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Pinball Circus Homebrew

Pintastic New England·video·19m 18s·analyzed·Dec 2, 2025
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.029

TL;DR

Homebrew designer Lynn reveals 4.5-month Pinball Circus rebuild with multiball, new rules depth, and custom fabrication.

Summary

John Manuelian (Lynn), a prolific homebrew pinball designer, showcases his custom rebuild of The Pinball Circus at Pintastic New England 2025. Built solo over 4.5 months using CNC and vacuum-forming equipment, the game features redesigned playfields, an eighth flipper, four-ball multiball capability, and screen-based wheel selection. Lynn discusses engineering challenges (particularly the wireform), rule design philosophy emphasizing player longevity beyond the original's perceived 'one-trick pony' nature, and plans for wizard modes and additional multiballs. The original IP remains owned by Harry Williams/Planetary Pinball, which recently trademarked the name; Lynn states this is a one-off build using FAST hardware and Unity 6.

Key Claims

  • Lynn built The Pinball Circus homebrew solo in 4.5 months of spare time while maintaining a day job as a mobile video game developer and having a family.

    high confidence · Direct statement from Lynn confirmed by moderator; specific timeframe and job details provided.

  • The original wireform in the middle of the machine is not manufacturable as designed; splitting into multiple parts would be required for production.

    high confidence · Lynn explicitly states: 'I don't think it's manufacturable. But when you're making it all by hand, all at once, you can kind of Mickey Mouse things.'

  • Lynn has designed and brought to playable realization six homebrew games total, with five others on display at the Electromagnetic Pinball Museum in Pawtucket.

    high confidence · Lynn clarifies: 'Technically number five, Blue House number six... They'll all be in the homebrew... all the other ones are going to be at the Electromagnetic Pinball Museum.'

  • Lynn has never played the original The Pinball Circus machine and based the redesign entirely on YouTube videos and instruction card images.

    high confidence · Lynn: 'I've never played the game myself. I've never been to Vegas. I've never played the one that you can play. So the only things I could do is look at YouTube videos.'

  • Harry Williams and Planetary Pinball own The Pinball Circus IP; Planetary recently trademarked the name to lock down future IP relationships.

    high confidence · Lynn confirms IP ownership; moderator reports Planetary Pinball took trademark steps, with Lynn agreeing: 'You just can't have a floating IP.'

  • The game uses a $120 single-board computer equivalent to Xbox/PS2 capability, running Unity 6 (C#) with FAST hardware.

    high confidence · Lynn directly answers technical questions: '$120 cheap single-board computer... somewhere around an Xbox or a PS2... running it off of Unity 6.'

Notable Quotes

  • “I treated this like the boss of a level. Can I defeat the boss and make it really good?”

    John Manuelian (Lynn)@ 1:26 — Explains motivation for undertaking a difficult remake rather than original design; competitive/challenge-driven mindset.

  • “The biggest challenge was the wireform in the middle—that big swirly wireform... I don't think it's manufacturable. But when you're making it all by hand, all at once, you can kind of Mickey Mouse things and get it working, right?”

    John Manuelian (Lynn)@ 2:27 — Key technical insight about engineering constraints for production vs. one-off builds; identifies scalability barrier.

  • “I've never played the game myself. I've never been to Vegas... So the only things I could do is look at YouTube videos of people who played it or look at the little instruction cards that it had on the skirt.”

    John Manuelian (Lynn)@ 5:26 — Remarkable constraint: designed rule set from incomplete online documentation alone, raising questions about fidelity vs. interpretation.

  • “I wanted to add more pinball-y rules into this. I wanted to make it feel like there are more things to do than just get to the top... That's why I added the multiballs. That's why I have a more formal Wizard mode with goals.”

    John Manuelian (Lynn)@ 14:03 — Core design philosophy: addressing perceived limitations in original (one-trick pony) through multiball, wizard modes, and stacking mechanics.

  • “I kept this completely secret private throughout the whole development time... I like surprising people.”

    John Manuelian (Lynn)@ 16:14 — Reveals intentional opacity; did not contact original designers or producers despite having opportunity.

