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Ep 37: Talkin' Turtles with Dwight Sullivan
41 Plays5 years ago
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is the hot new reveal and we have Dwight Sullivan to talk about it! We cover how TMNT came to be and everything it entails but we also dive into Dwight tenured history in pinball. Fun time with a fun guy!
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Announcement
00:00:06
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in to the Loser Kid Pinball Podcast.
00:00:08
Speaker
We are on episode number 37 with me, my co-captain, as always, Scott Larson.
00:00:15
Speaker
And Scott, it's been a wonderful, wonderful past week, hasn't it?
00:00:20
Speaker
It certainly has brought us new things to wake up our coronavirus hangover.
00:00:27
Speaker
And Stern, the pinball fairies dropped us off some news.
00:00:31
Speaker
And so we actually have something to look forward to other than just watching our tokens collect dust.
00:00:37
Speaker
Who do we have today, Josh?
00:00:39
Speaker
Well, let's hurry and introduce the friends of our show really quick.
00:00:42
Speaker
We want to talk about Brad Hunter.
00:00:44
Speaker
If you haven't checked out his Lit Frames, go to litframes.com.
00:00:47
Speaker
He's got some wonderful product there.
00:00:49
Speaker
I know Scott has one of his frames, along with the Monster Bash Brian Allen Translight.
00:00:55
Speaker
And
Interview with Dwight Sullivan
00:00:56
Speaker
that looks fantastic.
00:00:57
Speaker
And then also friends of the show, Zach and Nicole Many with Flippin' Out Pinball.
00:01:01
Speaker
If you're looking for new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from Stern, that is the guy to get it.
00:01:06
Speaker
He will borrow, beg, borrow, and steal.
00:01:10
Speaker
Beg, borrow, and steal.
00:01:11
Speaker
Yeah, that's the word.
00:01:13
Speaker
He'll do that to get your business.
00:01:14
Speaker
He is happy to help you out.
00:01:16
Speaker
He helped me out.
00:01:17
Speaker
I've already got my pro on lockdown.
00:01:19
Speaker
Didn't he help you out, Scott?
00:01:21
Speaker
He did.
00:01:21
Speaker
I am ordered.
00:01:22
Speaker
I have to wait a little bit longer because I wanted to wait for the premium, but absolutely.
00:01:27
Speaker
He's great to work with.
00:01:29
Speaker
Boom.
00:01:29
Speaker
So there it is.
00:01:31
Speaker
We're both RE customers are flipping out.
00:01:33
Speaker
We're happy with his service so far.
00:01:35
Speaker
Zach, if you're listening, don't screw it up.
00:01:40
Speaker
All right.
00:01:42
Speaker
I'm joking.
00:01:42
Speaker
I'm joking.
00:01:43
Speaker
So, well, I'm going to introduce our guest, if you don't mind, Scott.
00:01:47
Speaker
Go ahead.
00:01:48
Speaker
We have got, if you've already read the title, I've already probably put his name in it, but we have a master software designer.
00:01:55
Speaker
This man has so many hits under his belt, it is ridiculous.
00:01:59
Speaker
We've got Terminator 2, The Getaway, Star Trek The Next Generation, Game of Thrones.
00:02:03
Speaker
I mean, this man is amazing, and he's also brought us a brand new game that looks absolutely fantastic.
00:02:11
Speaker
With us, Dwight Sullivan.
00:02:12
Speaker
How are you doing, Dwight?
00:02:14
Speaker
I'm doing good.
00:02:14
Speaker
Thanks for having me.
00:02:15
Speaker
I'm really glad to be here.
00:02:17
Speaker
So how has the reception been so far?
00:02:20
Speaker
You've got nothing but roses in your office and everyone just giving you praise?
00:02:25
Speaker
Well, my office is an unfinished basement, you know, down here in my secret laboratory, my secret lair.
00:02:32
Speaker
But the reception's been great.
00:02:35
Speaker
You know, you're always nervous.
00:02:36
Speaker
Like going into the release, you're like, you're chewing your fingernails and you're trying to make the best coat you can and you're wanting everything to go well.
00:02:45
Speaker
You don't want like the Death Star not to work.
00:02:47
Speaker
You know, so, so, but this time it went really, really well, despite the fact that we had to do it through zoom and we had to, you know, Jack had to be my hands and whatnot.
00:02:58
Speaker
It went off really well.
00:02:59
Speaker
And then the people seemed to really like what they saw.
00:03:01
Speaker
So I'm happy so far, just waiting for the, you know, I'm just, I'm still waiting for something bad to happen and that maybe never happened, but you know, just, just, you have to plan for the worst and hope for the best.
00:03:14
Speaker
Exactly.
00:03:16
Speaker
So Dwight, when you got brought into the project, how long does it typically take to orchestrate a rule set?
00:03:24
Speaker
And what do you do when you're approaching a rule set to say, this is what I'm trying to do in this game?
00:03:32
Speaker
Okay, that's a hard question.
00:03:34
Speaker
So in this particular case, the Nickelodeon people, they came to work and they're like, hey, you guys should do a Turtles game.
00:03:42
Speaker
And I was skeptical.
00:03:45
Speaker
And then we saw the presentation and then afterwards I went to John and I said, John, we should do that turtles game.
00:03:51
Speaker
And John said, sure.
00:03:52
Speaker
And so we held up our hands and George and the team said, sure, go for it.
00:03:56
Speaker
And from that moment we started working on it.
00:03:58
Speaker
And this was when I was still working on, you know, when I was still working on Munsters a bit.
00:04:03
Speaker
And so the first thing we do is we start
00:04:06
Speaker
We start meeting once or twice a week or more than that, you know, whenever you have a cool idea or three in the morning when you know or during the shower or the drive to work or the commute, you know, you're thinking of ideas and then you, you know, share them with each other.
00:04:19
Speaker
This game was very collaborative.
00:04:20
Speaker
John Borg, Elliot Eastman, the mechanical chair and myself, we were the core team at the very beginning and
00:04:28
Speaker
And we, you know, so every time we got a cool idea, we would bring each other into the room and we would draw things on the whiteboard and we said, what if we did this?
00:04:35
Speaker
And what if we did that?
00:04:36
Speaker
We had lots of ideas that we've thrown out, but, and then also at that time, we started reviewing all of the early episodes.
00:04:43
Speaker
We got DVDs of the 1987 Turtles and we started watching them all.
00:04:48
Speaker
And that started giving us great ideas about, well, you know, maybe we should do this.
00:04:51
Speaker
Maybe we should have episodes like that, or maybe we should have modes like this and so on.
00:04:55
Speaker
And one thing leads to another and here we are.
00:05:00
Speaker
I gotta say, I love that you guys actually like review the material.
00:05:04
Speaker
I noticed a couple of things people would say is like, why gummy bears on pizza?
00:05:08
Speaker
And if you ever watch those original episodes, you, you don't have to go past the first episode.
00:05:12
Speaker
They're putting like cereal, they're putting gummy bears, they're putting whipped cream on their pizzas.
00:05:19
Speaker
And so I love that you put that into the game.
00:05:20
Speaker
Cause that is true to the show and people are like, what the heck is this?
00:05:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:25
Speaker
So we have, so in the code, I have 17 different ingredients.
00:05:29
Speaker
But only 12 of which actually have rules.
00:05:32
Speaker
So because
TMNT Pinball Game Development
00:05:33
Speaker
like from watching the from watching the turtles episodes, I just wrote down everything they were putting on their pizza, you know, and and and we picked out 12 that we liked and that's what we stuck rules to.
00:05:46
Speaker
That's pretty awesome.
00:05:47
Speaker
So you also have all four turtles and this is one of those games where you actually get to pick a turtle.
00:05:55
Speaker
Uh, so if you're playing a four player game, you have all four turtles.
00:05:59
Speaker
Um, what are the different things that each turtle brings to the table?
00:06:04
Speaker
Right.
00:06:04
Speaker
That's a, that's a good question.
00:06:05
Speaker
And that sort of goes back to that first question is, um,
00:06:08
Speaker
Right off the bat, one of the things we were throwing on the whiteboard is like, well, it's obvious that we want to be able to pick a turtle because everybody has a favorite turtle.
00:06:16
Speaker
So that's going to be something fun and obvious to do right off the bat.
00:06:19
Speaker
And I did it something similar on Star Wars and Game of Thrones.
00:06:22
Speaker
And I love giving the players choices.
00:06:25
Speaker
So then as soon as you decide that you're going to have...
00:06:29
Speaker
everyone pick a different turtle, well, then you're like, well, you need meaning behind that.
00:06:34
Speaker
You need to make a difference.
00:06:37
Speaker
You need a reason why they would pick this turtle over that turtle, and what does it mean deeper in the game, and so on.
00:06:42
Speaker
And then that's a lens that you hold all future rules through.
00:06:45
Speaker
You're like, well, what if I'm playing Donatello and I'm in this mode and I want to do that?
00:06:50
Speaker
What does that mean?
00:06:53
Speaker
So it's really fun with that.
00:06:56
Speaker
Some of the different things that you can do is one of them,
00:07:00
Speaker
They add more time to timers.
00:07:01
Speaker
They add more time to ball save.
00:07:03
Speaker
They add plus one multipliers.
00:07:05
Speaker
They give you plus one to your play field multiplier.
00:07:08
Speaker
Or sometimes they just straight out give you two or three X on a particular area of the play field or particular area of the game.
00:07:14
Speaker
Like, you know, they might give you, you know, two X scoring or three X scoring on episodes and stuff like that.
00:07:21
Speaker
So if I am first player and I pick Raphael,
00:07:26
Speaker
Can anybody else pick Raphael or are they forced to pick the other three?
00:07:33
Speaker
In normal play, everybody could pick Raphael.
00:07:36
Speaker
In co-op play, everyone has to pick a different turtle.
00:07:40
Speaker
And I'm thinking about making that an adjustment so that, I mean, by default, that's going to be what I just said.
00:07:46
Speaker
But I might add an adjustment so that you could just make everyone beat different turtles every single game.
00:07:51
Speaker
But the problem is I want people to walk up and go, okay, all of us are going to be Donatello.
00:07:55
Speaker
Let's see who can be the best Donatello.
00:07:57
Speaker
Or all of us is going to be Leo today.
00:07:58
Speaker
Let's see who can be the best Leo.
00:08:00
Speaker
So I want that possibility.
00:08:02
Speaker
So I noticed you talked about on the stream that there are six available episodes when you start and then you can unlock two more.
00:08:10
Speaker
Is that because of progression of the story through the pinball machine or is it just, it makes more sense that way?
00:08:16
Speaker
What, what made you determined to do that?
00:08:18
Speaker
Well, I, right.
00:08:19
Speaker
So I,
00:08:20
Speaker
Every once in a while, they sort of had, you know, like the show itself has some storylines that build on previous storylines.
00:08:30
Speaker
And I wanted to capture that in some fashion.
00:08:33
Speaker
And so in the game, we have one episode where Baxter is sort of forced to make these Mausers to go after the turtles and attack them.
