Transcript
Speaker: Thanks for tuning into the loser kid pinball podcast.
Speaker: Take three on episode 88.
Speaker: I am Josh Roop with me.
Speaker: My co-captain is always Scott Larson.
Speaker: Hey, and Scott, before we get to our awesome guest today, let's talk about our sponsor.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Uh, flipping out pinball.
Speaker: If you have that pinball machine or accessory that you are looking at contact Zach and Nicole, many flipping out pinball.
Speaker: Um, they've always been great to work with, uh, been able to get the accessories I want.
Speaker: I have some art blades that I need to install.
Speaker: and I've bought some shooter rods from them in addition to the games I've bought from them.
Speaker: So go ahead and hit them up if you have any questions.
Speaker: They'd love to help you out, especially with a topper.
Speaker: Oh, you and your toppers.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: Toppers are great.
Speaker: Hey, I also want to say thank you to them because they are helping us out with our flip in the script on autism.
Speaker: They are one of our sponsors that have stepped up to donate some product and whatnot to help out those kids at Learning Solutions with early intervention with autism.
Speaker: We want to thank also Stern and Multimorphic, Haggis.
Speaker: There's a whole slew of them.
Speaker: Brad with Lit Frames.
Speaker: They've all stepped up to help us out.
Speaker: We want to see you there at Pinball Expo here October 19th through the 23rd.
Speaker: We hope to see you there and give you some sweet swag.
Speaker: Why don't you go ahead and introduce our guest today, Scott?
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Today we have a designer who burst onto the scene with his first game that was basically a homebrew, but because of fan interest was able to come into a production game.
Speaker: And this is Scott Denisi and burst onto the scene with total nuclear annihilation, but has since...
Speaker: help make Rick and Morty even designing it.
Speaker: And so now he is with us.
Speaker: And so we want to welcome to the show.
Speaker: Hi, everybody.
Speaker: Nice to be here, guys.
Speaker: Now, Scott, you wear a lot of hats.
Speaker: So you're a pinball designer.
Speaker: You're also a DJ.
Speaker: You also still work at Pinball Life.
Speaker: What other hats are you wearing right now?
Speaker: Oh, man.
Speaker: The problem is I just I do too much.
Speaker: And I mean,
Speaker: Sometimes I need to settle down.
Speaker: But yeah, so aside from my day job, which is pinball life, where I do the technical stuff over there, whether it's, you know, mechanical, electrical engineering, I'll even do stuff like help out with tech support.
Speaker: help out with sub-assembly or whatever needs to be done.
Speaker: I basically do that because it's a small business.
Speaker: But besides that, which is the nine to five, everything else I'm doing, I moonlight.
Speaker: So whether it's making audio for a new VR game that we're working on or working with Multimorphic doing audio, but it's mostly I'm just doing a ton of audio right now.
Speaker: It seems to be a really fun point for me at the moment.
Speaker: Well, it's funny, too, because there's a lot of people in the pinball industry that are like musicians getting out of music to get into pinball.
Speaker: But you're almost like doing the opposite.
Speaker: You started out in pinball and you're like gravitating more towards music now.
Speaker: Tell us more about that.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, that's great.
Speaker: So really, I started writing music back in 1996 when I was in high school.
Speaker: And I started experimenting with electronic music and writing some really junky stuff.
Speaker: Sounds terrible.
Speaker: I actually found some of it the other day and I need to delete it.
Speaker: It's really bad.
Speaker: But, you know, I've been doing that as just a little side hobby for so long.
Speaker: And when I started getting into pinball, I said, well, hey, maybe I can take this other side hobby and smash them together and see what happens.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So when I built Total Nuclear Annihilation, I just started
Speaker: said, hey, let's see how crazy of a soundtrack I can make that's still acceptable to the normal pinball person, right?
Speaker: And we got the TNA soundtrack and I'm actually very, very proud of that, how that turned out still to this day.
Speaker: Now, tell me about what inspired you to build TNA.
Speaker: There's a lot of people who are like, yeah, I'd be interested in building.
Speaker: But with you working at Pinball Life, that gave you an advantage that a lot of people don't have and that I would have no idea what parts even make up a pinball machine.
Speaker: But you're well aware of this.
Speaker: So at what point did you say, you know what, I'm going to try making my own game?
Speaker: Yeah, so that's another really great point is I had all these industry connections prior to doing this.
Speaker: And what I did was I said to myself, I was like, hey, you know, I've been working with Jerry Stellenberg and building up this homebrew community for years at that point before I started working at Pinball Life.
Speaker: And I was like, you know, I'd never actually built an entire pinball machine from scratch.
Speaker: I have just been dabbling in rewriting code for previous games.
Speaker: I'm just kind of playing around nothing that I would distribute to anybody.
Speaker: But I got to the point where I was like, you know, there's, there's new games starting to be created, right?
Speaker: So Wizard of Oz had just hit.
Speaker: And, you know, that was doing really well.
Speaker: And I look at that game.
Speaker: And I'm like, there's so much in that game.
Speaker: I'm like, it's, but it's not really the type of game that I personally want to see.
Speaker: So I'm like, you know, I'm going to build a homebrew.
Speaker: of what I personally want and what I think my closest friends would play dollar games with me on.
Speaker: And I said, I need, you know, just a simple single level play field.
Speaker: It's gotta be very brutal.
Speaker: Uh, so that ball times are very short, you know, just other little wacky things.
Speaker: I need to put the latest and greatest technology into it so I can run full RGB with including the GI.
Speaker: Um, and, um,
Speaker: So, and then I'm like, well, now I need to program it and I want to make sure that I use the RGB differently than what Jersey Jack was doing.
Speaker: Cause at the time Jersey Jack was just blasting rainbows on everything all the time.
Speaker: And I get it.
Speaker: Cause wizard of Oz, that makes complete sense.
Speaker: But I was like, Hey, that's like, you overuse something to the point where it doesn't actually become effective anymore.
Speaker: You're just like, great, you know, rainbows and cool.
Speaker: The lights can do all that stuff.
Speaker: But yeah,
Speaker: if I wanted to trick people into thinking it was a normal pinball machine when you started,
Speaker: and then use the full RGB sweeps and crazy explosions and stuff that are on the actual play field and in the light shows as something that would really have more of an impact.
Speaker: So that was like the main driver for like the light show generation on it.
Speaker: Then I also needed something that I thought sounded really good and something that I wanted to hear.
Speaker: So I threw in my own music that I created from scratch for that.
Speaker: But yeah, it was like a lot of that stuff.
Speaker: So really that high level, that's really why I decided to make that game.
Speaker: And really, I just wanted to bring it places and share it with people and play dollar games on it with everybody.
Speaker: You're going to steal all their dollars, huh?
Speaker: Well, you know, it's funny because I am not a good pinball player, but I am average enough that I can win sometimes.
Speaker: So losing a few dollars here and there is no big deal.
Speaker: But I got a lot of satisfaction out of losing dollars to people on TNA.
Speaker: That was worth the dollar to me.
Speaker: Now, remind me, wasn't, I don't know if I'm remembering correctly,
Speaker: At the pinball Olympics, wasn't this on the turntable?
Speaker: It was this year.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: This, uh, or this past pinball Olympics.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So 2021.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, yeah.
Speaker: Just in case the game's not hard enough, uh, add it spinning at the same time as you are.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's, that's pretty rough.
Speaker: So I would say that this soundtrack is probably revered as one of the best soundtracks in pinball, especially for original score.
Speaker: I doubt there's one I can think of that is higher.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: Has it been hard because you've recently, you did music for Weird Al and then you did it for Rick and Morty, I guess, vice versa.
Speaker: Has it been harder to deal with licenses than doing your own jam or is it kind of easy because you get kind of a template to work off of?
Speaker: Oh, absolutely.
Speaker: So that's a really good question because there's I was actually very scared working with the Rick and Morty license because I always thought the worst.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I thought like, hey, I'm going to remix one of their songs for the main theme.
Speaker: And it's got to be energetic at times and, you know, halftime at other times.
Speaker: I'm really nervous about sending this over to them and having them having to like make a ton of revisions, like feel bad about it.
Speaker: But I sent it over to Adult Swim and they just thumbs up approved it right away and didn't have any feedback whatsoever for any of the music that was in the game.
Speaker: And that goes for the sound effects too, which is just incredible to me.
