Whoa Nellie! Big Juicy Melons

PINBALL
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Special:
Whoa Nellie!
Big Juicy Melons
Interviews with
Greg Freres, Dennis Nordman and Dave Peterson
+
Texas
roadtrip
report
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PINBALL
Santiago Ciuffo
• 208-pages
• Hardcover coffee table photo book
• Free 80-page supplement magazine included
• Text in English, French and German
• Additional language supplements available in Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Hungarian,
Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese,
Spanish and Swedish
Some of the feedback:
“This is flat out the best pinball photography I’ve ever seen
published. Absolutely amazing sir!” - Charlie Emery (Spooky
Pinball)
“The book is really wonderful! Great pictures which remind
me so much of James Hamilton’s work. It is truly a very impressive book with wonderful photos.” - Roger C. Sharpe
“I think the book looks great! The picture quality is perfect.
There is a nice selection of vintage games. Any pinball fan
should own a copy.” - Barry Oursler
“Loving the artwork! Santiago Ciuffo took some amazing
pics! Great job!!! This book is a nice compliment to anyone
who collects hardcover pinball books, and is a MUST for any
fan of pinball art.” - Eric J.
Available at various pinball parts shops and pinball-magazine.com
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Update
W
ho’s working on what? is Pinball Magazine’s overview of what the various manufacturers, and other pinball related
projects, currently are being worked on. Besides
being featured in the printed Issues of Pinball
Magazine, and PM Specials, a monthly updated
version is also available on the Pinball Magazine
website. Whenever possible there will be links to
a detailed article or website. In some cases it may
just be rumours…
April 2015
Stern Pinball: Latest games are Wrestlemania, designed by John Trudeau, which debuted at CES in January 2015 and Whizbang’s Whoa Nellie! Big Juicy
Melons. Also still being produced are Metallica, Star
Trek, 50 years of Mustang and The Walking Dead.
It has been confirmed that the AC/DC license expired at
the end of 2014 and there will be no more games being
produced. Stern is also assembling the remake of Medieval Madness for Planetary Pinball (see below).
Unconfirmed rumors of upcoming titles: At the 2014 NW
Pinball & Arcade Show pinball designer John Popadiuk
confirmed he was unable to secure the KISS-license after
displaying his KISS-prototype at the 2014 Midwest Gaming Classics show. He had been informed the license
had been secured by Stern since then. Please note that
Stern have not confirmed they secured this license. If
true, KISS could be John Borg’s next game. Steve Ritchie
is rumored to be working on Game of Thrones.
Jersey Jack Pinball: Current games being manufactured are The Wizard Of Oz and the 75th Anniversary
edition of that same game. The Hobbit should be avaialble later this year in various versions. JJP’s 3rd game will
be designed by famed pinball designer Pat Lawlor with
artwork by artist John Youssi. David Thiel has been announced as JJP’s new sound and music designer.
Spooky Pinball: Sold out the limited run of 150 units
of Ben Heck’s America’s Most Haunted. Their previously worked on Pinball Zombies from the Grave
has temporarily been put on hold in order not to compete
with The Walking Dead by Stern. Spooky Pinball will also
be manufacturing Riot Pinball‘s Wrath of Olympus game,
for which a minimum of 100 orders are required. The
maximum number of games game will be limited to 250.
Dutch Pinball: After upgrading The Machine: Bride of Pin-Bot with new rules and a full color dotmatix
(LCD) display (with the best animations in pinball ever),
they are now developing The Big Lebowski. A prototype of the game made quite an impact at various pinball
shows and production is scheduled to start Q2 of 2015.
Day One Pinball: A new company, already producing
their first game, Scoregasm Master, a flipperless bagatelle game based on PAMCO’s 1934 Contact Master,
which was originally designed by Harry Williams. Scoregasm Master has artwork by John Youssi. Production of
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the game is limited to 30 units, although a second batch of
30 batch may be considered in case of enough demand..
incomplete prototype of the game was shown at Pinball
Expo 2014.
Zidware / John Popadiuk: Still working on Magic Girl
and Retro Atomic Zombie Adventureland. Both
games are limited editions and apparently sold out. There
are rumors of John working on a new Alice in Wonderland game.
Silver Castle Pinball: another new startup company,
like Dutch Pinball based in The Netherlands, planning to
build a physical version of Pro Pinball’s Timeshock! In
1997 this game was one of four PC pinball simulations developed by Pro Pinball.
Planetary Pinball: Announced to remake Medieval
Madness in a limited edition, as well as a standard version. The game is being manufactured at the Stern Pinball
factory.
Whizbang / Dennis Nordman: Their Whoa Nellie!
Big Juicy Melons is being manufactured by Stern Pinball. Designer Dennis Nordman, one half of Whizbang, is
currently also working on a new pinball design. He prefers to not announce anything until things are finished.
Multimorphic: Developing Lexy Lightspeed – Galaxy Girl and Cosmic Cart Racing on their very innovative P3 platform. Lexy Lightspeed, a Dennis Nordman
design, was displayed at Pinball Expo 2014 and looked
very impressive.
Heighway Pinball: Developing Full Throttle, a motorbike racing themed game, for spring 2015. The game
can already be pre-ordered. During Pinball Expo 2014
Andrew Heighway announced the second game for Heighway Pinball: Alien, based on the 35 year old movie and
originally to be designed by Dennis Nordman. However,
Dennis only did the initial layout of the game and concepts for 4 toys and then left the company early December
2014. Two weeks later pinball designer Barry Oursler was
announced to be added to the Heighway Pinball team.
Alien was originally scheduled for April 2015, but is now
to be revealed at the UK Pinball Party (held at Heighway
Pinball’s factory in Wales) in August 2015.
Homepin: Developing Thunderbirds for 2015. The
company is currently setting up a factory in China where
the games will be manufactured.
