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We Are Pinball #41 "The Spooky Episode with Bug and Luke!"

PodcastAnalysis updated 3d ago1 hr 3 min listenBy WAP
From the creator

Stop whatever you are doing an settle in for a marathon session with Spooky Pinball's own Bug Emery and Spooky Luke! Designers, visionaries, and the best kind of knuckleheads churning out the...

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Highlights

  • Charlie Emery started Spooky Pinball with zero savings, no salary, and ate ramen noodles daily for the first 12 months while doing side work (3D printing, banners, decals) to pay rent.
  • Bug personally plays-tests every Evil Dead pinball machine shipped for at least 2 hours, using a timer-based QA process that stops if any fault is detected.
  • Spooky Pinball has moved through at least six different physical locations (business incubator, expanded incubator, purpose-built facility across street, etc.) and currently operates from a new factory designed and built over the course of a year.
  • Evil Dead has achieved 5,000+ plays on multiple occasions without problems, attributed to new factory design and improved quality control processes.
  • Spooky's board system is proprietary (not Fast Pinball) and has been revised multiple times just this year, with the Warden rev currently on iteration 9-10.
  • Every Evil Dead cabinet undergoes 24/7 power-on testing for approximately two weeks before shipping, catching ~95% of power supply and component failures before customer delivery.
  • Charlie Emery stepped back from day-to-day operations after Halloween's strong sales performance, initially reluctant but quickly relieved by the transition.
  • Spooky's early themes were often selected from Charlie Emery's personal movie collection rather than based on market research.

Notable quotes

“I remember being like, yeah, I don't know. That sounds really hard and, like, probably not the best idea... things are pretty cool right now... we're eating SpaghettiOs like every day.”
Bug
“He quit his job with no salary coming in... No savings account first. No savings account. Yeah, zero... he ate ramen. Literally, he's the stereotypical ate ramen noodles every day.”
Luke
“Every responsibility that he ever offloaded was pretty much me or Bug forcibly ripping it from his hands. Like, dude, you can't do all of them.”
Luke
“Bug legitimately plays for multiple, like two hours per every single Evil Dead that goes out the door. So it's like if you have an Evil Dead, he has played it for at least two hours. Physically himself in that chair.”
Interviewer
“If you don't have the best game of the year, you have nothing it seems like almost. People forget fast.”
Bug or Luke
“Most of the problems in pinball are solvable. They're just difficult, and you have to have creative solutions.”
Bug
“I mean, we've aged. Bugs put on 30 years in, like, two.”
Luke
“We've just had so many problems. We know how to deal with them. And it's funny when we work with people who aren't used to stuff like that coming out... this minor thing comes up where they're freaking out... And we're like, this is Tuesday, brother.”
Bug

Entities

  • Fast Pinball· company
  • Jersey Jack Pinball (JJP)· company
  • Spooky Pinball· company
  • Stern Pinball· company
  • America's Most Haunted· game
  • Evil Dead· game
  • Firepower 2· game
  • Halloween· game
  • Rob Zombie (game)· game
  • Benton, Wisconsin· location
  • We Are Pinball (WAP)· organization
  • Bug (Corwin L. Emery)· person
  • Charlie Emery· person
  • Don (Jeff Teolis)· person
  • Genghis· person
  • Luke Peters· person
  • Tori· person

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