Speaker: I think I just got lucky though, because I've heard horror stories of other things.
Speaker: And yeah, I'm going to go with luck.
Speaker: Let's go with luck on that one.
Speaker: Well, luck and skill, I guess.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So with Rick and Morty, though, you went a different level.
Speaker: You're like, you know what?
Speaker: I've done a street level game.
Speaker: I'm going to put some ramps in.
Speaker: So how was that different doing a more modern take?
Speaker: And you also put a pop bumper down in the danger zone.
Speaker: So that was interesting.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, yeah, the pop bumper thing is just crazy.
Speaker: When I started designing the game and Charlie told me that we could get the Rick and Morty license, that's when I said, okay, well, I need to actually create a chaotic game.
Speaker: And how am I going to actually do that?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So I wanted it to have, I wanted the low ball times again, and I wanted to create more chaos.
Speaker: So I actually put, I was like, well, I'm going to try and put a pop bumper somewhere weird again, because I love where I stuck it in TNA.
Speaker: It just, it's not very typical right there for modern games.
Speaker: So I went really extreme with it.
Speaker: And I was like, I'm going to replace one of the slingshots with it and just see what happens.
Speaker: And really it's, I didn't think it was going to make it to production because it was kind of a joke.
Speaker: I was like, ah, let's see, you know, let's see what I can get away with here, you know?
Speaker: So I cut the first white wood and we powered up all the stuff.
Speaker: I threw a P3 rock system in it so I could actually power up the slingshots and the pop bumper and the flippers and everything.
Speaker: And I'll tell you what, it was really fun and it actually worked.
Speaker: It was out of the way enough where it didn't intrude on the lower Italian bottom stuff.
Speaker: And it was neat because it was actually sending the ball upward on the play field and you could actually have it make shots for you.
Speaker: So we decided that it was a go.
Speaker: It was great.
Speaker: And then at that point when we said, hey, let's push this forward more, keep it in the whitewood, I still only gave it like a 50% chance of getting in the production game because I didn't know how the general public was going to react to it.
Speaker: So that was a big key because remember, like I have to make a game that will sell for Spooky, right?
Speaker: Like if I made something too crazy and people just didn't want to, you know, accept it, right?
Speaker: That could hurt Spooky's bottom line really on that game.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: I was a little bit worried about that, but every single person that I've had play it who are very trustworthy friends of mine who will absolutely tell me something is not good.
Speaker: They all played it and every single one of them said they loved it.
Speaker: So I was okay, I guess, pushing it to production.
Speaker: You know, Charlie loved it too.
Speaker: So it's a whole thing there.
Speaker: It's pretty crazy, actually.
Speaker: Well, and when we talked to you at Texas Pinball Festival, you told us like everyone sees that TNA is a love letter to like early solid states.
Speaker: But what a lot of people don't see is that Rick and Morty is kind of a love letter to System 11 games.
Speaker: Was there any games that kind of stood out to you that kind of helped influence you making that game?
Speaker: No, you're 100% right, though.
Speaker: So no specific game, but Rick and Morty, if you were to look at that and just take a glance at it at a high level, that's a System 11 game with an LCD screen on it.
Speaker: Really, I wanted it to still be retro and simple and not really take the ball away from you too much.
Speaker: And I don't really like tons of cluttered playfields.
Speaker: So I tried to keep it as clutter free as possible.
Speaker: I know I got a lot of heat for that though.
Speaker: I mean, people wanted toys and stuff and more things all over it.
Speaker: And I understand that that's like something that people do like, but again, I was kind of, I was kind of building in half for me again and then in half for everybody else at the same time.
Speaker: So I kept it pretty stripped down.
Speaker: But Spooky did end up putting some, some toys and things in there for production.
Speaker: But yeah, it's a System 11 game.
Speaker: And I love System 11 games.
Speaker: I've had a majority of them in my collection over the years.
Speaker: So that's the last game that you have, or at least designed, that is in the public.
Speaker: Do you have other things in your development cycle, I guess?
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: So I have tons of ideas, but I'll tell you what, designing a game in your spare time is very, very difficult to do just because of how much goes into it.
Speaker: Because if I design a game, I'm going to want to do the audio.
Speaker: I'm going to want to do all the sound effects.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And that's a full time job right there.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And then I'm going to want to go and make sure the rules are correct.
Speaker: And, you know, like the, the rules designers kind of staying within what, you know, what I would want.
Speaker: So it's a huge job.
Speaker: So like, I have to, I kind of want to take a break on it and like relax for a little while.
Speaker: Do you just do audio and then we'll see what happens, but I do have tons more ideas.
Speaker: I'm not giving up on anything.
Speaker: And yeah.
Speaker: It just dawned on me.
Speaker: I don't know why this clicked in my mind, but does that mean you made Rick and Morty?
Speaker: Obviously, TNA was a home project thing.
Speaker: We all understood that.
Speaker: But Rick and Morty, you were still working at Pinball Life, so I assume it was all not on the side, but kind of after work, right?
Speaker: Nights and weekends.
Speaker: It was nights and weekends.
Speaker: I was moonlighting that entire project.
Speaker: Holy crap.
Speaker: It kills you.
Speaker: You've got to be really careful not to do too much because you miss out on life, you know?
Speaker: So how was it doing sound for Weird Al?
Speaker: Because it's already a musician.
Speaker: How do you go in and say, I'm going to add to what you've already made?
Speaker: Oh, yeah, that's fun.
Speaker: So all of the music that is in Weird Al was taken from different generations of his albums, right?
Speaker: So there's a really broad spectrum of music from his early career and his later career.
Speaker: All of it was mastered differently.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So different like loudness levels and like all sorts of crazy stuff, like different EQ settings.
Speaker: So the first thing I did was I went through and I remastered every song that we're going to use in a modern style of mastering technique where it's very loud.
Speaker: It's very compressed.
Speaker: It sounds really good on pinball machine hardware.
Speaker: And that was the first thing I did, which took a bunch of time.
Speaker: But then I said, hey, we have we have some like open areas that we need some music for.
Speaker: So I was able to create music from scratch in the tone of Weird Al, which is like which is really fun for me because his music is so quirky and and and it varies so much.
Speaker: So it's like.
Speaker: Yeah, it was really interesting.
Speaker: And I think if you listen to that high score music on there, you'll see it just, it fits right in with the rest of everything else going on.
Speaker: But I did write that from scratch.
Speaker: I was going to say, it all sounds like it was made from Weird Al.
Speaker: So you obviously did a really great job of matching his style.
Speaker: Because I played that game, we played it a handful of times at TPF, and there was never once where I played it and was like, this doesn't sound like Weird Al at all.
Speaker: This must have been Scott, you know.
Speaker: Well, most of it is Weird Al.
Speaker: So I wrote two songs for that.
Speaker: And it's, let's see, the two songs, the high score music was something I wrote from scratch.
Speaker: And there's also, I believe they used it in Drink from the Firehose, but I could be misrepresenting that.
Speaker: But they used another one of my tracks there.
Speaker: Did you get to talk with Weird Al at all?
Speaker: I didn't.
Speaker: I wish I did.
Speaker: That guy sounds like it would be really fun to just like chat with and talk about just music stuff or just life in general.
Speaker: You tell Jerry that needs to be in the contract next time.
Speaker: If we're making a license for you, at least get to come down and meet all the people on part of the project.
Speaker: I know they should have had Weird Al come in to the actual like fly into Austin and be like, just meet with everybody.
Speaker: I would have flown down there for that in a heartbeat.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: I'm sure he's on tour, though.
Speaker: Actually, the crazy thing is that you knew Weird Al was valedictorian, right?
Speaker: No, I did not.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So the guy's crazy smart.
Speaker: And I just find it funny that he decided to do his to do his career in basically joke songs.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, he's a smart guy.
Speaker: He's also does like anyone you ever talk to about Weird Al is always talking about how he's just such a nice guy and how he just, you know, does all this really charitable stuff, which is really great.
Speaker: So may we ask you, you said that you have other developments in the pipeline.
Speaker: Is some for Spooky, more for Multimorphic?
Speaker: As of right now, I am just helping Multimorphic with some things.
Speaker: But the main project that I'm working on now is actually not confidential, which is cool.
Speaker: It is an official soundtrack for a VR game.
Speaker: This VR game is coming out on Steam and Oculus and all the VR platforms at the end of the year.
