The next piece is the art package. One of John Yausey's best art packages yet again. Whitewater came out in the beginning of 1993 and is perfectly evocative of early 90s pinball art. the cabinet with the name carved out of desert rocks it's got the top-down perspective of the river canyon on the playfield a la python angelo type of thing i really like i mean i just really like top-down perspectives like that it's something we don't really see anyone even attempt to do just creates like a depth of field man it just makes it looks like you're like it makes the whole thing feel very like thematic and inclusive and like um cohesive the whole thing it really makes it feel like it's its own little like story there yes and it makes that one picture makes it feel grand and grandiose and like in this game it gives a lot of verticality right because there's an upper play field and there's like lots of like starting at the bottom and then going up top and then gravity bringing you back down and then you're looking down into the desert canyon and yaossi's art is just absolutely top-notch iconic it's fucking embarrassing when people replace it with uh knockoff art but that's that's what we gotta talk about because this is the absolute fucking perfection that is the translate that depicts a wild world of river raft and chaos this is the best singular art package of the 1990s and once again i am willing to fight anyone who wants to about it this game stands out in a lineup it reads from a distance and up close it's a distinctive color palette and is stunning all around it's campy and goofy fun for sure but it's still dynamic and exciting and that back glass is beautifully airbrushed in true 90s fashion when people replace this with a brian allen trash show it's disgusting it's confusing to me it's disturbing it's very very confusing to me when people are drawn to classic games These are iconic pieces of functional art, and then you swap them out with something like chintzy that looks like it just looked like the equivalent of a gas station t-shirt art. And it's just – I'm confused. I don't know why. I get it if it's something that kind of is arguably ugly, but has anyone ever – before knowing there was an alternative out there, did anyone ever go, man, Whitewater is a great game, but it looks like shit? shit no it was never looked down upon there's not an argument i don't get it people just do it because the option exists and pinball people like spending money on little things to differentiate feel like they're customizing their game taking kind of ownership of it this isn't the place for it don't do it i think it's weird too because it's like he's borrowing john yousey's imagery he's borrowing other characters from williams games he's basically stealing the composition and the depth of focus, but it's just all worse in every way. Yeah, man. What I love about it, it's just like what we talked about with Sega Lost World, where it doesn't say the name on the back glass. Yeah. Whitewater also doesn't say its name because it's on the fucking cabinet, it's on the apron, and it's on the topper, which we haven't talked about. Yeah, we'll get to the topper. But when you look at Whitewater, is anyone fucking confused what game you're playing? Again, like, what's going on? Talking from a graphic design standpoint or from an artistic standpoint? I just look at that game and it's immediately a draw to the eye. It's immediately beautiful. It immediately stands out in a lineup, no matter what the lineup is the game stands out And it not like when you looking at i think it needs like heavy cartoon line art you know girls with just fucking balloon tits i mean i want to see guys with splintered fingernails and holes in their teeth angry eyes yeah easter eggs just all cool stuff we're going off here but it's just bugs both of us man this is one of my favorite games of all time i love this art package i hate walking up and seeing a whitewater with like the translate swapped out i was like that's john fucking yousey dude show some respect like to me it's again it's just you're allowed to do whatever you want to your game it's a reversible mod thank god but you're doing the game a disservice and i'm confused i'm just genuinely it comes from a place of confusion with me but i suppose that's all we need to say on it that's all we need to say okay moving on from the incredible art package the incredible sound design the incredible world on a glass and theme what's next the rule set okay so this is the one i want to talk about mike boone absolutely crushed this one he also worked as the lead programmer on indie 500 and scared stiff which are other 90s nordman bangers absolutely just incredible games both of those but you know i digress what is perfect about whitewater is that there is the perfect balance that the greatest 90s games had wherein the further you progress the higher the values are in this case multi-ball jackpot values are increased every time you clear another wrath level the multi-ball start itself is dope too because it puts a ton of pressure on you to make those first three stage ball shots because if you botch the first one you've pretty much cut your multi-ball value into 30 percent yeah because you're gonna fuck up you're gonna be in the way for two and three it's like yeah it does feel like nerve-wracking yes and it's awesome because the start is hype as fuck and then you immediately feel pressure because if you hit all three the rest of the multi-ball jackpots are all worth 3x the jackpots can be very lucrative but to avoid endlessly farming the main multi-ball each subsequent time you start the multi-ball it requires more shots to qualify the locks again and the targets themselves are fucking dangerous Yeah, they're like two very, very dangerous stand-up targets. You really want to hit them on accident? You want to glance off of them? Yeah, taking pot shots at them? Not recommended. Literally every bit of the game has value properly weighted to me. It has the risk-reward elements, yet it also will just reward you properly for climbing the ladder. Nothing feels out of whack. Even the playfield multiplier is so perfectly hidden. Five times the fun! and requires a ton of risk if you want to get it early and set up the quote-unquote perfect stack, which is hot foot, by the way, not the multiball, but... Again, you guys don't know ball. We can go deeper into that if you want to come into the Discord. I can explain all this to you. But if you want to roll the dice, you can throw it in the pop bumper or the boulder garden, but I wouldn't recommend it. Again, it's that perfect thing where it's like, all right well the first multi-ball is really easy to get but it starts the 5x multiplier really far away i can still go get it but the way i roll the dice i have to throw it into the pop numbers which is fucking dangerous exactly you're like you can shoot the orbit into the pops but like the pops are gonna kill you a lot of the time yeah and so it's like you could do that or you could wait for it later and there's just a lot of those moments and lots of decisions to make and even on modes like whirlpool which is the first uh whirlpool award which is a multi-ball you can choose whether or not to put yet you can get hundreds of millions by repeating the whirlpool shot over and over