Bonus PINcast: In-depth interview with Robert Mueller of Deeproot Pinball
As Deeproot Pinball begins sales of their very first title, Retro Atomic Zombie Adventureland, Jonathan from Pinball Magazine and Martin from Pinball News interview Deeproot Pinball's Founder...
Highlights
- Deep Root originally planned to launch at TPF 2019 (approximately two years before this interview), not three years ago.
- Supply chain issues in 2020 caused 20-50% of their vendor relationships to fail or drop off.
- The XE edition was dropped because it offered minimal differentiation from the Arcade edition beyond the floating backbox design.
- Deep Root Pinball cabinet platform will remain standardized for 5-7 years, with 60-80% of components shared across future titles.
- Customer deposits are being held in a separate account and are not being used for operational expenses or parts procurement.
- A leaked image from one of six invited guests to a September showcase forced Deep Root to accelerate their public reveal.
- Deep Root spent 3.5 months ripping out the pinball and redesigning it for a November show about one year prior to this interview.
- Mueller personally prefers accessible game design and has never completed Wizard or Super Modes on his collection of Williams/Bally machines.
Notable quotes
“I'm tired of setting deadlines and not meeting them, right?”
“It's time to walk the walk. It's time to execute.”
“When you're a new manufacturer and you're working with vendors that you haven't had, you know, real good solid orders, you know, like full production orders, you tend to go down on the priority list for a lot of these vendors.”
“Pinball, you should be able to walk up, and it should be inviting, right?”
“The first is physical. Where do you put it, right? How does it look? Are you just going to lose just a little rinky-dinky screen like you see on some back bars of some pinball machines?”
“We've tried to have the best of both worlds in creating a beautiful canvas to add all of these extra features and abilities into the pinball machine, but not distract and take away from what pinball really should be.”
Entities
- Bally· company
- Deep Root Pinball· company
- Stern Pinball· company
- Williams· company
- Houston Arcade Expo· event
- TPF 2019· event
- Retro Atomic Zombie Adventureland· game
- Pinball News & Pinball Magazine Pincast· organization
- Jonathan Houston· person
- Martin A.· person
- Robert Mueller· person
- West Springs· venue
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