Speaker: And I'll also be releasing an album with my record label.
Speaker: I'll release that entire album on there, which is interesting because that album is an official soundtrack for the game, but it also contains some of my prior work.
Speaker: that has not been yet released on an album.
Speaker: So it has some stuff from TNA in it.
Speaker: It has some things.
Speaker: There's a song called Silver Falls that's going to be on that official soundtrack, which I actually wrote for a homebrew project.
Speaker: So I got that going on there, which is really cool.
Speaker: But it's like 12 tracks.
Speaker: And yeah, that's going to come out later this year.
Speaker: So that's the main thing.
Speaker: What kind of game is this?
Speaker: Is this like Guitar Hero or something?
Speaker: It's called Arcade Legend.
Speaker: So it's like a, it's a game where you go in, stick your VR headset on, you go into an empty arcade, you find the keys to this arcade and you go in, you clean it up, you buy some games, you throw them in there, you maintain them, you like,
Speaker: You could set everything up and configure your arcade exactly how you want it, like put couches over here, like, you know, all the really cool stuff.
Speaker: It's mostly redemption things, but it has things like, you know, like, I don't know.
Speaker: It's just all sorts of really cool stuff in it.
Speaker: But you can also invite your friends in to play games in your arcade and win tickets, and then you win the tickets and you can go buy virtual things in the actual, you know, inside the game.
Speaker: Hmm.
Speaker: So are these going to be like licensed games inside your arcade?
Speaker: Licensed games.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, they're absolutely licensed games.
Speaker: Yeah, it's a legit operation.
Speaker: Most of the games right now are licensed from LAI Games.
Speaker: It makes a ton of different redemption games that I'm sure you've played.
Speaker: There's like a less balanced game.
Speaker: There's like a...
Speaker: I forgot the name of the thing is, though, but it's a basketball game.
Speaker: There's a like speed of light, which is like a thing where people like you have to hit all the like the big wall of buttons in front of you and you have to hit them when they light up as fast as you can.
Speaker: Is it like Chuck E. Cheese where you go to a redemption center and you get like a Chinese finger trap or a frog jumper?
Speaker: Oh, absolutely.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And but in this case, there's other things you can buy to inside the game.
Speaker: So there's a jukebox in the game and you can actually buy the tracks from the official soundtrack with your tickets and put it in your jukebox and have it play for people.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: How did that happen?
Speaker: Like, do you start putting out your information and say, hey, I'm an artist.
Speaker: I know how to write electronic dance music.
Speaker: How does this work?
Speaker: Because I would have no idea.
Speaker: Yeah, it's all about the relationships that you make.
Speaker: So in VR, I became friends with somebody who was on the team of that game, and they were going to actually just use like...
Speaker: You know what you can get like unlicensed songs or royalty free music.
Speaker: You just kind of pay for it and you can just use it however you want.
Speaker: But then again, so can anyone else.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So you'll you're not hearing any unique songs you can hear.
Speaker: You'll be able to hear those at other, you know, in other games or something.
Speaker: So it's like art, but stock music.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: And he was like, you know, I love what you did with TNA.
Speaker: And they're like, would you be interested in talking about doing an OST for this game?
Speaker: And then, you know, it just kind of happened that way.
Speaker: So it's it's cool.
Speaker: Like, you never really know what life's going to throw at you, you know.
Speaker: So what's been your favorite project so far?
Speaker: My favorite project.
Speaker: Oh, man.
Speaker: Let's see.
Speaker: There's so many crazy ones.
Speaker: Probably just the TNA thing, though.
Speaker: Not favorite because of how many years it took off my life, but because of stress and stuff.
Speaker: But it's my favorite because it's the most I think it's the most well received of the projects that I've done.
Speaker: Now, you're still a child of the 80s.
Speaker: You're very much influenced.
Speaker: You still, I believe, drive an MR2, correct?
Speaker: Oh, no.
Speaker: So I don't have a Fiero.
Speaker: Oh, it's a Fiero.
Speaker: That was really an 80s.
Speaker: But I actually got rid of that in 2020.
Speaker: I sold that.
Speaker: And I picked myself up Mitsubishi Evolution.
Speaker: I don't even know what that is.
Speaker: It's the rally car version of the Lancer.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So it's an Evolution 3 from 1995.
Speaker: So it's an old right-hand drive only made for the Japan market type of car.
Speaker: So it's super cool.
Speaker: It was a former race car in its days, and now it's a retired race car that I just care for.
Speaker: Okay, so it's super cool.
Speaker: What inspired you to buy that?
Speaker: I mean, I've never even heard of this, but it feels very early 90s.
Speaker: It's like, yeah, it's if you can pull a picture of it, my Instagram is a picture of me standing in front of the car, actually.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: So the the reason I really like those is because back in like around 2006 ish,
Speaker: I got my first real job out of college, like a real deal career job with a trajectory.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And I said, I'm going to treat myself and buy myself my dream car, which was a Mitsubishi Evolution.
Speaker: And that was a brand new 2006 Mitsubishi Evolution.
Speaker: It's a very fast rally car and I loved it.
Speaker: I drove that for many years and I ended up getting rid of it and got something more practical because of the... I'm like, I'm going to keep breaking this thing.
Speaker: I can't daily drive this thing.
Speaker: It's just, you know, it's like a race car.
Speaker: So I ended up selling that and getting something more practical.
Speaker: But then, you know, it just kind of ate at me over the years.
Speaker: Like, man, I should have just chucked that car in a storage unit and just forgot it was even there, you know?
Speaker: So it came up locally.
Speaker: One of my friends actually had the Evo 3, which is the third generation of the Mitsubishi Evolution that was not supposed to be in this country.
Speaker: And it became legally titled and he's like wanting to sell it.
Speaker: So I ended up, you know, trading him some pinball machines and sold the Fiero and picked it up.
Speaker: So it's really cool.
Speaker: And it's just been a real fun thing to tinker on.
Speaker: I had a fast car for years.
Speaker: It was a Lexus 300, you know, IS 300 and it was fun.
Speaker: But one day I was driving it and I hit black ice on the freeway and I spun around like eight times.
Speaker: And thankfully I didn't crash into anything, even though the freeway was full of cars.
Speaker: And I just said, I can't drive a rear wheel drive car here.
Speaker: There's too much inclement weather.
Speaker: So recently it was announced that there's going to be like a TNA 2.0 coming out.
Speaker: Can you shed some light on that?
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: The first thing is, is that I think we should stop calling it TNA 2.0 because that 2.0 designation means different.
Speaker: It is not really different.
Speaker: It's a rerun of TNA.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I am planning on doing a code update, which has some just minor little things in it here and there.
Speaker: But because there's some things I have to fix, I want to try and fix the score bit integration, making that more seamless.
Speaker: I wanted to put a new multiball in it, but I don't know if it's totally fun.
Speaker: And it might take away from the actual, you know, original code.
Speaker: So I'm probably, I don't know, that's up in the air right now.
Speaker: But it's a TNA rerun.
Speaker: So Spooky is going to rerun TNA.
Speaker: And the differences are going to be that it's going to be in the normal TNA cabinet.
Speaker: But the LCD is going to have the flip down LCD screen that they used on Rick and Morty and newer games.
Speaker: Mostly because the flip down screen is really handy to get in the back box and it kind of angles the screen back a little better, makes it look nice.
Speaker: But they're going to load this thing up with all the really cool mods.
Speaker: I think they're going to put, I don't know the exact mods that are in there yet, but I do know it's confirmed.
Speaker: We're going to put green, those fluorescent green protectors on it just from the factory with the translucent drop targets.
Speaker: And we're going to have those lit up from the factory as well.
Speaker: So, yeah, that's I think it's also we're going to have the upgraded shoot again display, too, which has extra LEDs on it to give more give more light show stuff.
Speaker: So, but yeah, it's really just a rerun.
Speaker: There's been enough demand where people want to still purchase the game and haven't been able to find a used one.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: So can you retrofit any of the new stuff that you're talking about on the original run of TNA?
Speaker: Oh yeah, it's all bolt-on stuff.
Speaker: Yeah, so nothing that's going to be on the TNA rerun game is, it's nothing that you can't bolt onto the original.
Speaker: It's basically just a rerun of the original again with just the stuff installed prior for you, so you don't have to deal with it.
Speaker: Okay, cool.
Speaker: So how does that work?
