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Ep 90: Living the Dream with Jerry Thompson
76 Plays3 years ago
It takes a lot to make a great sound package and Jerry Thompson is here to give us the insight! We talk his catalog and with the awesome experiences he's had from doing sound in the pinball industy.
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Transcript
Introduction and Flippin' Out Pinball
00:00:06
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in to the Loser Kid Pinball Podcast.
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Speaker
This is episode 90.
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Speaker
I am Josh Roop with me, my co-captain as always.
00:00:14
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Scott Larson.
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And Scott, you know, it's kind of been an interesting year so far in pinball and there is plenty of pinball to be had.
00:00:22
Speaker
So if you want to get a hold of a pinball machine, how do you do it, Scott?
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Speaker
I usually contact Zach and Nicole at Flippin' Out Pinball.
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Speaker
Definitely.
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Speaker
Now, I will say that last time I talked a little bit about my issue with the Rush Opto, and Zach actually reached back out to me to say, hey, let's get you taken care of and send that out.
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Speaker
So we're just waiting on that.
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You can always tell a good company by the customer support.
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And so if you have an issue and they are responding and they're active in it, then that is certainly, that certainly is the way that I judge a company.
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Speaker
And Zach and Nicole have always been great for me.
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Speaker
So it's, they'll do the same for you.
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Speaker
Just reach out, look them up, flipping out pinball, or just message them on Facebook.
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Speaker
Did you see on Facebook they caught Zach with his pants down on a recent post?
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Speaker
Oh, geez.
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Speaker
Yeah.
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What was he doing, man?
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That was just awkward.
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Yep.
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All right.
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Speaker
Enough of that.
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Let's get to our
Jerry Thompson's Pinball Journey
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guest.
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We have a man here.
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that has been in the industry for almost a decade now.
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He started out with Mustang back in 2014, and his library of games that he has worked on are amazing.
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We've got Godzilla, The Beatles, Ghostbusters.
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I know you're loving some of these.
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With us today is Jerry Thompson.
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Speaker
How are you doing, sir?
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Speaker
I'm great.
00:01:45
Speaker
How are you guys?
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Doing fantastic.
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I have to tell you, the Mustang I did announcer speech in.
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David Thiel did the sound package on that.
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And a great job.
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So I can't take credit for that one.
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Okay, well, you're working together with them.
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Yeah, yeah.
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Well, we've been friends since 2008, right?
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He and I are from the same area.
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And well, you want to just get right into this?
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Would you like to know how I know David did?
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This is what we want to know, the origin story.
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So we're just hanging out talking.
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When I got to Cousin Brucie's house to record the Beatles speech for that game, he said, you know, let's get to know each other before we start recording.
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I made some breakfast for us.
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And so, you know, it was just so we'll just act like that.
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We're just getting to know each other.
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Speaker
How about that?
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Was that OK?
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First off, you can't just leave with that.
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Was that a pretty surreal moment, by the way, being cousin Bruce's house?
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And he's like, let's make some breakfast and sit down.
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Well, you know, when we that's the only game I've gone into George and said, I am the Beatles biggest fan.
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Please let me do this game.
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And he said, OK.
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So that was easy.
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But I told him, I said, you know, cousin Brucey is on Sirius.
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He's now on back on WABC.
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But at the time he was on Sirius.
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And I said, you know, he introduced the Beatles at Shea Stadium in 65.
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And, you know, he's the only one to me that could be the announcer in the game.
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And so luckily they he and Joe Joe Camon Cal, you know, said, what are you thinking for the announcer?
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And and I said, well, I have an idea.
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Speaker
He goes, what about Cousin Brucey?
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I go, that was my idea.
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So he goes, call him.
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So I got in touch with him and he said, I'm about to leave for vacation and and we need to do this pretty soon.
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So I said, well, I'll come over to New York and we planned to do it at the Sirius studios.
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But that morning he called and said, you know, I don't want to run out of time.
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I want to make sure you get what you want.
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So why don't you just come over to my house if you have recording stuff?
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And I always take it with me everywhere I go.
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So I was like, sure, I'll be right over.
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And and we did it all in his living room.
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Just he sat on his sofa and I recorded him and just a just the nicest guy.
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You know, we we he said, you know, when your wife and and you come back to New York, let's all get together for dinner.
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But then COVID happened.
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So I haven't seen him since.
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But he's still on the air every Saturday night on WBC in New York.
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Okay, so you're going to have to bring me in.
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I've never heard of Cousin Brucie.
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So tell me about why he is important to the game.
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Speaker
Well, he was the one of the biggest radio DJs in New York in the 60s.
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And then he bought some radio stations and had a syndicated show in the 80s called Cruisin' with Cousin Brucie.
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He's written a few books.
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And I mean, he is he has a radio legend in the East Coast.
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And then if you listen to I mean, I'm 54.
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You guys are younger than me.
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Speaker
Right.
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Speaker
So you probably that's that's one reason you don't know who he is.
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Yeah.
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But yeah, I never thought I'd be the old guy.
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Back in my day, they had radios.
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I'm 47.
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So we're at least in the same wheelhouse.
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I would say I really enjoy music, so I knew who Cousin Brucey was because I watched the documentaries and stuff on the Beatles.
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My best friend, one of my best friends, was obsessed with the Beatles, so we had to know everything about the Beatles.
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Radio was my thing before pinball.
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My oldest brother is 17 years older than me, and I started working full-time, well, when I was in high school.
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A week before I turned 16, my mom had to drive me to the radio station for the first week before I got my driver's license.
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And then...
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In my senior year, I worked seven days a week and twice on Sunday.
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I worked at the local station in the morning from 6 to 8, went to school, came back and worked 3.30 to 6.
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And then I worked Saturday and then Sunday morning there.
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And then Sunday afternoon, I'd go over to Shreveport, which is about a 45-minute drive from my hometown, and work Classic Rock in the afternoon.
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So...
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That was, you know, radio was my thing.
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So I knew who he was.
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Eventually I worked in an oldie station and we ran his syndicated program.
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So I was a fan.
00:05:48
Speaker
I don't blame you.
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Speaker
That's so awesome.
00:05:51
Speaker
I feel like we got the cart a little bit ahead of the horse.
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Speaker
So please tell us how, because obviously you haven't been, you've been in pinball for eight, nine years now.
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Speaker
How did you even get into it?
00:06:01
Speaker
Well, it's a long story.
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Speaker
You got time.
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Speaker
Yeah, we got time.
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Speaker
We got all podcast.
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Speaker
My wife calls it the girl version.
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She'll say, you want the girl version or you want the short version?
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Speaker
So I bought my first game in 1998, and that was Twilight Zone, and I still have it.
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Speaker
And you know how they grow like rabbits.
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I mean, I have a house full now.
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But I...
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Speaker
there was a guy that i met through a craigslist ad you know you know how you you look for a game and the one you really want's in the background and i wrote him and said yeah i'm not interested in this but what about this game and he said no but you know come up and we we have this get together at a pizza place in oak harbor washington um once a year and a lot of people bring their machines and and so i went to that and then the next year it got bigger the next year bigger and so
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a group of us formed an email group and we'd go over to each other's house and play, you know, you'd rotate through.
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And so I met a lot of pinball people.
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Speaker
And then 2008, we were like, you know, this has gotten so big, maybe we could have a show.
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And so I was like, well,
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I went to my first pinball expo in Chicago in 2004 and I met Steve Ritchie.
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Speaker
I met him in Texas in 2002 because I lived there.
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I was working in Houston radio and I drove up to Dallas.
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So my first meeting with Steve was me standing in line with my Translight to get it signed for Next Gen.
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And he goes, you own this game?
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I said, yeah.
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He goes, does it work?
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And I said, yeah.
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He goes, that's rare.
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So my next time to see him was in the hallway at Expo in 2004.
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And I said, hey, I just got my Elvis gold yesterday before I had to leave to come to Expo.
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Speaker
And he goes, so his response to that was, wow, I can't believe you bought it.
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I was like, well, I love Elvis and, you know, and I still have that game too, you know.
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But so he was my thought to, you know, if we're going to have speakers, we need to get a big name and really make it a show.
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Speaker
We need to have tournaments, you know, a well-rounded show.
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Speaker
So I reached out to him and he was in California at the time.
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And he's like, yeah, if you'll pay my expenses, you know, I'll drive up.
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Speaker
So we had Steve Ritchie and then Steve Wiebe from the King of Kong.
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Speaker
I don't know if you guys have seen that.
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Speaker
Yeah.
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Speaker
With Billy Mitchell.
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He looks up there, doesn't he?
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Speaker
Right.
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Yeah.
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So he did it.
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And then Greg Dunlap was one of the organizers of the show.
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And he said, I'll do one.
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Speaker
And I was like, on what?
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Speaker
Because we didn't really know.
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We didn't know what each other did.
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We just love pinball.
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Speaker
You know, to me, that's the cool thing.
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Speaker
It's like pinball is kind of like the great equalizer.
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It doesn't matter what you do or if you have 100 machines or none.
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You just love pinball.
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Speaker
And so everybody's, you know, everybody's an equal at that point.
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Speaker
So he's like, well, I used to work at Williams and I was there when they shut it down.
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Speaker
And I have some video of the offices, you know, when everything was closed down.
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Speaker
So he did a seminar and then I had read in Pin Game Journal.
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David Thiel lived here too.
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Speaker
David did sound at Stern from 2006 to 2016.
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Speaker
I invited him.
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Speaker
We had a pretty great first-year seminar lineup, including David.
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Speaker
We became friends and started going to concerts together.
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I got to know Lonnie.
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Speaker
And Greg Ferris, actually, Greg and Dennis, I invited out to the show to be speakers in 2010.
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Speaker
And they got together, hadn't seen each other in a while.
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Speaker
I put them on the plane together and then they went to a restaurant and decided to make Woe Nelly while they were here in Seattle.
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Speaker
And so they made the four, I think, right?
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Speaker
The custom ones.
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Speaker
And then 2015, Greg called me and said, Stern's going to make Woe Nelly.
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Speaker
And since you were there in the beginning, you should do the sound for it.
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Speaker
And so I got to be the DJ in there.
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Speaker
And my best friend, Rod, was the crazy guy.
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Speaker
And then I found a girl that worked at a radio station in Shreveport that I did voice work for to be Melanie.
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Speaker
And so before that, though, David had let me do some speech.
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Speaker
Actually, it goes back to Lonnie.
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Speaker
Lonnie called me and he said, hey, I know you were on the radio and we're doing Rolling Stones.
