Episode 434: Raymond Davidson remastered
Stern Pinball’s Raymond Davidson talks about tinkering with masterpieces like Metallica and The Walking Dead. And we hear about his first lead game for programming, Star Wars: Fall of the Empire....
Highlights
- IFPA membership has grown to six-digit numbers (150,000+), indicating massive growth in the pinball player base over the past decade
- Raymond Davidson won his eighth or ninth Stern Pro Circuit event at Starfighters Arcade in Arizona
- Metallica remaster added two new wizard modes and concert footage/expression lights as primary enhancements
- The original Walking Dead code was lacking and was significantly improved through subsequent updates
- Star Wars: Fall of the Empire is Raymond Davidson's first lead game design role (Metallica was a remaster/follow-up project)
- George Gomez indicated the next Stern game would be either Pokémon or Transformers
- Raymond Davidson has been at Stern for approximately six years, starting in May 2020 during COVID
- The home pinball market is now more significant than the arcade location market, representing a shift from 30 years ago
Notable quotes
“before when it was dot matrix and and all that kind of stuff and mono mono sound uh for for a band too but uh again you talked about the wizard modes you know when you used to play the old Metallica was like, get to crank it up, get to crank it up. It's funny watching the pro players now bypass crank it up.”
“I wanted to make sure there was a multiball that was obvious and it looked like it worked. If you were able to figure out how to start it on your first game ever. That is the bar right there.”
“It's the same pinball game but it's night and day different than pinball not that there's anything yeah i mean even those first couple updates of walking dead you know when they added modes it just totally changed the game”
“There's so many new people into pinball than there was 10 years ago. I mean, just looking at the tournament scene, you can look at the new IFP. They're up to six-digit IFPA numbers now, right?”
“working on the star wars game uh super fun first um cornerstone lead game for me you know i was lead on metallica wasn't it was a remaster but the star wars first lead”
“the great thing about modern games today is how deep they are. You know, you don't want to just, I love classics because the rules are simple. It's about, you know, shot efficiency. But when you own and you invest this much money in a modern pinball machine, and maybe you're on location or you've got it in tournaments, you want them to be deeper.”
Entities
- Stern Pinball· company
- Starfighters Arcade· event
- Stern Pro Circuit· event
- Metallica (remaster)· game
- Star Wars: Fall of the Empire· game
- The Walking Dead (remaster)· game
- Pinball Profile· media
- IFPA· organization
- Seattle Mariners· organization
- Andrew Wilkening· person
- George Gomez· person
- Jeff Teolis· person
- Keith Elwin· person
- Lyman Sheets· person
- Raymond Davidson· person
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