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Episode 74 - The Mind of Scott Danesi

Wedgehead Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 13m·analyzed·Mar 17, 2025
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.035

TL;DR

Scott Danesi on engineering, design philosophy, and making pinball hard by design.

Summary

Scott Danesi discusses his multifaceted role in pinball as both a technical engineer at Pinball Life and a game designer. He shares insights into his design philosophy emphasizing challenging, aggressive gameplay inspired by classic 1980s Bally/System 11 machines, and explains his unconventional design choices for TNA and Rick and Morty (pop bumper placement, lock stealing, physical locks, co-op mode) that prioritize player engagement and nostalgia over mass-market safety.

Key Claims

  • Scott's work in parts manufacturing at Pinball Life is more impactful to the pinball industry than his game design work

    high confidence · Scott states directly: 'it's way more impactful to the pinball industry me doing stuff and building these things at pinball life than it is for me building games and releasing those as weird as that sounds'

  • Scott has a degree in Information Systems Technology and spent 10 years building ERP/business intelligence systems for large corporations before joining Pinball Life

    high confidence · Direct statement: 'I have a degree in information systems technology. and for 10 years after college, I did just that where I built business intelligence systems and ERP systems for really large corporations.'

  • TNA's design was intentionally aggressive to recreate the punishing gameplay of 1980s Bally/System 11 machines

    high confidence · Scott explains: 'I wanted it to be very difficult to play, just like the old Bally's from the 80s, just like the System 11's from the 80s as well... I want to build something that my friends and I really love.'

  • Scott gave himself a one-year deadline to complete TNA and get it to Expo playable with a whitewood

    high confidence · Direct quote: 'when I came up with the idea for that game, I gave myself a deadline. I said, I have one year to get this thing to Expo, and it has to play at least enough to where people can flip it.'

  • The inline stand-up drop targets on TNA are now referred to as 'Danesi locks' by the community

    high confidence · Host states: 'people now refer to these as the denisi locks which i think is rad like you have your own designation in the pinball pantheon'

  • Rick and Morty's playfield layout is intentionally asymmetrical with the left side 'off-kilter' to match the chaotic theme of the show

    high confidence · Scott explains: 'the right side of the playfield all the shots are in the normal place... the left side, everything is off... to make you feel uncomfortable shooting everything from the right flipper'

  • Scott intentionally excluded virtual locks from TNA to preserve the physical lock mechanic and its nostalgic feel

Notable Quotes

  • “it's way more impactful to the pinball industry me doing stuff and building these things at pinball life than it is for me building games and releasing those as weird as that sounds”

    Scott Danesi @ ~13:45 — Core claim about the relative impact of parts manufacturing vs. game design in the pinball ecosystem

  • “I have one year to get this thing to Expo, and it has to play at least enough to where people can flip it.”

    Scott Danesi @ ~22:15 — Reveals design discipline and self-imposed constraints that led to TNA's completion and success

  • “If you want to actually build something that you have a vision for, you have to utilize off-the-shelf parts. You have to utilize as many smart people that you have access to to get things done. Don't try to reinvent every single thing.”

    Scott Danesi @ ~24:30 — Design philosophy prioritizing pragmatism and execution over custom parts; influences modern homebrew community

  • “I was kind of frustrated by this. And I'm like, I want to build something that my friends and I really love. Like, we love these era of games. We love to just play dollar games on these things, get our asses handed to us in a total of five minutes for all of us to play.”

    Scott Danesi @ ~28:00 — Articulates core design motivation: returning to challenging, quick-play arcade experience vs. modern long-form games

  • “the pinball is not supposed to be easy i feel like people forget that we're safe is that the history of pinball was it has to be fun enough to get your quarters and mean enough to make money for the operator and that's like the the mindset that created the hobby we love”

    Alan (Host) @ ~42:30 — Philosophical statement about pinball design principles and industry history driving Scott's design ethos

  • “That's the nice part about physical locks. Yeah, shooting a ball at a hole in the play field that's lit green or whatever is just not – it's like ball locks. You're like, great, yeah, but where's the ball?”

    Alan (Host) @ ~63:45 — Defense of physical locks as both functional design and intuitive player feedback mechanism

Entities

Scott DanesipersonPinball LifecompanyTNAgameRick and MortygameSpooky PinballcompanyAlanperson

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Parts manufacturing (flipper bats, coil sleeves, replacement kits) at Pinball Life recognized as more impactful to hobby than new game design; reveals hidden infrastructure critical to pinball sustainability

    high · Scott: 'it's way more impactful to the pinball industry me doing stuff and building these things at pinball life than it is for me building games' and discussion of how flipper rebuild kits and coil sleeves enable hobby viability

  • ?

    community_signal: Stern Pinball's practice of patenting design mechanics (co-op play, switch usage) perceived as anti-competitive gatekeeping by community; Scott expresses frustration but frames as 'silly' corporate behavior

    high · Scott's angry reaction: 'That's fucking bullshit, dude. That sucks. That's fucking lame' followed by tempering: 'It's fine. I mean, yeah... They're not going to do anything with it'

  • ?

    community_signal: Lock stealing mechanics on TNA gaining acceptance and appreciation from core pinball community despite initial skepticism; recognized as strategic gameplay element rather than unfair mechanic

    high · Host: 'i wish more games have box stealing because i think that that unlike when tournament players bitch about it i'm like that's just strategy dude' and discussion of risk/reward nature

  • ?

    competitive_signal: TNA positioned as direct response to perceived softness in modern pinball (Jersey Jack Wizard of Oz); Scott frustrated by over-use of RGB lighting and lack of aggression in contemporary game design

    high · Scott: 'Jersey Jack had Wizard of Oz out at that point. It just wasn't, it didn't feel aggressive to me... I get the whole rainbow thing in the theme' and motivation to build alternative

