Ep 37: Talkin' Turtles with Dwight Sullivan

Transcript

Speaker: Thanks for tuning in to the Loser Kid Pinball Podcast.

Speaker: We are on episode number 37 with me, my co-captain, as always, Scott Larson.

Speaker: And Scott, it's been a wonderful, wonderful past week, hasn't it?

Speaker: It certainly has brought us new things to wake up our coronavirus hangover.

Speaker: And Stern, the pinball fairies dropped us off some news.

Speaker: And so we actually have something to look forward to other than just watching our tokens collect dust.

Speaker: Who do we have today, Josh?

Speaker: Well, let's hurry and introduce the friends of our show really quick.

Speaker: We want to talk about Brad Hunter.

Speaker: If you haven't checked out his Lit Frames, go to litframes.com.

Speaker: He's got some wonderful product there.

Speaker: I know Scott has one of his frames, along with the Monster Bash Brian Allen Translight.

Speaker: And that looks fantastic.

Speaker: And then also friends of the show, Zach and Nicole Many with Flippin' Out Pinball.

Speaker: If you're looking for new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from Stern, that is the guy to get it.

Speaker: He will borrow, beg, borrow, and steal.

Speaker: Beg, borrow, and steal.

Speaker: Yeah, that's the word.

Speaker: He'll do that to get your business.

Speaker: He is happy to help you out.

Speaker: He helped me out.

Speaker: I've already got my pro on lockdown.

Speaker: Didn't he help you out, Scott?

Speaker: He did.

Speaker: I am ordered.

Speaker: I have to wait a little bit longer because I wanted to wait for the premium, but absolutely.

Speaker: He's great to work with.

Speaker: Boom.

Speaker: So there it is.

Speaker: We're both RE customers are flipping out.

Speaker: We're happy with his service so far.

Speaker: Zach, if you're listening, don't screw it up.

Speaker: All right.

Speaker: I'm joking.

Speaker: I'm joking.

Speaker: So, well, I'm going to introduce our guest, if you don't mind, Scott.

Speaker: Go ahead.

Speaker: We have got, if you've al ready read the title, I've already probably put his name in it, but we have a master software designer.

Speaker: This man has so many hits under his belt, it is ridiculous.

Speaker: We've got Terminator 2, The Getaway, Star Trek The Next Generation, Game of Thrones.

Speaker: I mean, this man is amazing, and he's also brought us a brand new game that looks absolutely fantastic.

Speaker: With us, Dwight Sullivan.

Speaker: How are you doing, Dwight?

Speaker: I'm doing good.

Speaker: Thanks for having me.

Speaker: I'm really glad to be here.

Speaker: So how has the reception been so far?

Speaker: You've got nothing but roses in your office and everyone just giving you praise?

Speaker: Well, my office is an unfinished basement, you know, down here in my secret laboratory, my secret lair.

Speaker: But the reception's been great.

Speaker: You know, you're always nervous.

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.

Speaker: You don't want like the Death Star not to work.

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.

Speaker: It went off really well.

Speaker: And then the people seemed to really like what they saw.

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.

Speaker: Exactly.

Speaker: So Dwight, when you got brought into the project, how long does it typically take to orchestrate a rule set?

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?

Speaker: Okay, that's a hard question.

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.

Speaker: And I was skeptical.

Speaker: And then we saw the presentation and then afterwards I went to John and I said, John, we should do that turtles game.

Speaker: And John said, sure.

Speaker: And so we held up our hands and George and the team said, sure, go for it.

Speaker: And from that moment we started working on it.

Speaker: And this was when I was still working on, you know, when I was still working on Munsters a bit.

Speaker: And so the first thing we do is we start

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.

Speaker: This game was very collaborative.

Speaker: John Borg, Elliot Eastman, the mechanical chair and myself, we were the core team at the very beginning and

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?

Speaker: And what if we did that?

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.

Speaker: We got DVDs of the 1987 Turtles and we started watching them all.

Speaker: And that started giving us great ideas about, well, you know, maybe we should do this.

Speaker: Maybe we should have episodes like that, or maybe we should have modes like this and so on.

Speaker: And one thing leads to another and here we are.

Speaker: I gotta say, I love that you guys actually like review the material.

Speaker: I noticed a couple of things people would say is like, why gummy bears on pizza?

Speaker: And if you ever watch those original episodes, you, you don't have to go past the first episode.

Speaker: They're putting like cereal, they're putting gummy bears, they're putting whipped cream on their pizzas.

Speaker: And so I love that you put that into the game.

Speaker: Cause that is true to the show and people are like, what the heck is this?

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: So we have, so in the code, I have 17 different ingredients.

Speaker: But only 12 of which actually have rules.

Speaker: So because 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.

Speaker: That's pretty awesome.

Speaker: So you also have all four turtles and this is one of those games where you actually get to pick a turtle.

Speaker: Uh, so if you're playing a four player game, you have all four turtles.

Speaker: Um, what are the different things that each turtle brings to the table?

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: That's a, that's a good question.

Speaker: And that sort of goes back to that first question is, um,

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.

Speaker: So that's going to be something fun and obvious to do right off the bat.

Speaker: And I did it something similar on Star Wars and Game of Thrones.

Speaker: And I love giving the players choices.

Speaker: So then as soon as you decide that you're going to have...

Speaker: everyone pick a different turtle, well, then you're like, well, you need meaning behind that.

Speaker: You need to make a difference.

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.

Speaker: And then that's a lens that you hold all future rules through.

Speaker: You're like, well, what if I'm playing Donatello and I'm in this mode and I want to do that?

Speaker: What does that mean?

Speaker: So it's really fun with that.

Speaker: Some of the different things that you can do is one of them,

Speaker: They add more time to timers.

Speaker: They add more time to ball save.

Speaker: They add plus one multipliers.

Speaker: They give you plus one to your play field multiplier.

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.

Speaker: Like, you know, they might give you, you know, two X scoring or three X scoring on episodes and stuff like that.

Speaker: So if I am first player and I pick Raphael,

Speaker: Can anybody else pick Raphael or are they forced to pick the other three?

Speaker: In normal play, everybody could pick Raphael.

Speaker: In co-op play, everyone has to pick a different turtle.

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.

Speaker: But I might add an adjustment so that you could just make everyone beat different turtles every single game.

