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American Pinball Update - 2024

Pintastic New England·video·58m 50s·analyzed·Feb 7, 2025
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.032

TL;DR

American Pinball honors legendary designer Barry Oursler's final game and shares the story of completing it after his death.

Summary

American Pinball presents a detailed retrospective on Barry Oursler's final design, Barry's Barbecue Challenge, discussing his recruitment from Deep Root Pinball, his cancer diagnosis and treatment, his rapid one-month game design, his unexpected death during chemo resumption, and the company's decision to complete the game as a tribute. The presentation covers the game's design evolution from the initial 'Car Hop' concept through VPX simulation and final mechanical changes including drop target repositioning and 'Bash Locks' innovation.

Key Claims

  • Barry Oursler designed the initial game concept in approximately one month from scratch after being asked to design a game with spinners on the ramps

    high confidence · Direct testimony from American Pinball team members presenting development timeline; corroborated by multiple speakers

  • Barry Oursler was diagnosed with cancer while at Deep Root Pinball and lacked health insurance, forcing him to stop treatment

    high confidence · Direct testimony explaining David Fix's intervention to provide immediate health insurance upon hiring at American Pinball

  • Barry Oursler died from a bad reaction to resuming chemotherapy after approximately one month at American Pinball

    high confidence · Multiple speakers describe the timeline and circumstances of his death; presented as established fact at the event

  • The game was originally codenamed 'Car Hop' but could not release under that name due to an existing game with that title

    high confidence · Speaker explicitly states this naming constraint during design evolution discussion

  • Online speculation that Barry Oursler did not actually design the game is false and deeply offensive to the American Pinball team

    high confidence · American Pinball team directly refutes rumor and provides detailed documentation of Oursler's design process and drawings

  • The game went through at least two major mechanical changes: drop target repositioning from upper right orbit to classic Space Shuttle position, and implementation of 'Bash Locks' for saucer mechanics

    high confidence · Detailed technical discussion by American Pinball designers explaining both changes and their rationale

  • American Pinball's next game after Barry's Barbecue Challenge is confirmed, with the speaker indicating they were branched off to work on their own title halfway through the Barry project

    high confidence · Direct statement: 'So there it is. I don't have any other information on it, but it is the next game we're going to be releasing.'

Notable Quotes

  • “Fix said give me a game with spinners on the ramp, and he just said okay and came up with the rest of it.”

    American Pinball presenter@ 6:15 — Demonstrates Barry Oursler's exceptional design speed and responsiveness to direction

  • “There is a really upsetting rumor that Barry did not design this game. And that is just—why? Why? You? How could you know? Why would you know?”

    American Pinball team member@ 7:03 — Direct refutation of online speculation about authorship; shows community concern about the rumor

  • “Barry's game is next. We're finishing this game. Does anyone in this room think we should not finish this game that he has given us? And they're just silence, pin drop.”

    American Pinball presenter@ 14:48 — Pivotal moment where company unanimously commits to completing Oursler's final design as tribute

  • “This game coming out is the completion of a 40-year arc of my life.”

    American Pinball presenter@ 2:33 — Reveals personal motivation for completing the game; Space Shuttle was their first pinball experience

  • “He ran to his office and he shut himself in there for two hours. We thought—if it weren't for the glass doors, we would have thought he was upset. He was just frantically scribbling down everything he could remember Barry said to him.”

    American Pinball presenter@ 10:31 — Describes team's emotional response and immediate effort to preserve Oursler's design intent

  • “This is a physics simulator. It's like 95-99% inaccurate depending on the situation. But it lets everyone in the building see and feel the vision before we ever even build it.”

Entities

Barry OurslerpersonAmerican PinballcompanyDavid FixpersonDeep Root PinballcompanyBarry's Barbecue ChallengegameSpace ShuttlegameDennisperson

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Deep Root Pinball described as struggling financially and operationally ('swirling the drain') at time of Barry Oursler and Steve Bowden recruitment

    medium · 'we found out that the whole Deep Root Pinball thing wasn't going so hot, and we decided to pluck a few people out of the whirlpool'

  • ?

    community_signal: Online speculation and rumors that Barry Oursler did not actually design Barry's Barbecue Challenge; American Pinball team explicitly refutes as false and deeply offensive

    high · 'There is a really upsetting rumor that Barry did not design this game...podcasters will say whatever they can to get clicks and then they repeat it as if it's fact'

  • ?

    community_signal: American Pinball demonstrated organizational commitment to designer's health and treatment, with leadership 'going to war with HR' to ensure immediate health insurance upon hiring

    high · David Fix 'went to war with HR and said we're not going to wait. This man's getting health insurance on day one'

  • ?

    design_innovation: American Pinball developed Bash Locks mechanic—a teardrop-shaped saucer design—to solve ruleset issue where classic lock-stealing made ball-locked shots unplayable in modern game design

    high · Ryan conceived idea solving problem that 'if there's a ball in a lock...you don't even aim because of lock stealing. You don't need to hit it. But like now for a more modern rule set, you can't do anything'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: American Pinball prioritized preserving Barry Oursler's original design intent by building first whitewood exactly as designed, without changes, then evaluating modifications

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.176

0:00
That works. I'm keeping it. For anyone who has an IT background, we joke that after a couple of years in that industry, you get an IT aura where things just start working when you walk by. She has a game tester aura where things just start falling apart, but in a good way and a reproducible way. It's the most useful thing ever.
0:18
KCR Coder has commented on many occasions. She just walks into a room, a game will do a thing, and he's like, I've been trying to reproduce that for three days, and you did it in three minutes. and I'm pretty sure he's the reason that she got fired.
0:35
Wow. Well, you're the intern now. You can fire me for that. All right. Super fired. Our organization is very upside down, so the interns are actually at the top level. I got my intern's coffee, not the other way around. They were for a week, right? It was technical. Yeah, it worked. I got fired. It worked. Our old intern, Luke, fired me. It was great. so Steve put together our slides for this week we have we have a couple of stories to tell we're going to tell the story of Barry O's barbecue how it all came together what it meant for us as a company and us individually and we're going to share you know our interactions with the legend Barry who unfortunately is not here so what we are happy to be here in his stead and to present his final work as complete as we could make it. And we hope you enjoy it. It is in the free play room in the back corner. And in my opinion, that is the best playing one I've had my hands on. So do go check it out. And if you want, we'll also go over some of the goals and rules, because I've heard a few people say that once they understood their goals, that game made, they liked it a lot more. So, sure, you want to kick off the slides or whatever we got going on? Next slide, please. All right. How well can we see that? Yeah, that's good. That's good. So there's the original, close to the original car hop design that Barry and I were working on once we were talking about it. So this is about, it's dated November 2021, but we started talking about this in August of that year where we were, I mean, basically me, I'm hoping to try to get this as close to Space Shuttle as possible without it being Space Shuttle because... Nailed it. Thank you. Awesome. Thank you. Because Space Shuttle was my first pinball game I ever played.

