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© 2024 Wedgehead Pinball Podcast
Description
A weekly pinball podcast brought to you by the people that run Wedgehead, a pinball bar in Portland, Oregon. Each week Alan and Alex discuss a different pinball topic, with a focus on location play, often with other interesting guests.
If you have any questions, or might want to guest on a future episode, please email : wedgeheadinfo@gmail.com.
55 Episodes
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Our buddy Mike from Quarters and Quarters Sugarhouse joins us on the show to discuss operating two arcade bars in Salt Lake City, Utah.We talk about his start in the bar business, and all the unique challenges that running a bar in the state of Utah entails. Mike enlightens us on his local pinball scene and speaks about the decision to open a second location in the same city.Note: We are adults, so we swear a little bit.
This is the second part of our series about the groundbreaking Williams System 11 games, and we discuss the second half of them, including games from the recently acquired Bally pinball division which injected even more creative juice into the parent company.Ty Palmer is back for part two, and we talk about games like Whirlwind, Elvira and the Party Monsters, Diner, and Dr. Dude amongst all the others, and further discuss the many design tropes that emerged from this era including which ones ...
Our good friend and solid state pinball guru, Ty Palmer joins us for the first episode in our two part series on the Williams System 11 platform, a pinball board set and software framework that massively changed the game of pinball.Larry Demar designed and engineered this groundbreaking system, and programmed many of the best games from this era too. It spanned 5 years from 1986 to 1991, and includes 30 pinball machines.We discuss the first 15 of them in this episode including highlight...
In this episode Alan and Alex discuss the best games to trick your normie friends and family into liking and playing pinball. We discuss the parameters of what we think makes a great gateway game, what makes a bad gateway game, and tips for making their first time playing more fun.We are also now accepting questions for our 1 year anniversary episode, so send all your questions or comments that you want us to read and discuss on that episode to wedgeheadinfo@gmail.comNote: We're not wer...
In this episode, freelance pinball artist Jonathan Bergeron joins us from his studio in Montreal, Canada to discuss his life as a commercial artist doing gig posters and merch designs for bands like Mastodon, Guns 'n Roses, Suicidal Tendencies, Judas Priest, and many many more, as well as how he got pulled into the pinball industry as the artist for Stern's Jurassic Park.He did 5 different dinosaur themed art packages for all the different editions of that game, and we discuss his transition ...
The man/myth/legend Roger Sharpe is back again on the show to speak more about the pinball renaissance of the 1990s. In this second episode we dive more into some of the many people that made these games special.We talk about designers like Steve Ritchie, Pat Lawlor, and Dennis Nordman. Programmers like Larry DeMar, Lyman Sheats, and Dwight Sullivan, as well as the sound design and musical compositions of Chris Granner amongst others. Roger tells us some fantastic stories of licen...
Alan and Alex are joined on the show once again by Roger Sharpe, aka the 'Man Who Saved Pinball' to discuss his career at Williams from 1988-1999 as the Marketing Director. Roger tells us some great stories about getting hired, the merger of Bally into Williams, his role in licensing games, and more.And we discuss a lot about the different technological advances that made this era of games so dynamic and interesting, from the software and rules, to the DMD display, to the big mechanical...
Alan and Alex are joined on the show by their friend Tyler White from LA to discuss Stern's Insider Connected platform, and why he loves to use it, and how he wants to see it grow into the future.Stern's IC is a feature that has been on all their games since Godzilla (2021), and has retrofit kits to connect all their Spike 2 games going back to Batman '66 (2016).We discuss what the new platform has meant through the eyes of players and operators, and how connecting pinball machines has change...
In this episode, our friend and member of our local Portland Pinball scene, Nate Tayloe joins us on the show to educate us on the weird case where Gottlieb chose to sue Paramount Pictures over alleged copyright and trademark infringement due to the inclusion of Gottlieb's "Silver Slugger" pinball machine in the 2000 movie, "What Women Want" starring Mel Gibson and Helen Hunt.Nate learned about this case while he was in law school, and he wanted to bring this story of the case to our show, and...
Ty Ueda from Pop's Pinball Parlor in Boston, Ma. is back to defend another game on the show, this time it's 1993's Rocky & Bullwinkle and Friends!Released by Data East and designed by frequent DOTH designer extraordinaire, Tim Seckel, this game probably barely qualifies as it seems to sit somewhere in the middle of truly hated or truly respected. But Ty is an excitable boy and he LOVES this game so we thought it would be fun to read him all the bad reviews we could find.As always th...
