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Avengers: Infinity Quest Pinball Vault Celebration Stream

Stern Pinball·video·53m 29s·analyzed·May 22, 2025
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.034

TL;DR

Stern celebrates Avengers: Infinity Quest with vault stream featuring designer technical breakdown and advanced gameplay.

Summary

Stern Pinball held a vault celebration stream for Avengers: Infinity Quest, featuring designer Raymond Davidson, programmer Elizabeth Gishki, and community member Joe Marchfield playing and discussing the game in detail. The stream showcased advanced gameplay mechanics, rules complexity, and design philosophy while revealing that the game is being vaulted for at least two years and will not be in production during that period. Davidson provided extensive technical commentary on code decisions, gem mechanics, trophy systems, and the iterative design process with lead designer Keith Elwin.

Key Claims

  • Avengers: Infinity Quest is being vaulted and will not be in production for at least two years

    high confidence · Raymond Davidson: 'We dug it out of the vault. Very decided with our growing catalog to put a few games in the vault. We're not going to be making it for at least a couple years.'

  • Raymond Davidson's first game at Stern was working on Avengers: Infinity Quest with Keith Elwin and Rick

    high confidence · Davidson: 'This was my first game I worked on at Stern... they're like, You're going to help uh Rick and Keith, help Rick get Avengers going.'

  • The soul gem mode is one of the hardest things to program due to edge cases like grace periods

    high confidence · Davidson: 'I think Rick said it was one of the hardest things to program was that soul jump mode because of situations like that because he wants you to be able to get it on your last flip.'

  • Keith Elwin removed an extra ball from the Marvel ramp because Raymond Davidson was getting too many

    high confidence · Davidson: 'Keith like removed an extra ball from the Marvel ramp cuz I'm like he's like, You got too many extra balls, Ray.'

  • The Black Order mode was intentionally designed to violate the unwritten rule of never taking away earned progress, justified by Thanos being a rule-breaker

    high confidence · Davidson discussing Black Order mode: 'There's a rule, an unwritten rule in programming... where you never want to take away something that the player has already earned. So this is one of those rare exceptions... Thanos, he's pretty powerful and he doesn't really play by the rules.'

  • Raymond Davidson programmed a grace period for Black Order final blow so players can start victory laps with one ball

    high confidence · Davidson: 'I actually programmed a grace period. So if you drain one of your multiballs, you can hit it within a couple seconds. It'll start victory laps even though you only have one ball in play.'

  • The Eye of Agamotto helper was added to speed up space gem progression in the final mode

    high confidence · Davidson: 'I added a Eye of Agamotto helper. So when it goes down the right in lane... if I can hit the right in lane... you can see this little orange light. That tells you that you're getting double disc while that's blinking.'

Notable Quotes

  • “We dug it out of the vault. Very decided with our growing catalog to put a few games in the vault. We're not going to be making it for at least a couple years.”

    Raymond Davidson @ opening — Official confirmation that Avengers: Infinity Quest is being discontinued from production and vaulted

  • “This was my first game I worked on at Stern. Um, basically I showed up at Stern and they're like, 'You're going to help uh Rick and Keith, help Rick get Avengers going.' And so I basically just followed Keith's rules that he had written out as this big document.”

    Raymond Davidson @ early_segment — Reveals Davidson's entry point into Stern and his role as a junior programmer following Elwin's design specifications

  • “You can't fight genius. You know what I mean? It's like I can't say no because I'll never say no to a good idea. But yeah, sometimes.”

    Raymond Davidson @ mid_segment — Reflects on iterative design process with Keith Elwin, showing deference to legendary designer's judgment

  • “There's a rule, an unwritten rule in programming uh designing a pinball machine where you never want to take away something that the player has already earned. So this is one of those rare exceptions.”

    Raymond Davidson @ black_order_discussion — Articulates fundamental pinball design philosophy and its intentional violation for thematic reasons

  • “Thanos, he's pretty powerful and he doesn't really play by the rules. That's fair.”

    Raymond Davidson / Elizabeth Gishki @ black_order_discussion — Justification for breaking design convention through thematic coherence

  • “That's what makes these uh these Keith games so great, right? I just keep going, but unfortunately that means every time you drain, you feel terrible cuz you were just one shot away from something.”

    Joe Marchfield @ late_segment — Community perspective on Elwin's design philosophy of constant meaningful progression and tension

  • “I think Rick said it was one of the hardest things to program was that soul jump mode because of situations like that because he wants you to be able to get it on your last flip.”

Entities

Raymond DavidsonpersonKeith ElwinpersonElizabeth GishkipersonJoe MarchfieldpersonAvengers: Infinity QuestgameStern PinballcompanyRickperson

Signals

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Post-release balancing driven by community content creation; super combo nerf triggered by Raymond Davidson's six-billion-point YouTube video; similar balance issues in Jaws (900M combo) referenced as precedent

    high · Davidson: 'When the super combos were first implemented, you could keep hitting the same two shots and uh I put up like a six billion point YouTube video and then like Keith immediately was like, Okay, we got to nerf that.'

  • ?

    community_signal: Stern organizing vault celebration streams featuring developers, staff, and community players for gameplay, rules discussion, and technical deep-dives

    high · Stream format with Raymond Davidson, Elizabeth Gishki, and Joe Marchfield; extensive technical commentary on design decisions; public accessibility of developer insights

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Soul gem mode cited as one of the most difficult-to-program features in the game due to edge cases and grace period implementation; required intentional technical complexity to enable intended player experience

    high · Davidson: 'I think Rick said it was one of the hardest things to program was that soul jump mode because of situations like that because he wants you to be able to get it on your last flip.'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Extensive post-release updates including gamma ray mode value boost (initially 'worthless' and ignored by players), Eye of Agamotto helper for space gem progression, and various balance adjustments based on playtesting and community feedback

    high · Davidson: 'Gamma ray got a pretty good boost. It used to be kind of worthless. People kind of make fun of it. They're like just ignore it. But now it it's pretty good.'

  • ?

