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New podcast interview with Steve Ritchie about his career.

H

HatchetJob

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Joined
Apr 16, 2024
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London
Hello everyone,

I just did a podcast with Steve Ritchie where we spoke about his career and the history of some of his tables. We spoke for close to two hours about all sorts of things, from his days building radio / GPS stations in the Vietnam war all the way up to a $200,000 auction for one of his Elton John tables.

I used to recording a gaming podcast with friends somewhat regularly until 2016 and then stopped. This is the first show I've done in eight years and it was great to have Steve as my first guest back. I wanted him to come on because I used to play ST:TNG when I was at university and have loved the table ever since. If I was ever in the position to afford a real pinball table, that's the one I'd buy. ( INterestingly, Steve doesn't have one of his own and you'll hear that he sounds somewhat regretful that he sold his. )

I'm a console gamer so my questions might be rudimentary to people here, but I'm sure there will still be wonderful stories you haven't heard about his career and all the tables and innovations he's come up with.

If any of you listen and like it, could you do me a favour and share it with people you know? It would be great to have more people hear from him, especially those that aren't familiar with pinball.

Thanks.

hatchetjob.libsyn.com

HatchetJob.com: The Steve Ritchie interview. Probably the world's best pinball table designer.

Steve Ritchie is one of the most important pinball machine designers in the world. In this show you’ll hear about his background, his career and the remarkable stories behind some of the best pinball tables in history.
hatchetjob.libsyn.com
 
@HatchetJob - Apologies - i did see your message, however was poorly so didnt get chance to reply....

Answer is - No problems!!

Steve is an awesome guy so more than happy to have something with the Legend here!

Cheers
Paul
 
Paul said:
@HatchetJob - Apologies - i did see your message, however was poorly so didnt get chance to reply....

Answer is - No problems!!

Steve is an awesome guy so more than happy to have something with the Legend here!

Cheers
Paul
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Thank you, I appreciate it and I hope you're feeling better. Wherever I've posted the podcast it's clear that Steve is really appreciated; he was great fun to listen to, so it's easy to understand why.

INterestingly, when I was doing my research for the show I stumbled across a video of a virtual pinball machine by a guy called Arcade Matt on youtube. Weirdly, it turns out he was a guest of mine back in 2011, where I spoke to him about how claw machines work. Small world.

I like the idea of virtual pinball machines for ease of use, but even so they're still very expensive. However I'm most interested in the next few years to see what AR and VR can do, especially with things like Vision Pro. Maybe there's scope real pinball, virtual pinball, PC/console/mobile pinball and AR/VR pinball to sit alongside each other in different price points.
 
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zxspectrum16k said:
@HatchetJob I really enjoyed the show/interview; awesome.
'Like a sniper picking where they need to aim, and wrestling with the machine and the physics of it' Nice
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Thank you, I appreciate it. What I was trying to do was understand it in ways that videogamers lik me would understand; I imagined that lots of people will have played Call of Duty, but a smaller amount would have actually tried a real pinball machine.

I was also reminded of this video.. Pinball tables are really confusing to look at. I remember seeing footage, I think, of Terminator 2 where the lanes are clearly lit up and Arnie says 'Shoot her' or something. Like videogames, maybe pinball tables could do with tutorials that slowly lead people into th gameplay as well as slowly introducing lights and sounds so players aren't overwhelmed.

 
HatchetJob said:
Like videogames, maybe pinball tables could do with tutorials that slowly lead people into th gameplay as well as slowly introducing lights and sounds so players aren't overwhelmed.
Click to expand...

There have been games programmed with help along these lines, such as Centaur; pressing a flipper button in the attract mode sets off its mocking reverbed speech, outlining (in combination with the lighting) the basic points of the game.

And the later Special Force, from Bally's lamented '6803' series, had a similar instruction mode, using the then recently introduced alpha-numeric displays to describe the objectives.
 
That's very cool. I had a look at the tables online; Special Force's artwork reminds me a bit of the atwork from videogames like Ikari warriors. Centaur's atwork is... distinctive.
 
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