pinball land and welcome to episode number 28 of the special when lit pinball podcast i am ken cromwell and i am bill webb and guess what bill what guess who's joining us in the studio today. Well, I know who it is because they're sitting right across from me. I know. Well, I guess I don't need to ask you to guess, but it is legendary programmer and pinball designer Brian Eddy. He is real, folks. And he's here and he's in the studio. Brian, welcome to the show. Thanks, guys. So happy to have you here. Yeah, I'm great to be here. How was it making it out? Yeah. How was the drive in? It was great. It's raining out there. Did you enjoy that limo we sent for you? The limo, fully stocked limo was great yeah fully stocked right all the high c orange you can uh consume on the limo who's your sponsor yeah two brothers but two brothers full of two brothers yes see nicely done let's see you already fulfilled the uh the plug well they yeah well they paid they paid for the limo so it was fun in all seriousness man it's so nice to have you here um i know amongst our colleagues pinball people in general yeah collectors enthusiasts um to have a Brian Eddy anything lately is is been a real request and we're happy that you trust us enough to come in and kind of share a little bit of pinball stories knowledge career all that kind of thing so thank you very very much from the bottom of our pinball hearts yes thank you very much i appreciate it no problem this is my first podcast ever since they didn't exist back when i was doing pinball so this will this will be fun so you're a big podcast guy i understand oh yeah i haven't missed one of your shows thank you so much brian that's a man it was so easy in the transition of asking him to come on the show when he was such a big fan of... Yeah, he knew who we were. And that, you know, I mean, that helped ease things. He knew who we were like six weeks ago when I reached out to him. Yeah, we had him in episode one. Right. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I won't say that I'm a groupie, but I may have shown up at a few events. Oh, see? That's awesome. All right. Well, good. Let's just jump into it. And I'm going to ask the stereotypical question that everybody complains about when it's asked. But I think it's pertinent and we have to figure it out, right? Like, how did Brian Eddy get involved in pinball? Hmm. Okay. I'll give you a shorter version, I guess. But I always loved pinball. As a kid, down at the end of my street, we actually had an arcade that was full of pinballs. It was before video. So I was probably like nine or 10. So I would sneak down to that arcade and play pinball. My mom yelled at me because it was like the ne'er-do-well place to go. But as a little kid, I was just fascinated by all the lights and the sounds and stuff. So I'd still sneak down there and play them. I think there were still some 10 cent games at the time and stuff. Um, so I think that's my first memory of, of pinball. And if you don't, if you flash forward about 12 years or so, um, I actually just seen an ad in the paper when I was visiting Chicago, um, about a company that it just said games, games, games. And I thought, wow, that sounds good. Games. Right. Um, and I'm actually from Michigan. So after the vacation, I went back to Michigan. I called the place up and found out that it was pinball. And I said, oh my God, that would be incredible to do. I was big into games of any type, video games, pinball, any of that stuff. So I thought that was insane that could I actually get a job working in the industry? You know, is it that easy? Luckily, I had a programming background back on Commodore 64, VIC-20 and all those and taught myself programming, did a bunch of stuff on there before this job. And that's really what ended up getting me into Williams at the time, is the programming side. I knew the assembly language that they used to program in, and I came in for an interview. I think I was interviewed by maybe one or two people, and got a call back, and I was hired. And you remembered your resume at the interview, because when Dwight was here, he had forgotten his resume at that original. It doesn't surprise me. So you're ready to go. So what year did you start working at Williams? 1989. Okay, 1989. So I moved from Michigan to Chicago for the job. Do you remember who was there at the time or your colleagues? Foots and Reuter was there. Bill Foots and Reuter. Larry DeMar was there. Steve Ritchie. Dennis Nordman. Who else was there? Mark Panaccio was a programmer. Jim Strumpolis was a programmer. Now, when you were hired, did you recognize these names? Obviously. Obviously. Okay, yeah, Barry. I recognized a couple of them, more from the video side, like Futsunryu had done Joust, so I recognized some of those names. Yeah, I mean, you started right in 89. That's when Elvira was on the line, and they were gearing up for Whirlwind and all that. Yeah, Black Knight 2000, I think, was down in the build-up room at the time. So what was the first thing that you were put on at Williams? Because you started in programming, correct? I started in programming, right. This was back with the green screen monitor and the terminal, right, hooked up to the pinball machine. Nice. And I remember one person got a color monitor for the first time like a year or so later, and everybody was jealous that this guy's got the color monitor. That's awesome. But the first game I think I did any code on was, let's see, what would it be? Maybe Mousing Around. Yes. I did some effects and stuff for that game. And I think Bad Cats I did some effects on too. Bad Cats. Yeah. Meow, meow, meow, meow. Wow, Dwight did the same thing. Exact same thing. This is so funny. Yeah. I love how you guys. It sticks in your head, I guess. It does, right? Not the best game, right? But it. Well, it's got a following for sure. How many times did you hear that, though, when you were doing that? So, I mean, it's stuck in your head for life. About 10 billion times. Yeah. The match effect with the little cats and the ball back and forth. It's all here. It's like his text message alert now. Right here. Meow, meow, meow. It's like, oh. Especially when it's texting me. Waking up night sweats. Yeah, right. That's so funny. On some of the forums, there's been information saying that you, between games, also developed a basketball game called Hot Shot. Oh, yes. Okay. That's true. What is that? That would be a basketball. Like a pop-a-shot? Like a pop-a-shot, if I'm not mistaken. All right. Yeah, it was an interesting project. I was a programmer on it. When did this happen? Oh, God, when did it happen? Maybe in between Black Rose and Indiana Jones. Okay. thing because it had a dot matrix so it was probably around that era yeah that was an interesting project um williams did a few redemption type stuff back in the day not a lot and this was it was actually a toy licensed from it was actually i mean based on a toy that was licensed from a hot shot game that you'd buy it like toys r us uh it was a little basketball thing that you've been a spring that you flung and tried to get in and it moved right before so So I think Confidesa had some connection with the company, and they decided to do a license and make an enclosed one for the arcade. So I was brought on to be the programmer, but there was no real designer on it. So I kind of filled in a bit of that role. Oh, man. You're like the multifaceted guy again. Yeah. Programming and designing. And it was a sideline, right? It wasn't a long project. It was probably six months. But it was a fun game to do. It was just something different at the time, and I still have a couple of them in my basement. Oh, really? You can actually link them together and play against them. Not that there's two ever in the world other than in my basement, but you can't do that. So what time are we going over for Papa's shot over at Brian Eddy's house in the basement, right? It's like just what he wants, especially when I'm following him home like a possessed demon. There's no room in the limo. Sorry, guys. Oh, yeah, that's right. We played. We didn't pay enough. We got Uber. It's fine. So they made more than one, though. So they made two or three or five. You mean how many they made of the game? Yeah, yeah. Now they made, how many of those did they make? They made at least 1,000 total of the units. You mean total sold? Yeah. It was at least that. Okay. It might have been even 2,000. I don't remember. Were they like Redemption? Yeah, they tended to be Redemption. You could have tickets spit out. Okay. Are you a fan of Redemption games? I like Redemption games. I know they're kind of considered kiddie gambling in a lot of ways. Right. But since I'm into all types of games, right, anything that brings fun or entertainment to somebody, I'm there. I'm in. I want to just make fun things for people to play. So what games were you credited with for coding or programming at Williams? I guess programming-wise, then, Pool Sharks was the first game I worked on as the full lead programmer on. I think most of the games I did by myself, I think, except for Shadow. I had a little help from Mike Boon toward the end of it. So, God, now you're going to try to make me remember a lot. Now, Shadow, you were credited more as from design. Yeah, I designed and programmed it. Right, so that was like the double dip. Yeah, that was crazy. And I want to get into Shadow thoroughly in a minute if you're up for that. Sure. But prior to that, what games are you most proud about that you had written code for? There was a lot of fun ones along the way. I mean, Machine Bride of Pimbot had its fun elements. They're all like your babies, so you can't really stick one out. You can't say you love one more than the other. Yeah, exactly. I love my youngest kid right now more than the other. I only have one, so she's in like Flint for now. Okay, just saying. Indiana Jones, that was a fun game to work on. Yeah, so that's huge, right? It was big. It was all the movies and a lot to draw from. It's such a popular pin, too. I'm noticing Brian Eddy's name being associated with some of the big, heavy-hitting pins of all time, which is pretty huge. I mean, it's got to make you feel great. Yeah, it shocks me that 20 years later, now that I'm getting back into pinball, that all these games are still out in the limelight and people are playing them and enjoying them. It's awesome. What other industry could you be in that 20 years later people are still playing your game? Well, this doesn't happen in video, that's for sure. Well, and especially considering that all those games only had, like, an average lifespan of five to seven years. Right, right. You know, so the fact that people are still holding on to them, rebuilding them, and doing that stuff is just, you know, has to make you just. Yeah, it's awesome. It's great to see. It's great to see somebody enjoying and playing and having fun with one of your games. And from a programming standpoint now, I mean, you look at codes that are so complex. In comparison to some of the original code that was out in the 80s and in the 90s, What was your kind of concept or what were you following as somebody that was programming pinball machines and rule sets? I mean, did you have something that you wanted to accomplish early on? Did you have a direction that you were following or were you just kind of following somebody that had mentored you? No, I think at the time it was, you know, everybody was trying to make something cool and unique. I think modes started to come into play right around that time. So a lot of people are trying to come up with clever ways to do different modes. And I played with that a lot, too. But you always want to add some type of twist. something unique something little you don't want to do something completely