Topics

Game vaulting and production discontinuationprimaryCode design and programming philosophyprimaryIterative design process with lead designerprimaryGem mechanics and progression systemsprimaryMultiball modes and stacking mechanicsprimaryBalance tuning and post-release nerfssecondaryTrophy system and endgame content designsecondaryPlayfield ergonomics and shot designsecondary

Sentiment

positive(0.82)— Celebratory tone throughout vault stream; participants express enthusiasm for the game mechanics and design; Raymond Davidson speaks respectfully about Keith Elwin's design genius; appreciation for complexity and balance. No criticism of the game itself; minor tensions around difficulty balancing (extra balls) resolved positively.

Transcript

youtube_auto_sub · $0.000

Hey everybody. Come Hey, I'm Raymond here with Elizabeth Gieske, Joe Marchfield. We're going to play some Avengers Infinity Quest. Uh, I'm going to start because I'm I'm ready to play this thing. Let's do it. All right. Uh, so uh why we why are we playing this here today? It's uh the occasion. We We dug it out of the vault. Very decided with our growing catalog to put a few games in the vault. We're not going to be making it for at least a couple years. So, we got we got exclusive access to this for one last time. Dug it out. Elizabeth's in town. We got a couple shooters here. All right. Yeah. Rare occasion over here. Yeah. Show you guys how to play this game. Right into a mode. Okay. Yeah. I'm just kind of I'm feeling it out, you know, alone. Time gem. Interesting choice. Yeah, I like um if you can beat time gem makes these modes really good. All these uh super modes because you can extend the time on them. Uh and that's one of my favorite aspects of this game if you can kind of stack all these different side modes together. Um yeah, this was my first game I worked on at Stern. Um, basically I showed up at Stern and they're like, "You're going to help uh Rick um and Keith, help Rick get um Avengers going." And so I basically just followed Keith's uh rules that he had written out as this, you know, big document, all this stuff. Um and just kind of made it happen. I improvised things here and there, added my own little little touches. Um but uh yeah, so it's cool to play it again. It's been a while. Yeah, it must seem quite a while ago. I feel like you've been here forever now. So, you have to time that. That one's tricky. That's why I chopped it. You had to wait for the right uh I know. You got so unlucky with the other two drops. You were just missing that time shot. Is this your last Yeah. If I can get the center ramp. There it is. Shot. Perfect. You're combo going crazy right now. I just fixed it. That was me. My bad. Now I I could actually get that last one if I do like a half orbit. I've never tried to hit a half orbit on purpose. Do it. That would have been fun. The all right, here we go. Perfect half orbit. No. Okay. Fed right flipper. Oh, I totally nailed that. Is there grace period on those drops? Uh, there is, but not enough. Get in there for for a boat update. Yeah, man. It's fast. Yeah, there we go. Final blow 10 mil. Yeah, that rocks. So, uh you also started on an Elwin game. Yep. That was that was my uh draws. So, you kind of know how it works. You're kind of iterating with him and you you know you you put in the thing he asked and then he's like I don't like that. You You wrote it. It's like Yeah, but I I now I played it, you know. Yeah. There's a lot of iterating for sure. And did you ever have that where I'm like you you were like I have changed this like four times already. We're going to change it again. But it's always the right decision. Like it you can't fight genius. You know what I mean? It's like I can't say no because I I'll never say no to a good idea. But yeah, sometimes. All right. So, I got my Thor multiball lid over here. But set up for Bolton. Yeah. All right. All good. Leave that. Leave that easy one for me. Yeah. If only there was lock stealing, right? Yeah. That was like, you know, something uh Keith was like, "Well, Thor's going to be your first multiball." I'm like, well, why don't we why don't we start it with two letters, so it's only three shots away. You know, give give people something, right? So, I'm seeing my portal lock is on the bottom. Oh, the the bottom row here. Bottom row. So, I can't get it off the plunge. You can uh get Hulk rampage or super arc reactor. I think the lock also lights your Iron Man lock. So, Oh, okay. Maybe I'll go for that. Yeah. So, we're waiting for that grid to Yeah. Here you go. Unlock. I don't know if I have enough time here. Get it. Oh, nailed it. Yes. Okay. Secret shot. making it look easy. All right, now I have to do the rest of the game. Uh, I didn't think that far ahead. All right. Oh, it looks like you were off on your timing cuz you didn't get that lock. What? Nice shot. Roll the footage. Okay. I'm glad I have this long ball. All right. So, now you got a light portal lock by hitting four combos. Okay. Just hit those white arrows. Well, the portal is ready. Whoa. Yeah, I remember coming into Stern, seeing this uh Whitewood and just being absolutely blown away. I was like, whoa, is this the next game? It's probably his one of his best designs. Pretty cool. There's a lot of flow here. Gem common choice, I'd say, for Yeah. Yeah, it's a good scoring mode. Um especially if you can rip that disc. The more you rip it, the more points um the shots are lit for. I like the perk as well that you get. What's cool is um everything in this game stacks and and can be kind of accessed whenever. So even when you're not hitting boat shots, you're advancing your Avengers trying to work towards soul gem. You can advance your Thor. You also left for ball two. Well, I was wanting to sneak in a a multiball into that reality gem mode, but I didn't really prime it. Ah, that's Yeah, that that is a good multiball to stack with reality gem for sure. Nice little bit. I kind of struggle with that. Shield bonus be giant. My pops. Yeah. So, you collect that by hitting the side loop, the Hawkeye loop, and then that lights through the bumpers. Okay. I didn't realize you have to Hawkeye loop for it. Yep. Well, you have to collect it at through the pops, but qualify it by the Yeah, right here. So, here it is. Yeah. Oh, you hit the pops the wrong direction. Oh, so you have to hit it correct. You have to hit it through Yeah. Yeah, that's tough. Yeah, there's actually like three switches back in that left orbit. Some magical Oh, some timing. Um Yeah, the coding for all the shots that were laid out, you know, you're like, how do you tell if it's a left orbit versus a center orbit? Yeah, that's the magic of pinball. Like in software terms, everything is a timer basically. Yeah, lots of timers. Lots of lots of timers. What am I doing here? Uh, you want to hit that disc. Try it. Maybe hit the right ramp and then spin it with the upper flipper. That's always fun. Oh, it's okay. Ball two and three. We're going to have a blast. All right. All right. Let's see. So, um, yeah, since I have the time gem, I'm going to really see if I can play some of these modes because, um, wherever the time gem is. So, right now, my time