00:08:43
Speaker
And then, but then at the end of the episode, Shredder says, well, I'm done with you.
00:08:48
Speaker
And he turns him into a fly.
00:08:50
Speaker
So then later on, it's Baxter Fly that you face as a villain.
00:08:54
Speaker
And you can't face Baxter Fly first if he hasn't been turned into a fly yet.
00:09:01
Speaker
So that's one of our two-parters.
00:09:03
Speaker
And then the other one is, Crane wants a body.
00:09:07
Speaker
And so there's an episode where he wants a body.
00:09:09
Speaker
And at the end of the episode, he gets a body.
00:09:13
Speaker
And, and then, so then late, so that unlocks an episode down the road where he has a body and he's attacking you with his big giant, you know, this full body.
00:09:24
Speaker
And of course he can't do that in the reverse order, right?
00:09:26
Speaker
That, you know, I just didn't think that made sense.
00:09:29
Speaker
Yeah, that totally makes sense.
00:09:30
Speaker
That's awesome that you guys are,
00:09:32
Speaker
thinking out of the box in that way, in that regard too.
00:09:35
Speaker
It kind of reminded me when you talked about this kind of thing, Deadpool, where you had to kind of do some things up front to unlock the T-Rex and the shark.
00:09:45
Speaker
But it's cool that you've molded it into the episodes and that it follows the storyline.
00:09:51
Speaker
And so it kind of gives more depth to the game as well.
00:09:54
Speaker
Right, right.
00:09:55
Speaker
We heavily pulled our stories from
00:09:57
Speaker
the early 87 episodes.
00:09:59
Speaker
But they're not one for one, we had to, we had to, you know, take the square peg and put it to the round hole of pinball.
00:10:05
Speaker
And, you know, and that, you know, like, mostly, mostly pinball is about shots and goals, and, you know, and speech calls.
00:10:14
Speaker
So we had to, you know, we had to distill a lot of those stories down to simple little thoughts.
00:10:18
Speaker
And, you know, and that was, it was pretty fun to do that.
00:10:25
Speaker
Is there a secret mode where you get to play shredder?
00:10:28
Speaker
No, there's no secret mode where you get to play Shredder.
00:10:30
Speaker
I'm sorry.
00:10:33
Speaker
No, that's going to be a flipper code, right?
00:10:35
Speaker
Exactly, that's a flipper code.
00:10:36
Speaker
I want to play Shredder.
00:10:39
Speaker
So the 1987... You mean like play as Shredder?
00:10:41
Speaker
Yes, play as Shredder, so I'm fighting the turtles.
00:10:47
Speaker
So I know that the... Was the 1989 Konami arcade game influencing at all under the pinball machine?
00:10:54
Speaker
Because I know that has a lot of following to the original arcade stuff.
00:11:00
Speaker
No, I don't actually even know much about that one.
00:11:02
Speaker
So we...
00:11:04
Speaker
We pretty much stuck to, all of my research was the 1987 DVDs and those, in particular, like the first five episodes.
00:11:13
Speaker
Most of our stuff comes from the first five episodes in the 1987 series.
00:11:19
Speaker
So tell me about the different variations on the pro versus the premium, because there are certainly different things that are going to affect.
00:11:28
Speaker
One thing that led me to buy the premium is I really liked that the disk spun both ways.
00:11:34
Speaker
And so how do you incorporate that into code?
00:11:37
Speaker
My problem is I have an X-Men, and one of the challenges I have is that spinner, I swear, it just it launches that sucker just right to the left outlane every time.
00:11:48
Speaker
And I like the variation on the disk.
00:11:51
Speaker
And so when you're, I guess when you're coding for a pro versus
Pinball Game Testing and Coding Challenges
00:11:55
Speaker
a premium, exactly what type of, I don't want to say compromises, but what sort of decisions allow you to go, okay, this would be a great thing to fit into all of it.
00:12:04
Speaker
And we need, we should do this one down in the premium or the LE.
00:12:09
Speaker
So we, so, so we'll talk about the disc.
00:12:12
Speaker
The disc does, is a lot of fun.
00:12:13
Speaker
So a lot of people kind of scoffed at the fact that the LE spins in two directions.
00:12:17
Speaker
And I think it's, it's actually pretty nice because it, you know, on the LE while on both games, when, you know, the disc spins, when the ball kind of hits the targets nearby, because that's when the ball, I know the ball is nearby and it's going kind of slow.
00:12:33
Speaker
And so the disc might affect it.
00:12:35
Speaker
And so
00:12:36
Speaker
But what happens on the LEM premium is the disc will spin for half a second to one direction, then pause for a brief moment, and then spin the other direction for half a second, and then pause for a brief moment, and then it'll repeat that again one more time.
00:12:47
Speaker
But on the Pro, it just spins for two seconds straight, all it can do.
00:12:53
Speaker
And it's very, very different.
00:12:55
Speaker
The ball will actually hit a target, roll backwards onto the disc, start going around the disc in one way, then come back the other way, and then go out the drain.
00:13:04
Speaker
And that, of course, is funny, but that sucks.
00:13:07
Speaker
But hopefully you had a good ball before that.
00:13:11
Speaker
But the other part of your question was, what does it speak to some of the differences, right, for the pro and the LE?
00:13:19
Speaker
Yes.
00:13:20
Speaker
Scott, yeah.
00:13:21
Speaker
So we generally, well, this game particularly, we started with everything we wanted to put in the game.
00:13:29
Speaker
And that was going to be the LE.
00:13:32
Speaker
And so we wanted a glider, and we wanted a spinning disc, and we wanted a van that held three balls and eight balls total in the game.
00:13:40
Speaker
And then we had another toy on the ramp for a while, on the left ramp, but we couldn't make that quite work.
00:13:46
Speaker
So that money then became the Kring toy, which I think is very, very cool.
00:13:50
Speaker
And I'm glad that we have the Kring toy.
00:13:54
Speaker
And then we start thinking about, well, what would we remove?
00:13:57
Speaker
you know, to get into the budget of a pro and, and then we go, okay, well, the crane toy can't be there.
00:14:05
Speaker
And the, and the, and the van isn't going to hold three balls.
00:14:07
Speaker
In fact, that's a nice distinction between the premium and LE.
00:14:10
Speaker
I mean, the premium and the pro is, is, you know, the eight ball versus the six ball.
00:14:15
Speaker
And so then, you know, then we pull off, you know, we pull off that and we go, okay, well then what are we left with?
00:14:21
Speaker
And we were left with either the glider or, and, and the spinning disc.
00:14:26
Speaker
And that was really difficult because the glider's pretty fun.
00:14:30
Speaker
The glider, you know, you're like, well, I want the ball to come here.
00:14:33
Speaker
I want the ball to go there.
00:14:34
Speaker
And then the glider has its own feature.
00:14:36
Speaker
And so if we lost that, then the pro wouldn't get that.
00:14:40
Speaker
But then the spinning disc is pretty fun to watch because the balls come out and softwerically, I flipped that upper left clipper, softwerically, that's a word we invented.
00:14:53
Speaker
So, softwareically, I flip that upper lip flipper, the balls bounce off the upper lip flipper over to the spinning disc and get caught on the magnet, and then I spin them off.
00:15:03
Speaker
And that's pretty fun to watch.
00:15:05
Speaker
And when new people would come into my office and see that their eyes would bug out, they would be like, oh, that's pretty cool.
00:15:11
Speaker
So, you know, after thinking about it, it became clear that if we were going to lose the glider or the spinning disc on the Pro, it had to be the glider.
00:15:20
Speaker
because the glider is more highbrow.
00:15:22
Speaker
It's more people that really understand, oh, I want to shoot the left shot coming up soon, so I'm going to put the glider so that it comes back to my right flipper.
00:15:30
Speaker
You know, it's people thinking ahead on your home buyers, your basement games, and so on.
00:15:35
Speaker
And the pro, which also does go to the basements, but sometimes the pro goes out in the field more and is more for casual players, then the spinning disk is going to blow them away.
00:15:46
Speaker
So that's how that decision process all came about.
00:15:50
Speaker
Does that answer your question?
00:15:52
Speaker
Yeah, I would actually agree.
00:15:53
Speaker
I think that the spinning disc is the more wow factor.
00:15:58
Speaker
I've always said that one of the best multi-ball starts in pinball has been the Twister or the X-Men and now Turtles with the balls being trapped on the magnet and then flung around.
00:16:08
Speaker
I think it's one of the coolest features I've ever seen.
00:16:12
Speaker
Right.
00:16:12
Speaker
And it doesn't get old.
00:16:13
Speaker
Like you see it and I still like it because in our game, the way the geometry is set up, um, we just sort of accidentally lucked into the fact that, um, the balls sort of spin off, but I keep that magnet going and then the balls sort of bounce around and then come back and then one or two balls will catch on the magnet again.
00:16:28
Speaker
And, and that's, that's very, very entertaining.
00:16:31
Speaker
So I noticed when you guys did the pro and in the premium whatnot, this game seems to be kind of, kind of a fast game and, and, uh,
00:16:39
Speaker
If you're not paying attention, it can really take you to town.
00:16:43
Speaker
Was that a decision that you made or was that something John Borg made or was it something you guys kind of came together and said, hey, we need something fun but kind of fast?
00:16:51
Speaker
So early on, we start talking about high-level concepts.
00:16:55
Speaker
Like all three of us decided we wanted a third flipper.
00:16:59
Speaker
And then John goes, well, let's put it on the top left because I've done top right recently and I just want to change it up a bit.
00:17:04
Speaker
So John starts working out things and then we start going, we start, all three of us will meet and look at drawings and thinking about things.
00:17:12
Speaker
And quickly it became clear that, yeah, this is going to be a flowing
Collaboration with Nickelodeon
00:17:15
Speaker
game.
00:17:15
Speaker
It's going to be a fast game.
00:17:16
Speaker
It's going to be a combos game.
00:17:18
Speaker
And so that's when I, so then I go and I start writing down, figuring out on the whiteboard, you know, rules for combos and, but we all liked it.
00:17:28
Speaker
So to answer your question,
00:17:31
Speaker
You know, John said he wanted to do it as long as, you know, it was gonna be fast and smooth.
00:17:35
Speaker
And, and we're like, yeah, we're on board.
00:17:37
Speaker
We're good.
00:17:39
Speaker
Nothing wrong with a fast and smooth game.
00:17:42
Speaker
So about how many, uh, how do you play test this code, uh, at the stern, uh, building?
00:17:46
Speaker
Like, do you start a code?
00:17:48
Speaker
You actually have people come in and play it and give you ideas and, uh, I lead me through that process.
00:17:54
Speaker
Sure.
00:17:55
Speaker
Um, so at some point, you know, John.
00:17:59
Speaker
John and Elliot and I decide that we like what we have and we want to build it up and start flipping it.
00:18:07
Speaker
We make what we call a whitewood.