Speaker: I mean, I know with licensors, if you want to run Stern ran Iron Man Vault editions for about 20 years after they made it.
Speaker: So how does that work with Spooky?
Speaker: Did they have to contact you and say, hey, we want to license some more games?
Speaker: Or do they just have free run to make as many as they want?
Speaker: How does that work?
Speaker: Yeah, so it's really quite simple.
Speaker: I own all of the IP for Total Nuclear Annihilation.
Speaker: So something like if Spooky wants to rerun again, they just, they contact me.
Speaker: We have a contract that says they can just run as long as we both agree, they can run more of them when they need to or want to.
Speaker: And they just contact me and we license it out and they run it.
Speaker: Yeah, it's pretty good.
Speaker: And I just keep helping support it.
Speaker: So with the rerun, does that mean they'll be making more games?
Speaker: So will TNA become again, the most ran game at spooky?
Speaker: Oh, I'm hoping so.
Speaker: I really hope so.
Speaker: I hope there's demand for it to tell you the truth.
Speaker: Um, but we'll see.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I think what, what was the run of Halloween?
Speaker: Cause that one, that one, the initial, like,
Speaker: most run games so that's uh it wasn't a 1250 i think because i think they did 500 ultramans and 1250 of halloween so i think it was 17. yeah so 1250 yeah i don't know um i hope there's demand to blow that number out of the water but i don't know and i don't know the plan for spooky whether they're going to limit it or not uh they haven't yet announced and made anything superficial so
Speaker: That was going to be my next question.
Speaker: If they were going to limit it or if they're just going to keep running until they stop.
Speaker: I would keep running that until you couldn't.
Speaker: Yeah, I would.
Speaker: That would be very smart to do that.
Speaker: I don't know if that's what they're going to do, though.
Speaker: So we'll see what happens, I guess.
Speaker: Okay, so the art on TNA, I know you've talked about this before, but remind me, I mean, it definitely has a retro 80s feel.
Speaker: So in addition to writing the game, you also had to basically write the story and you basically also had to serve as art director to say, how do I want this to look?
Speaker: So tell me more about all of that.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: So I had to do everything on that.
Speaker: So I came up with the story first.
Speaker: I then started building the white wood and art was the last thing I wanted to touch.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So I just, I wanted to get this game fully going white wood with music and everything, and then let the art flow afterward because in my brain, I truly think that's the proper way to do a pinball machine.
Speaker: And I kept seeing John Papaduke put the cart before the horse with, he's like blasting art on these play fields that aren't even done yet.
Speaker: And it's like, what a, I keep seeing this.
Speaker: I'm like, what a waste of time.
Speaker: You know, I got, I, I'm going to show people like just with, by doing this, that this is the way to actually build a pinball machine, which most people understand, I guess, you know, Stern definitely knows that.
Speaker: So I left it to the complete end on that art.
Speaker: And I got to work with Matt Andrews as I am not a good art director, as I've learned.
Speaker: And Matt Andrews has, he had saved myself many times during this project by saying, like just saying, hey, Scott, stop.
Speaker: We're going to, let's think about this for a second and do, how about this way?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So it was really great actually working with him.
Speaker: And if I remember correctly, your wife is the inspiration for the girl in the game too, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So my wife really put up with a lot while I was working on that project and I wanted to get a little nod to her.
Speaker: So I gave Matt just a picture of her and said, Hey, when you draw the main character,
Speaker: if you could make it sort of look like her and it would be just kind of sealed into this piece of pinball history.
Speaker: And it, you know, I thought it was I thought it was just a nice gesture for everything she had to put up with.
Speaker: So, you know, that's quite the love letter.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: Do you have the translate hanging in your house somewhere?
Speaker: I don't actually, because I have the machine.
Speaker: So I don't feel like I'm very limited on art space.
Speaker: So I like to try and keep it as, you know, as diverse as possible.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I hope you're happy because it's ruined my relationship now because the poster hangs on my wall.
Speaker: I told my wife the story.
Speaker: She's like, why don't you do that for me now?
Speaker: Yeah, see, that's the – so I probably shouldn't – you know what?
Speaker: Hey, let's just go back.
Speaker: You can just – you just change what I said.
Speaker: Just change it with one of those AI things.
Speaker: I'm just kidding.
Speaker: No, I think it's awesome.
Speaker: If I could, I'd do it.
Speaker: Well, it captures the feel of the 80s, which unless you grew up or at least experienced it, you can tell when someone from Hollywood tries to set something in the 80s, but you're just like, there's something not quite right about the feel of that.
Speaker: There's two things to that, actually.
Speaker: And I think I can probably shed some light on this.
Speaker: There's actual what things looked like in the 80s.
Speaker: And there's the retrofuturistic version of the 80s that we all think of.
Speaker: And TNA is the retrofuturistic version, which at the time, this retrofuturism thing for the 80s was just starting to gain mainstream popularity.
Speaker: It's everywhere now, as you can see.
Speaker: I've got a shirt with Stern's logo on it.
Speaker: It's in that retrofuturism thing, and it's one of my favorite shirts.
Speaker: It's great.
Speaker: That style is not really the 80s, though, if you think about it.
Speaker: It captures the feel of the 80s, but it's not.
Speaker: From the 80s, and I have pictures to prove it of myself opening presents on Christmas Day.
Speaker: The 80s looked real...
Speaker: Brown.
Speaker: Yeah, brown.
Speaker: Like the couch with the flowers on it.
Speaker: That's what I was about to say.
Speaker: What about the TV?
Speaker: The TV was stuck with siding, like wood siding on it.
Speaker: Wood paneling.
Speaker: Wood paneling on the walls.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: It wasn't even quality wood paneling.
Speaker: It was like fake wood paneling.
Speaker: Yeah, it was like the really cheap, like particle board with a wood paneling finish line.
Speaker: With a veneer, and if you put a piece of tape on it, it would rip off.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: No, absolutely.
Speaker: Well, the funny thing is I've seen those memes.
Speaker: There's like what everybody thinks the 80s are, and it shows like all basically this color splash, everything.
Speaker: And it says what actually the 80s were, and it shows the TV on the ground with the Nintendo, the NES in front of it with a light gun.
Speaker: and the floral couch and the shag carpet.
Speaker: And we had, we had orange carpet.
Speaker: It was ugly.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Ours was like beige-ish brown color and it was like long.
Speaker: It was like, it's just kind of, you wouldn't see that in a house today.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: So here's what you need to do with the rerun of TNA.
Speaker: Keep doing the futuristic one, but run an 80s edition where it's like the brown ashtray on top of the pot bumper.
Speaker: The brown ashtray from McDonald's.
Speaker: McDonald's ashtrays.
Speaker: McDonald's ashtrays.
Speaker: Oh, I remember those.
Speaker: Those are awful.
Speaker: I wonder how much those cost on eBay.
Speaker: Hold on a second.
Speaker: I think I might need one of these for my bar down here.
Speaker: The tagline says it's brown.
Speaker: McDonald's ashtray.
Speaker: Let's see if it's affordable.
Speaker: It is terrible.
Speaker: I want the glass one.
Speaker: It looks like they took a beer bottle and made it into an ashtray.
Speaker: Yeah, it's a beer bottle.
Speaker: It's a beer bottle color.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, there's some.
Speaker: It's $18.
Speaker: That's a still of a deal.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm not seeing my, man, they even have these disposables.
Speaker: I just find it amazing that if you tell kids, yeah, when we went to restaurants, because they have all these clear clean air laws, which are great now because I don't like smelling like smoke.
Speaker: But I mean, that's, that was unheard of.
Speaker: It's like, Hey, which section do you want to sit in the, the designated smoking section or the non-smoking that still smells like smoke?
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: It was really gross.
Speaker: And I remember there was a specific time where they outlawed smoking in bars, right?
Speaker: And I could go to a bar with my friends and come home and not smell terrible.
Speaker: It was really like, it was a weird thing.
Speaker: Like the next day you'd be like, oh, you'd take your clothes and you're like just chucking them in the hamper and like closing it and getting it out of there because it smells like cigarettes.
Speaker: But yeah, that it's a, it's a thing that it doesn't exist anymore.
Speaker: Well, they don't, they don't allow smoking in bars here.
Speaker: I don't know where they do.
Speaker: I guess they probably do somewhere.
Speaker: Vegas.