different because then it throws people sometimes right so you want to do a little bit different to keep it interesting and i think that's what i tried to do with a lot of it try to reinvent some portion of it but give that familiarness to so that people know when they step up to it they can have immediate fun and then they learn these cooler newer deeper things then it'll get spooked like a horse and right yeah so i mean so you're a fan of mode driven games with twists and side plots and and other objectives other than the modes right i mean to me you can probably see it from most of my games, I want to make sure that anybody who, even if they don't play pinball, can come up and have fun with it. And then if you're a hardcore player and you want the deeper rule set and the deeper, harder to do rules, I want to make sure that there's something in there for everybody. It's a fine line, but you can absolutely do it. Yeah, they are very approachable, everything that you've designed. It's fun. I mean, even the replayability on your games, I mean, I don't know that they're matched by anything else. They're just fun to sit down and play. Yeah, it was all pure genius on my side. yeah that's exactly what i was doing exactly you just dropped the mic the programming mic and that was it what was the last game that you well i guess you had done code or programming on shadow and you were the designer so can you talk a little bit about how much more responsibility it was to go from just not just but somebody that's involved more on the programming side to make that transfer or that switch over to designer but then have to actually do both at the same time How does that even happen? Yeah, that's crazy now. Even I think back to it, all the amount of work that that took to do, I'm kind of amazed too because it's really two jobs in one. But when you're really passionate and close to a theme like that, you want to pour as much as you can into it. So you were passionate about the Shadow theme? I was passionate about making a pinball. Yeah, right, exactly. I think when the Shadow came up, it was one of the licenses that they had. and you know we did a lot of licensed games back then as they still do now uh and you don't know we did a lot of ones that were movies coming out so you never know how that movie is going to turn out yeah shadow not the best movie in the end right but it was being pitched as the next batman right yeah right and i actually remembered shadow from the radio shows and i'd listen to them so it's like i could kind of you know get into it um i think for that movie and that theme i think we did a really good pin for it unfortunately the movie wasn't as big as everybody hopes sure but But, I mean, this pin has, like, recently has a resurgence, almost a cult following, right? I mean, so I remember getting into the hobby, and Shadow, I knew what Shadow was. But, I mean, recently, over the last five, six years, it seems like Shadow is just one of those games where if you're into collecting or you're into playing, you want to own a Shadow, you want to play a Shadow. Yeah, not that I'm biased or anything. No, not you, Ryan. I do think Shadow is. I like that Shadow shirt you have on, by the way. So I do have to ask this. What was one of the initial obstacles or hurdles that you had to move past or conquer when writing code to designing the actual play field? I think in some ways I had an easier transition because I had to learn absolutely the whole side of pinball and physics and all that stuff that go into it to make a fun game. But I was still doing the programming side too, so I was able to kind of like gradually slide between the two before I transitioned to just designing. As far as the difficulties, you know, I had already been programming for probably eight, nine years. So I really understood pinball and what the fun elements were and how to make it fun. So I think I really just wanted to put those ideas myself into a game. And I decided I want to make this leap, right? And I think the other thing that happens, too, as a programmer, you're a little at the mercy of what the themes are out there. and working with whatever's up next or whatever designer needs a programmer. So you're a little tied into that, and you don't have as much choice on some of that. So I think that's one of the things that pushed me, too. It's like, well, I want to make my own path, right? I want to be able to make those choices. And it's a tough balance because a programmer is so important on a game, too. You've got to have both sides have to be great. Well, especially having that background, you know while you're designing it, hey, we can do this kind of rule set by laying out these inserts, this ramp this way, which almost gives you a real good advantage to start designing it, I would think. Yeah, absolutely. It comes into your thought process constantly when you're coming up with different things to do on the play field is you always have that in mind, and when you lay something out, you're already like four steps ahead of some other people who don't think in the same way. Yeah. So a designer and a programmer, they work in tandem normally to kind of come up with a final product. Did you find it hard working with yourself as a designer and a programmer? I'm a complete bastard to work for. So I was hell every day. Right. I don't know how you worked with yourself, Brian. It was horrible. That was pretty crazy. Yeah, it was crazy. I luckily survived, but I came out on the other end. You made it through the rain? Yeah, I made it through. So the Sanctum lock magnet is, in my opinion, one of the coolest kind of lock shots in pinball. I guess the way that it looks like the ball is going to fall, gets drawn back, and kind of disappears. Was that something that was intentional or was that something that just while you were programming was a visual effect that just happened on its own? No, completely intentional. Was it really? I mean, actually, if you go back to Twilight Zone, they were playing with magnets along the same time. And I was playing with them and kind of picked up on some of that and thought of a cool way to use them that tied into the theme. And, yeah, that was absolutely planned. And it turned out great. Even still today, you watch it. It's still cool to watch. It's very cool. It is one of the coolest innovations. It took me a few times the first time I played Shadow. I'm like, where the hell did the ball go? And I'm like, oh, yeah, it's like getting sucked back in. So I don't know. I like it. What is one of the coolest innovations that you've seen or you've done that you like the most or top three? Because there have been so many different innovations, you know, between the Shadow, Castle Blown Apart, which is still, you know, I have a medieval madness in my basement and watching that every time is just amazing. Even Steve Ritchie's The Getaway with the Supercharger. I mean, so many innovations in that era. Yeah, I don't know if I have a favorite from any of those things. There were so many new things being tried at the time. It was obviously one of pinball's golden eras, so we had more time to experiment with stuff. Certainly things with magnets were fun, especially at the time because it was just coming out. I can't come up with anything else at the moment. So, I mean, normally the normal process with a pinball machine is you've got a design concept, you've got a prototype game that you have in front of you. Now on Shadow, were there any major changes between the prototype and the production game? Was there anything that you had conceptualized that was on the pin originally, but because of cost-cutting measures or just because of, I don't know, time restraints? Time restraints or even usage. It just wasn't going to work out. Was there anything that was taken off that pin that you felt you would have liked to have kept on? Yeah, I think that happens in every game. We pour so much into them that we want to keep as much as we can. And back in the day, too, there was a little bit of the game of put too much on because they're going to make you take something off no matter what. Yeah. So some people would put like extra drop targets on saying, all right, I'll take a drop target off, even though they didn't really want to drop targets to begin with. There's 32 drop targets on this, Brian. So we did stuff like that. But on Shadow, there was one thing. There was those little Mongol statues that were on the side. You see a couple of them throughout the play field. So they were supposed to jump out from where they were to be a target for the ball at times and then pop back in when they're hit. We didn't have the budget and probably not the time to develop another machine. Like side trolls. Yeah, kind of like side trolls. So it was budget. It wasn't like cycle testing. It just was a cost-cutting measure. No, we didn't get to it, and cost ended up killing it before we could finish it. When that happens, is that something that they approach to you and say, listen, we understand that you want this in the game. It's just not going to happen, so you need to let us know what the change is? Or is there any room for compromise where you can take something else off? Or is it just kind of laid out for you and you've got to make changes on the fly? Well, yeah, there's pretty much a budget that games have to hit because the company has to make a profit. Yeah. So you have to eventually live by those rules. Unless you're Steve Ritchie or Pat Lawler back then, you know, you could make your own rules. Not that I'm bitter. No. But, yeah, we had to conform at some point. The trouble is you don't necessarily know the cost until toward the end either. Oh, so you're not working within a budget off the go. No, we have a target number we have to hit, but when you're developing things and parts and mechanisms, you don't know until toward the end exactly how much all of them are going to cost when you manufacture them. So it's hard to put an exact thing on it. So, yeah, I always try to put a couple, one or two things in because you don't know. We may end up coming up with a really clever way of doing a device that doesn't cost much, and we can fit it all in. That's never happened, of course, but you always have hope. Exactly. There's a dream. Yeah, right. What was your design theory going in the shadow? I mean, was there anybody that you wanted to emulate, anybody that you looked up to, any machines that you had played that you kind of wanted to replicate? I mean, because this was your first go as a designer. And then I can't imagine having the programming still on your plate, but I imagine you had an idea on what you wanted to accomplish before you even sat down and made that whitewood. Yeah, sure. I'm a flow guy. And you can probably tell some from my play field. So Steve Ritchie was a huge influence, right? He's like the master of flow. And as far as playing his games and kind of learning from them, that was probably the biggest influence. I think modes also were just coming out around that time and really expanding and add depth to games compared to previous games in a couple of years before that. So those two things were probably pretty influential. What Steve Ritchie games were some of your favorites that kind of inspired you as a designer? Pretty much most of Steve's earlier stuff, F14, Black Knight, Black Knight 2000, because that was one of the games, too, that was just getting built when I started. So most of his playfields have that nice flow, and that just feels good to me as a player. You get kind of in that zen mode as you're playing, and the ball is just making all the shots. It's feeling really good, and that's what I like. I mean, some designers are more of the bump and hit with a couple shots here, and that's totally another valid way of doing