Episode 245: Soren Worre

Pinball Profile·podcast_episode·16m 58s·analyzed·Feb 24, 2020

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.026

TL;DR

Søren Worre on creating competition-focused ROM modifications for classic pinball machines

Summary

Jeff Teolis interviews Søren Worre, a Danish pinball enthusiast and ROM modifier known for creating competition-focused fixes for classic Williams and Bally pinball machines. Worre discusses his background discovering pinball in Danish arcades, his programming expertise, and the philosophy behind his ROM modifications—fixing bugs, balancing scores, and removing luck-stealing mechanics to make games fairer for tournament play. Notable examples include Radical, Addams Family, Roller Games, and Junkyard.

Key Claims

Radical shipped with only version 1 software and never received updates in the field despite having multiple bugs
high confidence · Worre explaining Radical's software history during discussion of the game's flaws
Radical's Mega Million jackpot ranges randomly from 3 million to 10 million, making it unfair for competition
high confidence · Worre detailing specific design flaw in Radical requiring modification
Søren Worre started modifying ROMs around 2000-2004 after learning about competitive pinball
high confidence · Worre discussing timeline of getting into simulation and ROM modification
Addams Family's magnet timeout was originally 15 seconds; Worre reduced it to 3 seconds
high confidence · Worre explaining magnet modification philosophy and specific timing change
ROM modifiers like Worre operate as an informal collaborative community sharing techniques
high confidence · Worre describing ROM modifier network: 'We are the secret cult' and mentioning collaborators like Ron Howlett and Scott Charles

Notable Quotes

“Well to make them better of course and to fix bugs”
Søren Worre @ ~2:30 — Direct statement of Worre's core motivation for ROM modifications
“These wonderful pinball machines, these wonderful play fields, they shouldn't necessarily be deselected by tournament directors because of flaws in them. Maybe we could do something about it.”
Søren Worre @ ~6:00 — Articulates the philosophy behind competition-focused ROM design
“I don't like to rip things out of the games... The original designers, they put a lot of effort into this. And if the play field indicates that something is available, it should be.”
Søren Worre @ ~27:00 — Reveals Worre's design philosophy respecting original intent while fixing unfairness
“We are the secret cult, you know.”
Søren Worre @ ~31:00 — Humorous description of the ROM modifier community and their collaborative network
“Each system is different, so you have to learn the system before you can do anything in a safe manner.”
Søren Worre @ ~39:00 — Emphasizes technical expertise required for ROM modification across different pinball systems

Entities

Søren WorrepersonJeff Teolisperson Steve RitchiepersonRon HowlettpersonBruce Nightingaleperson Jim BelsitopersonScott CharlespersonPeter AndersenpersonFlipper Kjellhagenorganization

Signals

?
business_signal: ROM modifications operating at grassroots level without manufacturer involvement, filling gap in supporting competitive pinball infrastructure
medium · Worre created modifications for games that received no post-release updates (Radical, Roller Games), and distributions occur through pinside forums and community events.
?
community_signal: ROM modifier community operates as informal collaborative network sharing techniques and supporting tournament play
high · Worre: 'We are the secret cult... We communicate a little and help each other a little.' Mentions collaborators Ron Howlett, Scott Charles, and European modifiers.
?
competitive_signal: ROM modifications specifically designed to address unfair competition mechanics like luck-stealing, random scoring, and instant-death sudden-death triggers
high · Radical: removes unfair random jackpot range and soft locks stealing. Roller Games: fixes random sudden death. All modifications justified for tournament fairness.
?
design_philosophy: Worre explicitly avoids removing features entirely, instead tweaking mechanics to reward skill play while maintaining original designer intent
high · On Roller Games sudden death: 'I don't like to rip things out of the games... if the play field indicates that something is available, it should be.' On Addams Family magnets: modifying timeout rather than removing feature.
?
community_signal: Worre approaches ROM modification as engineering discipline requiring deep system knowledge before making changes

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.051

0:00

it's time now for another pinball profile recorded here live at the epc i'm your host jeff gules you can find our group on facebook we're also on twitter at pinball profile email pinball profile at gmail.com find us on instagram and please subscribe on your favorite podcatcher joining us right now a pleasure to finally be spending some time with them as i have earlier this week sir on boha i hope i got the name close it's fine jeff you may pronounce it any way you like it's my mod and how to change your name all right and speaking of changing games that's what you're really known for you've saved a lot of great games i can think of so many that come to radical let's talk about radical the first time I saw the Suron mod was the Freeplay Florida last year in fact and a lot of people really enjoyed that so let's talk first of all about why you changed so many of these games well to make them better of course and to fix bugs it started when I started to get into competition pinball say 10 years ago I learned about these deep rules knowledge of games and that some of them were less appropriate for competition usage for various reasons. That might be bugs or it might be scoring imbalances or it might be the fact that a good portion of the game you don't really use for anything. So that was really inspiring. My fascination with pinball machines and the way they work goes back a good number of years. Way back when I was a kid I was sneaking into arcades probably at an age that was a little younger than I was supposed to be. Was there an age restriction for arcades? Actually it was very liberal in Denmark. There were games everywhere in fast-food places and in movie theaters. I've seen a few liberal places here. Christiana is one that comes to mind. However, the legislation on amusement games was not that strict, so they were to be found in a lot of places.