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Speaker
And would you like to write some speech lines for the announcer?
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Speaker
that were kind of like radio factoid kind of things that you could say over an intro to a song.
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Speaker
And I was like, yeah, anything pinball.
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Speaker
I mean, when I got a game, and I have so many games with Tim Kittrow in them, I thought, wow, man, if I could ever talk in a pinball, that'd be the best thing ever.
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Speaker
And so Lonnie said in 2014, he's like, since you didn't get to talk in Rolling Stones, you want to talk in Mustang?
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Speaker
And I was like, yep, I'm there.
00:10:55
Speaker
So really, those were the two first things I kind of did.
Sound Design in Pinball
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Speaker
And then after I started working on Wonelli, they need some help with Game of Thrones.
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Speaker
And I had met Dwight also at Expo several times.
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Speaker
And so he said, you know, we need some some speech processing help on this.
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Speaker
And I started working with Dwight and I knew they were going to go going to do Ghostbusters.
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Speaker
And I said, man, I already hear this game in my head.
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Speaker
I really want to be the sound guy for Ghostbusters.
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Speaker
And, you know, since David had left, I
00:11:29
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I was like, and then, you know, of course, I hadn't done any.
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Speaker
So they look at me and they were like, yeah, but you've never done one.
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Speaker
And I go, just give me a month.
00:11:40
Speaker
And if it's not working out, get rid of me.
00:11:41
Speaker
But I said, I promise you, I can make this this game better than anybody else you have available right now.
00:11:48
Speaker
So he talked to George and George is like, yeah, we'll think about it.
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Speaker
So I came home.
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Speaker
called my friend, Sean, that I played with 20 years ago.
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Speaker
And he and his wife both have masters in music degrees and sing, play, just great.
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And so I said, hey, I got this opportunity to do a game and here's what I want it to sound like.
00:12:14
Speaker
And can you whip up some music for me, you know, like this?
00:12:17
Speaker
So
00:12:18
Speaker
Two days later, after I pitched him, I sent them three tracks and said, here's what I think it should sound like.
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Speaker
So, so Dwight called and said, okay, I think you, you know, we'll give you a shot.
00:12:29
Speaker
So I, I thank him all the time for giving me an, and George, you know, for giving me a chance.
00:12:35
Speaker
Um, and you know, then I had to, had to get in there and prove myself, but I'm, I just worked on my 20th game.
00:12:41
Speaker
So it's worked out.
00:12:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:45
Speaker
It's a pretty impressive run.
00:12:46
Speaker
And now that,
00:12:48
Speaker
Here's the question, though, when you think, what does a pinball machine sound like?
00:12:53
Speaker
Like, like, I would have no idea how to orchestrate that because it is so foreign to me.
00:12:59
Speaker
So walk me through that.
00:13:01
Speaker
Well, I wanted the my the biggest thing to me is immersion, you know, because that's one of the things I love about what Chris Granner did in Lord of the Rings and in Indiana Jones.
00:13:13
Speaker
And just, you know, any game, I don't want to do anything that ever takes anybody out of the game.
00:13:19
Speaker
You know, if there's something that sticks out like a sore thumb, then that's going to take you out of the, you know, out of the whole immersion of the game.
00:13:26
Speaker
So that's my first thing.
00:13:28
Speaker
I wanted Ghostbusters to sound like the 80s.
00:13:31
Speaker
So, you know, those cheesy synth sounds from the 80s, and I've got a Lindrum machine and Simmons drums that were big back then.
00:13:40
Speaker
So all that stuff was, you know, you hear cheesy little keyboard things in Ghostbusters because that's of the era.
00:13:48
Speaker
So it was real important to me that it not be, you know, new sounding instruments.
00:13:53
Speaker
And I tried to do that same thing in Batman and Ghostbusters.
00:13:56
Speaker
I mean, Batman and...
00:14:00
Speaker
Munsters.
00:14:02
Speaker
Just be authentic.
00:14:03
Speaker
And Sean is great at that.
00:14:06
Speaker
A lot of people were like, that's not the original Munsters theme.
00:14:09
Speaker
I said, no, it's so short.
00:14:10
Speaker
You can't have that for main play.
00:14:13
Speaker
So Sean will give me a version with a ton of tracks, and then I can mix out one ball in Munsters.
00:14:21
Speaker
You may hear a harpsichord lead.
00:14:24
Speaker
You know, one, you may hear piano and just it's kind of like, you know, I have a big palette to to paint with.
00:14:32
Speaker
Same thing with Ghostbusters, you know, and those tracks were just, you know, they were just great.
00:14:39
Speaker
They were perfect.
00:14:39
Speaker
I mean, I still love that game.
00:14:41
Speaker
To me, it's like that's a that's a high watermark that I that I try to reach every time.
00:14:48
Speaker
you obviously have a lot of eggs in a basket when you're doing sound.
00:14:52
Speaker
I guess where does your job end in the coders begin essentially with sound and implementation of sound
00:14:59
Speaker
Well, everybody has their, their thought.
00:15:02
Speaker
I mean, I come in with a thought of, of what I think, and then we'll talk it over, whether it's, you know, the designer or the coder.
00:15:09
Speaker
I mean, Dwight will say to me, Oh, I think this sound should sound like this.
00:15:14
Speaker
And then I'll do that.
00:15:16
Speaker
And, you know, Keith will have ideas.
00:15:19
Speaker
Keith has a great ear.
00:15:20
Speaker
He'll say, you know, why don't we do this here?
00:15:23
Speaker
It really, there's no set rule for how teams operate.
00:15:27
Speaker
Everybody's a little different.
00:15:28
Speaker
And, uh,
00:15:29
Speaker
So that's one thing, you know, you have to learn how to work with each team and each person in the team.
00:15:35
Speaker
But I must say there's a ton of work that goes into a game before I get to it.
00:15:40
Speaker
Because if, you know, you don't, things you don't even think about, there's so much planning with a team of storylines and storyboards, you know, animations that are before the final animations.
00:15:53
Speaker
And just, I mean, there's so...
00:15:56
Speaker
Even I, when I did the first one, didn't realize how many sounds are in a game.
00:16:00
Speaker
You have to have a sound for every switch, every button, every target, ramp, and then all the videos now that have come with the newer screen.
00:16:13
Speaker
I mean, they give those to me with no sound on them.
00:16:16
Speaker
So when you see the dinosaurs running and jumping on the fence in Jurassic Park or, you know, lightning or the trucks getting off, I mean, I get to do sound to all of those videos, which is really fun.
00:16:27
Speaker
I enjoy that part of it.
00:16:29
Speaker
And things like Mandalorian were nice because they gave us individual breakouts of the speech and of the sound effects in the show.
00:16:39
Speaker
But a thing like Godzilla, you know, there were there's that's there is no breakout.
00:16:43
Speaker
It's, you know, a mixed with music a lot of times.
00:16:47
Speaker
So those scenes I would get to go back and recreate from scratch because we couldn't use it out of the movie.
00:16:53
Speaker
You know, I I sometimes think people think, oh, they're just ripping things out of a movie and sticking it in there.
00:16:57
Speaker
But that's not how it works at all.
00:16:59
Speaker
There's a lot of a lot of detailed work that that goes into making sound for those videos.
00:17:05
Speaker
I love playing games at home because I can hear them.
00:17:09
Speaker
Like location games, that's one thing that feels distant to me is because a lot of times the location games have the volume turned really low or everything's so loud that you can't really appreciate the sound package.
00:17:24
Speaker
So from a sound design standpoint, how do you take that into account?
00:17:30
Speaker
Well, I mean, I try to make it as good as I can for the pro premium speakers.
00:17:36
Speaker
And, you know, I mean, I don't know how to address what you're talking about, because if you go to any show, you can't hear anything.
00:17:43
Speaker
But headphone kit's awesome.
00:17:45
Speaker
I mean, Keith asked me early on, well, about midway through Godzilla, he's like, have you heard this with headphones?
00:17:51
Speaker
And I said, no, I'll grab a headphone kit.
00:17:54
Speaker
And so Stern sent me a kit and I listened to it.
00:17:57
Speaker
I was like, wow, this is cool.
00:17:59
Speaker
You can hear every... Because I do a lot of stereo pans and stuff like that.
00:18:04
Speaker
And you get it all in headphones.
00:18:06
Speaker
I mean, you know, when you hit something and what you're seeing on the screen is in stereo in your headphones, it is really cool.
00:18:14
Speaker
And there's a guy that...
00:18:15
Speaker
I have not heard Star Wars with headphones on there, but there's a guy that wrote me and said, Star Wars with headphones on is incredible.
00:18:23
Speaker
So I got to try that sometime.
00:18:25
Speaker
Yeah, I have a friend who actually had a Star Wars LE and he hooked up a bass system and a sound bar to it.
00:18:35
Speaker
And it it was amazing.
00:18:37
Speaker
It felt like you were in the theater and the ships were coming over you.
00:18:41
Speaker
I know it was.
00:18:43
Speaker
And the sound is really, you know, when, when you think of star Wars, if you watch it without sound, it's laughable.
00:18:51
Speaker
Have you seen that?
00:18:53
Speaker
No, like just Google, like Google, the final, uh, like there's a YouTube video of them walking for the metal ceremony and it just looks weird.
00:19:04
Speaker
And, and the fact that they were able to integrate the sound and it is, uh,
00:19:10
Speaker
When you think of Star Wars, you cannot discount the effect of the sound and also the voice of Darth Vader, because there's also sound of Darth Vader being spoken by, I think his name was David, the actor.
00:19:27
Speaker
Right.
00:19:28
Speaker
It really, it sounds kind of comical, really.
00:19:33
Speaker
Well, I don't know if there is a solution for making sound cut through more in an arcade.
00:19:42
Speaker
I mean, it's just everything competes with each other.
00:19:46
Speaker
So, I don't know how to answer that question.
00:19:49
Speaker
But I'm sorry, but I will say, yeah, the importance of sound.
00:19:55
Speaker
If you go turn your sound off and play your your newer pinball game, it's not the same experience.
00:20:01
Speaker
It's boring.
00:20:02
Speaker
It's quite boring.
00:20:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:04
Speaker
So I don't know if you know Ryan Cass from head to head pinball, the podcast that used to happen about three years.
00:20:09
Speaker
I haven't met him, but I know of him.
00:20:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:12
Speaker
So he is like the sound guy when it comes to pinball for me.
00:20:15
Speaker
And I was like, Ryan, we're having Jerry on.
00:20:17
Speaker
And so he keeps sending me all these questions and they're pretty good.
