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Wedgehead Pinball Podcast
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Episode 58 - DEATHSAVES

PodcastAnalysis updated 3d ago44 min listen

Highlights

  • 70% of Stern games go to homes, 30% go on location (per Gary Stern at Dutch Pinball Museum)
  • Modern Stern games perform death saves automatically with minimal player input due to bouncy trough geometry
  • Manufacturers could prevent death saves with one line of code (killing flippers when right outlane switch triggers)
  • Death saves are banned in tournament play and result in automatic disqualification
  • Some games intentionally designed with death saves in mind (Rick and Morty, Data East games like Rocky and Bullwinkle, Last Action Hero)
  • Data East apron design from the 1990s enabled death saves and Stern inherited/continued this design without modification
  • Rubber feet cups on games can prevent death saves but location players remove them
  • Death saves reduce operator revenue by extending play without additional payment on pay-per-play machines

Notable quotes

if you can perform it on the game, other guys will. And if it's not something like some games... they're just almost comically easy i think it's like a design flaw
Jeff
if the operator has it set up in a way in which it's possible. I mean, why wouldn't you do it? That's what I'm thinking
Jeff
70% of games go to homes and 30% go on location. So they don't care.
Alan
I just call it cheating plain and simple there's a reason you don't do it in tournaments it's because it's cheating
Alan
if you're playing somewhere it's not like if the ball just pops up on the flipper on its own with just the slightest of efforts put in from me and no one is any the wiser i'm not gonna just i don't have the self-control to just like take my hands off of the flippers
Alex
You're getting mad at like the 7-Eleven that's selling to people with bad IDs and you need to be getting mad at the people making the cigarettes, right?
Alan
they give us all these settings. They give you a tilt, so if somebody's thrashing a game... And you can set that to be more sensitive. You can change the outlanes. You can do all these things... what happened is at some point in the 90s Data East comes up with their apron design and then never changes it
Alan
my whole thing is like the scores on a machine should have integrity... i want to see what's a real score without death save that's what that's what i'm here to see
Alan
if you're playing any pinball machine for 30 or 40 minutes, that game is bad. Like that's bad. I don't care who you are in the world.
Jeff
it should be as easy as if you're in single ball play, and a ball rolls down the out lane, and it triggers the switch, flippers die, ball's over... In multiball, obviously, you have to have that live so it can go through.
Jeff

Entities

  • Data East· company
  • Stern Pinball· company
  • Black Knight· game
  • Godzilla· game
  • Hook· game
  • James Bond 007· game
  • Last Action Hero· game
  • Lethal Weapon· game
  • Rick and Morty· game
  • Rocky and Bullwinkle· game
  • Sword of Rage· game
  • Dutch Pinball Museum· organization
  • Next Level· organization
  • Wedgehead· organization
  • Alan· person
  • Alex· person
  • Gary Stern· person
  • Jack Danger· person
  • Jeff· person
  • Roadsy· person
  • Scott Denise· person

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