2:21

But as I'm sure you know, Jeff, recognize from yourself, and what I'm sure that a lot of listeners can recognize from their childhood as well, is when you went to these places, it wasn't necessarily to play the games, because basically you ran out of money. Yeah, that's true. So it was more like being there, observing other people play. And I took that a notch further because I could sometimes find myself looking at games in a track if the place wasn't that busy. So I was observing these pinball machines, looking at the artwork, trying to read the rules of the inserts and the targets and stuff. Okay, back when you were younger, were there a lot of pinball machines in Denmark and what kind of machines were here? I wouldn't say there were huge collections in these places, but arcades were typically smaller places that had a bunch of video games and then maybe one or two pinball machines. That was a typical thing back then. And later on, when I started to play a lot in the 90s, of course, I got fascinated with how pinball machines could really explode in your face. with all these sound effects and light shows and how everything was prioritized. And it got really curious about how did they do all this? I mean, this is amazing. I don't know if you've ever heard Steve Ritchie talk about how he got into pinball. It's very, very similar too, just the bells, the whistles, all the mechanics of it too. And it's kind of a very, very similar interest that you have with Steve.

4:40

they shouldn't necessarily be, you know, deselected by tournament directors because of flaws in them. Maybe we could do something about it. There are a lot of flaws in pinball games. One of the games I had to play here at the Danish Pinball Open, and they wanted me to play a four-player game, was Back to the Future. I said, whoa, whoa, hold on a second. Ball three, player four, can shoot the skill shot and take the high score. They didn't know about that. The Data East game. I didn't know that either. Oh, there's a new project for you, Søren. Yeah, well, the Data East Games is somebody else. No, your specialty is the ballet games, correct? And Williams. Yeah, Williams System 11 and Williams WPC was the ones I attacked. So I mentioned off the top about Radical, all right? And explain what the bug was, explain what the fix was that you created. Well, Radical is a very interesting one you bring up because when I started to dig into that, I knew it was going to be the most difficult one of all. And it proved to be, because after I fixed the major things, there was just a plethora of bugs that kept coming at me. Kept coming at me more and more and more and more. Also a lot of things like light shows. When they shipped the game originally, the first one to come off the production line usually brought up two or three updates. They didn't necessarily make it out to the fields in any machine. They were already gone out in the field. In any machine, and it was quite complicated to update. but Radical never went further than version 1 of the software. So no, for that particular game, no, there wasn't any updates actually. But to get back to your question about that game, the two major things is that the jackpots you, or Mega Million as it is, called on Radical is very unfair in that game because it's random and it goes from a wide span from 3 million to 10 million. So already there, it's a deeply unfair game. for competition purposes. We're talking multiplayer too. But even still, if you were playing in a perp score or a pump and dump, yeah, there's some... It's already disqualified there. Completely. Totally useless. The other major flaw it has is the luck stealing. And I would like to say that I don't necessarily see luck stealing as a problem for competition usage. On some games, it's fine. On some games, it's even... You could say it acts to the excitement about the game. But on Radical, you take so much away from the other player when you steal that ball. So much progress that the other player has to do from the bottom, from the start again. So it doesn't work on Radical. So the change you made was? The change I made was that what I call soft lock stealing. Because a game with physical locks, I mean, the balls would go in and out of the lock trough as the games go along. So I fixed it. So that's the only thing you miss if you put a ball in the lock that another player is playing, is that you have to put it back in. You don't lose any progress, and other players don't advance on top of your progress. It's simply a matter of everybody has to play multi-ball on their own merit, and the only thing you can lose is that you have to make one shot again, and that's put the ball back into the trough, or balls, in other games. I saw at your underground place you and Peter Andersen and some of the other partners that you had there I'm gonna boot the name, but it's Flipper Kjellhagen? Exactly right. Exactly right. Exactly right. Gosh, if I could only play pinball the way I can speak Danish. You've been here a few days now, Jeff. You're advancing on the language. Well, when we played our Pinball Profile World Tour event, I saw a lot of Soen Roms and it was pretty incredible to see. You had one on Melsen Around. What'd you do there? Yeah right now at our place we have the Adams family Mousing Around Radical Junkyard What am I missing here Is Junkyard just the video mode Is that what you did On Junkyard I made it so you couldn play the video mode over and over again on the GOG shirt And I also removed it from the Mystery, Magic Bus, as it's called on there. With a few exceptions, like a ball making a sneak and stuff like that, you really play a maximum of one video mode per ball, which I think is a fair balance between ripping it out entirely and having this game where you play video mode a lot. Well, that has taken place over in North America, too. I've seen that ROM that you've done. It was featured, I believe, in this last year. Yeah, Jim Belsito, he asked for it and a few other ones, and I was happy to work with him on that. The Surin ROMs are all across the globe, too. But you said Addams Family. What did you do there? Addams Family basically does two things with the magnets. It shortens the time it takes for it to time out, and it makes it so it only starts when you hit shots that are not on the main objective of what you are doing. So to explain, in multi-ball you can advance towards lighting jackpots and you can make your jackpot shots without the magnets go on. So if you play like a top player and make your shots, the game allows you to make your shots without teasing you with the magnets. However, as soon as you have a ball in the wild, stand-up targets, slingshots, pop bumpers, the Magnus goes at you and teases you and throws the ball around. However, if you survive this and trap up, the Magnus goes off in three seconds. As opposed to what was it, 15, 20? It was 15 before, yeah. Chris Stevens used to notoriously be known for holding that and just, you know, every time the games would be long on Adam's family, everyone kind of nods, so thanks, Chris. So it's like I ask myself, how can this be improved? And I don't like to switch off the Magnus because they're part of the game, You can see on the playfield it says the power and stuff like that. It's nice to keep the feature, just tweak it a little, so it rewards skill play. And it doesn't necessarily mean that people are trapping up and waiting that long. So it's so much better now. I really, really like the way it plays now. I'm going to smile from ear to ear when I play Adam's Family, because you start the multiball, and you work towards the jackpot, and you're in control and everything is fine. All of a sudden, you hit a stand-up target or it goes into the slings, and boom! the magnets come at you like a beast and throws it around. But if you survive this and trap up, it goes off almost right away, and you can try to make a jackpot shot again. I'll tell you, I wish there was a Suriname. Years ago, I was in a playoff, and it was a ladder match. So the worst score was gone in a four-player game. And the game was Elvira and the Party Monsters. And boy, if ever a Suriname was needed for that, you have one now. I own Elvira and the Party Monsters, yes. And of course I've put some mind into what to do with it, but I don't really know what to do with the rams. Of course, lock stealing, that's an obvious one. But the rams, how they advance based on how you play, which is fine for some things, and maybe not so fine for some other things. I don't know what to do with them. So that will have to wait a little. You know, in North America, there's somebody else who's doing their best impression of doing the Surin Roms. And Scott Charles did it on Stars, too, with the WoW or whatever you want to call it, the special.

