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Ep 129: Signing Donuts with Keith Elwin

LoserKid Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 8m·analyzed·Jan 19, 2024
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.033

TL;DR

Keith Elwin talks Jaws design, mechanics, and future projects on Loser Kid Pinball Podcast.

Summary

Keith Elwin discusses Jaws pinball's development, design philosophy, and unique mechanics in depth. The conversation covers the upper playfield design, flip lock system, shark fin mech, captive ball boat shot, and Insider Connected integration. Elwin reveals his next game will have four flippers and discusses his design approach to balancing accessibility with competitive depth.

Key Claims

  • Jaws had over two and a half years from Godzilla reveal to Jaws reveal, unlike typical 12-13 month development cycles, due to unplanned timing and Stern cutting back to two cornerstones

    high confidence · Keith Elwin directly explains timeline difference was due to cornerstone reduction decision in fall

  • The shark fin mech is extremely large underneath the playfield, forcing the entire middle-right side design around it with shots placed far back

    high confidence · Keith Elwin: 'the footprint on that thing is gigantic... I had to design the entire middle, kind of middle right side around this gigantic mech'

  • The shark does not eat the ball due to licenser parameters requiring the shark to pop up and scare, which conflicted with ball-eating mechanics that became like an elevator

    high confidence · Keith Elwin explains licenser constraints and detailed the elevator/lame appearance problem with ball-eating attempts

  • Flip lock system allows holding right flipper for ~1 second to flash action button, then holding down locks upper flipper for default 15 seconds, usable once per ball with perks adding multiple uses

    high confidence · Keith Elwin provides detailed mechanic description of flip lock timing and functionality

  • Play the Shark mode will be unlocked via Insider Connected by collecting shark teeth and is expected spring 2025

    high confidence · Keith Elwin: 'Hopefully it should be in there spring' and explains IC connection with shark teeth currency

  • Keith Elwin is working on Bond 60th as a single-level game during extra development time while Jaws was finalized

    high confidence · Keith Elwin: 'My time is occupied by Bond 60th... I raised my hand' and confirms it snuck in while Jaws was already done

  • Shark teeth are collected through achievements like starting Jaws multiball or landing bounty sharks, similar to Avengers trophies

    high confidence · Keith Elwin explains teeth acquisition method with examples

  • The captive ball boat shot is directional (not omni-directional), requiring players to hit the ball to hit other targets, a design element Keith believes is unique or rarely seen

Notable Quotes

  • “Yeah, we tried. So what people don't understand, we have certain parameters we have to meet from the licenser. They wanted the shark to kind of pop up and scare someone... basically it became a shark elevator.”

    Keith Elwin @ ~23:00 — Explains the critical licensing constraint that prevented ball-eating shark mech, addressing major community criticism

  • “I didn't like it, so... So suck it, community.”

    Keith Elwin @ ~24:30 — Direct statement of design conviction vs. community trolling about shark not eating ball

  • “Does my mom understand this? And if not, maybe we should revisit it... make something easy, obvious goals up front with deep strategies later.”

    Keith Elwin @ ~35:00 — Core philosophy on balancing accessibility with tournament depth via Elizabeth Gieske collaboration

  • “The key to that is, you know, make something easy, obvious goals up front with deep strategies later.”

    Keith Elwin @ ~35:00 — Design philosophy statement about difficulty balancing

  • “My work was mostly done on this a long time ago. So all this extra time went to both the South Park team and the Jurassic Park 30th update.”

    Keith Elwin @ ~5:00 — Clarifies why Jaws had extended development timeline without additional creative time

  • “Four.”

    Keith Elwin @ ~51:00 — Teases next cornerstone game will feature four flippers on right side

  • “Find the Gary. Yeah, find the Gary. Every game we'll hide Gary somewhere.”

    Keith Elwin @ ~41:00 — Establishes Gary as recurring Easter egg character across Stern games

  • “I'll always raise my hand to do a unique project. Nothing in the works right now.”

    Keith Elwin @ ~55:00 — Open to special projects like Bond 60th, but no specific plans beyond cornerstones

Entities

Keith ElwinpersonJosh RooppersonScott LarsonpersonJawsgameStern PinballcompanyFlippin' Out PinballcompanyElizabeth GieskepersonGeorge Gomezperson

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Strong community interest in shark ball-eating mechanic sparked extensive online discussion and memes. Keith dismissive of criticism, confident in design decision. Describes community response as 'trolling' and 'chumming.'

    high · Keith: 'They're totally trolling. They're chumming' and 'I think I know what makes the game fun'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Keith designed flip lock system to NOT provide strategic advantage during multiball; instead creates decision point about parking balls. Emphasizes fun of manual flipper holding without assist is preferred strategy.

    medium · Keith: 'the strategy is just place to park the balls' and emphasizes it's 'more fun to not use it and hold... manually'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Keith's design process includes iterative culling of unsatisfying mechanics. Chum bucket originally too hard/repetitive, bash boat originally frustrating target-hitting requirement. Directional captive ball refined from failed omni-directional bash toy.

    high · Keith describes multiple iterations where mechanics were reworked due to 'hitting a wall gameplay-wise'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Keith Elwin's design approach emphasizes making games with 'easy, obvious goals up front with deep strategies later' to balance beginner accessibility with competitive play. Hired Elizabeth Gieske as external tester with 'does my mom understand this?' as core measurement.

    high · Direct quote from Keith and explanation of testing methodology with Gieske

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Brody character unavailable for Jaws playfield artwork due to estate non-response; only stunt double back shots permitted. Licenser required shark to pop up and scare, constraining ball-eating mech possibilities.

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.206

0:00
thanks for tuning in to loser kid pinball podcast i am josh roop with me my co-captain as always scott larson it is episode 129 we've got an epic guest as always on and before we get to that though jaws is now out if you want to get a hold of that scott how are you going to buy your jaws game i i actually have one on on order right now with zach and nicole mini at flipping out pinball So get on that pro premium or ask if there's an LE. We'll see if we can do that.
0:35
I'm hearing they're selling pretty well, actually. So can't complain. And nor can the man with us. He really needs no introduction, right? Like people love him. Men want to be him. Women want to be with him, right? Something like that. The man, the myth, the legend, Keith Elwin. How are you doing, Keith? I'm all right. Hanging in there. I heard you're a little sick. You caught something more from California than an Indy's trophy.
1:03
Every pinball tournament, man. Yeah. Get the pinball crud. You have to walk around with gloves and just change them every game. Yeah. Thank goodness it wasn't COVID, but yeah, it's so lingering and so annoying.
1:19
I guess Creasel coined it the con crud. That's what it is, I guess. It doesn't sound like fun. So you've just been at home. you called in sick well you had a great reveal so you just kind of called in sick this week or what i went in for the stream yeah that's true yeah which was great it out so um so everyone's wanting to know where jaws just released you had a little extra time on this game like most of your releases have been within 12 months to 13 months i feel like and this one you had over two and a half years from the reveal of Godzilla to the reveal of Jaws. What was different with this development process, and were you able to test some stuff out? Were you able to get more creative, I guess, with this game?

high confidence · Keith Elwin describes the traveling captive ball cage and directional mechanics as novel approach