it, but I'm a flow guy. What was the development cycle on The Shadow? If you remember, I know it's been a while. Yeah we pushing a bit That was probably 25 years ago It was probably about 14 months 12 to 14 months I think that what most of the games were for us mere mortals back then Wow. Mere mortals being anybody but Steve or Pat. Then they got to bend the rules just a slight. A little bit, but they deserved it. They earned it. Did you envision a third flipper right off the bat with that game? Is that something you knew you wanted to do? Yeah, I always wanted a third flipper. I like lots of options for people playing lots of different shots. The third flipper has a lot of pluses and minuses. Newbie players, they don't even know there's flippers up there. For them it's a bonus. That is the truth, yeah. I mean, I recognize that in Twilight Zone. I remember playing it for the first time. I didn't even realize there was another flipper up there. I'm like, oh, there's a flipper over there. So, yeah. Yeah, it takes a little while for them to get into it, but hardcore players love it. When you were done with Shadow, and I just want to go back to this for a second, because I think a lot of people discuss Medieval Madness, and a lot of people discuss Attack from Mars, and I don't know that there's a lot of information on shadow. And I know a lot of people had reached out to me and specifically had asked if we could please focus a little bit on shadow because it doesn't get the notoriety that those other two pins do. And another popular question was, once you were done with shadow, did you know the amount of success that it was going to receive? Looking down the road now, I mean, how well it's collected and accepted and how many people actually want to own shadow. I mean, did you foreshadow it? right out of the gate were you confident that hey i i kind of knocked it out of the park with this oh absolutely exactly what i was doing i don't know what i mean right what kind of question is that it's like one of the worst questions i've ever asked actually so no of course not no i don't think anybody knows for sure that's what you strive for right that's what you're putting all this passion and time into is to create something that people really love yeah and you know back in the day when we're making pinballs they would go out they would lose their value they'd be worth a thousand or two after three four years yeah and now it's incredible to see them come back and there's a limited supply of them and you know prices are like two three times what they were when we sold them did you own a shadow at the time i mean it was your first game did you yep take one home i still have a shadow is it your original one that you had yep it's i think it's the photo shoot game no kidding that's awesome pretty pretty nice shape still yeah how many places on probably not a ton a few hundred i guess a few hundred we'll do that in a weekend Yeah, no kidding. All right, so one other question on Shadow that I would like to ask you. The gun handle, is that something that you thought might have gotten costed out at the time? Yeah, that was absolutely the case on any of those things. It's all about tradeoffs and making choices, right? And sometimes like that, I think we found a place that could mold it relatively cheap, so we were able to keep it. But it was definitely on the chopping block for a while. Oh, yeah, because there's other games that you see that a gun handle would really fit the game theme and you get a launch button instead. So it's one of those catch-22s. Yeah, and it feels good in your hand, so I think they did a good job making it. Oh, yeah. After all said and done, is there anything that you would have changed on Shadow in hindsight? Monday morning quarterback, so to speak? There's probably not a ton. I know you're perfect, Brian. I mean, you can't master perfection. But if you had to criticize yourself. Right. You know, that game did have a lot of stuff in it. I really tried to pack a lot into it in that era of games as far as depth goes for the street location. So, you know, besides the Mongols that I took out, right, because I had to because of cost, I don't think there was a ton of things that I would have wanted in that game. It was pretty full-featured at the time, I think, with the diverters and the lock and the mini playfield. Even by today's standards, it's still pretty jam-packed with stuff. Yeah, it is. And innovative. A lot of that stuff, you don't, you know. Those diverters, too. I mean, that's not something that you really see. I don't know that you'll see it again, really. I mean, with extra buttons, diverting ramps. Yeah, yeah. And it was a fun feature from a player standpoint, but again, from a more hardcore player. Beginner players, they didn't notice it. So you're done with Shadow, and you killed it like you're on top of the world, right? I don't quite remember it that way, but okay, we'll go with that. What's next on your agenda? What's thrown into your lap next, and how does that happen? Yeah, well, luckily back then we actually got to do original themes, which was really fun. And so there was kind of a certain number of movie games and a certain number of original games. And I really wanted to do an original theme. And they have their pluses and minuses, right? You can throw anything you want into an original game and have a lot of fun with it. But it's also a complete original creation that you have to come up with. You need a strong team to do that and a good vision for people to jump in. And I just love that whole era of those campy sci-fi B movies, right? And I thought it would make a great pinball. and and i watched way too many of those 50s b movies you're talking about attack from mars attack from mars right which were absolutely horrible so but i sat through them all because they all kind of tied into that whole era and that feel and that that we wanted to come through in the theme there was a rumor that uh the top trading cards at the time like the attack from mars or there was a situation where that those kind of coincided with one another is that where you kind of had an additional inspiration or was that something that was completely different It was actually completely different. It was a complete coincidence. In doing research, I probably ran across the Topps trading cards and stuff at the time. But I think it was just pure luck because that summer that the game came out, I think Independence Day or one of those alien movies came out. Mars Attacks came out. It was like the summer of the alien attack movies. And the game just happened to land right in the middle of it. So it was like catching lightning in a bottle, so to speak. Sometimes you get lucky with all that coming together timing-wise, and that was the case. but it had nothing to do with Mars Attacks or the movie or anything like that. When you look at the play field design, it's like it's a fan layout on Attack from Mars, and it looks like a completely different design from Shadow. What was the inspiration for you to kind of change design concept? Was it something that kind of drove you to go into like a completely different direction, or was it just something that you had conceptualized before that you were trying to implement into your second pin? I mean, walk us through a little bit about the decisions on that design based in comparison to Shadow, which was your original design. Yeah, you know, each game to me starts with a blank sheet. You don't really want to bring anything from the past one. I think designers kind of over time, they have certain preferences. So you kind of see certain styles. And I think people like that, too. Yeah. So some of that kind of comes across. But I always start with a blank slate. And I did the same with Attack from Mars. And you want to do something a little different than your last one. You don't want to do the same thing. So I tried to mix it up a little bit there. But one of the big things about Attack from Mars, why it's a fan the way it is and why it's so open at the bottom, is because that flying saucer was supposed to be on a telescopic rod on a pivot on the back, so it could move all around the front of the playfield. Oh, the mothership was supposed to move? Yeah, the mothership was supposed to move and come out to the playfield. It had a target hanging from it that could move anywhere on the playfield, and you could hit it. I can't imagine why that got cut. Sounds like a $1,200 mech. Well, here, the real question is, did you guys ever try to make that? We did. We did. We had one prototype which kind of half worked. I think I still have it somewhere in my basement. That's pinball lore there. Yeah. And it was pretty cool. If we would have had time to actually perfect the mech and the cost probably to make it solid and strong enough, it would have been a really cool toy. But it ended up getting replaced with the saucer that's mounted there and the strobe light under it. And, you know, we made it exciting with what we had too. It's fun. That strobe multiball too is like epileptic seizure inducing. I've got to take my meds before I play. Yeah, it's still a great game, obviously, just the way that it's said. Just thinking about how that alien ship moving around would have changed, that would have been crazy. Yeah, and if you look at the play field, you can see that, too. You probably know the story here. Yeah. But, yeah, I could see that totally working. Now, you have a similar fan layout with Medieval Madness when you compare it to Attack from Mars. So was there any reason that you didn't go completely different on the third title versus the differences between your first and second? No, you know, like I said, they all start with a blank sheet. Sometimes they just kind of flow toward it because you start placing down the toys. It's not broke. Don't fix it, right? Yeah, there's a little of that. I don't consciously do it or not do it, but I do like to try new things. Even though it's kind of a fan layout, there are differences in the feel of some of the shots. And I think you always want some of that. But it kind of goes back to what I was saying before. If you try something completely different, you may completely hit it out of the park or you may completely do a horrible mess of something together. So I think a balance is kind of between the two. Try to do something that feels good with a mixture of something new. To your point, I mean, whereas like I personally from a pinball player standpoint, I see similarities in the shots in both of the pins, but they are completely different experiences. Do you have a preference as to what you would prefer to play, whether it be Medieval Madness or Attack from Mars? Yeah, it's really hard to say. I like both themes for different reasons. I think Attack from Mars, the theme, the campiness of all those movies and aliens and monsters back in the day is pretty strong with me. I really had fun doing that. Medieval Madness pulls from a whole other different set of roots of things that people enjoy and understand across all different age groups and across the world. It kind of has that Monty Python parody to it a little bit. Are you a Monty Python fan at all? Not as big as you would think after I made that game. No, that's okay. But I like Monty Python. I wouldn't say it wasn't my inspiration for the pin or anything. What was the inspiration for Medieval Madness? I wanted to do a cool castle game. So you did come up with a theme of that game. So that's interesting to me because I didn't know. It's like, hey, we need a castle-themed game, and I would like for you to design it. Yeah, that's what was interesting. How does that work? Yeah, back in that era especially, the designers got to choose their themes a lot. It's not so much now in the way the market is. but