gem's on the bumpers. So, every bumper I hit will add time. So, actually, I'm going to try to kind of short every bumper you hit adds time. Yeah. So, is that scaled? You see how it says time bank 17? Yeah. So, my next timed mode will start with 17 seconds. Got it. If it were on a different shot, would it be just It would only add It would add like 10 seconds for hitting that shot or something. Pops 10 seconds per pop. No, it's like two seconds per pop or something. Yeah. Yeah. That's the thing about these things games. They always make way too much sense. Looks like I did have a portal lock. Excellent. All right, now it's party time. We got We got Thor. We got I got to hit the disc. There we go. Now all my shots are lit. I'm going to try to hit the grid to get some loads going. Oh yeah, you're stacking. You're stacking. Extra balls. So during portal lock, do you have a 2x playfield or is it 2x mode score? Um it's just mode scoring. Yeah. And if you drain out and down to one ball, do you still have that 2x mode scoring? Um no, it's only while you have the balls in play. Shots. And if you can get all the way through the gem and you have at least two balls in play, then you get victory laps. Oh, that makes sense. Yeah, because you can't just have a multiball outside of a mode, right? You got to kind of break some of the logic, right? We got I got like everything going. Hulk, rampage, hulk, 100,000 per spin. Yeah. Oh my mode. No, No, no. Party don't end. He has too much lit. Nice. You get it? We got a little some spells. All right. Now, let's start the uh Iron Man party. I also have completed my Avengers. So, during all that chaos, I have um soul gem ready. Beat reality gem. The final blow was on the uh the tower shot. Uh it can be any shot. Um you just have to get the health down to zero. Okay. You just happen to hit like the hardest shot. Okay. All right. So, let's actually I'm going to start I could have collected my reality gem, but well, I should I should have done that, but I didn't want to accidentally start soul gem cuz I want to get I'm in the party, you know. I'm starting my modes. Yeah. Can you start So, you can start modes while you're in Iron Man multiple. Yeah, you can. Yeah. So, you can see I got 60 seconds on my timer. And what are we in right now? Uh, super something. Super arc reactor. Super Oh, super target. Super targets during multi walls. Yeah, this is massive. And super reactors running. Yep. What's super reactor? So, this this is like you don't see this strategy a lot cuz most people don't go time gem, but this is like if you just want to have like you're going all in. You're pushing your chips all in. You're gonna either blow it up or, you know, not do anything. I like the time gem mode. I think it's the most unique of all the mods. Yeah, it's fun. Yeah, it really stands out. 2x Arc Reactor. I just like playing games with Ray because he teaches me the rules. Yeah. 5 years later. It's true. It's true. All right. I need my Adabal. So, I think I need the right orbit to get that last in lane. Nice. Okay. So, Oh, I hit the disc, so it changed all my inlanes. Now I need the left in lane. All right, that's easier. There it is. Boom. Easy. Oh, I still need Oh, I got Adab's lit. Ad ball's lit. There it is. Just for the fun. All right, we still got Arc Reactor going. Yeah. And you're collecting your Avenger still. Uh, well, I'm leveling them up, so they're leveling them up. If I can start soul gem on this same ball, I'll get a nice payoff. All right, we got lots of arc reactor points. We still have this mode running, too. Hulk rampage. The spinner builds the value of imagine if I had the reality gem. Yeah, on that left orbit. Reality gem. There's a reason to put reality gem on like every shot. Yeah, that's what I was trying to do when I was, you know, I wanted to make sure everything had something. Okay, you lit a lock again, so it just gave you money. Still got super targets going still. Thank goodness for that. Extra ball. Another extra ball. I got a bunch of extra balls. I think I got it from bleeding my Hawkeye targets. Super arc reactor. I want super disc, too. Man, these Iron Man jackpots have been sleeping on them, but we're getting somewhere. Target or maybe not. Okay. 8 mil iron man. All right, so let's collect this. Oh, my Hulk rampage value is massive. I know. I didn't know. So, I guess you build that by hitting the spinner. Yeah, it was at like 400. But I've never lasted long enough in that mode to actually take advantage of it. Trophy collected. All right, let's put the reality gem up uh actually on the right orbit. Oh, what's that? Well, that could be a combo jackpot. Um and it's also just I don't know. It was available on my left. Oh, I guess no, that's already where we already got a time gem there. Oh, that's right. Oh, it put it on the left orbit. That's interesting. interesting. All right. This would be a good value. Yeah, she got 3.2. I guess the 3.2 is from No, it's just cuz I had That's the That's the pop. Black Panther level two. Uh, I'm going to go hard. Let's do it. Okay. Feeling lucky. Feeling lucky. I have located the soldier. All right. 20 flips. Let's go. Recover it with great haste. It's running strong. Oh, that would have been so good. Yeah, that would have been good. Is there like a perfect bonus? There it is. And reality. So, that's 30 billion for that one shot. Thank you, Reality. Okay. Close. Boy, he needs just that last. Oh. Oh gosh. What? That was like in bowling when you hit both like half 10 split. I want like a half orbit now. Oh, right. right. Marble shot. Yeah. Eight flips left. Okay. Okay. Easy tower. Oh, I know. It's oddly early. Okay, you're good. Five flips. Uh, still still late. We're good. We're good. All right. This is it, though. Oh, wait. Still, we're still No. No. Oh. Oh, come on. No. There's not a grace for a physical, is it? Oh, there's a zero. Keith, you're too kind. Let's go. All right. That I Zero Grace. Didn't know that existed. Goes down to zero. That's a Yeah, I think Rick said it was one of the hardest things to program was that soul jump mode because of situations like that because he wants you to be able to get it on your last flip. Right. Entrust an avenger with the Infinity Stone. It's always the modes that have the edge cases are always the the difficulty. Takes the most time to get right. I slap. Oh, I slapped you right into Oh, I still had so much. So, Oh, but you got how many extra balls? That's your third extra ball hit. So many extra balls. Feels like this guy broke him. I did like Yeah, I do like my extra balls. I heard get rained in on some of your Yeah. Yeah. I think Keith like removed an extra ball from the Marvel ramp cuz I'm like he's like, "You got too many extra balls, Ray." Like, oh, I like extra balls. I love how it counts the number of switches. 