Harrison
person
Jerryperson
Godzillagame
South Parkgame
Jurassic Park 30thgame
Bond 60thgame
Iron Maidengame
Insider Connectedproduct
Garycharacter
Brodycharacter
Dreyfusperson
Cactus Canyongame
Monster Bashgame
Foogame

high · Keith explains likeness rights vs. mechanical rights and specific licenser parameters

  • ?

    community_signal: Bond 60th represents Keith Elwin's voluntary contribution to special project outside cornerstone releases. Described as 'holding pattern' allowing single-level design work while awaiting next main project.

    high · Keith: 'I raised my hand... It kind of worked out perfectly... It kind of just snuck that entire design in'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Elizabeth Gieske brought on as external playtester/consultant for Jaws. Described as tournament-level player and 'very good player' with 'a lot of good ideas' who joined pinball scene 'a couple years ago.'

    medium · Keith: 'we hired Elizabeth Gieske... she's a very good player, and she has a lot of good ideas'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Jaws represents significant departure from Keith Elwin's typical designs with introduction of upper playfield, flip lock system, and captive ball boat shot. Play the Shark mode explicitly tied to Insider Connected progression.

    high · Keith notes this is first Elwin game with upper playfield; detailed description of unique mechanics

  • ?

    product_strategy: Play the Shark mode connected to Insider Connected and expected to launch spring 2025. Feature requires collecting shark teeth currency. Video mode challenge and ranking system (mackerel to great white) also planned.

    high · Keith confirms IC integration and spring timeline for Play the Shark completion

  • ?

    technology_signal: Keith volunteered for Bond 60th (single-level game) as 'unique project' during Jaws finalization. Suggests interest in projects outside standard cornerstone releases, but no current pipeline beyond cornerstones.

    medium · Keith: 'I'll always raise my hand to do a unique project. Nothing in the works right now.'