well now it's a lot of licensed themes you don't see original themes so there's there's not a whole lot of original but they gave us the freedom to choose the themes and we had to sell it to them we had to convince them that it was going to be cool but we had the freedom to do that yeah and that was awesome so you're in the mid 90s and you're going out on locations and you've got you know two pins that are performing pretty well at the time unfortunately like pinball starts to hit a decline in general just because they don't have the financial backing anymore So, I mean, walk me through a little bit about the feelings that you had after you're coming off these two hot titles, three successful pins, and you start seeing the decline of pinball. Yeah, it's really, really sad. I think everybody in the industry, especially at Williams Ballet at the time, I mean, we had such an intense group of people who just loved pinball there. And it was really disheartening to see it just worldwide start to just decline. and it's like that's not many doesn't happen with many products where you know given that it's broad reach that every market just started to go down yeah um it was really disheartening you know and looking around i at some point i think i decided well i should probably do something else if if pinball is going to go away i got a family i got people to support you know and just general life things going on and as i've said i i love all types of games i know some people just know pinball's it that's all i'm ever going to play right but i i like all types of games whether they're video or pinball or board games or whatever they are. So I had a lot of interest, too, that I decided to pursue after Medieval Madness. Well, and real quick before I forget, so Medieval Madness, that was mid-'90s. You had Black Knight, the movie that came out with Sean Connery, Robin Hood. So, I mean, that was kind of a more prevalent theme, which was probably an easier sell, saying, you know, we can kind of capitalize on this, kind of like F-14 to Top Gun, because they coincided very closely together. So is that maybe one of the reasons why that was an easier sell? No, I don't think so. I think coming off Attack from Mars, I think they realized, well, okay, let's give this guy a little bit more rope to see if he'll hang himself. And it kind of allowed me to come up with a theme. And it wasn't related to anything going on at the time either. I think a lot of times you look around at what games have been made, what themes haven't been done to death, and you kind of want something that's a little bit unique. and I noticed nobody really did a game like that. So I think this would be a great theme. It's so rich of history and everybody gets it. So I think that's why it was really chosen by me. And again, you had to sell it to management. You had to show that, hey, this is really going to be cool. What's going to be on it? And I was able to do that and they allowed us to make it. Crazy as that sounds. Well, and the Exploding Castle, the Catapult, I mean, that game is just awesome. It's pretty loaded, especially in that era of games. that was probably at the top of what we could spend on a game and put into it. They're satisfying shots when you see the mothership go down or you see the castle explode or shake. I mean, that's fun. It's awesome. I love that. And it doesn't get old. I mean, I've been an owner of both those pins, and you can consecutively play, and every time you hit it, it's just satisfying to sit back and you watch, and you've got a sense of accomplishment, and you've got that reward of that payoff for doing what you were asked to do. Yeah, absolutely. That emotional connection is really important to me, that feel good that I did this and I accomplished this, right? And I took this guy out or I took care of this. It's really important because that's why you're playing it. You want that cool feedback that, hey, I did well. I did something cool. And when you can tie it in with sound effects and visuals and mechanical, you usually will come with something pretty golden. Did you feel like you were at the top of your game at that time then after Medieval Madness was released? I mean, you know, the time frame since pinball was going down, you know, we had come off an era where games were selling over 10,000. Right. And slowly it just declined over the next few years. So we weren't selling big numbers of games at that time. So it didn't necessarily feel like, oh, my God, this is the greatest thing ever. Right. Because we weren't selling the numbers we were selling three, four years ago. So I think that kind of came in time when people played the game longer and were really getting attached to it. But by then we were already done and moved on. Right. We were on to the next game or next three, four games. Do you remember the day or the time where you made a decision that you said to yourself, you know what, I have to leave pinball. I've got to do something else. Yeah, it was definitely, it was right before Pinball 2000. Everybody was kind of at that era. We were kind of coming up with, well, what can we do to really prop up pinball? What can we do different that's really going to get people excited? Because, you know, everything's on downturn. Earnings are down and sales are down. so at that time I kind of looked around and said you know maybe maybe it's time to move on to something else and it was a really really tough decision because I loved working in pinball I loved making the games there's so much involved in making the games and they're so fun to do that it was a really hard decision to move on to something else in the end I guess it was maybe the right decision at the time because they closed up right after pinball 2000 but it was definitely a sad day. And I don't want to get too personal, but was there any sense of you feeling like you kind of were leaving colleagues and friends behind to go pursue something else? I cried like a baby for a whole weekend, I think. Oh, really? I'm sorry, man. I'm over it now. It was a rough patch. I can't tell if he's serious or not, but on a very special episode of Special When Lit, Ryan X. Yeah, it was definitely sad. These people I worked with for a decade, you know everybody, you know everybody's strengths and weaknesses, and a lot of camaraderie there. Because, like I said, everybody was so into pinball, who was working in pinball at the time. We all just wanted to be there and make great games. So it was really tough to leave. So you had to be rooting on the sidelines as they were still trying to get Pinball 2000 up and running. Yeah, absolutely. I helped out a little bit on the Revenge from Mars, the sequel. Just kind of checked in. I had moved on to video at the time, so I was still there in the building. I'd come by here and there and just give some comments to George and Lyman and those guys. But it was still hard to be on the outside and see, because even at the time, I still wanted to be in it, right? I wanted to try to make this work with everybody. I can only imagine, yeah, right. But you needed it to make sense for yourself and your family, too. So you can't follow the heart. You've got to kind of follow the mind, I would assume. Yeah, and that was the toughest part about it. So I was definitely rooting for those guys, did what I could whenever they had any questions or to help them out. Well, then it would be hard, too, watching them take your original theme. Yeah, that's what I was going to ask. And somebody else carry the torch and try and bring it past. That's your baby, right? Yeah, that was tough, too. I mean, but George is a great guy. He came to me and asked, is it okay if I do this? I know it's your theme, but I think it would be a great introduction to this new Pinball 2000. And I still wanted Pinball to be saved even if I wasn't there. and to do well. So even though it was hard to see somebody else take it, I was still a little bit involved to help give a little bit of direction on it. And George, I knew it was in good hands with George too. So it could have been a lot more painful to see that. But given the people who were involved and everybody was kind of together making that happen, it made it way less painful. I'd imagine it's an honor though to know that if this is the freaking pin that's got to try to say pinball and they're going to go ahead and they're going to make a sequel to a game that I had made. Yeah, and there's partly that too. It definitely feels like an honor for somebody to take a theme that you did and think that it's going to help save pinball with this new platform. So yeah, all those little things wrapped together, it definitely made it less painful. So you're helping from the sidelines, you're rooting it on, and then ultimately the plug gets pulled. Do you remember the day or who you spoke to who gave you the news that, hey, we thought we had it and we don't, and pinball is dead? yeah i was what a gloomy interview yeah really can you be more depressing right brian what's the most difficult depressing thing that's ever happened to you i think it was when pinball went out october 25th of uh 99 if i'm not mistaken i don't see it's depressing for bill too yeah i i still have the memo of pinball closing down oh that is which is really sad i should post that somewhere shouldn't i i'd love a copy of it yeah bill loves misery no i love the history i love the history you know honestly just like watching uh tilt and all that other stuff about you know and hearing stories from you know dwight and steve ritchie and now you know obviously you here in a minute you know i mean just hearing those stories and how passionate people were working at williams building these incredible machines that have far surpassed their livelihood of the five to seven years that people are dumping big money into to keep them going or buying something that's been remade or you know or remanufactured you know in new games it's just incredible yeah it is crazy it's almost like the 90s in that time frame was like the golden era of pinballs because we had enough power from the electronics and the software side to add enough depth and you know the music and the sound and the effects and everything coming together that it created something that wasn't there before and then since everybody there was so passionate about making them, you can see it and feel it, I think, in all those games that were made. And you can't buy that kind of passion. No, no, and it's something special. I mean, you still see it now, today, right, in different ways, but there was something special about that era. Definitely. All right, so I interrupted, and I'm sorry for that, but when you found out... Yes, please discuss the ultimate demise and how you were... Right. So where are you? I mean, because I remember certain things in life, you know, 9-11, Space Shuttle Challenger. I would assume for yourself and your career, I mean, just knowing the finality that pinball was dead, if you could walk us through that, if you're up for it. I've got Kleenex. Yeah. Give me a moment. No, I was over in video. I forget what game I was working on. It was my first video game working with the team over there to kind of learn the ropes. And, you know, I would come over to pinball all the time because I still knew all the people over there and would hang out occasionally with the guys. and it was rooting for them the whole time. When the news came out that they decided to cancel it, it wasn't completely a surprise because obviously when you're involved in it, there's lots of talk and there was a lot riding on this whole thing that Pinball 2000 had to save the industry or they were going to close it down. And it didn't quite meet the standards. I actually think it did fairly well. I mean, it did better than any of the games before