00:20:21
Speaker
I want to ask you this one.
00:20:23
Speaker
He wants to know why is there so many sounds in new games is less more or is more more?
00:20:29
Speaker
Well, I mean, like I said, you got to have sound to match what's going on on the screen.
00:20:34
Speaker
And then a sound for every element, the switches, targets, you know, and you want to have some kind of recognition that you've made a shot.
00:20:43
Speaker
So there's usually like an award sound.
00:20:45
Speaker
So I, you know, I don't know if more is better.
00:20:50
Speaker
I just try to make it.
00:20:51
Speaker
I, I, my thing about radio is I did a lot of cool stuff over the years, but it was all disposable.
00:21:00
Speaker
I mean, I voiced thousands of radio and TV commercials and still do.
00:21:04
Speaker
I mean, I have a lot of clients still, but that all goes away.
00:21:07
Speaker
Whereas pinball is something that, you know, 20 years from now, I'll be able to stand in front of that if I'm still alive, knock on wood and say, wow, I did that.
00:21:16
Speaker
You know, and my kids, my son was taking a road trip in Arizona and he sent me a picture not long ago.
00:21:23
Speaker
He and his friends walked into this place and there were three games in the front door that I did.
00:21:28
Speaker
So, you know, he's he was excited because he's like, I told him my dad did sound on those.
00:21:32
Speaker
You know, it's nice when your kids think you're cool every now and then.
00:21:35
Speaker
Yeah, definitely.
00:21:37
Speaker
Okay, I do have an appeal though, since you are doing the sound for all these games.
00:21:42
Speaker
can we please change the knocker sound?
00:21:46
Speaker
Well, I, I seriously, my first bought my game and I, this is when I was so new to pinball.
00:21:53
Speaker
I bought a Simpsons pinball party and I kept like hearing this really annoying sound.
00:21:59
Speaker
And I, I, I even emailed him.
00:22:01
Speaker
I'm like, there's like a really weird sound that's happening when I'm playing the game.
00:22:06
Speaker
Like, is there something broken?
00:22:07
Speaker
And they're like, yeah, that's the knocker.
00:22:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:11
Speaker
Can you have like a trumpet or a or we have played around with that, but it's it's still the same.
00:22:18
Speaker
I don't know.
00:22:19
Speaker
I can't tell you whether it'll ever change or not.
00:22:22
Speaker
OK, I will say that there's two things I do when I boot up a game is I immediately go in and put it on free play and then I turn off the knocker sound.
00:22:32
Speaker
I turn it on low.
00:22:33
Speaker
I put mine on low.
00:22:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:36
Speaker
I love the authentic one.
00:22:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:39
Speaker
Like the one that actually the old school knocker.
00:22:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:42
Speaker
That goes, I love that.
00:22:44
Speaker
But man, if I could, if I could ask one thing, I would definitely change that sound.
00:22:50
Speaker
Well, I usually say when somebody says they have an issue with something, I usually say not my department, but I guess this is kind of my department.
00:22:57
Speaker
That's your department.
00:22:58
Speaker
I'm going to put that off on Mark Guidarelli, the systems guy.
00:23:01
Speaker
Let's put that in his category.
00:23:03
Speaker
Okay.
00:23:04
Speaker
Seriously, like a fanfare, like a trumpet in a medieval castle.
00:23:10
Speaker
That's how I think it should be.
00:23:12
Speaker
So you did something unique with Godzilla that I don't think has ever been done before, where you did callouts in English and in Japanese.
00:23:21
Speaker
Are the callouts one for one?
00:23:24
Speaker
Because if you do play in Japanese, there still is about 10% of it is English.
00:23:28
Speaker
And was that pretty hard for you to implement the Japanese with that game?
00:23:32
Speaker
Well, I tell you, Rick Nagel gets all the credit for making things magical.
00:23:38
Speaker
In my opinion, you know, I give him a bunch of stuff.
00:23:41
Speaker
The video guys give him a bunch of stuff and then he puts it all together.
00:23:44
Speaker
So was it difficult?
00:23:47
Speaker
Maybe for him.
00:23:48
Speaker
I mean, it was just my job was to give the script to a couple of Japanese actors and say,
00:23:56
Speaker
cut these lines, label them exactly like you in English, because I have no idea what you're saying and then, you know, give them back.
00:24:04
Speaker
And so, so, you know, Rick then takes that line from them and then puts it on so that it's selectable.
00:24:12
Speaker
So, yeah, I, I don't know that to answer your question.
00:24:16
Speaker
I don't know if it's one for one.
00:24:17
Speaker
Cause we,
00:24:18
Speaker
We did several sessions with Rick Zeef and added some more things.
00:24:23
Speaker
And man, what a talent he is.
00:24:26
Speaker
He just makes the game, right?
00:24:28
Speaker
Yeah, he's amazing.
00:24:30
Speaker
And he was great in Iron Maiden, too.
00:24:32
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:24:33
Speaker
Have you had any feedback from the Japanese market with the sound at all?
00:24:38
Speaker
I have not heard.
00:24:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:39
Speaker
I mean, I, but I don't, you know, I don't get those emails.
00:24:42
Speaker
So I don't know.
00:24:43
Speaker
I mean, I, there might, there might be from somebody, you know, that, that gets the stern interior, um, internal emails.
00:24:49
Speaker
You know, I don't know.
00:24:50
Speaker
I haven't asked George, um,
00:24:52
Speaker
I will say it's fun because my my friend who is also a pinball collector, he does speak Japanese.
00:24:58
Speaker
Oh, really?
00:24:59
Speaker
So when we came over, we actually turned on the Japanese mode and he was laughing.
00:25:03
Speaker
Great.
00:25:04
Speaker
When you're going through games, there are different types of games.
00:25:07
Speaker
So you even mentioned Beatles, and I want to circle back to that.
00:25:11
Speaker
But you have Beatles in Star Wars, Iron Maiden.
00:25:15
Speaker
They come with a soundtrack to you already.
00:25:18
Speaker
There are things that you are going to incorporate in the games.
00:25:21
Speaker
You also have other things like Deadpool and you have, well, you mentioned Munsters, but even Black Knight, you're integrating the new stuff.
00:25:31
Speaker
Jurassic Park, yes, you have the soundtrack, but everything else you are going to be doing.
00:25:35
Speaker
So how do you approach all these different sound options when you have a lot of assets or little assets?
00:25:45
Speaker
Well, that's the fun part.
00:25:46
Speaker
It's never boring.
00:25:47
Speaker
You know, everything is different.
00:25:48
Speaker
But Beatles, I wanted the fanfares in there to sound kind of like the era, like Ed Sullivan show kind of or any any show of the day, you know.
00:25:58
Speaker
So that one is that that kind of directs itself as how the whole package that sound.
00:26:04
Speaker
And I and I had EM sounding chime stuff.
00:26:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:09
Speaker
Yeah, that's that's that's pretty much.
00:26:11
Speaker
I mean, like I said, trying to keep it authentic to its period.
00:26:15
Speaker
Same way with Ghostbusters.
00:26:16
Speaker
I wanted it to sound like the era and same with Munsters.
00:26:20
Speaker
So I'm looking at the list of games you've worked on.
00:26:23
Speaker
I mean, just in 2020 alone, you have Ninja Turtles, Heavy Metal and Avengers.
00:26:27
Speaker
Is it hard to keep projects straight when you have so many going on at the same time?
00:26:32
Speaker
Not really.
00:26:33
Speaker
I mean, I did five in 2018.
00:26:36
Speaker
like you said, you had five, you had Iron Maiden, Supreme, Deadpool, Beatles, and Primus all that year.
00:26:41
Speaker
Right.
00:26:42
Speaker
How'd you keep them all straight?
00:26:43
Speaker
And, and working on a Munsters because it came out in January of 2019.
00:26:47
Speaker
So, and what does Supreme sound like?
00:26:52
Speaker
I love the soundtrack for Supreme.
00:26:53
Speaker
Yeah, I love Supreme.
00:26:55
Speaker
It's old retro like electronic sounds.
00:27:00
Speaker
And they didn't they didn't want background music on it.
00:27:05
Speaker
But Tanya had a program that emulated old kind of patch synthesizer stuff.
00:27:12
Speaker
And we were playing around with it in his office and he landed on one.
00:27:16
Speaker
I was like, oh, that's so cool.
00:27:17
Speaker
Can we record that?
00:27:18
Speaker
So we recorded some background stuff that ended up in the game.
00:27:22
Speaker
And I really liked the way Supreme came out.
00:27:25
Speaker
I wish more people could play it.
00:27:28
Speaker
So, Jerry, you have on your collection list.
00:27:34
Speaker
Do I see this correctly?
00:27:35
Speaker
Twenty eight games.
00:27:37
Speaker
28 pins and I've got 15 classic vids.
00:27:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:40
Speaker
Like, you know, Pac-Man, Frogger, Galaga, and Ms.
00:27:42
Speaker
Pac and Tempest.
00:27:44
Speaker
Wow.
00:27:44
Speaker
All that kind of stuff.
00:27:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:46
Speaker
Okay.
00:27:46
Speaker
So, um, I'm not necessarily saying your favorite.
00:27:50
Speaker
What are the top five that you play the most?
00:27:53
Speaker
Hmm.
00:27:53
Speaker
Hmm.
00:27:55
Speaker
I could probably give you top five non-stern because I've had those longer.
00:28:00
Speaker
Twilight Zone, Shadow, Indiana Jones.
00:28:05
Speaker
Oh, Bonsai Run.
00:28:07
Speaker
I love Bonsai Run.
00:28:09
Speaker
Nice.
00:28:09
Speaker
Bonsai Run's a hard one, especially when you get to the back box.
00:28:12
Speaker
Yeah, I've had that a long time, too.
00:28:15
Speaker
I'm glad I got one before prices went so crazy.
00:28:20
Speaker
My Twilight Zone was my first game.
00:28:22
Speaker
I got that for 1975.
00:28:24
Speaker
And I probably overpaid because eBay was new and I didn't know to wait till the last second to bid.
00:28:31
Speaker
So I probably could have picked it up cheaper.
00:28:33
Speaker
But yeah, those were the days, huh?
00:28:37
Speaker
Yeah, I've heard of those days when people would be like, well, it's 500 bucks.
00:28:41
Speaker
Well, OK, I'll buy it.
00:28:43
Speaker
Right.
00:28:44
Speaker
Oh, I mean, I have a day to East Jurassic Park right now.
00:28:47
Speaker
I paid $800 for that one years ago.
00:28:49
Speaker
900 for my Gilligan, I think.