Entities

John ManuelianpersonPintastic New EnglandeventThe Pinball CircusgameHarry WilliamspersonPlanetary PinballcompanyFAST PinballcompanyElectromagnetic Pinball MuseumorganizationPythonperson

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Pintastic New England provides platform and showcase for homebrew pinball games as central part of show programming; has supported homebrew for 10+ years.

    high · Moderator: 'We've been supporting homebrew pinball games since our very first show 10 years ago... This is just one part of our seminar program.'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Lynn designed playfields from incomplete reference material (YouTube, instruction cards) and geometric inference; no contact with original designers or detailed documentation.

    high · Lynn: 'I've never played the game myself... The only things I could do is look at YouTube videos... I kept this completely secret private throughout the whole development time.'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Deliberate redesign of original game to add depth (multiball, wizard modes, stacking mechanics) addressing perceived 'one-trick pony' limitation; emphasis on player longevity and competitive viability.

    high · Lynn: 'I wanted to add more pinball-y rules... more things to do than just get to the top... That's why I added the multiballs... wizard mode with goals.'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Planetary Pinball recently trademarked The Pinball Circus name in apparent response to homebrew remake; proactive IP protection to define future licensing relationships.

    high · Moderator: 'Planetary took steps to lock down the trademark on the name. So I think it was because they heard about this.' Lynn agrees, acknowledging floating IP concerns.

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Homebrew adds four-ball multiball capability with stacking strategies (main playfield-only vs. mini-playfield-only multiballs with cross-playfield stacking); wizard mode planned.

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.058

0:00
Hello everybody. It's April 10th, 2025. Potentially a historic day in pinball. We're here at Pintastic New England, the pinball show that innovates. We've been supporting homebrew pinball games since our very first show 10 years ago, and we are a full-featured pinball show. This is just one part of our seminar program, and we will have more coverage of homebrew pinball later on in this weekend. And you can also plan on more coverage next year for our dates of April 9th to 12th, 2026. What we have here is a seemingly impossible game to build. The pinball circus homebrew done by the gentleman you see there, John Manuelian, a.k.a. Lynn, who built it by himself where whole teams were apparently not able to accomplish as much. Lynn you usually do original designs, you've done so many homebrew games that are original what made you decide you wanted to do a redo of somebody else's design? a couple reasons, first reason I wanted to challenge myself basically I treated this like the boss of a level can I defeat the boss and make it really that secondly I wanted one and thirdly people should be able to play the game so if I'm able to bring it around which it's an uphill battle sometimes to get it around but I want the public to be able to play the game it's a cool game and speaking of the challenges what would you say are the biggest challenges that you faced and do you think those were challenges that defeated other teams in their attempts to build it the biggest challenges I'm not sure what the biggest challenge was there was really just a lot of little challenges along the way like making sure things fit, making sure things kind of stayed where they needed to well actually, no, the biggest challenge was the wire form in the middle that big swirly wire form and all that that, with at least how I ended up making it I don't think it's manufacturable but when you're making it all by hand all at once you can kind of Mickey Mouse things and get it working, right?
2:37
Definitely it would need to be split up into multiple parts if you wanted to make more than one. Well, yeah, since you bring that up, I presume that for a suitable fee you would assist a manufacturer if they wanted to take it into production. I mean, you've designed all the specialized parts and you've done all the coding. Well, not all the coding, more coding to come. Yeah, there's still a lot of code to go. I mean, I'll help. I don't mind chatting. I mean, there's lots of different moving parts in that, no pun intended. But, I mean, yeah, I don't mind chatting with people and helping.

  • “You just can't have a floating IP. Any hobo off the street can just build one. That's not great.”

    John Manuelian (Lynn)@ 11:55 — Pragmatic view on IP protection; acknowledges legitimacy of trademark enforcement.

  • “I'm using a $120 cheap single-board computer to run the thing... I'm running it off of Unity 6 as far as software, so it's C Sharp... being driven by the FAST hardware.”

    John Manuelian (Lynn)@ 12:19 — Technical stack reveals modern homebrew approach: accessible hardware + game engine + FAST control platform.

    • Unity 6product

    high · Lynn: 'this now has a regular trough in it, so I can have up to four-ball multiball... One of the multiballs only takes place on the main playfield. Another multiball will only take place on the mini playfields... if you stack them, then you have other things going on.'

