Homebrew Showcase: Monsters Inc Pinball at Texas Pinball Festival 2026

Marco Pinball·video·16m 8s·analyzed·Apr 6, 2026

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.028

TL;DR

Monsters Inc. homebrew showcase with design/technical deep-dive at Texas Pinball Festival 2026.

Summary

Jeff Dodson and Marco Pinball showcase Ernie Silverberg's Monsters Inc. homebrew pinball machine at Texas Pinball Festival 2026. Ernie discusses the design process for multi-level playfields, wire form and ramp construction techniques, LED programming, playtesting methodology, artwork sourcing, and ball path evolution across his five homebrew machines. The conversation covers practical advice for aspiring homebrewers on cabinet sourcing, tool kits for shows, and community feedback best practices.

Key Claims

Ernie Silverberg has built five homebrew pinball machines total, starting with League of Legends
high confidence · Ernie directly states his first game was League of Legends and references 'second, third, fourth, and fifth game' in conversation about design evolution
Texas Pinball Festival 2026 had 14 homebrew entries, up from approximately 5 the previous year
high confidence · Ernie states: 'I think last year there was maybe five homebrews. There's 14 here this year and it keeps on growing.'
Monsters Inc. homebrew uses a magnetic ramp system similar to The Simpsons Party Pinball monorail
high confidence · Ernie clarifies: 'It's a magnet that travels on the bottom. That's incredible.' Also references Pinball Magic and homebrew Harry Potter as having similar systems
Ernie uses Visual Pinball X for virtual design before hardware construction, describing physics as '85% true to life'
medium confidence · Ernie recommends VPX for software-focused designers and notes accuracy limitations for predicting airballs
Ernie sources artwork through Fiverr freelancers, including a Philippines-based artist who has done artwork for three of his machines
high confidence · Ernie describes workflow: 'I have a guy from Fiverr...in the Philippines. He's done artwork for three of my machines.'
American Pinball may have damaged/defective cabinets available for homebrew community
medium confidence · Ernie states: 'I know American Pinball had cabinets for sale on their website and I was talking to them this week and there could be some potential for home brewers to have a good source'
Monsters Inc. homebrew will be displayed at an upcoming Expo show
high confidence · Ernie confirms: 'If you're coming to Expo, you can check out Monsters Inc.'
Mission Pinball Framework includes a 'Show Creator' tool with pre-made light show animations for LED programming
high confidence · Ernie describes: 'There's actually a program with the Mission Pinball Framework. It's called Show Creator. And they have a bunch of like pre-made animations and stuff'

Notable Quotes

“If you miss a shot, I like that there should be something set up from missing that shot...you want people to feel like they're doing something.”
Ernie Silverberg@ 3:49 — Core design philosophy on playfield flow and consequences for missed shots; references George Gomez design principle
“George Gomez has said that you want so many things to happen off of one potential shot. And I think a lot of that kind of like surprise action is what brings a pinball machine from just like a real linear experience to something that's like really exciting.”
Ernie Silverberg@ 4:16 — Invokes legendary designer principle; frames design philosophy around player excitement and agency
“Everybody that makes a pinball machine is a real person. For sure.”
Ernie Silverberg@ 15:44 — Community-building statement about respectful feedback; emphasizes humanity in homebrew design
“I like the physical play field. Um, I don't even flip the flippers at first. I just roll the ball with my with my thumb.”
Ernie Silverberg@ 6:14 — Unusual design methodology; prioritizes hardware testing over VPIN simulation
“Black Gorilla tape that's extremely sticky works really awesome when you got to like block something. So if you're going to bring a game to expo, which you should, and don't be afraid to start one, you should definitely bring black Gorilla tape.”
Ernie Silverberg@ 8:15 — Practical show troubleshooting wisdom; framed as essential tool for bringing homebrews to events
“It's 100% [more addicting than collecting]. For me it's more addicting than the collecting part.”