Speaker: The only time I really smell a lot of cigarette smoke is in Vegas because everybody has to chain smoke while hitting the penny slots.
Speaker: Yeah, but you can do almost anything you want in Vegas and it's just...
Speaker: They claim what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but the STD still comes home with you.
Speaker: Oh.
Speaker: You know, don't they wear diapers in Vegas too?
Speaker: Like some of the people, like, and they sit at the slot machines because they don't want to get in.
Speaker: Yeah, that is a level of commitment I'm not interested in.
Speaker: Oh, man.
Speaker: Yeah, just sitting there.
Speaker: Like, imagine, like, not being able to leave your station, right?
Speaker: Because you're like, okay, this is going to be the one.
Speaker: This is going to be the hit.
Speaker: You're like, oh, man.
Speaker: I don't even want to.
Speaker: Yeah, forget it.
Speaker: But if you do go down there, so...
Speaker: people from utah really go to mesquite or windover which is like the mini vegas is it's like i i don't think a lot of people go to mesquite they basically drive through like mesquite is the very ghetto version of vegas and and windover is not even that it is like an outpost it feels like an abandoned saloon town it's old folks home of vegas is mesquite yeah
Speaker: But that's probably why I was going to say that's why they're all wearing diapers at the slots is because there's a lady smoking a cigarette while having her oxygen bottle right there.
Speaker: She's like 60, 70 years old.
Speaker: Isn't that an insane fire hazard too?
Speaker: Oh, yes.
Speaker: That's just crazy.
Speaker: Trust me.
Speaker: When I worked at the VA, you'd see people out there with their oxygen tank and their pole standing in the rain smoking.
Speaker: I'm like, something's going to happen.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Okay, so what are you looking forward to now?
Speaker: Like what is on your horizon other than the, like, what are you looking forward to in pinball?
Speaker: Not necessarily what you're personally doing, but is there something in pinball that gets you excited right now?
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: So I, as crazy as it sounds, I am really excited to see what Multimorphic does with that platform.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Multimorphic got a big, they got a lot of publicity from the Weird Al game.
Speaker: And it's just going to push those guys who are a very smart team of people to do some crazy things with that platform.
Speaker: I know still there's a ton of people that are just, they don't accept it yet as a pinball machine.
Speaker: I'm wondering just, I want to see what happens, you know?
Speaker: So I'm excited to see what some of the most smart people that I know can do with that.
Speaker: Because they're driven.
Speaker: It's something Jerry and the team over there are really, really driven to try and make that platform, just get it out there to people.
Speaker: Well, and I hope they get some recognition this year too.
Speaker: Because let's be honest, I guess there hasn't been a ton of games released this year, but of all of them, Weird Al's up there.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: They did a really great job with Weird Al.
Speaker: Yeah, it's a, that was a really fun project too.
Speaker: It's, uh, it's neat to, to see the team kind of working on this stuff.
Speaker: And, uh,
Speaker: You know, it's a lot different from when I was doing stuff at Spooky because of how much I had to do.
Speaker: And it was to be able to just have access to watch the development team do their thing and then just be like, okay, well, I'm just going to do sound, right?
Speaker: And that's really all I need to function and like worry about, right?
Speaker: And it's really neat to see that, you know, instead of just running around all over the place trying to get everything done.
Speaker: Okay, so speaking of that, since you've actually seen behind the scenes on Multimorphic, did it give you an itch to try your own?
Speaker: You know, I've got ideas, but I don't yet have them completely fleshed out.
Speaker: Do you think a Multimorphic project would be easier or harder than doing our traditional pinball?
Speaker: I think that, and honestly, I don't know.
Speaker: I think from a complete dev perspective, right?
Speaker: Like if I were to try to build a pinball machine completely from scratch on the multimorphic platform, I think it's gonna be much harder because of all the video assets.
Speaker: And this is only for me personally, because I don't know how to properly create video assets, right?
Speaker: So it's just something I would have to work with someone else to do
Speaker: It's like black magic to me, man, how these people do this awesome video stuff.
Speaker: So don't know.
Speaker: A traditional pinball game, though, is extremely hard as well because there's so much that has to go into it mechanically as well.
Speaker: There's nothing really pre-made for you.
Speaker: the multimarfic system has like a pre-made, you know, flipper assembly that slides in, right?
Speaker: And it pre-made like side target assemblies and upper flipper assemblies.
Speaker: So you just build on top of that, right?
Speaker: But it has so much more dev on the software side.
Speaker: The other thought I had to, sorry, so I'm straying away from that, but we first met you at Pinball Olympics in Chicago at Pinball Expo last year, which I must say is one of my highlights to the whole trip.
Speaker: Weren't you part of one of the madmen that made some of those machines up there?
Speaker: So, so most of it was made by my buddy, Jay.
Speaker: I did help him with a few of the events, but mostly I help him with just running the thing and getting people excited.
Speaker: And, and, you know, I wrote some software for, for pinball Olympics that we use to keep track of the scores to make everything easier.
Speaker: But yeah, I did help build a few of the machines, but mostly it's Jay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's the mad scientist.
Speaker: You got to get him on the show one time and pick his brain.
Speaker: Oh, definitely.
Speaker: Because those machines are crazy.
Speaker: They're insane.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, just like looking at, I think it's Quicksilver is one of them.
Speaker: It's a narrow body game in a wide body machine because of the way that it spins and stuff inside the cabinet.
Speaker: Yeah, Shifty Quicksilver is what it's called.
Speaker: Oh, yes.
Speaker: Yeah, it's it kind of like pivots in the center and just kind of like shift side to side, like rotate side to side.
Speaker: Just to mess with you.
Speaker: If you want to try, if you want to experience physics on a pinball machine, you that you never dreamed of go to pinball Olympics this year at pinball expo, because you're going to see some crazy stuff.
Speaker: It's worth the drive.
Speaker: It's worth the drive.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So when you're at pin pinball life, now you are on the,
Speaker: Hey, I'm an average guy.
Speaker: I'm calling you.
Speaker: I don't know how to fix my machine.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So from your standpoint, what are like the top five things that you wish people understood about pinball?
Speaker: And what are some, what are the top five products that you're like, you know what, if you are working on your own machine, you need to have these.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So the main thing that I feel bad, so I feel bad when this call comes in, you're ready for this.
Speaker: This is the top one for me.
Speaker: They say, Hey, I don't know much about pinball.
Speaker: I can do basic soldering.
Speaker: I'm like, great.
Speaker: Like my coils, my flipper assemblies were like, you know, kind of sluggish.
Speaker: So I replaced the coils on my flipper assembly and they put, you know, they wired it backward for the diodes.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Or they put diodes on something that didn't need diodes and they had them on backwards and it just,
Speaker: And what happens is when that, that may be, you know, it's really not that big a deal because you can put it in there and then they're, they're not really doing anything too crazy.
Speaker: But the problem is when that diode is backwards and you don't know what you're doing with that, uh, it blows up the transistors on the actual board on the driver board and.
Speaker: telling somebody who can barely solder, who doesn't know how diodes work, that a piece of their circuit board now needs to be replaced.
Speaker: And the problem is it's their fault, right?
Speaker: It's like, there's nothing that we can do to say like, Hey, that's going to work in your game or not, unless they call for a suggestion.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So I feel terrible when that happens because they usually have to call a service tech and it ends up costing them so much money.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, so that's, that's probably the number one thing.
Speaker: We get a lot of, we get a lot of calls just from random people, just asking how to, how to install some of the kits that we have because the most people will throw away instructions.
Speaker: Really?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like an M. Oh, I do it too.
Speaker: I'm not saying I don't.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So I, I get a piece of Ikea furniture and I really don't feel like looking at the instructions.
Speaker: I want to try and figure it out.
Speaker: It always ends badly.
Speaker: OK, so is there a I'm looking at Pinball Life right now and I see I see a knocker assembly for Stern machines, which I thought was interesting.
Speaker: Is there one that works with Beatles?
Speaker: Let me see, like that one should actually it's a Spike 2 game.
Speaker: Because it says Sam.
Speaker: Oh, that's a Sam knocker.
Speaker: There's a spike knocker.
Speaker: Oh, is there?
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Because I got that the other day when I was playing Beatles.
Speaker: I'm like, ah, you cannot get a fake knocker in Beatles.
Speaker: It has to be like the old school...
Speaker: Yeah, if you type in like spike knocker, it comes right up.
