Homebrew Showcase: Tiki Tapu Pinball at Texas Pinball Festival 2026

Marco Pinball·video·16m 2s·analyzed·Apr 6, 2026

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.028

TL;DR

Homebrew Tiki Tapu machine showcased at Texas Pinball Festival with 2-year dev cycle.

Summary

Rebecca from Marco Pinball showcases Tiki Tapu, a homebrew pinball machine created by Nate and Manu over two years of development. The game draws inspiration from Virtual Pinball's Tiki Bob's Atomic Beach Party and Stern's Cheetah, featuring tiki and Polynesian cultural themes with custom code (Cobra Pin + MPF), hand-made art based on mid-century modern artist Shag (with permission), and intricate rules including multiball modes, 3D-printed drop targets, and themed jackpots. The presentation covers design choices, mechanical sourcing, coding implementation, and gameplay mechanics at Texas Pinball Festival 2026.

Key Claims

Tiki Tapu was inspired by Virtual Pinball's Tiki Bob's Atomic Beach Party, which was a remake of Stern's Cheetah
high confidence · Nate (Tiki Tapu designer) directly stated this as the inspiration source during the showcase
The game took approximately two years to develop, starting in August with the first screw hole
high confidence · Nate stated 'August will be about two years when I made my first screw hole' and was first showcased at Southern Pride in Georgia the following year
Nate obtained permission from Shag's legal team to use the artist's mid-century modern art in the game as long as it remains non-commercial
high confidence · Nate explained he reached out to Shag's lawyers and 'they gave me the good graces...if I'm not making money on it, then it's okay to do'
The game uses Cobra Pin boards with MPF (Mission Pinball Framework) code
high confidence · Nate explicitly stated 'I use Cobra pin boards' and 'the coding is MPF like most of us guys are doing'
All playfield art was created in Photoshop with stop-motion style frame animation
high confidence · Nate said 'All the art I've just made it all in Photoshop. All my animations are literally like stop film animation with like frames'
Steve Ritchie (legendary pinball designer) suggested adding more sidelights to the machine, saying 'You got to light it up like Elton John'
high confidence · Nate mentioned Steve Ritchie played it and made this specific suggestion, leading to additional light installation
The game features multiple multiball modes including 'Sneaky Tiki' (behind volcano), 'Volcano Multiball' (trap door lock system), and 'Tiki Taboo' (all five tiki gods collected)
high confidence · Nate detailed each multiball type during gameplay explanation, specifying mechanics and requirements for each
The drop targets were 3D printed with Kakamura (Enchanted Tiki Room bird) designs, but have recoil issues that need troubleshooting

Notable Quotes

“I Google image search. There's an artist, his name is Shag, and I really enjoy mid-century modern art...So, I reached out to Shag, not him directly, but his lawyers. Yeah. And they gave me the good graces.”
Nate (Tiki Tapu designer)@ 3:40 — Describes the legal/ethical approach to licensing existing artwork for a homebrew game
“The community of home brewers is very uplifting and very helpful...Sue is a nurse and she learned how to code to do the greatest showman. And that was inspiration for me.”
Nate@ 5:27 — Highlights the collaborative, supportive nature of the homebrew pinball community and self-teaching
“You got to light it up like Elton John.”
Steve Ritchie@ 14:34 — Design feedback from a legendary Williams designer, resulting in significant light additions to the machine
“August will be about two years when I made my first screw hole. That's it. Just two? Yeah. So, I really hustled because I brought it to Southern Pride in Georgia last year.”
Nate@ 13:47 — Demonstrates rapid development cycle and commitment to showcasing work publicly early
“I had FOMO from Expo because my game wasn't there. So, I'm really glad they're doing it again.”
Rebecca (Marco Pinball host)@ 14:46 — References importance of expo visibility in the homebrew community

Entities

NatepersonManuperson RebeccapersonJordanpersonMoogpersonSteve RitchiepersonShagpersonTiki TapugameTiki Bob's Atomic Beach Partygame