  • ?

    announcement: Official public reveal of Lynn's The Pinball Circus homebrew at Pintastic New England 2025; playable throughout weekend with potential code updates.

    high · Direct presentation at show; moderator confirms: 'For those watching remotely, we're gonna have it all weekend right here at Pintastic New England.'

  • ?

    manufacturing_signal: Custom wireform centerpiece is not manufacturable in current hand-built form; would require significant engineering rework (splitting into multiple parts) for commercial production.

    high · Lynn: 'I don't think it's manufacturable. But when you're making it all by hand, all at once, you can kind of Mickey Mouse things... It would need to be split up into multiple parts if you wanted to make more than one.'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Modern homebrew pinball stack: $120 single-board computer + Unity 6 game engine + FAST hardware control; represents accessible, game-engine-based approach to homebrew vs. traditional pinball architecture.

    high · Lynn's technical stack: '$120 cheap single-board computer... running it off of Unity 6... being driven by the FAST hardware.'

    • 3:16
    So tell us a little bit about how you've done the rules differently, extensions. Well, when I was working on this game, this game took me last summer. So four and a half months to make it soup to nuts, zero to this.
    3:34
    And as I was going through it and finding all the images, first I spent about a month before that actually doing some due diligence, seeing if I could actually do it, collecting images, scouring the web for whatever I could find. And once I started building it up, I was kind of playing it with my eyes. And I'm like, this doesn't feel kind of right or this seems kind of weird with where the flippers are. so I redesigned a lot of flow and lots of little pieces to it just by my own feeling. So most of it is what one would think of as pinball circus. Like the three play fields are largely the same because they were cool and there's nothing wrong with it. The main play field, I made it so you could do orbits on both sides. I added a lift ramp because why not add more things? I added an eight flipper because why not add more things? And actually that eighth flipper I put in specifically to kind of screw you over on the left side. The original game, it only had one flipper on the left side and no outlaying. So there was no way to really drain. So now with having kind of a double flipper over there, you can very easily drain on that side or by you know the ball going scissored or whatever And that was kind of the purpose of that to screw you over not really to help you So those were the little tweaks I made I also wanted to make it so it had multiball So this now has a regular Williams trough in it, so I can have up to four-ball multiball in this game.
    5:01
    And that is very interesting to play, especially some of the multiballs I had planned. You need to kind of get things on different play fields all at the same time, and juggling that is definitely a service. How about anything purely in the rules and the scoring or the objectives? So many of the objectives, like the only, I've never played the game myself. I've never been to Vegas. I've never played the one that you can play. So the only things I could do is look at YouTube videos of people who played it or look at the little instruction cards that it had on the skirt. So I took a lot of those, and I incorporated as much as I could that made sense with some of my new design. And I've added more on top of that. So there's still, like, the gold ball mode. You still can complete the giraffe, the second play field on the side there, to get up to the top, kind of like what the original game wanted. And you still have wheels that spin. But instead of having a physical wheel, I have a screen now, so I can have multiple wheels depending on what's selected, what you have acquired and things. So there's a lot of the same, but there's a bunch of just additions just because I can.
    6:15
    And price was no object. You weren't trying to stay with a particular bomb cost. No, I was just, I mean, some of the bomb cost is going to be cheaper because I don't have some physical things, but other bomb costs are going to be higher because, you know, so give and take with what you add and what you remove. And one big change that I made... Line up for questions. Oh yeah, line up for questions if you have questions. One big change I made, you'll notice I don't have the elephant on there. I do plan on making a little elephant toy, but with multi-ball, there's going to be lots of ball hang-ups and problems with that whole elephant neck. And to fix that would be out of the scope of what I wanted to deal with. So I just put a ramp there, which is a lot of fun, and I'll eventually have a little elephant there just for incidental animations and movement. Okay Dave, your question? Yeah, David, Classic Pinball Podcast So that game I played a pinball circus at Allentown a couple years ago really fun game again not quite finished but it was fun and a Python Angela game so this one here again, I don't know if you must have said something I didn't quite