2366. Nice. I'm guessing the flippers don't has a switch. That would be That would be a little I've seen a homebrew that had that flippers. Uh, all right. So, we got some gems going on. Yeah, you got to place them somewhere right on the drops. Is there a reason for that? Uh, oh, I I actually forgot about that. That's not a good place for your soul gem. Oh, I thought I was going to learn something crazy, but I can um I can change my gems. I got So, let's actually do that. Let's Let's change gems. So, you like change gems by completing your Avengers and I will spare. That way, you can set him up before soul gem or black order. Oh, it looks like it's going to be battle. So, I guess let's just do that. Oh, yeah. things might go either way. All right, this mode's scary. Say it's controversial. I would say this one is a little controversial. There's a rule, an unwritten rule in program in uh designing a pinball machine where you never want to take away something that the player has already earned. So, this is one of those rare exceptions. Well, you know, Thanos, he's pretty powerful and he doesn't really play by the rules. That's fair. And if you're good enough, it's really valuable. So, I guess it is worth a lot of points. Yeah. And you can earn a gem if you failed a gem. Um, so I actually should have I guess um I did too good cuz I didn't fail any gems. So I don't I know. Um, all right. I'm going to hit that one because your last one will automatically select for you. Oh, sure. And that spinner's kind of in the way for you. Is this the first game that Keith did his horizontal spinner? Horizontal spinner. Yeah, the disc. Yeah. So, right. Yeah. That's what what do you guys call this? It is horizontal spinner. Yeah. It's so much fun to rip. Okay, perfect. Oh, man. I'm scared though. My time gem's at risk. Oh, we like the time. I know. Oh, this thing shoots so good. Yep. We cannot stand alone. That's prepped. Yep. Nailed be nice. Be nice. Yeah, combo right here. Oh, a little late. Yep. Drop catch. Save the day. All right, let's go. Okay. Oh, do I get a some sort of victory? I got save flashing. Oh, that's how you get the victory laps. So, if you if you didn't have any gems lost and you beat that mode, instead of getting a gem back, you get super victory laps. Oh, okay. That makes sense. I was wondering how you how you got that. All right, so super victory laps. You hit the disc, then number of balls in play multiplies all the shots. Always a fun rule. It's my favorite rule in like retro games, black knight and stuff. Yeah, that and you know, every other thing. The disc is like making these points huge. Oh, and I got a reality gem on my left orbit. So, this will be massive. Boom. Yep. Extra ball. Extra ball. Maybe I should plunge off some of my extras here. Oh, no. You're doing great. You got to play it. This is a celebration of Avengers, not a not a Is nice to give it to Thanos one last time here. Yeah, that's right. True. doing a pretty good job. Oh, everything flipper fumble. It's okay. okay. Uh, back to this game. All right. Pretty good. 45 mil. Pretty good. Oh, now do I have locks? It looks like I do. I have one one locked in there. That's good. This is the premium version, so you can actually see your portal locks. I've never really noticed that. Super ball saver. Super ball saver. All right, we're going to put the time gem up here so I can hit it at will. We'll put the reality gem here in case I get the black order. And that's the super. Put the soul gem here because he's level Oh, I guess nobody's level anything right now. Whatever. I didn't have time. The portal is ready. I'm going to do some surgery real quick. All right. Nice. Have you come to pay tribute to Thanos? As long as we got the got the play field going here. Um, actually, power gem. Sure. Let's try to get our Avengers faster. Want to progress through this game. So, the power gem is really good. Um, it makes all your shots do double progress towards Avengers. Right. This mode, you can either play it the easy way or the hard way. The easy way is you just alternate the center ramp and the gauntlet ramp like they're always going to be lit. But if you want most points, you want to hit the fast blinking shots. Yeah, that's on the side orbit right now. And you can you can boost it boost the value with the um disc or the spinner. Wait, is there ever only one fast blinking red shot? I think so. Okay. The The more fast blinking shots you hit. Oh, this will be massive if I can hit it. Yeah, it's 100. Yeah, the more of those you hit, the bigger your final blow is, too. So, actually, I should have put the reality gem on the left orbit cuz the final blow this mode is on the left orbit. Disc is in the way. Yeah, a little bit. All right. Well, that'll be bigger now. We need a um a gem that lets you physically time and space. Okay, here we go. Yeah. Yeah, you got it. So, this will be 3.4 * 2. There it is. 30 13.6. Oh, times two times two because the portal. Oh, final blow. Final blow. Resurrect it. Oh, so I actually programmed a grace period. So if you drain one of your multiballs, you can hit it within a couple seconds. It'll start victory labs even though you only have one ball in play. Okay. Cuz it's like a, you know, grace. Sure. Oh, this graces are so kind. But as a program, you have to do it so intentionally. Get it for free. All right. Nailed. That was a really good power gem. Yeah. How many we got now? Four. Look at the topper real quick. Uh, that would be really big. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, mineral euphoria. Speaking of toppers, so apparently nobody had collected the power gem and so I just started one of the uh topper modes. It It comes up with two random names like gem mania. Uh what is this one? Stone Euphoria or something. Yeah, I'm not sure how this mode works. Has it been a while? Shoot lit gems. Jackpot. It says shoot lit gem. Something about spell four to add a ball. It's also a switchbased mode. Oh, so you qualify shots with man. Even you are learning something this game. lit. One more for Adaval. There we go. ball. What's the add ball on the Thor? Oh, okay. Ah. Oh, it it counted. Yeah. How are you able to get that timing right between when the auto punch works when you shoot it? It's because the um Yeah, I don't know. I'm I'm not sure. That's That's incredibly tight timing. It might just disable it. Like as soon as one goes up there, it stops the timer and then the way it came out of the shoot All right. What do we got here? Is the boat still going? Jackpot. Oh, is this boat just go? Oh, nope. Now it's over. I got a bunch of power gems lit. Oh, I see. Place my power gem. And your shield bonuses get All right. So, you don't really want to put power gem on Marvel or the drops cuz they don't correspond to any of your Avengers. So, let's try to put it. Oh, it counted. Oh, nice. Just tickled. You just needed the spinner. Yeah, it hit the switch. No, it just tickled the spinner. That's awesome. I think it's because uh that way the spinner can be affected by the gem as well. All right, we got a big soul gem jackpot over here. About 10 million or so. Jackpot. This guy can do math. Yeah. Now, if Black Panther was like level uh two, it would have been probably Yeah. Uh double Okay. Uh oh. All right. Where are we going now? Uh I'm just going to level up my Avengers here. Try to get to Black Order, which you do by leveling all the Avengers up. Super go. Yep. Oh, this mode's fun. Oh, yeah. Especially with um time. The portal is ready. See if I can actually loop it with that disc in the way. No way. All right. Mine gem. Is this