Wedgehead Pinball Podcast

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We're back to honor another year in pinball history, with the Pinball Hindsight Awards of 1985!  This was a major downturn of the industry, but that doesn't mean that there still aren't some great games released this year, and we honor all of them in this episode with some awards given out with the power of hindsight!

This isn...

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This episode is all about the rise and fall of one of pinball's most magnificent and enigmatic designers, Mr. John Popadiuk Jr., sometimes better known as JPOP in pinball nerd circles.  He made a string of some the absolute best games in the 1990s including World Cup Soccer, Theatre of Magic, Tales of the Arabian Nights, and Cirqus ...

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Join us as we discuss with frequent guest on the show Greg Dunlap to discuss the important role that programmers play in the design and development of pinball machines as we talk about all the many different ways that programmers can influence a player's perception positively or negatively through their work.

But there's some tast...

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This episode features former guest on the show, and dot matrix pinball programmer Greg Dunlap to discuss how Gary Stern ends up surviving TWO pinball extinction events at the turn of the millennium, and then another one at the end of the decade.

This is the only era in pinball's long history where there was only a single manufacturer in b...

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This is the first ever award show that attempts to get the calls right, all with the power of HINDSIGHT.  So, for this first Pinball Hindsight Awards Episode, we chose the year 1990, and are giving out the test of time awards to games like Dr. Dude, Funhouse, Whirlwind, Rollergames and many more.

Warning: adult language and no-no words are us...

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This episode Alan & Alex are joined on the show to discuss the short-lived Pinball 2000 platform, and Ian defends SWE1, the last game that Williams pinball ever made against a flood of bad reviews.

I mention in this episode a fantastic documentary that you should check out, called TILT: The Battle to Save Pinball check it out to learn mo...

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This episode is all about why pinball's natural habitat is on location, and why location pinball still matters (and matters much more than private collections) in the year 2025 and beyond.  Our whole podcast is basically centered around the importance of pinball being put on location, but this episode in particular is a love letter to o...

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This episode is all about the joys and fun that a hard game of pinball brings.  For whatever reason this seems to be a minority opinion in the modern era, even though we set out to prove that pinball was always supposed to be hard, and that challenging games are way more fun in the long run.

Obligatory naughty language warning. 

Support the ...

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This episode has been teased multiple times over the run of the show, and is a solo episode based upon what I started out writing as a short article about the business of location pinball, the economics of it, and the feasibility of pinball earning money on location.  What started out as a short article quickly grew wider in scope, and e...

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Good friend of the show and all-around expert solid state assassin, Ty Palmer joins us on the show once again for his SIXTH appearance to defend his DOTH game, 1979's Future Spa.

Designed by George Christian and released by Bally in their golden era, this game is a super wide body with a very weird and very horny art package, but it&apos...

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This episode is all about the mystery and mystique surrounding Bally's best game designer from their early solid state golden era, previously covered in our Susan B. Anthony Years episode.

And just like last time, we are joined by local Solid-State assassin and good friend Ty Palmer to discuss what is all of our favorite designer fro...

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This episode we discuss Stern pinball's interesting way of approaching certain licensed games that they make, including their recent games Dungeons & Dragons and King Kong, before we dive into the differences with their earlier Marvel games like Spider Man, Iron Man, or Avengers to what they make nowadays with Deadpool, X-Men, Venom o...

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This episode was written by Alex, about how to get the most out of a Pinball Show.  As the popularity of pinball has grown in the last 5-10 years, so too have the number of Pinball Shows/Expos/Conventions, and there is probably one near you too.

Shows can be overwhelming, so listen to Alex & Alan discuss their tips for getting the most ou...

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In this edition of DOTH, Marcus Petersen from the previous episode about creating a pinball scene in a rural town, is back to defend his love for Sega's final pinball machine: 1999's South Park.

I am sure everybody has heard of the show at this point, but this game was released after the first two seasons of the show. The pinball machine is no...

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This episode we are joined on the show with Marcus Petersen, who became a pinball operator in Lassen County, in Northern California near the Lassen National Park in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

Susanville is the biggest city in the county with less than 10,000 residents, so Marcus really had a small pond when he decided to first start operating pinball m...

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This the follow-up episode to Episode 76: Original Themes, and in this episode, we explore the licensing wars in the early 90s through the lens of Joe Kaminkow at Data East pinball and their shift from original themes to only making licensed games.  We talk about how Williams and Gottlieb follow suit and compare sales strategies amongst the companies.

Th...

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This episode we are joined by the Underboss of the Stern Family, Mr. George Gomez to discuss the single most popular location game in the Portland pinball scene and celebrate the 20th Anniversary of its release.

George tells us stories about the production of the game, working with Lyman Sheats and Chris Granner, as well as answering our questi...

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On this episode, we have a listener from the New England area Josh who wants to talk about the first Dungeons & Dragons pinball machine released in 1987 by Bally.  It's a famously hard game with very weird inlanes, so it should be no surprise that it is not well loved by most pinheads.

But Josh came on to set the record straight, and respond to ...

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This is a good one, where we discuss how Williams was able to prove that during the renaissance period of the late 1980s and 1990s, they were able to design, manufacture, and most importantly, SELL the crap outta their original theme games.

In this episode, we talk about how Williams beat their competition with original themes and then discuss why almo...