00:18:10
Speaker
The whitewood, sometimes it doesn't have the right lamps or it doesn't have any lamps.
00:18:15
Speaker
It just has kinetics and flippers and maybe one or two toys.
00:18:20
Speaker
We build that up and we start flipping it.
00:18:23
Speaker
As soon as we can, that whitewood shows up in my office next to my desk.
00:18:27
Speaker
And I started writing code for it and we start, you know, testing out different things and turning on lights and seeing how, what's fun and what's not fun.
00:18:35
Speaker
And then, you know, I, and then eventually we go to whitewood two and whitewood three and so on.
00:18:40
Speaker
And, and, and then later we, we have, you know, colored play fields, full-blown, you know, play fields with real, real artwork.
00:18:48
Speaker
And that's like, that's what I have next to my desk.
00:18:50
Speaker
Now I have next to my desk right now, a, a, a prototype, but it was built by the factory.
00:18:57
Speaker
Because we build them up.
00:19:00
Speaker
The engineering team builds up Whitewoods.
00:19:02
Speaker
And then at some point, the factory builds the last set of prototypes before they're going to go into production.
00:19:10
Speaker
And then all the while, I'm still working on code.
00:19:14
Speaker
Months and months are going by, I'm working on code and downloading it.
00:19:17
Speaker
And it's not just me.
00:19:19
Speaker
I'm just the face of a team of software guys.
00:19:21
Speaker
Right now, we have like four talented guys on this project.
00:19:27
Speaker
And it's all of us working really hard, you know, for long hours, for months.
00:19:32
Speaker
So I've got to ask because I've got just a tiny bit of coding background.
00:19:37
Speaker
I've done a little bit here and there.
00:19:39
Speaker
How is it tedious to do pinball coding?
00:19:41
Speaker
Because I know that like there's stuff like you do the code and then it's not working and you find out you should have put a comma here instead of a period or you should have put a little D instead of a capital D. Is it kind of tedious like that?
00:19:54
Speaker
Or is your program pretty easy to work with?
00:19:57
Speaker
Well, C++ is particular for everything being correct, but right off the bat, those type of problems won't even compile.
00:20:06
Speaker
So it's not like you're playing the game for an hour and then you go, Mr. Kawa, or Mr. Semicondu, the game won't even compile, you won't build, you won't be able to, so right off the bat, and then it'll show you where the problem was and you just fix it.
00:20:19
Speaker
So I guess that's tedious, but that's just comes from the job.
00:20:24
Speaker
That's just part of programming.
00:20:27
Speaker
So in your philosophy of building the code,
00:20:31
Speaker
What is your philosophy on rule balances?
00:20:34
Speaker
Because obviously a lot of these games, they want to, the last ability of a game really depends on their ability to be viable in tournament settings.
00:20:44
Speaker
You'll see people who, they buy a game because they want to get better at it.
00:20:47
Speaker
And they also want to make sure that there's multiple ways of approaching a game in a tournament setting versus one single way.
00:20:54
Speaker
And so how do you approach making sure that it is tournament ready?
00:21:01
Speaker
That's a great question.
00:21:04
Speaker
Usually, I used to get a game to like 90% or 80% done, or at least planned out, and mostly working or partially working.
00:21:14
Speaker
And I would invite Josh Sharp to my office, and he and I would bounce around the ideas and rules and let him play it for a while.
00:21:21
Speaker
I couldn't do that on this game for a couple of reasons.
00:21:25
Speaker
But fortunately, we have like,
00:21:28
Speaker
We have Tim Sexton and Keith Elwin and now we have Raymond Davidson to help bounce around those kind of ideas.
00:21:36
Speaker
Because I'm not a tournament player, so I always try to lean on whoever I can to help you with.
00:21:41
Speaker
Well, is this stupid or should this be less random and so on.
00:21:46
Speaker
How's the scoring feel here?
00:21:47
Speaker
Does anything feel exploitable?
00:21:49
Speaker
And that's how I usually do it.
00:21:52
Speaker
I try to compensate for something I'm not great at with
00:21:56
Speaker
people around me that are better.
00:22:00
Speaker
That's how I do the tournament scoring.
00:22:03
Speaker
The bigger question is, you have lots of different people playing your game.
00:22:07
Speaker
How do you make a game for everybody?
00:22:10
Speaker
And that's hard to do.
00:22:12
Speaker
So we make a game for tournament players and home players and casual players.
00:22:16
Speaker
And I'm not a tournament player, and I'm not a great player.
00:22:20
Speaker
I'm sort of a middle of the road kind of, I can beat anybody that has not been a pinball.
00:22:27
Speaker
So I want everyone to have fun.
00:22:31
Speaker
And that's why I like making rule sets like Turtles and Game of Thrones and Star Wars where, you know, maybe Martell isn't the best choice for the beginner or the medium player, right?
00:22:43
Speaker
Like the higher end player, he's going to want Martell because he knows about multipliers and manipulate that.
00:22:48
Speaker
But I would go for Baratheon on Game of Thrones.
00:22:52
Speaker
And on Turtles, I pick Raph because Raph has got some easy things going on.
00:22:56
Speaker
But like Gary Stern has a pro at his house and Gary always picks Donatello because Donatello puts you one shot for multiball.
00:23:03
Speaker
And that multiball doesn't score, you know, to keep it kind of balanced, that multiball doesn't score as well as some of the other stuff you could do.
00:23:09
Speaker
But, you know, but Gary doesn't care about that.
00:23:12
Speaker
He's going to play multiball.
00:23:15
Speaker
So I know that Nickelodeon was kind of, what's the word I'm looking for?
00:23:21
Speaker
Because some of the complaints I've heard, the only complaint I've honestly heard is some of the voice stuff.
00:23:26
Speaker
But I know that like the theme song, Nintendo required that exact theme song in there.
00:23:32
Speaker
And it's the exact same theme song they just did with the one, a one up arcade cabinet and whatnot.
00:23:38
Speaker
How much say did Nintendo or Nintendo Nickelodeon have when it came to the other characters?
00:23:43
Speaker
And was there a reason the original actors weren't brought in?
00:23:48
Speaker
I know that they're in their seventies now and your voices tend to change after that, but I didn't know what, what their, how you guys went the direction that you did.
00:23:57
Speaker
So great question.
00:23:59
Speaker
So the, so yes, so that we had,
00:24:03
Speaker
We wanted the original theme from the 1987 show.
00:24:09
Speaker
In fact, for a while, just playing the game before we had that theme in the game, and I thought that's what we were going to do.
00:24:15
Speaker
We were going to license that theme.
00:24:17
Speaker
And we would have, but Nickelodeon insisted that we have the tune that's in there now.
00:24:22
Speaker
And so we switched, and it's not the same tune.
00:24:24
Speaker
And for a day or two, it's like, well, this isn't the same tune.
00:24:27
Speaker
What the hell?
00:24:28
Speaker
But then, sorry about I swearing.
00:24:31
Speaker
You're fine.
00:24:32
Speaker
We allow hell on here.
00:24:34
Speaker
Okay.
00:24:35
Speaker
All right.
00:24:36
Speaker
So I'm like, well, you know, but then after playing it a little bit, I, I really liked the new tune.
00:24:42
Speaker
I like, you know, it's, it is not even that new anymore.
00:24:44
Speaker
We've had it in the game for months, but it, you know, it, it grows on you and it, and it fits and it's fun.
00:24:53
Speaker
But other than that, Nickelodeon has been a dream to work with.
00:24:57
Speaker
They've, you know, they've wanted to say in every single thing we did, like we, for, you know, like, like,
00:25:03
Speaker
You know, every art we did or in the display or every piece of sound or music or speech that we did, they wanted to hear it.
00:25:12
Speaker
And they had notes, but they were really, I mean, compared to other licensors, they were rarely easy to work with.
00:25:19
Speaker
Like they would say, we want more, you know, we think Raphael should be more like this or more like that.
00:25:25
Speaker
And we would then get new auditions and Jerry and I would go through new auditions and then pick like three more and send them to Nickelodeon.
00:25:32
Speaker
And Nickelodeon would say, yeah, like that sounds right, let's do that.
00:25:37
Speaker
And that worked pretty well.
00:25:40
Speaker
In general, so you asked about actors.
00:25:44
Speaker
So we have 17 characters in this game and there was no way that we could afford, we would have had to take the glider out of the game to afford
00:25:53
Speaker
know to afford you know the the original cast of oh yeah for all 17 characters so we we had to we had to figure out other ways to get that done but it was still really important for us and nickelodeon for it to sound great like so like shredder was very difficult and raphael was very difficult um crane they passed without a single note like and craig was
00:26:17
Speaker
Craig was done by our
Game Updates and Future Directions
00:26:20
Speaker
Tom Kizovet.
00:26:21
Speaker
It was our Craig.
00:26:22
Speaker
The Kizovet brothers, brothers Kizovet, I like to call them, they were Shredder and Craig and a couple of the other voices.
00:26:29
Speaker
And they did a great job.
00:26:31
Speaker
And Shredder we had to do twice.
00:26:34
Speaker
Nickelodeon didn't like the first pass.
00:26:37
Speaker
And so we went back and did it again.
00:26:38
Speaker
And then they loved the first pass.
00:26:40
Speaker
But they had no notes.
00:26:42
Speaker
Out of 17 characters, there was only one character they had no notes for, and that was Craig.
00:26:46
Speaker
And that was really good.
00:26:49
Speaker
Well, and Mark Silk did a fantastic job and he did like four or five of the characters.
00:26:54
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:55
Speaker
Big shout out to Mark Silk.
00:26:56
Speaker
Mark Silk.
00:26:56
Speaker
So Mark Silk, you know, I met him at Expo, you know, last Expo.
00:27:01
Speaker
And before that, we were talking on, you know, email and stuff.
00:27:04
Speaker
And I've known that he wanted to do.
00:27:06
Speaker
a game and I'm like, well, let's try to get him in a game.
00:27:09
Speaker
And I knew we were going to have lots of characters at some point.
00:27:12
Speaker
And I'm like, well, hopefully he can do two or three of these.
00:27:15
Speaker
We'll see.
00:27:16
Speaker
And it turns out he did.
00:27:17
Speaker
He did Splinter, like one of our main narrators.
00:27:21
Speaker
And he did a couple of the other voices, at least three or four voices.
00:27:25
Speaker
And he did a great job from what I've heard.
00:27:28
Speaker
Yeah, he did great.
00:27:30
Speaker
So lead us through the different modes of the game.
00:27:33
Speaker
Like tell me, you don't have to go through the surprise ones, but say I'm walking up to the game and you're like, okay, now you can take this path, you can take this path, and these are the first three or four modes that you wanna consider starting, and that will lead to this.
00:27:50
Speaker
So it's not quite like Star Wars where there are clear paths, you know, through the modes.
00:27:56
Speaker
All four turtles, you know, have all eight modes.
00:28:01
Speaker
Where the turtles differ is in how they enhance the game and how they enhance scoring and what pinball things they do, like they give you a bonus multiplier and stuff.