Riot Pinball: Have been developing Wrath of Olympus for quite some time using the P-Roc system. Spooky
Pinball have announced they will manufacture the game
if there is demand for over 100 units. The Riot Pinball
website also shows a sketch of an Alice in Wonderland
playfield design as being a work in progress.
If you think this is all, guess again. These are just projects
/ games that have been publicly announced (or rumored /
leaked). There are several other projects being worked on
below the radar, which will be added once they have been
publicly announced.
Still available:
Pinball Magazine No. 2
More a book than a magazine
PINBALL
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Special:
Dennis Nordman
& Greg Freres
Special Force
Party Animal
Blackwater 100
Elvira And The Party Monsters
Dr. Dude
The Party Zone
White Water
Demolition Man
Indianap0lis 500
Scared Stiff
Pirates Of the Caribbean
Wheel of Fortune
Whoa Nellie!
and more!
Plus in-depth interviews on:
Pinballnews.com
FarSight Studios’ Pinball Arcade
and:
The Pinball Company
Silverball Museum
Pinball Expo
Stern Pinball
ColorDMD
Quetzal: Are still working on Captain Nemo, with a
limited production of 30 units.
Circus Maximus Games: Have announced to be working on Python’s Pinball Circus, a rare and unique
Python Anghelo design based on The Pinball Circus
from 1994, which was never put into full production. An
4
ISBN 978-90-816266-2-0
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www.pinball-magazine.com/shop
Texas roadtrip report
Report: Jonathan Joosten, Copy editor: Paul Rubens
T
he Texas Pinball Festival (TPF) 2015 line-up of
guest speakers, and a collection of at least 300
games and very positive reports from previous
editions, looked so interesting that I decided last year to
visit the TPF show for the first time.
Since I’m traveling from Europe I contacted Martin Ayub
of Pinball News to see what his plans were. Together we
looked at additional places to visit which turned our visit
into a road trip.
Please note that reports like the one below usually are
not published in the printed version of Pinball Magazine.
Occasionally they appear on the Pinball Magazine website.
In this case an exception was made to include the report
in this Pinball Magazine Special as it ties in with the main
interview with Dennis Nordman and Greg Freres.
Lone Star Pinball Association’s Dan Ferguson
Below: one of the rare cocktail pinball games in LSPA
Martin and I both flew in two days prior to TPF. The next
morning we drove to Hockley where we arrived a little
after noon. Dan Ferguson runs the Lone Star Pinball
Association and he was already waiting for us outside.
The LSPA turned out to be a very interesting location
consisting of several rooms, each filled with pinball
machines from different eras.
The yard looks like many I’ve seen on the American
Pickers TV show with various car parts, advertising signs
and other stuff all over the place.
Inside the LSPA it turned out that Dan has quite a few
unique games in his collection, ranging from the earliest
bagatelle pingames to modern dot matrix pinball
machines. There were a few cocktail pinball machines
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want to visit, just contact Dan Ferguson via the website
(http://lspinball.com/) to make an appointment.
Next stop on our trip
was Pinballz Kingdom in
Buda, TX, a 2-hour drive
from Hockley. Originally
I had planned to meet
with John Greatwich of
Great Pinball Ltd over
there, but we didn’t
finalize the details in the
end so I didn’t expect
John to be there.
I had never seen before, all four Bally Fireball pinball
machines and a variety of pool themed pinball machines.
Even in the shed in the yard games were waiting for
restoration, with some unique games among them. There
was a beautiful stereo bagatelle game, which has two
mirrored playfield and two shooter lanes. I have never
seen anything like that. I also found the circular bagatelle
game very interesting. It seems since there was so much
competition in those days designers were really thinking
out of the box to come up with new ideas.
Dan showed us around each room and helped when I was
taking photos of certain games. To describe what’s there
is almost impossible. You just have to see it with your
own eyes. It may probably help that Martin took photos
as well and his report should be up soon on his Pinball
News website.
It was great to meet Dan and I appreciate him taking
the time to show us around. The Lone Star Pinball
Association does not have regular opening hours. If you
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I was happily surprised to
see John and his brother
Stephen just finishing up dinner when we walked into
the arcade. Despite what the name may suggest there is a
lot more to Pinballz Kingdom than just pinball. Basically
anything you can think of that should be in an arcade is
there. Over forty pinball machines, skeeballs, redemption
games - it’s all there.
The place consists of a large arcade area with a bar serving
drinks and food. We played several pinball machines and
they seemed to be in good condition. There are mainly
solid-state pinball machines there with several classics
from the ‘80s and ‘90s. Black Knight, High Speed,
Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park come to mind, but there
was also a mint Star Trek LE.
The left flipper on Indiana Jones seemed to be getting
weaker at some point. Interestingly one of the supervisors
walked up to us and asked us to report any issues with
the games so they can take care of that. After briefly
explaining the left flipper problem on Indiana Jones the
credits of the already played games were made up for on
another game of our choice. Very nice service!
The next morning we continued our trip after some
shopping. There were a few stops along the route causing
us to arrive after 3 PM at the Embassy Suites in Frisco, the
location of Texas Pinball Festival. The show would open
at 5:00 PM so we were just in time.
John Greatwich had offered to share his Great Pinball
booth in which he was displaying a brand new Stargazer
playfield and a Q-Bert’s quest sample backglass (awaiting
approval).
While I was bringing in the books and posters that
I brought to the show to the booth I ran into several
familiar faces. After some hellos and catching up I took
a quick tour.
Or at least I tried as the place was huge. More than four
hundred pinball machines in a huge conference room with
still plenty of space to move around: impressive. There
were plenty of vendors, including Nicolas and Timothee,
the French Pinsound brothers. Opposite to our booth
were XPin, Pinball Parts Australia and Spooky Pinball. It
was great to see them all again.
I had not expected to see Nicolas and his brother. It turned
out this was their first time ever in the United States and
they are probably spoiled from now on with this being the
biggest show around. Any other show after this will seem
small.