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.219

0:00
Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Wedgehead Pinball Podcast. I'm your host, Alan, like always, one of the owners of Wedgehead, a pinball bar in Portland, Oregon. Join the basement studio with my normal co-host. It's Alex, the water boy, once again. How you doing, Alex? I'm doing good. I'm doing particularly good because we're joined by a very special guest today. He's a renaissance man in pinball. He works for a large pinball parts supplier. He's created his own pinball machine beginning in the early homebrew days. And since then, he's made a couple of production games for a couple of different manufacturers. Yeah, whereas many talented individuals often tackle one or a few different aspects of what it takes to design a pinball machine from scratch, perhaps nobody else has truly encompassed the auteur role quite like the guest on his first game, not only designing, engineering, programming, art directing, but also orchestrating a stunning light show and a completely original and thumping soundtrack of music that he composed himself. His games are iconic for the sound design and brutally punishing layouts. In many ways, his games feel like love letters to older bygone eras. We are extremely excited to invite onto the show today our guest, and I believe that I speak for both of us here, a personal hero onto the show. Oh, yeah. Mr. Scott Denisey, how are you doing today, Scott? Hi, how are you? I am doing quite well. Man, that intro. Jeez, you guys. That's why we like to pre-write them. We get the, you know, we want to flatter our guests here. Yeah.
1:51
We butter you up. I'm like, man, man, I don't have my speakers on so my wife can't hear. So it's, you know, I should have turned this up a little louder. You can listen to the podcast later.
2:03
But, yeah, we're very excited to have you on here. I'd say you're a personal pinball hero of mine. You know, I didn't put that in the intro, but I stand by that. I love your game, Scott. I've told you that before in the past, but I've always been a big fan of your games since the beginning. Yeah, we'll start with your, you know, your fucking Clark Kent job here. I suppose. Yeah, the Clark Kent job. Yeah, your position at Pinball Life. How'd you end up with that job? And I guess what's kind of like the day to day like there? Yeah, like, what do I actually do? Right? I get this question once in a while. I've never man, I don't I don't remember if any podcast has dug in too deep on this. But oh, yeah, like, what do I actually do over there? Yeah, it's great. So at Pinball Life, what I do is I do all the technical stuff, right? Whether it's mechanical engineering or electrical engineering or keeping our servers running or keeping our Wi-Fi working in the building, you know, like any of that stuff. I also do all of our like ERP systems, which is like ridiculous. That's the stuff I used to do actually before I got into pinball. What's an ERP system? It's basically like a system that handles all of your financials and it handles all of your manufacturing data, like where you get parts from, how much you pay for them, when you put POs in and out and that kind of stuff. All your bookkeeping shit. It's all the boring bookkeeping stuff. Yeah, that's a huge task, though, when you're like, that's the whole business is retail. Yeah, it's pretty big. I mean, we have people that are working with me and managing the data and stuff. Gotcha. Yeah, it's a lot of fun, though, for me because that's actually what my background is from college, right? So I have a degree in information systems technology. and for 10 years after college, I did just that where I built business intelligence systems and ERP systems for really large corporations. Nice. Was there a position advertised there or did you just know the crew over there or kind of how'd that work out? No, no. So I've been into like coin op stuff even before college and I was just obsessed with everything. I grew up with a pinball machine in the house. After 10 years of doing something, I needed to kind of switch that up a little bit. It wasn't really fulfilling anymore. So a hobby of mine was pinball and I was really getting into it and I have a lot of friends just in the industry and I became pretty good friends with Terry during that 10 years I was doing stuff out of college. Now, one day I said to him, you know, I'm like, hey, I might, you know, think about just getting into pinball here. And he's like, well, I've got a position here. You could come in and do all this mechanical stuff for me because I'm SolidWorks certified. So it's something really that he needed over there just to kind of make things easier for him. And then from there, it just kind of snowballed into I do basically all the really hardcore tech stuff over there now. When you say mechanical stuff for the listener and you say SolidWorks, what does that mean? And what does that mean to a company like Pinball Life selling pinball parts? Are there any examples of something like that you can tell the listener? I'm super interested in this part of it because I work on machines all the time. you know like i oh very cool yeah yeah so this is this is pretty cool so uh i do go down tangents like this where i just forget that people might not know what solidworks is or what the actual mechanical engineering stuff really is but what i do is i will take a product like a flipper bat right so let's just pretend we've got like a no logo flipper bat right which has a piece of metal in it and it's got a piece of plastic on top of it and it looks like a flipper bat i take a program called SolidWorks, which is a 3D modeling program. Kind of like if anyone knows what AutoCAD is, which is a 2D version, people use it for just making 2D drawings. It's been around since forever, right? I think I learned that back in like 1996 or something. Yeah, SolidWorks is a 3D version of that, so I can make objects in 3D space. So what I do is I will draw this object in 3D space in all of its components, right? And then what we'll do is we will send that off to get manufactured. And that's what, that's the big thing that I do day to day. And so you guys have your own kind of supply chains and you're sort of responsible for making a lot of these parts yourselves, like as Pinball Life and you, Scott, help do that? Yeah, correct. So we try to source as much as we can because as a retailer, buying something and then like at a wholesale price, putting it on the website and selling it for a retail price is actually just, and you're not making a ton of money on that, but like, that's just easier. And if you could get a ton of stuff like that, it's just nice and easy to kind of turn and burn something, keep your business running. But if you have large, large quantities of something that, you know, OEM customers are using or something very common, like a flipper bat or flipper rubber or something like that, that needs to get, you know, you just make that in large quantity. You will go to the source, make it yourself. If you have an engineer that can draw that up and kind of facilitate that process and you're that engineer and i am that guy that can do that yes see this is well this is something i've never heard fully discussed which is why we wanted to ask you about it because i'm like this is such a huge part of like the pinball hobby when i first started playing pinball it was hard to get parts because i was playing in the 2000s and like oh yeah it was hard to even get replacement parts like there was kind of like a stockpile of like old williams parts when they shuttered but then when those went away pinball wasn't popular enough but these machines that were out there were still breaking obviously and then at some point you know pinball life and some other companies like started making replacement parts and like there's just a whole crew of people at these companies and you're one of them and i just i always feel like people kind of yada yada over this part of your career which is like Alex and I would have talked about like this might even be more impactful than your game design you know to the benefit of pinball exactly so put it this way it's it's way more impactful to the pinball industry me doing stuff and building these things at pinball life than it is for me building games and releasing those as weird as that sounds yep because of all of these boring parts I think a lot of people if you're new to the hobby or if you just haven't had a fixed much in the past you take for granted that there are like reproduction replacement parts for stuff but as soon as those don't exist or if you've ever been in a hobby where you can't get you can't source parts or if you have a weird old game that scott hasn't designed a replacement part for yet it sucks like oh yeah in the fucking water you have to make stuff yourself or you have to hack something together i've had new people that get into the hobby that start operating that start learning how to repair games and they'll open up an old game that some operator had and They're like, look at all these hack jobs. Look at what these guys did. And I was like, dude, that's what you had to do. That game didn't fucking work. That's it. Well, imagine this for a second. Imagine if companies like Marco Specialties and Pinball Life didn't make coil sleeves. Yeah. People take that for granted completely.

high confidence · Scott: 'I did not want to put the virtual locks in there because i thought it would take away from uh from the actual like just nostalgic you know lock stealing thing right'

  • Stern Pinball patented co-op play mode despite not inventing it; Multimorphic's Lexi: Light Speed had co-op implemented ~2 years before TNA

    high confidence · Scott: 'Stern patented that... they patent it whenever they do something that's out of the norm' and 'actual co-op was implemented with lexi light speed on the p3 platform... that was probably two years before'

  • “I don't like safe games like, you know, there's some people do. I get it. You know, I understand, you know, there is a need for some safe games with long roll sets, but it's just not something I'm into.”

    Scott Danesi @ ~52:15 — Explicit statement of design philosophy rejecting mass-market safety in favor of challenge

  • “That's fucking bullshit, dude. That sucks. That's fucking lame.”

    Scott Danesi (responding to Stern's co-op patent) @ ~68:30 — Reaction to corporate IP patents on design mechanics, reflects broader community sentiment about innovation gatekeeping

    • Alex
    person
    Terryperson
    Charlie Emeryperson
    Dwight Sullivanperson
    Lexi: Light Speedgame
    Wizard of Ozgame
    Jack Dangerperson
    X-Mengame
    Stern Pinballcompany
    Marco Specialtiescompany
    SolidWorksproduct
    ?

    design_innovation: Physical locks (inline stand-ups) used on TNA for multiball lock stealing becoming community standard referenced as 'Danesi locks,' representing Scott's influence on modern pinball design language

    high · Host: 'people now refer to these as the denisi locks which i think is rad like you have your own designation in the pinball pantheon'

  • ?

    design_innovation: Scott's pop bumper placement innovations (lower playfield, dangerous but valuable shots) on TNA and Rick and Morty influencing modern designers (Jack Danger's X-Men); hosts note Godzilla and Jaws using similar single pop bumper mechanics

    high · Host: 'now we've seen that with games like godzilla and jaws that feature single pop bumpers in similar places... you're definitely responsible for kind of bringing them back into the modern era'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Scott's pragmatic approach to homebrew design: utilize off-the-shelf parts, leverage existing expertise, set firm deadlines (one year for TNA whitewood completion) rather than custom-build everything; influences modern homebrew design philosophy

    high · Scott: 'If you want to actually build something that you have a vision for, you have to utilize off-the-shelf parts... Don't try to reinvent every single thing' and one-year TNA deadline

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Scott explicitly designs games to be challenging and punishing, deliberately avoiding 'safe' games with long ruleset progression to recreate 1980s arcade experience where risk/reward and quick play are central

    high · Scott: 'I don't like safe games... there is a need for some safe games with long roll sets, but it's just not something I'm into' and 'I wanted it to be very difficult to play, just like the old Bally's from the 80s'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Rick and Morty design required balance between creative vision and licensing constraints; Spooky allowed creative freedom but designers had to validate unconventional pop bumper choice with licensor

    medium · Scott: 'it's a pretty big license and we do have to make sure that it's you know it's not too far gone' and discussion of getting pop bumper approval after whitewood testing

  • ?

    technology_signal: Co-op play mode precedent established by Multimorphic P3's Lexi: Light Speed (~2 years before TNA); Stern Pinball adopted and patented mechanic despite not inventing it, with Dwight Sullivan as current primary implementer

    high · Scott: 'actual co-op was implemented with lexi light speed on the p3 platform... that was probably two years before' and discussion of Stern patent on co-op despite pre-existing implementation