Speaker: And it's just a little kit that installs in there and it puts a real knocker in there for you.
Speaker: Oh, yeah, there it is.
Speaker: It's actually really cool.
Speaker: I drew up and engineered the board and the hardware for that kit completely.
Speaker: Oh, there you go.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I hope Stern's not too mad at me for that, but it's just something that really needed to happen.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I hope they realize it.
Speaker: I just hope they realize I'm doing it on good faith.
Speaker: Like I'm not doing this to like try to screw them over or anything like that, but it's just, I just hope they, they know that that's a, it's just a needed thing.
Speaker: Hey, legitimately, I thought my first machine was Simpsons and I had it for a few years.
Speaker: And I finally was like, what is that sound?
Speaker: I had no idea because I was so new to pinball.
Speaker: And I finally emailed them.
Speaker: I'm like, what is this terrible sound that happens occasionally on the game?
Speaker: They're like, I think it's the knocker.
Speaker: So I was like, oh, OK.
Speaker: So once I turn that off, I'm like, oh, so much better.
Speaker: That's the first thing I do every time I set up a machine is turn off that that annoying fake knocker.
Speaker: yeah absolutely well if you've ever had someone that has never really played pinball before and they come over for the first time and they're playing it and i always have my replay set up as extra balls because i figure if you're playing good enough to get to the replay you should at least earn something since you're not on location and and that knocker goes off and people like i think i broke it what's wrong with the circuit i think i blew a speaker what's going on
Speaker: I've had that same thing, man.
Speaker: Like my doctor dude has the loudest knocker I've ever heard in my life in it.
Speaker: And it scares the crap out of everybody.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So what are some of the things you're like, okay, if you are going to assemble your pinball workbench, what are some of the products that everybody should have?
Speaker: Oh, first of all, fuses, because every time you buy a machine, it's always a fuse.
Speaker: So just overfuse everything.
Speaker: No, I'm just kidding.
Speaker: Don't do any of that.
Speaker: So, yeah, the fuse joke is something pretty funny, though.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Some viewers will get it.
Speaker: Some viewers won't.
Speaker: Anytime they say, this pinball machine doesn't work, it's probably just a fuse.
Speaker: It's probably just a fuse.
Speaker: I'll take $10 off.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: You're like, but what caused that to actually break?
Speaker: This is what I would do.
Speaker: I would get your workbench needs to have some of each coil sleeve that goes in a pinball machine.
Speaker: You need to have, depending on the era of machines, you should probably have a couple of rebuild kits, but usually I would just buy the rebuild kits like as I needed them.
Speaker: Um, the reboot kits contain end of strokes, which is an older games, those end of strokes, which is blow out like crazy.
Speaker: Um, so, and they're super cheap and easy to replace, like just, you know, saturing into things and screwing it back in there.
Speaker: Um, so yeah, the coil sleeve is number one.
Speaker: Um, but you should also have, uh, you know, I, I have coils in my toolbox, but I don't need them.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: And this is like low level.
Speaker: So I'm forgetting like the really common things like rubber, like having a complete set of rubber just there.
Speaker: So if you break a flipper rubber, you can replace it immediately.
Speaker: What else am I missing?
Speaker: Just standard cleaning supplies, extra pinballs, that kind of stuff.
Speaker: And ping gulps.
Speaker: You got to put ping gulps on all your stuff.
Speaker: Oh, yes.
Speaker: Shameless plug.
Speaker: I actually, I mean, shameful, shameful.
Speaker: I tell people all the time when they ask of them, like the first thing you need to do is get something for people to put their drinks in because otherwise they're going to put them on your game.
Speaker: Yeah, forget that.
Speaker: And it's angled, so they're just about ready to fall over.
Speaker: Yeah, it's great.
Speaker: Did you see the new pingulps that we came out with in the past year?
Speaker: Can't you take them off?
Speaker: It's the 3.0, right?
Speaker: Yes, the 3.0.
Speaker: Yeah, those are crazy because they're actually really cheap.
Speaker: So they're better and cheaper, which is crazy.
Speaker: The only reason we still sell the original pingulps in the pro version and the premium version, whatever we call them, I forgot.
Speaker: But we sell those because people don't like to have non-matching pingulps in their game room.
Speaker: Oh, yeah, I can see that.
Speaker: Yeah, but the 3.0s are the way to go.
Speaker: I actually swapped all of mine out.
Speaker: I just gave all my pingulps to Jay for the Pinball Olympics and just...
Speaker: Yeah, just put all 3.0s on there because if I'm climbing between games, I need to pull them off real easy.
Speaker: Yeah, actually, I probably need to do the same thing.
Speaker: But I am neurotic and I probably will replace them all together too.
Speaker: I'm looking at these and now I need to get some, they're only 10 bucks a pop.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And they'll go on sale too.
Speaker: When we do, uh, when we do like the October, uh, like expo sale where like everything on the website goes like super cheap.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: They get down to like seven or eight bucks.
Speaker: If not more, I don't know.
Speaker: They're cheap.
Speaker: So I want to bring up one project that you don't, I don't know if you talk about much, but, and I don't know if many people know that you did this, but you found an earth shaker and like redid it from kind of like a software ground up.
Speaker: Didn't you?
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So earth shaker.
Speaker: So I stumbled across, I found earth shaker, the prototype number two.
Speaker: So it was the second game built.
Speaker: And a friend of mine had it and he restored it with like a clear coated play field and everything.
Speaker: And he, um, he was looking to get rid of it.
Speaker: So I traded him like a fun house for it or something.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And I went through it.
Speaker: I'm looking at this thing and I'm like, ah, it's so cool.
Speaker: It's a piece of history, right?
Speaker: It's like got all these prototype ramps on it and the prototype building and like all the right prototype, everything on it.
Speaker: And, uh, then I was like, I hate the music in this game.
Speaker: like legitimately hate the music, but I like the gameplay.
Speaker: And so I said, I am going to reprogram it.
Speaker: So I got a P-Rock and a P-Rock adapter board and wired the whole thing up in there and then started digging in and rebuilt the software completely from scratch for Earthshaker.
Speaker: It is very similar, but it has different music.
Speaker: It has expanded rules on it.
Speaker: And I posted that software online for people to use as reference.
Speaker: And that is still up there to this day.
Speaker: I don't have that airshaker anymore.
Speaker: I ended up selling that pre-pandemic.
Speaker: I think someone in Michigan has it or Florida.
Speaker: I don't know exactly where it is right now.
Speaker: But yeah, I took this prototype Earthshaker that was beautiful and I, in this prototype playfield and screwed an auto launcher into it.
Speaker: You know, people were not super happy with what I did to it.
Speaker: But again, I gave that whole machine something to be even more special now that it's the only one in existence.
Speaker: Definitely.
Speaker: And if I remember correctly, didn't you actually take the back glass off so that way you could, like you had like a plexiglass trans light.
Speaker: So that way you could just go into it.
Speaker: It was straight tempered glass.
Speaker: I put a piece instead of the back glass, I pulled the back glass out and wrapped it up real nice and set it aside.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So I didn't like break it or anything, but I put a clear piece of glass in there and then cut out some vinyl that said earth shaker aftershock on it.
Speaker: And then what I did was I put some LED strip in the back box so it lit up the circuit boards so people could see that it was not like it had a P rock in it and it had this crazy adapter board and an alphanumeric converter board and stuff like crazy stuff that did not exist in the game before.
Speaker: And I just I could I could make that LED strip change colors programmatically.
Speaker: And it was really cool.
Speaker: So that project was a lot of fun.
Speaker: That was my first time writing pinball code completely from scratch, from the ground up.
Speaker: Well, and if I remember correctly, didn't you have your wife also redo some of the lines and didn't you redo some of the lines as well in there?
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I everything was redone, by the way.
Speaker: So it was like, again, this is a complete from scratch build.
Speaker: So I had to have someone record the vocals and my wife actually did that for me.
Speaker: And let's see what else I didn't write any of the music, but I did do all the sound effects for it.
Speaker: All the music in that game was actually just ripped from other artists that I really liked.
Speaker: But since I wasn't selling it or giving it away even, it was fine to use that as a fan project.
Speaker: So what inspired Earthshaker?
Speaker: Was it just availability?
Speaker: You had the option of doing it?
Speaker: It was.
Speaker: Really, it was just because I had this game and I also just hated the music so much that I needed to redo it.