00:28:12
Speaker
And they help you with ball save and what they start at the beginning.
00:28:16
Speaker
So, for example, like Leo.
00:28:18
Speaker
Leo likes training.
00:28:21
Speaker
The way you normally like training is you hit the lair bay.
00:28:24
Speaker
And then the first time you hit it, it likes training.
00:28:27
Speaker
And then the second time you hit it, it likes play field multiplier.
00:28:30
Speaker
So since Leo likes training, it's lit when you push start.
00:28:33
Speaker
And so if you want to get your multiplier going right off the bat, you can spell layer and it'll give you a multiplier right off the bat since training is already lit.
00:28:42
Speaker
So there's stuff like that.
00:28:44
Speaker
Michelangelo is similar.
00:28:45
Speaker
Michelangelo, so the April bank, the first thing it does is lights battle again, but Michelangelo lights battle again.
00:28:52
Speaker
So if you pick Michelangelo and you have battle again lit because you picked him, or at the beginning of your ball, your first ball,
00:29:00
Speaker
then April will start one of our hurry ups first instead.
00:29:04
Speaker
So those are subtle little paths like that, nuances like that, that are kind of interesting once you get to know the game.
00:29:12
Speaker
You know, one of the things that I've only heard on the Stern Insider podcast, but I'm surprised you guys really haven't been pushing anywhere else, is that you guys took into account April O'Neil and making sure she wasn't tied up or anything like that.
00:29:27
Speaker
Because even though it's a 1987 show and there are some goofy tropes from that show, you made sure that it was still time appropriate.
00:29:38
Speaker
And I think that's very impressive.
00:29:39
Speaker
What...
00:29:40
Speaker
Was that just something that got thrown out one day or is it just something that was kind of leading the charge as you went into the project?
00:29:46
Speaker
No, that was so that so.
00:29:47
Speaker
Early on, before we have a whitewood, we you know, we started the team is now four or five of us.
00:29:55
Speaker
There's the Brothers Kizabat, our way into our way into Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
00:30:01
Speaker
And so the Brothers Kizabat, Tom, Tom or John, Elliot and I are all.
00:30:05
Speaker
in a room, we're brainstorming, you know, what are the different tropes that we're going to have in this game?
00:30:10
Speaker
Like, what are the different, you know, like, clearly at some point somebody needs to be rescued, and at another point, you know, Shredder's going to try and use his mutagenry, and we're going to bring the Mausers in, and what are the different themes that are going to be in this game?
00:30:24
Speaker
And April and how April was going, what April was going to do changed several times.
00:30:31
Speaker
Like, you know, we started with, well,
00:30:33
Speaker
what she does in 1987 is not really what we want to do.
00:30:36
Speaker
We don't want her all helpless and tied up and, and kind of ditzy.
00:30:41
Speaker
We wanted her, um, you know, she's a story.
00:30:44
Speaker
We leaned into the fact that she's a news reporter.
00:30:46
Speaker
And in fact, in the very first few episodes, she's very heavy.
00:30:49
Speaker
Like I want to get the story.
00:30:50
Speaker
I want to get the story.
00:30:50
Speaker
So we made her all about trying to get the story.
00:30:54
Speaker
So her April hurry up, April hurry up is, is,
00:30:58
Speaker
can be stacked with anything else going on in the game.
00:31:00
Speaker
So if you have an episode or a multiball or both going on, she's worth more depending on what else you have going on because there's more for her to report on.
00:31:08
Speaker
And that I thought was pretty unique and pretty fun.
00:31:13
Speaker
So one thing I noticed in the layout and some people have brought this up and I want to get your take on it.
00:31:19
Speaker
So the side targets, as opposed to like four or three different individual side targets, they're big single side targets.
00:31:28
Speaker
How does that affect the way you approach the coding?
00:31:31
Speaker
Because that does make it a little different when you don't have to hit three different ones versus you can hit the same one a few times.
00:31:40
Speaker
So you guys are being nice.
00:31:42
Speaker
um so there's a lot of people that don't like those really wide targets but john and i are not among them like so early early on um on monsters and on turtles john's like hey what do you think about you know like big white targets right here and i because he likes them and so do i i like i like having moments in the game when when that when that bank is blinking for something you need to do and all you have to do is hit some anything in the bank and
00:32:10
Speaker
And I know that we could do that with stand-ups, but there are several advantages to having the big, wide, long target.
00:32:16
Speaker
And one of them is it's psychologically easier to hit.
00:32:20
Speaker
Even though it's not, it just seems like it's easier to hit than any one of these three stand-ups or four stand-ups.
00:32:27
Speaker
The other cool thing about it is you can put artwork all the way across it.
00:32:30
Speaker
And sometimes, like if you want to do April, April is five letters, but there's no way we could easily fit five stand-ups in that space.
00:32:39
Speaker
So you kind of, you know, you have to go to this, you know, this plan anyway.
00:32:43
Speaker
You have to do one big long target, which is fine with me.
00:32:47
Speaker
And the other half of your question was, well, how do you program for that?
00:32:49
Speaker
And I would program them very similarly, even if I had individual targets, I don't like,
00:32:54
Speaker
I mean, I guess, I guess I have, you know, I've done it in the past where, you know, you hit a target and you get that light, you hit a target and you get that light and you've got to spell out whatever word is there.
00:33:03
Speaker
And, um, but I, I kind of like spelling out words in order, like, cause like you quickly can glance over and go, Oh, I've got three of the five and I, you know, and I'm working my way down.
00:33:13
Speaker
I guess it's maybe it's an OCD thing.
00:33:15
Speaker
Um, but, but I prefer that over, you know, over spelling things out in the wrong order and, and,
00:33:23
Speaker
And I mean, I know there's no such thing as wrong in this case, but it's just in my head there is.
00:33:28
Speaker
And so, and it's never really bothered me.
00:33:31
Speaker
Like, I know, like I used to play pinball all growing up and I know there's spell outs on thousands of machines, you know, with standups that are like what people are, you know, have like, you know, like that, but it's just, it is, it doesn't bother me that that's missing.
00:33:48
Speaker
Well, and honestly, if this game's a little faster and a little more, I don't want to say brutal, but it's a little harder to play, the side-to-side action, a lot of people aren't going to go for.
00:33:58
Speaker
So if you make that target a little bit easier for them too, they might actually go for it versus just...
00:34:04
Speaker
getting rid, you know, unless if it's really, really important, they're like, you know, it's not worth my time.
00:34:09
Speaker
A lot of people would ignore those just because they are any sort of a cross action in a game.
00:34:13
Speaker
You're, you're at danger.
00:34:15
Speaker
And so you really want to get more of a vertical as opposed to a horizontal action on the ball.
00:34:19
Speaker
Right.
00:34:21
Speaker
And so, but people didn't like it on Munsters.
00:34:24
Speaker
So I took that in consideration when I was planning out the rules for, um, turtles.
00:34:29
Speaker
So I did a few things, I did a couple of things that I think mitigate the complaints.
00:34:34
Speaker
And one of them is, I made it so that if you, so that the letters time out.
00:34:41
Speaker
So like if you spell APR and you're on your way to spelling April, right?
00:34:46
Speaker
And if you don't keep tickling that target for every few seconds, it'll time out on you and then you'll reset back to the beginning.
00:34:54
Speaker
You're also reset back to the beginning at the beginning of each wall.
00:34:58
Speaker
And you get to do it twice.
00:35:04
Speaker
You spell April and she lights battle again.
00:35:06
Speaker
And then you spell April again and she'll sort of hurry up.
00:35:09
Speaker
And then she goes into a mode where the light's moving back and forth.
00:35:13
Speaker
And you can't spell April for a while until you play an episode or until you start another episode.
00:35:19
Speaker
So you have to pace them out and plan them better.
00:35:22
Speaker
And you can't just sit there and get them for all day long.
00:35:25
Speaker
And you have to stack them correctly with whatever you're wanting to do.
00:35:32
Speaker
I like the single bank target.
00:35:35
Speaker
I mean, I don't know.
00:35:36
Speaker
It brings a different variance to the game than the same old, same old.
00:35:39
Speaker
So I like that you're taking all these into consideration.
00:35:42
Speaker
It's not just feedback from a person or two.
00:35:46
Speaker
It's from multiple past games and stuff like that.
00:35:48
Speaker
It's awesome that you do so much back research to make each game better and better from there.
00:35:56
Speaker
Thanks.
00:35:58
Speaker
Now, your last two games, you actually had these big...
00:36:04
Speaker
these big modifications that came out later after the game came up and famously Ghostbusters came up, but we know that wasn't your issue because it was a scheduling issue.
00:36:14
Speaker
But you changed a lot with Ghostbusters and really nuanced that rule set.
00:36:18
Speaker
You also did the same thing with Game of Thrones.
00:36:21
Speaker
And so how does that come about?
00:36:24
Speaker
How is the philosophy of, you know what, we need to modify these rule sets and you saying, hey, this is what I would like to change it to.
00:36:33
Speaker
How does that work?
00:36:35
Speaker
Good question.
00:36:37
Speaker
So those, what happens is, I get it in my head that I want to, because you're never done designing a game.
00:36:45
Speaker
You know, just at some point, they take the game away from you and they start putting it in the box.
00:36:49
Speaker
And then at some point you move on and you start working on another game.
00:36:54
Speaker
But you always have more ideas and more things you want to do, always.
00:37:01
Speaker
So at some point you're like, well, it'd be really cool if I could do this or do that.
00:37:06
Speaker
And you know, like right now I'm working on Turtles, but I'm also working on the game after Turtles, the game that I'm going to come out with, you know, sometime down the road.
00:37:19
Speaker
But so right now I don't have any time, but if I do get time, I would love to go back.
00:37:23
Speaker
I'm always wanting to go back and work on something else, work on enhance some other game.
00:37:29
Speaker
And luckily I got that chance.
00:37:32
Speaker
last summer to work on Ghostbusters and Game of Thrones.
00:37:34
Speaker
They actually gave me Tanya for a while, so I got to do both at the same time.
00:37:38
Speaker
I was working on Game of Thrones, and Tanya was working on Ghostbusters, but I was sort of designing both.
00:37:46
Speaker
If that comes up again, I'll work on past games any chance I get.
00:37:50
Speaker
It's just a matter of timing.
00:37:52
Speaker
There's always priorities, and as long as I'm getting my job done and getting my current game done, and I have some time before my next game needs me to actually start typing stuff,
00:38:02
Speaker
Um, my bosses don't let, don't care what I do.
00:38:06
Speaker
So speaking of coding and with the coronavirus and everything happening, did that help further the code along for teenage mutant turtles?
00:38:13
Speaker
Like how close are we to 1.0?
00:38:16
Speaker
We're pretty close to 1.0.
00:38:17
Speaker
It, it helped, it helped with, so it didn't give me any more time, right?
00:38:23
Speaker
Like the amount of work that I had to do five months ago didn't change.