00:28:51
Speaker
So, you know, I'm I. OK, Gilligan's Island always fascinates me because.
00:28:58
Speaker
it, they made a lot of these like 4,000, you know, according to the side 4,100.
00:29:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:05
Speaker
You wouldn't believe how many people have said, why do you own a Gilligan?
00:29:07
Speaker
I go, cause I've never seen one.
00:29:10
Speaker
That's like 4,000 games.
00:29:12
Speaker
That's still a high production game.
00:29:14
Speaker
Like I've never seen one.
00:29:15
Speaker
Well, I, I've, you know, I grew up on the show.
00:29:18
Speaker
I mean, I've seen every episode probably 10 times and I, I, the game is fun to me.
00:29:22
Speaker
It's a place like kind of a system, system 11 to me.
00:29:27
Speaker
And it's challenging.
00:29:28
Speaker
I mean, you have to get all five of the island shots in a certain amount of time to get your 50 million.
00:29:34
Speaker
And, you know, I'm not a great player.
00:29:36
Speaker
I mean, we were making Godzilla and I watched Keith play it and I'm just like, wow, I can never do that.
00:29:40
Speaker
You know, I
00:29:41
Speaker
I play for fun and I think I frustrate Dwight because, you know, I'm not, I don't usually read rules.
00:29:47
Speaker
I just play.
00:29:48
Speaker
And, you know, he's like, well, I'm doing this with the rules.
00:29:50
Speaker
I want you to know all of it.
00:29:51
Speaker
And I go, my brain doesn't work like yours.
00:29:53
Speaker
You know, you're, I don't, I can't grasp all that, you know?
00:29:57
Speaker
So, but yeah, I mean, to me, it's just Gilligan is fun.
00:30:02
Speaker
I mean, it's not, you know, it's not super deep, but it's fun.
00:30:05
Speaker
And I, can I tell you my Marianne story?
00:30:09
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:30:10
Speaker
So she was here in town in 2016.
00:30:12
Speaker
She went to UW and I think she was Miss University of Washington back when she went to school, but she, she was here doing an appearance in 2016.
00:30:22
Speaker
And so I went and I had my,
00:30:25
Speaker
My, you know, charter minnow charters t shirt on, you know, my Gilligan shirt.
00:30:30
Speaker
And I was having her sign actually an apron card for my game.
00:30:34
Speaker
And she's like, so this is your childhood, huh?
00:30:37
Speaker
And I said, yeah, I've seen probably every one 10 times.
00:30:40
Speaker
And she goes, I'm old enough to be your mother.
00:30:42
Speaker
And I said, yeah, I would still date you.
00:30:44
Speaker
And she immediately goes, what are you doing tonight?
00:30:48
Speaker
I mean, she was so quick.
00:30:50
Speaker
But yeah, she was great.
00:30:52
Speaker
My favorite about Gilligan's Island, though, is that forever it was like, OK, I know they didn't have that many seasons.
00:30:59
Speaker
They had like, what, three seasons?
00:31:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:01
Speaker
Three seasons.
00:31:02
Speaker
OK.
00:31:03
Speaker
I always thought it was hilarious where they had at the very end, they they named all of them.
00:31:11
Speaker
except for the professor and Marianne.
00:31:13
Speaker
Well, that was the first season.
00:31:14
Speaker
They did.
00:31:15
Speaker
And the rest, which blew me away.
00:31:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:17
Speaker
First season, but they changed it for second and third.
00:31:20
Speaker
Yeah, no, it's just kind of funny.
00:31:22
Speaker
And the rest.
00:31:25
Speaker
So what's your favorite game?
00:31:26
Speaker
Right now, I would have to say Godzilla.
00:31:29
Speaker
I am so blown away.
00:31:31
Speaker
That game is so good.
00:31:34
Speaker
I find something new in it every time I play it, and it's just so good.
00:31:38
Speaker
So the games that I alternate between...
00:31:42
Speaker
Beatles because I love the classic feel.
00:31:45
Speaker
And when you're saying that you want to capture the era, it does for me.
00:31:49
Speaker
And I love playing that.
00:31:52
Speaker
Iron Maiden.
00:31:53
Speaker
I grew up on Iron Maiden, so I'm actually a big fan of the music.
00:31:55
Speaker
I know that a lot of people count it as a negative on the game, but actually it's a huge positive for me.
00:32:01
Speaker
So that's a great package.
00:32:04
Speaker
And
00:32:06
Speaker
Tonight, I helped my friend update his Mandalorian code.
00:32:13
Speaker
And we had a blast playing that.
00:32:16
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I had a good year last year.
00:32:18
Speaker
Mando and then Godzilla, two great ones in the same year.
00:32:22
Speaker
I'm happy with how both of those turned out sound-wise.
00:32:25
Speaker
Yeah, and Godzilla I played a lot too.
00:32:28
Speaker
They are in my new collection, so I alternate between all of those.
00:32:33
Speaker
But that's what I tend to play the most.
00:32:36
Speaker
If I want to come down and just have a quicker game, then I tend to play the stern parts of the Caribbean or I play Deadpool.
00:32:47
Speaker
Nice.
00:32:49
Speaker
What about you?
00:32:50
Speaker
You have more?
00:32:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:53
Speaker
He listed a lot.
00:32:54
Speaker
He listed a lot of faces.
00:32:55
Speaker
I know.
00:32:56
Speaker
I could just list off my whole collection.
00:32:57
Speaker
You know, it's funny because I have a better appreciation for sound now.
The Impact of Sound on Gaming
00:33:02
Speaker
Between the new stuff, I just picked up a Whitewater, and I didn't realize how much of the sound does actually make a game because it just links something in your brain to moments.
00:33:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:16
Speaker
And especially with, like, Vacation Jackpot,
00:33:19
Speaker
all the sounds and everything coming at you just blowing up that game.
00:33:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:23
Speaker
I don't know.
00:33:24
Speaker
You know, it's funny because we always talk about these games and it's like, what makes a game so excellent?
00:33:28
Speaker
And when I think of like great sounding games, I also think of like the jackpot sound getaway too.
00:33:35
Speaker
Right.
00:33:35
Speaker
Or, you know, jackpot in a Adam's family or twilight zone.
00:33:39
Speaker
It's just something like I'm doing something awesome in this.
00:33:42
Speaker
All three of those are Chris Grana, right?
00:33:45
Speaker
Yeah, Chris Garner did, I think, all four because he did Whitewater as well.
00:33:48
Speaker
Right, right.
00:33:48
Speaker
Oh, I forgot.
00:33:49
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:33:50
Speaker
And so, I don't know.
00:33:53
Speaker
I guess one of my favorites of all time is World Cup soccer.
00:33:55
Speaker
And it's because it's been in my collection the longest.
00:33:57
Speaker
But everyone loves it.
00:33:58
Speaker
It's just a good game for beginner.
00:34:00
Speaker
It's a good game for novice and whatnot.
00:34:02
Speaker
And the sounds on it are just great.
00:34:04
Speaker
I just –
00:34:05
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, Chris Granner, Dan Forden, you know, Brian Schmidt, David Thiel.
00:34:12
Speaker
I mean, I have big shoes to fill to do sound.
00:34:17
Speaker
That was the crazy thing, you know, that I went in there and...
00:34:23
Speaker
Luckily, I had David DeCalle when I got the Ghostbusters gig.
00:34:28
Speaker
There were several times where I called him and goes, okay, how do I do this?
00:34:32
Speaker
Code-wise stuff, because I've never done code stuff, and I have to do files and mix the game and all that stuff.
00:34:41
Speaker
He was very nice to answer my calls and answer my questions a few times.
00:34:47
Speaker
But I, you know, I'm a big fan of all those guys.
00:34:50
Speaker
And I'm a fan of Paul Heisch too.
00:34:52
Speaker
You know, you don't really, you don't hear much from him or Vince Pontorelli.
00:34:57
Speaker
Although George had him do some stuff in Deadpool, but I'd love to hear, you guys should reach out to him.
00:35:02
Speaker
I'd love to hear Paul Heisch because I've got three of his games, Creature, Judge Dredd, and he did Bram Stoker's Dracula too.
00:35:10
Speaker
And I love the Dracula sound package, you know, with the pitched pop bumpers and
00:35:16
Speaker
And just the whole atmosphere of that game.
00:35:19
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:35:20
Speaker
That sound package is amazing.
00:35:22
Speaker
It makes that game.
00:35:25
Speaker
So I told Dwight, and he's like, you can stop telling me that.
00:35:28
Speaker
You've been here over seven years.
00:35:31
Speaker
He's like, you know, he's my work wife.
00:35:32
Speaker
Everybody goes, man, you guys, we just hit it off.
00:35:35
Speaker
And I love him, and I loved Lyman.
00:35:39
Speaker
And the fact that those two guys –
00:35:41
Speaker
treated me respectfully.
00:35:44
Speaker
And I mean, I, you know, I didn't, I didn't know a thing.
00:35:47
Speaker
Didn't have any, any back catalog.
00:35:49
Speaker
Now, now I can say, here's my greatest hits.
00:35:51
Speaker
But back then, you know, they could have been just like, I'm not working with this guy or, you know, just, just, but both of them were very nice.
00:36:00
Speaker
And I mean, I learned a lot about how to make a great game from Dwight on Ghostbusters and, and, uh,
00:36:05
Speaker
Yeah, I'll just always be forever grateful to him and to George.
00:36:09
Speaker
I mean, you know, George has got a good team there.
00:36:12
Speaker
And, I mean, it's cool that he's putting together a whole team for the future of pinball, of people that love pinball.
00:36:18
Speaker
You know, it's not just a job.
00:36:21
Speaker
And so...
00:36:23
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I got to make two games with Lyman and, you know, miss him.
00:36:28
Speaker
I had dinner with Penny and him and my wife and I had dinner at Expo last year, and he and I...
00:36:41
Speaker
We're texting back and forth with each other just a few days before he was gone.
00:36:45
Speaker
I mean, we had a love of Do-Si-Do's Girl Scout cookies, and he sent me a picture of his and was making fun because he got his before I got mine.
00:36:55
Speaker
And, you know.
00:36:56
Speaker
I just never thought that things would turn out that way.
00:36:59
Speaker
I laughed more with him than, you know, just about anybody.
00:37:02
Speaker
He would pick me up at seven in the morning from the hotel and then we'd go work.
00:37:06
Speaker
And then, but just, I mean, go to lunch and just laugh.
00:37:10
Speaker
He, I told him all the time, you know, you could have been a standup comedian cause he was just hilarious.