    • 9:09
    I don't know what you would do. They would get dirty in the crack. I would probably try to make something out of metal to stick in there. Yeah. Or maybe just run it without a coil sleeve and see what happens. Yeah. I'd be like carving one out of a fucking tub of margarine or something and be like, what kind of plastic is this? Fit it in there.
    9:34
    Exactly. So it's just interesting that people do take that stuff for granted. And they do. And that's okay. But things like flipper rebuild kits were hard to come by for a long time. Right. And now you can just like, hey, my flippers are kind of weak. You know what? I'm going to flip a rebuild kit this game. It's good as new. More people need to do that still, but yes. Yeah, totally. Absolutely. We're going to talk about some of the games that you did, but like obviously working at Pinball Life, it must have influenced the way you designed your first game. And I know you've talked about this before, like by using and prioritizing using off the shelf parts. But I see a lot today in the homebrew scene that a lot of people just try to make everything custom from ramps to mechs and things like that. But you took the utilitarian approach probably because you knew the industry so intimately. You're like, hey, these are the parts. I know how to get them. I know these things work. I know how they work. But on TNA, your first game, you did a few things with those off-the-shelf parts that hadn't been done for a while or things that were… Unconventional. like new utilization the most famous of course is your use of the inline stand-up drop targets using them to lock balls in between for your multi-ball people now refer to these as the denisi locks which i think is rad like you have your own designation in the pinball pantheon but i also credit your game tna for changing the way this is the one that strikes me yeah the way pop bumpers are used on modern games sometimes now by other designers because for a while there it was just like put a nest of pop bumpers up near the top of the play field and it doesn't matter like whatever happens up there doesn't really matter and then you took it like i'm gonna put one and i'm gonna bring it down lower onto the play field i'm gonna make it really dangerous to hit but i'm gonna make it valuable to hit yeah you know and like now we've seen that with games like godzilla and jaws that feature single pop bumpers in similar places yeah other people are definitely like paying attention to that i feel like i know there were other games like that in the future, but you're definitely responsible for kind of bringing them back into the modern era. Yeah. Like, can you tell us about your design philosophy and particularly about the pop bumper and why you did that? Yeah, absolutely. And then also like, you know, we can, I'm going to chat a little bit about the off the shelf parts too, which is interesting. Working at Pinball Life didn't actually sway me too much into using that off the shelf part thing. A lot of people back in the mid-2010s, early 2010s, we're building homebrew games. And I saw a lot of people just keep spinning their wheels on stuff because they're making everything. And there's nothing wrong with that. They want to make their own stuff. They're getting fulfillment out of that. But I wanted to finish my game as quick as possible because when I came up with the idea for that game, I gave myself a deadline. I said, I have one year to get this thing to Expo, and it has to play at least enough to where people can flip it. Yeah, that's impressive. Yeah, if you want to actually build something that you have a vision for, you have to utilize off-the-shelf parts. You have to utilize as many smart people that you have access to to get things done. Don't try to reinvent every single thing. Try to utilize what's already there. But I still do that to this day. and uh that was a a big thing on why tna got finished as fast as it did at least the whitewood part i guess it yeah just all comes down to what you what you want to do with it you know tell us about the pop bumpers man because that's such a big part of the game dude if if you haven't played tna everyone listening we're gonna have our tna out at wedgehead by the time you're listening this episode so come in and play it but it's on the lower section of the play field on the right hand side and you're trying to destroy different nuclear reactors and they get your final shot your kill shot's always at this pop bumper, which is super dangerous. It's not always at the pop bumper. Oh, I guess it's not always at the pop bumper. It can be at the pop bumper. Yeah, it can be at the pop bumper. But it's a very important shot to progress that game. And so, like, can you run us through that? Like, and the whole game design around it? Because it's almost like, did you design it around that pop bumper? Or, like, what made you do that? The pop bumper replacement was actually one of the really early on things that I put into the design after I did the Italian bottom. I knew this game really wanted to be, or I wanted it to be very difficult to play, just like the old Bally's from the 80s, just like the System 11's from the 80s as well. Hell yeah, dude. And I needed to get more side-to-side action on the game. The problem with, and I was frustrated at the time, because the people making games now weren't really making stuff that was very aggressive. You know, like Jersey Jack had Wizard of Oz out at that point. It just wasn't, it didn't feel aggressive to me. And it overused the RGB, like rainbow stuff everywhere. I get the whole rainbow thing in the theme, so that kind of makes sense. So I was kind of frustrated by this. And I'm like, I want to build something that my friends and I really love. Like, we love these era of games. We love to just play dollar games on these things, get our asses handed to us in a total of five minutes for all of us to play. Yes. You know. Yeah, that's exactly what we're into. And then, yeah, exactly. Then we'd go, like, have a beer and then, you know, maybe come back to it or something, you know, and try again. You know, but it gives you that breath. It gives you a time to kind of get in there, get beat up, walk away for a second. and get back to it because it makes it feel addicting to me. So that was that. So in order to make games more difficult like that, you will need to make a bunch of difficult shots. And the pop bumper itself isn't actually the most dangerous shot in that game. So we can talk about that too in a second. But the pop bumper's goal, like the goal of the pop bumper was to just make chaos on the lower end of that play field and get more side-to-side action. Yeah, absolutely. yeah and you and you're very successful on it it's iconic about that game obviously like your choice of the way you use the inline drops and using that for the multi-ball uh that's iconic and that's such a big part of the game is that is that what you're gonna say scott is it's the three stand-up targets right in the right in the middle there those are aimed completely like i i'm such an asshole when i laid that out because it's like i aimed them directly so if you shoot them from one flipper it's going to go toward the middle and if you shoot it from the other flipper it's going to go toward one of the outlanes that makes sense like playing firepower it's like firepower yeah the pinball is not supposed to be easy i feel like people forget that we're safe is that the history of pinball was it has to be fun enough to get your quarters and mean enough to make money for the operator and that's like the the mindset that created the hobby we love in the further we stray from that i feel like the further it gets from what makes pinball pinball yeah that's why we were so excited to have you on the show scott because it's like we talk about this a lot on the show and like we like hard games like i was very excited to meet you and talk to you because i was like finally dude one of us like somebody's making a game that's a fucking challenge that like we could play a four-player game with buddies that are good at pinball and we can get through it in five to ten minutes and it's not just like a slog yeah i love the the use of a pop bumper up there to get the side-to-side instead of putting like an upper flipper because the upper flippers if you're playing like eight ball deluxe you just learn real quick if it's a mean copy not to flip that thing ever yeah but the pot you don't got a choice on so what about the you don't have a choice what about the pot bumper on rick and morty for anyone that's listening hasn't had a chance to play rick and morty instead of the left sling it's got a pot bumper what made you uh like go that way on that one and like i guess what was kind of just the idea behind it if you had something you know, a similar thought process. Yeah, the Rick and Morty layout is actually very interesting. So it's so if you watch the show, I was a big fan of the show, right? So if you watch the show, it's chaotic. As Morty, you have basically no control over your life and your adventures, right? So you are just like always just getting in trouble, not your fault. You would love to just stay at home, be a normal kid. Not going to happen. I was like, good. I get to make some chaotic, crazy thing, right? If you take a look at Rick and Morty, I don't know if you guys have a picture of it up in front of you right now, but this is going to, you know, people listening, maybe if you're sitting in front of a computer, pop a picture of that playfield up real fast and draw a line right down the center of the playfield from left to right like it a or to divide the left and right sides of the playfield You will notice something very strange is the right side of the playfield all the shots are in the normal place that they supposed to be Yeah the right side like a nice traditional fan. It's a nice traditional layout. And then the left side, everything is off. So everything is off kilter on it so that you have to, you will feel uncomfortable shooting everything from the right flipper over to the left side. It's true. And there's an optical illusion on that ramp it just it's it's there to just be crazy so that left side is just nuts so i'm like well i want to see and this was just an experiment in the whitewood i want to see what it feels like to put a pop bumper instead of a slingshot and it was just amazing when i did it i only really gave it like when i did it i probably gave it maybe a 50 chance of making it in the final thing only because i really liked it but i didn't know what other people would like and in this point though it's a pretty big license and we do have to make sure that it's you know it's not too far gone we'll get into that a little bit more but you're making this one now tna obviously got sold and became a production game but you designed it just for you and your buddies whereas this one you're designing to sell so i understand different mindset yeah exactly but i still could just i still had like total creative freedom with it which is great yeah spooky pinball really did uh like they were really