Wedgehead Pinball Podcast

Support the show & receive a link to our private discord server: ko-fi.com/wedgeheadpodcast In this episode, we are joined on the show by the patron saint of making pinball challenging again, Scott Danesi.  Scott works a full time job at Pinball Life as a multidisciplinary engineer, creating replacement pinball parts for all of us to benefit from, but he also famously has designed 3 (as of thi...

Support the show: https:/ko-fi.com/wedgeheadpodcast In this episode we discuss the final chapter of Gottlieb as a pinball manufacturer.  The prevailing narrative around these games is that they're all terrible, but that's simply not true.  There was a bunch of talented individuals working at Gottlieb at this time, making some very interesting games on extremely tight deadlines, with few...

Support the show: https:/ko-fi.com/wedgeheadpodcast We are joined on the show by our friend Todd Robinett, to discuss creating a pinball scene from scratch in a small town near the Oregon Coast.  He operates pins in his two businesses: the Merry Time Bar, and the Labor Temple Diner. When Todd first moved out to Astoria, there were no pinball machines.  Now Astoria has 45 pinball machines on locati...

Support the show: ko-fi.com/wedgeheadpodcast IFPA director, and former women's world champion Zoe Vrabel is back on the show to discuss the past, present, and future of women's competitive pinball.  Zoe tells us all about the rise of competitive women's pinball, and what she would like to see in the future. Stream the Women's World Championship March 29th-30th on Twitch through...

Support the show: https://ko-fi.com/wedgeheadpodcast In this episode, Alan is joined on the show by Zoe Vrabel, an IFPA director and former Women's World Champion to discuss some of the legendary women who have worked in the pinball industry, and we discuss their impact on the games that we all know and love. ....but, we do swear sometimes. Support the show

Support the show: ko-fi.com/wedgeheadpodcast This episode our special guest Glenn Waechter (of the Saw Homebrew machine) joins us on the show, to Die on the Hill for Stern's 2001 game, High Roller Casino. This early stern, rare non licensed title wasn't well received upon its release, as evidenced by all the bad reviews we found, and it's low overall rating on pinside.  But it was l...

Support the show: https://ko-fi.com/wedgeheadpodcast This episode is all about the history of the licensed band pin starting way back in the late 1970s, with a couple dots in the 1990s, and finally into the explosion of them in the 2010s until today. We talk about the effect it has had on the industry, and why, love 'em or hate 'em, old man band pins are here to stay. Warning: If you don...

Support the show: ko-fi.com/wedgeheadpodcast This is the finale episode of our 3-part trilogy of episodes that began with the first episode: Pinball Buyer's Guide, continued in our episode Pinball Maintenance, and finally culminates in this episode right here. Alex and Alex talk about coming full circle on a pinball machine and give you some hot tips for kicking that giant box of lights down...

Support the show: ko-fi.com/wedgeheadpodcast Companion piece episode here from Alan to talk about how to maintain that pinball machine that Alex convinced y'all to buy in the Pinball Buyer's guide episode. There's a lot of bad or wildly unnecessary advice and ridiculous precautions out there on the forums, and it can get confusing fast as others loudly argue amongst themselves about...

Support the show: https://ko-fi.com/wedgeheadpodcast Scott & Ryan, the creators of the Pinball Map are back on the show to defend Scott's DOTH game: Stern's 2007 machine, Wheel of Fortune.  It's got a tweaked lower playfield, a theme nobody asked for, and code that was never completed.  But Scott loves this game. So listen up as Ryan and Alan read him all the bad reviews pulled...

Support the show: https://ko-fi.com/wedgeheadpodcast This is a sequel to our earlier episode 16 - So You Wanna Buy a Pinball Machine?  And in that episode (which we HIGHLY recommend listening to first) we mostly discuss a lot of the things that we wish we knew before we bought our first pinball machines, including a lot of the downsides that you might not even be thinking about. But this episode i...

Support the Show: https://ko-fi.com/wedgeheadpodcast This episode features an interview with Ryan and Scott, two regular guys and former roommates who created the Pinball Map all the way back in 2008 right here in Portland, Oregon. Alan talks to Ryan and Scott about the history of this incredible resource, and they talk about the expansions to bring in more cities and regions, the development of t...

Support the show: https://ko-fi.com/wedgeheadpodcast This episode is all about the hotly debated definition of what a fan layout is, what it isn't, whether they are good, or whether they are cookie cutter derivative BS.  We discuss the history of them, some of the most famous ones, and some of the designers most associated with them. And at the end of the episode we even argue about some &quo...

Support the show: https://ko-fi.com/wedgeheadpodcast This episode, we are joined by our friend Isaac Ruiz, a legendary tournament director and organizer from the Portland scene to discuss the rise of tournament pinball here, breaking the IFPA rankings systems in the early 2010s, developing Brackelope, the world's first software for running pinball tournaments, some format explanations for new...

Support the show: https://ko-fi.com/wedgeheadpodcast Local Deathsave enthusiast Jeff Hart returns to the show to defend Stern's 2006 game, World Poker Tour against all the internet haters.  This is one of those games with a star studded design team, loaded with mechanical features, and yet it still is widely derided by many pinheads. Jeff is here to set the record straight, and respond to the...

Support the show: https://ko-fi.com/wedgeheadpodcast This episode Alan recaps the seminar that he was a panelist on for the 40th Annual Pinball Expo in Chicago and sort of reprises his notes for you all to listen to. The panelists were 3 independent Arcade Bar Owners, Zespy of Logan Arcade in Chicago, Rachel & Cale of the Electric Bat Arcade in Tempe, and your very own Rhodesie & Alan of W...

Support the show: https://ko-fi.com/wedgeheadpodcast We are joined on this episode by admitted cheater, local Portland player Jeff Hart, to discuss the dark arts of pinball: The deathsave and it's little brother, the bangback. We discuss the moves, the ethics of doing them from a player's and operator's perspective, and why they aren't allowed in tournament play.  Alan argues f...

Support the show: https://ko-fi.com/wedgeheadpodcast In this episode we interview a fan of the show Mike, who runs a cool AirBnB in Troy, NY near Albany.  He has 15 pinball machines in the apartment that are all on free play for the guests, and we talk with him about this unusual but very cool way to operate pinball in an unconventional way. Mike tells us how he got started collecting, and then th...

Support the show: https://ko-fi.com/wedgeheadpodcast In this episode we are belatedly celebrating our one year anniversary of hosting this weekly pinball show. We asked y'all to submit some questions, and boy did you!  We try and answer all of your questions that you sent in to us, although a few came in after we recorded this episode and we will save them for another time. Thank you to each...

Support the show: https://ko-fi.com/wedgeheadpodcast 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...

Support the show: https://ko-fi.com/wedgeheadpodcast 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...

Support the show: https://ko-fi.com/wedgeheadpodcast 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 er...

Support the show: https://ko-fi.com/wedgeheadpodcast 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...

Support the show: https://ko-fi.com/wedgeheadpodcast 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 a...

Support the show: https://ko-fi.com/wedgeheadpodcast 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 Su...