00:37:15
Speaker
And it's funny cause I think a lot of us think of when we see Lyman, he's quite very quiet and reserved.
00:37:22
Speaker
You know, at least for my impression, besides the interviews and stuff he did, but it always seemed like when they talked to him, he didn't really want to talk about himself.
00:37:28
Speaker
Yeah, very shy.
00:37:30
Speaker
I mean, he just, you know, I mean, he was a private guy.
00:37:35
Speaker
But then you've seen the giant laugh.
00:37:38
Speaker
I mean, I love, it made me tear up seeing that clip that they played from the Cactus Canyon thing where he's laughing so big because that's what I remember about him.
00:37:46
Speaker
You know, we, I forgot, I didn't write them down.
00:37:49
Speaker
I had like my top five list of things that he said that were hilarious because he didn't intend to, well, I'll tell you one, we were looking at a CAD drawing on the wall of a game that didn't get produced, a play field that someone had designed.
00:38:08
Speaker
And I said, what do you think?
00:38:09
Speaker
He goes, I think I've already played it in my mind and walked away.
00:38:17
Speaker
You walked away on ball one.
00:38:19
Speaker
Right.
00:38:20
Speaker
So, yeah.
00:38:22
Speaker
And, you know, he was he was very funny.
00:38:25
Speaker
And and, you know, we had lots of laughs.
00:38:28
Speaker
And, you know, he on vacation, he would text me pictures of his my tie and, you know, always call and say happy, happy birthday or Merry Christmas or what, you know, and.
00:38:38
Speaker
And it meant a lot to me that he told me when he left, he's like, you know, I consider you a real friend and not just a work friend.
00:38:44
Speaker
And I hope, you know, we get to do a game together again sometime.
00:38:47
Speaker
And I mean, that that meant a lot to me, because like I said, you know, I mean, he's worked with the best of the best and he's considered one of the best.
00:38:54
Speaker
And so I really, you know, I will always be thankful to Dwight and Lyman and the way they treated me working with me on my first game with each of them.
00:39:05
Speaker
It certainly does make a difference.
00:39:07
Speaker
Well, a couple of takeaways, I guess.
Personal Experiences and Mental Health
00:39:10
Speaker
I think it shows that we don't really know what's going on inside people's heads.
00:39:15
Speaker
Right.
00:39:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:16
Speaker
No, I'm just saying we don't know what they're going through.
00:39:18
Speaker
So they could even be putting on a brave face.
00:39:21
Speaker
I mean, to be I've never really talked about this before.
00:39:26
Speaker
My my brother in law committed suicide about 10 years ago.
00:39:29
Speaker
I'm sorry.
00:39:30
Speaker
And we.
00:39:32
Speaker
Like we had no idea.
00:39:33
Speaker
We had no idea that he was dealing with, uh, and this deep anxiety depression and, uh, eventually it just overwhelmed him.
00:39:42
Speaker
And, um, you know, it's, it's, it's such a shock and it reminds me that, you know what, it's, um, you want to try to leave people with a positive vibe because that, that really could be the last time that you see them.
00:39:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:58
Speaker
Well, and I told my wife, I said, you know, we were texting a couple of days ago and I wish I had called him and, you know, maybe.
00:40:05
Speaker
And she goes, you can't can't live with the maybe.
00:40:08
Speaker
She goes, you know, there's nothing you could do.
00:40:11
Speaker
And I said, well, I just wish I could have talked to him one more time, you know.
00:40:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:16
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, I, I, I so admire Penny for putting that out there and helping.
00:40:21
Speaker
I think that helped a lot of people that struggle and, you know, cause you look at this guy and he's laughing all the time and he's great at his job and, and you think everything's perfect and you know, you never know.
00:40:33
Speaker
So that's, that's a good point you make.
00:40:34
Speaker
So, you know, I would, that's why I'm talking about it because I think she did such a service to help somebody struggling.
00:40:41
Speaker
I mean, I think we've all been down at one time or another and, and,
00:40:45
Speaker
You know, and may have thought that even, but it's, it's, you know, I hope that if somebody listening to this is going through that, that you'll talk to somebody or, or not go all the way.
00:40:56
Speaker
I would say it's a moment.
00:40:57
Speaker
It's a moment that we can recognize his greatness.
00:40:59
Speaker
And the bottom line is he's not summarized by his, by his struggle with depression.
00:41:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:07
Speaker
Like he's summarized by all the people he touched, uh, how he welcomed you to Stern and everybody, I've never heard anybody say a negative thing about him.
00:41:17
Speaker
And so the legacy is much greater than the tragic end.
00:41:22
Speaker
And yes, it's,
00:41:23
Speaker
And I also, I also applaud Penny for being upfront with this because a lot of people, I'm glad that we're able to talk about mental health nowadays.
00:41:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:33
Speaker
Because there are, there's still a stigma with it, but I think it's, it's getting lower where people are like, you know what, if, if there's something wrong, I really do.
00:41:42
Speaker
I should reach out and I should talk with someone.
00:41:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:45
Speaker
Well, and, you know, he was very shy, private, didn't want to be, you know, he didn't want people coming up to him and saying, oh, you're great.
00:41:55
Speaker
Because, you know, he just liked to, he would talk to one person, but he didn't like talking to groups.
00:42:00
Speaker
But his main thing was, I want to make a great game.
00:42:03
Speaker
I don't know.
00:42:03
Speaker
Maybe that's when we got along because I said the same thing.
00:42:06
Speaker
I said, you know, I don't care how long it takes or how much work it is.
00:42:09
Speaker
I just want to make a great game.
00:42:11
Speaker
And, you know, when we were making Elvira, he would tell Greg, I just want to make a great game for you, Greg.
00:42:16
Speaker
You know, because of that team, of the Greg and Dennis team,
00:42:20
Speaker
it gave me a chance to see the creative genius of that team is Greg.
00:42:25
Speaker
I mean, Greg came up with the characters and the script and, you know, he, Elvira was a lot of Greg's creation.
00:42:34
Speaker
You know, I think he, he could have kept, you know, supplying ideas for months to come if we had had time to put them in.
00:42:41
Speaker
But yeah, and you will not find a nicer person than Greg Ferris.
00:42:45
Speaker
I mean, he's,
00:42:47
Speaker
He is a great, great guy.
00:42:48
Speaker
There's a lot of great people there, man.
00:42:50
Speaker
I love a lot of them.
00:42:52
Speaker
And Mike Vinicor is one.
00:42:54
Speaker
You guys, maybe you could have him on.
00:42:57
Speaker
He's got interesting stories.
00:43:00
Speaker
I didn't know until a couple of months ago because we were talking about the crazy...
00:43:04
Speaker
thing that, you know, how your life could be different with one or two different moments.
00:43:09
Speaker
And he's like, yeah, I happen to have a game t-shirt on from a game I loved at a bar.
00:43:14
Speaker
And this guy's like, oh, you like that game?
00:43:16
Speaker
And he said, yeah, it's my favorite game.
00:43:17
Speaker
And, and he's like, you know, I work in gaming.
00:43:19
Speaker
I work at that company.
00:43:20
Speaker
And, and Mike ended up having a chance to go over there and talk to him and get in gaming because he was at a bar with a certain t-shirt on one night.
00:43:29
Speaker
I mean, crazy life moments.
00:43:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:33
Speaker
Well, and I think that you touched on it a little bit ago.
00:43:36
Speaker
I think people that are in pinball right now love pinball.
00:43:43
Speaker
And that's what's making such a great product.
00:43:45
Speaker
I look at the games that are being produced now, and every single game feels like it is a passion project on some level.
00:43:53
Speaker
And it's because all these people love pinball and they want to put their heart into it.
00:43:58
Speaker
And the end product is really showing that.
00:44:01
Speaker
And I think we're at a really great time in pinball because of that, because the game has been so elevated to a level that we've never seen before because of it.
00:44:11
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I still love the classics, but I, you know, it is it is nice to have all the new elements in pinball that you get.
00:44:20
Speaker
I mean, and I like I'm for I'm updating updating four or five games right now, you know, through insider connected auto updates in my game room.
00:44:29
Speaker
That's a nice feature, too.
00:44:31
Speaker
I updated.
00:44:32
Speaker
Okay.
00:44:32
Speaker
Okay.
00:44:33
Speaker
Here's my question.
00:44:33
Speaker
Are they updating fast for you?
00:44:35
Speaker
Because I basically, my rush kept timing out and I don't know if it was my connection.
00:44:39
Speaker
So I had to download, but that's like 11 gigabytes.
00:44:42
Speaker
that I had to download.
00:44:43
Speaker
Well, I've been in here talking, so I don't know.
00:44:46
Speaker
I'll have to go back in and check on them.
00:44:47
Speaker
But yeah, like Iron Maiden updated and Godzilla updated, but like Mandalorian, I just had to do it.
00:44:57
Speaker
And and Rush, that was just too much.
00:45:01
Speaker
So I still have to do Deadpool, Jurassic Park, Led Zeppelin and Infinity Quest.
00:45:11
Speaker
Nice.
00:45:11
Speaker
I love Avengers, the way it shoots.
00:45:14
Speaker
I think that might be my favorite Keith shooter, really.
00:45:18
Speaker
Yeah, it's an awesome game.
00:45:21
Speaker
Yeah, and I finally got the fix for the Captain Marvel shot.
00:45:25
Speaker
So that makes that so much better.
00:45:27
Speaker
It's one of the coolest ones just because the ball moves fluidly in so many ways in that game.
00:45:35
Speaker
I love that tower shot, too, where it holds it, you know.
00:45:37
Speaker
Oh, it's so great.
00:45:38
Speaker
And, and the, the drop that you hit, I don't know, what is it?
00:45:42
Speaker
That eggplant ramp or whatever it's called.
00:45:45
Speaker
The, that, that one that you can hit from anywhere.
00:45:49
Speaker
It's such a fun, repeatable shot.
00:45:52
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:52
Speaker
I mean, I'm so lucky getting to work on all four of his games.
00:45:56
Speaker
I mean, I, that's the thing.
00:45:57
Speaker
I I'm I'm just grateful.
00:45:59
Speaker
Still.
00:46:00
Speaker
Somebody said to me recently, a guy who's been in pinball and I knew and see, I,
00:46:06
Speaker
I've known people from meeting them at Expo.
00:46:08
Speaker
I went to my first one in 2004, and I was the guy every year hauling tons of junk through the autograph line, getting it signed.