Signals

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design_innovation: Custom-welded scoop mechanism inspired by Attack from Mars with integrated Williams kicker; back ramp pop-out design with trap door lock system for multiball
high · Nate described 'completely welded up and fabricated myself' scoop with custom mechanics; detailed trap door mechanics for three-ball lock system
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design_philosophy: Deliberate design choice to reference 1990s-era pinball games with EM/SS simplicity, inspired by Attack from Mars and classic street-level games
high · Nate stated 'I like simple. I like EM and SS games...it's actually really hard. A lot of my modes ended up being really hard'; Rebecca noted '90s era games with classic street level games with a little bit of flare'
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design_innovation: Stop-motion style frame animation entirely hand-crafted in Photoshop for all game animations; non-traditional digital animation approach
high · Nate explained 'All my animations are literally like stop film animation with like frames and then the frames just move'
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manufacturing_signal: Repurposed and refurbished parts from Stern Cheetah and Maharaja machines; custom fabrication of core mechanisms; 3D printing of specialty components
high · Nate stated 'I bought a populated Mahari. All my pot bumpers, the drop banks, the slings were all repurposed. I refurbished them all'; '3D printed different um drop targets because I wanted the Kakamura dudes on them'
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community_signal: Homebrew community providing uplifting support and education; self-taught developers learning code through community assistance; role models from established designers

Topics

Homebrew Pinball Design & DevelopmentprimaryTiki/Polynesian Culture in GamingprimaryArt Licensing & Intellectual PropertyprimaryPinball Code & Hardware (Cobra Pin, MPF)primary3D Printing in Homebrew PinballsecondaryPinball Rules & Multiball MechanicsprimaryCommunity & Mentorship in Homebrew ScenesecondaryDesign Inspiration from Existing Gamessecondary

Sentiment

neutral(0)

