Episode 386: Cardona Pinball
Jim Cardona has taken classic Bally/Williams titles and revamped them with new code, animations and more. Hear Jim discuss what he's done with No Good Gofers and Black Rose, plus a sneak peak of...
Highlights
- Cardona Pinball has licensed four Bally/Williams titles through Pinball Planet for modernization.
- No Good Gofers 2.0 and Black Rose 2.0 are the first two released titles; Game 3 launching March 2024.
- Original No Good Gofers contained unfinished modes like 'Turtle Wax' visible on screen but never implemented.
- Cardona works 4-6 hours daily full-time on these projects after retiring from day job.
- Each 2.0 conversion involves complete CPU, sound, DMD board replacement and new 15-inch LCD screen installation.
- Pinball Planet licensing model grants exclusive rights to prevent multiple companies from remaking same games.
- Raymond Davidson (Stern coder) has tested Black Rose 2.0 and provided feedback.
- Cardona redesigned No Good Gofers to use golf-style stroke counting with combo mechanics rather than original fixed target number system.
Notable quotes
“we want to do more modes... I wanted to not have everything so much focused on putting out. So we wanted to have two different strategies.”
“I'm kind of stuck there. But in future games, we do have some plans for potentially changing some things on the play field.”
“pinball is the physics of the ball... I just really wanted to focus on that. I could have done video modes, but I just, I don't know.”
“I'm not going to do it. I love people like yourself doing these kind of things because, yeah, some of these older titles need a little bit of love”
“The important thing is, where do people get these? Right now, you can buy them online. You can get them from my website, cardonapinball.com. Pinball Planet, their website, and Cointaker is also carrying them.”
“My initial plans were when Cactus Canyon Continued came out, I wanted to do something like that... just through a strange series of events, I got in touch with Planetary, and they convinced me that there was a business model here.”
“the first game took a lot longer than the second, third, and fourth game are going to take.”
“Deep code is pretty important, and it just helps your investment so much more.”
Entities
- Cardona Pinball· company
- Cointaker· company
- Haggis Pinball· company
- Pinball Planet· company
- Texas Pinball Festival· event
- Black Rose· game
- Bride of Pinbot 2.0· game
- Cactus Canyon Continued· game
- Demolition Man· game
- Funhouse 2.0· game
- Galaxy· game
- Legends of Valhalla· game
- No Good Gofers· game
- Whirlwind 2.0· game
- Delaware Pinball Collective· organization
- Pinball Profile· organization
- Jeff Teolis· person
- Jim Cardona· person
- Pat Lawlor· person
- Raymond Davidson· person
- Scott Gullix· person
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