One of the interesting concepts of this hotel is the happy
hour for those with a room. From 5:30 to 7:30 PM all
drinks, including alcoholic beverages, are on the house.
It should not be a surprise that it was pretty crowded in
the bar area, even though the show just had opened. So I
took a drink (and one for Martin) and then went back to
the showfloor.
good and the view as well. Unfortunately the kitchen had
already closed. So we ended up in an Irish pub nearby,
with a less entertaining view. The fish and chips was still
very good for bar food.
Saturday morning had a very early start as there was the
free breakfast at 7:00. I’ve been to other shows where I
stayed with other attendeees in the same hotel, making
the breakfast an interesting place to catch up with people,
but TPF blew it all. Everybody was there! I found that a
lot of fun and hard to pick a table to join. The breakfast
itself had a wide variety of food and a kitchen cooking
eggs upon request. No complaints here.
At this point the first seminar had finished and Gary Stern
was about to start his seminar. I listened to it for a bit, but
then went back to the showfloor to manage the Greatwich
Pinball / Pinball Magazine booth. As it turned out John
and his brother didn’t mind looking after it, allowing me
to take photos of certain games that are likely to appear in
future Issues of Pinball Magazine.
Needless to say that Friday night flew by like it was
minutes. I took almost all the photos I needed. Around
10:30 Martin, John, Stephen and I walked up to the Wild
Pitch sports bar across the street for some food. This bar
was recommended to us. The food was supposed to be
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At 8:00 AM a swap meet started in the parking lot outside.
As I had never attended such a swap meet I didn’t want to
miss it. I didn’t expect to buy much as it would be difficult
for me to bring large items home on a plane. Still, it was
interesting to see what was being offered.
I actually found one seller offering a bunch of PinGame
Journal magazines. These are great for research so I
bought them all: thirty five of the earlier issues, filling
out my collection a bit more (although I’m still missing
some issues). How to fit them in my luggage was another
problem to figure out later.
Once back inside I pretty much spent the whole day in
the booth, offering books. I had planned on taking some
more pictures, but the battery of my camera needed to
be charged. That’s when I discovered I must have left the
charger at home. Not very smart as I planned on taking
some photos with designers for the upcoming Pinball
Magazine No. 3. Thankfully Martin Ayub was able to help
out with some of those.
For lunch a new visit to Wild Pitch was attempted, this
time with more luck: the kitchen was open :) Very decent
bar food and the view was nothing to complain about.
There was an auction of games in the afternoon. I was
interested to see how that went so I walked by the seminar
room where the auction was being held. The auction team
seemed to handle the auction professionally. Personally
I found the auctioneer quite entertaining, almost like a
country singer. The way he was calling the bids that is. I
watched two auctions and then went back to the booth.
Dinner meant another visit to the Wild Pitch bar and their
ribs were pretty tender.
Early Sunday morning I found out the show would stop
at 2:30 PM, which seemed rather early to me. Still I can
understand the reasoning behind it as everybody needs to
get their game(s) out and head back home.
After finishing my breakfast I joined Greg Freres and
Dennis Nordman for their breakfast. Afterwards we
continued an interview I started with Greg prior to the
show. Since their Whoa Nellie! Big Juicy Melons game
was displayed at the show I was curious how the response
had been so far from those who actually played it. The
complete interview is published on the next pages of this
special Issue.
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Once the show had ended and I had emptied the booth
I found a Whoa Nellie! Big Juicy Melons game that was
still powered on. Not only did this allow me to play the
game and actually hear some of the voice calls and music
in the game. It also allowed me (and Martin) to take some
photos of the game with the glass removed.
I also took some photos of the inside of the cabinet and
backbox. While the software is still being developed I
think I got a pretty good idea of how the game plays and
its objectives.
The main goals seems to be to light all four pop bumpers
by making all four rollover lanes at the top left. Once
that is done the goal is to shoot for the kickout saucer,
preferably when it is lit for 200 points.
Now this may seem simple, but it was not that easy to
complete all rollover lanes on one ball, as they reset on
each ball. So there’s a bit of a challenge and it kept me
trying to achieve it game after game. That’s a good thing.
I can see how this game may be a very well earning game
on location.
After taking pictures of the game I ended up in a discussion
with a woman about whether or not Whoa Nellie! is a
‘sexist game’ or not. She had her opinion, I have mine and
it was interesting to see how the discussion respectfully
resulted in getting me to know her better.
I don’t think she saw that coming. I don’t think she was
completely convinced of my reasoning that the game
actually discriminates men as it seduces them to play it,
exploiting their weakness for a cute farm girl character
and some double entendres. Clearly the men are the
weaker sex here. Still, it was fun discussing the matter
with her. The way she looked slightly disgusted at the
Wrestlemania sideart was priceless :)
Not long after that Martin and I said goodbye to organizer
Ed and we left for the airport. While Martin was flying
back home I picked up a rental car to do some visits of my
own. Looking back I can only say that the Texas Pinball
Festival is a top-notch show and I can recommend it to
anyone to attend. I sure hope to be back next year. For
more info, please visit: www.texaspinball.com. Martin
also wrote a (far more detailed) report on TPF, which you
can read on his Pinball News website.
Photo credit: Martin Ayub, Pinball News
Pinball designer Dennis Nordman (left) and artist Greg Freres posing with their Whoa Nellie! Big Juicy Melons prototype
Interview with Greg Freres and Dennis Nordman
Interview: Jonathan Joosten, Copy editor: Paul Rubens
M
arch 20th 2015 Stern Pinball officially
announced the manufacturing and
pricing for Whoa Nellie! Big Juicy
Melons. The game started out about five years
ago as a redesigned Continental Café (Gottlieb,
1957) with new artwork. Pinball designer Dennis
Nordman created a completely new playfield
layout as well as a unique crate-themed cabinet
and Greg Freres created a stunning art package
for the game.