Entities

Ernie SilverbergpersonJeff Dodsonperson ManupersonBeccapersonGeorge Gomezperson Jack Dangerperson ElwinpersonMonsters Inc. Homebrewgame

Signals

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design_innovation: Monsters Inc. homebrew features a magnetic ramp system where a magnet travels on the bottom of a wire form, similar to monorail concepts in existing games; positions as second or third homebrew with this innovation after Simpsons Party Pinball and Harry Potter homebrew
high · Ernie describes: 'It's a magnet that travels on the bottom' and clarifies distinction from traditional monorails; references similar systems in Pinball Magic and homebrew Harry Potter
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design_philosophy: Ernie prioritizes shot consequences and orbital flow over linear ball paths; emphasizes kinetic satisfaction and surprise action as core design principles, invoking George Gomez's philosophy about multiple outcomes from single shots
high · Multiple quotes about missing shots setting up next actions, crossing paths, and surprise moments bringing excitement to gameplay
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community_signal: Texas Pinball Festival 2026 shows significant growth in homebrew participation, with 14 entries compared to approximately 5 the previous year; indicates expanding homebrew community and venue support
high · Ernie states: 'I think last year there was maybe five homebrews. There's 14 here this year and it keeps on growing.'
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manufacturing_signal: American Pinball exploring potential to provide damaged/defective cabinets to homebrew community; represents opportunity for manufacturers to support homebrew ecosystem while minimizing waste
medium · Ernie reports: 'I was talking to them this week and there could be some potential for home brewers to have a good source from American to get some cabinets'
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Topics

Multi-level playfield designprimaryWire forms and ramp construction for homebrewsprimaryBall path design philosophy and player satisfactionprimaryLED programming and light show creationprimaryHomebrew design workflow (hardware vs. VPIN approach)primaryArtwork sourcing and freelance collaborationprimaryCabinet sourcing for homebrewerssecondaryPlaytesting and community feedback methodologysecondary

Sentiment

neutral(0)

