From Molly Atkinson's Pins and Needles to today's anchor venues — in his Kineticist debut, LA local Benjamin Plotkin maps the past, present, and people of Los Angeles pinball.
May 5, 2026
A conversation with sound designer Jeff Dodson about his work on Dune from Barrels of Fun.
Oct 9, 2025
Episode 12 of trying to finish Stern's Lord of the Rings and reach Valinor. No distractions this time. Just me, the machine, Syd harassing me, and trying to get to Valinor. 📡 Twitch 📺 YouTube 📷 Instagram 📘 Facebook 👕 Apparel
Episode 11 of trying to finish Stern’s Lord of the Rings and reach Valinor. At this point the game has made its position pretty clear. 📡 Twitch twitch.tv/dirtypoolpinball 📺 YouTube youtube.com/@dirtypoolpinball 📷 Instagram instagram.com/dirtypoolpinball 📘 Facebook facebook.com/dirtypoolpinball 👕 Apparel
More attempts to reach Valinor on Stern’s Lord of the Rings. The Pinsound pack is running, the rules are known, now we just need to actually get to elf heaven. 📡 Twitch twitch.tv/dirtypoolpinball 📺 YouTube youtube.com/@dirtypoolpinball 📷 Instagram instagram.com/dirtypoolpinball 📘 Facebook facebook.com/dirtypoolpinball 👕 Apparel
Jason Knapp on building pinball's most trusted news platform and industry rumor sourcing.
▶ Full Dirty Pool Podcast Playlist Jason Knapp of Knapp Arcade joins Dirty Pool Podcast to talk about running one of the few dedicated pinball news sites still trying to keep track of the hobby in real time. We get into pinball journalism, how stories are chosen, how much work goes into keeping information accurate,and what it’s like covering a small industry where the people, companies, rumors, and drama all exist. Also I eat a taco. It was pretty good. We also talk about the Knapp Arcade redesign, what changed behind the scenes, how the site has grown, and the balance between building something useful for the community without getting dragged into every argument the hobby creates for itself. 📡 Twitch 📺 YouTube 📷 Instagram 📘 Facebook 👕 Apparel
Ep09 is more Valinor chasing, more multiball paperwork, and more LOTR being one of the best games ever made while also acting like it personally resents you. We’re running the Pinsound setup again too, so at least when the machine ruins everything, it sounds amazing. Can we finally get a real Valinor push without the game turning into a three-hour argument? 📡 Twitch twitch.tv/dirtypoolpinball 📺 YouTube youtube.com/@dirtypoolpinball 📷 Instagram instagram.com/dirtypoolpinball 📘 Facebook facebook.com/dirtypoolpinball 👕 Apparel
The connection issues are finally handled, which means Lord of the Rings pinball can go back to draining for normal reasons. We’re continuing the road to Valinor with Stern’s Lord of the Rings, Pinsound running the soundtrack, and hopefully fewer cursed network interruptions from the dark tower of home internet. The Great Pyramid tech department has briefly stopped screaming. Pinsound 📡 Twitch 📺 YouTube 📷 Instagram 📘 Facebook 👕 Apparel
Pinball Cult Apparel promotional mention of Dune, Labyrinth, Winchester Mystery House, and Godzilla.
The new Dirty Pool Pinball cult apparel is live, and international orders are now available. Sweatshirts, shirts, and whatever else the Great Pyramid allowed us to put on fabric are up at High-quality stuff, glow-in-the-dark weirdness, and no cheap blank shirt energy. Join Us. 📡 Twitch 📺 YouTube 📷 Instagram 📘 Facebook 👕 Apparel
Winchester pinball game receives major update with two new rooms and enhanced audio.
🏚️ Winchester Code Update The house just added more ways to get lost. Sarah’s Bedroom and the Hall of Fires are now part of the public tour, which means Henry and the Cinder Man have more opportunities to ruin your evening. Sarah’s Bedroom has you trying to free Sarah from Henry’s control before things get worse. Hall of Fires turns into a panic sprint putting out fireplaces while the Cinder Man tries to turn the room into a lawsuit. There’s also a pile of new audio work in this update. New music, updated sound design, and fresh callouts all over the new rooms. The Hall of Fires stuff especially gets pretty toasty once things start stacking up. Which room has been wrecking your runs more so far? 📡 Twitch 📺 YouTube 📷 Instagram 📘 Facebook 👕 Apparel
Steve Bowden on pinball commentary, accessible game design, and modern rule complexity.
▶ Full Dirty Pool Podcast Playlist Steve Bowden has one of the stranger paths through modern pinball. Tournament player. Broadcaster. Rules analyst. Designer. deeproot employee. American Pinball employee during one of the company’s rougher stretches. A lot of the modern hobby overlaps with Steve somewhere along the way. The conversation moves through tournament strategy, how commentary changed the way players learn rules and scoring, balancing games for casual players versus high-level competition, working inside pinball manufacturing, streaming culture, and the lingering fallout from the deeproot era now that parts of that story have started resurfacing again in community discussions. There’s a lot of history attached to this one. 🌐 Website 📷 Instagram ❌ Twitter/X 🎵 TikTok 📘 Facebook Page 👥 Facebook Group 📡 Twitch 📺 YouTube 🌐 📡 Twitch 📺 YouTube 📷 Instagram 📘 Facebook 👕 Apparel
Dirtypool Pinball lists pinball game titles in brief clip.
Cut together a new Art of Pinball edit for the new Transformers machine with a heavy focus on my own sound design and mix work layered into my footage. Loud mechs, aggressive lighting, metallic impacts, and way too much granular synthesis. This is my way of translating media day into video. More mood, more motion, less talking. 📡 Twitch 📺 YouTube 📷 Instagram 📘 Facebook 👕 Apparel
Dirtypool reviews Stern's Transformers: smooth layout, complete code, weak Pro model.
Fresh back from Stern after getting hands-on time with Transformers. I don't have the Flu this time, so that's a plus. Lets chat live about being hands on with the next cornerstone game from Gieske and Eisman. Is it more than meets the Ei.... sman? (Get it? lulz) 📡 Twitch 📺 YouTube 📷 Instagram 📘 Facebook 👕 Apparel
Multimorphic VP Gerry Stellenberg explains P3 platform design, adoption barriers, and technical innovation.
▶ Full Dirty Pool Podcast Playlist The P3 has carved out a very different lane in modern pinball. Swappable modules, a ball tracked LCD playfield, physical mechs, and a platform that approaches game design from a completely different angle than most traditional machines. Gerry joins the Dirty Pool Podcast to talk about the origins of the Multimorphic platform, designing games around modular hardware, how different modules take advantage of the system in unique ways, and how the P3 has evolved over the years. We also get into the balance between physical and digital integration in pinball, the realities of building a platform meant to support multiple experiences in one cabinet, and how players have responded to pinball that experiments outside the standard format. 🧬 Multimorphic / P3 Pinball If you had a P3 cabinet, which module would you want to try first? 📡 Twitch 📺 YouTube 📷 Instagram 📘 Facebook 👕 Apparel
Greg drops into the sanctum for a full Shadow pinball lore dump. We’re digging through the history of the game, the movie, the callouts, the weird rules quirks, and why this machine still has one of...
Raymond Davidson on competitive play, code design philosophy, and balancing accessibility with depth.
▶ Full Dirty Pool Podcast Playlist It's podcast time with RAYDAY! Raymond Davidson of Stern Pinball known...
This episode flips the switch on my reactive custom sound design system, except it’s now driven by a carefully curated grid of Franchi audio artifacts that have been accumulating for months. It...