Speaker: So it really just comes down to that.
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: We're kind of running up into you're going to be going live here shortly to hang out with your pay phone.
Speaker: I am.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So that's a that's a whole nother.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Tell us about your pay phone, because we were talking about offline and I think it's awesome.
Speaker: Yeah, so I actually have a restored payphone that is installed in my basement right on my bar that is hooked up to my landline, which I still have.
Speaker: I had to call and reactivate my landline because I didn't have one.
Speaker: And the lady on the phone, you should have heard her, she goes, you want to do what?
Speaker: I'm like, I want to add a landline to my account.
Speaker: She's like, why would you want to do that?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like everyone's just getting rid of the landlines.
Speaker: I'm like, well, I got the Comcast modem here and it has a landline output on it.
Speaker: Just, just activate that for me.
Speaker: And I finally convinced her to do that.
Speaker: And it ended up saving me $20 a month, actually.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: We actually have a landline and it's the same thing.
Speaker: It's like with Comcast, you pay 10 bucks a month on top of whatever you're doing.
Speaker: Yeah, but it saves you like $20 a month by bundling it together.
Speaker: Yeah, we have it because we still have, you know, we have young kids who don't have their own cell phones.
Speaker: And we're like, you know, just in case they need to pick up and call 911.
Speaker: But yeah, it does.
Speaker: It does come in handy about every year or so when a company from 1992 asks for a fax and you can send it.
Speaker: That's funny.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So the pay phone, like, yeah, so it's actually hooked up.
Speaker: I have a, uh, I have a piece of radio, old radio equipment that taps into the phone line, which, uh, allows me to send my voice and the caller's voice, uh, through an XLR output into my audio gear.
Speaker: So I'm going to tonight spin up my Twitch stream and
Speaker: I'm going to post the number online, which is really risky to do.
Speaker: And I'm going to just talk to anyone who calls in.
Speaker: Obviously, I can hang up on people.
Speaker: There's no dump button.
Speaker: And I've already set it up to where if anyone calls that number with like star six, seven, remember that how it blocks it?
Speaker: It will automatically never even ring the phone.
Speaker: So it doesn't even tie the line up.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: And I do have a caller ID on it.
Speaker: So if somebody calls in and does something stupid, I can I'm going to have my laptop up in front of me.
Speaker: So I'll be able to block the number immediately and it will just never come back.
Speaker: So we'll we'll see what happens.
Speaker: It's really risky.
Speaker: I could get kicked off Twitch tonight.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: But I do know it's going to probably be entertaining.
Speaker: I think it's worth the risk.
Speaker: I think it's worth the risk too.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I'm actually going to do that in an hour.
Speaker: I've got one hour.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So I do have time for food and I do have time to kind of prepare for that.
Speaker: I've got a really crappy camera angle, which looks like a camcorder sitting on a countertop that is going to be pointed at me and the phone, which the, which the guys are actually looking at right now.
Speaker: Cause I kept my, it looks great.
Speaker: It really, if you grew up in the eighties and you had to call your mom from the arcade, this is your phone.
Speaker: Yeah, it's great.
Speaker: I'll have the pinball machines on in the background too.
Speaker: There's two of them over there that are in the camera view.
Speaker: So we've got Big Lebowski and Tron, which are two great games.
Speaker: Okay, yeah, actually, we didn't even talk about that.
Speaker: What is in your collection right now?
Speaker: Yeah, let's go down.
Speaker: Here, I'll go down.
Speaker: I'm going to look.
Speaker: I'm just going to read them off, right?
Speaker: So I'm going from left to right around the room here.
Speaker: Big Lebowski, that's the actual prototype number one, first game ever built by...
Speaker: by those guys.
Speaker: I've got a Tron, which I call Powerball Tron because it only has Powerballs in it and it will never have steel pinballs in it ever again.
Speaker: Because if you play Tron with steel pinballs, you're cheating.
Speaker: Seriously.
Speaker: And it's awful.
Speaker: It plays awful with steel pinballs in it.
Speaker: Go put four power balls in Tron and I'll tell you what, you will never ever want to play with steel pinballs in there again.
Speaker: That's hilarious.
Speaker: I'm going to have to tell my buddy who bought my Tron to try that.
Speaker: Yes, please do.
Speaker: And spread the word because it's absolutely important.
Speaker: So going over this way, we've got obviously a total nuclear annihilation, which shouldn't surprise anybody.
Speaker: That one is the, that's the first one that was built by the guys.
Speaker: It doesn't have a serial number on it.
Speaker: The serial number is just Scott, which is kind of cool.
Speaker: So when, you know, eventually one day when I pass away or something, someone's going to find that and find serial number Scott on it and it's going to, they're going to be excited.
Speaker: Next to that is a Rick and Morty with the serial number Scott as well.
Speaker: I have no idea when that was built.
Speaker: I think that was built like halfway through the run.
Speaker: I have a Bride of Pinbot 2.0.
Speaker: And then a multimorphic P3.
Speaker: And then the Dr. Dude that's over there and a Revenge from Mars, which is one I just picked up recently.
Speaker: You know, my Revenge from Mars played a Revenge from Mars at my friend's house and my wife thought it was awesome.
Speaker: She's like, they should have made more of these.
Speaker: This is really cool.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And actually, the reason I got it was because it was my wife's favorite game.
Speaker: And I had one a while ago.
Speaker: It was like the third game I ever bought way back in the day.
Speaker: And my wife really loved it.
Speaker: And when I sold it, she was actually upset.
Speaker: And I didn't realize how significant that was until later on, because she doesn't really like pinball.
Speaker: She just tolerates it and goes, ah, whatever, you know.
Speaker: Um, but, uh, when I talked about getting another one again, she actually was like, Oh, I'll actually play that.
Speaker: I'll come down and play that.
Speaker: So I'm like, okay, well, it's a done deal.
Speaker: Does it have the LCD conversion too?
Speaker: It doesn't, this one's all original and it has a bright tube in it still, which is really crazy.
Speaker: That is crazy.
Speaker: Cause I, I do like the LCD conversion because the other ones I've played, uh, just the CRT is, is, is boxed.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: And that's really common.
Speaker: I got really lucky with this one, which is why I hopped on it.
Speaker: The lines on that game are so classic.
Speaker: I love that game.
Speaker: Oh, they're so ridiculous.
Speaker: I thought of picking one up.
Speaker: I mean, I have Attack from Mars and I love it and it would just be fun to have both of them.
Speaker: Oh, absolutely.
Speaker: Yeah, like the funny lines too, like there's a little scene where like the alien's like massaging the girl in a massage parlor and he goes, I need you.
Speaker: Yes, to need, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, to need the K, right?
Speaker: It's like, she like turns around, ah, yeah.
Speaker: One of my favorites is Clinton was still in office.
Speaker: It's while the aliens are ducting everything off the white house lawn.
Speaker: And he says like, take my wife.
Speaker: Just don't take the secretary.
Speaker: Save the interns.
Speaker: It's so terrible.
Speaker: No, it's, it's funny.
Speaker: It's all, but yeah, no, I get it.
Speaker: It's done in a way that's not like disrespectful either.
Speaker: It's just, it's just silly and funny and everyone laughs at it and everyone loves it.
Speaker: It's it.
Speaker: It's really, really well done in that game.
Speaker: Don't take the car.
Speaker: That's the chick magnet.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's like funny.
Speaker: Oh, I need to get another one of those.
Speaker: It's been years since I've had one, and they're such a good game.
Speaker: And I'll tell you what, too.
Speaker: There's something, like, sorry to interrupt you, but, like, there's some really cool thing going on with Revenge from Mars right now.
Speaker: There's a guy out of the UK named Jim Askey who has expanded on the actual code in the games, and he'll send you, like, you buy, like, this little kit from him, and you plug your computer into Revenge from Mars, and you can update the code to, like, this new code that he's working on right now.
Speaker: He's like, he's actually unlocked unused voice call outs and stuff that are in the game ROMs that are not used in the game.
Speaker: I'll have to get that link from you because my friend has one.
Speaker: And Josh, you still have yours, right?
Speaker: Or did you sell it?
Speaker: I sold mine to buy attack for Mars, but I am actively looking for revenge for Mars right now.
Speaker: So it's such a cool game.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I do know where there's another one for sale right now in Chicago, but that's a little far.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: I know a gentleman that owns a couple of them, actually, because he owns a pinball company here in Utah.