just let me kind of they're like whatever just do the thing like Make it crazy if you want, whatever. So yeah, I put that pop-up over there. And I started having people play it. And it was just a flipping whitewood with nothing else except all the stuff activated. The pop-bumper just kept getting thumbs up all over the place. And at that point, I'm like, okay, maybe this has like a 90% chance of making it in now. And we just sat down. I sat down with Charlie and we just discussed it for a bit. You know, it's like we have to decide whether or not like it's going to make or break the game with the general public. And we thought about it, and we're like, you know what, let's just go for it. I'm sure they'll be fine with it. And in fact, it turned out great. Yeah, I mean, the geometry's all right on it, so it's all correct. It's funny because it's like one of the things, when I saw the game, when it was unveiled or whatever, it was my first new Unboxed game, and when I saw it, it's like the pop was the thing that I'm like, oh my god, this is awesome. It's just funny, it's like sometimes the not-safe decisions are the ones that end up selling games. Yeah. And now we see a pop in a very similar position on, not exactly, but just a little above it on Jack Danger's new game. Yeah, on X-Men. On X-Men. Yeah, he's got two pops on the lower play field, actually. Yeah, he's got one basically where TNA has one. He's got one where Rick and Morty has one. I just think you're very, I just think you were such a breath of fresh air for the games that you designed. And I want to talk about another thing that happens on your game, TNA, where it's like you have lock stealing on the multiball. ah yes i've gotten a lot of flack for this one i okay so i want to tell you like i love the lock stealing i wish more games have box stealing because i think that that unlike when tournament players bitch about it i'm like that's just strategy dude that's like do i'm gonna am i gonna go for it it's reward it's very much risk reward and i don't know why people hate it so much other than they're cowards but like what made you do that on tna i mean i guess you're you're the same way you like lock stealing games we're basically like the same person so it's like so lock stealing is just a lot of fun right so when you are able to uh when you're playing and you're playing up against somebody else for a dollar right you got it all you really want that dollar yeah you got the big dollar if i i'm i'm paying attention now like if i start locking balls and I don't capitalize on that, that is, that's my fault. Right. Like if I die before those balls get released out of there, that that's totally my fault. Yeah. You're setting the table for your opponent. Yep, exactly. And there's, it's no different than just like not getting a bunch of points and there's like maybe giving some extra points to your opponent because you screwed up. Right. It's not, it's not too much different than that. you know you're giving them progress actually it's technically progress dude i love it i i wish we got more games that have box stealing because every time i find one that has it i i love it's immediately more fun for multiplayer my wife will just bitch endlessly if i steal if i like get her molly get her multi-ball on tna but then she fucking loves it when she gets mine it's like all of that is forgotten and she's like aha like you got like yeah and you're like yeah that's what makes it fun that's why it's fun that's the thing yeah yeah that's the thing so it's interesting because you don't really see it very often in tna there's no uh setting for virtual locks so that's done by design i did not want to put the virtual locks in there because i thought it would take away from uh from the actual like just nostalgic you know lock stealing thing right i mean 100 i don't know i put a foot down i guess i like i guess i was stubborn about it i don't know i mean No, that's good. That's the good thing. Can I put something in there? Yeah, I probably could have, but I just didn't want to. Yeah, we love it. It's your game. You made it with your vision. And that's why we get cool shit like this. And I talk about this as an operator who operates pinball machines. And all I want is more people to play pinball. And I think part of the modern, you know, to get off on a little tangent, part of the modern stake, like you said, with Wizard of Oz and what caused you to design TNAs. like you look around and playing pinball for long enough i enjoy games of all eras as does alex but like i go back to the older games that play shorter that are more dangerous and i have to fight for ball control and i have to shoot dangerous shots i don't want everything that's controlled you made that with tna and it was clear decisions from the get-go and i love but people go no then people won't like it because it's hard i was like i always tell people all pinball is hard when you're new yeah like it all feels hard i see new players all the time come into my bar and play pinball every game is equally hard to them they don't even think tna is hard they don't even they don't know that it's hard they're like well all pinball they don't realize it yet they don't get it yet that because all the ball saves and stuff in there so there there are very strategic ball saves put in TNA so that people who are really bad at pinball can still play it and have fun. Yeah. But I think it's like, what's interesting too, is like the simplicity of teaching someone how to play a game that they'd never played or that they haven't played pinball. That's why I love physical locks on a game. It's because it teaches players. They're like, why is the ball stuck there? And they shot you another one. It says ball locked, locked two more for multiple or whatever, you know? And like with virtual locks, now all of a sudden, multi-balls just happen out of nowhere. And even as an experienced player, you're like, what just happened? Yeah. Like, it's confusing, right? There's quite a few games that when they come out my first time, I'm like, I have no idea how I – well, I guess there's only been a couple times where I'm like, I genuinely don't know how I started that multiball. But, yeah, that's the nice part about physical locks. Yeah, shooting a ball at a hole in the play field that's lit green or whatever is just not – it's like ball locks. You're like, great, yeah, but where's the ball? Yeah, lock where? You're going to kick me the same one? You're going to kick me the same one back again? No, it's cheesy. Yeah, physical locks are just cool. I'm glad you put your foot down, Scott, because, like, it's an iconic part of that game. And I think it's, like, these decisions that you made and were stubborn about, that's what makes me love your games is because you're, like, you can tell. And I know the other designers are fighting their own battles and they're, you know, everyone wins some and they lose some and whatever. It's a collaborative team effort. But it's just like I just appreciate some of these decisions that are kind of ballsy, like because they're not going to be universally loved. Like you don't make safe games at all. No, definitely not. No, it's I don't. Well, it's just because I don't like safe games like, you know, there's some people do. I get it. You know, I understand, you know, there is a need for some safe games with long roll sets, but it's just not something I'm into. so with all that time you saved not adding virtual locks to the software on tna you did add something else to the software that we wanted to talk about uh that's co-op play that's now been since incorporated by uh i think dwight sullivan's the only guy at stern doing it but he's he's been adding it to a lot of his games he does he also patented it too what what yeah stern patented that Oh, that's fucking bullshit, dude. That sucks. That's fucking lame. It's fine. I mean, yeah. They're not going to do anything with it. They're just doing that because anytime they do something that's out of the norm, they patent it. I suppose. I mean, Stern has a patent for using switches in a play field. Come on. No. I mean, it's really no big deal. It's just mostly a funny talking point. It's funny, but it immediately angered me. I know, I know. So I wanted to cool you down on that real quick.
    27:15
    But, yeah, it's just silly. Yeah, and remember, though, too, like I didn't invent that, remember? Sure. So co-op mode even existed in pinball machines before I did it. Did you know that? What game? They have team play. I don't share. Well, team play is different. Team play is you're just sharing scores. so actual co-op was implemented with lexi light speed on the p3 platform oh interesting that's cool yeah yeah okay so that was already that was already done that was like two years before yeah i think that was probably two years before that yeah yeah and it makes it somewhere in there co-op works really well in tna because it's such a punishing game it's just a great way to play it with new players i know yeah if i'm playing like again if i'm playing tna with my wife if she's not trying to steal my ball locks, we're playing co-op usually. Honestly, it's very, very welcome on that game. Can you describe, I know you just obviously mentioned the Lexi Lightspeed having it beforehand. Was that like a conscious choice because of the difficulty to include co-op on there? Or why you did and what your thoughts are on Sina and Pinball Machines moving forward? Yeah, so what's interesting is I didn't even know Lexi Lightspeed had that on there. Okay, I didn't either. Yeah. So I didn't know about that until after the fact. It's really funny because I'm going to tangent just for a second with Lexi Lightspeed. Lexi Lightspeed also had a timer between the flippers, and I didn't even really realize it. I must have subconsciously noticed that at one point. Yeah, clocked it. Yeah, and then I was just like, you know, it went in my brain. So two things out of that game. Yeah, the co-op stuff was added. And the reason for it that it was added was because I really enjoy the camaraderie of playing pinball with other people. And I wanted to build something more that would bring more people like together. So people aren't just playing solo. Right. If you played TNA by yourself a whole bunch, you might actually just get sick of it. No. And it's like but I mean, really, though, it's meant to be multiplayer. Like it really is meant for people to come together and just be like laughing and cheering for each other and, you know, having a good time with it. So putting co-op on there, I wanted to see how people would react with that, where they could team up to try to get to that final reactor. And it actually was a really good idea. It turned out to be a better idea than I thought, only because people were able to beat the game with co-op all together, like four people together doing it. It just feels so good when you're doing that. And you're cheering like crazy when the other people are playing, right? Dude, co-op pinball in general. So Alan runs a tournament at Wedgehead that's like a cooperative team-based tournament where you add your scores together. And it really just is a fun change of dynamic where you're actually rooting for the people you're playing with. Yeah, you're playing matches, four-player matches on a machine, but they're not your opponents. They're your teammates. And then we use the scores combined to compare to other team scores. But yeah, I just love that. That's why I was immediately hooked on TNA once I discovered co-op. Yeah, and like you said, what's interesting is, for the listener, if you haven't played a TNA yet, again, if you're in the Portland area, we'll have ours out. They get hard, the reactors start off easy with a few shots required to destroy them, and then they require more and more and more and more, and the game is dangerous and forces you to shoot dangerous shots. So the likelihood of you getting to the final reactor gets further and further away. But if you're playing with more players and you're not dealing with three balls, you're dealing with 12, you have a much greater shot at seeing that. And everyone kind of shares in the collective victory or defeat, you know, or the close defeat of like, oh, we almost got there, you know, like, let's play it again. Exactly. Pump more quarters into it. I will say one of my favorite things about TNA's co-op specifically is the fact that it does keep track of who destroyed the most reactors, whatever. It keeps, yeah. Because that's like, there's still the little bit, like, you're still, you're like, we're all rooting for each other. I couldn't, I couldn't do, I couldn't not do that.