Space Shuttle was the speaker's first-ever pinball game, making Barry's Barbecue Challenge's completion a 40-year arc of their life

high confidence · Personal testimony explaining emotional significance of the game design

American Pinball presenter@ 20:22 — Explains how VPX simulation allowed team visualization and validation of Oursler's design before physical prototype

  • “I have one question: did he design the table before he knew that he was mentoring you? No, I think no that's—he knew that I don't—he made mistakes so he can intentionally teach you. I doubt that.”

    American Pinball presenters (dialogue)@ 25:22 — Reveals uncertainty about whether Oursler intentionally left design flaws for pedagogical purposes

  • “Ryan just go build it. Just go in the lab and build it.”

    Dennis (American Pinball designer)@ 0:28 — Shows pragmatic design philosophy of prototyping concepts physically rather than just discussing them

    • Zofiaperson
    Steve Bowdenperson
    Ryanperson
    Kathyperson
    Car Hopgame
    Pulp Fictiongame
    Bash Locksproduct
    Lukeperson

    high · Team consensus: 'we need to make our first whitewood exactly as Barry has designed it. Not a single change' before deciding on modifications

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Barry Oursler and Steve Bowden recruited from Deep Root Pinball to American Pinball as Deep Root faced production/financial difficulties

    high · David Fix 'reached out to him right when we found out that the whole Deep Root Pinball thing wasn't going so hot, and we decided to pluck a few people out of the whirlpool'

  • ?

    product_concern: Initial design had mechanical issues with drop targets in upper right orbit position causing ball hang-ups and poor playability; repositioned to Space Shuttle configuration

    high · 'it was a ball hang-up, and you couldn't hit them on purpose...the feed would be awful, and like, it was just—it really wasn't working'

  • ?

    product_strategy: American Pinball confirmed next game in pipeline after Barry's Barbecue Challenge; speaker indicates they were branched off halfway through Barry project to work on own title

    medium · 'around halfway through I was branched off to work on my own title, which is now I think we're confirmed as that's the next one...it is the next game we're going to be releasing'

  • ?

    rumor_hype: Persistent online speculation that Barry Oursler did not design Barry's Barbecue Challenge, attributed to podcasters seeking engagement

    high · American Pinball team directly addresses: 'podcasters will say whatever they can to get clicks and then they repeat it as if it's fact. Which is the problem.'

  • ?

    technology_signal: American Pinball used VPX physics simulation as design validation tool during development, allowing team to visualize and test concept before building physical prototype

    high · Speaker created complete VPX recreation of Barry's drawing and 'they already know that most of Barry's work works' before physical construction began