00:38:28
Speaker
And we've been, we've been working, you know,
00:38:30
Speaker
long hours for the last couple of months, me and the other programmers and the artists and Jerry have been working long hours for like a couple of months to try to get the game done.
00:38:40
Speaker
So it didn't change the amount of work I had to do or when I was going to be done.
00:38:44
Speaker
What changed was what the code looked like when it first goes in a box.
00:38:48
Speaker
And the stream the other day, I think people figured out that it was like 0.92 and we're pretty close.
00:38:57
Speaker
In that stream, we had about, we had three wizard modes that were kind of rough and not really finished.
00:39:02
Speaker
And when those get finished and some more polish and score balancing happens and some more lap effects, I'm going to call it 1.0.
00:39:11
Speaker
Well, and the other question with that too is now that software's kind of
00:39:16
Speaker
I'm trying to think how to put this.
00:39:17
Speaker
Do you think this will be like a one-time thing?
00:39:19
Speaker
Because I know a lot of time when the games come out, the code is kind of like 0.56 or 0.6, whatever you want to say.
00:39:26
Speaker
Do you think that will help the rest of the software be a little more closer to 1.0 on future releases?
00:39:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:35
Speaker
So it's our objective to be at 1.0 when the game first goes in a box most of the time.
00:39:42
Speaker
And we've been trying really hard to get there.
00:39:44
Speaker
Now, we got a setback here and there, like Stranger Things didn't quite work out the way we wanted it to.
00:39:50
Speaker
But if you go back, I think you see that Monsters was pretty close to done.
00:39:54
Speaker
And most of my games have been pretty close to complete when they first go in a box.
00:40:00
Speaker
And while we still want to do updates after that and add things to the games after that, complete in 1.0 is what we're calling the same thing.
00:40:09
Speaker
So it's important to us going forward to try to have every game be at 1.0, very close to 1.0 when it first goes in a box.
00:40:19
Speaker
And for example, we just hired Raymond Davidson to help us with that task, to help us to add another software person to our team to get things done on time.
00:40:31
Speaker
Tell me a little more about the co-op mode.
00:40:35
Speaker
It seems like that's a natural with having the turtles.
00:40:39
Speaker
You have four players typically in a game.
00:40:41
Speaker
And if you're all competing for the same thing, tell me how that interacts with each other.
00:40:47
Speaker
I will.
00:40:47
Speaker
I will.
00:40:49
Speaker
You said it's a natural.
00:40:50
Speaker
So co-op has become a thing since Scott Denisi kind of brought it back.
00:40:54
Speaker
But co-op isn't a new thing, but Scott
00:40:57
Speaker
you know, kind of brought it back with TNA and, um, I played TNA and then, and that was pretty cool.
00:41:02
Speaker
And I'm like, you know what, we need to do that.
00:41:04
Speaker
And then every, about the same time I started hearing from lots of other conversations, people saying co-op should come back.
00:41:10
Speaker
And I'm like, well, I'm going to try and bring it back.
00:41:12
Speaker
And then, and then I started thinking about turtles and I'm like, you know what turtles, you're right.
00:41:16
Speaker
Turtles is pretty natural.
00:41:19
Speaker
You know, you know, it does sell really well with, with co-op because there's four players, four player co-op, four turtles.
00:41:26
Speaker
You know, it works out really well.
00:41:28
Speaker
What was the other half of your question?
00:41:33
Speaker
Well, that was it.
00:41:34
Speaker
It was just, it seems like it's getting back to those button master days where everybody, you know, they had like four or five different of those games where everybody had to play, you know, the Simpsons, everybody played a different thing, but they're all going toward the same goal.
00:41:48
Speaker
That seems to be a natural fit for the hearkening back to the old arcade games too.
00:41:53
Speaker
And I know you said you didn't really look too much into it, but this felt very similar to it.
00:41:57
Speaker
I actually have the arcade games in my basement.
00:41:59
Speaker
So I really liked that approach.
00:42:03
Speaker
One other question I have too is, Keith put like a kind of a fast mode, a escape from Nublar mode or something like that.
00:42:13
Speaker
Would you consider doing something like that in any of your games?
00:42:18
Speaker
I would absolutely consider it.
00:42:19
Speaker
So like, I love that Keith works for us.
00:42:23
Speaker
I think Keith is amazing.
00:42:26
Speaker
He's a breath of fresh air and rules and I try to steal things from him every day.
00:42:33
Speaker
I love the Newbar thing, but I think that he sort of, well, I mean, while his is unique and different and cool in its own way, but Are You a God kind of started that whole thread.
00:42:43
Speaker
So I'm going to take some credit for having modes that, you know, having a way to play it in, you know, a deeper mode, you know, at the beginning of the game.
00:42:53
Speaker
And yes, so
00:42:54
Speaker
Turtles, right now when you walk up to Turtles between games, you can hold in both flipper buttons and that'll bring a menu up on the screen.
00:43:03
Speaker
And the menu will give you several different ways to play the game.
00:43:06
Speaker
It'll give you standard or co-op or competitive or co-op plus competitive.
00:43:12
Speaker
And a little side note there, I'm really hoping that someday people will play 4v4 tournaments where you and your three friends,
00:43:20
Speaker
try the best you can and compare your scores versus four other guys who played co-op Turtles.
00:43:27
Speaker
But the other gameplay modes that you can do in Turtles right now is team play.
00:43:30
Speaker
You can do 2v2 team play, 2v1, and 3v1 team play.
00:43:34
Speaker
And then I'm hoping that maybe somewhere down the road after 1.0, I'll get a chance to add a Nooblar or a Are You a God type mode to Turtles as well.
00:43:46
Speaker
That is awesome.
00:43:47
Speaker
That would come up in that menu.
00:43:49
Speaker
That would be one more game mode that you could choose from that menu.
00:43:53
Speaker
That would be amazing.
00:43:55
Speaker
I know Gomez said that internet connectivity probably won't be a possibility with this game.
00:44:01
Speaker
Can you give us any hope at all that it might?
00:44:05
Speaker
Or it's probably not going to be on Ninja Turtles?
00:44:10
Speaker
It will not be on Ninja Turtles.
00:44:13
Speaker
I can't speak to that very much.
00:44:15
Speaker
Connectivity is a big thing that we've been working on and planning toward for quite a while.
00:44:22
Speaker
And it did get put on hold because of COVID.
00:44:26
Speaker
COVID put a pin in that for now.
00:44:28
Speaker
And right now we're just trying to get the factory back and going.
00:44:31
Speaker
We're just trying to get up and running.
00:44:32
Speaker
And soon as we get connectivity going, pretty cool things are going to happen.
00:44:41
Speaker
So we can't ask you if it's going to retrofit to older games or if it's just going to be pretty much from when you guys.
00:44:46
Speaker
We're going to try our best to make it as cool as possible.
00:44:49
Speaker
Okay.
00:44:50
Speaker
Good enough.
00:44:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:51
Speaker
No, you're fine.
00:44:52
Speaker
So, so I have a, a comment and a question.
00:44:55
Speaker
Uh, this is actually from Sarah line, Mrs. Pin.
00:44:59
Speaker
Uh, she said, uh, tell Dwight high and she wants to know who your favorite turtle is.
00:45:06
Speaker
Okay.
00:45:07
Speaker
Hi, Sarah.
00:45:08
Speaker
Um, Mrs. Pin.
00:45:09
Speaker
Um,
00:45:10
Speaker
I'm a big fan of her.
00:45:13
Speaker
So my favorite turtle in the game is Raphael because Raphael, you know, and he's kind of a bruiser and I kind of likes Raphael in general, I think.
00:45:21
Speaker
Even though I identify with Donatello because Donatello is a nerd and like makes gadgets and he's, you know, nerdy like me and like probably all programmers.
00:45:31
Speaker
But outwardly, I think I'm more like Raphael.
00:45:33
Speaker
It's probably not true, but
00:45:35
Speaker
But anyway, in the game, I like Raphael because Raphael lights episodes.
00:45:39
Speaker
And episodes, if you're not Raphael, you have to work to light each episode.
00:45:45
Speaker
And so I like pushing start.
00:45:48
Speaker
And right off the bat, I can shoot into the pizza parlor, lock a ball, and start an episode.
00:45:53
Speaker
And I'm halfway to getting an extra ball.
00:45:56
Speaker
And that's why I picked Raphael.
00:45:58
Speaker
But I think Raphael is my favorite turtle, even from the show.
00:46:05
Speaker
Um, I know that you guys kind of talked about this on the stream, but are you going to put more Casey Jones in, or is it going to be pretty much just what it is because he wasn't really much in the first three seasons?
Dwight Sullivan's Career Retrospective
00:46:18
Speaker
So it's the, it's the letter.
00:46:19
Speaker
Um, so Casey Jones is a good example of, of stuff that was on the whiteboard.
00:46:25
Speaker
So early on, you know, we're like writing down on the whiteboard, everything that's cool about the turtles.
00:46:29
Speaker
And of course, Casey Jones takes up a quarter of the, of the whiteboard and, and
00:46:35
Speaker
But then when we started doing more and more research, we're like, well, he doesn't really play a role in all these stories.
00:46:41
Speaker
I mean, we can't leave them out, you know, so we have to, you know, cause he was going to get his own target bank and like maybe instead of Lair, it was going to be, you know, Casey Jones or Casey or whatever spelling over there.
00:46:52
Speaker
And it would be like, you know, he would be a guy that would come along and help you out.
00:46:55
Speaker
And, and that all kind of got cut to the pedigree floor when we, along with lots of other things, lots of other cool ideas when we, um,
00:47:05
Speaker
We had to pare the game down and decide exactly what we were putting in the game.
00:47:10
Speaker
We really wanted to stay faithful to those early episodes, those first couple of seasons.
00:47:17
Speaker
Then we invented one of the wizard modes, in fact the first of three wizard modes is called Teema.
00:47:22
Speaker
Instead of having April tied to a chair and you have to go rescue April,
00:47:31
Speaker
We're going to have Shredder kidnaps three of the turtles, the three turtles that you are not, and you have to go rescue them.
00:47:38
Speaker
And what are you going to do?
00:47:40
Speaker
You're going to call up one of your friends.
00:47:41
Speaker
You're going to call somebody to help you, and they're going to come and help you in this wizard mode.
00:47:48
Speaker
And so each of the four turtles has a different team up that they team up with, and Raphael teams up with Casey Jones.
00:47:55
Speaker
That's awesome.
00:47:55
Speaker
And I love the team up mode, too.
00:47:56
Speaker
I think that's very brilliant having, you know, Raphael team up with Casey Jones and Leonardo with Splinter and Donatello with Metalhead and then Mikey with the neutrino.
00:48:05
Speaker
I know a lot of people look at that and go, who the heck is this guy?
00:48:08
Speaker
But he's he's like the fourth episode in and he's very prominent to most of the stories throughout all the history of Ninja Turtles.
00:48:15
Speaker
Yeah, well, the Neutrinos are badass.