your last one? Uh space gem. Oh yeah, space man. All right, fast blinking shot. There we go. Oh, you want you want to hit all the fast blinking shots cuz then you don't have to hit the final sanctum target. And the more blue things I hit before spinning the disc more points. Well, your first gem lost. Mine gem is gone. Thanos finally got one. Yeah, we let him have it. Boom. Yeah. This is great. Let's go. I think I'm Am I out of the No, you better keep trying. Don't this There's no mercy rules here. Well, that way when you when you come back, you know it was all real. Uh, okay. Hit the Oh, I almost hit that. I got multiball lit. Iron Man. Let's light a mode. Wow, the last gem takes a lot of discs. Is there any way to like speed up the progress? There is actually. I added a eye of Agamoto helper. So when it goes down the right in lane Oh, on a combo. So if I can hit the right in lane. It's kind of hard to get it to the right in lane. You can shoot the the buck. Oh, true. Um but you can see this little orange light. See the little orange light come on? So that tells you that you're getting double disc while that's blinking. Oh, okay. Good read. Good read. All right, let's combo jackpot. I remember uh when the super combos were first implemented, you could keep hitting the same two shots and uh I put up like a six billion point YouTube video and then like Keith immediately was like, "Okay, we got to nerf back." We had the same problem with Jaws. There was a combo that got like 900 million and it was timed. 60 seconds still way too valuable. Wow. I mean, I couldn't do it though. I'm like, Keith, you're the only one that can do this. Like now I feel like it's not worth it enough. Oo, look at that. Gamma ray. So yeah, gamma ray got a pretty good boost. It used to be kind of worthless. People kind of make fun of it. They're like just ignore it. But now it it's pretty good. It is funny how loud the gamma ray is and how attractive it is to shoot the spinner. So yeah, with that first batch of code, it was a little disappointing. Got to get to the Iron Man super. That's one of the uh trophies in the game. So that's kind of the the ultimate goal. Um there's a trophy mania, which is kind of what I where I came in cuz Keith just said, "Hey, we're going to have trophies at the end." And I'm like, "Oh, what does that mean?" He's like, "I don't know. Figure it out." So, so I came up with 32 different objectives and you need 24 of them to fill your trophy case and that will um get you trophy mania. And the better you do on stuff, you get, you know, silver or gold trophies are helpful. They uh they give you good bonus. Um they're just nice to show off, you know. I got the gold trophy. All right, so we're almost to the final stage of Iron Man. We need I need right in lane for Adabal. Sure. The game's getting tired on you. I didn't hit it quite I am as my ancestors before me. The Oh, the Black Panther is All right, that should light a ball. Oh, hit now. I got to hit that sanctum target. But you're nailing the the shield shot. Close. Oh, the disc right here. That was It was Come on. Oh, that grace was going to be it. All right. Uh, yeah. Rest of the game. Here we go. We need um disc and we need Oh, we need Thor. Thor is our last Avenger. Huh. Portal is moving and Thor is the capital. Yeah. Shoot the portal. Now I can also get an Avenger if I time this to land on the middle square. Oh god. Yeah. Needed it. Trying to post pass on an L1 game. What are you doing? All right. Whatever. This isn't Kong. All right. Last extra ball. Last extra ball. Oh boy. I felt that in my heart though. How do you know this is the last extra ball we can spot adventure? So, we want that middle one. That'll give me Thor and instantly get me uh All right. Yeah, we'll wait on it. Take your time. Come on. Is there a Does it go on the same like track every time or is it kind of random? Oh, I I failed at plunging it. Uh oh, I have the soul gem. So, I can try this one again or just space. Um, yeah, let's just try to do I forgot about that. The soul gem lets you retry quests. So, that was an in right away. Yeah, I did that later. Yeah, I think that was a perk. Yeah. Oh, those that reality gem should be giving me good pops. Yeah. Uh-oh. Oh, so mean. All right. Well, how you feeling? I did some good work, I think. Yeah, I'm sweating a little bit. Ah, yeah. You still have one more ball. That's right. So much more opportunity. Okay. All right. Close the gap. Hey. Yeah, no problem. We're going to we're going to be learning uh from a different skill level or knowledge level. Okay. What should I be thinking about right now? Uh well, you got Thor lit, so you probably want to start a gem quest. So, immediately try to spin that horizontal spinner. Yep. Right. Oh, yep. No, that's not going to go up there. Maybe button plunge is the way to go. Oh, okay. Oh, yeah. You also at some point want to let your Iron Man locked. So, pay attention. Oh, you just did it. Nailed it. So, yeah, you hit that the little target there. Spotted an Iron Man letter, which most people it's kind of like a secret thing about this game is if you can't hit the lid in lane, you can hit that target up there. And if you want to relight that target, you actually hit the buck. Kind of another All right. What are you going to do? Uh I mean time jam with a multiball is pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. It's sometimes it can be hard to time time it right. But yeah, but it's so safe. Yeah. I don't like to do blue because then I don't know which are Thor shots and which resistance will be same on like Star Trek games look like. All right, I'm going to go pick after Seattle and kidding. Oh yeah, true. There's only so many colors. I know, right? Where's the brown? You can't have a brown light. A no black light. So, this mode is actually really fun. You hit as many jackpots as you want um and then it lights the uh Thor Captain Ball uh as like a double jackpot. So, you can hit that right away or you can keep hitting more jackpots. Um it gives you a letter in Thor each time you hit the captive ball and you're trying to get all four letters. That gives you the uh super jackpot. Yep. So there's and the this mode was fun before, but now um the disc actually can juice up your jackpots. That's I always want a way to juice up my jackpots. I missed I Oh, so you're f you're focusing on that. I am and I'm uh not quite getting it. But maybe I should uh I mean that was 2.7 million compared to the 350,000 time jump shot. Yeah, that was something kind of difficult is for picking the trophies for like silver, gold, bronze, I wanted to come up with a simple way to remember like 30 million in a gem quest is gold. But once I came up with that simple to remember rule, it meant I had to balance all the quest. Yeah. Um, did you have like a big Excel sheet of everything? I did. Yeah, I went through them all. I was like, "Okay, this mode is worth this much. was worth this much on average or you know minimum maximum. Um but it means it's harder to like you know I might want to buff time gem but then maybe it makes the trophy too easy to get. So I don't know. It's It's a tough balance. Yeah. But I I think for time gem you're not