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The Classic Pinball Podcast
The Classic Pinball Podcast
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#102 Keith Elwin - The Classic Pinball Podcast

PodcastAnalysis updated 2d ago1 hr 18 min listenBy George
From the creator

Dave and George interview Keith Elwin about classic pinball.

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Highlights

  • Keith Elwin started playing pinball at age 8 after his older brother (10 years senior) took him to arcades as cheap babysitting.
  • Keith attended trade school for electronics after high school, then worked for an electronics firm for 4-5 years before returning to pinball/amusement repair.
  • Keith worked for Area Amusements, a large San Diego operator, where he learned electromechanical repair and worked on a wide variety of amusement equipment including pinball, gun games, slot machines, and novelty games.
  • Keith's first tournament was in 1993 in Arizona, attended with friends Jim Belcedo and Neil Schatz.
  • Keith transitioned from being primarily a competitive player to reducing tournament participation around 2016, largely due to Papa and Pinburgh tournaments closing.
  • Keith started operating pinball machines after a friend with a bar in San Diego approached him, eventually leading to operating machines at The High Dive and later at 82 in LA.
  • Early tournament formats (1990s) were simple high-score-on-one-game formats, with complex multi-stage formats emerging in early 2000s, significantly expanding when IFPA formed.
  • Keith owns or has owned classic Stern games including Skateball, Frontier, Flash Gordon, Beat the Clock, and games like Seawitch and Meteor acquired later in life.
  • Keith works with Greg Ferris (the artist who did art packages in the early 1980s) and picks his brain about design decisions on classic games.
  • Keith currently does not actively learn new rule sets for modern Stern games and states 'My days of trying to learn rule sets I think are at an end.'

Notable quotes

“I've been playing pinball since I was like eight years old. And then out of high school, yeah, I became a technician.”
Keith Elwin
“It was cheap babysitting because, you know, my mom and my parents were divorced. And my mom would have him, you know, watch me. He didn't want to sit around and watch me. So he was like, hey, let's go to the arcade.”
Keith Elwin
“My first tournament was in 1993 in Arizona... It was actually a friend of mine that I worked with at the arcade who he would actually go to this show, not to compete, but just to buy and sell stuff.”
Keith Elwin
“I enjoyed those two tournaments so much and when they went away it just I don't know part of me died”
Keith Elwin
“My days of trying to learn rule sets I think are at an end. I know so many. There's no more room for new ones.”
Keith Elwin
“I never saw Seawitch on location when I was a kid. Bought one of those. I have a Lightning that I bought that I'd never seen.”
Keith Elwin
“These guys would have a, they'd get all the brand-new games from Stern, and they'd be like the test location... and say, okay, you want to buy that game now? Well, I'm not going to pay retail. The game's used.”
Dr. Dave (guest/co-host)
“Isn't that crazy to think that now every single pinball machine made, unless it's burned in a fire it's going to be here forever people just don't do that to their games anymore”
Keith Elwin
“You're about to find out”
Keith Elwin (recalled anecdote)
“I think now with modern rule sets and, like you said, YouTube and all these really good players coming up, you see all kinds of different strategies now, which is actually pretty cool.”
Keith Elwin

Entities

  • Area Amusements· company
  • Stern· company
  • California Stream· event
  • Beat the Clock· game
  • Flash Gordon· game
  • Frontier· game
  • Galaxy· game
  • Game of Thrones· game
  • Meteor· game
  • Seawitch· game
  • Skateball· game
  • X-Men· game
  • IFPA· organization
  • Dr. Dave· person
  • George· person
  • Greg Ferris· person
  • Jim Belcedo· person
  • Keith Elwin· person
  • Mark· person
  • Neil Schatz· person
  • 82· venue
  • The High Dive· venue

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