Speaker: But the problem is I want people to walk up and go, okay, all of us are going to be Donatello.

Speaker: Let's see who can be the best Donatello.

Speaker: Or all of us is going to be Leo today.

Speaker: Let's see who can be the best Leo.

Speaker: So I want that possibility.

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.

Speaker: Is that because of progression of the story through the pinball machine or is it just, it makes more sense that way?

Speaker: What, what made you determined to do that?

Speaker: Well, I, right.

Speaker: So I,

Speaker: Every once in a while, they sort of had, you know, like the show itself has some storylines that build on previous storylines.

Speaker: And I wanted to capture that in some fashion.

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.

Speaker: And then, but then at the end of the episode, Shredder says, well, I'm done with you.

Speaker: And he turns him into a fly.

Speaker: So then later on, it's Baxter Fly that you face as a villain.

Speaker: And you can't face Baxter Fly first if he hasn't been turned into a fly yet.

Speaker: So that's one of our two-parters.

Speaker: And then the other one is, Crane wants a body.

Speaker: And so there's an episode where he wants a body.

Speaker: And at the end of the episode, he gets a body.

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.

Speaker: And of course he can't do that in the reverse order, right?

Speaker: That, you know, I just didn't think that made sense.

Speaker: Yeah, that totally makes sense.

Speaker: That's awesome that you guys are,

Speaker: thinking out of the box in that way, in that regard too.

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.

Speaker: But it's cool that you've molded it into the episodes and that it follows the storyline.

Speaker: And so it kind of gives more depth to the game as well.

Speaker: Right, right.

Speaker: We heavily pulled our stories from

Speaker: the early 87 episodes.

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.

Speaker: And, you know, and that, you know, like, mostly, mostly pinball is about shots and goals, and, you know, and speech calls.

Speaker: So we had to, you know, we had to distill a lot of those stories down to simple little thoughts.

Speaker: And, you know, and that was, it was pretty fun to do that.

Speaker: Is there a secret mode where you get to play shredder?

Speaker: No, there's no secret mode where you get to play Shredder.

Speaker: I'm sorry.

Speaker: No, that's going to be a flipper code, right?

Speaker: Exactly, that's a flipper code.

Speaker: I want to play Shredder.

Speaker: So the 1987... You mean like play as Shredder?

Speaker: Yes, play as Shredder, so I'm fighting the turtles.

Speaker: So I know that the... Was the 1989 Konami arcade game influencing at all under the pinball machine?

Speaker: Because I know that has a lot of following to the original arcade stuff.

Speaker: No, I don't actually even know much about that one.

Speaker: So we...

Speaker: We pretty much stuck to, all of my research was the 1987 DVDs and those, in particular, like the first five episodes.

Speaker: Most of our stuff comes from the first five episodes in the 1987 series.

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.

Speaker: One thing that led me to buy the premium is I really liked that the disk spun both ways.

Speaker: And so how do you incorporate that into code?

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.

Speaker: And I like the variation on the disk.

Speaker: And so when you're, I guess when you're coding for a pro versus 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.

Speaker: And we need, we should do this one down in the premium or the LE.

Speaker: So we, so, so we'll talk about the disc.

Speaker: The disc does, is a lot of fun.

Speaker: So a lot of people kind of scoffed at the fact that the LE spins in two directions.

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.

Speaker: And so the disc might affect it.

Speaker: And so

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.

Speaker: But on the Pro, it just spins for two seconds straight, all it can do.

Speaker: And it's very, very different.

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.

Speaker: And that, of course, is funny, but that sucks.

Speaker: But hopefully you had a good ball before that.

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?

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: Scott, yeah.

Speaker: So we generally, well, this game particularly, we started with everything we wanted to put in the game.

Speaker: And that was going to be the LE.

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.

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.

Speaker: So that money then became the Kring toy, which I think is very, very cool.

Speaker: And I'm glad that we have the Kring toy.

Speaker: And then we start thinking about, well, what would we remove?

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.

Speaker: And the, and the, and the van isn't going to hold three balls.

Speaker: In fact, that's a nice distinction between the premium and LE.

Speaker: I mean, the premium and the pro is, is, you know, the eight ball versus the six ball.

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?

Speaker: And we were left with either the glider or, and, and the spinning disc.

Speaker: And that was really difficult because the glider's pretty fun.

Speaker: The glider, you know, you're like, well, I want the ball to come here.

Speaker: I want the ball to go there.

Speaker: And then the glider has its own feature.

Speaker: And so if we lost that, then the pro wouldn't get that.

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.

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.

Speaker: And that's pretty fun to watch.

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.

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.

Speaker: because the glider is more highbrow.

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.

Speaker: You know, it's people thinking ahead on your home buyers, your basement games, and so on.

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.

Speaker: So that's how that decision process all came about.

Speaker: Does that answer your question?

Speaker: Yeah, I would actually agree.

Speaker: I think that the spinning disc is the more wow factor.

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.

Speaker: I think it's one of the coolest features I've ever seen.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: And it doesn't get old.

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.

Speaker: And, and that's, that's very, very entertaining.

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,

Speaker: If you're not paying attention, it can really take you to town.

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?

Speaker: So early on, we start talking about high-level concepts.

Speaker: Like all three of us decided we wanted a third flipper.

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.

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.

Speaker: And quickly it became clear that, yeah, this is going to be a flowing game.

Speaker: It's going to be a fast game.

Speaker: It's going to be a combos game.

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.

Speaker: So to answer your question,

Speaker: You know, John said he wanted to do it as long as, you know, it was gonna be fast and smooth.

Speaker: And, and we're like, yeah, we're on board.

Speaker: We're good.

Speaker: Nothing wrong with a fast and smooth game.

Speaker: So about how many, uh, how do you play test this code, uh, at the stern, uh, building?

Speaker: Like, do you start a code?

Speaker: You actually have people come in and play it and give you ideas and, uh, I lead me through that process.

Speaker: Sure.

Speaker: Um, so at some point, you know, John.

Speaker: John and Elliot and I decide that we like what we have and we want to build it up and start flipping it.

Speaker: We make what we call a whitewood.

Speaker: The whitewood, sometimes it doesn't have the right lamps or it doesn't have any lamps.

Speaker: It just has kinetics and flippers and maybe one or two toys.

Speaker: We build that up and we start flipping it.

Speaker: As soon as we can, that whitewood shows up in my office next to my desk.