    • 2:07
    Well, no, because we weren't supposed to release when we did, so it's pretty natural to start on a new project when the other one's kind of ramping up for release. So this just happened in the fall when we decided to cut back to two cornerstones. So my work was mostly done on this a long time ago.
    2:31
    So all this extra time went to both the South Park team and the Jurassic Park 30th update. Okay.
    2:39
    Cool. Okay, so here's another question, too. This is the first Keith Elwin game that has an upper play field.
    2:48
    Okay, so just curious about that. this is a departure from your other, you know, your four cornerstones and obviously your street-level game. So what were the thought processes going into that?
    3:03
    So when I told I was doing this game, the number one thing I envisioned was an upper play field themed as the orca, where you're up there.
    3:14
    Originally I was going to have the shark kind of bust through the back up there, but we just didn't have room to do it. So we went for kind of like the smallest play field we can do, and my goal was to, hey, what don't I like about upper play fields? Well, it just seems like you're just flailing around, not being in danger. So it was my goal to just have the upper play field kind of just flow into the rest of the shot pattern. So you get in there, it does this little serpentine, the slow down the ball, It goes to the mini flipper, and then you got – essentially you have two shots. You got a ramp, and then you got the horizontal spinner, which also feeds to another ramp. And you also have what's called the radio target, which will spot anything you need. But those rules aren't in at the moment. But no matter which shot you hit, it's going to find an XGB. For the radio target, it's going to dump out on that little metal dump out that kind of feeds the right slingshot. The left ramp kind of feeds the left orbit, and then the reel feeds the mini-flipper on the right. So I didn't make any geometry changes since the initial Whitewood, and it's because the shots all did exactly what I wanted them to, and I thought it was perfect.
    4:31
    Speaking of the little flipper and feeding to it, did you always have that little post section right there to kind of hold it to slow down? because in the stream when I was watching it, it's like blazing fast and almost like you need to stop everything just to line up what you're doing. So was that, I guess, original concept?
    4:48
    Yeah, actually we screwed it up in the first white one and it didn't hold it. So I had to move the hole on everyone's game. But, yeah, that was always part of the concept.
    4:59
    Just as I thought it would add because there's no, like especially during the multi-ball, there's no place to park the ball in this game. There's no scoops. you know there's nothing the up posts don't come up during multi-ball so the only chance the player has to park the ball somewhere is using the uh the little flip lock system or just holding the right flipper up so speaking of flip lock i want you to go more into this like i saw it on the stream it looks awesome my like is it just it holds it through the whole multi-ball do you have a timer what exactly how does this flip lock system work so the way it works is during a multi-ball if you hold the right flippers in, I think it's probably like one second, the action button will start flashing green. And then if you hold that down for one second, it'll lock the upper flipper in for, I believe default is 15 seconds, but that can be built upon by bounty hunts, which add perks to that. So there's also, you can do it once per ball, but there's also a perk that you can do it multiple times per ball. That is the, right now I think it's the Tiger Shark. If you catch the Tiger Shark, you can do it multiple times in a single multi-ball.
    6:10
    Is there a bonus for actually not using that during multiple? Because that would be, that's harder, right? When you have four balls flying at the same time?
    6:20
    Essentially, I think it's more fun to not use it and hold, you know, manually hold the flipper up and try to see as far as you can get without trying to release the right side. But it's cool. I think it's just a unique way to, like I said, safely park the ball somewhere that's never been done before. So, yeah, I was pretty excited to finally get that going. That wasn't actually in the game on that initial release stream.
    6:50
    That stream was kind of an older code, So we got that in just before the actual official reveal stream on Monday. So you were talking about stage flipping, basically. So for people who haven't really picked this up, if you typically have two flippers, if you hold it in a little bit, it holds the top flipper. You hold it in all the way and it holds the bottom flipper. Now, you have three flippers that are activated by the right side. And so if you're trapping up by either stage flipping, is the upper playfield flipper also being activated or does it lock or how does that work?
    7:30
    The upper playfield is also – it shows the same secondary switch as the right side mini flipper. uh flip lock does not affect the upper um basically because you know that would feed the purpose because you know the easiest way to uh use that upper play field during the multi-ball is to have you know have balls parked away in the uh the flip lock so are you gonna have modes in here so i'm thinking like terror of mecha godzilla right like it's a multi-ball um but if if you were able to flip lock and then put a bunch of balls in there you could pretty pick up pick off those shots with less hazard and then it's also like because then you lose flips as you drain too is there some strategy like that that's going to go into this or or what no the strategy is just place to park the balls man it's cool yeah it's exciting it is it's unique it makes you think oh do i want to use it now or do i you know what i'm trying to get two balls in there and that way i can play like a one ball multi-ball for 15 seconds you know it forces you to think a little bit and And then, of course, activating isn't super easy. You know, you kind of have to plan it a couple seconds ahead of time.
    8:41
    And is this like a once a multiple or one time per multiple? How does that work? Yeah, right now it's one time per multiple per ball in play. But like I said, you can add perks to use it multiple times and also have the timer, longer timer. so this is the this is the game where you actually get to play the shark and this is this is a a deviation from a lot of the things because in jurassic park that would be kind of fun if you could play as the t-rex and you could eat the uh the villagers or whatever or stanos and avengers or stanos and you can kill people yeah so how were they receptive to that idea and were they excited about that? Were they nervous about that? Because you're kind of playing the bad guy if you're playing the shark.
    9:31
    Yeah, we still haven't fully fleshed out the plays of shark. We got our storyboards and everything. Licenser was fine with it.
    9:41
    But it's something that we're working on. Hopefully it should be in there spring. But yeah, it'll be connected to IC. So as you collect shark teeth, you can unlock the plays the shark mode, which is its own entirely own mode, kind of like the Escape Noobler Challenge. It's the three balls of its own dedicated minigame. Okay, that actually blends into another question that one of my friends asked. He was over last night saying that we were interviewing you, and he wanted to know about – so he has a Venom. He has a Venomeli. And with this new phase in in insider connectivity, with the ability to either build up experience or track things, how is that going to be incorporated into your games? Or or do you are you planning on obviously you're planning on that. And how do you view this? Because this is different than all sorts of before you would go up, you'd hit start and you were starting from scratch every single time. So how has the game changed now?
    10:50
    Yeah, we're not doing any progression towards actual gameplay. So you can't log in and smart bomb your way to the finale or whatever. So the way we're doing it is you're in currency, known as Shark Team.
    11:09
    You cash this currency in in the form of challenge modes, and each of these challenge modes have their own leaderboard. So, for example, right now, if you have 20 shark teeth, you can unlock the video mode challenge, which is basically the video mode but with unlimited levels. And things start getting really hard after, like, level four or five. So I'm actually really excited to see the leaderboard on this when it goes live. The other one is it plays the shark, and I'm sure we'll do some more. We do have a ranking system. Basically, for all the teeth you collect, I think it's 100, 150-something, that you earn a shark jaw.
    11:49
    Each time you earn a shark jaw, you progress your rank towards, you know, you're working your way up the food chain in the ocean. You start off as a mackerel, and you work your way all the way up to a great white. I believe it's 15 or 16 ranks between the two. And then you keep your rank right over time. And this is like a – this is kind of the track progression. Yeah, yeah. And then I assume you keep your teeth as well. It's for bragging rights.
    12:18
    Yeah, so you have spendable teeth and then you have a lifetime teeth. Your lifetime teeth are what – when you have enough to fill in an entire great white jaw, then it becomes a jaw. Then, you know, your teeth reset to whatever you need. But the spendable teeth, those will keep going as long as you don't spend them. Okay. Are these teeth easy to obtain? Like, is it just hitting, like, a stand-up in the game? Like, how are we collecting these teeth? They work very similar towards just achievements. There's just big-time achievements, like starting Jaws multiball, you know, you get a couple teeth. You land a bounty shark, you get a couple teeth. So it's all just kind of scattered throughout the game and, you know, doing different things during the game. So kind of similar to, like, trophies in Avengers, right? Yeah, exactly. Perfect. Okay. Easy enough. That's easy to think of. that's cool that's that's i like that and it's cool because like if i go out to a location i'm playing with friends i can still be working towards progress at home as well but it's not taking away that gameplay value of the main game so that's a cool concept i like that yeah yeah that was like i didn't really want to you know have you be able to you know just kind of jump it into wizard modes i think i'd rather you know i'd rather offer the wizard modes or the challenge modes in a different light.