really worried about the point. You just want I want to get it. I don't know if I needed to hit it that hard, but sometimes the bigger the move the better, right? Uh yeah. Yeah, you can kind of knock sense up until Bob doesn't know what's going on. That's right. Is this mode on a timer? It is. But you can extend your timer if you beat the time gem. Ah, I thought I timed that. Oh, that was my last one. Oh, yeah. That's needed to It just felt it felt like it was right on the fly was when I needed to Well, if you get the soul gem, that might be your your plan. But progress isn't held, right? No, not for the modes, I don't think. Um, but yeah, I think next ball maybe focus on getting your Avengers. Mhm. Or Iron Man will start Iron Man. The blocks are lit. I didn't collect any of the locks, but yeah, I feel like um there's a lot of opportunities for blow one. This is another one right around the corner. That's what makes these uh these Keith games so great, right? I just keep going, but unfortunately that means every time you drain, you feel terrible cuz you were just one shot away from something. Yeah. Or you were in the middle of something. Yeah. But that's just like true of the entire experience. attack. So, fun fact, that actually awarded a grid squares. See that? By doing that little Hawkeye combo. Oh, you can actually spot one of the drop target grids. Okay. It's like a very minute piece of knowledge. The Hawkeye combo spray ramp into the side. Uh yeah. So, he actually started this mode, this whole rampage just by doing that business. Um I thought it was cool. Keith wanted a way to give you a safe way to kind of start those drop targets. Although it takes a lot of shots, a lot of combos. That was actually really hard to implement, too, because sounds so simple on paper. Like, spot one of these. Like, what does spot mean? Yeah, that's so true. Or like spotting a shot. Like, you know, spot any shot. That's the most valuable. That was one of the first things I had to do in this game was come up with how to spot a shot when you do the flank attack. For real. And the way I ended up doing it was instead of he wanted it to spot like the best shot in each mode and like you know instead of saying like okay I think the center ramp is the best shot. It's like well it might be the best shot in one mode but not the other. So what I did is each mode it will spot its own best shot. So it actually might be spotting multiple shots. Um but it it just spots stuff that's running. But you had to write like an individual function in every mode. Yeah. And then Pete kind of reused that in Godzilla with the um the big wall up. Big wallup. And then if you don't have any mode running because he used the same logic I used from this game, which is if nothing's running, it has no logic of what to spot. Yeah. So he gives you 5,000 mini wallup points on Godzilla. I saw that. I mean, I used the I didn't know it was yours, but I used that on the radio target. I was like, "Oh, okay." Yeah. We have these virtual functions and you override it. Nothing overrides it and it uses 5,000. We're a bit nicer and we give a million, but yeah, you need to have some way on the code. So, I know it's you. All right, Joe's rocking the power gem here. Well, after seeing how it's how it's done. Showed me the map. Oh, what a drop. Curse Widow. All right. Well, you just need Thor for all your Avengers and or Multiball. You're actually set up really good, too, on the Sanctu. Oh, no. You're still in. Let's go. Yeah. Uh cuz that's the thing. Once you do like the big move, you have to recover, too. All right. Throw multiple lit. You also have the final blow lit on your mode. Yeah, let's order and it got it. You got the flank attack. Okay, so flank attack when How can you relight? You can't. You just get it once. Okay, but say you're in like a timed mode or you're in a gem mode. You use flank attack, but I start the time. Do I reenter? Your flank attack will work on the time code, but not the one you already used it on. Oh, you put that logic in there. I think so. I did not put that logic across. Okay. Could have did not. No, it just Yeah, it relights. Yeah, I think each mode has its own like did I each mode has its own like did I use my flank attack yet or something? Oh, no. That sounds familiar. I did do that, but I think I was kind enough to reset. So, I kind of wanted to just Oh, so you can st Yeah. Yeah, actually. I would have to recheck. We need um Thor here to get Black Order. Okay. Do it bounce. Yes. I don't know what that was. Glancing blow reference to this game. Yeah. Center. Okay, we're good. Oh, actually, if I had level one Black Widow, the um her perk is uh Yeah. See, it says five shots to level one. So, if I had her at level one, you'd see she'd be pulsing. Then, every in lane would actually give you two door letters. Oh, a combo. Yeah. A little helper. I thought you were going to say a half ramp counts as something. Oh no. I'm like, okay. Add a ball lit. Well, there are half ramp rules and some other games that So, right now, are you just trying to whail on Thor still or where are we thinking? Oh, apparently I need to spell Thor another time to get Thor. Can you do it in the multiballs? No. Ah, so I should have just gone after the drop target. I might just do that now. Oh, spotted. Yeah, can you do that? Yes. So, let's wait for it. This is very Walking Dead. Yeah. So, that's locked in now. You just want to do the drops. Yep. I'm being sincere in some of my questions. Like, I just almost know a lot about this game, but not quite. Hey, look at that post. Oh my gosh, you did it again. It's the spin on the ball that's scary. Oh, that was too much. Okay, that was only good. Okay, good. All right, it's lit. It's lit. Well, I survived. Super disc. Okay, early back. Yes. All right. Now, this mode I had a fun time coding. Um it's it's all about um you hit the Avengers to light jackpots on the side loop and the more Avengers you get more multiplied your jackpot is. Um and then once you get the jackpot then you spin the disc inven through Captain America. But this multiball is also not worth much if you don't hit that difficult side loop. So it's it's kind of like an old school multiball where an upper flipper shot is very valuable. Yeah. all whirlwind. Yeah. And there was kind of a funny story with um Captain Marvel. I uh I had a bug where you'd hit it and it would increase the jackpot X like that. See how it says jackpot at 3x? And I forgot to make it so that you can only do that once. But then I liked it so much I'm like, "Oh, actually every time you complete you light the jackpot. Let's relight Marvel so that if you crisscross like you do like, you know, level up Thor, then hit Marvel, level up Iron Man, then hit Marvel, you know, then you can get a huge jackpot multiplier." So it was one of those happy accidents. I love that. I'm gonna have to rewatch this playback. I feel like I'm all right. I really need that. Um, well, I need the side loop is where all the money is. Oh, sure. Okay. What's the plan? Right. Ramp side. Yeah, I can also hit the um I want the I'm greed. Maybe too much greed. I can handle this. I also have a button on my I can sacrifice my soul gem to add a ball. Oh, so you can resurrect. Yeah. Okay. Hello. I never remember if it's hold or press tab. All right. So now I have to get a super jackpot or else I will lose my soul gem. First I need a real jackpot though. Do I need that? All right. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. A little late. So yeah, this is the part about this multiball where it's it's really difficult, but if you can pull it off, it's worth a lot. Especially so many will not be so easily defeated. Did you get it? That's correct. No, it actually went all the way around. Yeah, I know. And that's not even the one you were aiming with. Oh, did my other one make it? I just flipped it. Oh, that's awesome. All right, so now we spin the disc. Now we got a fatty super lit. Move. Was that doubled with reality? Yeah. Nice. The plan. It's working. Let's go. Oh my god. It's a party. Is what it means to be an Avenger. Does that super also give you a ball save or is that just uh Yeah, it gave me Adabal. Add a ball. A bunch of ball save. And then I got a Adabal from my other mystery award. at the office. Okay, so your side loop lit now. Oh, super jackpot's lit. I must have gotten a side loop. Oh. Oh, no. Oh, wait. I got to I'm cheating here. You're stacked. Little nudge. Oh, I guess I can just something will happen. Oh, that's not what I wanted to happen. The bounce out. Just glad it got out. All right. Super jackpot split to add a ball last second. No way. Oh my god. I got Trying to backhand the sanctum. Does that seem impossible? No, the Yeah. Man, that would the shield thing. Yeah, that would have been like another 100 million and another had a ball. So, you can see how that multiball can get crazy. Yeah, you got your bill. All right, I can I can rest easy. Power out. That was sick. Good ball. I think that's uh first stream build in a while. At least in this room. That might have been the first billion streamed in the replay. It's playing so good. Says you. I can do that. Hey, I got my portal locked. There you go. So, you're on track. I guess I did something right. Oh, but my plan. I remember my plan. Always have a plan. Reflecting Avengers and thinking about Thor. No, Iron Man. Yeah. Okay. Button. There you go. See, we're learning. I don't know what that was. Too good. I was aiming for the tower. It found its way there. I'll take Okay. Yeah, we'll just let that go. Nope. Never mind. Yep. just fall in there. So, I got two poor. Yeah, and they're in the little thing. I see them now. Get up there. Okay. All right. Survive this. Oh, we need one more tick. Should I shoot for it? Maybe hit the lock and then Okay, that works. Oh, got the extra ball. Okay, so now I just collect the mode. Yeah. Uh, yeah. yeah. Infinity. I don't know. What should I do? You tell me. Uh, I like power. Okay, power. Yeah, I can use some power. And I want to aim for the fast blinking ones or just alternates that are grants. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the shots kind of move left and right, left and right. that build that built the value is pretty Oh wow, your shots are going to be worth a lot here. One that even a a flank attack would be helpful. Yeah, I got one. Whoa. Oh my goodness. I was busy. I almost lost both of them. Yeah, I'll take the one. Marvel at the strength the mighty Thor possess if I lock it. Just kidding. What? Kind of scary situation. It's mine. Ah. All right. Well, you're getting all your Avengers, right? That was the plan. Yeah. Oh gosh, that shot has changed the last time I played this. Nope. Late now. I took all the flipper power. I can take it. Still wanting that lock. Oh, flank attack. Yeah, flank. I guess I already used it. No, I gave it to you. Hit the Yeah, that was a terrible power. I'll take it. That's fine. Yes. I'm so excited to blame more. You need you need the extra balls. I feel I like I needed all four of them or whatever. Yeah, you got there though. All right, power gym lost. But we're back to the original plan which was collect Avengers and start Thor, which I'm not finding that tower ramp or ramp again. Iron Man tower. Yes. Why am I getting all these portal locks? Tower rocks. Uh I don't know where they're coming from. Speed of combos. Yeah. You know, you can build towards it while you were in it previous. Uh, you might have got one from your grid. Maybe you did a Hawkeye challenge. Uh, yeah. Nice. I thought I read that right. Destined for I didn't I didn't see the spin door open for the last. All right. Yeah, you had it. You You had it about to blow it open there. You had your soul gem. You had a two portal lock mode coming up. That's okay. Oh, freaking that spinner. When it's in that spot, you're just Oh, yeah. That's a little bit ugly spot. Kind of got to tickle it with the upper left flipper, huh? Oh, yeah. It just vibrated with his flippers. Okay, we got Iron Man tower. Oh, we got the uh Hawkeye challenge. Bounced it up there, right? Yeah, it worked for me. Yeah, I didn't think it would work again. Oh, but he survived. You didn't survive. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Okay, I'd rather have survived. So, yeah, I guess you could have just not gone for it. That's the toughest thing about this game, just getting out of that the upper flipper. Yep. Extra ball. All right. Extra ball. We all need him. We all love him. Got Thor going. Got super hard reactor. And you're coming back. Extra ball. Extra ball to the rescue. What What are we chasing here? Yeah. What's the plan? Always a plan. Okay. Shoot again. Try to get it. Yeah, I got a deer. Ah, why isn't that a skill shot? What? Oh, that would be a really hard skill shot. Yeah, I think that every time I shoot a shot, the plunge, I'm like, "All right, all right, we got portal lock lit." Portal lock ready. There we go. now the inspiration for that subway was um Flight 2000. Oh, same walking ball lock mechanism. All right. Was a big fan. Just my patience. Yeah, cuz Flight 2000 is great, but it takes up the real estate. Trophy collected. Yeah, that's Keith likes to do that. Just take something and then kind of improve on it. Oh, you're right. Getting out of that upper. It's so I I mean I would have to play this game 10 more times to figure out what I'm supposed to do. All right, that would be one of us. I'm not sure I knew it. Oh, okay. We didn't we didn't uh punch in. Oh, that's Oh, can I still punch in? Will it give me stuff? I don't know. Will it? Dude, you programmed it. I don't know either. someone. It might give Well, actually, cuz I was player one, so I might be okay. Do you ever Do you ever ask Keith about a rule of his one of his games? He's like, "I don't know. Ask Rick." Yeah, sometimes. Avengers assemble. What a score. Yeah, that was big. Oh, we get the spinning spinning newspapers. Power gem. All the gold. That was sweet. On the zero. On the zero. status attacks. Thanks for the clinic on here's some fun. Bringing it out of the vault for us. Yeah, zoom in on us. Thanks for joining us everybody. Gary's right off camera about to roll this game away. So, thanks for joining us. We'll see you out there. Thanks everybody. See you.
  • Keith Elwin needed to nerf super combos in Avengers because Raymond Davidson created a six billion point YouTube video