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.

Speaker: And then, you know, I, and then eventually we go to whitewood two and whitewood three and so on.

Speaker: And, and, and then later we, we have, you know, colored play fields, full-blown, you know, play fields with real, real artwork.

Speaker: And that's like, that's what I have next to my desk.

Speaker: Now I have next to my desk right now, a, a, a prototype, but it was built by the factory.

Speaker: Because we build them up.

Speaker: The engineering team builds up Whitewoods.

Speaker: And then at some point, the factory builds the last set of prototypes before they're going to go into production.

Speaker: And then all the while, I'm still working on code.

Speaker: Months and months are going by, I'm working on code and downloading it.

Speaker: And it's not just me.

Speaker: I'm just the face of a team of software guys.

Speaker: Right now, we have like four talented guys on this project.

Speaker: And it's all of us working really hard, you know, for long hours, for months.

Speaker: So I've got to ask because I've got just a tiny bit of coding background.

Speaker: I've done a little bit here and there.

Speaker: How is it tedious to do pinball coding?

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?

Speaker: Or is your program pretty easy to work with?

Speaker: Well, C++ is particular for everything being correct, but right off the bat, those type of problems won't even compile.

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.

Speaker: So I guess that's tedious, but that's just comes from the job.

Speaker: That's just part of programming.

Speaker: So in your philosophy of building the code,

Speaker: What is your philosophy on rule balances?

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.

Speaker: You'll see people who, they buy a game because they want to get better at it.

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.

Speaker: And so how do you approach making sure that it is tournament ready?

Speaker: That's a great question.

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.

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.

Speaker: I couldn't do that on this game for a couple of reasons.

Speaker: But fortunately, we have like,

Speaker: We have Tim Sexton and Keith Elwin and now we have Raymond Davidson to help bounce around those kind of ideas.

Speaker: Because I'm not a tournament player, so I always try to lean on whoever I can to help you with.

Speaker: Well, is this stupid or should this be less random and so on.

Speaker: How's the scoring feel here?

Speaker: Does anything feel exploitable?

Speaker: And that's how I usually do it.

Speaker: I try to compensate for something I'm not great at with

Speaker: people around me that are better.

Speaker: That's how I do the tournament scoring.

Speaker: The bigger question is, you have lots of different people playing your game.

Speaker: How do you make a game for everybody?

Speaker: And that's hard to do.

Speaker: So we make a game for tournament players and home players and casual players.

Speaker: And I'm not a tournament player, and I'm not a great player.

Speaker: I'm sort of a middle of the road kind of, I can beat anybody that has not been a pinball.

Speaker: So I want everyone to have fun.

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?

Speaker: Like the higher end player, he's going to want Martell because he knows about multipliers and manipulate that.

Speaker: But I would go for Baratheon on Game of Thrones.

Speaker: And on Turtles, I pick Raph because Raph has got some easy things going on.

Speaker: But like Gary Stern has a pro at his house and Gary always picks Donatello because Donatello puts you one shot for multiball.

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.

Speaker: But, you know, but Gary doesn't care about that.

Speaker: He's going to play multiball.

Speaker: So I know that Nickelodeon was kind of, what's the word I'm looking for?

Speaker: Because some of the complaints I've heard, the only complaint I've honestly heard is some of the voice stuff.

Speaker: But I know that like the theme song, Nintendo required that exact theme song in there.

Speaker: And it's the exact same theme song they just did with the one, a one up arcade cabinet and whatnot.

Speaker: How much say did Nintendo or Nintendo Nickelodeon have when it came to the other characters?

Speaker: And was there a reason the original actors weren't brought in?

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.

Speaker: So great question.

Speaker: So the, so yes, so that we had,

Speaker: We wanted the original theme from the 1987 show.

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.

Speaker: We were going to license that theme.

Speaker: And we would have, but Nickelodeon insisted that we have the tune that's in there now.

Speaker: And so we switched, and it's not the same tune.

Speaker: And for a day or two, it's like, well, this isn't the same tune.

Speaker: What the hell?

Speaker: But then, sorry about I swearing.

Speaker: You're fine.

Speaker: We allow hell on here.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: All right.

Speaker: So I'm like, well, you know, but then after playing it a little bit, I, I really liked the new tune.

Speaker: I like, you know, it's, it is not even that new anymore.

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.

Speaker: But other than that, Nickelodeon has been a dream to work with.

Speaker: They've, you know, they've wanted to say in every single thing we did, like we, for, you know, like, like,

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.

Speaker: And they had notes, but they were really, I mean, compared to other licensors, they were rarely easy to work with.

Speaker: Like they would say, we want more, you know, we think Raphael should be more like this or more like that.

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.

Speaker: And Nickelodeon would say, yeah, like that sounds right, let's do that.

Speaker: And that worked pretty well.

Speaker: In general, so you asked about actors.

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

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

Speaker: Craig was done by our Tom Kizovet.

Speaker: It was our Craig.

Speaker: The Kizovet brothers, brothers Kizovet, I like to call them, they were Shredder and Craig and a couple of the other voices.

Speaker: And they did a great job.

Speaker: And Shredder we had to do twice.

Speaker: Nickelodeon didn't like the first pass.

Speaker: And so we went back and did it again.

Speaker: And then they loved the first pass.

Speaker: But they had no notes.

Speaker: Out of 17 characters, there was only one character they had no notes for, and that was Craig.

Speaker: And that was really good.

Speaker: Well, and Mark Silk did a fantastic job and he did like four or five of the characters.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Big shout out to Mark Silk.

Speaker: Mark Silk.

Speaker: So Mark Silk, you know, I met him at Expo, you know, last Expo.

Speaker: And before that, we were talking on, you know, email and stuff.

Speaker: And I've known that he wanted to do.

Speaker: a game and I'm like, well, let's try to get him in a game.

Speaker: And I knew we were going to have lots of characters at some point.

Speaker: And I'm like, well, hopefully he can do two or three of these.

Speaker: We'll see.

Speaker: And it turns out he did.

Speaker: He did Splinter, like one of our main narrators.

Speaker: And he did a couple of the other voices, at least three or four voices.

Speaker: And he did a great job from what I've heard.

Speaker: Yeah, he did great.

Speaker: So lead us through the different modes of the game.

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.

Speaker: So it's not quite like Star Wars where there are clear paths, you know, through the modes.