    13:37
    You know, okay, you want to play this? Okay, yeah, you can try it out. But once you spend your teeth, then you have to accumulate enough teeth to try it again, basically.
    13:47
    That's like digital currency, almost. Yeah. You won't get sick of the challenge mode. Like, you know, I know people play the Nublar challenge over and over. People who have a top-run Godzilla play the Time Attack challenge. It's like, same thing, but, you know, you actually you need to earn it and then hopefully that'll keep it fresh for you and also it offers leaderboards so which is the other benefit okay so with jaws now we all know that archer was then initially your your demo game that you converted to iron maiden for your first game um now that iron maiden obviously came after you had designed so for this this seems very specific to Jaws. And so it seems like you definitely incorporated the theme into the game design because it's not like this would work for Black Widow or Black Panther or something like that.
    14:44
    So how would that, is that different knowing the theme beforehand or is this typical how you do it now is that you get the theme and you try to figure out how to blend the experience with the theme?
    15:00
    Yeah, well, the biggest challenge to doing this game in particular was, you know, when we first concepted it, and George was in the meeting, too, and he was just, yeah, dude, guys, we got to have a moving Finn, Mick. And, yeah, we're like, yeah, yeah, you know, we'll figure this out. But I was, like, pretty adamant that it's not, you know, Mick on a stick. It's like, if we're going to do this, it has to pop up in the play field and disappear. I don't want it out there all the time hiding behind a post or whatever. And so Harrison and I concept something out, and lo and behold, man, the footprint on that thing is gigantic. I mean, it is huge. If you ever look under one of these, you'll see how big it is. And so basically I had to design the entire middle, kind of middle right side around this gigantic mech, which is why the shots on the back right side are so far back there. This is the only place I can fit it. so that's kind of what you have to take into account when you're designing a game knowing what you're doing whereas you know if I took the archer layout and tried to theme it Jaws there was no way that mech was going to fit in that playfield layout and I like this mech because it's like a mashup between like the stand-ups and Cactus Canyon mixed with like Dracula from Monster Bash and I love that you I was wondering if it moved back and forth as I was watching the stream. It looks like it just kind of moves from left to right, correct? It can move back and forth, but it obviously looks silly, the shark fin moving backwards.
    16:36
    The shark putting in reverse. Sharks can't swim backwards. Yeah, we know that. It technically can. It just doesn't. So yeah, we're using it in two different ways. We're using it in motion. We have, I think, three or four different speeds it can move smoothly from left the right and we also have it like you said almost that's a good analogy the cactus canyon pop-up tires we can pop it up anywhere in that track we want uh we call it the quick shot feature so it kind of pops up out of the play field for a few seconds and if you hit it you win gear which is our perks um yeah it turned out exactly how we drew it up except for the shape of the fin But, you know, I covered that in our podcast. It was making quite a mess. Well, and the other thing I love about this too, on the stream, this is a moment when this fin comes out. And it's the mixture of the music, what Jerry did with that, shoot, shoot now. You know, it just it feels like there's some urgency and some pressure on hitting this shot. It's amazing. I love how you guys have set this up. It's just it's awesome.
    17:42
    Yeah. Yeah. Jerry killed it on this for sure. So now we OK, there was the the thing online and you did talk about it in the in your podcast. But can you briefly talk about why the why the shark does not eat the ball? because it seems like that's the main theme that a few people are really focusing on.
    18:06
    Oh, we tried. So what people don't understand, we have certain parameters we have to meet from the licensure. They wanted the shark to kind of pop up and scare someone. It's like, yeah, that sounds awesome. Then when you try to add a ball-eating mech to that same thing, basically it became a shark elevator.
    18:30
    So instead of the shark jumping out of the water, we basically had this elevator and the shark moved perfectly horizontal to the play field. Like Godzilla.
    18:41
    Exactly. Imagine the building having a shark on top of the building. That's how lame it looked. By the way, I'm putting a shark on top of my Godzilla building right now. so we scrapped out at one and then we tried another one where it was coming out from under the boat but the problem is in order to have it eat the ball it only comes up so far and you can barely see it and it was just basically a moving scoop and you know how I love scoops so all of us kind of stood around us and said this is stupid rather have the shark pop way up pop out really fast and then you bash it disappears.
    19:24
    I want to say this is kind of the first time, like, yeah, you have the building on Godzilla, and it's technically a bash toy, but you can shoot through it. With this, it's like a straight-up bash toy. Have you always wanted to do a bash toy, or is this just kind of, this is what it is because of the theme?
    19:40
    Yeah, it's kind of what it is with the theme. I don't have a thing against bash toys. I think they can be pretty fun. I guess... Is it my first question? I was going to say Iron Maiden, it's a ramp shot up the middle. Yeah, you have the mummy shot in Iron Maiden.
    19:59
    Yeah, I guess it is. I didn't even think of that. Yeah. It was just, once we tried it as a bash toy, we all liked it so much better because it would just kind of send the ball wherever the place. Like I said, the other thing, once it swallows the ball and goes under, okay, then what? We can't shoot another ball in there. And when it comes back up, it's either going to vomit it back out or if the scoop method is going to fire it back at you, which is also strange. Why is a shark firing something at you? Yeah. It was a team decision to axe that. I agree with your decision, by the way. I do, too. I just find it funny how much – like the memes have been ridiculous. I don't know if this is like people really care or they've just – Are they trolling? Yeah, they're totally trolling now. They're chumming. Yeah. They control all they want. I don't care. I think I know what makes the game fun and what doesn't. I didn't like it, so... So suck it, community.
    21:04
    No, it's great. I'm really liking the shark mech. It's very unique. The other thing I want to point out, too, I've noticed that one of the things that you really like are captive balls. And in this game, the captive ball is the... boat and i find it interesting that the directional play from the ball inside the boat uh i mean i don't know if i've ever seen something like this i don't is there inspiration where this came from i can't really think of another game where it does it it's i don't think there is either um unless there's some old em but um well it seems like a variation a little bit on like the amy shot the congo like the under where the you're punching but it seems like a step removed from it because you're hitting the ball and it's it's you know so it's a it's it's almost like a pool shot instead of the grill slapping the ball around it's you slapping the ball around yeah no but it seems like a pool shot because you have the cue ball and then you're sitting you're hitting another ball to hit a target and that's i don't know how many that this is the first time i can consider you have to hit the ball a ball to hit another shot yeah so that started off originally it was more of a very target bash toy so you had the back of the boat you kind of hit the back of the boat would kind of give away a little bit and then supposed to push the ball back but it ended up just like the ball would hit it, the ball would die and it would just dribble down it was like oh this is terrible so we went back to the drawing board and then I had the idea of like you said not an ambi-directional but more of a directional captive ball, whereas, hey, you know, since this thing is direct in the middle of the play field, perfectly horizontal, we can, you know, we can have a traveling captive ball and a little cage there that we can, you know, depending on what direction I hit it, we can hit different targets. And so we tried it out. Oh, this is really cool. So the initial code you had to hit later on in the game, you had to hit each individual target with the captive ball in order to light the modes later in the game. But then it became more frustrating than fun. So now we save the actual having to hit a certain target with the ball for certain modes.
    23:29
    So getting into that, you have mentioned a few times about code evolving. It seems like your games haven't had a major code overhaul. It seems like it's a natural progression. There are some other games that have had, you know, almost complete reboots. Ghostbusters come to mind where it's it almost in Walking Dead also comes to mind where it became almost a completely different game later on in the development cycle. But we haven't really seen that from you. The question is, what would prompt the change in code and and in the and what does prompt it either from a minor standpoint or like a major overhaul?