00:48:19
Speaker
They drive a really cool car that flies and shoots lasers out of the front.
00:48:24
Speaker
So, like, how do you not put that in the game?
00:48:27
Speaker
I agree.
00:48:28
Speaker
By the way, Sarah said that you can continue to be friends with her because that was a test, and hers favorite is Raphael, too.
00:48:36
Speaker
Oh, wow.
00:48:37
Speaker
You're talking to her right now.
00:48:38
Speaker
I texted her.
00:48:39
Speaker
She well, OK, so through a sticker mule or whatever.
00:48:45
Speaker
Who did I order stuff from?
00:48:47
Speaker
It's it's the swag store.
00:48:49
Speaker
So, OK, yeah.
00:48:50
Speaker
So well, it's actually it's a merchandise that you can order for your own stuff.
00:48:56
Speaker
So it's a sticker mule.
00:48:57
Speaker
So we got I got a whole bunch of stickers right before the coronavirus.
00:49:00
Speaker
So I have like 500 stickers that I can I can give out a show and just hand to people or mail to them or whatever.
00:49:06
Speaker
And so there was actually a they have little promos.
00:49:10
Speaker
And one of the promos that came up this week was little earring things.
00:49:14
Speaker
And so I said that she could order the earrings and she's like, absolutely.
00:49:19
Speaker
Just mail email me or mail the loser kid logo to me and she will make them for me.
00:49:25
Speaker
And so we've just been talking today about making swag for for everybody, including everybody who wears earrings.
00:49:33
Speaker
Well, you know, not for me, but, you know, I think it's a cool idea.
00:49:36
Speaker
You know, you can pierce anything.
00:49:38
Speaker
It's fine.
00:49:38
Speaker
Just put it anywhere.
00:49:42
Speaker
That's some TMI right there, buddy.
00:49:47
Speaker
I didn't say I had one.
00:49:48
Speaker
I'm just saying it's possible.
00:49:49
Speaker
Okay.
00:49:50
Speaker
All right.
00:49:53
Speaker
I'm going to be careful.
00:49:54
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:54
Speaker
If you ever see Scott Pearson, you got a person, you got to ask him all the piercings.
00:49:57
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:49:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:59
Speaker
Zero is the answer.
00:50:00
Speaker
So.
00:50:01
Speaker
So, okay, I actually want to talk a little more about your history in pinball, but Josh, this is your baby, so I want to make sure you get all of your questions, your teenage mutant ninja turtle love in before we switch gears a little bit.
00:50:15
Speaker
I have a, I have a, the coolest rule ever thing I want to talk about too.
00:50:18
Speaker
Okay, go ahead.
00:50:19
Speaker
Go for it.
00:50:20
Speaker
All right, so the coolest rule ever, and of course you guys, so, I mean, I probably talked about this with the insiders and like, you know, I'm telling this to everybody that will listen, but, but,
00:50:31
Speaker
But I think one of the innovative things that I made on, because like Scott Denisi made really cool co-op mode.
00:50:37
Speaker
And I had to figure out, well, how do I improve on that?
00:50:41
Speaker
And I don't know if I did or not.
00:50:43
Speaker
I just think I did in my own head.
00:50:46
Speaker
And so here's what I did was in addition to sharing your progress, because of course co-op shares your progress and it's very nice.
00:50:54
Speaker
Like when you, you know, like if you play, if you go first and you play an episode and then on my turn, I've already had that episode played.
00:51:02
Speaker
I don't have to play it.
00:51:03
Speaker
I can, you know, I only need, you know, I need one less to get to the next Wizard mode.
00:51:09
Speaker
And so that's, of course, sharing the progress.
00:51:11
Speaker
That's like what he did with the reactors.
00:51:15
Speaker
But I wanted to do one more thing.
00:51:16
Speaker
I wanted to figure out something I could do that was different.
00:51:19
Speaker
And what I did was this.
00:51:22
Speaker
So what I wanted to do was like when you're playing your ball, you can light something or enable something on somebody else's ball.
00:51:31
Speaker
So like on somebody, you could help out your teammate with something cool you did.
00:51:37
Speaker
And I kept it, I ended up keeping it kind of simple.
00:51:39
Speaker
I had lots of really complex ideas.
00:51:41
Speaker
And if I try to explain all this to you right now, you're still going to think this is pretty complex, but it's not if you are sitting in front of a game.
00:51:49
Speaker
So what happens is when you make your skill shot, you light weapon for yourself.
00:51:53
Speaker
In co-op, you light weapon for yourself, but you also enable lighting a weapon for everybody else that follows you that ball.
00:52:03
Speaker
So, so you, you, player one gets up, makes a skill shot, lights weapon, and then, you know, you know, plays weapon or not, doesn't matter.
00:52:10
Speaker
But if he plays weapon, he'll get two cascading hurry ups and then he's done.
00:52:15
Speaker
Player two comes up and if he makes a skill shot, he'll light weapon for himself.
00:52:20
Speaker
But since player one made his skill shot, he'll get, he'll get four hurry ups in a row.
00:52:25
Speaker
You know, he'll get his two plus player one's two.
00:52:29
Speaker
All right.
00:52:30
Speaker
Are you guys following me?
00:52:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:52:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:52:32
Speaker
All right.
00:52:32
Speaker
So keep so so that keeps following.
00:52:34
Speaker
So player three could get six and player four could get eight if all the wounds align and all and the four players create a perfect storm.
00:52:43
Speaker
So that makes players not only before the game starts, are they discussing, all right, you're going to be Raphael and I'm going to be Leo and you're going to be Donatello because, you know, because we're each better at these different shots and so forth.
00:52:54
Speaker
But you're also going to discuss, well, who should go first, second, third, and fourth?
00:52:58
Speaker
Because whoever bats fourth is going to, you know, might get put in the position to try to get eight straight hurry ups.
00:53:05
Speaker
Coolest rule ever.
00:53:06
Speaker
Yeah, that seems like a, it's almost like a relay race that you have to pick the strongest guy to be your anchor.
00:53:14
Speaker
So that's when you get Keith, that one to play in the practice room and you're like, Keith, we need you to be fourth right now.
00:53:22
Speaker
Raymond's currently number one.
00:53:23
Speaker
So maybe you want Raymond.
00:53:25
Speaker
I'll take either one on my team.
00:53:27
Speaker
I don't care.
00:53:27
Speaker
You can pretty, pretty fierce foursome out of the employees from Stern now.
00:53:33
Speaker
Right.
00:53:33
Speaker
Right.
00:53:34
Speaker
Well, that's like, speaking of Keith though, that's the three V one mode.
00:53:37
Speaker
The three V one mode is three, you know, three players versus Keith.
00:53:42
Speaker
Or in the pin household, right?
00:53:44
Speaker
It's all the girls versus Chris.
00:53:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:53:50
Speaker
So it can go either way.
00:53:51
Speaker
I think the 3D one is going to be just as fun as the co-op in some households.
00:53:57
Speaker
I totally agree.
00:53:58
Speaker
Especially, I think it was on...
00:54:00
Speaker
pinball show they were talking about you know a lot of us that are pinheads play a lot more and the families get discouraged to play with us because of long ball time so between co-op and three versus one it could really refresh the atmosphere of pinball in our own homes yeah no it's it's a great way of uh helping out especially a kid who gets uh interested in pinball you're like hey you can team up with mom or dad right right or all of us versus the game yeah versus dwight yeah heck yes
00:54:32
Speaker
Bring it.
00:54:32
Speaker
Bring it on.
00:54:33
Speaker
I'll take everybody on.
Modern Tech in Pinball
00:54:34
Speaker
All I can say is I'm excited to get this game in my home.
00:54:37
Speaker
I've dreamt of Ninja Turtles machine that isn't the Data East one for years now.
00:54:42
Speaker
And this is honestly a dream come true.
00:54:44
Speaker
I know Zach Manning said it's done great for you guys already.
00:54:47
Speaker
He said that within four hours, all LEs were sold out.
00:54:51
Speaker
And that hasn't happened since Jurassic Park.
00:54:53
Speaker
It's already got a good track record.
00:54:55
Speaker
It seems like it's brewing the perfect storm for you guys.
00:54:57
Speaker
Yeah, I'm loving it.
00:55:00
Speaker
Right?
00:55:02
Speaker
I'm glad you're loving it.
00:55:03
Speaker
Cause, uh, that, that is amazing.
00:55:04
Speaker
I know Scott wants to talk about some of what's let's dive into some of your, your older stuff now that I have all my Ninja Turtle questions out of the way.
00:55:12
Speaker
Well, I, I wanted to hear a little more about, uh, how did you get involved in gaming?
00:55:16
Speaker
How did you get involved in a pinball, uh, and exactly, uh, the twists and turns in your career to come to Stern.
00:55:25
Speaker
Wow.
00:55:26
Speaker
So that's, that's, that's a long podcast.
00:55:28
Speaker
Um, so I've been, I've been at this for over 30 years.
00:55:33
Speaker
In 1989, I started working at Williams.
00:55:36
Speaker
And that's a story in itself.
00:55:41
Speaker
You should edit out all these uns and ins and outs.
00:55:44
Speaker
I'm sorry.
00:55:46
Speaker
So exactly where do you want to begin?
00:55:47
Speaker
Because I could go back to, as a teenager, I used to ride a bike up to the bowling alley to play Playboy Pinball Machine.
00:55:54
Speaker
Or I used to ride a bike to the airport to play Gorghar and other games.
00:56:02
Speaker
And then as a late teen, after I got a car, my buddy and I, we would go to the arcade instead of doing anything else and play whatever they had there.
00:56:13
Speaker
But the arcade would be packed full of video games and like Dragon's Lair and stuff.
00:56:18
Speaker
And instead of playing Dragon's Lair, I was into playing Grand Lizard at high speed.
00:56:24
Speaker
And high speed is the game that then really pulled me in and made me realize that pinball has got more stuff going on than
00:56:30
Speaker
than just keeping the ball on.
00:56:33
Speaker
There's a story there, there's objectives, there's goals.
00:56:36
Speaker
And I'm like, that's really when I got hooked was when playing high speed.
00:56:41
Speaker
And then at some point, then fast forward, I'm now in college and I'm trying to figure out what I'm gonna do with my life.
00:56:47
Speaker
And I interview at Williams and they are fortunate, you know, I'm fortunate enough to land a job and start working on pinball machines.
00:56:57
Speaker
And it was really surreal.
00:57:00
Speaker
I really had a comet by the tail and it just took off from there.
00:57:07
Speaker
So what were you studying in college and where did you go to college?
00:57:11
Speaker
Like what was your proximity to Williams?
00:57:13
Speaker
Because that was pre-internet, pre any easy way of contacting companies.
00:57:24
Speaker
That was the old phone book or mailing something away.
00:57:28
Speaker
Right.
00:57:28
Speaker
So I stumbled into it just haphazardly, like I do most of my life.
00:57:34
Speaker
It's sad to say.
00:57:36
Speaker
So I was in college.
00:57:37
Speaker
I went to DeVry University.