Speaker: All four turtles, you know, have all eight modes.

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.

Speaker: And they help you with ball save and what they start at the beginning.

Speaker: So, for example, like Leo.

Speaker: Leo likes training.

Speaker: The way you normally like training is you hit the lair bay.

Speaker: And then the first time you hit it, it likes training.

Speaker: And then the second time you hit it, it likes play field multiplier.

Speaker: So since Leo likes training, it's lit when you push start.

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.

Speaker: So there's stuff like that.

Speaker: Michelangelo is similar.

Speaker: Michelangelo, so the April bank, the first thing it does is lights battle again, but Michelangelo lights battle again.

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,

Speaker: then April will start one of our hurry ups first instead.

Speaker: So those are subtle little paths like that, nuances like that, that are kind of interesting once you get to know the game.

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.

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.

Speaker: And I think that's very impressive.

Speaker: What...

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?

Speaker: No, that was so that so.

Speaker: Early on, before we have a whitewood, we you know, we started the team is now four or five of us.

Speaker: There's the Brothers Kizabat, our way into our way into Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Speaker: And so the Brothers Kizabat, Tom, Tom or John, Elliot and I are all.

Speaker: in a room, we're brainstorming, you know, what are the different tropes that we're going to have in this game?

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?

Speaker: And April and how April was going, what April was going to do changed several times.

Speaker: Like, you know, we started with, well,

Speaker: what she does in 1987 is not really what we want to do.

Speaker: We don't want her all helpless and tied up and, and kind of ditzy.

Speaker: We wanted her, um, you know, she's a story.

Speaker: We leaned into the fact that she's a news reporter.

Speaker: And in fact, in the very first few episodes, she's very heavy.

Speaker: Like I want to get the story.

Speaker: I want to get the story.

Speaker: So we made her all about trying to get the story.

Speaker: So her April hurry up, April hurry up is, is,

Speaker: can be stacked with anything else going on in the game.

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.

Speaker: And that I thought was pretty unique and pretty fun.

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.

Speaker: So the side targets, as opposed to like four or three different individual side targets, they're big single side targets.

Speaker: How does that affect the way you approach the coding?

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.

Speaker: So you guys are being nice.

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

Speaker: And I know that we could do that with stand-ups, but there are several advantages to having the big, wide, long target.

Speaker: And one of them is it's psychologically easier to hit.

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.

Speaker: The other cool thing about it is you can put artwork all the way across it.

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.

Speaker: So you kind of, you know, you have to go to this, you know, this plan anyway.

Speaker: You have to do one big long target, which is fine with me.

Speaker: And the other half of your question was, well, how do you program for that?

Speaker: And I would program them very similarly, even if I had individual targets, I don't like,

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.

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.

Speaker: I guess it's maybe it's an OCD thing.

Speaker: Um, but, but I prefer that over, you know, over spelling things out in the wrong order and, and,

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.

Speaker: And so, and it's never really bothered me.

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.

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.

Speaker: So if you make that target a little bit easier for them too, they might actually go for it versus just...

Speaker: getting rid, you know, unless if it's really, really important, they're like, you know, it's not worth my time.

Speaker: A lot of people would ignore those just because they are any sort of a cross action in a game.

Speaker: You're, you're at danger.

Speaker: And so you really want to get more of a vertical as opposed to a horizontal action on the ball.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: And so, but people didn't like it on Munsters.

Speaker: So I took that in consideration when I was planning out the rules for, um, turtles.

Speaker: So I did a few things, I did a couple of things that I think mitigate the complaints.

Speaker: And one of them is, I made it so that if you, so that the letters time out.

Speaker: So like if you spell APR and you're on your way to spelling April, right?

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.

Speaker: You're also reset back to the beginning at the beginning of each wall.

Speaker: And you get to do it twice.

Speaker: You spell April and she lights battle again.

Speaker: And then you spell April again and she'll sort of hurry up.

Speaker: And then she goes into a mode where the light's moving back and forth.

Speaker: And you can't spell April for a while until you play an episode or until you start another episode.

Speaker: So you have to pace them out and plan them better.

Speaker: And you can't just sit there and get them for all day long.

Speaker: And you have to stack them correctly with whatever you're wanting to do.

Speaker: I like the single bank target.

Speaker: I mean, I don't know.

Speaker: It brings a different variance to the game than the same old, same old.

Speaker: So I like that you're taking all these into consideration.

Speaker: It's not just feedback from a person or two.

Speaker: It's from multiple past games and stuff like that.

Speaker: It's awesome that you do so much back research to make each game better and better from there.

Speaker: Thanks.

Speaker: Now, your last two games, you actually had these big...

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.

Speaker: But you changed a lot with Ghostbusters and really nuanced that rule set.

Speaker: You also did the same thing with Game of Thrones.

Speaker: And so how does that come about?

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.

Speaker: How does that work?

Speaker: Good question.

Speaker: So those, what happens is, I get it in my head that I want to, because you're never done designing a game.

Speaker: You know, just at some point, they take the game away from you and they start putting it in the box.

Speaker: And then at some point you move on and you start working on another game.

Speaker: But you always have more ideas and more things you want to do, always.

Speaker: So at some point you're like, well, it'd be really cool if I could do this or do that.

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.

Speaker: But so right now I don't have any time, but if I do get time, I would love to go back.

Speaker: I'm always wanting to go back and work on something else, work on enhance some other game.

Speaker: And luckily I got that chance.

Speaker: last summer to work on Ghostbusters and Game of Thrones.

Speaker: They actually gave me Tanya for a while, so I got to do both at the same time.

Speaker: I was working on Game of Thrones, and Tanya was working on Ghostbusters, but I was sort of designing both.

Speaker: If that comes up again, I'll work on past games any chance I get.

Speaker: It's just a matter of timing.

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,

Speaker: Um, my bosses don't let, don't care what I do.

Speaker: So speaking of coding and with the coronavirus and everything happening, did that help further the code along for teenage mutant turtles?

Speaker: Like how close are we to 1.0?

Speaker: We're pretty close to 1.0.

Speaker: It, it helped, it helped with, so it didn't give me any more time, right?

Speaker: Like the amount of work that I had to do five months ago didn't change.

Speaker: And we've been, we've been working, you know,

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.

Speaker: So it didn't change the amount of work I had to do or when I was going to be done.