Dennis and Greg, working together as Whizbang
Pinball, built four games in total, which were
sold to private collectors. The game was also
showcased at various pinball shows. In Pinball
Magazine No. 2 Dennis Nordman’s career in
pinball is covered with Greg chiming in on the
games they did together. The origins of Whoa
Nellie! Big Juicy Melons are also discussed in the
magazine and illustrated with plenty of images.
Pinball Magazine spoke with Greg when the game
was announced and did a follow-up interview
with both Dennis and Greg at the Texas pinball
Festival, where the game debuted a week later.
PM: Greg, Stern is finally producing Whoa
Nellie! Big Juicy Melons. Congratulations! Any
comments?
Greg Freres: Dennis and I are very happy that we’ve got
to this point. It’s an exciting day for both Whizbang and
Stern, because this is a new venture teaming up with an
outside design group like Whizbang. We’re glad to be part
of the new direction that Stern is going to try.
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We’re very happy that they chose Whoa Nellie as a kind
of stepping off point, providing a unique product with
a unique vision to the ever-growing market of pinball.
We’re excited to be on the production line and that people
can actually order the machine.
PM: Originally you and Dennis built four
prototypes of this game. How does the Stern
version differ from these prototypes?
Greg Freres: The biggest differences are to alleviate the
confusion of what was the gobble hole. After watching
people play our four games at many different shows, we
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noticed that people were a bit confused by the nature of
the gobble hole. [Note: a gobble hole is a hole on a pinball
playfield where the player instantly loses his ball in play
– PM]
Even the players that have played woodrails with gobble
holes from the 1950s and 1960s were surprised that
the game had a gobble hole. Players that had never
experienced a gobble hole just thought the game was
broken. They were like, “Hey I lost my ball and it didn’t
come back.”
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We had to explain too often to too many people how it
works and why. So instead we put in an eject hole that
kicks the ball back into play, into the pop bumper area.
We’re building in some strategy into that as well in the
game rules. There’s a little bit more depth there, related
to that shot compared to just losing the ball. There was
also strategy when it was just a gobble hole and you lost
your ball. – If you shot all three balls on a three ball game
into the gobble hole there was a silent extra ball that
would happen – In this case we’re not looking at an extra
ball, but we’re looking at other scoring features that will
go into that. We’re balancing that now.
We’re very happy with the results and
we’re happy we made the decision
to modernize the game from that
standpoint.
PM: You did the original art
for the game and at Stern
you’ve been art directing this
game as well. The artwork of
the game has some minor
changes compared to the
original prototypes. For
example the melons Melony
is holding changed. (pictured
on the
right is the original drawing of Melony)
Greg Freres: Yes, there are some minor
changes. We gave it a look and Melony is
holding watermelons now. I feel their color
works better for the game. It adds a nice vibrant
touch. It kind of frames her. There’s a watermelon
on the ground and she’s holding two, so there’s a
nice little trio of color there that frame her nicely.
On the backglass we added a ‘High score to
date’ light. Like in the old days, where it’s
in the hidden copy. It lights up to show you
the high score to date on the reels.
During attract-mode we will cycle the
game once in a while to display the
highest score to date because this game
is about scoring. With four reels to
work with the other careful balancing
act was to make sure that we’ve got
everything dialed in, so a really, really
skilled player can’t just roll this game
whenever they want to.
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That’s another facet of this game. With modern pinball,
people are used to score thresholds of millions and
billions. Here you can roll the game after 9,999 points.
It’s a bit different in the structure and philosophy of how
you play the game and approach the game from a rules
standpoint too. We’ve enhanced some of the rules and
brought it up to some more modern standards (besides
the eject hole versus the gobble hole.) But for the most
part it plays exactly the same way as our prototypes. It’s
snappy.
We’ve seen concern that people feel it’s just a re-themed,
re-arted electromechanical game, but it’s more than that.
It’s a fresh layout by Dennis Nordman. It’s got modern
features that run the game, and it’s running on Stern’s
Spike system. It’s got a lot going on.
There are sound effects that we didn’t have in the
first four games. We had some sound effects, but
not very many. We have speech that we didn’t
have in the first games that we built.
As for the speech: Dennis and I are kind of
known for doing strange and knucklehead kind of
humor games and this one lives up to that. We’ve
got a great sound effects package coming and we
found a great voice-over talent for the Melony
character. Very inviting, very wholesome and
it’s all coming together great.
The other cool thing is that we’ve got lots of
room for all of this speech and sound effects.
What we’re trying to do is make it entertaining
for as long as possible, so a player isn’t inundated
with similar speech calls every three games. We’re
trying to build enough depth to the sound effects
and speech that the game stays fresh for a very long
time.
In the sound package we’ve played with several
versions of bells. We’re working on that right now
to find the best solution, so that it has the vibe,
look and feel and sound quality of the retro
game that it represents.
Ball times are completely different than
modern games because there’s more
randomness to this. It’s not an EM game,
it’s an EM-styled game. There are return
that you do in the game, but Papa Leroy is going to get
on your case because you’re getting a little too close to his
daughters, so to speak.
The inside of the backbox, showing the Spike system,
reels and additional lighting
lanes, which many EM games didn’t have. So you can
control the ball back to the top of the playfield.
The same rules apply. You want to hit the rollover lanes
to light the bumpers to maximize your scoring and all that
good stuff. A lot of people are going to be shocked and
surprised by the entertainment value of the game. We’re
looking forward to seeing the first reactions of people
when we get it out at the Texas Pinball Festival next week.
PM: You mentioned that you guys recorded a lot
of speech for the game with various characters.
Can you elaborate on those characters?
Greg Freres: Sure, of course there’s Melony and she’s
the focal point of the game. She’s the one in charge, she’s
the one with all the power, but she’s sweet. We found a
perfect voice over, Jessica Rowe did the voice-over work
for her- she just fits the character you see on the backglass.
Our sound package was done by
Jerry Thompson from Seattle,
who has worked with us before
on the Mustang project. He
plays several roles in the game.