    • 2:33
    So this game coming out is the completion of a 40-year arc of my life. So that is one reason why I'm especially proud and grateful that this happened. so this is called car hop uh it's codenamed car hop i mean we know there's a car hop game that exists so it would not have been able to come out with that name um but you can sort of see in the design compare it to what uh well we'll get to those in the later pictures but to what uh barrio's barbecue challenge ended up being um so and you can kind of see a little of the space They shut on this in here, but the anomaly would be the drop targets, right, where we attempted to do something which, you know, some things just don't work out. But, hey, you got to try stuff where we put the sweepable drop targets on the right, the far right, and then attempt to do like a sweepable target into the hole at the top. It's sort of like a combo, like a long distance combo in that way. But we'll talk about how that ain't a thing in a few other slides. It's okay. So, Steve, I can't help but notice that this does not say food truck anywhere. No, it does not say food truck. Do you care to describe the relationship between Barry O's barbecue and the rumored food truck pin? Absolutely none. Not none whatsoever. So, yes. Maybe I could draw maybe one thing, the fact that a star rating exists. Well, the designer was clearly hungry. That's all I got. Yes, this has nothing to do with it. Barry was a hungry man. He liked him some food, and who doesn't? This has nothing to do with Voldemort's food truck, okay? This has nothing to do with that. Everyone seems to think that whenever they walk up to it. They're like, oh, it's not a hard leap to go from food truck to barbecue. It's like, actually, those two things are completely separate and have never had any overlap whatsoever. We would tell you in this fun little presentation if it did. But instead, we're going to show you the original drawing for Car Hop. Right. which was what Barry made for us, completely started and finished this drawing while working for API during the short period that we had him. Right. So I guess we could start by telling – maybe we don't have to get into all the nitty-gritty, like, teary stuff that we did last time. No, I mean, it won't be teary. It will be more inspirational. Yeah, okay. All right. So the timeline kind of went something like this.
    5:03
    Barry got hired by American Pinball. David Fix reached out to him right when we found out that the whole Deep Root thing wasn't going so hot, and we decided to pluck a few people out of the whirlpool, as it were. So it's swirling the drain, and we're just like, let's get Steve Bowden out of there and put him on dry land, and let's do the same with Barry. um so unfortunately uh barry had been diagnosed with cancer and he was running through his chemo treatments while he was at deep root and his health insurance was not existent at deep root and so he unfortunately had to stop his treatments and so when we hired him David Fix was very adamant and he went to war with HR and said we're not going to wait this man's getting health insurance on day one Barry go get your treatments I don't want to hear it he was like no don't give me special treatment I don't want to hear it go to the doctor and while you're at it can you design me a game with spinners on the ramps Barry's like alright cool that was the scene Fix said give me a game with spinners on the ramp and he just said okay and came up with the rest of it and so what was it, what did it take him like a month two months? Not even, we weren't even talking very much before we finished with this thing, yeah it was not even the man is a machine. A month later he gives us an almost this drawing from nothing like it wasn't napkin doodle then iteration iteration like it's give me a game with spinners on the ramps, a month later this is turned in so um unfortunately we've had to dispel a couple of really upsetting rumors to us i'm just gonna stop like just get this out of the way um rumors happen with every game people talk people are bored they have to speculate but this one really upset us and so we wanted to make sure we put this right down um there is a really upsetting rumor that barry did not design this game and that is just why why you how could you know why would you know why would we lie i mean that's the most ridiculous thing in the world were you in the same room with us when we were talking i mean there must maybe you but you had bugged the room or you had bugged our phones when we were talking about the game and even if you were somehow right the the impersonation level that a designer would have to do to pretend to make a berry game is is ridiculous why would we bother with that it's just it's stupid please stop repeating it uh we can we will show you his original drawings and we will tell you all the stories of everything he had involved in the project um i know none of you in this room are saying that but podcasters will say whatever they can to get clicks and then they repeat it as if it's fact which is the problem you can speculate all you want just don't pass your speculation on it's fact so as we said barry the machine had a complete game first draft done in a month um and then at that point is when he had started going back to get his chemo treatments because his health insurance was back and unfortunately he had a bad reaction to resuming chemo and we lost him because of that um i was actually about to meet him in a week i have never had the pleasure of meeting barry and steve did and i'm very glad that got to happen.
    8:25
    Oh, I'm so glad to hear that. I want to check out that recording at some point. I remember I was in one of my several trips to Chicago before actually moving out there. I was in a meeting with a supplier about stand-up targets. We were getting a new supplier for stand-up anti-loft, anti-sway targets that we were going to use in some of our upcoming games. And at the time, my favorite breakfast place was Wildberry. It's freaking delicious. and I'm eating my pancakes, and I see David Fix get a text message, and I just see his heart and eyes just sink, and he says, oh, no. And he just stares at his phone for like 30 full seconds, and I've never seen that man rattled. You can mess with him all day. You can do whatever you want. You can throw him under the bus. I've never seen him shaken like this, and I just said, David, what's wrong? And I completely had forgotten our supplier was even there at this point. I felt actually kind of rude later on, but – and then we found out that we had lost Barry. Yeah, really, because when I got the call from Kathy, right, and I was being prepared to share this news, and I know where I was. I'm in that office where Mitesh is now. That's where I was sitting. And I'm like, well, here we go. I have to get myself together, stay stoic, get professional to break the news, the fakes, and talk about what we're going to talk about. and all through that you know once I had processed that and all of a sudden I'm like you have that I guess you can call it the oh crap moment where it's like wait a minute that means I'm game designer now I need a lot of help so immediately at that point I start hurriedly getting notes of everything that I was going to ask Barry about that we were going to discuss the job terms we were going to discuss the ramps we were going to discuss our initial rules that we had with it you know So I had to frivolously start typing it down so I don't forget because if I forget anything, it would just break my heart if I forget everything that we talked about. Certain things that I know he wanted were literally in green text on the rule set as these are Barry's words. These will not be touched. He ran to his office and he shut himself in there for two hours. We thought – if it weren't for the glass doors, we would have thought he was upset. He was just frantically scribbling down everything he could remember Barry said to him. Right. And once I was satisfied with that and then – and once we broke the news and everything. and we had the team meeting, and we discussed what we were going to do with that, and then that's when the idea of a tribute game began to manifest in my mind and in the team's mind, and I'm so glad that the team accepted it and really pulled this off. So after that, to continue my little timeline, after that breakfast was when we got back to the office, and we called the big team meeting, and we broke the news to the rest of the team. Unfortunately, some people hadn't heard yet, and Barry was a very dear friend. Zofia comes to mind specifically.
    11:25
    So after that – I think we can advance to the next slide because I just want to see some of the – because I go through so many iterations of it just so we can get more modern. See, this is the Car Hop with more of the inserts filled in, right? Yeah, more of the inserts filled in. You can see Car Hop coming together. You can see there were burgers and fries, I think, in there. Yeah, burgers and fries and things that you're going to be doing. Three levels. Definitely some rule of three happening there.
    11:53
    And, you know, one of the things I wanted to discuss with Barry was what is a medium burger? What does that mean? Because that's a little weird. So that might have been one of the first changes we were going as far as grammatically and gameplay-like.
    12:07