Speaker: What changed was what the code looked like when it first goes in a box.

Speaker: And the stream the other day, I think people figured out that it was like 0.92 and we're pretty close.

Speaker: In that stream, we had about, we had three wizard modes that were kind of rough and not really finished.

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.

Speaker: Well, and the other question with that too is now that software's kind of

Speaker: I'm trying to think how to put this.

Speaker: Do you think this will be like a one-time thing?

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.

Speaker: Do you think that will help the rest of the software be a little more closer to 1.0 on future releases?

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: So it's our objective to be at 1.0 when the game first goes in a box most of the time.

Speaker: And we've been trying really hard to get there.

Speaker: Now, we got a setback here and there, like Stranger Things didn't quite work out the way we wanted it to.

Speaker: But if you go back, I think you see that Monsters was pretty close to done.

Speaker: And most of my games have been pretty close to complete when they first go in a box.

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.

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.

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.

Speaker: Tell me a little more about the co-op mode.

Speaker: It seems like that's a natural with having the turtles.

Speaker: You have four players typically in a game.

Speaker: And if you're all competing for the same thing, tell me how that interacts with each other.

Speaker: I will.

Speaker: I will.

Speaker: You said it's a natural.

Speaker: So co-op has become a thing since Scott Denisi kind of brought it back.

Speaker: But co-op isn't a new thing, but Scott

Speaker: you know, kind of brought it back with TNA and, um, I played TNA and then, and that was pretty cool.

Speaker: And I'm like, you know what, we need to do that.

Speaker: And then every, about the same time I started hearing from lots of other conversations, people saying co-op should come back.

Speaker: And I'm like, well, I'm going to try and bring it back.

Speaker: And then, and then I started thinking about turtles and I'm like, you know what turtles, you're right.

Speaker: Turtles is pretty natural.

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.

Speaker: You know, it works out really well.

Speaker: What was the other half of your question?

Speaker: Well, that was it.

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.

Speaker: That seems to be a natural fit for the hearkening back to the old arcade games too.

Speaker: And I know you said you didn't really look too much into it, but this felt very similar to it.

Speaker: I actually have the arcade games in my basement.

Speaker: So I really liked that approach.

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.

Speaker: Would you consider doing something like that in any of your games?

Speaker: I would absolutely consider it.

Speaker: So like, I love that Keith works for us.

Speaker: I think Keith is amazing.

Speaker: He's a breath of fresh air and rules and I try to steal things from him every day.

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.

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.

Speaker: And yes, so

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.

Speaker: And the menu will give you several different ways to play the game.

Speaker: It'll give you standard or co-op or competitive or co-op plus competitive.

Speaker: And a little side note there, I'm really hoping that someday people will play 4v4 tournaments where you and your three friends,

Speaker: try the best you can and compare your scores versus four other guys who played co-op Turtles.

Speaker: But the other gameplay modes that you can do in Turtles right now is team play.

Speaker: You can do 2v2 team play, 2v1, and 3v1 team play.

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.

Speaker: That is awesome.

Speaker: That would come up in that menu.

Speaker: That would be one more game mode that you could choose from that menu.

Speaker: That would be amazing.

Speaker: I know Gomez said that internet connectivity probably won't be a possibility with this game.

Speaker: Can you give us any hope at all that it might?

Speaker: Or it's probably not going to be on Ninja Turtles?

Speaker: It will not be on Ninja Turtles.

Speaker: I can't speak to that very much.

Speaker: Connectivity is a big thing that we've been working on and planning toward for quite a while.

Speaker: And it did get put on hold because of COVID.

Speaker: COVID put a pin in that for now.

Speaker: And right now we're just trying to get the factory back and going.

Speaker: We're just trying to get up and running.

Speaker: And soon as we get connectivity going, pretty cool things are going to happen.

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.

Speaker: We're going to try our best to make it as cool as possible.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: Good enough.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: No, you're fine.

Speaker: So, so I have a, a comment and a question.

Speaker: Uh, this is actually from Sarah line, Mrs. Pin.

Speaker: Uh, she said, uh, tell Dwight high and she wants to know who your favorite turtle is.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: Hi, Sarah.

Speaker: Um, Mrs. Pin.

Speaker: Um,

Speaker: I'm a big fan of her.

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.

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.

Speaker: But outwardly, I think I'm more like Raphael.

Speaker: It's probably not true, but

Speaker: But anyway, in the game, I like Raphael because Raphael lights episodes.

Speaker: And episodes, if you're not Raphael, you have to work to light each episode.

Speaker: And so I like pushing start.

Speaker: And right off the bat, I can shoot into the pizza parlor, lock a ball, and start an episode.

Speaker: And I'm halfway to getting an extra ball.

Speaker: And that's why I picked Raphael.

Speaker: But I think Raphael is my favorite turtle, even from the show.

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?

Speaker: So it's the, it's the letter.

Speaker: Um, so Casey Jones is a good example of, of stuff that was on the whiteboard.

Speaker: So early on, you know, we're like writing down on the whiteboard, everything that's cool about the turtles.

Speaker: And of course, Casey Jones takes up a quarter of the, of the whiteboard and, and

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.

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.

Speaker: And it would be like, you know, he would be a guy that would come along and help you out.

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,

Speaker: We had to pare the game down and decide exactly what we were putting in the game.

Speaker: We really wanted to stay faithful to those early episodes, those first couple of seasons.

Speaker: Then we invented one of the wizard modes, in fact the first of three wizard modes is called Teema.

Speaker: Instead of having April tied to a chair and you have to go rescue April,

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.

Speaker: And what are you going to do?

Speaker: You're going to call up one of your friends.

Speaker: You're going to call somebody to help you, and they're going to come and help you in this wizard mode.

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.

Speaker: That's awesome.

Speaker: And I love the team up mode, too.

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.

Speaker: I know a lot of people look at that and go, who the heck is this guy?

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.

Speaker: Yeah, well, the Neutrinos are badass.

Speaker: They drive a really cool car that flies and shoots lasers out of the front.

Speaker: So, like, how do you not put that in the game?

Speaker: I agree.

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.

Speaker: Oh, wow.

Speaker: You're talking to her right now.

Speaker: I texted her.

Speaker: She well, OK, so through a sticker mule or whatever.

Speaker: Who did I order stuff from?

Speaker: It's it's the swag store.