Transcript

youtube_auto_sub · $0.000

Hello everybody. He's audio guys, I swear. Hello everybody. I'm Jeff Dodson. Uh I am the representative of the Great Pyramid. Here we are. I'm joined with Manu and Ernie. His game Monsters Inc. Uh it looks amazing. We were throwing up triangles. Let's do it. Uh so we kind of started off a little bit. Ernie, there is a lot of levels. You've got an upper play field. You got I mean this is not a street level pinball machine and there are sculpts and stuff all over the place. Can you tell me a little bit about just the design process of doing a multi-level pinball machine versus say a street level game like Denise's TNA? Yeah. So started out just the lower part and kind of fine-tuned all the layout the shots. Um the upper playfield I wanted an upper play field because of Monsters Inc. with the doors and having some area where that worked. Sure. Um, so once I had the lower play field kind of fleshed out, then it was like, how do I get up there? You know, is it a is it a scoop in the back? Is it a ramp? Um, I tend to like the ramp and things that don't stop so it flows, you know, a little bit better. Um, so it's more so just for me, you don't want to cover the whole playfield. So it's where do you fit it that doesn't block shots or block other things, you know, moments that you want people to see in the game. And I see you've popped it on top of pop bumpers, which is great because pop bumpers are kind of like a chaos element. You don't really need to see what's going on. You don't need to see what's there. And then you also, it gives you a little space to where the flipper mech is on the bottom of it. You have a little bit more space there as well. Do we need to get a better pinball player in here to show off the game or I'm warming up. Warming up. You got to give him you got to give him some time. I'm just razzing him because he makes fun of me on my stream. Um, so obviously do you do you like the IP Monsters Inc.? Yeah. I love I'm a me and my family are a Disney family. We go to Disney all the time and I love Monsters, Inc. So, this was perfect for me. Pixar, incredible film making. Um, so let's talk about wire forms and ramps. I feel like for someone like me, I don't know a lot about the manufacturing process for that. If I'm a home brewer and I want to put ramps in my games and I need wire forms, what do I do? Um, I mean, me personally, what I do is I take wire forms from existing games. I cut sections out of them and then weld those sections together to make a new wire form for however I need to flow. Amazing. But there's you can also get uh I think it's 1/8 in metal um mild steel from Home Depot and bend your own. There's 3D printed clips to put those together or you can weld them if you have a welder. That's amazing. So, and also for the other components, I mean obviously a lot of the stuff comes from Marco, but when you are saying you're like taking some elements from other games, what have you found has been like a surprising useful thing to salvage from other games to help kind of bring the vision up? Um, I think ball guides is probably one of the biggest things so you can get like a full orbit from an existing game and you can cut that into sections wherever you need to cut it. They're also very flexible. People don't realize that uh ball guides are extremely I mean yes where the posts go in to screw it into the game is not exactly movable. But in terms of uh realigning it, readjusting it, it's pretty easy, you know. Yeah, it's uh they bend really easy. You can bend them back. I mean, there's as you're building a game, you'll tweak all the time on the shots cuz you may change one, you know, one small thing and you're like, "Oh, well, now I need to tweak it here." And it's it's super easy to tweak them. When you're playing it and you're trying to dial in the fun, how do you determine like, hey, like this isn't fun. I need to reiterate this. Like, how do you how do you not be afraid to be too locked in on something just because it was the way you wanted it to be, not the way it needs to be. So, for me, if you miss a shot, I like that there should be something set up from missing that shot. So, like on this one, you have the outside orbit pass. So if you bank it off of a target, it'll go back down that and go to the flipper and set up another shot instead of just a, you know, hit a post, come down, clunk, and and you know, maybe go out, maybe not, or hit the sling. So I think for me, it's you want people to feel like they're doing something. George Gomez has said that the you want so many things to happen off of one potential shot. And I think a lot of that kind of like surprise action is what brings a pinball machine from just like a real linear experience to something that's like really exciting. Yep. So, very cool, man. I appreciate it. I love that. Is that a monorail? It It is. It's a It's a magnet ramp is what I call it. But can we say this is the second monorail in pinball now? Yeah. Is there Is there any other games other than Simpsons Party Pinball that has a monorail on this? You're you're talking about the the wire form. So, it's actually a magnet that travels on the bottom. That's incredible. That's very cool. It's kind of like pinball Pinball Magic has a ramp similar to that. um underrated Capcom game, right? Yeah. And then uh the homebrew Harry Potter has one as well. I did mine beforehand. Subtle plug, but it's true, right? It could be true. So, for LED programming, I feel like uh RGB lighting is obviously something that has really like swept through pinball in the last 15 or 20 years. uh when you're programming lighting stuff, right? What is the basis for how you bring an animation like that to life? Um so there is I think if it's from a shot, it should grow from that shot. So like there's a couple shots here where everything turns green, goes it like