00:46:18
Speaker
I was looking for a picture the other night, and I found one from 2007 with George and John Yowse and me, and I just sent it to George and said,
00:46:27
Speaker
you know, never would have thought a few years later, I'd be working with you and, you know, thanks for giving me a chance.
00:46:33
Speaker
It's just, I, it's crazy.
00:46:35
Speaker
Cause I, I had, I feel so blessed.
00:46:38
Speaker
I had a great radio career.
00:46:41
Speaker
Um, and I, you know, I got to do mornings and I, my, my last on-air job was mornings in Houston.
00:46:46
Speaker
And, uh,
00:46:47
Speaker
Then I started doing production and voice work.
00:46:49
Speaker
And so I still have a lot of clients that I have to this day.
00:46:54
Speaker
One for over 30 years.
00:46:56
Speaker
I started on a voicing a TV station in Mobile, Alabama when I was 19 and I'm still on retainer with them.
00:47:04
Speaker
And I'm 54 now.
00:47:05
Speaker
So it's been a while.
00:47:07
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, Houston, Shreveport.
00:47:10
Speaker
I mean, I've been on 20 years on those.
00:47:14
Speaker
But so then, you know, I was working at home and and and just.
00:47:19
Speaker
I, that's why I was like, I'm so grateful.
00:47:21
Speaker
This is a, a second great career that I never expected.
00:47:25
Speaker
And, and, you know, I, it's still a privilege to, to walk out into the factory and go, wow, I work here.
00:47:32
Speaker
You know, I mean, if you love pinball, it's like the, you know, the, how can you not be grateful and, and, and in awe of walking through the factory at night thinking, man, I used to go through the autograph line and here I am working here.
00:47:46
Speaker
How long does it take to make a sound package?
00:47:50
Speaker
I'm usually working, I mean, not all day, every day, but I'm on call for, as things develop, probably about a year.
00:47:58
Speaker
Okay.
00:47:59
Speaker
And since you're working on multiple at a time, then you haven't spaced out.
00:48:03
Speaker
You're not working on the same project every day.
00:48:05
Speaker
You're kind of flopping back and forth.
00:48:07
Speaker
Sometimes, you know, depending on how many, but I love that.
00:48:09
Speaker
I mean, I don't, you know, I love shifting gears and I love to be busy all the time.
00:48:14
Speaker
I mean, I look back at 2018.
00:48:16
Speaker
Now I got, I, I did five games, took a two week European vacation and got married.
00:48:22
Speaker
And I'm like, how did I do all that in one year?
00:48:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:26
Speaker
But, you know, I enjoy that.
00:48:28
Speaker
I enjoy working all the time.
00:48:29
Speaker
So I, I right now I'm getting to do a little bit of, of things with several people.
00:48:36
Speaker
And that's fun.
00:48:37
Speaker
I'm getting to work some with Lonnie now and some with Mark Panaccio, which, you know, he, he introduced himself.
00:48:44
Speaker
I was like,
00:48:44
Speaker
man, I got your name on games in my house.
00:48:46
Speaker
I love Fishtails and Elvira and the Party Monster as he did.
00:48:50
Speaker
So that's fun.
00:48:53
Speaker
I like doing whatever.
00:48:55
Speaker
I'm the whatever guy.
00:48:57
Speaker
Anything they ask me to do, I'll do.
00:48:59
Speaker
And I'll stay there as long as they want me to be there.
00:49:02
Speaker
I know one day there'll be some new kid who does
00:49:08
Speaker
who did what I did and says, Hey, you know, give me a shot.
00:49:11
Speaker
And I'm, I'm, I'm okay with that.
00:49:13
Speaker
If it ends tomorrow, I've, you know, I've had a great time there and I've made some stuff that I'll still get to play a few years from now.
00:49:20
Speaker
And that, that maybe people will remember.
00:49:24
Speaker
I've got to ask, you've got a few games under your belt that have been previously made before, not like remade, but like Elvira's got two games previous to house of horrors.
00:49:33
Speaker
You've got a Ninja turtles game that was made with data East and Jurassic park.
Insights on Popular Pinball Themes
00:49:37
Speaker
Did any of those games kind of influence your sound or did you go back to them to kind of dig up some sounds that may be good to reuse in the newer games?
00:49:47
Speaker
No, I mean, I have not played the original Turtles.
00:49:52
Speaker
I own a Data East Jurassic Park.
00:49:57
Speaker
And for the Elvira games, Greg and Lyman owned a Scared Stiff, and he said, you know, I kind of want some of that feel to it.
00:50:08
Speaker
And, of course, we got Tim Kittrow back.
00:50:10
Speaker
I mean, you know, can't get any better than Kittrow and Rick Z for voiceovers.
00:50:14
Speaker
Those two guys are, you know.
00:50:17
Speaker
Just fun, fun sessions and amazing.
00:50:21
Speaker
When you think how much Tim Kitzrow did in Elvira, you know, House of Horrors, I mean, he's so many voices, including the trailer at the end.
00:50:29
Speaker
And those are hilarious.
00:50:30
Speaker
You know, that's another Greg idea.
00:50:33
Speaker
You know, the trailers at the end.
00:50:35
Speaker
Yeah, I love those.
00:50:36
Speaker
That whole package is great, too.
00:50:38
Speaker
It's just amazing.
00:50:39
Speaker
Well, that was a fun one because there's so many different kinds of music in there.
00:50:43
Speaker
You know, Greg said, we want to do jump, jive and wail and shout.
00:50:48
Speaker
And, you know, you've got the the
00:50:51
Speaker
music that sounds like the old movies and then you've got the tiki music, you know, and it's just, it's a lot, it's kind of well, kind of like Deadpool, a lot of different styles in Deadpool.
00:51:04
Speaker
And I, I, I kind of had the, originally that, that attitude rock kind of feel, and then it started morphing into something funny and more fun.
00:51:16
Speaker
And so I turned in the, um,
00:51:19
Speaker
the Katana Rama song, the polka song.
00:51:22
Speaker
And George was like, this is so funny.
00:51:24
Speaker
Well, you know, and that he kind of, he's like, you know, he called me one night driving home.
00:51:28
Speaker
He's like, let's do songs with lyrics.
00:51:30
Speaker
And I was like, okay, what do I have in mind?
00:51:32
Speaker
He's like, let's do a country, a rap and a metal and like, you know, an R and B, um,
00:51:39
Speaker
And so I called Sean and actually Christie, his wife, she's she does the country song.
00:51:46
Speaker
And then I call this rapper guy that he's actually it's funny.
00:51:50
Speaker
He's actually a real estate agent.
00:51:51
Speaker
My wife's a realtor.
00:51:53
Speaker
And so this guy is a real estate agent, real estate agent, but he does rap shows, too.
00:51:58
Speaker
So he did the boom song, which is awesome.
00:52:01
Speaker
And then there's another friend that I saw playing drums.
00:52:05
Speaker
And he ended up doing the metal song.
00:52:07
Speaker
I thought he was just going to drum on it, but he did the vocals on it, too.
00:52:10
Speaker
And George is like, I just want that one to be, you know, all all just like pinball things like flipper bumpers.
00:52:17
Speaker
And so it doesn't really make any sense.
00:52:19
Speaker
But and then so I woke up one Saturday morning and I had this little rhythm track and I started because I when when George says R&B, I'm thinking Barry White, you know.
00:52:29
Speaker
So I came down and I was just like making up stuff that sounded dirty.
00:52:34
Speaker
You know, so I was like, I got six balls for you, baby.
00:52:38
Speaker
And so I sent that to George and Tanya.
00:52:41
Speaker
I go, is this a thing or not?
00:52:43
Speaker
Should I?
00:52:44
Speaker
And they're like, yeah, that's funny.
00:52:45
Speaker
Is that you?
00:52:46
Speaker
And I was like, yeah, so.
00:52:48
Speaker
I did some more and then I had Christie sing, you know, the Deadpool.
00:52:52
Speaker
And then Tanya was like, I think she should sing everything, like repeat everything that I'm saying, you know, like multi-ball, Deadpool, all night, all that kind of stuff.
00:53:01
Speaker
And he's like, sax, it needs some sax too.
00:53:03
Speaker
So I said, you know, can you give me some sax?
00:53:06
Speaker
And I put it all together and, you know, it turned out funny.
00:53:09
Speaker
I hope, I hope people like all those.
00:53:11
Speaker
But I mean, that's, you know, George is so creative and I, and I knew that I,
00:53:16
Speaker
I watched that tilt making of pinball 2000 video and just all the innovations they did in such a short time about, you know, cabinet redesign and all the things that are different from a normal pinball game.
00:53:29
Speaker
And, and George is still that way.
00:53:31
Speaker
I mean, he's probably the most creative guy I've ever seen.
00:53:33
Speaker
And, and, and if there's an issue, he's like, you know, let's not get upset about it.
00:53:38
Speaker
Let's fix it.
00:53:39
Speaker
I mean, he's, he's the perfect person for that job, you know?
00:53:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:53:44
Speaker
Well, I will say Revenge from Mars is still it's a hilarious game.
00:53:48
Speaker
My friend still has it.
00:53:49
Speaker
And it's it's a mint condition.
00:53:51
Speaker
So I play it and I'm thinking this is amazing.
00:53:53
Speaker
This is what, 25 years old technology or 23 years old technology.
00:53:57
Speaker
And when you consider how fast it was developed and how much different it is from a normal pinball game up until then, it's amazing.
00:54:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:06
Speaker
I have one.
00:54:07
Speaker
I still, I, I love it too.
00:54:09
Speaker
It's fun.
00:54:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:10
Speaker
I need to find another.
00:54:11
Speaker
It's one of my, it's one of the ones that got me into pinball the night that I actually got introduced to pinball.
00:54:16
Speaker
That's the one I ended on.
00:54:17
Speaker
I was like, holy crap.
00:54:19
Speaker
Like this is.
00:54:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:19
Speaker
So how'd you guys get into pinball?
00:54:22
Speaker
Uh, my wife's cousin, we, we had to go stay with them out in Saratoga Springs, which is South of Salt Lake.
00:54:31
Speaker
Um, but west of me about locked 20 minutes.
00:54:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:35
Speaker
So, so we kind of got locked into his house.
00:54:37
Speaker
He's like deadbolted from both sides and I needed to go get some stuff.
00:54:40
Speaker
And then I'm walking through this house of a guy that I barely know.
00:54:42
Speaker
And I was like, um, where do I go?
00:54:46
Speaker
And I'm hearing noises from the basements.
00:54:47
Speaker
I'm like, well, I guess I'll work my way down there and see if I can find them.