We're joined again on the show by Greg Freres whom we spoke to in the last episode, about the legendary Bally Art Department of the early solid state era. But in this episode we focus our discussions on his ascension to head of the art department at Williams/Bally after the 1988 merger, guiding them through their wild 1990s pinball renaissance until they closed their doors in 1999.After about a decade in between of working in videogames and freelancing, he returned to pinball as t...
In this episode, Alan and Alex are joined on the show by long time pinball artist Greg Freres, and they discuss Greg's time working in the late 1970s and early 1980s art department at Bally, a truly remarkable time period for pinball art.Greg tells us all about the different processes that revolutionized the industry, working under art director Paul Faris, and the fraternity bond that he shared with Paul, Kevin O'Connor, Margaret Hudsen, Dave Christensen, Tony Ramunni, and Pat McMahon.Greg te...
In this MEGA sized episode of the podcast, Alan and Alex discuss the rise and increase in the number of pinball MEGALOCATIONS with 100+ machines.We discuss traveling to these pinball destinations, what to expect playing massive collections in warehouse buildings, and talk about our own experiences at some of these locations such as Past Times, Next Level, Pacific Pinball Museum, and the Pinball Hall of Fame.There's some very cool and massive pinball locations popping up around the world, and ...
Sean Irby, homebrew pinball designer from our last episode rejoins the show to defend his "Die on this Hill" game: Sega's Godzilla.Before Stern released their Godzilla to a near deafening roar of approval, Gary's previous pinball venture had a much less successful go at a Godzilla game, based on the similarly ill - fated Godzilla movie starring Mathew Broderick in 1998.The contrast between the reception of these two pins is STARK, to say the least. So listen as Sean defends this origina...
In this episode, Alan and Alex are joined on the show by Sean Irby, a northwest pinball neighbor from Seattle to discuss the making and development of homebrew pinball machines, AKA making your own pinball machine.Over the last 5 years, the homebrew pinball community has exploded thanks to the availability of boards, mission pinball framework, and the online community surrounding these tools.Sean built his own pinball machine, Eight Ball Beyond, a spiritual successor to the trilogy of Eight B...
In this special edition of our popular 'Die on this Hill' series, Alan teams up with his buddy AJ, the owner and operator of the Flip a Coin Arcade, to defend Data East's Hook.Alex is there as the resident hater on the show, and he GLEEFULLY reads AJ and Alan an avalanche of awful reviews scoured from the depths of the internet.Buckle up, this one is a wild ride.But we do use some choice and tasty adult language throughout the episode to punctuate our refined takes. You've been warned! ...
We are joined on the show by Adam 'AJ' Jordan, owner and operator of the 'Flip a Coin Arcade' that they built in the basement of his girlfriend's bakery, the 'Bite Me Cake Company' in Pueblo, Colorado.We talk about building a scene in a small town, taking a leap in the middle of covid, and how his day job as an autobody repair guy has bled over into his operating of pins, including spraying new clearcoats and repainting old cabinets in the booth.AJ is another very passionate hobbyist turned o...
Our pal Jeff Johnsen, the operator of Walt's in LA, is back on the show to defend the last pinball machine that the original Stern Electronics company ever made, Orbitor 1.Jeff tells us about the historical significance of the game, including the two pinball outsiders and NASA engineers, who brought their concept and ideas for an entirely new play experience to a company under duress, and convinced them to take the leap and manufacture one of the most hated pinball machines of all time in the...
We speak with Jeff Johnsen, owner and operator of Walt's Bar in LA's Eagle Rock neighborhood about how his father taught him and his brother how to work on games as kids, almost blowing themselves up in the process.We talk about the LA pinball scene, pricing games, giving up his route, and how to properly rehab an old plumbing supply store into an iconic LA bar, replete with 10 vintage pins.Join us for a chat with one of the wildest pinball operators we have ever chatted with, as we talk abou...
Pinball restoration artist Ashley Ludwig (@ludwigsynopsis) is back on the show to defend her favorite trashy 90s pin, Lethal Weapon 3.Made by Data East in 1992, and based on the hit series of odd couple buddy cop films, Ashley passionately tells us why she thinks that LW3 is actually better than the Addams Family, and we confront her with the heap of bad reviews we found for it all over the internet refuting her claim.Obligatory swear word warning here: we cuss a little bit.
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