uh it comes out the buck on the side you control it you send it up the middle and then you hit the shot but it starts out worth almost nothing and then it keeps ramping up every time you hit it up to like 30 or something it goes back down and it goes back up and you can ride that roller coaster as long as you can hit that relatively easy shot over and over again or you can choose to just use the two ball multi-ball instead to advance your rafts and to shoot dangerous shots yeah with one of your other balls instead to try to move towards wet willy and both are viable that's what i like about it is it feels like there's not a wrong way as long as you're kind of like making some progress in the game you're not like oh this is like a waste of time everything feels like no this was a good thing to do yeah and it's well thought out i mean did i mention that uh there's no fucking ball saves i mentioned that yet no there's a i mean do you can you hit one switch you can you can full plunge as long as it doesn't hit like a sling or anything on the way out one switch so there's i mean it's kind of a ball save if you really if you really fuck up but other than that go listen to the episode on ball saves if you want to know wow how i feel about that but i think there's also brilliant uses of workarounds to advance the riskier hazards to advance your rafts but they all take more shots but they're safer they take more shots you know it's there's all that kind of shit is layered in this rule set the whole game is literally risk reward perfection it has a wizard mode and it has a special vacation jackpot award which is also just insane the first time you do it i won't say anymore you guys should try to figure out how to do vacation jackpot and then go try to do it on whitewater if you can watch a tutorial without seeing the show that it gives you when you do it that's even better because it's a great surprise the first time you do it yeah zero notes mike boone fucking cooked on this bad boy perfection when i when people are like what game like what do you like in a game you know like alan you only like frontier it's got to be just like light spinner rip spinner or hit drop i was like that's not it i can appreciate a game with multiple ladders and modes and wizard modes but it's got i got to feel like one i can do multiple things and score well two i want to feel like there's not one fucking thing to do yeah this game breaks a lot of the things that i don't like in other games one of them is play field multipliers not a big fan but this is the fucking way to do it this is a good one Because, again, if you get this one, not only does it last a very short amount of time, and nothing stops the timer. So if you get it ready and you have two balls locked, you're like, okay, I got to get the ball. My timer's already going. I got to hit that shot. Oh, fuck. I'm counting down. Like, nothing stops the clock. Then you got to start your multiball like most people try to do. Then you just hit three jackpots in a row. Like, yeah, that's under pressure until you fuck those up. Yeah. That's, I was going to say, I really like the play field multiplier in this because you can only collect it once, right? And then you have to go through all the other awards. You have to get all of your awards to collect to get it back around to get it again. So most of the time, the way I'm playing this game, I see it once in a game and it's usually, it's not the type of thing that I like go out of my way to try to set up. I just pay attention to what I have lit for an award. And then when I start it, I panic and I'm like, wow, do I get like, what's, what's, how do I get the most points? what's the best way to get points right now like i'll fuck the multiplier's coin and that leads to me like fumbling the ball a lot and i like that i like being challenged in pinball i like it when the game makes me freak out it's why i like scared stiff the wizard mode the first time you like so much fun so long for me to clear that wizard mode and you're like those aren't hard shots yes hit a ramp then hit the center crate then hit a ramp then hit the center crate it's just you're like when the pressure is on pinball it turns into a different game and i love that because it's just like you get a little you get a lot of those little like pressure moments in white water yeah it's perfection mike boone he nailed it hopefully one day i will get to meet you he's the big boon to us yeah big boon now the last thing we got to talk about which is the physical layout disaster drop dennis nordman i think we've said it on the show before this is my personal opinion got to be the single most overlooked and disrespected designer of the modern ramp slash mode era of pinball so the last 30-ish years or so the guy gets hired then fired then let go then you know like taken off of projects all this and really like when you play his fucking games the guy understands flow better than steve richie dude he makes fun functional layouts in a way that no one else like his games are all so fun to shoot and they all work really well they work it's crazy it's not like oh like that one almost that was close you know like that was a cool idea but like it doesn't really work that well in reality you're like no this shit all works and it's all cool and it's just he makes some remarkably fun games yeah i mean this layout in particular it's buttery and smooth and flowy it has shots close and far and he makes the mundane parts like stand-ups necessary and valuable the light locks the extra ball dude the extra ball advance hazard extra ball is basically just like collect and drain for me mostly like 50 of my extra balls basically are coming back to me within like three seconds dude the extra ball stand-up placement is so damn perfect it's so good it brings a tear to my eye thinking about it extra ball this is what every actually like okay there's your extra ball there it is it's right there go get it and it's like the fucking it's like six inches away from a flipper oh dude so good it's so good that's like the most over i forgot about that i'm like that's the most overlooked thing you're like having an extra ball collect that's just fucking dangerous is genius it's perfect i love it absolutely perfect you know the waterfall ramp is the greatest ramp once again this is what i say this is like this is the greatest game of all time because the sum of all of his parts each individual part is excellence yeah that is rarely matched On its own. Yeah, each one of these, you're like, it is at least in the conversation. I don't think anyone could argue against any of these in any of these categories. You're like Best World Under Glass. You're like, you might have some other ones that you like, but Whitewater's absolutely in every conversation. Sound Package, absolutely up there. Art Package, absolutely up there. Rules, if you like the rules, that's maybe the most subjective one of these, which is funny. You'd think art would be more subjective, but I disagree. I think rule sets are their own art, and this is a beautiful execution of the rules I like to see. And you're like, in the layout, dude? The waterfall ramp on the left side is the best ramp in pinball And he lets you combo it from the left ramp at speed so it like the Steve Ritchie maneuver shit The spine killer