00:57:40
Speaker
I grew up in Michigan and I went to Eastern Michigan University for a few months.
00:57:44
Speaker
And it wasn't really for me.
00:57:47
Speaker
I was too immature for college right out of high school.
00:57:50
Speaker
So I stopped going to college for a while and I took on like three, four jobs delivering pizzas and stuff like that.
00:57:56
Speaker
And eventually I'm like, you know what?
00:57:58
Speaker
I got to get out of here.
00:57:59
Speaker
I got to, I got to get out of this town.
00:58:02
Speaker
I got to go do something.
00:58:04
Speaker
So I start seeing these commercials for DeVry university.
00:58:07
Speaker
And I'm like, you know what?
00:58:08
Speaker
I'm going to do that.
00:58:09
Speaker
I'm going to take whatever money I have and I'm going to pour it into
00:58:12
Speaker
getting a college education and I do that.
00:58:15
Speaker
And then near the end of my DeVry college career, the counselors at the school start sending me on job fairs.
00:58:24
Speaker
And I get a suit and I get some resumes and I start going to job fairs.
00:58:29
Speaker
And I got a date mixed up with my counselor and I went to the wrong job fair.
00:58:34
Speaker
And I forget the lady I talked to, but like I was so I was I was at a job fair, but it was it was not for entry level people.
00:58:40
Speaker
It was for people already established in the software world or the or the electronic world.
00:58:48
Speaker
My degree was a bachelor of electrical engineering technology.
00:58:52
Speaker
It's not it's not quite the same as a degree.
00:58:55
Speaker
And it's you know, it's sort of somewhere in between.
00:58:59
Speaker
So I'm trying to get it.
00:59:00
Speaker
I'm trying to get an interview for for
00:59:03
Speaker
someone somewhere here in Chicago.
00:59:05
Speaker
And then I show up at the wrong job fair, but I'm still in my suit and I've got a binder full of resumes and I'm like, you know what?
00:59:12
Speaker
I'm just going to go practice interviewing and hell with it.
00:59:15
Speaker
And everyone keeps saying, no, sorry, we're not hiring entry level people.
00:59:18
Speaker
Sorry, we're not hiring entry level people.
00:59:20
Speaker
And finally I talked to one lady who said, you know what, you know, who's, who's looking for all the time.
00:59:25
Speaker
And she hooked me up with Ed Sahaki's phone number and Ed Sahaki worked for Williams.
00:59:31
Speaker
And he was the head of the software department at Williams.
00:59:34
Speaker
And I called him and I said, Hey, I, you know, so-and-so just gave me your number and I'd love to come and chat with you.
00:59:39
Speaker
And he said, no problem.
00:59:41
Speaker
So we set it up.
00:59:42
Speaker
We set up a time and a date and I put my suit back on and I go down there and I, and I interview with Larry DeMar, Mark Panacho and Bill Fitson-Rudder.
00:59:52
Speaker
And those are old names from the past that you, you know, you, you may or may not know.
00:59:57
Speaker
And that was, that was, and I brought with me,
01:00:00
Speaker
all kinds of stuff that I've done, like programs I had wrote on my Commodore 64 and programs I wrote on my Macintosh and games I had designed and artwork that I had made.
01:00:09
Speaker
And I laid it all out on the table and they hired me.
01:00:15
Speaker
It was pretty awesome.
01:00:18
Speaker
So I see on your history, I mean, going through Williams in Midway, and what was the first game you started on and when was the first time you were a lead program designer?
01:00:31
Speaker
So you're, you're a lead almost right off the bat.
01:00:33
Speaker
Like, so you start trading, right?
01:00:35
Speaker
Like, so they threw a mouse around in my office and I started, so like Larry DeMar's down the hallway from me.
01:00:40
Speaker
And, and one of my first encounters with Larry DeMar is he's, he's writing Apple at the time because we're about to go from system 11 to system 12 and he's writing the operating system for system 12 and it's called Apple.
01:00:53
Speaker
Right.
01:00:53
Speaker
And, and he's trying to figure out how does, you know, what the algorithm is for leap years.
01:00:59
Speaker
And it actually turns out not, it actually turns out to be pretty interesting and it's much more involved than most people think.
01:01:05
Speaker
And, um, so he's, he, cause he's wanting to make sure that, that the, you know, that when we cross over into the year 2000, that all Apple machines still, you know, do the right thing.
01:01:15
Speaker
And, um, um,
01:01:18
Speaker
So they put a mouse around in my room.
01:01:20
Speaker
And then one of the first things I start doing is playing with that and start making different, um, 16 segment display effects.
01:01:26
Speaker
Right.
01:01:26
Speaker
So I start making cool wipes and stuff on the 16 segment displays.
01:01:30
Speaker
And then the next thing they had me training around on training on is I help, um, Brian Eddy make pool sharks and pool sharks.
01:01:38
Speaker
So Brian, Brian started about six months before I did.
01:01:41
Speaker
And so then he and I start working on pool sharks and I start doing that a little bit.
01:01:46
Speaker
But then as soon as they needed somebody to work on Riverbrook Gambler, they paired me up with Ward Pemberton and Ward and I made Riverbrook Gambler.
01:01:54
Speaker
And from that point forward, I've been a lead on programming, just like, you know, less than a year after starting at Williams.
01:02:02
Speaker
And that's a really fun, fun game.
01:02:04
Speaker
I actually stumbled across one in my own town and it's very unique.
01:02:08
Speaker
It's very different.
01:02:10
Speaker
Um, I was one of the fortunate ones to actually have the diamond plate play field.
01:02:13
Speaker
And I guess there wasn't very many of those made for that, for that game.
01:02:17
Speaker
Yeah.
01:02:17
Speaker
It's when we first started figuring out diamond play.
01:02:21
Speaker
So my question is, were you ecstatic to be on getaway considering that's one of the games that you played growing up in the, and at the airport and whatnot.
01:02:30
Speaker
Yeah, I, I was, um,
01:02:33
Speaker
Mark Bonaccio and Steve are making Getaway and they were getting started on it.
01:02:40
Speaker
And we also were tinkering around with doing a dot matrix.
01:02:46
Speaker
And Mark Bonaccio was working on all the hardware, not the hardware, but the software to go with the underlying dot matrix work that before, because that's right about where we are in 1991 or so, 1990.
01:03:02
Speaker
Um, so then, so then Gary and, or not Gary, um, Mark Bonaccio and Steve Ritchie sort of have a fight.
01:03:10
Speaker
So several things happen all at once.
01:03:12
Speaker
Um, Mark Bonaccio and Steve are not, you know, are not on the best of terms.
01:03:18
Speaker
And then T2 falls in our lap.
01:03:21
Speaker
As a company, we were able to do T2.
01:03:25
Speaker
And then Steve and a bunch of other people go out and meet with James Cameron and learn all about T2.
01:03:31
Speaker
And they decide to shelve Getaway and do T2 instead.
01:03:37
Speaker
And then Mark Panaccio and Steve have a huge fight.
01:03:39
Speaker
And Mark's never going to work with Steve again.
01:03:41
Speaker
So they take the new guy, me.
01:03:44
Speaker
And I'm now working on T2 as my second game with Steve Rich.
01:03:48
Speaker
And that's a whole story in itself.
01:03:52
Speaker
But, you know, that was a lot of fun.
01:03:54
Speaker
And we made T2 and that, you know, then, and I'm not even vaguely aware of Getaway at the time.
01:04:00
Speaker
Like I didn't, like, I'm not sure what the other teams are doing, you know, down the hall or around the corner from me in my office.
01:04:07
Speaker
I was still kind of, you know, not really paying attention or not, you know, not read in.
01:04:13
Speaker
I didn't really know that Getaway was sort of shelved in that whole story.
01:04:17
Speaker
But then when T2 was a huge success, Steve pulled some of his getaway drawings down off the board, off the shelf, and then he and I did getaway.
01:04:29
Speaker
And I'm like, that was a dream come true because high speed was the game that pulled me in and I'm now making getaway.
01:04:36
Speaker
We would have meetings at Steve's house and Steve, so we would be over there for two or three hours, and it was supposed to be to figure out what to do on getaway.
01:04:44
Speaker
And because Steve had a high speed in his basement,
01:04:47
Speaker
And so we would go and we would look at his high speed and then, but we would spend 95% of the time looking at Steve's really cool stereo equipment and his giant screen TV and stuff like that.
01:04:57
Speaker
And, you know, that was, you know, that was that.
01:05:00
Speaker
But I ended up buying that high speed from Steve.
01:05:03
Speaker
So that was like, that was pretty amazing too.
01:05:05
Speaker
It was like, I own Steve Ritchie's high speed, the game that got me into pinball, you know, somewhere about the time that we were making Getaway.
01:05:13
Speaker
That is awesome.
01:05:14
Speaker
Did you end up having him sign it too?
01:05:17
Speaker
Um, I don't, I don't know if he did sign it.
01:05:20
Speaker
Um, Lyman Sheath now has that game.
01:05:22
Speaker
So, you know, but, but Lyman has said that he's willed it to me.
01:05:26
Speaker
So it'll come back to me if Lyman ever, you know, kicks the bucket.
01:05:32
Speaker
So what was your most memorable experience of working in the, uh, the Valley Williams?
01:05:40
Speaker
Wow.
01:05:41
Speaker
Um, um,
01:05:44
Speaker
so there's one memorable experience.
01:05:45
Speaker
So that, I mean, there's lots.
01:05:47
Speaker
So we went out, so we made getaway and then we went to the, to the, like, so we made getaway like six months after we made T2.
01:05:55
Speaker
We made, so it was, it was Williams, like back-to-back games.
01:05:58
Speaker
It was T2 and then getaway.
01:06:00
Speaker
And we sold like 15,000 T2s.
01:06:03
Speaker
And then we went to the Vegas show and almost sight unseen, you know, we sold 13,000 getaways.
01:06:10
Speaker
It was incredible.
01:06:12
Speaker
And then,
01:06:13
Speaker
While we were in Vegas, Larry DeMar put me in a car and drove me over to one of the casinos.
01:06:18
Speaker
And one of the casino signs, the silver dollar, I think the name of the casino was, and the sign on the outside, like sitting in the parking lot, you could see their sign and how the sign is constantly changing between the new features that they have and you should come into the casino and check it out.
01:06:33
Speaker
And one of the things that they were advertising was their new arcade featuring T2 Pinball.
01:06:39
Speaker
Wow.
01:06:41
Speaker
Yeah, that was pretty cool.
01:06:42
Speaker
That is way cool.
01:06:44
Speaker
Yeah.
01:06:45
Speaker
You were a star with your name in the lights.
01:06:46
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
01:06:48
Speaker
Yeah, that's me on the Vegas Strip.
01:06:50
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
01:06:52
Speaker
Right next to Siegfried and Roy, right?
01:06:54
Speaker
Right, right, right up there.
01:06:55
Speaker
Right.