    31:22
    I just love that so much because it's like, okay, even when there's a common goal, you're like, well, who can do it better though? I know, but like, but I like totally did that better. Look at this. Like Johnny over here with, you know, zero reactors. Yeah, but I did all the work. I loaded the multiball like every time for you. Yeah, see, it's those fun things. Like the last thing I wanted to say about co-op, though, was like one of the main things that was going through my head, too, when doing co-op was some players are going to be way better than others. and I can't really play a game of TNA against, you know, Andy Bagwell, right? Or Boeing parents, right? I just, I can't do it. Like my skills are not anywhere close to that. But if we did a two-player co-op, dude, it's a lot of fun. You can play with those guys all day. Yeah. And the same goes with like your kids too. Like if you wanted to play with one of your kids or something and it's like they're just, they're terrible at pinball right now because they're still learning, you know, but you're really good. Instead of just sandbagging yourself, you can just do a co-op. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. You're a renaissance man. I think the story's been well told by now, and we try to introduce it. But, you know, you did, truly did everything on your first game TNA. You were making it for yourself. It was a homebrew project for you and your friends to play. But we also know that you said that that project almost killed you and that you'd never try to do everything all by yourself ever again. So which jobs did you enjoy the most making a pinball machine? And which tasks do you find to be the most challenging or tedious or not fun? Yeah, what would you like to do in the future? And what would you like to avoid specifically? The most fun part about that entire thing, the most fun job of that was bringing it to a show and talking with people about it and just being passionate about the actual project and just showing it off. but that doesn't really count that's kind of a that's kind of just a cop-out thing that i just made up but uh the uh yeah no one's gonna pay you to do that fun part the second yeah exactly exactly but the secondary one to that was actually the sound design for me yeah that makes sense that one it was a mixture of it was supposed to be like retro futuristic right so and the music in tna is very highly engineered to uh it's very intentional what it is it it sounds like maybe i just made some techno music and threw it in there but it's actually not it's actually very intentional like a genre the genre is very intentional so i know a lot of people do not like electronic music right there's a lot of people there's a lot of pushback on electronic music in especially the pinball crowd right it's uh you know a lot of people like rock music and they want their metal and they want all this other stuff right so if you're going to make electronic music that isn't going to offend everybody it has to be at a certain speed and it has to not contain crazy annoying sounds that sometimes electronic music does contain right like you could never you could never launch tna like that and have like crazy dubstep from like 2012 like skrillex crap in there that's like screeching and making crazy bass sounds and stuff like people would look at that and just be like what the hell turn this thing off like you know i was gonna say there's another game on the market that uh does have like 2012 kind of uh i wouldn't put it at skrillex quality dubstep in it but uh it came out you know 12 years after that yeah that uh that yeah yeah you want to avoid that that exists that exists someone ran that experiment Someone did do that experiment, yes. But yeah, it's not appropriate. But if you were to write electronic music that had the speed of something closer to disco and had elements of retro synthesizers from like the 80s and 90s and then kind of infused all that stuff. And then I added a lot of techno style, techno as the genre style things in there as well, just sprinkled in. And I just tried to make something that would be more acceptable to everybody. Right. Yeah. I do think I succeeded in that one because I don't really hear too many people complaining about it, which is great. There are people who did complain about it because there are people you will never, ever win over. Right. That's fine. But I think that was I think that was a well, a well done part of it. And that was a lot of fun for me to try and figure that out because I had been listening to electronic music for so long. I've been performing electronic music for so long and I kind of know what different types of audiences like and don't like, which sounds kind of strange. But like this audience, this this this audience group I had to be very careful with. So, yeah, it's kind of like, you know, combining your hobby of making music with like the puzzle of making sure that it doesn't offend people. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, because it is. And I will admit there's a ton of electronic music out there that is offensive. There a lot that people would like you said there a lot that people would not have taken that would have impacted people initial impressions of the game anyway Yeah correct It like I love the soundtrack on that thing And it does a really good job of matching, like, like it creates moments with the sound and light shows in a way that other games do not. So the sound design on that thing is excellent. Yeah, I think people focus so much on like a playfield layout and the physicality of a playfield layout. But like what I got out of playing your games and TNA was the first one was this is finally a guy that understands a light show and understands sound in a pinball machine, making you feel cool when you do something. You know what I mean? Like, because that's such a big part of it. Or making you feel tense. Yeah. I mean, it's one of your senses. It's a sense, right? So in pinball, you have your visual sense, right? Obviously, you're looking at it. You're getting light shows and stuff. You've got your touch sense, right? You can feel the machine. You can feel a shaker motor. You can feel the ball moving. You can feel the flippers clicking. You can feel the pop bumpers hitting, you know, like all that stuff. And then you have your, your audio, right? The, all three of those things have to play together really nicely, you know? Yeah. And sometimes the coil gets stuck on and then you get your, you get your smell. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you can have that too. Yep. Absolutely. It can happen. So which tasks would you say were the most challenging or tedious or what would you specifically like to avoid if you could outsource, you know, one thing? Yeah, I see that you want to know what sucked. Yeah, I gotcha. Okay. The coding, the coding suck. Okay. The coding takes a very long time. I think that pinball programmers, they don't get enough credit, I think, when they have to sit and debug things and create rules that make sense and have it actually work in the game. So shout out to all the pinball programmers out there, but it really is a difficult job. Yes, I can program, but it is not something that I am super proficient at. I'm good at it, but it takes me a long time. It's a labor. It is, yeah. It's one of the tools in your quiver, but it's not the one that you want to use all the time. It's something I can do, but it's not something that I would do as like a job. Right. I would be slow at it. And that makes sense because it's like a lot of homebrews get, you know, they look visually great. They might shoot awesome. And then there's just absolutely like bare bones code in them. Because I think a lot of people hit that point and you're like, coding sucks. And then a lot of guys are like, I just want to build another game rather than finish the code on this one. Seems to be the common thread on the moon. Yeah, but sometimes people really love coding. So there's a whole group of people out there that just really love to code stuff, you know? See, that's why we need to set them up. They need to find each other. Yeah, the matchmakers. yeah exactly yeah the thing too about like using multiple people for that stuff too though is you got to make sure you're in sync like that's the one thing that i believe makes tna so cohesive is the fact that i did the code i did the audio i did the light shows like yeah i did the gameplay stuff right there was like one vision very it's very intentional everything is very intentional in it well yeah i mean it's i know it almost killed you but god damn it that's a fucking an all-time great game like i'm not even afraid to say that like i know you're on the show and you don't know me from anyone else but like i'm not the type to blow smoke like i'm just that's not me like i have been a big fan of your games and tna blew me away and it still does when i play it like i get locked into tna and it'll kick my fucking ass and then i just get i'm just like i'm better than this i'm better than this and it keeps me playing over and over and over again and that's what draws me to pinball i'll play 52 minute games of pinball in a row but if you give me one game where it's a 45 50 minute game i'm pissed like i don't want i get like locked into a long playing modern game i was like what is this why are we doing this who wants this it's like arcade machines right like remember like playing dig dug right you're not gonna play dig dug very long you know it's gonna kick your ass and it's gonna kill you but it's that's the stuff that just makes it so good. And I'll tell you what, too. The 10-year anniversary for TNA is going to be coming up in about two years here. Oh, yeah? I think it's about two years from now. That's kind of nuts that game's been out for eight years already. It's almost been out for 10 years, which is crazy to me. So I'm actually going to put a – there's a brutal mode that's already in the game right now, and I'm going to actually make that even worse. So it's going to start punishing you for missing shots and like doing things, starting to take away ball save time and stuff like that. Just like all sorts of just unfair crap was going to happen. Is the brutal mode, is that like in the settings or can you enable that like by holding the flippers down kind of like co-op or whatever? No, it's not like that. So it's in the settings. So you got to actually like intentionally put that on there. Gotcha. There's a lot of like really quirky little things in there as well. Like you can do one reactor battles with people. I don't know if you've ever done that before. That's a lot of fun. I had that game in my garage over COVID, and so I would play that with my wife. Like, we would do that. Oh, nice. Yeah. Okay, you just set it for, like, you set the end of the game for the first reactor instead of the ninth reactor. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, so then what you have to do is you have to try not to finish too quick because you're not going to have any points, right, if you're playing against somebody. Yep. you want to try to maximize as much as you can and then kill that reactor during multi-ball with three balls. If you can get the add-a-ball going, so you get a four times reactor value.
    42:04
    There's a lot of greed comes in when you start playing like that because then you start getting greedy and then you die.
    42:12
    Yeah, that's great. That's like a very different approach to how you would ever play pinball normally. Absolutely. Exactly. we got to talk about the process of developing final resistance and your game on the p3 multimorphic platform and just how how different it is and i i would just start this off by saying like i got to play this for the first time at expo alex didn't get to play it but i was with johnny crap jonathan bergeron uh the artist you got to play with johnny crap that's awesome i got to hang out with him most of expo and it was the raddest because like it was just like hanging out with a like a cool french canadian buddy who's like really a kick-ass artist and like loves pinball that guy loves pinball it's also funny because he's fairly new so it's like novel to him still and he's and he'll play anything dude i'm just like johnny have you played gottlieb gladiators and he's like no and i was like dude you're gonna love it like let's go play it like we're playing all these weird old spanish games and we're like looking at the art it was super fun but i got to play final resistance with him and like i was like scream yelling when i got the multi-ball like i was so excited and that game made me feel things like all your games do but like that giant mech where the ball fires back at you and like i can't even describe this to somebody that hasn't played it yet it's like a cannon that you load balls into and and there are other games that fire balls at you like iron man has a great kickback shot that i love but like yours is nothing has lightning fast intensity of final resistance yeah it's a it's a knocker assembly in there so it yeah it's got a lot of power we're actually like we're actually a little bit worried about it because it's like if that goes wrong like that can start breaking stuff right if that starts hitting plastics yeah and stuff it's not supposed to i mean we got the uh we got the geometry down on it really nice it just it hits the flipper right in a sweet spot every time but it's very fast very fast it's very fun can you tell us about the p3 platform and designing a game for that and how it was different than your other games yeah absolutely so um for the p3 i had a entire team of people which included a rules designer i had a coding guy who also did rules design as well uh and just like spot checked everything to make sure everything was okay uh i had a full-time engineer at Multimorphic. Wow. They're like, they're staffed up. Freaking outstanding. Yeah. And they've got a, they've got a graphics guy that just like kicks ass. Like, and then Johnny doing art on there. Like I had this whole team. So what I did was I initially just, I laid out everything in SolidWorks for the engineer and I did it kind of quick so that like, you know, cause I know he was going to go through and do a bunch of stuff anyway to it, but I laid out the mechanism uh which i had that mechanism was already designed that was going to be for whatever third game i did i'm like if somebody lets me do an unlicensed theme again i'm like i'm doing this final resistance style thing you're like fucking spaceship that's launching balls as fast as possible like an aggressive spaceship i drove this mech and stuff and i just dropped that onto the playfield aimed it where i needed to go put all the rails in put in the ball paths and everything and all that stuff and then uh passed that over to the engineer and the engineer then just iterated with me back and forth and uh figuring out everything else and he just he brought it like brought it home the shield that goes in front of the ship that blocks two of the shots that are through the ship that one was originally going to come out of the bottom side of the playfield the engineer's like hey man that uh it doesn't really make sense i'm like what are you talking about it's blocking the ship's blocking its shots he goes yeah but if a ship lands on like a parking lot is it gonna like really just like bring out a gate from the ground off the parking lot like it doesn't make any sense he's like we'll make it come out of the ship like from the top down i'm like there's no space he goes oh there's space yeah that's one thing those uh the multi-morphic guys are very good at fitting an unbelievable amount of shit into like an area yeah their game yeah like loaded with pretty nuts so yeah he he made that happen just incredibly like if you take a close look at that thing you're still even looking at it and watching it go up and down like sticking your face by you're like where does that go how does that fit up in there like it's just it's crazy so would you say most of the difference on that project then wasn't even the platform itself it was just the fact that you had like an actual team you were working with for once that was the big thing right so with fuki right it's a smaller company so you have to wear more hats, right? It just, that's the way it is. Like that's, that is just it. But with Multimorphic, they've got a lot more people working on these projects. So you get to kind of offload some of that and work with these other people. Again, that has its own set of challenges because you have to make sure that the overall vision doesn't get lost, right? Yeah. That's still a lot of work for myself, right? Where we're having constant meetings to double check everything and make sure everything's okay and seeing how things fit together. How much do you think that game's still like 99% Denise, you know, like, did it fit your original vision? Is there anything that you're like, oh, they made me make it too easy. They definitely understood. You can feel when you play it. I really could feel when you play it. Cause I played all of the multi-morphic games now at different shows. Like it was immediate. You immediately feel it. You're like, this is a Scott game. Yeah. Just cause like the velocity. And again, it feels like a fight and the gun that shoots back at you. But like, just like the use of like the video of the play field, it's not just It looks slick, dude. It's slick. The graphics guy and Johnny's work on that thing, it looks really cool. It doesn't have the big kind of like stuff that kind of like pops up and down, those like kind of scoops or whatever. It just uses things more sparingly, and it's just – It uses them when it counts. Like that's a big thing that I – that's a big philosophy that I use is just like using things – if you have a piece of technology and you overuse it, it becomes not special. Yeah, like the Rescue 911 helicopter. Yeah, the famous rescue nonspec helicopter. Yeah, it's true. Or the full RGB LEDs in Wizard of Oz, right? Yeah, when everything's rainbow, rainbows are no longer special. Dude, it's like you go to Kohl's, everything's on sale, right? So nothing's on sale.
    48:22
    You know? The Wizard of Oz light show is the Kohl's of light shows. Let's not go there. you know it's used so much that it just becomes less impactful you know what i mean yep absolutely like a cool sale yeah the team that was on that multi-morphic thing as well was just really solid i mean these like michael ocean's doing programming we have bow and karen's making sure all the rules and everything aligned with what the overall vision right making sure that coming up with this stuff and michael was helping them a lot with that stuff you know tj's doing the engineering. We've got Rory doing the graphic stuff. I don't know. It's really cool when you have a team of people who are really, really good and experienced kind of helping you out. And also I'm very good friends with Bowen just in real life. So like he understands how my brain works and he'll step in when something is like, if I'm not saying something properly, but he knows what I'm trying to do, he'll step in and just take care of it, you know? Yeah, that's awesome. anything he's involved with i'm immediately interested in like okay i know i'm gonna like this like rule set usually i want to ask you i want to end this episode scott i want to get inside the mind of a pinball designer i know we've done that sort of but i want to ask you a bunch of quick fire questions just give me kind of quick answers i just want to get to know you and i want people when we talk to designers and stuff and the creative teams of pinball machines i think it's helpful to like not only talk about the work they've done but like the work that inspires them or what they like or what they don't like. And so I just want to ask you, what are some of your favorite pinball machines of all time? If you've got three or four games that you come to mind, games that you're like, this defines me, or this is what I like in pinball. My favorite Stern game of all time is Tron. Yeah, that's awesome. Not the LE version. And the reason for that is because the drop targets actually slow the game down on the left side. So you get less side-to-side action. bounce that gym shot off of them like you did on the stand-ups. I love bouncing that shot. Okay, good answer so far. Tron is really it. It's just outstanding. And my first pinball machine I ever bought with my own money was High Speed. So that game has a special place in my heart. First game I ever bought, too. Was it really? Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah, it was so good. And that sound is so nostalgic for me now that it's just incredible. That explains the light on top of TNA. the beacon yep big fan of the beacon yeah there's lots of little nods in tna you'll see to a lot of different things yeah that's definitely one of them um but those those are really like the ultimate best ones i mean i could keep going on why i like certain games but like that's a good example of like a classic and a modern though definitely and they're they're along the same lines too It's just they're fast, brutal games. I've got my Tron set up pretty difficult. I do not use steel balls in Tron, and neither should anyone else. Always Power Balls. All Power Balls all the time. Always Power Balls all the time in Tron. Yeah, seriously. Just spend the $100 and put the Power Balls in it. So how long should a game of pinball last? When you're designing games, you were talking about this, and, like, Alex and I, we evangelize this on the show. Like, we love hard games. and part of the show is like hey just because the game is hard doesn't mean it's bad no embrace the challenge yeah absolutely that's what makes pinball fun so like we admire short ball times i think you're the same way but i wanted to ask what is your like ideal length of a pinball machine or a game of pinball all right i would say average player five minutes okay right yeah and i would say boeing karen's 45 minutes if you can get him down to 45 minutes you're doing good keep him under the hour yeah well he's got to go to dinner eventually i want to keep him i want to keep him pretty short there is a threshold though where it becomes too short and then it becomes not fun yep it's just so because you don't get to explore at all so there's there's a good balance and that it does change from game to game like rick and morty does have a little bit longer ball times than tna does and final resistance has definitely longer ball times than rick and morty does so gotcha but you know you kind of want to explore it yeah you got it kind of has to match the rule set as well. Any designer from the past or present that you particularly admire and why? It would be Steve Ritchie. Yeah, us too. Yeah, Steve is he's done a lot of really, really innovative stuff over the years. You know, love him or hate him. He's you have to acknowledge all of the crazy things he has done with like short ball times and like flow of games and just creating this he did so many cool things man he like he introduced flashers into games right yeah like flashball like that was like that was him everything man inserts uh you know like locking a ball and calling it a lock and like multi-ball in the solid state yeah good answer we that was our very first episode was talking about him right yeah second episode we talk about steve richie all the time yeah first episode yeah he's a great guy too yeah he's he's And lightning flippers, man. Don't tempt me.
    53:38
    Oh, we love lightning flippers. Yes, we're for them. They're awesome. They're awesome. So what's the pinball golden era to you? If I ask Scott Denise, because I know this is different for everybody. Some people, it's right now. What's the golden era? What decade or what run by a manufacturer does that mean to you? It's going to be Stern, Bally, Solid State era from the early 80s all the way up through about 1992, including Willie James in there too. So System 11 is included in that too. But it's going to be the classic Ballys and the System 11s. And I'm going to group that together because that's like the System 11s were definitely different than the Solid State Ballys. That era right in there where it just evolved into this crazy thing. Yeah, that's the metamorphosis era right there. The system 11 is how everything changed. That's what we're yeah when we travel and go visit other locations We're always looking for spots with pre DMD games because then we know we can actually play multiplayer. Yeah Yeah, if it doesn't have a DMD we can actually play each other on it. So yeah good answer
    54:44
    Next next question is what some of your favorite or standout light shows and pinball from any era they could be modern old light shows whatever you know you kind of think is cool i have two and for different reasons uh the first one is the one that was most impactful to me was the adams family showtime oh yeah dude so that's the biggest one for me and that was i don't know if you noticed and like oh it's iconic it's all like it i don't know if you noticed at all in final resistance did you let the light show play when you started multi-ball oh yeah or did you oh yeah no like i knew i was like i don't get how am i gonna get to play this like i'm like i'm letting it go like i want the fanfare so that was like a little homage to that that and i do really like what jersey jack is doing with their hardware right now if i had to pick something modern they're overdoing it like insanely with the hardware i would love to like get my hands on then just program one light show and just like because because you can use like i don't know if you guys realize this but like the play field itself with the inserts and the gi and everything is a display it's just a very low resolution display well you use that to great effect on rick and morty yeah you use it as a display like with that like panning like red and white on rick and morty right so so that kind of stuff like that's i do like what jersey jack is doing the Wizard of Oz thing was too much for me, but now they're going in and they're using it more. Well, and especially if they got you in there. If you got in there, you got to use their toolkit. I would love to see what you could do with, like, the tiny little, like, they have those little, like, fiber optic almost inserts on, like, Guns N' Roses and shit. You could have, like, full, you could, like, animate movies on that.
    56:30
    You can. Actually, the Jersey Jack logo actually gets projected onto the playfield with the inserts at one game during a track mode. It matches the – wait, look around. Like, next time you see a Jersey Jack game, look around at it. Watch the display. Like, if the LCD has the Jersey Jack logo on it, I think the playfield also has the logo on it. That's sick. I did not know they could do that. Yeah, take a look at that next time. But it's just basically like a – it's just another display. They're just doing a movie player thing on it, which is super cool. That is. Well, the other thing we got to ask the pinball musician is what about sound? What are the standout sound or music packages that excite you? Anything from Chris Grainer to and the soundtrack that's on Tron is really good. The soundtrack on Tron is just kicks ass. Dude, the gym song specifically is just fucking it's so good. It's so good. Yeah. I did replace the actual, like, a lot of the music in my Tron game with Daft Punk remixes of stuff.
    57:33
    So it's not to say that the music that was in there wasn't good. It's just to say, like, I really, really just wanted more Daft Punk in there.
    57:43
    It's outstanding. And even the sound effects and stuff. Oh, yeah. That's great. Great choices. and what do you have as far as like you design both but i'm not really asking from a business perspective but more as a fan and player of pinball do you prefer original ip unlicensed games or licensed of your favorite movie property whatever yeah i like unlicensed stuff just because it gives you more of a chance to explore and learn the license right yeah so what's cool to me though what's real cool is when a licensed theme comes out that I have no fucking clue what it is.
    58:22
    That's, that's awesome. Because then I'm just like, I don't know what this is. Let me explore and figure it out. Right. It's a, I really love the unlicensed stuff, but it does not sell. Yeah, totally. Yeah. If you want to make money in pinball, don't do unlicensed stuff. Yeah. I mean, I think everyone knows that it's just, we're, we're just sort of like, I'm like as a player, like, and that, you know, as a player, I really love it. Yeah, me too. Okay, so next question. Deep rule sets, simple rule sets. What games do you think have the perfect mix or balance? Where's kind of the sweet spot for depth on something? Nice. So I love deep rule sets that last 45 minutes to 40 hours. No, I'm just kidding. I don't like any of that. No, it's the opposite of that. I like the very short rule sets. The more simple rule sets are good because what happens is you're able to make the machine physically harder because you can have that shallow rule set in there. So a good example of this is Cactus Canyon. So Cactus Canyon has a very shallow rule set in it, right? There's not that much going on, but what you do is you take the outlane posts out and then try to get through that rule set. And I guarantee you, you're going to be having some trouble. Scott, I swear to God, this is what I do. I have a monster bash where I pulled the outlaying post completely out and all of a sudden like people are like damn like they can't break 20 or 30 on it you know and they're like what happened and i was like it's a fun game again because it's got a simple rule set you're not gonna just like completely because you're not gonna get to monsters of rock on ball one dude you're gonna like you're gonna have to fight for ball control that's the problem with like a lot of those like classic games that when you've been playing pinball for a while you've just kind of mastered and it's like like when monster bash shows up at a place that I play pinball, I'll play it once and kind of like do everything or, you know, play it one day or whatever. And it's kind of like, I don't need to like touch that for a while again. But when they're hard, you're like, this is good. It's real good. Yeah. It keeps you coming back, man. It's like, uh, it gives you a taste and you're like, ah, I got to get more of this. Come on. Okay. So what are your, some of your favorite playfield max or clever usages of common playfield features that you enjoy, like from the physical aspect of playing pinball all right the best the best mech slash gimmick slash toy whatever you want to call it that ever existed you ready for this it's the missed multi-ball oh my god that's what i say all the time scott my god i'm on the record we're the same person you know what i'm gonna let you actually finish this interview for me oh my god i don't want to talk over you i mean i just Jordan Allen's answer is like beforehand off air. My God.
    61:03
    The synchronicity of that is crazy because I talk about, I'm like, Miss Multipole is the fucking best gimmick in pinball. Dude, it's so sick. It is. It's amazing. Do you remember the first time you saw it? Yes. And like, you're just like, wow, what the fuck? How is it? And you're like, I got to bash that off of there. But you know exactly what to do. It's so intuitive. I have to hit that ball off of that. it's it's a perfect met because it's not it's unintrusive to the rest of the play field it doesn't get in your way it's not like something that's just sitting there blocking all your shots 99 of the time and it's super intuitive but it's just fucking like it's still fun dracula's a fucking perfect game it is a perfect game dude dracula is a perfect game i should have added that to my thing man that was the second game i ever owned in my life man and it was it's amazing it's a fucking good that's a good game it's not about dracula but oh yeah we could yeah we should We should talk about that.
