Around the Playfield: The Kyle Spiteri Interview
Kyle Spiteri has long been a fixture in the pinball world, at least since I’ve been actively involved in the hobby. While he’s never chased the spotlight, he’s always close to the action. While other contemporaries in the hobby built big public personas, Kyle built himself on a foundation of trust, deep technical expertise, and a quiet kind of respect.
He’s the kind of person who embodies the best of the hobby. Knowledgeable. Authentic. Enthusiastic. And refreshingly helpful.
I know these were the qualities that stood out to me, at least, as a pinball fan watching his early repair streams with Marco Specialities and learning about his background in pinball.
When news broke of him joining Stern Pinball as a Technical Support Engineer in 2023, it felt like such an incredible feel-good story.
Passionate pinball fan spins experience and hard work into high-profile industry gig.
It’s in this role that I’ve been fortunate to interact with him more in person over many trips to the Stern factory in the last few years (he gives a really good factory tour, if you ever get the chance to visit).
I’ve found in these kinds of situations, it’s like a 50/50 chance that the publicly presented online persona matches up with the offline reality. For Kyle, though, there’s near-perfect alignment.
So I’m pretty excited to finally be able to have an official, on-the-record chat with Kyle, about his role at Stern, his rise in the industry, how people can get more involved in the hobby, and so much more.
Interview with Stern's Kyle Spiteri
Kineticist: How did you first get into pinball?
Kyle Spiteri: I got into pinball as a kid. I had all of the video games most kids who grew up in the 90's had at home. My NES, Sega Genesis, N64, and a PC – my personal favorite even today. When I would go to an arcade as a kid, which at that time were mostly FECs, or value-added arcades like at a bowling alley, cinemas, roller skating rinks or pizza joints, video games never really interested me because I could enjoy that experience at home. But always captivated me. Any coin operated arcade game that offers something you could not do at home was really captivating to me as a kid. Why spend my valuable quarters on a video game when my neighbors or I had these games. Games like Silent Scope, or maybe the Star Wars Battle pod did offer something I couldn't do in my living room, but I definitely didn't have an Attack From Mars in my living room which set pinball games – with their strange noisy boxes, flashing lights, and physical movement – apart.
As I grew a bit older, past high school, I didn't play as much pinball. These were the dark ages where Stern was putting out only a few games. There were few great games overall and more forgettable titles in general at this time. Plus I was more interested in motorcycles and playing music in bands. I would always play games when I saw them, but rarely sought them out.
As I started working in the motorcycle industry as a tech I started attending some local conventions (California Extreme, The Pacific Pinball Expo, Pin-A-Go-Go) and eventually got more in sync with the community locally in San Francisco and the Bay Area. One thing led to another and I started helping repair games at the Pacific Pinball Museum, which led to me realising pinball repair is a combination of all of my favorite things: something mechanical, a game, and electronics. I threw myself into learning everything I could and was offered a job as a tech at the Pacific Pinball Museum.
This eventually led to Chris Kuntz, the Pinball Pirate, offering me a job working at his shop. At this point I also had a collection of games, but lived in a small house, so the natural course of action was to operate these games! During the day, I was working on pinball games for other people and at night I worked on my own games that were scattered around at local pinball spots.
Kineticist: How did your time at the Pacific Pinball Museum change your relationship to pinball? What was life like servicing and being around so many machines regularly?
Kyle: The PPM really gave me the confidence and knowledge to pursue pinball as a real job. I was exposed to working on games from the 1930's all the way to the 2000's. Having this spread of games available to tinker on and hone my skills with was invaluable. The warehouse I worked out of had around 1,000 games and was truly unbelievable. One of the partners in the collection has one of the most complete pre-1960 Gottlieb collections in the world!
I remember that as long as there was nothing wrong at the museum I could go to the annex, choose a game and then just make it work. Most of this work was done post the 2016 Pacific Pinball Expo where there were hundreds of games on legs set up and working with regular maintenance.
Then, there was also an absolute sea of games on their backs ready to be worked on. A lot of that work was banging my head against the wall until I could figure something out – but those frustrating lessons taught me so much about how these games worked, and what I needed to do to fix them. It gave me a huge appreciation and love of the electro-mechanical games as well as the solid state games from the early 1980's.
Kineticist: How did you get your current job with Stern Pinball? What does a technical support engineer do there? What does your day-to-day look like?
Kyle: My current position involves one part customer support and one part communicating issues and field reports back to the engineering teams. Day-to-day my responsibilities vary though. The one constant is to try and help respond to customer issues and of course the 3 p.m. coffee break!