Transcript

youtube_auto_sub · $0.000

And we're here. Good morning, you guys. My name is Rebecca. We are here at Texas Pinball Festival bringing you the home brerew games. We are starting here because we like to drink at 10:00 in the morning. Uh definitely 5:00 somewhere. Mont is going to cut that out in post. Um we're everything can get fixed in post. Uh, so we're gonna start with Tiki Tapu. This is Manu. This is Nate. And I am very I was This is a beautiful game and I I am absolutely in love with it. So Nate, tell me a little bit about how we got started with Tiki Tapoo. Like where is your inspiration coming from for this? The inspiration is coming from uh Virtual Pinball uh Tiki Bob's Atomic Beach Party. It was a rethe of a stern cheetah and I really like the vibe. I love tiki stuff. Polynesian culture. The music like hoola hoola and lua music. It's just chill vibes. Um, as you can tell from the color, it's pretty down chill vibes. Um, and I just went from there. I tried creating my own virtual pinball to start the process and it didn't just really pan out. So, I ended up getting a piece of wood, attaching some flippers to it, and just started going to town and trying to find my correct ball pass. So, we took the full So, we did the foam core practice style sort of development. Oh, yeah. Well, so my play a lot of my playfield parts, I bought a populated Mahari. All my pot bumpers, the drop banks, the slings were all repurposed. I referbed them all, cleaned them up, and so then put those on there first. I guess that was the start of it, but I totally forgot your question. No, you're fine. So, we started with some stern cheetah drops. You want foam core? Yes. Cereal boxes were my favorite like rigidity for making ramps and stuff because it's like I don't know. It's just the right malleableness and it's thinner than foam core so you can like tape it as a ramp and stuff. So, specifically cereal boxes. Did you have a cereal that you gravitated towards? We always have like Captain Crunch in our house, so no joke, there's a lot of Captain Crunch on here. Is there anything related to Captain Crunch Incorporated in your game? No. No, there's not. He's not very uh tiki. He's a more of a pirate. I would do I would do a pirate theme, too. I mean, honestly, the way that this is turning out, if you also did a pirate theme, I would be so into that. it would probably turn out okay I'm thinking so we worked with some cheetah we worked with some Mahari I think you had mentioned a little earlier today that you also and really liked the spinner that came from the Bond 60th yeah uh the local place which is not local it's an hour and a half away called Pinball Palace Pinball Palace um he has a Bond 60th and I played it and that has loop backs that was a thing too going through the volcano it does a pretty nice like kickback to you and I really enjoy that speed and the spinner It gets in the way, but it also just adds to the game. You have to watch out for it or bank off of it. I don't know. I love the spinner. Little tiny. So, what system are you using for this? Uh, how are we working on the code and the animations and the art? Where did all of this come from? It's gorgeous. So, we'll start with art cuz it was a little contentious. I Google image search. There's an artist, his name is Shag, and I really enjoy mid-century modern art. One of my favorites, art deco. Super cool. I love the straight lines. Anyway, I made the art. Someone's like, "That's not your art." And I was like, "Okay, whatever." So, I reached out to Shag, not him directly, but his lawyers. Yeah. And they gave me the good graces. I said I was going to bring it to Expo, which I never made it to Expo, and they said basically, if I'm not making money on it, then it's okay to do. Obviously, you can't even put a coin in it. So, so that was my good graces and that's where the art came from. I actually took and cut it and collaged everything together. Like if you took a Google lens, you could probably get a feedback that it shag, but it's very cut up and different. So, you took existing art, you worked it all together to kind of make something different. It's like a collage. It's like a big collage. It's a big collage. My splash screen on my attract mode. I give props to the artist and I say re-imagined by me. It it is reimagined, but it's his art. No. Well, it is it is gorgeous. His art is fantastic. Um, so then tell me a little bit about the coding. Yes. Well, it's a I use Cobra pin boards. Okay. I know a lot of guys use Fast. I'm I could tell you how cheap I am there. I homemade a bunch of stuff on here. And it's not that I'm cheap. I'm frugal, I guess. I don't know. But I have Cobra Pin. It the price point was good for me. Um, the coding is MPF like most of us guys are doing. And I did not know a thing about code. If you don't know code, you can learn it. It's like actually, you know what, Sue, I think uh the greatest showman, Sue is a nurse and she learned how to code to do the greatest showman. And that was inspiration for me. Like these people who know nothing about it, cuz I know nothing about it, have learned how to do this. However, the community of home brewers is very uplifting and very helpful. So, yeah. So, Cobra and MPF and GDAU and then um all the art I've just made it all in Photoshop. All my animations are literally like stop film animation with like frames and then the frames just move. Honestly, it fits your theme really, really well. I'm very impressed by it. So, talk to me a little bit now that we've kind of talked about your playfield, your design, your art. Um, let's talk a little bit about your rules. How how do we play this game? What do you want to shoot for? We know Manu's flipping on it like crazy. What do I want to start? How do I get to a multiball? The real big question for anybody who walks up to a game, I want more than one ball. How do I get there? Start with I don't Can you see it? You can. Okay. Oh, you you can't see it in the image. So, every time I brought this somewhere, no one knows how to start it. Uh-huh. the the start button is on the right hand side and the plunger is on the lefth hand side. So no one could find the start button. Uh I put a little turtle here that says start. No one saw it. I made that placard right there. It says start button on the right. Two can play. People still ask me how to start the game. So anyway, if you get it started, uh once you start the game, once you start the game, you have to hit the captive ball two times. Once you hit it twice, you can hit the scoop for a mode. Right new man who's got the scoop lit for mode. Okay. Oh, you know that's another part of my modes, too. I like simple. I like EM and SS games. I wanted it to be simple. It's actually really hard. A lot of my modes ended up being really hard and but whatever. It's making me a better player, right? Um so, actually for the first multiball, Yes. about multiballs. Yeah. Um the first one after the initial uh drain uh what you ball save when the ball save ends behind the volcano is a little kicker and it's called the sneaky tiki multiball. So if you can just grace it up in there you can get a multiball and that's on every ball. There's one time every ball because it's kind of a hard shot. The next up would be the main multiball, which Man who just got one in there. There's a trap door. You can open the trap