it. But the second game came out with a huge license and it didn't do as well as they had expected it to. Star Wars. Yeah. Even though it was a very ambitious effort and a lot of interesting things went into that game, it wasn't enough for them to keep it going. I think part of it too might have been that they were also getting into the slot machines in another market, so they had another shiny thing to chase after and pinball was going down all this time. They tried to save it. They put the money into it to try to make it. It wasn't doing what they wanted to. It just seemed like the return on investment on a slot machine was exponentially greater than putting that into pinball at the time, which was unfortunate because, to your point, it just seemed like it was the heyday of pinball. Yeah. And just right when it was catching on to where it was going to dominate, the plug was pulled. Yeah, and it was horrible, especially with everybody being out of a job and leaving after we had been together so long doing all these games. It was, from a personal side, it was really, really a sad day. So where do you go? I mean, you said you leave, you're out of pinball, you're helping out on the sidelines, you're into video games. Yep. You know I had both passions as a kid pinball and video So it was exciting to me to go into something new take what I learned in pinball and apply that sensibility to a video game So I moved over to video. I worked on a game called Hyperdrive with Matt Booty, who was leading the team. Learned all about 3D programming and how all that works. And after that, I started my own team and did Arctic Thunder, which was a sit-down game. Yeah, sit-down driver, yeah. And that ended up being the last game that Midway made. I'm catching a common theme here. Another sad moment, I guess, in the era. This might be our last podcast. Brian closes it down. Oh, my God. Hey, thanks for coming in, Brian. We'll catch you. Hey, where's that limo? You might want to take the knife away. Oh, my gosh. All right. Good luck, Stern. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you look back at that, and some of those were kind of dark areas, right? We were still all passionate about making games and trying to make the best thing we possibly could, but the era was changing. You know, the consoles were coming out at the home, and they were lower cost, and you could play for 50 hours on a game versus a quarter at a time. So the world was changing, and it was hard to change with it at the time. But, you know, one thing I certainly learned about being in games, if you don't like change, you're never going to survive because the whole industry changes constantly. It's evolving and changing. Yeah, and that's one of the fun parts about it, though. And it seems like it goes in cycles, too, though, with pinball and just life in general. Yeah. Now, pinball was always a big topic. Oh, it's just a cycle. It's on the downturn. It'll come back. It'll come back. But after years and years of it'll come back, it didn't come back. Yeah, yeah. So that was the hard part, I think, of it all going away. I think if they had their focus more on pinball and the slot machines weren't around, they might have put more focus. They might have scaled down to keep some portion of it going. I think some of the focus was on more brighter ventures that they thought in the management at the time. So I can see how they made the choice. I don't agree with it, of course, but, you know. Yeah, right, I get it. It happened. Made dollars or cents to somebody at some point. So after Midway, where did you go next? Yeah, Arctic Thunder. Yeah, I actually stayed at Arctic Thunder. Then Midway closed down the arcade division. probably I think that was probably 2000 2001 around then because the same thing happened to arcades as happened to pinball right all of that world was going away it wasn't just pinball itself but the whole arcade world and those types of games were disappearing so they closed that down another really sad day different interview but all the mechanical side and everybody who involved in making the big sit-down games went away too so they got into console games So I then moved into doing console games, still at Midway. Oh, cool. So what console games were you part of? So I then led the team on PsyOps and Mindgate Conspiracy, which was a PS2 game, Xbox and PC. That project took probably two and a half or so years from start to finish. Most of the game was done in about 18 months. How was that transition for you, going back into programming versus game designing, a physical game, and then you're going into more like a virtual world? Yeah, well, at the time, like on Arctic Thunder, that team was probably about 10, 12 people, and I was programming still at the time on that. After that, the teams just got way bigger. The products got way bigger in the whole console market, and PsyOps was probably about 35, 45 people, depending on when in the project. Are you digging console gaming at that time? Are you at home with the PS2 when you're playing that and EA Sports Baseball? Yeah, you totally absorb yourself into it. I wasn't a big sport games fan, but yeah. What are some of the games that you were playing on PS2? Platform games, Nintendo Mario type stuff, and shooters, and a large variety of games. I'm kind of like the, I just consume games, so I like playing just about everything. Yeah, that's, I love it. And you learn lots from that, too. Yep. So when we did PsyOps then, and that team was probably about 35, 45 people at that point, you can't be a programmer anymore um you know i was still compiling code and and playing with the game at that point but i wasn't really a programmer on that there's just too many things to do the games are too big yeah um and then after psyops uh was there a sense of of like were you excited to have be going into another direction or was there a sense of like emptiness or depletedness were you concerned about taking down any new companies that you worked for after i just closed pinball and arcade like you're saying you're gonna close down sony or like how's that that's right my destruction knows no bounds right um funny you should say because it did end that way but it's not me really oh my gosh drop the mic um yeah everybody council became a really tough business too after like four or five years because there's so much competition in that world and the budgets were just growing exponentially where PSYOPs was probably I don't know what PSYOPs was probably 7-8 million dollars to make that's amazing yeah and that's a bargain nowadays you can't even make a game for that on the console the next game I made was about 35 million and now the games in console like Grand Theft Auto and stuff like that they're 100-200 million dollars to make so it's a big movie budget so the teams are just gigantic and it was like a thousand people working on those games. And it's a totally different experience than a core team of four or five guys making a pinball machine. Yeah, there's a ton of people. It's amazing. Yeah, silly money that goes just into the home console stuff now. Well, I mean, the money that's being brought in on the home console stuff, I mean, properly done is, you can't compete with it, right? No, absolutely. It's just, you know, mind-boggling. You can almost solve third world crises with the money that's Yeah, right. Dumped into an arcade, well, a console game. It also kind of destroyed the innovativeness of that market, too, because if somebody's spending $100 million making a game and somebody spends $3, $4 million, I'm going to play $100 million. It's going to cost the same amount for the game, right? $60 for the game. Right. So that kind of squashed a lot of innovation, and you don't see as much in the console market anymore. It eventually moved to mobile where you see a lot of the innovation. But at the time, all the companies that were kind of in that mid-road were falling apart and dropping out because they couldn't afford to compete with the guys spending $100 million. How long are you hanging out in the console world then? So I then did John Woo's Stranglehold, which took another two and a half or so years, and that was on PlayStation 3, Xbox. And after that, we had started another game that went for about six months, and then Midway's whole debacle of losing their funding and such happened, and they closed their doors. So that's the third thing I closed. Oh, Brian, Eddie, the grim reaper of entertainment businesses. No, no, third time's the charm. So everything else after that, we're done. You're good. Stern's in good hands, no worries. So far, anyways, how long you been there? I'm just kidding. Give me a few more months. So Midway closed down, and I was kind of looking around, well, what to do next? That whole market and the console stuff kind of came crashing in all of Chicagoland, So there weren't that many big companies around. So me and the CEO, Matt Booty, at the time, we kind of did some consulting for about a year, year and a half or so. And then some friends of mine, which you guys might know, Joe Camico and Larry DeMar, we're looking at starting up something. And this was in, at the time, Facebook games. I was really getting drawn into those because it was such a huge market that just appeared and was kind of taking over a whole new audience and bringing a whole group of people into playing games who never played games before. And they were making a lot of money doing this. So I played a ton of those games to understand them and digest them. I thought, wow, this is something we could make a mark on. So those guys were starting a company. I joined them right at the beginning as the chief creative officer, and we started pitching and making social games. Can you share the name of the company? That was Spooky Cool at the time. Okay. and spooky we made this massive wizard of oz we got the wizard of oz license through the magic of joe and i made this huge builder game um which is kind of like farmville um castleville any of those games at zynga and stuff there was a bunch of them at the time that were just doing crazy zynga that's yeah i mean some of the zynga games were making a million dollars a day at the time it was just it was amazing yeah it just brought this whole new audience who hadn't really played games and gave them a format that they could understand and jump in and have fun so we made this uh builder game but it was it was the first real 3d builder game you know with obviously all my expertise from the past and console games and stuff and it was probably one of the biggest games ever made in that era of the console games we were a new company um there was a brand new market there wasn't a lot of information about how to succeed in that market everybody kept it closed yeah this whole market appeared in a year and took off and very few people understood you know what's happening how does it work and you know especially us being in chicago and everything being out in california where where it all started so did your pinball and video game background lend itself well to the new endeavor yeah absolutely um especially the whole coin up that was one of our pitches with the company is that these were games that you have to jump in understand really quickly and have fun playing and which is the same back in arcade and pinballs It's that same expertise that comes into play for these casual players who like to jump in and play a game. So we made this massive builder game, launched it. We had players that just loved the game to death. I think our challenge was understanding the metrics, which is all the data you can collect from those games, and then reacting to it and knowing what to do. And that's something that we didn't have expertise, and we couldn't really lure anybody in who had expertise. We knew we had to get all this data, but we didn't know what to do with it. You have reams of data to go through and evaluate and decide what to do. And right around that time, we were looking at selling the company. Also, I think that was one of our end goals. What year is this at this point? This is probably 2013 or so. Okay. And Joe, an amazing sales guy, right? Joe knows everybody. He was able to find multiple people who were interested in buying Spooky Cool. So we eventually ended up selling this Zynga to sell it to. And they bought us. They bought Spooky Cool. And we stayed on, a bunch of us, doing various types of games for them. Casino games, which Joe obviously is famous for in that industry. Social casino games, Match 3 games, and a few other things. So I stayed there for about three years. To what, 2016? 