Speaker: So, OK, yeah.

Speaker: So well, it's actually it's a merchandise that you can order for your own stuff.

Speaker: So it's a sticker mule.

Speaker: So we got I got a whole bunch of stickers right before the coronavirus.

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.

Speaker: And so there was actually a they have little promos.

Speaker: And one of the promos that came up this week was little earring things.

Speaker: And so I said that she could order the earrings and she's like, absolutely.

Speaker: Just mail email me or mail the loser kid logo to me and she will make them for me.

Speaker: And so we've just been talking today about making swag for for everybody, including everybody who wears earrings.

Speaker: Well, you know, not for me, but, you know, I think it's a cool idea.

Speaker: You know, you can pierce anything.

Speaker: It's fine.

Speaker: Just put it anywhere.

Speaker: That's some TMI right there, buddy.

Speaker: I didn't say I had one.

Speaker: I'm just saying it's possible.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: All right.

Speaker: I'm going to be careful.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: If you ever see Scott Pearson, you got a person, you got to ask him all the piercings.

Speaker: Yeah, exactly.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Zero is the answer.

Speaker: So.

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.

Speaker: I have a, I have a, the coolest rule ever thing I want to talk about too.

Speaker: Okay, go ahead.

Speaker: Go for it.

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,

Speaker: But I think one of the innovative things that I made on, because like Scott Denisi made really cool co-op mode.

Speaker: And I had to figure out, well, how do I improve on that?

Speaker: And I don't know if I did or not.

Speaker: I just think I did in my own head.

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.

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.

Speaker: I don't have to play it.

Speaker: I can, you know, I only need, you know, I need one less to get to the next Wizard mode.

Speaker: And so that's, of course, sharing the progress.

Speaker: That's like what he did with the reactors.

Speaker: But I wanted to do one more thing.

Speaker: I wanted to figure out something I could do that was different.

Speaker: And what I did was this.

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.

Speaker: So like on somebody, you could help out your teammate with something cool you did.

Speaker: And I kept it, I ended up keeping it kind of simple.

Speaker: I had lots of really complex ideas.

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.

Speaker: So what happens is when you make your skill shot, you light weapon for yourself.

Speaker: In co-op, you light weapon for yourself, but you also enable lighting a weapon for everybody else that follows you that ball.

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.

Speaker: But if he plays weapon, he'll get two cascading hurry ups and then he's done.

Speaker: Player two comes up and if he makes a skill shot, he'll light weapon for himself.

Speaker: But since player one made his skill shot, he'll get, he'll get four hurry ups in a row.

Speaker: You know, he'll get his two plus player one's two.

Speaker: All right.

Speaker: Are you guys following me?

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: All right.

Speaker: So keep so so that keeps following.

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.

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.

Speaker: But you're also going to discuss, well, who should go first, second, third, and fourth?

Speaker: Because whoever bats fourth is going to, you know, might get put in the position to try to get eight straight hurry ups.

Speaker: Coolest rule ever.

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.

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.

Speaker: Raymond's currently number one.

Speaker: So maybe you want Raymond.

Speaker: I'll take either one on my team.

Speaker: I don't care.

Speaker: You can pretty, pretty fierce foursome out of the employees from Stern now.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: Well, that's like, speaking of Keith though, that's the three V one mode.

Speaker: The three V one mode is three, you know, three players versus Keith.

Speaker: Or in the pin household, right?

Speaker: It's all the girls versus Chris.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: So it can go either way.

Speaker: I think the 3D one is going to be just as fun as the co-op in some households.

Speaker: I totally agree.

Speaker: Especially, I think it was on...

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

Speaker: Bring it.

Speaker: Bring it on.

Speaker: I'll take everybody on.

Speaker: All I can say is I'm excited to get this game in my home.

Speaker: I've dreamt of Ninja Turtles machine that isn't the Data East one for years now.

Speaker: And this is honestly a dream come true.

Speaker: I know Zach Manning said it's done great for you guys already.

Speaker: He said that within four hours, all LEs were sold out.

Speaker: And that hasn't happened since Jurassic Park.

Speaker: It's already got a good track record.

Speaker: It seems like it's brewing the perfect storm for you guys.

Speaker: Yeah, I'm loving it.

Speaker: Right?

Speaker: I'm glad you're loving it.

Speaker: Cause, uh, that, that is amazing.

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.

Speaker: Well, I, I wanted to hear a little more about, uh, how did you get involved in gaming?

Speaker: How did you get involved in a pinball, uh, and exactly, uh, the twists and turns in your career to come to Stern.

Speaker: Wow.

Speaker: So that's, that's, that's a long podcast.

Speaker: Um, so I've been, I've been at this for over 30 years.

Speaker: In 1989, I started working at Williams.

Speaker: And that's a story in itself.

Speaker: You should edit out all these uns and ins and outs.

Speaker: I'm sorry.

Speaker: So exactly where do you want to begin?

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.

Speaker: Or I used to ride a bike to the airport to play Gorghar and other games.

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.

Speaker: But the arcade would be packed full of video games and like Dragon's Lair and stuff.

Speaker: And instead of playing Dragon's Lair, I was into playing Grand Lizard at high speed.

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

Speaker: than just keeping the ball on.

Speaker: There's a story there, there's objectives, there's goals.

Speaker: And I'm like, that's really when I got hooked was when playing high speed.

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.

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.

Speaker: And it was really surreal.

Speaker: I really had a comet by the tail and it just took off from there.

Speaker: So what were you studying in college and where did you go to college?

Speaker: Like what was your proximity to Williams?

Speaker: Because that was pre-internet, pre any easy way of contacting companies.

Speaker: That was the old phone book or mailing something away.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: So I stumbled into it just haphazardly, like I do most of my life.

Speaker: It's sad to say.

Speaker: So I was in college.

Speaker: I went to DeVry University.

Speaker: I grew up in Michigan and I went to Eastern Michigan University for a few months.

Speaker: And it wasn't really for me.

Speaker: I was too immature for college right out of high school.

Speaker: So I stopped going to college for a while and I took on like three, four jobs delivering pizzas and stuff like that.

Speaker: And eventually I'm like, you know what?

Speaker: I got to get out of here.

Speaker: I got to, I got to get out of this town.

Speaker: I got to go do something.

Speaker: So I start seeing these commercials for DeVry university.