    And I just want to get to a certain point in this. You can go to the next one, a little bit more of an iteration where some of the bonus slides go in, because this is going to be a very simple game. Oh, yeah. That was going to score in the hundreds of thousands. We're talking about maybe we're going to do a seven-digit display. Really take it old school. Do a dot matrix.
    12:29
    Let's really take it back to old school and do it that way. I think it was right about that time while we were in the planning stages that Pulp Fiction came out. We're like, well, they just did it. I mean, we can still do it, but now the throwback's not ours. So you say you want to go to the next slide? Yeah, the next one is the last iteration before we get to your VPX. All right, all right, Kurt. I'm not there yet. Yeah, I know, but I want to take you there so that when you get to the VPX, we slowly transition over. This was one of the last versions with some of the more of the things filled in, the idea of the radial system as far as the bonuses, Playfield X started to come in as I'm starting to integrate more. And this is all still Barry, right? Yeah, this is more in that same month. This is still us talking about me while I'm trying to integrate some more Barry-ness in this game because I love his games, right? Because he was going to come to American Football. It was going to be Barry and I. He was going to help me, teach me the Barry system and the philosophy. I was really beginning to learn from this man how he's able to design so quickly games that make sense, games that are easy to learn and hard to master. And so I was so looking forward to, beyond the three-plus years we worked at Voldemort, being able to deepen my knowledge and relationship with him in that way. So that was really – I want to get to this point so that you can continue with that. So anyway, so we get to the meeting. The break – the unfortunate news is broken to the rest of the team. And we kind of dispersed for about an hour so everyone could collect themselves. And then we realized, all right, we only have a lot more meetings that we have to have because just like Steve had his moment of, okay, like now that my emotions are starting to process, this has a lot of implications that we – like unfortunately we need to deal with. So you start going through that. And so we had the final team meeting of the day where we – it became very apparent that all of the plans that we had had and we had a timeline going out in what, like six years at that point, like on paper, ready to go. We had a schedule and everything. That carefully crafted schedule was completely thrown out the window that day. We had a lineup We had like this game is next this game is next this game is next Literally crumpled it up threw it in the pile and was like all right well Barry game is next
    14:48
    We're finishing this game. Does anyone in this room think we should not finish this game that he has given us? And they're just silence, pin drop. So it was just, all right, we're all agreed. We're going full on. We're going to finish Barry's final game, and we'll figure out what the rest of our plan is later. We'll put it all together. So that's what we did. We all broke. We dropped everything we were working on for the other games and put it on a shelf. And we all started frantically studying all the information we had. and I had a long meeting with Dennis that day about, and Zofia, about how much, if anything, what we were going to do. So we realized we'd been handed a first draft, and that's all we had. And we had the rules, which were very haphazard and introductory at that point. So this was me after scribbling everything down, basically rearranging all the Lego blocks we had that I was going to talk with Barry about.
    15:56
    And this is when, again, when the Barry tribute format started germinating in my head. And you'll see how that progresses as we move forward. So we had the mechanical and design had a meeting. We're like, well, we don't have him anymore, so this is all we're ever going to get. So what's our plan? And the very first thing we all agreed on is we need to make our first Whitewood exactly as Barry has designed it. Not a single change, even though we all see some obvious things that are not going to stay. There are a couple posts that are just in not correct positions, but we don't care. We're going to put this together exactly as he designed it so we can all play it, and then we will decide how much to change, how much to add, what needs changing, what would be like in this what he would want us to change or add to it because again he this is a game that he had only taken one pass at and like for all we know he had grand plans to add like a second play field or three of them we don't know like yeah we don't know we hadn't got and we hadn't got to that point in our discussions either so yeah this is again this is going to be one of the things we're going to discuss when he got to join me exactly we were going to go through the iterative process, but this is what we had at this point, and we had to see what we were going to work with. So as we created the game as it was written, then we started to discover, okay, we know this is probably not going to work. Okay, we really can't do this. I mean, we can get into the drop targets on the right. Oh, yeah, we'll get there. Yeah. So this was also supposed to be the game that I was supposed to be mentored on. So the schedule, and like Barry was actually told, we have a junior designer. He's very talented. He made his own game, but he doesn't know anything about the industry or proper practice, et cetera. And we want to bring you in to take him under your wing and start teaching him how to do this the right way. And from what I heard, because, again, I unfortunately never got to meet my mentor, he was very excited and couldn't wait to start working with me.
    17:59
    And so I was going to be part of the design process on this game from day one. We were going to make all the changes. I can tell you that. He was excited. So, you know, I believe. this i'm just i unfortunately never got to see it would be ultra confirmed yes so we ended up breaking for the day it was a very somber day and coming in the work the next day and it's like all right well now we have to actually get started on on this big project and that doesn't have to be a bad thing so i'm i'm still a new designer who has very little experience in this i'm still just a homebrew guy i have i've just started i just got my own office like i barely even have access to the systems i'm like you know what i do have one thing i can really contribute with right now and that is something i've talked about a lot in the homebrew seminars which is visual pinball vpx um i have a drawing i have access to this drawing it is accurate i literally so i go to my office because no one needs me for anything. I just started, and they're all frantically working on other things. I'm like, you know what? I'm going to be useful. And I took the drawing, took Barry's drawing, and I imported it into VPX as the playfield background. So I set in the exact dimensions for the playfield, and I cut the drawing so it was exactly pixel edges, so it would line up. And then I used that as a background, and I literally recreated every single thing on that drawing in VPX. Which I believe is next on the app. It is. So that will be the next slide. Yeah, okay. There we go. Nice. Yes. And that's what I worked on for the next three days. I didn't bother telling anybody because everyone was too busy to talk to the new guy at this point.
    19:44
    And I got it all designed right down to the T, every insert, everything. I didn't get any programming really done for it. I did end up programming a multiball just so we could see. It's important to see how a game plays with multiball. and then when I finished this and I had shot it I was like oh my god this thing like shoots even in VPX with no adjustments and nothing changed whatsoever like all these shots work it's like I just walked up to a game and it's just functional so I brought this to the rest of the team and I had to explain what it was they had no idea what they were looking at I'm like just trust me it's a physics simulator it's like 95-99% inaccurate depending on the situation. Yes, Lynn, backhands don't work that great. Where is he? Whatever. He doesn't need to be here.
    20:36
    But it lets everyone in the building see and feel the vision before we ever even build it. They're not even started thinking about building one and I have something they can play. So they already know that most of Barry's work works.
    20:58
    So I think we have a short video on one of the slides. I didn't link it because I was afraid of how much that would... Since I'm sending it. Okay, that's fine.
    21:07
    I'll probably post that on our official... Yeah, we can post that there. But there's a slide of it. Oh, okay, cool. So we can get the next one? No, then we get the close-up to the 3Bank. So this is the close-up, not specifically to the 3Bank, but just to show you the overlay of his original drawing to where each of the post sends it up. So you can just see that I'm putting the lights in VPX right over his lights. I'm putting the posts right over his posts. The dotted lines mean something's underneath the playfield, so you don't have to pay any attention to that. That's the drop target mechanism.
    21:39