2017. 2017. Did you cross paths with Chris Granner? Oh, yeah. I hired Chris there. Oh, no kidding. Yeah. Okay, nice. Me and Chris go back, obviously, to pinball before. He did Indiana Jones with me. Was it fun, like rekindling a little camaraderie there? There's definitely that. I hired a number of people from back in the industry to come work. And you knew these people and you knew what they could do, and it was a great combination. So, yeah, after we sold, I stayed for about three or four years and then decided. It's a big corporate company. there wasn't a lot of innovation going on there wasn't new products it's kind of itching to get back hands-on and do something cool um and pinball was having a resurgence which is awesome i think i'm like yeah right actually do pinball again this would be like the best thing ever so um that was the case you know i called up george and said you know what do you think about this so that was gonna be my question so you approached george gomez at stern and you're like hey i'm ready to get back in. Now, are you working on a design on the side at this point and you're kind of ready to kind of show them what you've got? I mean, not that you have to prove yourself, but did you already have the bug at home or were you just like, hey, get me back in. I'm ready to kind of launch something and I just want to get back into pinball. Yeah. You know, I think anybody who has been in pinball, especially for the number of years that I was, you never stop thinking about pinball. So even when I wasn't making pinball for 20 years, I have notepads of, I would just come up with some idea and I'd write it down. So I have this like stack of papers of ideas over the years. Oh, that would be cool to see some sketches. Because you just think that way and it's like, wow, this would be really fun. Even if I couldn't do anything about it, I definitely was always thinking about it. So what is George saying? So he gets this call and it's like, hey, Brian Eddy on line three. And then how did that conversation go? The first three times he hung up on me, I don't know what that's about. Listen, you killed pinball last time. Exactly. You killed three industries. Stay away. You're not coming back. That's so funny. Yeah, that was tough. But eventually I got through to him and convinced him that this was like the best idea ever. I don't think that's how that went at all. Exactly how it went. Now, George is great. You know, me and George go back to the early days, too, and he's always been incredible to work with. So I was excited to work with him. So was he immediately receptive to the idea? Yeah, I mean, was he just like, let's do this? Oh, yeah, he was excited about it, too. Given our past history and pinball's resurgence and stuff, it seemed like a natural. Yeah, you're having like a reunion over there at Stern. Yeah, let's talk a little bit about some of the employees there that you worked with in the past. Yeah, that's what's incredible. It's like the only job you can start where you know almost everybody there. It's like coming back to family. It's like the reunion episode of Family Ties or something. Exactly. The only thing that's not changing is you're not driving down to 3401 North California. I don't miss that a bit. That was a horrible ride. How do you know that address? 3401. Good with numbers. All right. Yeah, you know, coming back and seeing all the people like Steve Ritchie and Lyman and Dwight and George, so many people who were there in the heyday and still doing the craft, and all great, incredible, talented people. and so it felt like coming back home. It was the easiest job you'd ever start because you know everybody, and everybody knows you, and it's just a lot of fun. I mean, there was Bill and Ted that I've known forever. We've had amazing adventures with Bill and Ted. There you go. Hey, I got that one. I got it. What? You know Bill and Ted? Yeah. Okay. All right. I thought it was a reference to the movie. Did I miss something? Brian Eddy's busting my balls here. No, Bill Fitz and Reuter, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, Bill. Okay. You got it. We're going to pause for station identification on the Special Inlet Radio Network. I don't know what's going on here. Yeah, are you just trying to bomb us with the Bill and Ted's fake ad? Are you actually? No comment. Okay. No comment. I don't know. Derail. All right. Back. Game on. All right. so I even forgot what we were talking about because all of a sudden I just felt like I didn't know what was happening. And I thought I was having a stroke for a second because I experienced missing time and I might have gone to the bathroom. In all fairness, the left side did go droopy. Right. I was watching, but you came back. It was weird. I'm like, what's in the Coors Light? Many excellent adventures. So Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventures. What's that? Yeah. I'm not sure what that is. Is there an underlying joke that I'm missing here? laughing at me i don't know what's happening you know jack danger did post uh yes i know okay so yeah you're just is that what you're referencing maybe oh my gosh i've never felt like like i feel like i'm talking to my wife right now i don't know what's going on wait of all people come on you should have got that what do you mean because jack dropped the you know maybe he doesn't know No, I didn't. I talked to Jack about this. See, this is great for the audience. I know I'm relieved. This will be in the director's cut of the podcast. When people need to pay extra that extra free download that comes out later. Alright, so Bill and Ted. Hey Brian, thanks for coming in. What are we doing on time? Alright. Good times. Back to our regularly scheduled broadcast. So you got the walk back in And, you know, into pinball, obviously. Thank you, Bill. That's what we were talking about. All right. And you felt, how did you feel walking back in knowing most of the people? That's where we kind of left off. Yeah, we're right. So, okay. Yeah, definitely coming back home, like I was saying, and knowing that you have the support of all these people and that you know they know what they're doing, it definitely makes a comfort level of coming in and knowing that you're going to work with great people and you can be able to make a great game. Well, on Shadow, so you were your own dynamic duo because you were programming and you were designing. But your partner in crime back in the heyday was Lyman Sheets, and that was both on Medieval Madness and Attack from Mars. So when you walk in the stern and you've got Lyman in there, was there kind of a sense of, hey, that's the last guy that I really knocked out of the park with? I mean, you guys work together on arguably two of the top three or four pins of all time. If you look at the pin side top 100, it's Medieval Madness and Attack from Mars. And those two games will switch depending on what side of the bed people are waking up in the morning. But popularity-wise, I mean, those are the two pins to own. Yeah, absolutely. And Lyman was great to work with, right, because we both throw ideas around. And he's such a good player, right? He has a perspective that a lot of people don't have to tune to that audience. And I was also there wanting to serve that audience, making sure that the hardcore player could have a great time playing this game a thousand times. But I also always had my mind on the newbie player, too, the casual player who comes up and just wants to have fun hitting the ball around. So I think really the combination of all that together is what made that special. you know both of our knowledge both of our passion like lyman's extremely passionate about his games he wants them to be good i'm the same way when you have people like that working on a team together you know chances are you're going to come up with something great how do your personalities mesh or Slash between yourself and lyman um you know i i think we mesh pretty well when especially when we were working together back in the day um because we both had that same idea of trying to create a game that was fun for everybody. Since we were aligned on that theme and a lot of our ideas about pinball weren't wacky far apart, just with the way I laid out the play field and being from the programming side and how I was thinking the rules, it was in line with a lot of things that Lyman thought. So it really meshed together probably perfectly, which shows hopefully in the games. I've got another Lyman question for you later, if you don't mind. Sure. Coming back, though, into pinball, I mean, in your opinion, what do you think is some of the bigger or major changes that might have taken you by surprise coming back? Is there anything that is like, wow, this is completely different? This is completely different. Didn't expect this. I mean, obviously, we've seen the evolution of pinball from a consumer standpoint, from a player standpoint, but being in the business and being so successful in the 90s and then returning again in 2017, 2018. 19 years later. Right. I mean, is it like Twilight Zone? Like, I mean, how does that work? Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I mean, some things have stayed the same and some have changed pretty dramatically. I think with the markets changing and so many games going in the homes now, that the depth that you can add to pinballs is probably one of the bigger changes that have happened. We still have the toys and you still want to be innovative and have a cool feel to it. but having that ability to put more depth into the games is is incredible too you know we didn't have as much freedom back in the day so that's probably one of the bigger changes you know the the play field and layouts and the toys and all that stuff you're always garnered by a certain amount of cost and such of what you can put into a game so that hasn't trained to changed as dramatically little things on technology have to write your board set now is the size of a postage stamp compared to the whole backbox. Yeah, and that actually opens up more possibilities because the tech has evolved and LED lamps, they make all the other games look dull and old without them. So as far as serviceability and stuff, there's a lot of positive things that have happened over the years. But it's still a pinball, still that experience under the glass with fun toys and ramps and the theme and the sound and the rules and stuff all coming together to make something entertaining. That stayed the same. and that part is still exciting. You've got the evolution from the DMD now going to the LCD also. Which opens up many doors. I mean, you think about doing Medieval Madness now with a giant LCD would just be insane. Yeah, it would be incredible what you could do in the display. Now the game takes place under the glass so that where I put most of my effort But you could do some incredible graphics and tie with it and you can display so much more information on them That where I think the key is