00:54:51
Speaker
So I open, I get down there, knock on the door.
00:54:53
Speaker
He says, come in.
00:54:54
Speaker
I opened the door and he had a, I want to say about 15 to 20 pinball machines in this room.
00:54:59
Speaker
And I'm like, what the heck is this?
00:55:02
Speaker
And he's like, what do you need?
00:55:03
Speaker
And I tell him, and he's like, I'm like, but I want to come back and try this all out.
00:55:07
Speaker
And he's like, okay.
00:55:08
Speaker
So I go get my stuff, dropped off to my wife.
00:55:12
Speaker
Our son was like two or three at the time.
00:55:13
Speaker
He was really young.
00:55:14
Speaker
And I'm like, I'm going to go downstairs and hang out with Sean.
00:55:18
Speaker
And anywho, the first game I play circus full tear and I was hooked.
00:55:23
Speaker
And then he just started one after another Simpsons pinball party, white water.
00:55:28
Speaker
Adam's Family, Twilight Zone.
00:55:29
Speaker
I mean, it was like greatest hits.
00:55:31
Speaker
And this was back in, this was 2011, 2012, somewhere around there.
00:55:35
Speaker
So, I mean, it was right around the time that Woz was getting ready to come out because he was talking about, yeah, there's a new company.
00:55:42
Speaker
They've got the license for Wizard of Oz and all that stuff.
00:55:45
Speaker
So, to kind of gauge a timeline.
00:55:47
Speaker
But, yeah, we ended on Revenge for Mars.
00:55:49
Speaker
I just thought that was the coolest game with the holographics and everything.
00:55:54
Speaker
It's just such a unique...
00:55:56
Speaker
And I wish we would have saw more.
00:55:57
Speaker
I wish there would have been.
00:55:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:55:59
Speaker
I wish it would have not ended with those two games.
00:56:01
Speaker
Well, but it is.
00:56:02
Speaker
Yeah, it's great, too.
00:56:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:56:05
Speaker
Yeah, it's awesome.
00:56:06
Speaker
I mine was just don't take the secretary.
00:56:10
Speaker
Mine was just dumb luck.
00:56:11
Speaker
I was I was doing a man cave and I was looking for, hey, it'd be fun to because I grew up on Silver Spoons.
00:56:19
Speaker
Right.
00:56:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:56:20
Speaker
And you know, everybody thought that was the coolest thing in the world that this guy had an arcade game in his house.
00:56:28
Speaker
And so I was like, you know, that would be kind of cool.
00:56:30
Speaker
So I was looking for, there was a local guy here that sold arcade games.
00:56:37
Speaker
His daughter is a nurse who I work with.
00:56:40
Speaker
And so she just sent me to him.
00:56:42
Speaker
So I went over to check out some games he had and he had just barely picked up
00:56:47
Speaker
three like home use only games from a house.
00:56:51
Speaker
And he just said, well, what about a pinball machine?
00:56:54
Speaker
So I just said, well, there's a, there were three of them.
00:56:58
Speaker
One of them was Corvette.
00:57:00
Speaker
One of them, I can't remember what the, what that was an old game.
00:57:03
Speaker
And one of them was Simpsons pinball party.
00:57:05
Speaker
And my wife said, well, let's get the Simpsons.
00:57:07
Speaker
Nice.
00:57:07
Speaker
So that, and I never played pinball even before that.
00:57:10
Speaker
So my, my first real experience playing pinball was buying one.
00:57:14
Speaker
Me too.
00:57:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:57:15
Speaker
I, I,
00:57:17
Speaker
love twilight zone the tv show and then i was my girlfriend at the time in 94 they had this giving tree at the the super k mart i don't know if you remember those where you go pick a name off there and buy a present and stuff she wanted to do that so we stopped in the super k mart there in houston i think on westheimer i remember going to the customer service department and there was a twilight zone there and i was like wow
00:57:42
Speaker
I mean, I hadn't seen pinball, didn't know.
00:57:44
Speaker
I was like, I got to get one of these someday.
00:57:47
Speaker
And so when eBay came around, you know, I found one, bought it, got it shipped to me.
00:57:52
Speaker
And I had to call the guy.
00:57:53
Speaker
I go, how do I put the balls in this thing?
00:57:56
Speaker
He's like, oh, you do, you undo the lock button, lockdown bar and slide the glass off.
00:58:00
Speaker
And I mean, I knew nothing, but, and then I was like, man, first arcade game I remember playing was like a cocktail Pac-Man and,
00:58:09
Speaker
and, um, and Tempest.
00:58:11
Speaker
And he's like, Oh yeah, I got both of the, both of those.
00:58:13
Speaker
And so I just like send those too.
00:58:16
Speaker
So I had like three games in no time.
00:58:19
Speaker
Uh, and then, you know, what happens after that, you know?
00:58:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:58:22
Speaker
They do multiply.
00:58:23
Speaker
My childhood was Gilligan and the universal monsters.
00:58:27
Speaker
And so the next thing I got was creature.
00:58:30
Speaker
And then after that, I went to buy some tickets at ticket master at this supermarket called Fiesta and
00:58:36
Speaker
around the corner from my house and they had an adams family and i had never played it never seen it and so i dropped some money in that while i was waiting for ticketmaster to open and the hand came out and the magnets threw the ball around and i was like oh gotta get one of these so that was my third um so i i mean you know didn't know anything at the time but i just knew i loved this immediately
00:59:00
Speaker
Well, it's funny that you said that about the calling to even figure out how to get the balls in.
00:59:03
Speaker
I remember when I was first in the hobby, I'd sold off my Data East, changed me to Turtles, and the people called me.
00:59:11
Speaker
They drove three hours.
00:59:12
Speaker
They picked it up.
00:59:12
Speaker
They took it back, and they played it, and it was working fine.
00:59:16
Speaker
And so when they get it home and the ball's not getting ejecting out into the trough, they're like, you sold us a faulty game.
00:59:25
Speaker
I'm like, is the game level?
00:59:28
Speaker
And they're like, hold on.
00:59:29
Speaker
And so they went and leveled it and like, oh, it's working great.
00:59:31
Speaker
Never mind.
00:59:32
Speaker
But I learned how to work on them because, you know, and you had to.
00:59:36
Speaker
Yeah, right.
00:59:37
Speaker
And I love I love working on them as much as playing them.
00:59:40
Speaker
I mean, I've done several play field swaps and I just finished a evil Knievel was the was the big thing of my youth and six million dollar man.
00:59:49
Speaker
But like, you know, in 77, I think it was for Christmas, I got the Evel Knievel bike and, you know, I had all the toys.
00:59:56
Speaker
And so I just finished doing a play field swap, a cabinet paint and restore on an Evel Knievel I just got.
01:00:04
Speaker
So that's that's my newest.
01:00:06
Speaker
I've never owned a Bally and I've never owned anything past.
01:00:10
Speaker
I don't know what's my oldest space shuttles, my oldest before that.
01:00:14
Speaker
So.
01:00:15
Speaker
So, yeah, I'm looking forward to playing that.
01:00:18
Speaker
But I learned that I like working on them and I don't mind board work, but the cabinet part is not my favorite to do a cabinet.
01:00:26
Speaker
I'm no Chris Hutchins or Brian Kelly.
01:00:28
Speaker
Mine does not look as good as their jobs, but, you know, I don't plan on selling it.
01:00:33
Speaker
So.
01:00:33
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:34
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:35
Speaker
Now you also just took a big trip, didn't you?
01:00:38
Speaker
Didn't you?
01:00:39
Speaker
You I heard you were in England and you dropped by our friend Mark's house.
01:00:44
Speaker
I was.
01:00:45
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:46
Speaker
Well, you know, I'm the Beatles are my favorite band.
01:00:49
Speaker
Rolling Stones are my second favorite.
01:00:51
Speaker
And so they announced their 60th tour in March, I think.
01:00:55
Speaker
And I was, I told my wife, I said, oh man, the stones are playing in Liverpool on my birthday.
01:01:01
Speaker
How cool would that be to go?
01:01:03
Speaker
And she's like, well, you should do it.
01:01:05
Speaker
And I was like, no, I saw him last year and I don't, I don't need to go.
01:01:09
Speaker
And I was like, you know, there's no, no, no.
01:01:11
Speaker
And I, I, so I forgot about it.
01:01:14
Speaker
I didn't forget about it, but I was just denying myself.
01:01:18
Speaker
And so, because it's not practical to flag, you know, to go see a concert.
01:01:23
Speaker
So, um,
01:01:25
Speaker
a couple of days before the the pit ticket sold out and i was like well i don't want to go unless i can be close and so that solved that so a couple of days before i saw a video of their first liverpool was their third night of the tour so i saw a video from the first night and i was like man i wish i had gone so i looked and they had opened up a few more pit tickets so i told her i was like
01:01:46
Speaker
They just opened pit tickets.
01:01:47
Speaker
She's like, buy it and book the next flight out and go.
01:01:50
Speaker
And I was like, really?
01:01:52
Speaker
And she's like, just do it.
01:01:53
Speaker
So I did.
01:01:54
Speaker
I got the last seat on the next flight out and she took me to the airport and I went on Tuesday, got to London the next afternoon.
01:02:02
Speaker
And, uh, well, I called Mark Silk right after I bought it and I said, so I'm going to be in your neighborhood tomorrow afternoon.
01:02:08
Speaker
And he's like, well, you got to come over.
01:02:10
Speaker
So I stayed at his house the first night in Birmingham and then took the train up to Liverpool.
01:02:14
Speaker
Saw the show.
01:02:15
Speaker
It was my most amazing birthday.
01:02:19
Speaker
And I never, you know, my pictures look like, you know, Mick is 10 feet away.
01:02:24
Speaker
I mean, it's just the whole thing was great.
01:02:27
Speaker
Next morning, I got up and went to a couple Beatles museums.
01:02:30
Speaker
And got to the end of one of them, and they had the Beatles game that I did sound on in the Beatles Museum.
01:02:35
Speaker
And I was like, okay, this is surreal.
01:02:37
Speaker
My favorite band.
01:02:40
Speaker
And then so I took the train down, went to see Billie Eilish, and then the next day I went to Back to the Future, the musical.
01:02:46
Speaker
And that was...
01:02:48
Speaker
amazing.
01:02:49
Speaker
It comes to Broadway next year.
01:02:50
Speaker
And I mean, if you get a chance to go, it was just the production values were better than anything I've ever seen.
01:02:57
Speaker
And it was the actors were great and it's well worth it.
01:02:59
Speaker
So then I ended up getting upgraded on the way back.