    Which color is which? So green things are entities in VPX, so your ramp specifically. And then there's a few... So the black and white... Yes, where it says light mystery and everything, that's what barry drew you can't really see it that well but like that target that's above light mystery there is a vpx entity target there if i were to click it it would light up blue but it's a it's a wire wireframe black and white um but some of the entities in vpx have color so that's why you can see them so well so like the the insert lights i made them white but like you can see how they have like the circle of aura around them like each one has its own it's poorly traced because I made the circle by hand. It doesn't really matter. And all those white rubbers are VPX entities too. So yeah, we can keep going.
    22:31
    Yep, there's just more of a complex. You can see the pop bumper entities, like just the blue and white rings overlaid along with his ramp routing and his scoops. And you can see the process of overlaying exactly in what is normally a freehand, do-whatever-the-heck-you-want program, and it can follow a real drawing very quickly. So, yeah, this is what I worked on for a couple days. You can give me the next one now. There we go. I had a short video of playing it. However, when you do it this way in VPX, you can actually get the blueprint to be the playfield image. That's how it was done. So when you play it, you can literally see his drawing as if we had glued it to the playfield. And this is what I brought to the team. At this point – it was when I got to this point, you can see I didn't even delete all the default posts on the side. This is when he ran around the office and said, Steve, come in here right now. It still says Cosmic Lady on the apron. Yeah, right. Anyone who knows my lore. Okay, let's play this. And here I am for the next whatever it was, minutes or hours, flipping this thing. And I'm like, yeah, this is feeling really good. I think it was that point, Steve – I think it was that point David Fix walked into the office like, what are you two doing? It's like, well, you come over here and look and you see. And then, okay, now sit down. Just on my screen is the game he's been looking at. And he's like, what the hell is this? He's like, let's go. I'm like, what, you think I've been doing nothing for the last three days? So at that point he invites everyone in the office to come see it. And Zofia saw it and Dennis saw it. Dennis wasn't really sure what he was looking at, but he could tell what it was once we explained it to him. And he kind of just wandered off to his office to go work 2D again. Poor guy. I tried to get him to understand VPX but he just never really could and that was fine but Zofia was like this is amazing how could this you could already play this and it's been two days like I'm like yep they can so yeah that was really fun part of the journey and it was also fun as for me as a like what was supposed to be a mentoree or whatever you can call that and just to go over every single line and every single post that he had placed was kind of a weird experience, but it was good. I actually learned a lot from just doing this. That's what it was. It was. That's what happened. I actually learned a lot.
    24:54
    And I like to think he would have been proud of me because I actually, as soon as I had finished this, I made a second version where I fixed some obvious mistakes.
    25:04
    Like I said, there were just some posts that weren't in the right spot. Specifically, the right scoop was way too closed off for no reason. so like you i was able to move the posts back change the wall a little bit doesn't close the other shot opens that one wide up and dennis was like oh yeah good job barry would love that so i have one question sure did he design the table before he knew that he was mentoring you no i think no that's he knew he knew that i don't he made mistakes so he can intentionally teach you i doubt that but maybe i also cannot confirm or deny that that seems like a lot of work just to Just to screw with your new intern. I mean – Harry Williams would have done that. Really? Yeah. Harry Williams would put things in just so that somebody else could come along and say, why'd you do that? I did have one afternoon with Dennis like that. Dennis gave me one of those. He said, what's wrong with this? And like had me list everything wrong with it.
    26:03
    He said I did quite well on that one. So that's kind of the end of my story when it comes to the beginning of Barrios. I was involved in the development from a very early on thing, and then around halfway through I was branched off to work on my own title, which is now I think we're confirmed as that's the next one. So there it is.
    26:29
    I don't have any other information on it, but it is the next game we're going to be releasing. So my earliest contributions were working with Dennis when we decided to make the two small changes to the game that we actually ended up making, which is, as Steve mentioned, we moved Barry's drop targets from the position on the upper right orbit, where it's the multi-ball release shot, to the more classic space shuttle position. It's the space shuttle position, yes. And that was not done just because we wanted it there. It was done because it really wasn't working. Like, it was a ball hang-up, and you couldn't hit them on purpose. And Barry's vision of being able to hit some drops on the way out of the scoop did work, but more often than not, it was not pleasant for the player. Like, it would hit one down, but then the feed would be awful, and, like, it was just— We made some very small changes. There was that one, and then I— You, me, and Dennis were in his office, And we were discussing how it's a very simple game and that's fine. But for a code and rules perspective, you were struggling because the saucers in a classic Barry style game, as soon as a ball is locked in them, that shot is lost. So we have three space shuttle. Exactly. If there's a ball in a lock and space shuttle, I mean, like you don't even aim because of lock stealing. You don't need to hit it. But like now for a more modern rule set, you can't do anything with that. You can't make that a mode shot. you can't do anything. And while we do have enough shots we could have worked with, it was just unfortunate to lose those shots. And I don't remember what inspired me. I just kind of looked at it and went, huh, what if we do this? And that's when I just came up with the idea for Bashlocks, which is what they later got called.
    28:17
    Is there a slide for that? I don't think we have a slide for Bashlocks. I don't think there's a slide for that specifically. Oh, I'm bad like that. There's one that points it out, because there's one that points out the entire flyer with the plate. Okay, yeah. So we have that. That later became a marketing thing. But it was just a way that we could make it so that if a ball was locked in a classic saucer, we could still keep it as a shot that you could hit. And I tried to explain my idea of a teardrop-shaped saucer to Dennis and everybody in the room, and Steve got it immediately. He knew exactly what I was going for. I was fine with it. I was just making sure I would just do it so that I can shake the heck out of it and make sure I can't Dracula the wall in there. But you understood what I was coming for from the very beginning. That was the first thing. Once it passed that, I'm like, let's go. That means I get my shots back. Absolutely. Dennis was struggling with understanding what I was trying to tell him because I was, like, way too excited and animated and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like I never do. Hold on. Let me drink some caffeine. Yeah. Have some more. All right. Let's go.
    29:18
    And so he getting frustrated and fix it He like Ryan just go build it Just go in the lab and build it And I like all right fine fine So I went and found Hot Wheels Playfield or something that had like a classic saucer that we already had And I just started in with the jigsaw, making it into a more teardrop style and using a file to get the edges down. And I was like, look at this. If we do it just like this, the ball sits there. But then if you hit it, it will briefly roll backwards off the switch and then back onto it. And stay in there most of the time. 99% of the time. Until I play it. Until Bree plays it and breaks it. But that's okay because it happens so rarely, but it's fully detectable. So we could do something like Roller Coaster Tycoon used to do where if it failed to move the locks, it would say, oh, no, not two at once, and give you a secret multiball that that's the only way you could do. And that was a full-coded mode. It had jackpots and stuff, but you could only get it by accident. So now that lets us – I don't think it's in their game, but that's the point. Not yet, but it just – Like if you knock a ball loose, we're going to have a call out. That will happen. Two ball, multiple. Here you go. Yes. Like you just couldn't wait, could you, or something like that. I don't know. That will happen. Yep. But it's so infrequent. But like every time you bonk that thing, it just rolls right back and right back on the switch. And so now, the easiest way I show people this is when I put in a two-player game and I lock a ball with player one. And then I die. I drain. And then I die. Yes, exactly. And player two will notice that they don't have that lock. There's no proper lock stealing. You haven't earned that. But it's blinking. And if you just bash that ball one time, now you have your lock and it goes solid. so but we also if there is a ball in there unrelated um you can collect fireworks that way so we got a crazy light show and the game vibrates and you know you did something and fireworks is a barry reference but we'll just move on so it is a there's a reason why it's called fireworks so yes but go ahead um and then i i still remember this because i don't think i'm ever going to hear it again and when i finished when i finished this and we decided to go with it David like ran off for a little while and then he came back and he's like, Ryan, I don't I never get to say this, but I really don't think that's ever been done in any game before ever.