does a cycle through everything. Um I think it just depends on like the the lights are meant to indicate a shot to hit. So, majority of them, you know, they're just blinking or they're on because it should indicate that you're trying to hit that. When you're trying to create moments, that's where you do these little shows or swirls and that. And um there's actually a program with the Mission Pinball Framework. It's called Show Creator. And they have a bunch of like pre-made animations and stuff that you can combine to make your own custom light shows in there. Very cool. So, when you're designing a game like this, are you doing it in a VPIN like scenario in order to get a layout for it or did you dive into just hardware from the get-go? For me, it's hardware. I like the physical play field. Um, I don't even flip the flippers at first. I just roll the ball with my with my thumb. Um, that's how I play pinball, too. In order to get points, I have to take the glass off and just roll it around. I I tell people I'm not a very good player, so I if I can build the machine, I can put little cheats in there for myself so I can get more points. But um it's always important to put Easter eggs in your game, right? Oh, for sure. Yeah. Actually, there's a picture of my daughter on one of the plastics over there. That's adorable. But um yeah. No, I think uh what was the question before that cuz now I uh we were talking about virtualizing your pinball machine for the design. So, you know, let's say I'm a person who's interested in doing a pinball design, but I'm more comfortable in software. Is there is there a pathway that you would suggest? It's kind of like the best way to go for that Visual Pinball X. It's a virtual pinball. Um, you can make your machines and that. Sure. Uh, the layout I would say it's 85% true to to life with physics. So, you can get really really close to a working machine without ever drilling a hole or doing anything. Sure. But really to get an idea of what the actual ball's going to do, you you don't want to get stuck with like secret ball stucks and all sorts of other fun. And I will say that no matter how good you think you blocked all the places that a ball could get stuck, there's always an airball. It's still going to happen. It's cuz you can't predict an airball. An airball can go wherever the heck it wants. Where it wants. And there was uh one of my other games that brought it to a show and I I mean I had played the thing, you know, 500 times probably. Never got a ball stuck behind the top of the flipper between the wire form and the flipper. But at one show I brought the first show I brought it to, it did it like 15 times. So I had to take black duct tape and put it there just to stop it from getting in that spot because and had never seen it before the show. Would you say that duct tape is then the most important pinball hardware, I would say. So the black Gorilla tape that's extremely sticky works really awesome when you got to like block something. So if you're going to bring a game to expo, which you should, and don't be afraid to start one, you should definitely bring black Gorilla tape. There you go. Are there any other uh what would you consider like secret weapons to bring in your toolkit if you do bring a game to show? Um solder iron, some extra fuses, you know, maybe an extra coil or two just in case cuz you never know what could happen. That's crazy. It's funny you've never really seen coils fail, but uh King of the Hill had one fail here. So, you never know. And you don't and you don't want to be in a position where your game just like can't flip cuz you do want people to play it. No, for sure. Yeah. And you know, it's kind of uh some of these like I drove 13 hours here. You know, it's kind of uh breaks your heart if you come and your machine, you know, plays one day and then stops working and I've had it happen to me with one of my first games. But what was your first game? Uh League of Legends. Do you feel that learning experience really paved the way for being able to do the second, third, fourth, and fifth game without any of the fear? Yeah, I mean I've always been somebody that just like dives head first and figures it out and, you know, goes with it. But it it definitely gets easier after the first one. Um, and there there are multiple people that in our community that they build one saying they're only building one and now they've got they're on their second machine or their third machine. Would you say that designing them is almost addicting as collecting them? It's 100%. It's for me it's more addicting than the collecting part. Do you have parties that have people come over and play test it? Like what do you do? Because I feel like when you're developing it, right, you know so much about it, you're dialed in, maybe you maybe you're like unaware of certain things that could occur on the game. Yep. No, I do. I have a couple buddies that come over and they'll play it. And if you're someone like me with no friends, like what would you suggest? I I mean local arcades. Arcades are cool. Just roll you roll your homebrew in there. They don't mind you putting it in there. I think most would like it because it draws people to I mean it potentially could draw people there and you never know until you ask, right? I mean like the worst thing you could do is not ask the question and find out. So your artwork, I guess let's talk about that. Like obviously the final like kind of like layer of design is putting the artwork package in. It really doesn't change how the game physically plays or anything, but for creating the artwork like this, how did you get it done? And what are some resources you would recommend for people people that are interested? So, I have um a guy from Fiverr, which is a um like a freelance type app where they do art and code and stuff like that. I have a guy um