He’s Papa Leroy, Melony’s
father. He’s the antagonist of
the game, a cranky old coot he’s the one that’s giving you
grief when he thinks you’re not
playing up to snuff.
Melony will congratulate you for most of the good stuff
There’s a farm hand on the backglass who’s eating a
watermelon and his eyes are bugging out because that
watermelon is probably so good and he turned into our
“crazy guy” character. He’s over the top. He does extreme
shout outs and adds a lot of manic-style speech to the
game. He and Melony have a little bit of a rapport with
each other.
The goal of the speech in the game was to make it deep
enough so that you won’t hear the same thing over and
over, like on many pinball machines from the past. We
don’t have to worry about dot matrix animations on this
game, so there is extra room in the game to put as much
speech as possible into it.
So when you play the game there’s a wide variety. Even if
you own the game and have it for several years, we hope
that – based on percentages of how we set it up for these
speech calls to come through – you’ll hear something
fresh even much later into ownership of the game.
PM: We’re you involved in the script for these
voice calls as well?
Greg Freres: Oh yes, we wrote the script. Dennis and I
both had a hand in writing the call outs and stuff.
Dennis Nordman: That was fun. That’s always a fun
part for us.
Greg Freres: They’re not all pure funny. A lot of them
are pure corny. Somebody mentioned that this game is
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more like “Hee-Haw” (a country oriented variety TV show
from the 1970’s) with a few more colorful things thrown
into it. Our double entendre work is always just that.
We try not to push the envelope too much, or get too racy
or ridiculous. We want the player to have fun with them
feeling, “Wow, that was over the top.” We’re not going to
have an adult setting or anything like that.
We also have a DJ. The background music is from the
radio station broadcasting at the melon farm. The DJ,
also Jerry Thompson, is doing special call outs to several
people. Right now there’s a few call outs welcoming you
to the Texas Pinball Festival. So the DJ is there, we have
commercials, station identifications and different things
the announcer talks about.
PM: From what I’ve seen so far, gameplay time is
a lot shorter on this game than on other modern
pinball machines. Are ball times long enough for
people to hear the DJ switch to another song?
Dennis Nordman: At times, but then just play it again.
Greg Freres: In a home environment, because of the
depth of the game, you’re going to discover new audio bits
throughout the course of several games.
Dennis Nordman: When you start a new game it may
start with a new song, randomly.
PM: There are no modes assigned to certain
pieces of music?
Dennis Nordman: No, no.
Dennis Nordman: The DJ introduces the background
songs. There are ten different songs and we’ve given wacky
names to every song. Like, “Here’s one called Trailer Park
by The Tornados.”
Greg Freres: The only assigned music is a 20-second
goodbye song that we use after your last ball, with the DJ
or Melony voicing over that saying something like, “Hey
nice job, come back next time.”
PM: These songs, are they existing songs?
Greg Freres: These songs were licensed from an entity
that Jerry works with. It’s a nice wide variety of generic
instrumental country music.
Dennis Nordman: We have a lot of funny stuff related
to the outlanes, the tilt warnings and such. When you
drain Papa Leroy will say something like, “Just go wait
in the truck.”
PM: The original three solid-state prototype
games also has some background music.
Greg Freres: Yes, that was like a placeholder. We did try
to license that music, but we couldn’t get the performance
rights to it. So we had to abandon that and we ended up
with what I believe is a great variety of songs that really fit
the theme. So we’re very happy with that.
Greg Freres: We’re putting in other discoverable pieces
of score threshold stuff that people will discover, and
we’ll probably allude to it either on our Facebook page, or
maybe on the Stern website.
Once the game is out there and people are playing it – and
they don’t discover certain little hidden things – then we’ll
PINBALL - Santiago Ciuffo
Pinball News: “PINBALL is an impressive collection of photographs taken by Santiago in 2013. Like any good coffee
table book, you can dive in at almost any point and find an
interesting and thought-provoking picture to ponder and
explore further, discovering details which may never have
caught your eye before.
It’s also the kind of book someone with no prior interest in
pinball can happily leaf through, enjoying the iconic pinball
compositions without feeling uninformed or intimidated.”
14
give them hints and stuff like that. We’re trying to make it
fresh and inviting for people to discover things too.
Also the threshold of rolling the game, going beyond
9,999 will be something special. Our goal is to make it
so that people don’t roll the game too easily. We don’t
want rolling it to become so easy that a skilled player will
become bored with it too quickly.
Dennis Nordman: The way it is set right now I think
5,000 is a great score.
PM: The factory installed replay score on the
games at Texas Pinball Festival is 3,000, which
is already quite hard to achieve. Rolling it is
obviously going to be a lot harder.
Greg Freres: Last night I saw that somebody posted a
score of over 7,000. It’s getting a lot of play too. I didn’t
see anybody roll it at the show.
Dennis Nordman: We’re going to make sure that it’s
tweaked, so that it’s very difficult to roll it. We may also
change the replay level.
Greg Freres: We’re still discussing whether we’re going
to make the replay level operator adjustable. But rolling
the game will be a big event. Audio, lightshow, everything.
We do want to pay the player back with a huge moment,
depending on where the ball is at the time. It’s not just
going to be another ding on the bell system. It will be
huge!
PM: The game has scoring reels, but are these the
same type of clicking scoring reels we know from
EM games, or did you use some modern variant?
Greg Freres: Our mechanical guy has worked in the
slot machine business and he knew a lot about modern
versions of the reel systems. We’ve incorporated stepper
motors to keep the reliability factor there. We looked at
a mechanical solution at first, but in this day and age it’s
just too expensive and we want the game to be reliable.
We want operators to entertain the idea of using this
game as a location piece.
The other interesting thing is that we’ve added a
multiplayer feature. Even though there’s just one set of
score reels, we reuse those for a multiplayer scenario
where the hidden match lights at the top of the backglass
will be blinking when player 1 is up, versus player 2, 3 and
4. So the reels will reset for each player.
We also have a very small display screen on the bottom
arch to display the replay level. So when you walk up to
the game you’ll be able to look at the scorecard and see
a display under the scorecard that will tell you what the
replay level is at.