    24:14
    It does happen in my games. You just don't know about it because I catch it early. there was plenty of times Godzilla I remember that the way the city inserts worked were completely different with the direction we went didn't like it so we just changed it hey you know you just play this mode once in each city you get your annihilation bonus or whatever move on with Jaws there were some minor things like the chum bucket we kind of changed the rules on that We changed the rules on the bash boat. So, like I said, it was stuff that just was, you know, you're hitting a wall gameplay-wise just because, you know, something is a little too hard. So we changed things around. Like the chum bucket originally, you had to hit the chum bucket, and then I was like, well, this is too hard, and it's also, you know, people bath in the same thing 10 times. So we added, like, once you chum the water, you know, it stays on water. kind of moves around on the RGBs, kind of floats around the game, so you can hit those as well. Add some more flow to the game and make it less central, bashing some central toy over and over.
    25:28
    How do you decide what is, because obviously your games speak to all spectrums of the pinball player, from beginner to super expert. How do you balance these games out and figure the Chum Bucket is too hard or whatnot? Because I assume every game you play, you're very well rehearsed in playing it. And so, or you can obviously get deeper into it than, say, someone that's been only in the hobby for a year. How are you learning to balance these games for that?
    26:00
    Yeah, it's a learning process. You know, I have other people play it and get their feedback. For this game, we hired Elizabeth Gieske, who's a, you guys probably saw her on the stream. I think she came on the scene a couple years ago, but she's already been hitting up the tournament. She's a very good player, and she has a lot of good ideas. And when she came on board, we started bouncing ideas back and forth. And one of the things I kept telling her, and she agreed, her measurement was, does my mom understand this? And if not, maybe we should revisit it. And those words she said, they ring so true. So, you know, if a novice player walks up to it and is completely confused, you know, what's going on, then we're not doing our job very well. So I said, this isn't for us. This isn't for tournament players. We've got to make something that everybody likes. So the key to that is, you know, make something easy, obvious goals up front with, like, deep strategies later.
    27:02
    Thanks. Okay. This is a submitted question. We know you have a lot of Easter eggs in your games. can you give us some hints on some Easter eggs that we should be looking for in Josh?
    27:15
    There's none yet. That's usually 1.0 stuff. Okay. So is Gary now going to become like the Stanley of Marvel? He's just going to show up randomly in the artwork? Because I notice he's swimming in the water by the way. He's floating. He's not swimming. He's floating. He's chumming. Oh, yeah. Gary is chumming the water. Yeah. We put him in Godzilla, too, but I don't think many people found him. Oh. Where's he in Godzilla?
    27:43
    He's on Mechagodzilla's scaffolding with his... He's got a little chart with him. Oh, really? That's kind of funny. Because I know he's one of the aliens in Foo Fighters under the right upper flipper, if I remember correctly.
    27:57
    Yeah, we had fun hiding him in there, so we decided to do it again, but not as hidden. He's the new cow that just appears everywhere.
    28:08
    Find the Gary. Yeah, find the Gary. Every game, we'll hide Gary somewhere. Can you kind of speak to, so when this game first revealed, or whatever that was, a lot of people were complaining about Brody, but then once we saw the footage and stuff, Brody is very predominant in all the video and stuff, but he's not really on the artwork. Can you kind of speak to, like, is that like a decision that you guys made, or is it something that the licensor asked, hey, no Brody on the play field?
    28:39
    So the way licensing works, there's likeness rights and the mechanical rights. So if he's in the movie, yeah, we can use it. In order to draw him, we need his permission, and his estate didn't even respond to us, whereas we had to work with Dreyfus and the estate of – you know, and, you know, pose them any way we want. And you see that in the artwork, but yeah, we, we couldn't get ahold of the Brody estate. Is that, is that kind of why you have, because I know on the premium on the right side, it shows Brody, but it's coming from the backside of him looking at the shark and that's kind of a scene from the movie. So is that why that's there? Yeah, because that was most likely a stunt double anyway. So, you know, that's fine every back looks the same right yep that's awesome okay so uh we did this is another question that my friend said so you said three flippers when we talked to you last time and we were talking about the next game three flippers on the right side and he's like okay i'll give you points that they're all connected to the right side but you know they're okay so Can you give us a sneak peek on the flipper count for your next game?
    30:06
    Four. Nice. Okay. How many fins? Okay. Kidding. I hear they make excellent natural ramps. Yeah, exactly.
    30:19
    Oh my God. That was so bad. Break any, break any glasses with the, with the jumper. Yeah. It was, That was, yeah, we probably should have saw that coming. Yeah. You know. Well, we're glad that you tried it because you don't know until you try it, right? Right. Well, here's the thing. When we test games, we generally don't have the glass on. So if we shoot a ball completely outside the cabinet, we probably have a problem. Yes. That's impressive.
    30:51
    So you've obviously had some extra time and whatnot, like Scott was saying. Can you tell me how many designs ahead you are or how many you've got in the pipeline? No. My time is occupied by Bond 60th there, which is why I'm not so far ahead of my next one. But that was actually my volunteering when I found out that, you know, this was getting pushed back a bit. I was like, well, you know, they were looking for someone to do Bond 60th. And I raised my hand and it kind of worked out perfectly. It kind of just snuck that entire design in while this design was already done before I started on my next design, which I didn't know what it was at the time. So it's just kind of a perfect, you know. The holding pattern. A little availability for me to get to do a single-level game, which I really like. I have mine upstairs. I love shooting it. It's a great game. It is fun to shoot. It's very unique. And I'm glad you did it, too. Are you looking to do more outside of Cornerstones? Or is just Cornerstones the way forward and if something falls in your lap kind of situation? I'll always raise my hand to do a unique project. Nothing in the works right now. well the other thing too gomez actually pointed this out i hadn't really thought about it but you're kind of the king of the monsters right now like you you're you've done godzilla and now like jaws is kind of a monster t-rex was a monster yeah so is this kind of your eddie eddie monster yeah so is this kind of a monster is this a signature for you or is this like a i you know it's just the cards you've been dealt it's fine with me um you know when makes a fun game and I think monsters kind of lend perfectly to that so I'll keep doing them it's fine with me beats uh doing music pins so no more music pins sell true yeah it doesn't mean you have a ton of creative freedom on them sure so you're telling us you're not lining up for like uh like you got billy joel coming out Yeah. Okay, I got one. Okay.
    32:58
    We all know you're a big fan of classics games and kind of the retro feel of games. But obviously the future of pinball has been changing into, you know, you have insider connectivity. You have deeper code. And like the stuff from Bally Williams, you know, the 90s stuff, it just it doesn't cut it anymore because you have people who are buying the majority of these games and putting them in their homes. So they're really exploring. So what do you feel the future of pinball is moving toward?
    33:32
    Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head. I think the more we can offer connectivity wise, the better experience you're going to have in your home. So, like I said, what we're doing with JAWS is, you know, offering unlockable currency, kind of like when you play Call of Duty, you know, you're earning XP and you're unlocking skins or whatever. So that's kind of what we're doing with this. You're unlocking challenge modes, and I'm sure we'll figure out some other things you can unlock. You know, the leaderboards, I think, are going to be super cool for, like, the challenge modes. Like I said, when you're doing the video mode, which is, you know, completely different than pinball, it's a different skill set. So I'm really curious to see the leaderboards for our video mode challenge, and I think people are going to love that. It like anything you can do to you know connect scores compare them to other people especially in a video mode because you can take the glass off and cheat that So I think it will be super fun
    34:27
    Definitely. That's actually what I was going to ask. I was like, how do you prevent cheating? I mean, obviously, if you look at the score and it says Carl D'Angelo next to it, you're like, oh, never mind. But if I'm beating Carl, then there's an issue. There's rubber bands on the outlanes. Well, that's why we have verified location and not. So, you know, if you're at Logan Arcade, you're probably not going to be able to get the glass off cheating. Someone will see you. So, you know, can we 100% stop it? No, but, you know, we can put some safeguards in place.
    34:59
    So your team stayed pretty consistent from all your designs and whatnot. You typically bring a person in or two and whatnot. Liz seems to be the new person on this game. How has her help with contribution, has it changed kind of your process a little bit? has it just been?
    35:15