Speaker: So I might have to call him and harass him because he's always like, yeah, if you ever want one of these, you call me.
Speaker: I don't think he's a fan of them.
Speaker: I don't know if it's because they're heavy or what it is.
Speaker: Yeah, probably because of that Prism card is scaring people.
Speaker: But, you know, what are you going to do?
Speaker: Yeah, well, it's such a good game.
Speaker: It really is.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: My vote is play it till it dies and then figure it out later.
Speaker: Well, I think that pretty much wraps it up for us.
Speaker: Is there anything else you want to tell us, Scott, before we hop off and wrap it up?
Speaker: No, I think that's pretty much it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We got to get you the 2.0 Loser Kid hat.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: I can't remember.
Speaker: Do you have the original?
Speaker: I don't think I do.
Speaker: I don't think I have any Loser Kid stuff.
Speaker: You don't have that one?
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I do not have that.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So we've run into you twice and we never gave you a hat.
Speaker: I don't have a hat.
Speaker: At all.
Speaker: Yeah, no, we need to get that to you.
Speaker: Because you actually wear hats too.
Speaker: I do wear hats.
Speaker: Actually, I grew my hair out during that COVID thing.
Speaker: And I was going to cut it off and donate it.
Speaker: But now I'm just waiting.
Speaker: I still got long hair right now.
Speaker: It's crazy.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: But yeah, I wear hats like only, I don't know, 25% of the time now.
Speaker: I used to wear them every day.
Speaker: We'll make sure it can fit in your man bun.
Speaker: Perfect.
Speaker: It can stick out the back.
Speaker: It's fine.
Speaker: We'll definitely be up there for Expo.
Speaker: So worst case scenario, we'll bring you a hat at Expo.
Speaker: That sounds perfect.
Speaker: Well, if you want to get a hold of us, actually, before you get a hold of us, if you want to get a hold of Scott outside of his pay phone, because that's happening in an hour, and by the time we release this, it'll probably be done.
Speaker: So you could go watch the Twitch stream, the VOD.
Speaker: Well, we'll see if there's a VOD.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: If someone wants to get a hold of you, Scott, how do they do it?
Speaker: You can go to my website.
Speaker: That's the best way to do it.
Speaker: Just scottdenisi.com.
Speaker: There's a contact form on there.
Speaker: You know, like my email is not hard to figure out if you know what my website is.
Speaker: I'm sure you can probably guess it, but that's another way.
Speaker: You know, so the yeah, so that's probably the best way to don't contact me through Facebook because it's I just don't look at that very often at all.
Speaker: But, you know,
Speaker: Yeah, websites, the website's the way to go.
Speaker: And that's scottdenisi.com.
Speaker: Scottdenisi.com, yeah.
Speaker: But it's awesome.
Speaker: I'm here now.
Speaker: I'm looking at this.
Speaker: This is pretty cool.
Speaker: Not many people can say they have their own website.
Speaker: Yeah, I just had to have a place for all the random crud that I do.
Speaker: You know, there's a lot of reference material and like blog posts that I wanted to just make sure that that information didn't die.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So the website's the best way to do it.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: And this is a cool looking website.
Speaker: Go check it out, everyone.
Speaker: Even if you're not going to contact them, at least go there and check out this website.
Speaker: There's a TNA code there too.
Speaker: You can download that.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Well, if you want to get a hold of us, we are LoserKidPinballPodcast at gmail.com.
Speaker: We're on all the socials, Facebook, Twitch, Twitter, Instagram, all at LoserKidPinball.
Speaker: We've kind of simplified it to make it more simple for everyone else.
Speaker: Other than that, what do you got for us, Larson?
Speaker: You know, I'm just really looking forward to more stuff coming out and I'm really looking forward to getting my rush fixed.
Speaker: So that's what I'm looking forward to.
Speaker: But I'm also looking forward to really Expo.
Speaker: That's my next big thing.
Speaker: So about four months away.
Speaker: Yeah, same here.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And, uh, and Simon, four months away, we're, we're in the middle of July.
Speaker: It's going to be here.
Speaker: We need to get close.
Speaker: August, September, October.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We're, we're three and a half months, if that.
Speaker: So, Hey, Scott, do you still need one of these for your, uh, uh, for your,
Speaker: See that?
Speaker: Okay, so check this out.
Speaker: Actually, I installed an Alpine.
Speaker: By the way, for those who don't know what I just showed, I have an old cassette with the adapter line in.
Speaker: So all the people who bought a car from the 80s that still had the cassette, but they had to convert it to CDs, that's what you'd hook up your CD player to.
Speaker: All right, so I got a quick statement about those.
Speaker: So I had in the Fiero, I had a working tape deck, right?
Speaker: And that was all I had.
Speaker: I had FM radio, working tape deck, AM radio didn't work too well.
Speaker: So what I did was I just, I have a collection of cassette tapes
Speaker: and I would just pop those in and listen to them.
Speaker: And a ton of people were like, hey, let me give you this thing and you can plug your phone into it and then you can listen to anything you want.
Speaker: And I had to keep reminding people that that's actually not the point.
Speaker: Like that actually ruins the experience of being stuck with a tape and having to listen to every song on that album.
Speaker: When you have too many options, you aren't as satisfied with the outcome that you pick.
Speaker: What happens though is it basically has iTunes killed albums.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like very few people actually put together a great album start to finish now because they only focus on one or two singles.
Speaker: And then a lot of other filler stuff because it's so easy to hit next song, next song, next song.
Speaker: But a lot of the songs that I've grown to appreciate on those older albums were songs that took me a while to really get into.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: And again, there's a whole study that happened with this thing with jelly beans, right?
Speaker: They would walk out with two options of jelly beans and ask people, like, do you want lemon or do you want coconut?
Speaker: And people would be like, oh, well, I'll take lemon, you know, and they eat it, right?
Speaker: They get to pick one, right?
Speaker: And after they'd eaten the jelly bean, they say, well, how satisfied are you with your choice?
Speaker: And they're like, well, very, because I like lemon and I don't like coconut as much.
Speaker: So there you go.
Speaker: And then they did the same experiment again with like a hundred different flavors of jelly bellies, right?
Speaker: And so then they're like, okay, pick one.
Speaker: And everyone's like looking around.
Speaker: They're like, well, I don't know.
Speaker: I mean, I like apple, but also...
Speaker: You know, the marshmallow one's pretty good or this and that, you know, it's like and they'll eventually settle and pick one.
Speaker: And then they say, well, how happy are you with your choice?
Speaker: And they're like, well, not not entirely.
Speaker: I should have picked the lime one because I, you know, I kind of got overwhelmed and I didn't lime would probably have been better.
Speaker: You know, it's like you get overwhelmed with options and cassette tapes are an amazing way and vinyl too.
Speaker: It's an amazing way of listening to music and being more satisfied with what you're listening to.
Speaker: You're a more captive audience.
Speaker: Yeah, you are.
Speaker: Well, this is actually this is what Costco actually zeroed in on is that you there's a paralysis of choice.
Speaker: So if you go into Costco, you have like two or three options for one thing.
Speaker: You don't have like 10 or 20 options.
Speaker: You basically is like you want ketchup.
Speaker: Here's the Costco ketchup.
Speaker: And they found that they sold a lot more that way because if people had like five choices, then they're just like, I don't know which one to buy.
Speaker: And so sometimes they wouldn't even buy one because they just didn't make a decision.
Speaker: Yeah, it's crazy.
Speaker: I feel like this should be a title for the episode.
Speaker: Pick your jelly bean.
Speaker: Pick your jelly belly.
Speaker: Well, thank you, Denise, for coming on.
Speaker: I really appreciate it, man.
Speaker: We've, we've wanted to have you on for a while now.
Speaker: This just worked out perfect.
Speaker: Uh, we, we are so excited.
Speaker: Like you are some of the fresh blood in the industry and we have just loved your games between TNA, Rick and Morty, uh, and I guess the sound on weird Al, uh, hopefully you can get to a time that, uh,
Speaker: You can make another love letter to maybe an era of pinball machine.
Speaker: And then we'd be looking forward to that too.
Speaker: So absolutely.
Speaker: Thank you again for having me on.
Speaker: It was really fun.
Speaker: Thanks, Scott.
Speaker: Shut up and sit down.