That display will also be able to display the current
player’s score along with the score reels. An operator, or
owner, can also use it as a diagnostics tool.
We have the same diagnostic button system that we have
on every Stern game and instead of looking on a dot
matrix display you’ll be able to see your diagnostics info
on this display. We’ve tested it and it looks great.
PM: You also came up with some new
merchandise.
Greg Freres: Yes, this is new stuff. Besides the game
we have an agreement with Stern to add themed
merchandising. We’re starting with T-shirts, pint glasses
and coffee mugs. We went back to the coffee mug because
they were pretty popular when we sold them through
Whizbang early on. These three products are available
now.
We also needed beer cans (these are used to ‘level’ the
game when placed on the bottom crate – PM). I just
PM: A stepper motor does not have that EM score
reel clicking sound. In order to stay authentic are
you considering to add clicking sounds of score
reels?
Greg Freres: We may. It’s a little bit of a team debate.
We’re fine-tuning that right now. We’re trying to find the
best solution before debuting the game next week.
15
the game and we’re going to include a whole one, not
smashed, in the coin box as well. You can buy more from
the Stern Shop later. We are looking into making our own
beer, so you’ll be able to buy beer in those cans.
PM: That would be nice.
Dennis Nordman: Yeah.
PM: Is there going to be a flyer / brochure for the
game?
Greg Freres: Yes there will be a flyer. We’ll have those
available at the Texas show as well. We’re using the
Texas Pinball Festival as a kick off debut for the game, so
everything is kind of corresponding with that.
PM: Did you do new artwork for the flyer, or did
you use existing artwork?
Greg Freres: It’s pretty much the elements from the
game, but it’s a nice looking flyer.
PM: The game comes with a set of metal legs as
well as the bottom crate. This bottom crate: does
it come as a crate, or do you have to assemble
it yourself like furniture from a well-known
Swedish furniture chain?
Greg Freres: You nailed it. It was engineered to be put
together like that type of furniture, with the same type of
posted to the Whizbang Facebook-page that since we
needed beer cans, we decided to make our own beer cans.
We have now switched to Whoa Nellie Big Juicy Melons
Summer Blond Ale. Does the beer exist? Not yet, but we’re
hopeful. The cans exist, so we just have to fill them now.
PM: But if you want to use the cans to level the
game
Greg Freres: You’ve got to crush them.
PM: Who wants to do that?
Greg Freres: (Laughing) You’re going to get the game
with the cans already crushed. We want to make sure the
people see them intact too, so we have a plan for that as
well. We realize they have a value uncrushed so we have
a plan for that.
PM: What’s the plan?
Dennis Nordman: Well, these will be accessories. Like
Greg said there will be some smashed ones included with
16
screwing and bolting system. It’s very robust once it’s put
together and it’s engineered to support the weight of the
cabinet and the backbox. It looks great.
I took that as a compliment. Not only on the art but also
the way it was printed. I’m very, very happy with the
results.
We made the decision quite a while ago that we were going
to produce the game as ‘This is it and this is what you get
with it’. In order to do so and still be able to ship it in
one box, the base crate then had to become an engineered
piece. That way we could put that in a separate smaller
box and pack it in the same Stern boxes that we normally
ship in.
PM: Speaking of lighting: does the playfield have
LED lighting or traditional lightbulbs?
Greg Freres: We’re using the Spike system so we’re
using LEDs. It lights up the playfield beautifully.
PM: Does the game have a backglass or a translite?
Greg Freres: It is a backglass, printed on glass and I
have to say it is beautiful. With the Spike system lightning
we have much brighter light going on. To work with that
we had to make some changes because the light is so
much brighter than the insert panels that we used in the
first four games we built.
So we got away from the insert panel and engineered the
backbox so that we could use the Spike system. They’re
printed on glass and they’re incredible. I mean there’s just
so much vibrancy. One of our newer employees looked at
it the other day and he said, “It looks like a box of candy.
It’s so colorful and vibrant.”
The colors on the playfield are vibrant. We stayed with the
spot color printing method that we used on the first four
games that we built.
For the upcoming shows we’ve got digitally printed
playfields so there will be a little difference in the first
games that we’re building for show purposes, but the final
playfields are just vibrant and beautiful. I’m very excited
on how all the printing on this game turned out.
PM: The press release gave me the impression
the games are ready to be shipped, but I get the
feeling they still need to be built.
Greg Freres: They’re on the production line. We’re
ramping up production. We’re out there. We’ve got the
parts in-house and things are getting screwed together.
PM: So the game will be at the Texas show.
Greg Freres: Yes. It will also be at the AMOA show the
same week in Las Vegas. We’ll have one game there, so
everybody can get their hands on it and see what it’s all
about. We hope operators will think about it and want to
add it to their repertoire too, because it’s really a unique
piece to see and play.
PM: Operators may also be interested in how it
fares on location, but you don’t know that yet.
Greg Freres: No not yet.
PM: What are the expectations of the game?
17
happy with the gameplay, which is paramount. Sure you
can buy a piece of art, but we want that piece of art to be a
fun game. That was our goal from the beginning.
The original concept of Whoa Nellie was to build a custom
game that was fun to play. Since we are game designers
from the start then it made sense to make a fun game and
not just a rehash or re-skinning of a former game. With
Dennis’ design skills and my art skills it made sense to try
this as an experiment.
Greg Freres: We hope it will be a great success. Like I
said, it’s a unique vision and it’s unique that Stern has
picked up on it, and wanted to help us out and see our
vision through further development.
My hope is that it’s such a positive success that we have
more to come in that kind of typical knucklehead humor /
retro style that Dennis and I can produce for games.