get it though how did you actually acquire the cabinet and what you had already. How did you actually get that? I designed the cabinet in SolidWorks, and I built it by hand. Wow, okay. So this is all you. Yeah, all the play fields I designed, and, well, I made changes. I have a CNC machine. I have a vacuum-forming machine. I have a whole bunch of fabrication tools. So once I cut them, there's a sign shop nearby that has a flatbed printer. I brought it to them to just do a direct print right on the thing, so it really looks nice. and all the artwork I had to recreate pixel by pixel based on blurry pictures that I could get off of things. So yeah, it was all me. So you've actually played this game before? No, I play it now. I've never played it beforehand. Okay, so you're just going off what you saw online? Wow, that's impressive.
    8:16
    Well done. Can't wait to try it. Well, you get your opportunity over the course of the weekend to be in our custom game room.
    8:24
    And this was four and a half months of build time? Four and a half months of build time and about, oh, I'm a loony.
    8:39
    Do you have a day job? Yeah. Okay. Four and a half months of spare time. Yeah, and I have a family, so my spare spare time.
    8:48
    I'm a game developer. Well, a video game, mobile. Question here? Derek? Have you contacted anybody who maybe at Planetary Pinball or anybody that worked at Capcom back in the day that retired back in the day but they did work on that game? Nope. This was all solid. Okay, no contact with Laughlin who had all the No, it was all what I found online and what I could infer and what kind of fit. The nice thing with pinball is once you start building something especially if you're trying to remake something, everything kind of has its place. So I couldn't take a play field and move it to the right a little bit more because then it wouldn't line up with what underneath it so to speak And since this is already there and I saw pictures well I knew that the elephant play field needed to be on the left side and a little bit to the front so how does that line up if I look straight down Oh that looks a little bit like what I see on the line That close enough And, hey, there's spots where I can drill the hole, so great.
    9:47
    So there was a lot of that. So there's definitely going to be differences. It's all my own work, but it came out pretty good, I think, and it plays pretty well.
    9:58
    How much more do you expect to do on the rules? I have a lot more rules to put in I have plans for multiballs I didn't get them added in yet maybe they'll appear magically through an update this weekend I have wizard modes planned I have additional multiballs I have a python multiball I want to add in and python wheels and things because the original pinball circus had this python toy in the middle and I've heard various degrees of oh it never worked, oh it was cool and I just didn't want to try to add that thing. So instead, if you look closely at my game, on the left slingshot, I used a, I don't know, what was it, a Hobbit, one of the Hobbit slingshots, and then we put a Python head on that, so it kind of bites the ball when it hits the slingshot. So it's kind of there, but instead you have a more traditional flipper layout instead of like a weird offset or something.
    10:54
    Hey, George, question? Could this game be produced commercially? And the second part of the question is, who owns the IP? Well, I don't own the IP, so I'm not producing it commercially. I made this one and done. I'm happy with it. I'll just keep working on it.
    11:13
    Williams and Planetary Pinball still own the IP, so it would be up to them. Yeah, in fact, Nap Arcade recently reported that Planetary took steps to lock down the trademark. on the name.
    11:28
    So I think it was because they heard about this, and so they wanted to make sure that whatever relationship for future development might happen, that they got their role properly defined for it. Would you say that's a fair idea? They're not looking to prevent this from ever being built by anybody as far as... Right. You just can't have a floating IP. Any hobo off the street can just build one. That's not great.
    12:04
    Brian, you have a question? What are you using for code and electronics to drive it? I'm using a $120 cheap single-board computer to run the thing. It's probably the equivalent of, I want to say, somewhere around an Xbox or a PS2 type of thing. I'm running it off of Unity 6 as far as software, so it's C Sharp and everything. It's the same engines I use on all my other augmented games and whatnot, and it's being driven by the fast hardware.
    12:36
    And how many games have you done? That are playable or that I've done? Well, how many games have you designed and brought to some level of physical realization? Okay. Well, this is... To be able to play right now, this is number six that you have. Well, technically number five, Blue House number six. But anyways, this is the sixth one.
    13:01