    high confidence · Davidson: 'When the super combos were first implemented, you could keep hitting the same two shots and uh I put up like a six billion point YouTube video and then like Keith immediately was like, Okay, we got to nerf that.'

  • Raymond Davidson @ mid_gameplay — Reveals technical difficulty of implementing grace periods and edge case handling

  • “When the super combos were first implemented, you could keep hitting the same two shots and uh I put up like a six billion point YouTube video and then like Keith immediately was like, 'Okay, we got to nerf that.'”

    Raymond Davidson @ late_segment — Shows how community content creation (YouTube videos) influences post-release balance changes

  • “I remember coming into Stern, seeing this whitewood and just being absolutely blown away. I was like, whoa, is this the next game? It's probably one of his best designs.”

    Raymond Davidson @ playfield_discussion — Praise for Keith Elwin's mechanical playfield design layout

  • “I came up with 32 different objectives and you need 24 of them to fill your trophy case and that will um get you trophy mania.”

    Raymond Davidson @ trophy_discussion — Reveals scope and complexity of endgame content Davidson designed for Avengers: Infinity Quest

  • Jaws
    game
    Black Knightgame
    Cactus Canyongame
    Thanosgame_element
    Star Trekgame

    design_philosophy: Complex endgame content strategy: 32 different trophy objectives with 24 required to unlock trophy mania; bronze/silver/gold tiering system; careful point value balancing across all modes to maintain fairness and difficulty

    high · Davidson on trophy design: 'I came up with 32 different objectives and you need 24 of them to fill your trophy case... I went through them all... this mode is worth this much... I had to balance all the quests.'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Intentional rule-breaking in Black Order mode justified through thematic coherence (Thanos breaking normal pinball rules); rare exception to fundamental design principle of never taking away earned progress

    high · Davidson discussing Black Order: 'There's a rule, an unwritten rule in programming... where you never want to take away something that the player has already earned. So this is one of those rare exceptions... Thanos, he's pretty powerful and he doesn't really play by the rules.'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Raymond Davidson was entry-level programmer on Avengers: Infinity Quest, following comprehensive rules documentation created by lead designer Keith Elwin; demonstrates junior developer apprenticeship model at Stern

    high · Davidson: 'This was my first game I worked on at Stern... they're like, You're going to help uh Rick and Keith, help Rick get Avengers going. And so I basically just followed Keith's rules that he had written out as this big document.'

  • ?

    design_innovation: Keith Elwin's whitewood (prototype) playfield layout received significant praise from Raymond Davidson upon first exposure at Stern; recognized as 'probably one of his best designs'

    medium · Davidson: 'I remember coming into Stern, seeing this whitewood and just being absolutely blown away. I was like, whoa, is this the next game? It's probably one of his best designs.'

  • ?

    product_launch: Avengers: Infinity Quest being vaulted and removed from production for at least two years; exclusive vault celebration stream marking end of active production

    high · Raymond Davidson: 'We dug it out of the vault. Very decided with our growing catalog to put a few games in the vault. We're not going to be making it for at least a couple years.'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Hawkeye combo mechanic enabling Hulk Rampage start through specific shot sequence required complex implementation; described as 'really hard to implement' despite sounding simple on paper

    medium · Davidson: 'That was actually really hard to implement, too, because it sounds so simple on paper. Like, spot one of these. Like, what does spot mean?'