    31:41
    Like this never happens. It's always been done in some game. It's always been done in some old Gottlieb has done everything like it or in some way or something similar. It's like, oh, you mean like this game? Oh, I've never even played that game. I didn't know that. But he was like, no, this one's actually truly original. Good job. So it's a small thing, but I'm never going to hear that again. So I'm happy about it.
    32:07
    And I'm glad for the avenues that reopened up in the rule set as well because I'm going to look forward to pay you. You're already going to get paid to hit it. You're already being paid to hit it. But I'm looking forward to paying you for hitting it out and then paying you again for putting it back in. Okay, so it's three levels of payment available to you as far as your score for doing those actions. That's going to really help expand strategy and other things, you know, and its implication with the playful legs. And I should just stop because I'll start rattling on about the rules and we haven't got there yet. So go ahead. But we're about to get there. So that was one of my biggest contributions to the game. And then, again, fine-tuning a lot of the things, fine-tuning the skill shot with Dennis and moving a bunch of walls to make things as smooth as possible. But it was at that point where we reached the point where I was going to pivot on to starting my own project. And I worked on mine for, I don't know, probably the rest of the duration of Barbecue. I was more of like a consultant than an actual designer, which is why I'm not like on the very top with Barry and Dennis and Steve. I'm more of a consultant in the middle. Although I did find out yesterday that I was actually on the apron credited. I didn't know that. I told you before. I didn't know I was on the apron. That's what I told you. That's why I went. I know. That's why I came in the office and said, no, you're on the line. I thought you meant software. Like my name's on the screen. And then he shows me. He's like, oh, it's on the screen. It's right here. Because I wanted it there. That's why.
    33:35
    So at this point, it becomes more of a Jack, Steve, and Zofia show. Right, yeah. I guess I can go to the next one. What is the next one? I think that's where we start getting more. OK, yeah, this is where we get into, hello, mini LCD. OK. this is uh some of the things that i've uh once we were discussing what else are we going to have on this game that makes this game more than it is this is where the mini lcd screen comes in right and i'm starting to uh think of some ideas of what i could put on there to help the player not have to look up at the screen wasn't it originally going to be a seven segment yeah it was going to be a big seven segment then it went to maybe dmd and then once that didn't happen And then I'm like, okay, let's continue to make this more of a utility by putting the mini screen in there. Because I wanted this in there so that you could look at the, you have something always staring at you. Like those two, those two became nicknamed as the two big numbers. There were three big numbers for a thing, but I got rid of one. So those are the two, those are the two big numbers that are always staring at you most of the time. And their implication in your scoring are very key. but you notice that top line is changing up there drop targets, cook the side dishes and then it'll switch to shoot saucers to defeat Gator Dine who is one of the characters in the game so what that is doing is giving you a tool tip so that you always look down and see what do I do now I can just look down, I can see my score, my score is up 100% of the time, that score bar is always there because I never want you to not see your score, I always want you to see it as much as possible, even if for some reason the top screen is covered, I want you to at least see your score, especially for tournament implications and competitive play. The other boxes around there were just my trying to figure out what else I could put down there and not have it look too annoying or busy or whatever to try just to give you a guide and showing you what important information I could have down there for you at a glance to avoid you having to look up at the screen as much as possible because you're playing pinball. I mean, you don't really have a lot of time to look up there because you got balls running around and you're trying to not die. So I want to put as much important information as I can there. So I think if we can go to the next one, I believe. I think I'll continue with that. Yeah, so I'm just continuing on with the idea of how I'm going to show you what the multiball value is. What does the ladder mean as far as when you're in multiball and you're climbing the ladder of greatness, which is based on what you do during gameplay. you know literally send a grill to space and we're saying a real space but that's part yeah so the best animation oh there you see the mode the mode timer is counting down you got you still the top tooltip layer up there is telling you what to do shoot jackpots these many jackpots are left to get to the top and all that so and your score again always visible and i'm just working out this small notes of what this number means in the middle that you're looking at you notice you have the big number in the middle. You've got a number that's up above you that you can't quite see because you're visualizing you are climbing, you're basically climbing a ladder. Imagine like, I guess who wants to be a millionaire barbecue grill edition?
    36:52
    Right? But really, I mean, I guess I should give them this Barry game reference since we're here, right? Oh, we should do that. Because I can't, I couldn't do the family. I want to make sure we hit everything. But it's at the end. I have to reveal them all. That's fine. Oh, we do? Yeah, I have to. We can't do the family feud one. That's all right. We can do it the other way. We can show them the games, and they can try and point it out. I like that.
    37:17
    Exactly. So I do want everyone to appreciate. You all have now heard Steve Bowden talk about rules for about five minutes.
    37:26
    Now you understand why excited I am to have him doing my rules. I could never reach that level of enthusiasm in detail. So I am so happy. that you were the one leading my rules team.
    37:40
    So I think if we go to the next one, I think it's similar. Okay, what you're seeing is a preview of what was going to be the top of the ladder, right? This is the Ultra Jackpot. It's one of the big prizes. And so I don't know if you won't be able to place this unless if you really know what I'm referencing this game from. this ladder is a reference to one of my favorite multi balls in all of pinball the jackpot multi ball okay that is it right jackpot's multi ball is maybe my favorite i have to think before that okay um and so the difference is they'll say since you know the jackpot multi ball what is the first jackpot amount in multi in jackpots what's the first one what number do you start off at it is that is correct it is 50 million and then you go up the ladder 50 75 100 what and it explodes in your face one one fit right with the space shuttle 150 one the 200 two so the first amount is 50 million in this game the first amount is what you bring to the table whatever it is that number that one of those two big numbers that was staring you in the face the whole time it's that one so whether it's 1 million or 30 million i had it up to 70 million and i was kind of scared of the rules you're a monster it was awesome i was kind of scared like is this imbalanced and i'm like no because you still got to do it like don't start it at 40 million and make one shot i mean don't do that you know i've started with 40 million and made one shot and then i started with 8 million and made 10 shots so it's that's that that's that's all on you it's a big risk-reward thing, but that's the thing. It is your who wants to be a millionaire ladder. It's where you start as opposed to the 50 million. So if I started at 5 million and you come up after me, you know I started at 5 million. You're going to want to go for 6 million, 7 million, 8 million, because what's the difference? 