14:15

And so I put it in as number three. So we get it as the number three award in the mystery. So it's not the first thing. It's not an obvious thing to get in each game. You have to work a little to get it, but it's definitely achievable. Now, we've talked about Ron, but his partner Bruce Nightingale despises almost every single Gottlieb game. Have you ever tried tackling a Gottlieb game? Because you want to talk about some scoring imbalances. There might be a few on some of those old Gottlieb games. Yeah, and we have a TXX at Kellan. It is on loan now, but we've had it for a long time. And, of course, it's tempting to see what can we do here. But what's the scoring exploit there? I mean, I just ripped the spinners. Oh, it's just spinners all day. Yeah. That's fine. But you want to make it maybe a little more. Actually, the spinners all day games, you can adjust yourself because you can tweak the spinner to rotate easier or harder. So you can fix them to one or two spins. You sound like Jim Belcido getting ready for InDisc. Just don't give him any ideas. But no, the thing is, Jeff, there's a huge margin to climb before you make your first little bit tweeny tweak on these things. Each system is different, so you have to learn the system before you can do anything in a safe manner. In the serious, if not professional, or then at least to a professional effort. So God Lips is not something I have dug into yet, and never say never, but it's not coming tomorrow, let me say. Well, Søren, I wish I had more time. We have to get back to our matches here, but I appreciate everything you've done. I appreciate that we're seeing these ROMs in North America. Thank you so much for what you've done. Thank you. If anybody want to check this out, I try to keep everything until forms and the pin size are completely up to date with all the information I have. And I would like to say thank you to the collaborators I've had and the people who support this and the people who embrace pinball and like pinball development like this. And last but not least, I would like to say a big thanks to all the original designers and programmers of pinball machines from way back to present day for all their hard work and all the efforts they put into it. We love the games, thanks. Thank you very much, sir. Thank you, Jeff. Thank you very much. This has been your Pinball Profile. You can find our group on Facebook. We're also on Twitter at pinballprofile. Email us pinballprofile at gmail.com. Also look for us on Instagram. Please subscribe on your favorite podcatcher. I'm Jeff Teolas. Ch-ch-ch-changes. Turn and face the strange changes.