Note: After the initial interview some time went by and
the game has been show at a few shows since then. At the
Texas Pinball Festival Dennis and Greg were interviewed
again, which explains why the response by people could
be discussed.
PM: Dennis, the WNBJM game just debuted on
the Texas Pinball Festival and has seen a lot of
play over the past two days. How has the response
been so far?
Dennis Nordman: From what I hear people love it.
They think it’s beautiful, they think it’s fun to play and
that it’s a work of art.
Greg Freres: Going into the show our goal was to hear
people say, “Wow, this isn’t what I expected.”
Dennis Nordman: Right.
Greg Freres: And for the most part that’s the response
that we’re getting. We couldn’t be happier with that
response, because – again – that was our goal.
They didn’t realize the cabinet was made out of real
distressed wood, even though the flyer says so, but not
everybody got to see the flyer before the show. The fit
and finish of everything, including the printing of the
backglass and the styling of the cabinet itself, we couldn’t
be happier. The players are happy to hear that it comes
with both the base crate and the metal legs. They’re very
18
Now we’ve taken this experiment a step further with
Stern and we hope that people appreciate it for what it
is. It’s a hybrid between a modern pinball and old school
gameplay from the past.
Dennis Nordman: It’s very difficult to comprehend
what that might be like, because you can’t imagine that
in your head by reading stuff on the internet. You have to
actually play the game to understand the fusion of the old
and the new.
To add to the fun we’re going to have three different
rulesets. It’s not just a one ruleset kind of game. If you
think you’ve mastered the first, easy ruleset, then you can
just go into the diagnostics and pick the harder ruleset.
There are three rulesets: simple, sassy and stern.
My goal for the game was to make something that new
players are not going to be intimidated by when they walk
up to it. I think on a lot of modern games new players
don’t know what to do and they are intimidated by that.
I’m thinking that the game is really going to earn well
on location, because you can put it in a bar setting and
players of all skill levels can play equally on this game.
And it’s easy to understand.
PM: I didn’t read the scorecard until I played more
than ten games or so. From what I understood
the main goal is to light all four pop bumpers by
making all four rollover lanes at the top left of the
playfield. That turned out to be pretty hard, even
on this setting, with the lanes resetting with each
new ball.
Dennis Nordman: It is difficult. And more than just
lighting the pop bumpers and the rollovers are those cool
bulls-eye targets with the little centers. That’s the way to
get 200 points, when it’s lit.
The lit target rotates amongst those three areas. Those are
pretty cool targets and it takes a really skilled shot to get
that. So that’s a challenge too for players. Especially with
the smaller flippers, which play differently.
Also the posts and the lane in between the flippers makes
it play differently. I love the way that it plays because
sometimes it feels like you can suck the ball right out of
a drain. You play differently with those two posts there.
It’s fun.
PM: Anything you would like to add about turning
this game from a prototype into the production
model, or working at Stern again?
Dennis Nordman: I just would like to say that Stern
engineer Tom Kopera did a fantastic job drawing, refining
and getting this game ready to be built in a production
environment.
As for the cabinet, I’m very happy with the knock down
base crate that Tom came up with. When you buy the
game you get both the base crate and the legs and it all fits
into a standard Stern box. The crate has to be assembled.
We’re going to put a video online, on YouTube, to show
you how to assemble the crate. But it’s really simple, like
a piece of furniture.
shown your face at Stern some more, is there a
chance for you to become a game designer for
them again?
Dennis Nordman: Well, it might be a possibility. Gary
mentioned in his speech that they may do other studio
games, as he calls them. So who knows? I do have another
game that’s almost ready to go, so we’ll see what happens
with that.
PM: And what about becoming an employed game
designer again? Say they have this great license
and would like you to design that game?
Dennis Nordman: I’m open to anything, so who knows?
More Dennis and Greg?
Read Pinball Magazine No. 2
188 full color glossy pages!
PINBALL
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Our cabinet company did a really great job. We found
a place that distressed the wood for us. Our cabinet
company stained the wood with all of this stain and it has
clear coat on it and I’m very happy with it. It looks almost
identical to the four original cabinets that I built.
PM: Since you mention doing a YouTube video:
with all the characters on the game being original,
you might as well do a video with animated
characters from the game promoting the game.
Dennis Nordman: That would be up to Greg. It would
be nice to promote the game like that, and I’m sure
it would be unique for pinball as well, but it sounds
expensive to me.
PM: Once Stern decided to do this game, how
much time did you put into it?
Dennis Nordman: I spent about a week at Churchill,
our cabinet company, and a week at Stern once they
finally got everything together. I oversaw the building of
the first cabinets at the cabinet company. I still expect to
go back to Stern for software refinement.
PM: You and Greg designed Whoa Nellie! in your
garage and Stern picked up on that. Since you’ve
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Elvira And The Party Monsters
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White Water
Demolition Man
Indianap0lis 500
Scared Stiff
Pirates Of the Caribbean
Wheel of Fortune
Whoa Nellie!
and more!
Plus in-depth interviews on:
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19
Dave Peterson posing with Santiago Ciuffo’s PINBALL book in front of Stern’s The Walking Dead
Interview with Dave Peterson
Interview: Jonathan Joosten, Copy editor: Paul Rubens
D
ave Peterson is an investor and board
member of Stern Pinball. He serves
as Chairman and CEO of Sphere Point
Enterprises, Inc., the holding company that owns
Stern Pinball. As such he’s involved with a lot of
the daily ongoing business at Stern. Dave was
earlier featured in Pinball Magazine No. 2 and a
follow-up interview and is always happy to do new
interviews regarding current affairs. The current
affairs discussed below are Stern’s upcoming
move to a larger facility in Elk Grove Village, IL
and Whoa Nellie! Big Juicy Melons.
PM: Dave, thanks for taking the time to talk to
Pinball Magazine. How are things going?
20
Dave Peterson: Good. We’re very busy with the move.