    How has it changed things up for you? Liz is... Elizabeth. I don't know if she even goes by Liz. Oh, okay. Elizabeth.
    35:25
    Maybe she does. She has basically implemented the rules I've written. She's also written some rules herself.
    35:34
    Most notably casting catch and scars. She's great because she'll put in what I write and she'll be like, well, you know, I think this will work better this way. So she'll kind of tailor them to make them better because it's easier for her because she's right there programming it. She can make changes on the fly rather than having to make me a build and send it to me.
    35:58
    Like I said, we bounce back and forth ideas. How is the average person going to understand this? How are they going to understand that? What can we do text-wise on a screen to help better understand what's going on? So, you know, she she's a pinball genius. So, you know, you don't need to explain anything to her. She just picks up on everything right away and knows exactly how the mode should work, what makes it fun and how best to explain it to both expert and novice players. Now, we've talked about this before. Before you took your job at Stern, you played a lot more competitive pinball. But as you move to Stern, we all need a break from work, right? And so you have stepped a little bit back from the competitive pinball scene, even though you still show up for majors.
    36:48
    Do you still get the same buzz by going to pinball tournaments that you used to? Not really. It was something I did for so long. My first tournament was in 1993. That's how long I've been doing it. And, well, when I lived in Carlsbad, I had a whole room full of games set up. Super tournament hard, you know, the Outland's gone, Steve, Wax, whatever. And that was kind of like my training ground for when I would go to a tournament. And now I have like, you know, three or four games that I don't really play at home. I live in the game I'm testing.
    37:26
    And I, yeah, it's just, it's like one or the other. It's really hard to focus on both. so one of the things that you've talked to about to us about before is um when you when this game release when you're when your game releases you're pretty much sick of it because you've been playing it non-stop for like the two months prior same situation with jaws getting it prepared or since you had a break is it kind of like refreshing coming back and be like oh i do remember this now well yeah i've been playing nothing but jaws for the past six months so yeah When I went to Indus, playing anything other than Jaws felt weird.
    38:04
    It's a hard feeling to describe. Like I said, it's my own fault. I know I can go out and play other games that I just haven't chosen to.
    38:13
    It's fine. I wouldn't say I'm sick of it. I never got sick of Godzilla. I never got sick of Avengers. I never got sick of Iron Maiden or Jurassic. But there is a time where it's like, yeah, I'm good not playing it for a few weeks. usually once we hit 1.0 and then we start dabbling in the next game then I'll take a break and speaking of big tournaments, Pinnberg is back and you're the king of Pinnberg if I understand correctly are you planning on being there? no, I can't make it that weekend maybe you can play virtually that's alright we'll see you next year Maybe hopefully they'll grow some and won't fall on a weekend that already had plans. But, yeah, I'm curious to see how it goes there. I'm excited that, you know, those guys were – I believe Doug is screwheading this.
    39:07
    Yeah. If I remember correctly, Doug was on Pinball Profile with Jeff Teola. So if you want to hear more about that experience, go over and check that out. It was a really good interview.
    39:17
    How has the – now you are in the new facility now. You have officially moved. has that changed anything from what you are in charge of and what your plans are no but i lost my window view no i'm in a much bigger office now but yeah i did lose my view but um that's cool i have my new office i can probably cram you know six or seven machines in there it's so much bigger than the old office and uh yeah the building is really cool i'm sure you've seen like footage of it and where we streamed the other night you can see it over the yeah farm all the planners we have hanging out yeah it looks yeah it's really cool well that's what made me chuckle too so i was watching the videos between the new presentation video which i loved by the way with with gomez and you kind of just doing a brief five minute this is what it is that was how we're doing do that every time seriously 100 but it was funny because i had been in the new facility and i saw that was in the lineup like right as you walk through the front It's not right as you walk in the front door, but if you walk in the front door, you can see over that location. I'm like, how did you guys sneak that up front without – you just guys not planned tours for that day? You're like, okay, let's say we're sticking Jaws up front and we're doing this presentation.
    40:36
    Yeah, I mean, it's kind of hard to see through all those doors. I know what you're talking about. You can kind of see through the whole building there, but it's really hard to make anything out. So, trust me, we've all tried.
    40:52
    Can we see that from there? I guess we really can't. It seems like at any given time, there is a Keith Elwin game on the line.
    41:04
    So, does that put pressure on you with your next games? I mean, obviously, Godzilla was, to put it bluntly, a monster. It's highly rated. it really did the unthinkable and it took over Medieval Madness for the number one ranking which Medieval Madness has been there forever was there any concern with you coming out with the next game to say wow I hit a huge high mark on my last game how is this one going to be received?
    41:38
    Yeah I mean I can't think like that I just gotta like hey here's what I have to work with here's what I'm thinking let's try to make this work You know, I take, you know, not to sound too baseball-y, but, you know, one game at a time and not worry about what I did in the past, other than I'm trying not to repeat designs, which is one of the reasons that this game kind of, if you walk up to it, it looks different than my other designs. It's because I've tried, you know, trying something new. It's like, you walk up, you look at it, oh, these shots look familiar, but then when you shoot them, they go a completely different path than what you're expecting. And, you know, so I was trying something a little out of the box for me. I think it worked. I really liked the way it flows.
    42:20
    So you spoke that you worked on Jurassic Park 30th. What did you do to help kind of bring that to fruition? And what's different about that? It kind of looks like just an art package slapped on, but it sounds like there's more that was involved. Well, it was the adding the whole co-op stuff was very time consuming and stuff that we had to, you know, we had to draw out and say, okay, what can we share? What can we not share?
    42:45
    It was very time-consuming to figure out, you know, how to balance it between the teams. So if this person lights, you know, two control rooms, does this mean the third person only has this one option left? You know, a lot more goes in the co-op than you might realize. I didn't even think – I didn't even know that was – so is that – so I have an LE. Is that on the LE also now? Every Jurassic Park has it now. So that's the benefit of doing the 30th is that everyone's game now has co-op. Oh, wow. If you hold the flipper buttons, you'll see the co-op menu. You know, there's co-op, three against one, two on two, one on one, and yeah. I think there's something else. I don't remember. Oh, wow. So definitely check that out. I didn't even know that was a thing. Nor did I. Yeah, that's – you asked what was so time-consuming. It was – you know, Raymond helped with that too. Rick Raymond and myself just kind of like sat down and was like, well, this is what it's going to be. This is what it's going to share. This is what it's not going to share. This is how – this is going to work under this circumstance. It was very complicated. Plus all the UI works. Now we're showing like each team is now color-coded and where they are respective to each other on the map.
    44:05
    Yeah, a lot of work went into that. Rick and Raymond really busted their butt on that. So is it kind of similar to Turtles where everyone works together? If one person gets to a mini wizard mode, everyone gets to a mini wizard mode? On your team, yes. Or it depends what it is. Some of them, like King of the Island, I know that whoever gets to it first gets to it. But I think most of them are set up that if one person gets there, it's left for the next person. Okay. Yeah, I was not aware. I don't feel like this was pushed at all. I didn't know there was co-op at all. Yeah.
    44:40
    That's funny because Scott owns the game, too. Well, okay. I just did a major rehaul on my room, and I brought down Godzilla. I brought down Rush. So I've been playing those a lot more because they were in my garage, and they were so cold. So it's nice to have them down now. So, yeah.
    45:03
    I finally got Iron Maiden and Godzilla in the same room. we got more call outs added too Rick Z came and did another session for us for the Jurassic Park call out so yeah it was a solid update that's great to know so I've noticed Jaws is Spielberg Jurassic Park is Spielberg is there any Spielberg like movie you would just die to do are you a fan of Spielberg Duel, man.
    45:38
    Duel? Duel. Yeah. I don't know what Duel is. That's his first movie. Oh, is it? Nope. Going way back in the fall. It's basically Jaws. It's a big truck. It's chasing a little car.
    45:52
    Wow. I've never even heard of this. Now I'm going to have to look this up. Yeah. It's a solid movie. You guys should watch it. It would be like doing a George Lucas. Was it THX 157 or whatever that sci-fi movie he did before he did Star Wars?
    46:10
    I'll have to check this out. That is pretty random. All right. I'm just so much older than you guys. That's not true.
    46:19