Speaker: And I'm like, you know what?

Speaker: I'm going to do that.

Speaker: I'm going to take whatever money I have and I'm going to pour it into

Speaker: getting a college education and I do that.

Speaker: And then near the end of my DeVry college career, the counselors at the school start sending me on job fairs.

Speaker: And I get a suit and I get some resumes and I start going to job fairs.

Speaker: And I got a date mixed up with my counselor and I went to the wrong job fair.

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.

Speaker: It was for people already established in the software world or the or the electronic world.

Speaker: My degree was a bachelor of electrical engineering technology.

Speaker: It's not it's not quite the same as a degree.

Speaker: And it's you know, it's sort of somewhere in between.

Speaker: So I'm trying to get it.

Speaker: I'm trying to get an interview for for

Speaker: someone somewhere here in Chicago.

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?

Speaker: I'm just going to go practice interviewing and hell with it.

Speaker: And everyone keeps saying, no, sorry, we're not hiring entry level people.

Speaker: Sorry, we're not hiring entry level people.

Speaker: And finally I talked to one lady who said, you know what, you know, who's, who's looking for all the time.

Speaker: And she hooked me up with Ed Sahaki's phone number and Ed Sahaki worked for Williams.

Speaker: And he was the head of the software department at Williams.

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.

Speaker: And he said, no problem.

Speaker: So we set it up.

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.

Speaker: And those are old names from the past that you, you know, you, you may or may not know.

Speaker: And that was, that was, and I brought with me,

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.

Speaker: And I laid it all out on the table and they hired me.

Speaker: It was pretty awesome.

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?

Speaker: So you're, you're a lead almost right off the bat.

Speaker: Like, so you start trading, right?

Speaker: Like, so they threw a mouse around in my office and I started, so like Larry DeMar's down the hallway from me.

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.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: And, and he's trying to figure out how does, you know, what the algorithm is for leap years.

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.

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.

Speaker: And, um, um,

Speaker: So they put a mouse around in my room.

Speaker: And then one of the first things I start doing is playing with that and start making different, um, 16 segment display effects.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: So I start making cool wipes and stuff on the 16 segment displays.

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.

Speaker: So Brian, Brian started about six months before I did.

Speaker: And so then he and I start working on pool sharks and I start doing that a little bit.

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.

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.

Speaker: And that's a really fun, fun game.

Speaker: I actually stumbled across one in my own town and it's very unique.

Speaker: It's very different.

Speaker: Um, I was one of the fortunate ones to actually have the diamond plate play field.

Speaker: And I guess there wasn't very many of those made for that, for that game.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: It's when we first started figuring out diamond play.

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.

Speaker: Yeah, I, I was, um,

Speaker: Mark Bonaccio and Steve are making Getaway and they were getting started on it.

Speaker: And we also were tinkering around with doing a dot matrix.

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.

Speaker: Um, so then, so then Gary and, or not Gary, um, Mark Bonaccio and Steve Ritchie sort of have a fight.

Speaker: So several things happen all at once.

Speaker: Um, Mark Bonaccio and Steve are not, you know, are not on the best of terms.

Speaker: And then T2 falls in our lap.

Speaker: As a company, we were able to do T2.

Speaker: And then Steve and a bunch of other people go out and meet with James Cameron and learn all about T2.

Speaker: And they decide to shelve Getaway and do T2 instead.

Speaker: And then Mark Panaccio and Steve have a huge fight.

Speaker: And Mark's never going to work with Steve again.

Speaker: So they take the new guy, me.

Speaker: And I'm now working on T2 as my second game with Steve Rich.

Speaker: And that's a whole story in itself.

Speaker: But, you know, that was a lot of fun.

Speaker: And we made T2 and that, you know, then, and I'm not even vaguely aware of Getaway at the time.

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.

Speaker: I was still kind of, you know, not really paying attention or not, you know, not read in.

Speaker: I didn't really know that Getaway was sort of shelved in that whole story.

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.

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.

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.

Speaker: And because Steve had a high speed in his basement,

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.

Speaker: And, you know, that was, you know, that was that.

Speaker: But I ended up buying that high speed from Steve.

Speaker: So that was like, that was pretty amazing too.

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.

Speaker: That is awesome.

Speaker: Did you end up having him sign it too?

Speaker: Um, I don't, I don't know if he did sign it.

Speaker: Um, Lyman Sheath now has that game.

Speaker: So, you know, but, but Lyman has said that he's willed it to me.

Speaker: So it'll come back to me if Lyman ever, you know, kicks the bucket.

Speaker: So what was your most memorable experience of working in the, uh, the Valley Williams?

Speaker: Wow.

Speaker: Um, um,

Speaker: so there's one memorable experience.

Speaker: So that, I mean, there's lots.

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.

Speaker: We made, so it was, it was Williams, like back-to-back games.

Speaker: It was T2 and then getaway.

Speaker: And we sold like 15,000 T2s.

Speaker: And then we went to the Vegas show and almost sight unseen, you know, we sold 13,000 getaways.

Speaker: It was incredible.

Speaker: And then,

Speaker: While we were in Vegas, Larry DeMar put me in a car and drove me over to one of the casinos.

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.

Speaker: And one of the things that they were advertising was their new arcade featuring T2 Pinball.

Speaker: Wow.

Speaker: Yeah, that was pretty cool.

Speaker: That is way cool.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: You were a star with your name in the lights.

Speaker: Oh, yeah.

Speaker: Yeah, that's me on the Vegas Strip.

Speaker: Oh, yeah.

Speaker: Right next to Siegfried and Roy, right?

Speaker: Right, right, right up there.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: Just like Siegfried and Roy and then Dwight Sullivan.

Speaker: No, no, no.

Speaker: T2 Pinball.

Speaker: T2 Pinball.

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: How much has it changed from those early ballet years to now when coming to software and whatnot?

Speaker: Is it more, I mean, I assume it's a lot more labor intensive, but is there a lot more collaboration as well?

Speaker: Well, yeah.

Speaker: So like collaboration comes and goes like Star Trek Next Generation had an amazing amount of collaboration.

Speaker: Like, like, so like T2, Steve made these really cool toys and awesome kinetics.

Speaker: And, but Steve and I had a great relationship sometimes.

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.

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.

Speaker: So,

Speaker: But the collaboration with Steve was always, you know, like Steve and Steve, the line was very clear.