Sometimes I am running field service, sometimes I am repairing games here. There are seven people who run customer support responsibilities that are not in the parts department or logistics.
Kineticist: How does content creation factor into your story? Personally, I was first exposed to you through your repair and restoration videos for Marco Specialties, back when you were employed there, and it seems as if some of that has carried through to your work with Stern Pinball, with the Stern Tech School YouTube series.
Kyle: The content creator part sort of stemmed from Imoto [Harney] and I having late night conversations brainstorming things to do during pandemic lockdowns. At this time, the number of people streaming pinball really took off. It was a great way to make new friends, and to enjoy the normally social game of pinball, that many people were not able to do with most public locations shut down.
So reluctantly I became a 'personality' on the internet, Imoto shoved a camera in my face, and I started the Pintech Live series, where we would repair a game during a livestream. Sometimes it was focused, such as how to rebuild a Bally linear flipper assembly, or sometimes it was work through the actual diagnosis, repair and refurb process on one of my games, or a customer's game.
While being decent at conversation and talking with people, I am a pretty introverted person in real life, so this really did put me out of my comfort zone for a while. I was really lucky to have a very dedicated audience who would show up every week, to learn, ask questions, laugh and cry with me about pinball!
I made a lot of connections with people through that livestream that have turned into real world friendships, I am a lucky person in that regard. When I go to some pinball events, it feels great when people stop me and tell me I had given them the confidence to open up their own games and to attempt a repair, or that me de mystifying pinball mechanics gave them confidence to buy their own game!
I suppose that does help with the tech school stuff at Stern! Producing an instructional video is way different than doing a livestream. I could make a mistake live, and correct myself, as opposed to doing something wrong and having to do another take in a produced video! I really enjoy producing the tech school videos, the video crew is amazing and make me look great, and I really enjoy being able to teach people how to take care of their games!
Kineticist: Do you feel like your path into the pinball production industry is a model for outsiders? It seems like quite a number of people get involved in the hobby locally and climb a bit of a ladder of escalating responsibility/visibility to eventual full-time employment at a manufacturer.
Kyle: People ask often, where did you go to school to learn how to fix pinball games? As we mostly all know there is no formal school for pinball, but more so dedicating a lot of time to learn these things yourself. These days, jobs that involve pinball are few and far between. When arcades and public pinball were huge, there was a lot of hands on experience for people working for amusement companies and vending companies to get hands on experience working on pinball (and other equipment) which also allows you to learn lessons from hard earned experiences from the people who have had more time in the trenches than you have.
I learned a lot myself, but as stated before, I learned so much from my mentors, as well as other people in my community. I was lucky in my situation to have people willing to teach, and a LOT of games to work on to really refine my skillset on working on electromechanical games to modern games, and everything in between.
I stopped a promising career in the motorcycle industry, to start again in pinball, and I am glad I did.
In my situation I feel like I put myself out there, and took opportunities when presented to me, and yes, anyone could follow this path, but it does take a lot of dedication and time to refine your skillset.
Having a useful skill set and becoming invaluable to an organization that requires that skillset is the perfect way to fit in anywhere, especially a niche industry like pinball.
Kineticist: What is your all-time favorite "toy" or object on any table?
Kyle: One of my favorite playfield toys in a pinball game is probably the trunk in Theatre of Magic. It is a pretty basic toy, but there is a design decision that I feel makes it pretty brilliant. Games prior to Theatre of Magic generally would always feed the ball directly back to the player safely.
Kineticist: Is there one toy or mech that stands out to you as being the biggest challenge to service?
Kyle: Hmmmm, a lot of specialized mechanisms on a pinball game can be challenging, but two that have gotten me frustrated in the past that I can remember right now are usually the Time Expander in Doctor Who, and the moving car scoop on Nascar.
Nascar mostly because these games got operated for a LONG time, and they were put away wet, and sold to customers pretty beat. There are a few parts that wear on the Nascar mechanism, as well as it needing to be assembled in a very specific way to allow it to slide up and down, and on top of that, it needs to be disassembled from the top AND bottom, to get it out. Can be a real headache. Thankfully, as most things in pinball, once its taken care of and serviced, it will work well for a long time!
The Time Expander in Doctor Who is also a pain for similar reasons. A lot of stuff, packed into a unit that needs to be serviced out of the game. Game was relatively popular, and got beat to hell in operation. I have brought many of those games back from the 'dead' and for some reason this whole game gives me some pinball PTSD! People who have done this long enough can probably relate.