    I turned 50 this year. Okay. Well, to be fair, it was one of my mom's favorite movies. So when I was a kid, she would say, oh, it's on. Watch it. And I was like, that's how I knew about it. Gotcha. Okay, well, if you rewound to what my mom watched all the time, it was Murder, She Wrote. So if you want to do a Murder, She Wrote pinball machine, that would be great. That would be all in. That would be epic. Yeah. I think she's actually a serial killer, though. She's in a very small town in Maine, and everybody dies. Yeah, everybody dies. Like she's the one who's doing it all.
    46:51
    Okay. It's just like a diehard Bruce Willis, wherever he goes. Yeah, stay away. Stay away. Okay, so in keeping with the theme of the water, so if you are on a desert island and you could only have one triple drain guy, so you have Joel, you have Tom, and you have Travis, who would you want on the island and why?
    47:23
    A deserted island? Yes. Okay. So I saw Castellet and I saw his toothache. So I'm thinking Tom. You're thinking Tom. Okay. Oh, you know what? That is, that's hilarious. I didn't even think about that. That's brilliant. That's brilliant. Which is funny because Tom's follow up question is why don't you like him? Yeah. Any kind of tooth pain? Tom, what's going on? That's right. You know what? Yeah. I'll drive him nuts. yeah that hey you know what you you went a completely different direction i just thought like joel would be better at back rubs travis would do feet rubs travis could cook i'm not exactly sure but toothache you know what i i'm with you on that uh my job is to take away pain too so i i'm totally on board with that scott's making anesthesia out of like coconut husks yeah blending coconuts. Yeah, that'd be great. You can just grab an ice skate and knock that tooth out. Yeah.
    48:25
    That is awesome. Okay, all-time favorite game from the 70s and all-time favorite game from the 80s. From the 70s? Oh.
    48:38
    Man, that's a tough one. I guess I would have to say Harlem. And I remember being at the bowling alley when they unboxed that. I was just a little kid. I was like, wow, this game is so cool because I was a little kid into the Harlem Globetrotters. I had to play that thing for days.
    48:58
    80s. I set my torpedo alley back up and I was like, man, 80s are so comfy. Oh, yes, they were. You mean the painted on pants? Yeah, painted on pants. Those are really awkward.
    49:14
    Um... I mean, man, Whirlwind really stands out to me as one of my favorite 80s games. And then, of course, the classic valleys, you know, Frontier Skateball. Sure. You're going to make me choose one?
    49:30
    Yeah, this is Desert Island. We're still on the Desert Island. If it's the Desert Island, I'm definitely taking Whirlwind. Okay.
    49:36
    That's a really good choice. And the big one, the 90s. One Desert Island pin from the 90s. I'm going to have to say Congo.
    49:49
    Okay. Nice. I've got to add. It's probably my favorite shooting 90s game. It's a good one. It really is. There's not as many producers people thought.
    50:02
    No. I think a lot of them got converted to a Monster Bash. I remember back in the day. In search of Congo to part out and convert to a Monster Bash. And there was one. there was one that was like a black and white option too if i remember right yeah i think there was some kind of kid or something i don't really remember i know somebody has a hairy one that they used to bring next to them had a gorilla fur on the outside of it it was very strange to play like it was rubbing hair on your hands as you flipped the buttons the entire cabinet was covered in fur fur it's a wow that sound insulation you know you play that and the sound doesn't go anywhere. That's a good point, but yeah, it was kind of an interesting mod. I knew that because I never thought it was weird growing up that my parents put carpet on the walls, legitimately carpet on the wall, like you go to Graceland and you see the carpet on the ceiling and people think it's so weird, and I'm like, I don't know, I grew up with that.
    51:02
    Then I figured out that my parents were like, you know what, you guys are down there and loud, so just shut up. so are you going to try to do more upper play fields or is this kind of like one and done kind of thing or never say never but we'll see okay the horizontal spinners though that did that prime the okay did you do this first or because you have them on Bond 60 This is a completely different type
    51:35
    If you're familiar with the Jurassic Park premium helicopter spinner, it's more based on that, where it's a top-loaded disc with playfield underneath it, whereas the Bond 60, if it's actually a mechanism that comes up from underneath the play field and is completely routed out whole. And the ball hits, you know, post on the disc itself, whereas this, it's all completely above the play field. Oh, okay. It's a lot lighter.
    52:06
    I do like that when you hit that spinner, because, like, you have to reel in your shark with it. That is cool that it sounds like an actual reel reeling in your shark. Well, I needed something to slow the ball down, because without that, if you take that thing off that ball whips around there so incredibly fast that it's it's just crazy so i needed something to slow it down and a uh a standard spinner would not do it so i was like well you know i can clean this as a fishing reel and use a disc it's a metal disc with the plastic on top and it's counterweighted to always go the same spot and that creates a lot of weight so it really slows the ball down so it feeds the uh the figure eight you know catch portion of the mini flipper. So that's where that was born. And then I used it again on the upper play field because it kind of just fit perfectly there as the ship's wheel. I wonder if I can install that on Godzilla because that basically the repeatable shot from the upper flipper, I can get it twice and then it's just, it's going way too fast. Oh yeah. Godzilla, if you keep that thing waxed, it is so hard yeah yeah jaws is the same way it's it's a really fast game you don't realize it until you're in front of it that center ramp just whips so quickly you know right back at you i'm i'm hearing very positive reviews from people that have already got to play these in arcades and whatnot and and that's one of the first things they say is it's it's a very fast mover and they weren't expecting the upper playfield to to uh you have to get used to it because it just it goes so fast Yeah, I'm reading these stream comments Nobody's shooting the upper playfield No, we are, you just don't see it because it's so fast You'll see it When you play at the upper playfield You have about One second to aim and flip And the ball's gone Like I said It's a flow-based upper playfield I get that On stream that probably doesn't really come across Too well, but when you're playing it Actually, I really like it I like it too because it rewards you for making the shot and it punishes you if you don't like it. If you miss it drains right down or not drains, but it shoots it towards the middle of the flippers. Yeah.
    54:20
    I was one of the first things I knew or noticed. I was like, man, this upper play field just looks like it's got some unique shot combinations. How, what's the top different amount of shot combos you can do? Like if you're a string, a bunch of shots together, what's the most, it's most you can string together. Hmm. I don't know. I didn't think about it. We don't have a standard combo system on this game. We have modes that are combo-based.
    54:45
    But yeah, I don't know. I know Iron Maiden was six. I think Jurassic was six. If you can do more than six, then you're doing something good. It seems like the left out lane is significantly lower than the right out lane. um is there does that feed into in into the design process because the bottom line is the kickers the the goal of the kickers is to shoot it toward the outline and it's to so how does that change when you're when your kickers are roughly the same because it doesn't really at least uh just from my eye it doesn't seem like it's shooting to the outline um yeah it probably It doesn't.
    55:31
    It really – slingshots are fairly safe on this game. And first for me, there are non-symmetrical slingshots. The right one is smaller than the left one.
    55:44
    And that was to accommodate the ball screaming down the left lane and feeding the in lane. So, yeah, I'm not a huge fan of slingshots. It just dumped the ball in the out lane, I think. and they create enough chaos as it is that they don't need to do that too.
    56:01
    That's one of the reasons why my games have always had the slingshots further back as well. But you also have two posts down on each side. On Jurassic Park, you just had one on the left. And so tell me about that. It seems a little bit like Cactus Canyon where it'll freeze it, and is there something that pops up that you have to shoot, like a time shot, or what's the point of those? only on the first time when you're first starting multi-ball when you have time hitting the fin target the post will come up it'll be shoot it shoot it now and then releases and you have to shoot the moving fin that's the only time we're using a timed feature like that we tried it you know for every one of the block shots as it were and Elizabeth's like oh god I hate this post and I'm like yeah me too so we we'll just do it for the first one to introduce people to the mechanic and, you know, make this a little mini moment and then we'll just use it to stop the ball for our mode starts and whatnot after that.
    57:04
    Can you not post transfer on this one? Cause I know with like Godzilla, you really can't. These are looking pretty far back. I mean, all my games you can, it was just harder than you just have to be better, Josh. Yeah. Play better.
    57:19