5 million becomes 7.5 million, becomes 10 million, becomes 12, but if you started at 10 million, 10 million becomes 15 million, becomes 20 million, And it becomes – and all the way up. So I'm showing – so when you get to multiball, look at – you'll see the big prize at the top. We dangle it right in front of you, $500 million. Then we start driving down. $500 million, megabucks progressive at the top. And then all the numbers on the way down is your ladder that you made. Good luck. And then at the very bottom is that number you saw that you chose to start. Whatever it is, $3,578,240. Okay, there you go. All right, good luck. Go up the ladder. I still remember being told about this ladder and then being told that we're going to be going to space with it. I'm like, wait, I thought we started with a grill. How are you going to get a grill to space? And then I come in after like a week being somewhere else, and I see that Jessica, our graphics artist, has literally just turned some hot sauce bottles down, and we're just using them as jets. And I'm like, all right, cool. Send it. Yep. This grill is going to space. It's going to space. And there's – in a future update, there might be something waiting for you up in space if you can manage to get that far. Maybe. So I highly anticipate that. Some of you might know what that is through context. So let's try to scooch a little bit forward because we are – You're running up. So let's go to the next one. We always end up running up. So let's get you to – let's get to some trivia, and I don't want to miss this. So I'm going to actually toss it over to our newest employee. And I want to know a couple of things. And this is actually just personally I want to know this. What do you do all day? Because I bring you to work. She breaks things. I bring you to work. You sign in right now. You don't have to do that anymore, which is cool. And then I don't see you for the rest of the day. I have no idea where you're going, what you're doing.
    41:36
    I'm in the lab swearing and burning myself and lighting fires. And you're in the code dungeon that we call it with Steve and Casey and also swearing. I hear a lot of swearing coming from in there. That happens as well. So what is your new role in American Pinball? Like they said, I do a lot of test playing. So I've been doing a lot of test playing with barbecue. So I'll go in and I will work on whatever they want me to do for the day. So if they're looking for bugs, I try to find bugs. Or if we're testing things, we try to do a lot of testing. So something that really I've been working on are the bash locks. So when we first implemented the bash locks on the game, we were trying to figure out, so if you are a second player going into your first ball and the first player has locked a ball, you only hit the other lock so that you don't qualify your lock on the left. So that's not your lock. It's there, but it's not mine. You have locked your right ball. We had to code so that when the ball is released, you only got two balls instead of three balls. So stuff like that. So it's a lot of sitting in and looking at barbecue and hitting switches and putting things where they need to be and recreating things to make sure that we can get the code right so that it plays well for all of you. So that's super fun and exciting. We also look at lights and seeing is this mode confusing to new players? When I get up to the machine, do I know what I'm looking at? So we change the barbecue pit targets so that they're a different color, so that they're a little bit easier on the eyes. So you can kind of figure out this is what I should be shooting at. This is what I should be doing. So, yeah, that's what I do. I do a lot of testing. And then Steve and I literally talk for three hours about rules and get excited with each other and play the game and figure out what we can do better. And the next thing I know, I don't know how to play the game anymore.
    43:21
    I knew last week that these two happened, and now I don't think I can. No, look at this. They're wonderfully explaining it to me, though. Well, they do. They bring me in. They're like, all right, what do you think is happening? I'm like, I think I'm in trouble. I'm not going to say anything. Right? Yeah, we don't say anything. Don't say nothing. We just go play the game. What's different? Yep. And more often than not, I'm like, oh, I know exactly what's going on because you color-coded it or because, I don't know, it's been pretty good. Here's a comparison between iterations. We have a later iteration of the barrier drawing on top of now with the LCD in there with the grid under there. You can tell why the grid is there I mean hello space shuttle I love your grid we fought really hard for that grid Oh my Like I said it was my first game It was my introduction to pinball So, again. So you can see the iteration on the left, right? We have lots of everything filled in. We have the center circle, which includes this is the meat edition. This is the barbecue meat edition. There was a city's edition. Oh, right. That's actually one story I wanted to make sure I specifically told in Boston. so originally the design for the game the storyboard for the game was not a food festival it was a road trip so it was kind of like a road show where you would advance to the next city where you would go up against a local and you would try to like either was it beat them in a cook-off or you just kind of be it would be beat them in a cook-off or defeat them in some other challenge some of the vehicle challenges came in like that something like that So at one point we actually had a bunch of cities listed off, and I was still involved in the vision at this point, and then later on the whole thing evolved so it all got thrown out. But I insisted that there be a vague town in the top right corner of whatever fictional country, if we weren't using the United States, if we were whatever, was where I was going to go cook me some roast beef. I insisted. And I was like, I will do the voice acting. I don't care. I will throw on my worst Boston accent and I will cook you up some roast beef with some sauce.
    45:37
    And I fought very hard for that. And I would have gotten it for you if that whole vision hadn't just been changed and thrown out the window entirely. That was on napkin drawings. We were planning on having a vaguely Bostonian guy. In my head, it was all literally I was going to go to Bill and Bob's and just take a bunch of pictures and stalk that guy because he sounded exactly like I wanted him to. And we're just going to make a famous roast beef place.
    46:07
    And I'm still holding out for some DLC. I want it. But now what you see on the left are 12 fictional barbecue restaurants, some with great puns that Jack made. I love Jack's puns. Jack's puns are legendary. Jack Hager's mind is. Did he ever make me a roast beef pun, famous pun? I think he might have, but yeah. But see, now you can see on the left, you see the 12, and then you can see in the middle it becomes six, because 12 is a lot. It is. I mean, sure. I mean, 12 gives me some flexibility because, yeah, you got 12 faces on a clock. I can link that one through 12, subtly teach you some things there, but 12 is too many things. So it's six semi-fictional barbecue areas, not necessarily America, not necessarily Earth, places to visit to cook barbecue against these six people, these six barbecue stars who are challenging you to be better than them in barbecue. So you can see how things have changed in the middle. We have the Dan Hughes art in here now. Great. We have the screen integration. We have the modes in there on the grid. And then on the right, you'll see everything decked out as far as what everything is pointed to across the flyer. I have a few copies of the flyer with me here. I could show that if you want a little bit of a better close-up of it later, I could show you that. But, yeah, those are the iterations to show you what it was and what it became later. We're still doing 12 things too because, like, in between your six modes, you're also cooking up the food, and it's different every time. So it's just you're just leapfrogging like, all right, cook me some food. Now do this mode. Cook me some food. Now do some mode. And you can't cook and do the mode at the same time. You can't do it at the same time because then you get judged when you start it. Right. So that's – I think – Figure out how to cook good food if you want good points. So there it is. Get your two side dishes, drop targets, finish your sauce bottle, spinners on the ramps, and make sure you get the spice the customer asked for as close to what they wanted as possible. The judges are specifically asking for this flavor. That's the meat. If you get that, we're going to pay you like 80 million. The platinum trophy. That's more. More. You can get more. More. Yeah. And then it obeys the doctor. I shouldn't have said that. That's one. All right. Well, that brings us into our trivia section. Here it is. We have, what, 10? There are a strong 10 and a loose 12. And they're up there. They're up there. So I have to do this reversed. Okay. Because originally I wanted to have them hidden. Oh, we got all the answers up there. All the answers are up there now. Now, can you point out where they are in the game? Some of them you can see. Some of them you have to play to see. And some of them are planned. All right. So we got Doctor Who. I just gave you that one. The Doctor Who right ramp. Where's Doctor Who? It's on the right ramp. Okay. It's literally the play field multiplier system from Doctor Who. Every time you hit the right ramp, you get .5 play field multiplier, and it slowly ticks away. and it is just as fun as Doctor Who, if you ask me, except we don't take away your comboing ability every ten shots. Right. Although if you hit ten shots in a row, you don't need any more help. You don't need any more. You're done.
    49:16