01:03:02
Speaker
So I was like, OK, this birthday could not have been better.
01:03:06
Speaker
So, but yes, luckily I had miles.
01:03:09
Speaker
I didn't have to pay, you know, I flew on miles.
01:03:11
Speaker
I would not have bought a, a, an international ticket, a round trip ticket a day before and spent that kind of money.
01:03:18
Speaker
But so I was fortunate.
01:03:21
Speaker
That sounds like the perfect birthday, man.
01:03:23
Speaker
That's it was, I mean, it was just, I mean, not everything was great.
01:03:26
Speaker
And so I have to thank my wife, Jennifer, who, who made, made me go in quotes.
01:03:32
Speaker
She twisted your arm.
01:03:33
Speaker
Yes.
01:03:34
Speaker
Yeah.
01:03:35
Speaker
But so I, one of my Uber drivers there, he's like, are you here by yourself?
01:03:38
Speaker
And I said, yeah, my wife told me go have a fun birthday adventure.
01:03:41
Speaker
And he said, wow, my wife would not have said that.
01:03:45
Speaker
I said, yep, I really lucked out with her.
01:03:47
Speaker
She's awesome.
01:03:47
Speaker
Nice.
01:03:50
Speaker
Um, I have one more question before we wrap this up.
Challenges and Community in Pinball Shows
01:03:53
Speaker
Uh, maybe, maybe two.
01:03:54
Speaker
Um, the one question is Mandalorian was kind of a tight
01:03:59
Speaker
time schedule from the guy the time that you guys got the license actual product coming out was that one different from the other ones that you did was it kind of weird being trickled out and watching the show as you're doing the game kind of thing
01:04:11
Speaker
probably not for me as much as the guys like Brian and Dwight who were coming up with what storylines they wanted to use in the game.
01:04:21
Speaker
I mean, by the time it came to my part, that was all decided, you know?
01:04:26
Speaker
And so we, they gave us the episodes as they came out for, you know, for the second season.
01:04:36
Speaker
And so, yeah, probably, like I say, there's so many people,
01:04:41
Speaker
involved in making a pinball game that you never even think about and um all those all those uh creative minds that come up with the modes and and the planning and all that that takes so much time you know don't get a lot of credit it's kind of like a a movie you know there there's a handful of us who get the starring role and then there's that long list of credits that roll after that there's a lot of people that that do a great job that that you never hear about so yeah um
01:05:09
Speaker
I can't say how thankful I am to be a part of the team.
01:05:16
Speaker
It's the team's choice.
01:05:19
Speaker
I'm a contractor, so they can choose to use me or not.
01:05:23
Speaker
I'm really thankful that a lot of people, including Keith for four times and all of Dwight's games since 2016, I've gotten to do.
01:05:32
Speaker
My last question, and if we need to cut this out, we can.
01:05:37
Speaker
I was sent this sound clip.
01:05:39
Speaker
Okay.
01:05:49
Speaker
Can you tell what that was?
01:05:52
Speaker
I can't.
01:05:52
Speaker
No.
01:05:53
Speaker
Ah, son of a gun.
01:05:54
Speaker
What is that?
01:05:56
Speaker
Is it Wheel of Fortune or what is that?
01:05:58
Speaker
It kind of sounds like Wheel of Fortune.
01:05:59
Speaker
It's supposed to be like a roulette from Vegas, I guess.
01:06:07
Speaker
Anywho.
01:06:09
Speaker
Is it a, well, it's those standard orchestral orchestra hits from the nineties.
01:06:14
Speaker
I mean, it sounds like some bonus stuff I did in a game.
01:06:19
Speaker
Yeah.
01:06:19
Speaker
He's going to say, did you, did you still, were you walking through Vegas when you stole the sounds for Godzilla or not Godzilla, uh, ghostbusters.
01:06:26
Speaker
That is well, you know, that was the sound on those records in the in the late 80s, early 90s.
01:06:33
Speaker
Those orc hits, you know.
01:06:36
Speaker
And yeah, I mean, they that was era appropriate.
01:06:39
Speaker
So those are in there.
01:06:40
Speaker
But so is that from some kind of game in Vegas?
01:06:44
Speaker
Yeah, he was actually was in Melbourne.
01:06:45
Speaker
He was working.
01:06:46
Speaker
He was walking past as one of those giant roulette wheels.
01:06:50
Speaker
And so I guess it's a, it's a digital roulette roulette wheel that was spinning.
01:06:55
Speaker
And then every time it, you know, the ball would flop.
01:06:57
Speaker
I mean, they're just pitched orchestra hits like, you know, yeah, I've, I've used those kind of same kind of things for bonus.
01:07:04
Speaker
Um, and, uh, you know, count ups.
01:07:07
Speaker
Yeah.
01:07:08
Speaker
That's funny though.
01:07:09
Speaker
I mean, when you, when you played it, I was like, yeah, I've heard that kind of sound before.
01:07:14
Speaker
Yeah.
01:07:15
Speaker
But he was probably walking through like, where's ghostbusters at?
01:07:17
Speaker
Like where's right.
01:07:19
Speaker
Right.
01:07:20
Speaker
Well, you got anything else for us, Scott?
01:07:22
Speaker
No, we're just really thankful that Jerry came on.
01:07:26
Speaker
Want to get you a hat.
01:07:27
Speaker
We just ordered some, so hopefully we'll get them in stock.
01:07:30
Speaker
And so we'll get that information and we'll be able to send one out to you.
01:07:34
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
01:07:36
Speaker
Yeah, I'll see you guys at Expo.
01:07:38
Speaker
Okay.
01:07:38
Speaker
I'm planning on being there unless something changes.
01:07:41
Speaker
I'm trying to make it.
01:07:44
Speaker
I booked.
01:07:45
Speaker
I put in my request, but right now I'm on the wait list for vacation time.
01:07:50
Speaker
Oh, okay.
01:07:51
Speaker
Yeah, he's always vacationing.
01:07:53
Speaker
Yeah.
01:07:55
Speaker
No, it's right now we're super short staffed.
01:07:58
Speaker
And so we can only let four people off at a time.
01:08:01
Speaker
So it's really tight.
01:08:02
Speaker
Well, I that's one fortunate thing for me because I really can work anywhere.
01:08:09
Speaker
I mean, I did stuff on Godzilla from the hotel room in in Liverpool.
01:08:14
Speaker
you know, as long as I have a computer and, uh, and a microphone, I, I mean, I have my travel bag ready to go all the time and, and I can work a little in the room, go have fun at night.
01:08:23
Speaker
So, I mean, it's, I'm, I'm very grateful for what I get to do, you know?
01:08:27
Speaker
So I hope, uh, I hope this came off okay for you guys.
01:08:32
Speaker
Oh, it came out fantastic.
01:08:33
Speaker
That was great.
01:08:33
Speaker
Loved it.
01:08:34
Speaker
All right.
01:08:35
Speaker
Well, thank you guys.
01:08:36
Speaker
Definitely.
01:08:36
Speaker
Well, we appreciate you coming on and joining us.
01:08:39
Speaker
Um, if, if,
01:08:41
Speaker
Tell us a little bit more about the Seattle show.
01:08:44
Speaker
You still work with that, right?
01:08:46
Speaker
Yeah, we, after 2008, the first one, we saw it was going to be successful because we didn't know if anyone would show up.
01:08:55
Speaker
And we had over a thousand people.
01:08:57
Speaker
And so I said to the two guys who started it and put the money in, I said, you know, we either have to probably make no money or all of us should get some money because there were a lot of, you know, eight to 12 volunteers that worked really hard.
01:09:11
Speaker
And he said,
01:09:13
Speaker
Why don't we just make it and nobody makes any money.
01:09:16
Speaker
So they registered as an official 501C.
01:09:20
Speaker
And since 2009, up until now, nobody has taken a dime from the show, including board members, organizers.
01:09:28
Speaker
And
01:09:29
Speaker
And whatever extra money there is every year is put back into the show and to scholarships.
01:09:35
Speaker
Usually $5,000 or sometimes $10,000 if we have enough money.
01:09:39
Speaker
Didn't do any this last year because, you know, or this year rather because of being off for two years of COVID.
01:09:45
Speaker
We didn't know what to expect.
01:09:47
Speaker
And so we want to make sure we had enough money to put on the show next year.
01:09:50
Speaker
But, yeah, it's...
01:09:52
Speaker
it's great group of people that still, still some of the same people from 2008 that have been there every year since the beginning that put it on.
01:09:59
Speaker
And, um, we had just under 500 games this last time at the show.
01:10:05
Speaker
And, uh, and I can't remember how many, it was several, maybe 3000.
01:10:09
Speaker
Um, so good number.
01:10:11
Speaker
Um, but yeah, you guys hopefully can make it out sometime.
01:10:15
Speaker
It's a, it's great.
01:10:16
Speaker
Seattle is great in the summertime.
01:10:18
Speaker
Definitely.
01:10:19
Speaker
Yeah.
01:10:19
Speaker
I would love to come out and
Contact Information and Community Support
01:10:20
Speaker
do that.
01:10:20
Speaker
So,
01:10:21
Speaker
If people want to get a hold of you or if you don't want to be bothered at all, Jerry, how do they get a hold of you or just tell them now?
01:10:27
Speaker
Go away.
01:10:30
Speaker
Well, jerry.thompson at sternpinball.com is my email address.
01:10:37
Speaker
Okay.
01:10:38
Speaker
Well, we thank you again for Jerry for coming on.
01:10:40
Speaker
And if you want to get a hold of us, we are Loser Kid Pinball Podcast.
01:10:44
Speaker
You can get a hold of us at gmail.com.
01:10:47
Speaker
or on the socials at LoserKidPinball.
01:10:49
Speaker
That's Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Twitch, or just Scott or Josh on Facebook.
01:10:55
Speaker
That's probably the easiest way to get a hold of us.
01:10:58
Speaker
Don't forget, we do have Flippin' the Script coming up here at Expo.
01:11:03
Speaker
We're excited for it.
01:11:04
Speaker
And we want to thank everyone that has pitched in to help us with the charity for kids with autism.
01:11:12
Speaker
And we are so excited to be doing this to help those that are affected by autism.
01:11:17
Speaker
You got anything else for us, Scott?
01:11:20
Speaker
No, just have a great rest of the summer where our kids are going back to school in a week and I can't wait.
01:11:26
Speaker
Same here.
01:11:27
Speaker
Two weeks for us.
01:11:28
Speaker
And we'll see you in two weeks.
01:11:32
Speaker
Shut up and sit down.