    Okay. I will say after moving my Godzilla downstairs, I don't know if the way it's set up, hitting that scoop is one of the hardest shots, like for some reason. And I don't know if like maybe the play field is not leveled to the right, but sometimes I nail it and it just kicks right back out. I will say if you have aftermarket flipper rubber, it might be impossible to do post-pass on. Yeah. With the standard black factory rubber, it's possible, yeah. Okay. I've got to ask. So it's really random. I don't know if people have seen this picture. I'll probably put it as the podcast picture. But it's you, Richard Dreyfuss, and Jody Dankberg. For some odd reason, he's holding up a little donut. Yeah, what's up with the donut? And why does Richard look like he's so ticked in the picture? He hurt himself playing pickleball a couple days before we recorded. Yeah. And he was on some meds, and he needed to eat donuts. He needed some sugar. He needed to eat donuts. And I think he had some Diet Dr. Pepper or something with him. And he had a few donuts left over, so when we were done recording, he handed both Jody and I a donut. He said, you guys want a donut?
    58:35
    So we posed with a donut. You know what? Hey, if you posed with a donut, that's a good thing. Yeah. He's like, hey, I got a donut from Richard Dreyfuss today. Of course, I can't post that because it's a secret. Right.
    58:50
    You actually kept it home and you put it in a plexiglass and it's on your desk now. I think Jody did. I think Jody had him sign it.
    58:58
    That's awesome. Wow. How was it working with Richard and the call-outs? Oh, it was great. It was funny.
    59:06
    It's almost like he didn't know what he was recording. He was thinking, oh, yeah. so this casino game I was like oh no the pinball machine he's like oh okay that makes a lot more sense like I said I know he had a rough couple days because of his pickleball injury but yeah Jody and I were both excited for him to show up he showed up and he was really nice cordial and let me know what you want so he went through and read everything way too fast and so we're like oh yeah can you slow this down a little bit a little more emphasis on here and there I really hope that you got him to do the what about Bob call out where he's tied to the boat he's like I'm sailing I dig it if it's sailing this means something close encounters I don't think he understood that was a long time ago 77 or something next time we're playing with our mashed potatoes Yeah. Bust that clip out. Hey, did you know that this is weird trivia with Steven Spielberg and George Lucas? Did you know that they had a bet on which movie would make more money, Star Wars and Close Encounters? And so they each gave each other a small portion of the movie as the bet. and Star Wars obviously Star Wars completely obliterated Close Encounters but they were both George Lucas was confident that Close Encounters was going to make way more money I liked it the movie as a kid I really enjoyed it the pinball machine came out and I was like yeah and I started playing it wow this sucks that is the worst when you have a dream theme and you go and play it and you're like yeah I think I can pass on that the 70s were tough for gunnery yeah so when you were storyboarding was quint and shark hunting always kind of the this is the way we're going or did you have any other storyboards for well i mean this is kind of a tough license to work with as far as like things to do pinball wise so um we had to come up with a way to kind of you know fill some space and one of those ways is well how does quinn earn a living well he's the bounty hunter he basically goes after sharks and you know collects a reward on them so we decided to integrate that into the game itself and so we took all sharks that they mentioned in the movie or at least Dreyfus mentioned in the movie or you know Quint did in stories and then we you know that's how we came up with the four other sharks okay I would say yeah because I just watched Jaws recently this past couple weeks and and I was noticing that all the sharks that were in the movie you'd put a game like the tiger shark and the Mako and whatnot. Well, and you have the license plate, right?
    61:56
    Yep. The license plate that you took out of the, what is it, a tiger shark? In the movie, I can't remember which shark, they pull it out of the gut, and they're like, oh, yeah, this is it. There's the tiger shark, yeah.
    62:09
    It's actually part of the player screen in the top middle. It tells you what ball. Exactly, yeah. It's from Louisiana.
    62:16
    So, Keith, I mean, obviously Stern did Baywatch, and it had a shark in it. did you guys think about repurposing that and putting that in this game we thought about it um we do not know what that tool is anymore so the tool for the the the flipper mech yeah okay it was actually a topper oh it was it was yeah it was built into the top of a mini flipper it wasn't all one molded piece Oh, really? Yeah. I didn't know that.
    62:48
    And Baywatch has – it's kind of like Phantom Flip for Monster Bash and whatnot. Did you guys ever consider putting that in with this? I hate that. Okay, seriously, that shot never works, by the way. Trust me, nothing that Baywatch has thought about during this game, other than that they're both blue. Wait, you mean you don't have a Pamela Anderson cameo running across the screen away from the shark? That's the Easter egg right there. That's the Easter egg. that's the best video mode ever that definitely has to be in the 3D oh wow hold on I'm getting my 3D glasses that is great okay actually that is one thing I didn't bring up we didn't bring up so you have the 3D mode and so you have the glasses how does that work do you like okay you got the move and you just throw them on real quick because you can enable it or you can disable it obviously but uh i mean it's it's kind of a fun little easter egg uh tidbit thing because jaws jaws was 3d like jaws 3 was jaws 3d yeah um yeah no it's just a fun little thing we thought of because when we're you know doing this video based on an old rifle game where you're you know you're standing at a rifle and you're looking depth wise you know technically you're looking straight ahead but it's a mirror and you're looking down it gives you this great depth so it's like i wonder if we If we use 3D, we can kind of simulate the sharks are back here, and then they're marking their way towards you.
    64:18
    Our art guys took a few stabs on it, and they were like, well, yeah, check it out. This actually works. So we're like, cool. So, yeah. And then George sat, and he's like, oh, my God, this is awesome. We're going to include 3D glasses in every game. We're like, oh, awesome.
    64:31
    That's funny. Now you can buy your Stern pin gulp for your machine. So hold your glasses. There you go. The glasses were mainly meant for. challenge mode when you're playing multiple levels yeah i don't expect you to like whip out the glasses to play you know a 20 second video mode and then take them off you can that's why we left that option in there but realistically it's for the challenge mode okay because that's that actually that does play into my childhood because i swear every single like three books like from the book fair they were huge when i was a kid like for some reason it's like i don't know And also the paint by dots where it had the paint already there, and you just put, like, water on them. They blended all together.
    65:15
    Like, that was definitely my childhood. Our art guys all ruined their vision to make this one possible. So Zach would be wearing his glasses for so long, he would take them off. He was like, if I look at a white wall and close one eye, it's completely red. And the other guy, it's cyan. He was like, yeah. So I tried it, too. I put the glasses on for, like, a minute, took them off. And I was like, oh, my God, yeah. the color of the wall is changing. It takes a good 20 minutes for your vision to get back to normal. How do you find, because when you're playing this mode it's like the old school bells and reels and the clicker mode. How did you get those sounds without telling anyone, like, we need to find this machine to get its sounds?
    65:55
    Jerry has quite a big catalog of electromechanical sounds. Yeah, because I'm like, it sounds pretty spot on to what was in the movie, and I've never played this game. I heard it's not that, like, the 70s game's not that great.
    66:08
    It's awful. Most of those games are terrible. It's awful. Yeah, if you buy a lot of those games and put them in your house, you'll play them for, like, five minutes because there's a reason why you put a quarter in, and that was kind of the attention level that that game deserved. Yeah. There are some shooting games I really enjoy, mostly the older ones. Yeah. That one is from, that one uses, I think it uses, like, a projector. Mm-hmm. It's a kind of projector to project sharks like floating around. Yeah. That's kind of weird. I just, I just remember the, uh, there was one, it was called battle zone where you put your head in like this, this little, uh, you know, it was like a periscope type thing, but yeah, that was a similar type thing, but I think that was a vector game. I think that pretty much does it for all the questions we have. So I'm going to wrap this up.
    67:01
    Um, if you want to get ahold of, with with Keith you just don't right like don't send him memes of shark eating ball don't just wait just wave at him on a show yeah yeah I gotta mention though I ran into you at expo and we were chit-chatting and it was funny because I brought my little Godzilla card for you to sign and not even like five minutes before your girlfriend or whatever was like people really having you sign things and then here I walk up and Can you sign this for me? Can you sign this?
    67:33
    Yeah. She doesn't get why people like me. I don't either. So, fine. Okay. Well, that's kind of back to when I think George was on a date and he took his date to a pinball place and someone recognized him. She's looking at him like, who are you?
    67:53
    Can you walk down the street, man? Yeah. Terrible. It's hard being pinball famous. I know. Yeah. Pinball famous. Well, if you want to get a hold of us, we are Loser Kid Pinball Podcasts at gmail.com. On the socials, we're at Loser Kid Pinball. That's Facebook, Twitter, X, Instagram, Twitch, YouTube, all that jazz. Make sure to subscribe and like.
    68:16
    Give us our last word, Scott. We're going to need a bigger boat. you