    So, Tester, you had your hand up first. Let's go. Give me another one. All the way to the right, the saucer, that's from Whodunit. Right, that's one reference, right? And the Whodunit also, since you must go to Whodunit, the skill shot is also there. How good is that? Right, because then you can also control which one you can let. Because you know, as soon as you've done it, it starts automatic. And then you can stop it. You can do it here, too. So I saw another hand up over here.
    49:46
    That is correct. And also, that's great. And also, the wizard mode is going to be based on Junkyard because, and I need to go back a bit here, because of one of our one of Barry and I's meetings after we were eating dinner with his family, having fun, talking whatever, we play his awesome Dracula and his awesome looking Junkyard which I then get to the wizard mode outer space, I play through it, I play through it in front of everybody beat crazy Bob from outer space and Barry and his family are looking at it and Barry comes up and he says basically like what was that? I had not seen that before he had never seen the wizard mode because he had left as it was being developed so I was the first one to show that to him so that means it better be in the Barry Tribute game I mean also we're going to space with unlikely objects my grill doesn't go to space so like Junkyard World it does why are we sending a grilled jalopy to space So I think we've now established a weird continuity in the API universe where all we know about the fictional locations here is that it's somewhere in the same universe as Lumina. Yep. Because we have some call-outs there. There's some call-outs that are very fun. Somewhere in that universe. And then maybe there's Jalopies. Maybe there's Jalopies there. All right. So I had another hand up over here. Give me another reference.
    51:16
    Nailed it. Barakora Lanes at the top. Yep. Right. And I'm only just now, after probably 100 hours on that game, finally being able to wrap my stupid noodle brain around him. No, no, don't say that. Because one of the reasons why the Barracora top lanes are up there is because I can't do it. It turns my brain. It makes me feel so much better that he says he can't do it. Sometimes I just take care of my flippers. Because Barracora is in a tournament right now, and I can't do it. So I took Barracora, and I basically flipped it on its end. So everything's the opposite of Barracora. Like a barricade, you need the top lane to like the bottom lane. In this name, you need the bottom lane to like the top lane. Everything's reversed. I still can't do it. He explained it to me, and this actually made sense in the little noodle brain. He said it's like Connect 4.
    52:02
    And I'm like, oh, so if the bottom one's already used, then I get the top. Okay, it's Connect 4. I get it. Thanks, Steve.
    52:12
    That still didn't help me do it. It's just I can at least comprehend it now. Now, one of them you might have to zoom in for. I don't know if we can get the full screen of it. Do we have any other ones anyone sees anyway?
    52:24
    Derek? Pit and barbecue targets are from Dracula. Thank you. Yes, the Dracula position. That's right. They're in the Dracula position. And also, arguably, the ramps are in the Dracula position as well, but they're a little bit difficult. Yes. So it is a shadow of Dracula. There is also a rule, like you remember the Dracula bats round? There is a rule of that in there. If you push your grills too hard and hit them too much, your grills or your bumpers, you push them too hard, they break down and malfunction. And to get them to work, you have to hit the grills in 15 seconds and a hurry up is running. We've got fixed targets up there. Those are not for David Fix. Although we make fun of him all the time. All the time. So this should be the last slide. There's another easy one that we gave you guys earlier. Come on. What's the first one on the list? Space shuttle.
    53:19
    There's a literal space shuttle on the play field right in front of those targets. The space shuttle sleepable drop targets? We're not even pretending on that one. It's the sauce shuttle. Sauce shuttle. I'm sorry. Yes, one of our characters is an astronaut, you know, Sierra Sue from the sauce shuttle. Yes, she is there. She is also there for a lore reason.
    53:39
    But, yes, so what else? So we found out, Dr. Who, fire is literal. Literal fire. There is going to be an extra call-out that's not in there yet.
    53:50
    I'll spoil it right now. Save my brisket. Save my baby back ribs. Or save my baby back ribs. I think that's what it's really going to be.
    54:01
    Save my baby back ribs. Save me back, baby, back, baby. Got barbecue sauce. Now, there's another one that is literally on the play field. can you it's right in the middle it's gonna be hard to see a little hard to see but it's a little hard to see but right in the middle of the name of the grill yep is called the iron phoenix for barry's first game accredited as a designer and also the call out for that one too the fixed grill targets that are hiding behind the bumpers are in that position are in the phoenix position where you have grill fixed targets in the in the bumper garden so that's phoenix's reference so i think we're just about out of time we're out of time but just do we have any time for any Should we take a couple questions? Do we have any questions? We're wasting our time even asking. Anyone who doesn't need to eat lunch, but the monograph session has started. Any questions? Anyone want to know anything about Barry, what we did, what we're doing? I think we covered a lot.
    54:57
    Anyone want to heckle us for a little while? Let's go! Bring it on, Ding Dong! As soon as Steve starts speaking favorably about Jackpot, I'll let him know. Right.
    55:09
    By the way, I'm just asking, I'm taking liberty here, but is the jackpot kind of the ramp system with the tunnel next to it?
    55:18
    Well, okay, the tunnel does relight the jackpots, so that's another link to it. Now, the jackpot's the multi-ball ladder. The jackpot really is the multi-ball ladder because once you – I'll just say it because you're here. So, okay, you get to the top of the ladder, right? What happens in jackpot, you get your number of jackpots, right? And then what do you have to do? You have to hit the visor, right, 25 times to open it for the big prize. Well, here you have to go up the ladder, and then something happens where you have to hit something 24 times. And the reason why it's 24 instead of 25 is because I have six targets to work with. And then that opens up the big prize. Yeah. So I'll just say something so you can see what it is. because the art's not in it yet, but it will be there. You'll have to do something to basically save the festival, and then... From whatever weird threat from space, as there always seems to be in our universe. There's always a threat from space. So that is the equivalent to the jackpot multiball, if you get that far.
    56:25
    There better be. I mean... There's a lot of count. Oh, my God. Is there a cow? Harley Davidson, the slingshot plastic he's riding a bike. There's going to be a cow if there is. You have Barry and you have a pig riding a bike. Lynn. Yeah. Okay.
    56:48
    We had twerking cows in the last game. Can I get a super jackpot by locking balls in both the saucers? That is correct. Yes. You can also get a mega jackpot for locking all three balls in all three saucers. It's good. Because I don't know why they didn't do that in jackpot. They got the third saucer sitting right there. Yes, if you lock all three, it's one, two for super, three for mega. And you will get paid one, two more, and then three more. Up the ladder like that. Added together and paid to you. But the difference here is that I hope you had a play field X when you did it. Anything from common and cyclones? Yes. The top lanes, remember in common and cyclones, when you complete the top lanes, it increases your play field X, Jess. So when you complete the top lanes here, it boosts the ramp. What it does is instead of giving you one, it gives you two, which also happened in Doctor Who if you had Doctor Six. Yep.
    57:45
    Right? So there you go. I want to have a cyclone reference. Right. No, it does not chop it right. There's nothing to chop off your fingers in this game. But, yes, that is the comet slash cyclone reference, so I'm counting that as one game even though it's because it's very close. Can you give me an extra cyclone reference where if I hit the left ramp six times in a row, you just give me a flat million? You give me a flat million? Yeah, I would love that. Well, I was only going to take four. And then you can go, million. It's only going to take four. Million. Yeah, it'll take four.
    58:10
    Million. You'll get $250, $500, $750, and a million for the left ramp. That's not your tech sound yet, but it will be, I promise. Hey, you with the ribs. Yeah, right. Hey, you with the ribs. But, yeah, I think we got everything right. That's it. Is our dog going to be here? You guys should be signing autographs, actually. Oh, all right. It never occurs to me to even go to the signing. We're invited. All right. Yeah, I guess we're invited to the signing. Thank you all so much. Thank you. I promise we'll do more of another witty nonsense seminar next year for my game. But thank you all so much, seriously, for joining us for this. Great job, guys. Thank you. That was really great.