Kineticist: What was the first pinball machine you ever bought and what drew you to it?
Kyle: Creature from the Black Lagoon. I bought the game from a bar in the town I grew up in that was selling it and it was absolutely trashed. This was also before reproduction cosmetic parts were easily available. It was a great game to learn on since it was so thrashed though and led me to meeting many people in my immediate community in the Bay Area, which really started me down the path of learning to repair games. I do not have it anymore though! I sold most of my WPC games when their values greatly exceeded the prices I paid for them.
Kineticist: What is your favorite pinball venue?
Kyle: I am lucky to have been to so many different arcades around the world! A few standouts, The Flipper Room in Concord California, run by the Moretti family which has an amazing collection of games that are both new and old in a really welcoming environment. Free Gold Watch in San Francisco, California, also comes to mind and I don't know how Matt Henri and his crew keep cramming more games into that spot without it feeling any more crowded!
Kineticist: What is one game that everyone loves but for whatever reason you avoid playing if possible?
Kyle: There aren't really any games I do not want to play, but one game I do not understand the almost unanimous adoration for is White Water. The game does rule. The sound and music are top notch and it is amazing to shoot and truly fun to play. But I have heard so many people say that that game is their one desert island game, which I just do not understand! I do not dislike it at all, I just do not understand the hyper fans.
Kineticist: What pinball repair equipment or tools do you always have handy? Is there one item newcomers should invest in early?
Kyle: Whenever I am going to do service, I always bring my full kit. I always work out of my tool box, whether I'm at home, or on the road! I think as a newbie, you really need the basics.
You can do so much with a good set of nut drivers (1/4" to 3/8" hollow shaft and magnetic) and a Phillips screwdriver. But you should absolutely learn to solder. It is not hard – with a little practice it becomes a breeze. Soldering always is the thing that makes most newbies anxious about attempting to repair a game!
I would also buy a decent iron that has temperature controls. The iron I use 90% of the time is a Hakko 601. I can solder everything from component level board repair, to wires on a flipper coil with it. A solder station such as the Hakko FX888 is a great option too! It is just bulkier to carry than a small pen iron, but it isn't too clunky for under a playfield, and allows for a multitude of uses. Plus, both of these irons share the same tips, so you can adjust and customize to your heart’s desire!
Kineticist: Do you prefer to work on and service brand new machines or refurbish and service classic machines? Why?
Kyle: They both satisfy different itches. I love doing just general maintenance to new games, and keeping them fresh, and playing well. But taking an older game, and seeing the transformation after dozens and dozens of hours of work is really gratifying. I don't do as many playfield swaps anymore and personally do not like doing big deep restorations of games. I feel that games get over-restored nowadays. Everything is bought new, mega polished, and clear coated to the extreme which is not my style. I really appreciate a good condition “survivor” of a game. I don't mind dings and I don't mind scratches or weird inserts. It’s all part of the history of the game that you are now the steward of. Just make it function nice. It doesn't need to be a Tiffany egg.
Kinetcist: Where do you see the pinball hobby going in the next decade?
Kyle: We have so many kids growing up with pinball at home now that there will for sure be another generation who got to experience the same games we did, but in a different way. Some of the current greatest players are teenagers and it's incredible to watch.
At Stern, the Insider Connected system will continue to expand new ways to interact with a pinball machine, and help continue to drive players to locations helping them thrive. We are lucky to get to enjoy pinball when we do because there are so many great games from so many decades that we can enjoy for a few quarters, nickles, or dimes at a time.
Kineticist: For those who want to get more involved in pinball (both professionally and as a hobby), what do you see as the best opportunities to do so?
Kyle: The best way to become involved in pinball is to make connections with other people in your community. You do not need to own a pinball game to enjoy the world of pinball, but it is the easiest way to get hands-on experience familiarizing yourself with how pinball games work, and how to refine your skills.
That's one thing that I do love about pinball is how it is almost egalitarian. Sure, the cost to own one at home is expensive, but the cost to enjoy one is a dollar. To get engaged with your community just means showing up and engaging.
Getting involved professionally can be a bit more complex. Does your local pinball museum have a volunteer day to clean and get games ready for the week? Do you have an operator or distributor near you, see if there are any openings. It is a small and niche industry, but there are ways to get experience if you are lucky enough to live near a company or individual doing the work.
Kineticist: Where can people find you if they want to chat your ear off about pinball or get some assistance with a game repair?
Kyle: Maybe if you are lucky, and you call Stern, I will answer! Otherwise, come say hi at Pinball Expo or whatever show you may see me at!