    And they're all in a lineup in the homebrew. Well, this is going in there too. They'll all be in the homebrew that everybody can play. And except for this one, all the other ones are going to be at the Electromagnetic Pinball Museum in Pawtucket. They're always open for people to play them on location. and as far as what I've designed, I don't know, a dozen plus. I have a lot of play fields I haven't finished up. I had a Tale of the Dragon play field once years ago, which I had to use the cabinet for another game, but eventually I put it back in the cabinet. So I have a lot of things going on.
    13:37
    So how do you feel about this? When you get all your rules in, Do you think it'll be something that would be a dedicated pinball player would enjoy it for year after year? I hope so. There's a lot of longevity in it. Again, one of the things I've heard, and again, I haven't played the original, but it's a one-trick pony or you get to the top and that's it or it's fun to see.
    14:03
    So I wanted to add more pinball-y rules into this. I wanted to make it feel like there are more things to do than just get to the top. Maybe I need to complete this ring or this mode or get into the wheel or something else. That's why I added the multi-balls. That why I have a more formal wizard mode with goals to get to the wizard mode There always the need to climb but you don always have to climb For instance one of the multiballs only takes place or will only take place on the main play field Another multiball will only take place on the mini play fields, and if you stack them, then you have other things going on. So I'm trying to make your risk rewards and the things that everybody kind of likes, or if you're just a casual player, you go up and you see, ooh, this is neat type of scenario, right? Yeah, I definitely had that experience playing the original.
    14:56
    Being at a show with a lot of other people, I didn't get that many games on it, but I was able to get up to the top level, so I had that sense during my first hour of playing it. So you need something more than that. Yeah, I'd love to make it so people will want to play competitively on it. That would be really cool. I play competitively myself. it'll be difficult but I think it would be kind of neat if I can get that working. But first I need to get the rules in before balancing to make that a possibility. More questions? You can wrap this up if there are no more questions. Run over there. Okay. It will be in the homebrew room here at Pintastic New England, as you said, for the rest of the weekend with occasional code updates, potentially? Yeah, occasionally. I mean, I always update my games during shows because I'm that kind of crazy. And since this one didn't get a code update since October, and there are definitely some things I kind of wanted to add. While I was here, I might as well add them.
    16:07
    Okay. Dave? Did you ever reach out to any of the original designers or people that were involved with this, with the original Pinball Circus? Nothing like that? Never? Nope, I kept this completely secret private throughout the whole development time. Okay. Yeah.
    16:20
    I like surprising people. They're both good and bad. And how close do you think you're until you're a complete finished product, do you think? Well, it depends on how much time I put into this compared to my other games. I need to kind of serialize or thread my time between multiple projects. So I don't know, like, since I'm able to have this at this show, I don't know if I'm going to be able to bring it to other shows in the future. It is kind of a touchy-feely thing to see if I can do it. The more shows I can start bringing it to, the more I'll have the desire to add more. Otherwise, if it's just sitting in my shop over in my little arcade area, I'll look at it. Oh, this is neat, but I won't necessarily add more. I'll work more on the ones that I'm actually showing. well if I may I'd like to invert his question and say of the six games you have here are there any where you say I'm not going to change the code the code's done almost luau that's the newest one yeah but it's also a 60's EM style thing so there's not a lot going on and yesterday I pushed eight code updates to it so alright do you plan on calling it Pinball Circus when you've done, or Pinball Circus Reimagined, or what are you... Lin's Pinball Circus Homebrew, something like that.
    17:43
    I wanted Pinball Circus, so I want to have that in there somewhere. And I love Python's art. I respect him a lot as an artist, so I want to make sure his art's on there. So calling it something different completely would be... I don't know. I wouldn't feel right about that. Yeah, I think there's another Williams artist that did part of it, but probably Python on the sculpts. Probably, yeah.
    18:13
    But either way, I wouldn't feel right naming it something different if it has art from the original.
    18:22
    All right. Any other questions? for those watching remotely we gonna have it all weekend right here at Puntas New England come to Massachusetts exit 63 B off I-495 and you're right there you can come and play it yourself so thanks to Lynn and thanks to Jillian Hafner and our audio visual team. This is less than 24 hours since we got the necessary permissions to do this. I was about to fall asleep when I got a text and I'm like, oh, okay. Thank you.