Skip to content
LoserKid Pinball Podcast
LoserKid Pinball Podcast
200 episodes tracked since 2019 about →
Copied!

Ep 105: Bad Mother Flippers with Mark Ritchie and Josh Sharpe

PodcastAnalysis updated 5d ago1 hr 4 min listen
From the creator

Suprise! It's only been 2 days since our last episode, so we figured, why not drop another episode? Mark Ritchie along with Josh Sharpe join us to talk all about Pulp Fiction and crazy fun adventure...

Listen on LoserKid Pinball Podcast

Highlights

  • Steve Ritchie had not worked on pinball since Indiana Jones Pinball Adventure (and Capcom's Kingpin)
  • Raw Thrills and Play Mechanics approached the Pulp Fiction project with George Gomez as President of Play Mechanics
  • Chicago Gaming Company partnership came about organically when Doug discovered what Raw Thrills was working on
  • Quentin Tarantino specifically requested an old-school aesthetic with no LCDs or fancy features
  • Tarantino rejected the initial wide-body design with ramps and displays
  • The game development took approximately 5 years from initial concept to release
  • Pulp Fiction Limited Edition (Bad Mother Flipper version) with topper is sold out at major distributors
  • Doug [Chicago Gaming Company] engineered and iterated the motorized briefcase topper extensively
  • The game originally included Butch and Mia as playable characters but was directed to remove them during licensing approval
  • Quentin Tarantino influenced the hand-drawn comic book art style and recommended an artist

Notable quotes

“I had all but kind of given up on the thought of getting back into it, not wanting to go back to work for Sam Stern or any of the big companies... but I'm super glad I did because I feel like this is the best group I could have possibly ever been blessed to work with.”
Steve Ritchie
“He basically just peed all over it. I don't want that. Get that out of here. Way too much. No ramps, no displays.”
Steve Ritchie
“Doug does good, and he does cheap. So it's not fast. And I couldn't think of two out of the two out of those three things I would pick would be the two that Doug picks.”
Josh Sharpe
“The game is going to live for 10 20 30 40 years out there and all of the trials and tribulations of getting to this point and having a game that is of this quality and looks like this will be worth it for long after mark and i are gone”
Josh Sharpe
“You can play that game any way you want. The features are not dependent on one another, per se. So you can have fun with one of those features endlessly.”
Steve Ritchie
“We're not selling a game to that audience of 30 years ago, right? Like We Are Pinball selling this game to a modern audience.”
Josh Sharpe
“When you reach the LCD era, it's like, oh, we can do whatever we want, because then we can just throw some stuff up on the screen and people will figure it out. And the real trick... is to embrace the limitations that the system has.”
Josh Sharpe
“It's a licensing thing, and that's all I'm going to say about it.”
Steve Ritchie
“He found another one. Not as bad, though.”
Josh Sharpe
“Larry DeMar, to me, is like the GOAT of really transitioning from classic to modern. Modern pinball would not be what it is today without Larry.”
Josh Sharpe

Entities

  • Chicago Gaming Company· company
  • Flippin' Out Pinball· company
  • Play Mechanics· company
  • Raw Thrills· company
  • Stern Pinball· company
  • Fishtales· game
  • High Speed· game
  • Indiana Jones Pinball Adventure· game
  • Pulp Fiction· game
  • Taxi· game
  • LoserKid Pinball Podcast· media
  • Straight Down the Middle: a pinball show· media
  • Doug· person
  • Eugene Jarvis· person
  • George Gomez· person
  • Josh Roop· person
  • Josh Sharpe· person
  • Larry DeMar· person
  • Matt Scott· person
  • Matt Scott Larson· person
  • Nicola· person
  • Quentin Tarantino· person
  • Steve Ritchie· person
  • Zach Minney· person

More from LoserKid Pinball Podcast

→ All content from LoserKid Pinball Podcast
Contact us about this coverage