in the Philippines. He's done artwork for three of my machines. That's amazing. And I he I found him on League of Legends. He was he was a League of Legends fan. So, I kind of told him he had he didn't even know anything about pinball, but he knew League of Legends. So, I kind of like I took my cut file um DXF and then I made it into a PDF and like listed kind of what was in each area. I did the insert art myself, but then kind of told him what was in each area and I said, "I don't care. These are the characters I want there, but you can do it however you want." Sure. And he he did awesome. And then like the cabinet art, I told him kind of what I was thinking and I said, "I don't you can come up with the design." And he did freaking amazing. That's amazing. The second game I did was Beavis and Butt-Head. He didn't know anything about Beavis and Butt-Head. So he was like, I I don't want to do the art because I don't really know. I can like cut p, you know, that kind of stuff. So I ended up doing the art on that myself. Um, that's unfortunate. I feel like you don't need to know anything about an IP to don't be afraid to dive in. But then when I did uh Box Mockina, I kind of he didn't really know a lot about that, but then I I took a PDF and put kind of all the art I kind of wanted and then told him just to reimagine it in his style. Okay. And then he did he did awesome on that. So you gave him kind of a mockup and then that gives some guidelines and kind of like gives some rails to like get get the design done. Yeah. And then Monsters Inc. he knew that, you know, had watched the movie multiple times. So I kind of gave him what I wanted in each area and then he came up with it. Man, that interloop shot there looks so satisfying. I'm just I'm watching Becca play this and just like there's a lot of what I would call kinetic satisfaction going on in your game. There's a lot of crossover shots. There's a lot of um like that center orbit area. You can go you either hit the left spinner and it brings it into it, brings it back out one way or you can go directly in it and it comes back down the other way. So coming from your first game to this, how do you feel that your ball paths have like evolved? Uh I mean a thousand%. Sure. like specifically as a designer like as you're homing in like what's fun versus like what's playable like what do you feel have been top top like mentality for approaching it? Yeah. So like my first game I was newer to pinball so I was just pulling things from existing games you know and it was it's a pretty standard more of a it's not really a fan layout cuz there's three flippers but it has the pops in the center with the four lanes coming in. So it was pretty standard. Hey Jaws is a fan layout. It has three flippers. So, it was more of a standard pretty simple layout. Yeah. For me getting into it, it made it easier. You know, that one I'm actually updating right now because now as I've grown, I like all the crossing paths and the, you know, the cool shots and the moments where you hit something, you're like, "Oh, damn. That's cool." Yeah. Those like kind of loop-de-loop paths. I think Jack Danger kind of I feel like kind of brought those back into popularity very um very fun. Yeah. I Jack and um Elwin are my two two favorite incredible designs. Yeah, I feel like Elwin, you know, his shots are always very cool pass and satisfying when you hit them. Sure. Uh so, last question I'm going to ask you and then I'm going to throw you on just to kind of like uh say goodbye and anything else you'd like to say on it. Uh for sourcing cabinets for people that want to like actually like put a game into a thing, what what are some good resources for finding cabinets? That's probably the hardest thing to source. Uh there are I know Barrels of Fun are actually selling uh like scratch and dent second cabinets. Every I don't know who that is. Oh, I'm joking. Yeah. Um that went over my head for a second, but uh there are a couple companies that do virtual pinball cabinets that will do them for the homebrew community. Interesting. I know the lead times on those are pretty long. Um, I know I think American Pinball had cabinets for sale on their on their website and I I was talking to uh them this week and there could be some potential for home brewers to have a good source from American to get some cabinets. So, you you never know what products come that are are either damaged or have defects that they can't ship to market, but would be perfect for a home brew. So, don't be afraid to email manufacturers and be like, "Hey, I need a cabinet. Can you help me?" Even even like wire forms and stuff, you know, because I'm sure that they have rejects that are usable in a game like this, but not something going to a customer. Sure. All right. Amazing. Well, here. Step in. Say your name and uh what your game is and tell people to come check out what's your message from Texas TPF. Tell the people what something. Yeah. I'm Ernie Silverberg. Um come check out the Monsters Inc. and all the other games out here. There's uh I think last year there was maybe five homebrews. There's 14 here this year and it keeps on growing. So come uh come show the people out here love. They love to have people play their game, give feedback. Don't be mean though. No, don't that does nothing. Don't talk about the best parts of the pinball and give the create give the criticism in constructive ways so that they can be iterated on. Everybody that makes a pinball machine is a real person. For sure. Ernie, thank you so much. Can you praise the great pyramid with me? All praise. Thank you so much for everybody who's checking out uh Monsters, Inc. If you do make it to TPF, are you bringing this to other shows in the future? Yeah, it'll be at Expo. There you go. If you're coming to Expo, you can check out Monsters Inc. Thank you everybody. And uh yeah.