We’ve actually started it. It will take a couple of weeks
to get it done. All of our stockrooms have been moved
already to the new area. If you go out in the factory it’s
starting to look naked over here. For the people their last
day here will be in two weeks. So basically the last day of
production in this location will also be two weeks from
today. The following Monday the people will report to the
new facility and the hope is that we only lose one day of
production.
Basically what we’re intending to do is to move one
production line – we still have two production lines
moving here at the moment – next week or the week
after that. So one line will be set up over there. We will
that owns Stern Pinball, you’re the moneyman,
so to speak. The announcement of Whoa Nellie!
Big Juicy Melons got quite some response on
the pricing of the game. Would you be willing to
address that?
Dave Peterson: Yeah sure. Whoa Nellie is a specialty game.
It’s a relatively small run compared to our “cornerstone”
titles. We don’t expect it to be a big run, because it is a
specialty game. But it’s not a limited edition, so if there is
a lot of interest in the game we’ll continue to produce it.
Small runs of specialty parts are expensive.
A map showing the new Stern Pinball location
still have one line here. That way we can keep everything
rolling once we move to the new facility.
PM: It sounds very ambitious.
Dave Peterson: It does. I’m sure we’ll all be pleasantly
surprised if it all works out that way.
PM: You’re not expecting any hiccups, or any
delays?
Dave Peterson: Well, this is the plan and we’ll see how it
goes. Ray Tanzer, our VP of Manufacturing, has done a
fantastic job of managing the build-out of the new facility
and the move.
PM: With your stockroom already moved to the
new facility, how can you keep the lines running.
The stock is at another location.
Dave Peterson: We’ve got both lines fully stocked over
here.
PM: So what games are currently on the line?
Dave Peterson: We’re running a bunch of different games
all the time. Some of the games we are running these days
are Whoa Nellie, we’re running Wrestlemania. We’re
running Medieval Madness on the second line. And we’re
also doing remakes of other games, like Star Trek and
Mustang.
PM: Metallica?
Dave Peterson: Actually we’re not running Metallica
between now and the time we move, but once we’ve
moved we’ll probably run Metallica again.
PM: Since you’re the head of the investment group
Also, recreating some of those older technologies is very
expensive. Doing the reels is not a cheap thing to do and
there are a lot of aspects of the game that are custom. A
lot of the woodwork, including the crate, that’s expensive
to do as well.
So with all of those things taken together they all add up.
We would have loved to price it closer to a Pro, but that’s
not how the economics turned out.
PM: But can you understand a lot of people
didn’t see this price level coming? I mean on a
regular modern Pro game there are dot matrix
animations that need to be programmed, you
need programmers to do that, the rule sets are
much deeper with those games as well. So while
people may understand you’re looking at some
game specific expenses, you’re also spending less
money in other areas.
Dave Peterson: Yes, but again, this isn’t a traditional
game. Because of the specialty nature of the game it’s just
more expensive to produce. That’s just the way it is.
We would have loved to sell Whoa Nellie just for $ 1.00,
but that doesn’t make any economic sense for us. Again,
it’s a special game. Not just to us. There are a lot of things
in that game that are special. Creating that specialness is
expensive to do.
PM: With Whoa Nellie being a specialty game,
does that mean you’re only expecting to sell a few
hundred units?
Dave Peterson: We’ll see how the market responds. It’s
one of those games that can be a tremendous success.
We’re really curious to see how it does in a commercial
environment. We’ve got a number of operators that have
expressed interest in the game, because of its nature. It’s a
much, much simpler game obviously that today’s modern
21
pinball. So a lot of operators and locations are interested
in trying it out to see how it does on location and on the
street. So we’ll see. It’s hard to say right now.
PM: Reason for me asking is that you obviously
did some math not on only the bill of materials,
but also the number of games you need to make
in order to recoup the development costs. So
you may expect to sell a few hundred games at
a certain price level to recoup those costs. But if
the price level was lower, isn’t it likely that more
games will be sold, which will then still recoup
those costs - but on a larger production run?
Dave Peterson: Sure absolutely. But it’s not just the
development costs that you’re talking about. There’s also
the direct costs associated with producing each unit. It’s
just higher.
PM: While we’re on the subject of the pricing of
the games: Currently the US dollar is very strong,
making Stern games a lot more expensive for
European buyers / importers. Since a large part
of your production used to go overseas, is this
affecting your business?
Dave Peterson: We’re having a lot of discussion with our
export distributors. Not only in Europe, but in other parts
of the world too. All of whom are being impacted by the
strong dollar. But we’ve encouraged all of them to take
steps to hedge the currency risk. So far business continues
to be good, but it is something that we are paying attention
to. Like the crash in oil prices, a lot of people were caught
off-guard by the quick strengthening of the dollar.
PM: So even with the strong dollar you’re exporting
games all over the world and people should be
able to find them with their distributors?
Dave Peterson: Yes.
PM: For Whoa Nellie a number of new
technologies have been implemented, such as the
reels. Is there any chance such technologies will
be used in future game designs?
Dave Peterson: Sure, absolutely. It is sure that that will
happen? No, I can’t say that. That’s really up to the design
teams.
We’re committed to this studio model where we partner
with game designers when they want bring something
to the market which we feel is something cool, different,
special, the way the Whoa Nellie game is. We expect to
continue that in the future. So, it is possible that some
of the elements that were designed and created for Whoa
Nellie end up in a future game, but it’s not for sure.
PM: Gary expressed interest in doing more
externally-designed studio games. Yet designers
working on such games on their own may feel like
Whoa Nellie only happened because Greg Freres
is working at Stern. So how seriously are you
interested in games from outside designers?
Dave Peterson: Oh we are. We’re already talking to a
number of people about studio games and we’ll continue
to do that. When we find something that we think makes
sense for us and also makes sense for the studio, we’ll
continue to partner and bring those games to the market.
PINBALL - Santiago Ciuffo
Pavlov Pinball: “If you appreciate pinball artwork then
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More info, reviews and feedback on pinball-magazine.com
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