door on both ramps or through the center of the volcano. There's a subway. You lock three balls and you get a volcano multiball. They all come out of the box cascading like lava and then the playfield turns like magma. So maybe he'll get it. I will say your light shows are also wonderful. Um, I do feel like I should be like underground in a tiki bar right now while we're watching Manu play with it. So, I I did I did notice um that he's got three lights and a little arrow lit. What does that do now that he's got it lit? So, I'm a big fan of Attack from Mars. Who isn't? It's a great game. Um, my scoop is actually modeled after that, too, where you can go in the back and it pops out the front, which I completely welded up and fabricated myself and it has like a Williams kicker in it. So, when you get the three lights, well, the fourth. So, you got to do one, two, three, and then the the name of the tiki god. These are all real tiki gods. I did a a ton of research. I did a ton of research on Polynesian culture to like kind of help integrate with the game. So, you get one, two, three. So, right now, Kelo is blinking. Okay. If he gets that back loop shot one more time, the scoop will light up and blink. So, he must have got Heina cuz I can see it's blinking pink right now. Yeah. So, if he gets in there, the playfield will do a rainbow splash and he'll get 75,000. Did he get volcano multiball? Oh, no. It didn't. Oh, did he get it? Okay. Volcano multiball is going to start. I think I think he's got two ball. I think he has two balls locked. Two balls locked. So, now he needs to get to the volcano multiball. I'm very excited. One more. Oh, see the rainbows. I like the rainbows. That is a tasteful rainbow. Um, so you don't have to get the bonus after getting them all to get there's going to be like it's called Tiki Taboo multiball. If you literally get all those filled up, all five Tiki gods, it's a three ball multiball with like a 60-second ball save just for all your hard work cuz that's what four 8 12 16 what is that? my 520 20 shots to light all those. This is so crazy. And I what I will say is I feel like this is very inspired from our like '9s era, like our '90s era games with a lot of the classic I like street level games with a little bit of flare. You know what I mean? I think that this absolutely hits that need. I also really like that it's something where it's like a you hit it, you hit it multiple times, you get the thing, then it incorporates into your mode. I also really enjoy um I really enjoy your parrots. Did you tiki room birds? Yeah, the enchanted tiki room. It was the inspiration for that because uh there's four uh is a Pierre, Jose, Michael, and Fritz. And if he gets to that mode, the enchanted tiki bird mode, they're actually going up and down. sounded like the Kakamura. That's from It's That's from Disney. That's from Disney, you know. So, if you So, if you get all the Kakamura's knockdown, that's that's the mode. But it's not as easy as you would think. So, I 3D printed different um drop targets because I wanted the Kakamura dudes on them. And I don't know, the recoil on them is weird. So, it's something I got to work on. So, I'm going to ask the one I am a massive 3D printing nerd just like me personally. What printer are you using? Uh, I have bamboo P1Ps and then So, my wife 3D prints for a side business. So, we have four of those and we have seven AMS's. I think I might need to become best friends with your wife and I'm going to entirely derail this entire homebrew stream just to nerd out about 3D printing. Really, really bad. I just noticed my R drop target is not registering and I messed with it this morning and I see it's not working. when he just did that mode. Did he get it? I think we got it. I think we're about to have a volcano multiball. It should register though. There's no tilt. Just shake it a little bit. Just shake it. It's hoola. You don't need to tilt. You don't need it. Oh, come on. THERE WE GO. YES. Here we are. OH, IT COMES OUT THE TOP OF THE VOLCANO. OH, that's so uh I think when we drove here there must be a particle of something in the subway because that keeps happening too. Like it just can't get over it. But I don't have compressed air here to blow it out. Somebody here has to have compressed air. But also tell me about volcano multiball that Manu just drained out of. Oh no, it's still in there. Yeah. Okay. So now the the coup ramp that back ramp that's a jackpot and then the side which is called the kahuna jackpot because it's got the surfing hippopotamus. Yeah. Big big kahuna. You know that's Hawaiian. The big kahuna. That's where he comes from. So that's incorporated into it. But yeah. So I wanted it to all be lava with the volcano multiball. Um my friend here Moog who made Turbo Time. He actually has an idea for like a wizard mode that everything will be black and then it'll slowly just be red draining down the field and you have to make certain shots. So that'll probably get coated at some point where all the lights shut off and then just red and you have to get the shots before the red gets to the bottom. It's like a lava flow. How long were you working on this game? Um August will be about two years when I made my first screw hole. That's it. Just two? Yeah. So, I really hustled because I brought it to Southern Pride in Georgia last year. I actually had my Playfield vinyl um done and I was clear coating it in my shed before that show because I wanted to bring it there. The code was extremely um not mature. Opposite of mature. Baby code. Premature code. I don't know. It was baby code. Um, but I wanted to bring it there. I had met Ernie and I was like, I need to go. I need to go. So, I brought it there and ever since then, it's been like, yeah, yeah, I'm going to make it better. I'm going to make it better. So, my game has been like built and looking like this. Not the sidelights. I added those too because you know what? Steve Ritchie played it and he said, "You got to light it up like Elton John." And I really have added a lot of lights. A This is amazing. Thank you. I am I'm glad you're here to do this. I had FOMO from Expo because my game wasn't there. So, I'm really glad they're doing it again. Thank you, Marco. Thank you, Manu. Whoever else is involved with this. What is your team? I am Rebecca. My partner Jordan is over here. We are streaming on Flipronic. That's what we do. We are in Austin, Texas. That you guys are part of this. This is so awesome. Me, too. One of these days if you come down to Austin, we'll have to take you to the Tiki Bar down in Austin. It is wonderful. Um, and so I think we're gonna finish up here. The last question that I have for you is what is your favorite tiki drink? You're gonna hate this. I I don't I don't drink. That's so that people have like, "Oh, you should put this drinking stuff in here." I'm like, I don't drink. I love this. I don't drink a lot, but I love a good fruit juice. You know what? I went to Perry's the first night that I was here and got a pineapple mint mocktail. Phenomenal. I love mocktails. I also love mocktails. Fizzy water. So, anything bubbly? I think actually the end of this is that we're going to become best friends and your wife is going to also be my new best friend. So, with that, we're going to go stream some more homerews. Hi, Amodo. This has been very fun. Thank you.