is being able to display information The problem being you still have to look up for that information. So you've got to trap up, see what's going on. But the LCD lends itself well to giving that information instead of instant info on holding a flipper button for status updates and whatnot. Yeah, and I think players who are watching, standing around it too, can learn more of that information. I'm not a big fan of games that are overcomplicated, though, ones that have 152 modes. There's a limit, I think. There's a limit to somebody being able to come up and understand at least some portion of the rules so they can have fun. If it gets too complicated, there's too many choices and stuff, I think you start to lose some part of the audience. I want to serve the biggest audience I can. I want everybody to have fun when they play the game. So it's a fine balance between the two that I think every team has to find. You want the game to be approachable, right? Well, yeah, and if you can't play the game and actually get through the entire game, you know, being a proficient pinball player, I mean, I'm not saying world-rated, but at least be able to get through the game after playing it six months, then... Isn't there a sense of letdown, though? And this is what happens to me, Brian. Like, I've been known to go through pins pretty fast, and it's not because I'm, like, an excellent player. It's just because once I think I've seen everything that there is to see on a pinball machine, I'm not as, like, willing to lend my time to go downstairs and play it anymore. And it's just because I'm always looking to see something else. And where I think the complexity of like a hidden wizard mode or something that's a little bit deeper, for me, it's kind of interesting because then I know at any given time I can come downstairs after owning a machine for months or even years and I might see something that I've never seen before on a pinball machine. Now, the flip side of that is you could own a machine for years and years and years and still not see everything that you've ever seen. And that could be frustrating, too. So in your opinion, like where do you draw the line? What are the checks and balances to make both people happy? yeah i mean since more games going to the home now i'd like to see a lot more depth than the 90s games um but there's some games like even some of the jersey jack games right they they have an incredible amount of content in them yeah but in some ways it's almost too much to your casual player that they get too confused it's like you can't just walk up to it and play it now there's some people just love that format of a game and that's fine too right there's something for everybody out there um but for me i think i like that approachability and i like adding that depth in for the good players. Back in the day, we could have one wizard mode. Well, now you could have three different wizard modes staged in different ways so that there's different pathways you can follow to try to get to each one. So you can add that depth and keep it interesting. I like that it's not linear. You have different ways you can approach. Yeah, and you can still make it approachable to the average player. Okay, so one other question. Hey, Bill and Ted's. Bill and Ted's. Do you know Bill? Damn. How you doing? Brian's killing me. When we started the podcast, that was my biggest... I hope he's picking on me because he likes me and not because I'm just some putz here. Well, my biggest gripe with Ken... Your biggest gripe with me? My biggest gripe with Ken is he's not Ted. Where is this podcast going? I envisioned this podcast. If it was a Bill and Ted's podcast, that would have been it. You were with me, and then Brian Eddy comes over, and now you guys are both picking on me. We used to live close together. You don't know our history. He's thrown out addresses of your former employers and stuff. It's creeping me out, to be honest. Ken was a town north of me. I was in Elk Grove Village. Oh, yeah, there you go. Not on the cool side of the tracks, evidently. I wasn't on the cool side of Wooddale, so it's fine. As I get, you know, ostracized on my own damn show. So we discussed the reunion between yourself and Lyman Sheets, and I appreciate that you were candid and kind of let us know a little bit about your personalities and how they mesh. Is there a chance that we might see a Lyman Sheets, Brian Eddy pinball machine in like a tandem effort again in the near future? maybe you never know that's a hell of an answer i'll tell you what that that was i keyed right in then to what you needed to know that was awesome hey you're saying there's a chance so there's a chance there's a chance there's a chance maybe if our schedules align some year who knows yeah and that's if he designs pinball because we don't know if he's you know cleaning microwaves or you know guarding the front door well how about this before you know before you went before you went to stern because i'm not asking you to tell me anything that you're working on currently at stern unless you want to offer anything in which case i'd be happy to hear that but before you went back at any point did you think to yourself that you would want to make any follow-ups to attack for mars or medieval madness or did you think that those pins were finished as they lie in pinball history never say never i guess on any of that stuff right there They're popular themes. They're broad themes. I could totally see doing that at some point. That's exciting. But when I'm just cleaning microwaves, I'm not sure if I'm going to get that chance. There's a lot of microwaves that be cleaned at Stern. There are. That's a big factor. That's so funny. So I guess, can we confirm that you're at Stern, right, as game designer? Yes, I am at Stern. So he does go in the door. What he does, we don't know. Right, exactly. Okay. Can we expect to see any elements from your prior pins implemented into future pins that you may or may not be working on at any given time in any given place at any given manufacturer i keep i keep those uh microwaves really clean oh damn the microwaves yeah that's where they cook all the cool mods man the microwave yeah that's where i'm gonna stick my head after this show is in a microwave on you know on the one thread there was uh you know they they use those microwaves to melt plastic stuff and do all this weird crap yeah i know i know they need to get clean too i've got youtube all right so it's not as easy as it sounds i'm just saying i i can totally appreciate that so brian uh so you're on it's stern as a designer we know this but what can we expect from Brian Eddy as a designer in the near future with stern well i can't obviously divulge anything um but since you know bill and ted and you know we've had a lot of excellent adventures damn it i think anything could probably happen excellent or is it bogus i don't know what's going on here. We've got to wait and see. The uncomfortable moment of podcast silence is about to take place. That's all right, though. But I will say that I'm having a great time being back. I was going to say, are you having fun? Yeah, it's like the most awesome thing ever. Are you at Stern every day then, or how often are you there? I come in a certain number of days a week to work with the team and stuff. Not that there is a team. Oh, shazam. Ooh. Right. Bill and Ted's got a little more interesting. and it's getting excellent that's good all right okay all right so we'll uh so because at the recording we're only at an hour 15 minutes and that's actually pretty sweet because yeah that's perfect people ask me to go three hours with you and go ahead who will listen to that i can do this for three hours we both could you for three hours right we're on our best behavior yeah like seriously like all that stuff we wanted to talk to you we could keep digging because there's a million questions about you can ask a few more questions Medieval, all this stuff. Yeah. When you heard that Chicago Gaming Company was going to be remaking Medieval Madness, how did you react to that? What kind of feeling did that give you? I was super pissed. I got the lawyers involved. We actually sued them. Oh, snap. We didn't see that coming. It was in the courts for about three years, and I'm completely making this all up. Oh, okay. Wow. I was like, oh, crap, man. He's never coming back. Hard to hear, especially on the Pinball Podcast. No, I wasn't even consulted. So I probably heard the same way you guys heard, that they're doing a remake. I obviously wasn't involved at all. I know Doug over there, and I wish them well in doing it. But unfortunately, I don't have anything to do with it. It's great to see it, though. I mean, like we were saying, 20 years later, that game is still popular enough to remake. And the current day, people are having fun and enjoying it. That's awesome. So great to see that. You know, one thing I do love about that is, you know, if you wanted a Medieval Madness, you're not spending $15,000 on one now. So the average person, it's an attainable game now. And this might not be popular, but I like to see games get played. You know, they're not, you know, I mean, obviously you want to have nice examples, but, you know, a $20,000 game, I mean, was it dipped in gold? Yeah, it was getting crazy. The prices were just totally out of line. And obviously we didn't make enough of them back in the day to what it ended up becoming. So for somebody to remake it and bring a whole new audience, a whole new era into it, yeah, that's an honor, right, to see that happen and to see more people enjoying it, a totally different era. Does part of you feel kind of slighted, just like, man, I missed my calling as far as time frame for my pinball machines? Because if those pinball machines were released now, granted, you would probably have to tweak some complexity of the code to make it a little bit deeper, but maybe not even possible. But, I mean, do you feel like you just kind of missed your time period for your creation? You know, I'm already depressed about closing three industries down. Did you really need to bring up the fact that I missed the whole era of the heyday? Oh, man. So sorry, man. It's true. We're going to hug this out before you leave. So we're on the same page here. One other question about remakes. The topper for Attack from Mars. And I'm asking this question for our friends at Kansas Joe and Matt in our pinball club. What were your initial thoughts when you saw that topper? What topper? I have no idea what you're talking about. You've never seen the topper for Attack from Mars on the remake? No. Is it the one with the big alien that's kind of hanging? No, no, no. Yeah, it's the alien head. And he goes up and heads. It's the body. Yeah. Yeah, okay. I think I've seen some pictures of it. I haven't seen it live. Have you played a remake? I did play a remake out at Doug's Place. How did it play in comparison to the... Considering they redid the electronics and they brought it all back, it's not exactly the same. The feel and the timings are a little bit different. But considering you can buy a brand new Attack from Mars and it's pretty close, it's not bad. Not worth a nitpicking. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, as a purist, right, as a designer, I would still want an original Attack from Mars. But we know what the prices are on some of the original stuff in pristine condition, too. So everybody has to make the tradeoff. Do you like LEDs and pins versus the incandescents? At first, when I seen the LEDs, I hated them because they were like blaring and, you know, eye-searing the light from them. I think they've since toned them down a little bit and kind of regulated them a little bit better. and now actually when you put two pins next to each other with the old lights and the new ones the leds look way more exciting and attractive to me so i've kind of been sold on to the leds if done tastefully yeah because you see exactly yeah you see something like a little bit that's the key i think creative you're like oh yeah have you seen the pin stadium mods like yeah yeah what are your thoughts on that yeah yeah i i mean i think the whole mod community right now i think is really exciting yeah i think it's i love that the energy of the industry that people are making all these unique mods and people buying them and selling them, putting them on their games and making them their own. So I totally support all that stuff. It's awesome to see. That's cool as a designer that you don't feel like somebody's trying to improve on your original design or anything. Yeah, a lot of the ideas that they come out with were probably ideas that we had during development, but we couldn't afford the cost that we had. So if somebody wants to modify their game and make it cool to themselves in some way... Because myself and Bill, we're going to do this Attack from Mars mod where the ship comes out and it just goes across the whole play field yeah there's a prototype we're going to check out in Brian Eddy's crawl space yeah and then we're going to be hitting that mod community with that so that you heard it here first on special with pinball podcast did i mention i have lawyers ah okay he did um all right so final question for you for me um what is in the private collection of Brian Eddy of pinball machines oh good question um i have pretty much all the games I did back in the heyday, ones I programmed and the ones I designed. Can you go down the line? So let me see if I can remember it. Or how many do you have to start? I think it's like 13. Okay. So it starts with Pool Sharks, Diner. I forgot about Diner. Wow. Yeah, Diner. I did a few. That's a System 11, right? Yeah. Yeah. I did a few. So is Pool Sharks. I did a few light shows and display effects and stuff on that when I first started. And then, let's see, Bride of Pimbot, which I programmed. Funhaus, which I did some effects on with Larry and Pat. Funhaus is another super popular game, especially lately. Funhaus is a unique game. It was definitely a fun game. It was like the transition to System 11, just the last of the System 11 games. So I think after that was Black Rose, which was the first Dot Matrix game. And then, let's see, what's after that? Is it Indiana Jones? I think it's Indiana Jones. Is that 92, 93? Probably 93. Indiana Jones. And then there's the Hot Shots in there that we talked about, which surprised me that you guys even knew of that. And then, let's see, what's after Hot Shots? Probably The Shadow, right? Yep. Is that right? That sounds right. Yep, sounds right. The Shadow, and then Attack from Mars, Medieval Madness. I have a Scared Stiff. It's the only pinball I didn't do that I have. Okay, so I love Scared Stiff. I've owned two of them, and I'm looking for a third. But, okay, great wins. That's one owner scared stiff is what you have, right? So here, the better question is, when you bought these games, were they coming out of Williams Factory, and you brought them home, set them up, and now they've just been sitting ever since? Yeah, pretty much. And since they're at home, they last forever, right? So they're all pristine. The unique thing about the Scared Stiff, it was I think the first game that went out on test that I have, I did a play field swap, so that's like pristine. but the back glass is still the original pencil sketch that went out on test get out of here Greg Freres yeah great wow you know what man i don't want to ever invite myself over to somebody's house no but that's that's incredible um and so yeah medieval and then i have uh revenge from mars so i think that's i think that's all that's cool wow that is that is so cool when you do play pinball at the Brian Eddy household i mean what are you gravitating to right now and are any of the machines that you're currently playing influencing the decisions that you're making going forward on your new game assuming i'm working on a game and when the microwaves are yes right once they're clean we'll see what happens i still play attack from mars and medieval a lot right because i think they're timeless and um i'm not like a lyman level player and somewhere kind of in the middle probably uh so there's still a challenge to me that's still still fun to try to get to the wizard modes and complete them so you're not grand champ in all these games every time you go downstairs are you in a tournament pinball at all i mean you ever follow it you ever i do follow it a little bit especially now coming back to it and i love how big it's growing it's like there's tournaments everywhere if you want to play in a tournament every weekend you could go somewhere probably and and play in a tournament now and stern seems to have like half of the top 10 pinball players in the world just working in the building yeah yeah that's got to be unbelievable as a designer to have that kind of exposure to those guys i mean it's got to be i mean yeah it's incredible and they're all great guys and they're all willing to help out so you know to to have that reference right there in-house yeah it's pretty incredible can you talk a little bit about maybe a Keith Elwin who is newer you know as of last year you've got Keith Elwin uh scott denisi and eric minier from jersey jack i mean these are kind of the three up-and-coming designers uh that have recently come out of the woodwork offered games right can you talk a little bit about working with keith or anything that you see with keith yeah i haven't really work directly with Keith, but talking with him and stuff, Keith is awesome. His first game he's come out with, even though he had to re-theme it as something, it's been incredible. He looks at it from a player's standpoint and the entertainment that that player wants, which I think gives him a great perspective on how to make a great game. A lot of the pinball designers from back in the era are getting old. We joke that I'm the youngest old guy who's there now. We've had a lot of comments on you having some great hair in pinball, actually. It's not quite as great as that picture, but I still have hair. No, I love it. It's perfect. Yeah, so a lot of us are getting older, so to see some new people come in who are enthusiastic and passionate about it to keep it alive is great. I love it. So, Brian, I mean, how long do you see yourself in pinball? Would you like to see yourself retiring as a pinball designer or retiring in pinball? yeah i mean i love pill now that i'm back and that energy is there and all the people at stern are just as passionate as the people back in williams valley in the days i'd love to keep making games i have 20 years of ideas that i've been writing down right to come back to it at some point how exciting is that yeah it's it's exhilarating to be back so you've got a plethora of designs and ideas and i have like 20 different ways to clean a microwave oh brian only got through like three of them oh my goodness awesome all right yeah for those of you that don't know what we're talking about there's a microwave wall at stern for the break room so that people can microwave their frozen meals all at the same time at stern pinball because everyone that's on the line right they all take lunch at the same time right so there's a the the bell that goes off and everyone comes running to the lunchroom and they all have to cook their their meals at the same time because they only get x employees it's break time so yeah you can't have uh all those people sharing one microwave. No, no. I'm glad you guys understand. Yeah. We've been that stern when they allow us. I think my ban is up in three more days. It would be a lot nicer if we could walk without the ankle bracelets attached. I get it. George Gomez has us on the leash over there. Yeah. Brian, in closing of this interview, is there anything that you would like to say to the people that have been waiting for you to come back and are excited that you're back? Is there anything that you want to tell them or share with them about Brian Eddy's resurgence in pinball? I think the next couple of years in pinball are going to be the most exciting time in over two decades. All right. Love that statement. I love it, too. So this has been like a pretty cool edition of Special Unlit, episode number 28 now. To have Brian Eddy in the studio has been an honor. Brian, thank you so much for coming in. uh bill yeah jenny she's been sitting here jenny i know it's like you know like we have to give her credit jenny i'm sorry my fault uh i don't know how you want to like go ahead and and and introduce this at the very end i apologize i i probably should have that's bad manners from me well you gotta get credit you gotta get credit you've been here through the process so right so uh so so jenny uh Brian Eddy's girlfriend right yes has been here the whole time patiently listening to us go back and forth with the banter. And she didn't mock me once. I'm amazed. She didn't. She didn't. In fact, yeah, that's good. So, Jenny, I apologize we don't have four mics because it would have been interesting to hear what it's like to deal with a Brian Eddy on a daily basis because he's so... Oh, you don't want to know that. So personable and friendly here to me. So, but thank you, Jenny, for coming and thanks for your patience. For those of you that have been waiting for the interview, hope we didn't disappoint. Anything in closing here? Yeah, I mean, everybody go out and have a Two Brothers beer and enjoy some pinball. Wow, listen to that. Free plug. We don't even make money on that. But we can sell that to Two Brothers, right? Awesome. Try to make some money off our sponsors. I'll be waiting for my truck. Right. If you're looking for residuals, I'll tell you, they're not as big as you might anticipate. They're a little light. A little light, but that's okay. It's fun to do this. But everybody, thank you for listening to episode number 28 of the Special One Lit Pinball Podcast. Thank you, Brian Eddy, for coming in. Thank you, Jenny, for listening to everything that we had to say today. it's been great, Bill yeah, thank you everybody thank you Brian, thank you Jenny thank you Ken, this has been an awesome experience and actually I was thinking about this when we started doing this, you know, one of the first times we did a podcast we were like, you know, it would be cool to get Brian Eddy and everybody that we've ever talked about on the show and like tonight was like, you know, one of the cappers of that you know, things that we've done it was just kind of surreal, I mean, in all honesty so I'm glad that you're back I'm glad that you're out there. I'm glad that you're working back in pinball. And I think I speak for everybody. When I wish you the best of luck, we're all counting on you. No pressure. As they're paying you. So for Bill Webb, I am Ken Cromwell. Everybody have a good morning, good afternoon, good evening. And don't forget to take some time out of your day to play some pinball. So long, everybody. Wow, I just listened to myself talk for a while there. It is public knowledge. I'm starting to feel very uncomfortable down here. Let me pour the beer in my eye for max absorption right into the bloodstream. The Special When Lit Pinball Podcast is sponsored by Two Brothers Artisan Brewing, makers of pinball pale ale. You're passionate about all things pinball and great tasting craft beer. Two Brothers Artisan Brewing is a firm believer in pursuing your passions. For over 20 years, Two Brothers has had an unparalleled passion for their craft, their customers, and their community. Two Brothers Ours and Brewing wants you to follow your passion and drink theirs.