01:06:56
Speaker
Just like Siegfried and Roy and then Dwight Sullivan.
01:06:58
Speaker
No, no, no.
01:06:58
Speaker
T2 Pinball.
01:06:59
Speaker
T2 Pinball.
01:07:00
Speaker
Yes.
01:07:02
Speaker
How much has it changed from those early ballet years to now when coming to software and whatnot?
01:07:07
Speaker
Is it more, I mean, I assume it's a lot more labor intensive, but is there a lot more collaboration as well?
01:07:13
Speaker
Well, yeah.
01:07:14
Speaker
So like collaboration comes and goes like Star Trek Next Generation had an amazing amount of collaboration.
01:07:20
Speaker
Like, like, so like T2, Steve made these really cool toys and awesome kinetics.
01:07:24
Speaker
And, but Steve and I had a great relationship sometimes.
01:07:28
Speaker
Like at the end of every project, I pretty much swore to myself, I'm never, ever working with Steve again, but we made like six games.
01:07:34
Speaker
So, so, you know, we, you know, that, that I would always forget that I was, you know, an idiot and like, I don't know.
01:07:42
Speaker
So,
01:07:43
Speaker
But the collaboration with Steve was always, you know, like Steve and Steve, the line was very clear.
01:07:48
Speaker
Like Steve made really cool kinetics and toys and stuff, but mostly I came up with the rules and whatnot.
01:07:54
Speaker
But on Star Trek The Next Generation, he's a big fan of Star Trek The Next Generation.
01:07:58
Speaker
And so it was a huge collaborative effort.
01:08:01
Speaker
And that's a lot like Turtles too.
01:08:03
Speaker
Turtles has been a huge collaborative effort where everybody just kind of poured tons of work into it and tons of thoughts and ideas and bouncing off each other.
01:08:14
Speaker
I forgot your question.
01:08:15
Speaker
I was just asking if, if times had kind of changed going from.
01:08:20
Speaker
So times.
01:08:21
Speaker
So the collaborative part of it hasn't changed.
01:08:24
Speaker
Like sometimes, sometimes I kind of take the reins and I, and I pretty much handle most of the rules and oversee everything that's not nailed down.
01:08:32
Speaker
And sometimes it's hugely collaborative.
01:08:34
Speaker
Um, and, and, and for different varying results, sometimes that's good.
01:08:38
Speaker
Sometimes it's not.
01:08:40
Speaker
Um, but.
01:08:41
Speaker
The actual job itself has changed quite a bit.
01:08:43
Speaker
We do way more in the games.
01:08:45
Speaker
So like T2 only has really one multiball.
01:08:49
Speaker
It only has one little set of rules, only one hurry up, and it doesn't have any modes and so forth.
01:08:55
Speaker
And today, you're not a game unless you have eight modes and two multiballs and two hurry ups and all these other features and stuff.
01:09:02
Speaker
A modern pinball machine requires many more things than it used to.
01:09:06
Speaker
And we have pros and premiums and LEDs
01:09:09
Speaker
that all adds more complexity to everything and challenge.
01:09:13
Speaker
And the LCD screen adds quite a bit.
01:09:16
Speaker
It's very much the same game, the same thing that I used to do, but it's also very different.
01:09:22
Speaker
Now, you also weathered the storm in the dark days, basically in the 2003 on till about 2010.
01:09:31
Speaker
Tell me about that time.
01:09:33
Speaker
Yeah, so this is, so at Williams, well, so even before then, the storm first started
01:09:39
Speaker
you know, in the late nineties, in the late nineties, we were, we were, you know, like, like cloud, dark clouds are over our heads and people are getting laid off every three of our months.
01:09:50
Speaker
And, and, and, you know, and that, and then, and then we had pinball 2000 and we thought pinball 2000 was going to save the day.
01:09:57
Speaker
And then of course it didn't.
01:09:58
Speaker
And they shut down, they shut the doors.
01:10:00
Speaker
And then I go to Stern and I thinking, okay, we've got a refresh start.
01:10:04
Speaker
And, and for a couple of years, things were okay at Stern.
01:10:07
Speaker
But then things kind of slowly died down again and things were bad again.
01:10:12
Speaker
And clearly, you know, we're not great.
01:10:15
Speaker
And then Stern laid me off again.
01:10:17
Speaker
So I don't know if you guys know, but from 2008 to 2014, I went back to Williams and made slot machines for a few years.
01:10:26
Speaker
I was wondering why there was that gap there in your history.
01:10:30
Speaker
Yeah, that's why.
01:10:32
Speaker
Gotcha.
01:10:34
Speaker
Not many pinball machines at all were made.
01:10:36
Speaker
And then so I 2008, you know, I left CERN and and then George brought me back in 2000 at the end of 2014.
01:10:46
Speaker
So tell me about having I would say that pinball in the last 10 years.
01:10:53
Speaker
has been more fun than at any other time.
01:10:56
Speaker
That would be my guess, just because everything seems to be exponentially changing every year.
01:11:01
Speaker
And it seems like it's on a crescendo as opposed to a decrescendo.
01:11:05
Speaker
I could be projecting, but I want to get your take.
01:11:10
Speaker
I like things that are complex.
01:11:11
Speaker
So, so back in the nineties, I was one of the people that, that made games more and more complex.
01:11:19
Speaker
I made,
01:11:20
Speaker
We tried to, like, T-Turk, like, like, like, Star Trek Next Generation was far more complex than T2, right?
01:11:26
Speaker
And we, and all of the other teams were doing something similar.
01:11:29
Speaker
They were, we were all packing more and more stuff into the games.
01:11:32
Speaker
And we, what we did was we, we took the crowd of people that were standing around the T2, like, like, they were two, three people deep trying to wait to play T2.
01:11:41
Speaker
And, and we took that crowd of people and we pulled them down this path.
01:11:44
Speaker
But along the way, we made the path narrower and narrower and people fell off.
01:11:48
Speaker
And we really didn't notice at first.
01:11:50
Speaker
But eventually it caught up with us and we made the games too complex for the time.
01:11:57
Speaker
So now I'm back in a world where we are making amazingly complex games, but it's much better because a big percentage of our games go to their basements and people want complex, people want depth, people want all kinds of options and choosing things and stuff that never would have flown in the 90s.
01:12:13
Speaker
So I'm loving that quite a bit.
01:12:19
Speaker
It probably has made a difference too, in that there's a better way of sharing information now.
01:12:24
Speaker
And so, you know, you have streamers, you have the internet, you have any way of saying, Hey, did you guys see this?
01:12:30
Speaker
And you can share it.
01:12:31
Speaker
There, there really wasn't that in the nineties.
01:12:33
Speaker
I mean, there was basically trade magazines or your, your buddy at the cafeteria.
01:12:39
Speaker
No, correct.
01:12:40
Speaker
Yeah.
01:12:40
Speaker
We, that's a, that's a huge important fact that you're, that you're talking about.
01:12:44
Speaker
Like we today, you know, I have beta testers.
01:12:47
Speaker
I have people like that, that,
01:12:49
Speaker
that I trust.
01:12:52
Speaker
And so the game goes out there and we continue working on it.
01:12:55
Speaker
We get feedback instantly from people all over the world on what they like and what they don't like and what they hate about your game.
01:13:03
Speaker
And you weigh all those options and you decide whether or not to improve it or how to fix it or how to make it better.
01:13:10
Speaker
And that's all much faster because the world's much shorter, much smaller than it used to be.
01:13:16
Speaker
And, you know, you have that feedback loop, which didn't even exist in the 90s.
01:13:20
Speaker
Well, we've taken plenty of time, Dwight.
01:13:22
Speaker
I know that we like to keep these around an hour to an hour and a half.
01:13:24
Speaker
So we got to get wrapping it up.
01:13:27
Speaker
I got to go pick up my son from soccer practice.
01:13:30
Speaker
But is there anything else you want to share with us before we shut this down?
01:13:35
Speaker
No, I had a good time.
01:13:37
Speaker
And, you know, I would do this again if you want, anytime you want.
01:13:40
Speaker
Absolutely.
01:13:41
Speaker
Thanks a lot for coming on.
01:13:42
Speaker
We certainly would be happy to help you out with any code testing since we are both getting them.
01:13:47
Speaker
And I'd be interested to see what Josh thinks of his pro and what I think of my premium.
01:13:52
Speaker
And we also want to send you out a loser kid hat.
01:13:56
Speaker
So send us your information and we will definitely get one out for you.
01:14:00
Speaker
Okay.
01:14:01
Speaker
You can send it, you can send it to me at work, you know.
01:14:04
Speaker
Awesome.
01:14:05
Speaker
We will definitely do that.
01:14:07
Speaker
And I look forward to having a hat.
01:14:08
Speaker
Is this going to be like the beanie kind of hat?
01:14:10
Speaker
Like I see Keith wear?
01:14:12
Speaker
Which one do you want?
01:14:13
Speaker
I have three in my possession.
01:14:15
Speaker
I have the black one.
01:14:16
Speaker
I have the beanie one with the puffy ball.
01:14:19
Speaker
And I also have the original gangster hat.
01:14:26
Speaker
I don't know what a gangster hat is.
01:14:28
Speaker
Is it a ball cap?
01:14:29
Speaker
It's just a baseball hat.
01:14:31
Speaker
Yeah, it's a ball cap.
01:14:32
Speaker
Right, I'll take the baseball hat.
01:14:34
Speaker
Awesome.
Constructive Criticism in the Pinball Community
01:14:35
Speaker
And I ask that you guys be brutally honest with your feedback.
01:14:40
Speaker
Definitely.
01:14:41
Speaker
Absolutely.
01:14:43
Speaker
Well, we'll be constructive.
01:14:45
Speaker
That's the our attitude is we are trying to make sure things are positive and for change.
01:14:53
Speaker
And it doesn't necessarily have to be that we like everything, but there has to be a method to the critique.
01:15:00
Speaker
If you like it because of this, then it's a way of changing direction.
01:15:07
Speaker
I really hate the constant negativity I see with much of the hobby.
01:15:12
Speaker
And I would rather it be driven to a more positive angle, I guess.
01:15:18
Speaker
Yeah, so constructive criticism...
01:15:20
Speaker
brutally honest, great, genuine feedback.
01:15:23
Speaker
That's right.
01:15:25
Speaker
And then at the same time, if I take in your suggestion and I say, no, I'm not going to do that, you have to not be pissed at me.
01:15:34
Speaker
Yeah, I'm not a designer, so I'm fine.
01:15:36
Speaker
Okay, all right.
01:15:38
Speaker
And I think you guys are pretty cool.
01:15:39
Speaker
You're not losers
Conclusion and Final Thanks
01:15:40
Speaker
at all.
01:15:41
Speaker
Well, thank you.
01:15:43
Speaker
Well, we just made some shirts that say losing at life, winning at pinball.
01:15:49
Speaker
All right, cool, cool, I like it.
01:15:52
Speaker
All right, thanks for letting me do this.
01:15:53
Speaker
Yeah, thanks so much.