Speaker: Like Steve made really cool kinetics and toys and stuff, but mostly I came up with the rules and whatnot.

Speaker: But on Star Trek The Next Generation, he's a big fan of Star Trek The Next Generation.

Speaker: And so it was a huge collaborative effort.

Speaker: And that's a lot like Turtles too.

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.

Speaker: I forgot your question.

Speaker: I was just asking if, if times had kind of changed going from.

Speaker: So times.

Speaker: So the collaborative part of it hasn't changed.

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.

Speaker: And sometimes it's hugely collaborative.

Speaker: Um, and, and, and for different varying results, sometimes that's good.

Speaker: Sometimes it's not.

Speaker: Um, but.

Speaker: The actual job itself has changed quite a bit.

Speaker: We do way more in the games.

Speaker: So like T2 only has really one multiball.

Speaker: It only has one little set of rules, only one hurry up, and it doesn't have any modes and so forth.

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.

Speaker: A modern pinball machine requires many more things than it used to.

Speaker: And we have pros and premiums and LEDs

Speaker: that all adds more complexity to everything and challenge.

Speaker: And the LCD screen adds quite a bit.

Speaker: It's very much the same game, the same thing that I used to do, but it's also very different.

Speaker: Now, you also weathered the storm in the dark days, basically in the 2003 on till about 2010.

Speaker: Tell me about that time.

Speaker: Yeah, so this is, so at Williams, well, so even before then, the storm first started

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.

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.

Speaker: And then of course it didn't.

Speaker: And they shut down, they shut the doors.

Speaker: And then I go to Stern and I thinking, okay, we've got a refresh start.

Speaker: And, and for a couple of years, things were okay at Stern.

Speaker: But then things kind of slowly died down again and things were bad again.

Speaker: And clearly, you know, we're not great.

Speaker: And then Stern laid me off again.

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.

Speaker: I was wondering why there was that gap there in your history.

Speaker: Yeah, that's why.

Speaker: Gotcha.

Speaker: Not many pinball machines at all were made.

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.

Speaker: So tell me about having I would say that pinball in the last 10 years.

Speaker: has been more fun than at any other time.

Speaker: That would be my guess, just because everything seems to be exponentially changing every year.

Speaker: And it seems like it's on a crescendo as opposed to a decrescendo.

Speaker: I could be projecting, but I want to get your take.

Speaker: I like things that are complex.

Speaker: So, so back in the nineties, I was one of the people that, that made games more and more complex.

Speaker: I made,

Speaker: We tried to, like, T-Turk, like, like, like, Star Trek Next Generation was far more complex than T2, right?

Speaker: And we, and all of the other teams were doing something similar.

Speaker: They were, we were all packing more and more stuff into the games.

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.

Speaker: And, and we took that crowd of people and we pulled them down this path.

Speaker: But along the way, we made the path narrower and narrower and people fell off.

Speaker: And we really didn't notice at first.

Speaker: But eventually it caught up with us and we made the games too complex for the time.

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.

Speaker: So I'm loving that quite a bit.

Speaker: It probably has made a difference too, in that there's a better way of sharing information now.

Speaker: And so, you know, you have streamers, you have the internet, you have any way of saying, Hey, did you guys see this?

Speaker: And you can share it.

Speaker: There, there really wasn't that in the nineties.

Speaker: I mean, there was basically trade magazines or your, your buddy at the cafeteria.

Speaker: No, correct.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: We, that's a, that's a huge important fact that you're, that you're talking about.

Speaker: Like we today, you know, I have beta testers.

Speaker: I have people like that, that,

Speaker: that I trust.

Speaker: And so the game goes out there and we continue working on it.

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.

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.

Speaker: And that's all much faster because the world's much shorter, much smaller than it used to be.

Speaker: And, you know, you have that feedback loop, which didn't even exist in the 90s.

Speaker: Well, we've taken plenty of time, Dwight.

Speaker: I know that we like to keep these around an hour to an hour and a half.

Speaker: So we got to get wrapping it up.

Speaker: I got to go pick up my son from soccer practice.

Speaker: But is there anything else you want to share with us before we shut this down?

Speaker: No, I had a good time.

Speaker: And, you know, I would do this again if you want, anytime you want.

Speaker: Absolutely.

Speaker: Thanks a lot for coming on.

Speaker: We certainly would be happy to help you out with any code testing since we are both getting them.

Speaker: And I'd be interested to see what Josh thinks of his pro and what I think of my premium.

Speaker: And we also want to send you out a loser kid hat.

Speaker: So send us your information and we will definitely get one out for you.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: You can send it, you can send it to me at work, you know.

Speaker: Awesome.

Speaker: We will definitely do that.

Speaker: And I look forward to having a hat.

Speaker: Is this going to be like the beanie kind of hat?

Speaker: Like I see Keith wear?

Speaker: Which one do you want?

Speaker: I have three in my possession.

Speaker: I have the black one.

Speaker: I have the beanie one with the puffy ball.

Speaker: And I also have the original gangster hat.

Speaker: I don't know what a gangster hat is.

Speaker: Is it a ball cap?

Speaker: It's just a baseball hat.

Speaker: Yeah, it's a ball cap.

Speaker: Right, I'll take the baseball hat.

Speaker: Awesome.

Speaker: And I ask that you guys be brutally honest with your feedback.

Speaker: Definitely.

Speaker: Absolutely.

Speaker: Well, we'll be constructive.

Speaker: That's the our attitude is we are trying to make sure things are positive and for change.

Speaker: And it doesn't necessarily have to be that we like everything, but there has to be a method to the critique.

Speaker: If you like it because of this, then it's a way of changing direction.

Speaker: I really hate the constant negativity I see with much of the hobby.

Speaker: And I would rather it be driven to a more positive angle, I guess.

Speaker: Yeah, so constructive criticism...

Speaker: brutally honest, great, genuine feedback.

Speaker: That's right.

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.

Speaker: Yeah, I'm not a designer, so I'm fine.

Speaker: Okay, all right.

Speaker: And I think you guys are pretty cool.

Speaker: You're not losers at all.

Speaker: Well, thank you.

Speaker: Well, we just made some shirts that say losing at life, winning at pinball.

Speaker: All right, cool, cool, I like it.

Speaker: All right, thanks for letting me do this.

Speaker: Yeah, thanks so much.