    61:55
    A couple more questions, though. Is there any game that you like that you would consider a guilty pleasure? Dr. Dude.
    62:02
    Yes. Yeah, it's a good one. Yeah. What's it about Dr. Dude? Dude, the Dr. Dude thing is so funny to me because I have a story. So I like the whole cheesy 90s, like, yeah, dude, like, check it out, how hot I am. And the girl's like, yeah, look at you. you know like that kind of like it's just so weird like it's just it's corny it's hilarious it's like it's so over the top and it's like it's like poking fun at this like culture right of like this dude culture or whatever this is right it's like this nerd guy it's iconic dude there's so much stuff like you look in the art the art like greg ferreras did the art on that and it's and you could keep look i mean i have one here and i've had it in my collection for years and I still find little things in there like that are just new that I didn't notice. And the reason for that is like Dr. Dude is a challenging game, right? You can open up the outlines and make it nice and challenging. You don't have to have the extended flippers on it or anything. The cool thing about that is that I was hanging out with Dennis Norbin once. Like he came into Pinball Life and we were chatting and stuff. And I'm just chatting with him and, you know, I'm like, you know, we were just talking about like pinball design and stuff. And I'm like, I really liked what you guys did with Dr. Dude like back in the day. you know and he's just kind of like oh yeah like like what i'm like oh i like how you're like poking fun at this like thing and like you're just being silly and it's just it's really funny and like all this stuff he looked at me dead in the eyes and was like oh no no we were we were serious with that we really thought that was cool and i'm like i'm like i'm like yeah it's that message i'm like come on no way he's like no no for real like we really like that was what was cool i'm like i'm like oh like if you could like if this was a video uh chat like i i got my i'm like oh my god dennis what i'm like okay well you know what i love this game even more now yeah like i don't know how you just did that but you just made me love this thing more it was in earnest he was tommy wiseau dude they were like we're making this shit for real yeah it's incredible yeah man it's fucking awesome yeah greg is awesome we had him on the show he's yeah dude he's good dude so that's uh that's my guilty pleasure game um i have a really nice like brian kelly restored version of it too so that's like something that's like never leaving nice all right and we got another we got the final question on our rundown here is are there any hard no features or rules objectives or max or it's basically the opposite anything that you wouldn't personally do in a game you designed that's common in pinball oh yeah uh selecting your own character at the start is a big no-no that is just too complicated again it comes down to the rule set stuff again if the rules are too complicated where the play field can't tell you what's going on you have failed and this is just my opinion okay like this is like some people really love i agree some people love these games man some people love this crap i don't know but like they want to read a book they want to figure out every little nuance of every little thing here but they want to they they don't learn the game from playing the game they learn the game from reading about the game and i want to avoid that you know like like tna and rick and morty and final resistance even tells you what's going on on the playfield with inserts that's kind of the way pinball supposed to be yeah exactly it's how pinball was right because there were you know you get like a rule card with like four lines of crap on it right yeah and then just play the freaking game dude just try not to collect your bonus right away just wait keep the flippers right so that's a that's like the big the big no for me is having to read a book to understand i can't agree anymore that's why we're big fans of your work yeah i would like to see more modern pinball with that mentality. And it's no surprise that my favorite modern games, everyone else goes, those are shallow and boring. And I was like, I don't know. Yeah, and so there are people out there that like that. Like, sort of raise your wrist, because I fucking know what I'm supposed to do, and it's a fight, dude, and I love it. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, Steve's great. Yeah, we'll wrap this episode up for the first time. We want to thank Scott Tenisi for joining us on another episode of the Wedgehead Pinball Podcast. We appreciate you, Scott, for joining us. it was a... Absolutely. Yeah, this has been a blast. It was a pleasure. Even though it was kind of a waste of time because I could have just asked Alan all the questions. Oh, dude. You could have. Yeah, you could have. I was actually going to turn it over there for a second. I'm just like, man, this is... Like, for listeners of the show, they're going to hear it. They know, our regular listeners. I was like... It's very funny to see you echo... That's funny. ...like, almost all of the sentiments. You're talking about, like, I love Steve Ritchie, and I love Miss Multiball, and I like Shallow Rules, and Ass Kicker Games, and pulling Post out to make a game more fun. Man, I get so much heat when I do that. When I pull out posts, I was like, it's more fun now. And they're like, well, it's more fun to you. It's hard. And I was like, hard is fun. You're like, yeah, well, try and do better at it. This has been great, you guys. Like, it's been really humbling, too. I really appreciate all the kind words you guys have said, too. Yeah, well, we appreciate your work in pinball, both the designs and the work at Pinball Life. Both very, very important to the modern scene. Oh, yeah, so important to the hobby. and for anyone else listening we'll just end this episode go out, play some more pinball that's what we always say, go out and find these machines on location and play them for everyone in the Portland area we will have Alex's Rick and Morty at Wedgehead and we will have our TNA at Wedgehead for you to play by the time you're listening to this we gotta get Tron with glow balls in too oh we can, we gotta Tron not glow balls, power balls ok the $100 investment yeah it does cost $100 but seriously It's $100, and I just don't feel like I could be friends with someone who loves the steel balls in Tron. I have this like – Well, we want to be friends. We want to be friends. And I want to be friends with you, so put those Power Balls in that Tron and let's go. We will. And you'll see. If you've never played a Tron with Power Balls in it, though, it is a surprising difference, like significant difference. and it plays like no joke plays better. I bet. We're going to do it. Okay. So we'll have two. Yeah. I can get two Scott Denise games and one Scott Denise homage of the Powerball Tron, hopefully. Yeah. Oh, yeah. We can make that all happen for sure. Well, thank you. Loyal listeners for listening until next time. Good luck. Don't suck.
    68:54
    and alex wants to ask you about your evo because he's a car guy yeah we just the episode got long i got good news and bad news the good news is the evo was built up exactly how i wanted it and it was all done. Yeah. And it was like 700 horsepower 4G63, right? That seems like a grenade to me, but that's what I was curious about. Well, the good news is it didn't grenade. Okay. The bad news is I sold it. Oh. Yeah. Because it's an Evo III. So it was super rare. I wasn't using it enough. It was built exactly like finished the way I wanted it done. I got professional pictures taken of it i moved it on to the next owner it was honestly just worth too much money yeah like i can't afford to like have something like that in my possession that i a don't use and be like just have like well and then also maybe afraid to ruin yeah if it's done and you like tinkering with things i wasn't really afraid no i i'm not usually yeah that's another thing that i didn't say during the podcast i'm not afraid to use my games but that offends people when I talk about that. Dude, that's crazy to me that people, when you go into like the, we don't need to like focus too much on the show about like us bitching about other people in the hobby, but it's insane to me how guys will be like, you can't play with rings on and shit like that. And you're like, are you fucking insane? I know, dude. Like, dude, don't even wash your hands and play my game. I don't care. Like, just like a funny story though, is I bet Tron that I got. Yeah. I picked up, so this is my second Tron because I sold one because I was a dummy. Yeah, we all fuck up sometimes. And, you know, so I picked up another one and I found a really nice one in this guy's house. And I'm like, dude, I looked at the play field on it. I got it in like 2021 or something. And it's at that point, it's like, what, 10 years old? Yeah. Right, came out in 2000. Yeah, 10 years old at that point. I look at it and I'm like, this play field, it's like brand new. I'm like, what the hell? Did you play field swap this thing? He goes, oh, no, no, no. It's the, that's the original play field. I'm looking at the scoop hole and there's like no wear on it. I'm like, this is just weird. That's weird. I'm like, it looks really good. He goes, oh, yeah, yeah. He goes, yeah, no, I don't play my games. I was going to negotiate, but I got to get out of here. Like, let's get this thing loaded and let's. You're like, we're on different sides of this hobby, I think. He's like, don't you want to, you know, play it? I'm like, nah, I'm good.
    71:33
    I know what I'm about. I know Tron. I'm good, dude. This is like. It still has steel balls in it. I don't play a Tron with steel balls. like yeah it's yeah it had steel balls in it what was i gonna play it it's a waste of time i popped open the service menu just to see how many plays were on it and it only had 50 lifetime plays on it holy shit that's insane you need to play your freaking game you're playing the game like once every three months could you imagine like owning it for 10 years and then just that's fucking insane times that's disturbing most of those were like his grandkids or his kids playing it like flipping it around i'll put 50 games on my grand prix in a night yeah dude we'll just play grand prix over and over or your big game over and over oh my god those spinners oh big game yeah guys how about frontier huh oh we got a frontier scott you gotta make it out to portland dude you would love you would love my bar portland's on my oh my god damn it portland's on my list i just haven't made it happen yet so hey we'll throw you a big party i have to go to Portland. We'll throw you a party.