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Nick Neitzel - Tony Hawk’s Pro Pinball - Episode 54
PodcastAnalysis updated 6d ago45 min listen
Send us Fan Mail Episode 54 interviews the creator of Tony Hawk’s Pro Pinball machine, Nick Neitzel. Nick discusses creating and building Tony Hawk’s Pro Pinball, as well as his next project...
Highlights
- Tony Hawk's Pro Skater video game franchise has generated over $1 billion in sales worldwide
- Tony Hawk turned down $500,000 for likeness rights and negotiated royalties instead, earning $4 million from the first three games
- Tony Hawk's Pro Skater homebrew debuted at Chicago Expo and started working 30 minutes before doors opened
- The game's only mechanical issue at Expo was 3D-printed stand-ups taking a beating; only one had to be replaced
- Nick is now working for Electric Playground as a Product Engineer after leaving aviation industry
- Electric Playground Pulp Fiction topper will be revealed at Texas Pinball Festival in March
- Nick has patented two novel technologies being developed for his next original-license homebrew game
- Electric Playground received over 300 survey responses for topper ideas
- Atomic Pinball Now in Wood River, Illinois hosted Tony Hawk and raised over $250 in donations for the skate park project
- Nick designed the Tony Hawk playfield exclusively based on the Warehouse level from the original PS1 game with some Hangar elements from THPS2
Notable quotes
“The number one complaint about a game there is that the line was long. I mean, that's the best kind of complaint you can get.”
“I'm very much preferring working on machines than I would play them. I still like playing them. So that tells you how much I like working on them.”
“I got that tattoo... as my, you are going to make this pinball machine promise to myself and her and my friends and everything.”
“Everything clicked. This is okay. So not only is this going to be my personality now, this is what I'm going to be focusing on forever.”
“I would come home and I would walk into my basement and I would come back upstairs 10:30 at night, get up the next morning at 5:30, and it was like that for almost a year.”
“I figured out that RC car motors are the same size as flipper coils and they make heat sinks for those. So I have aluminum heat sinks in there with fans on them. And those coils will be ice cold forever.”
“There's two pieces of tech that I'm developing right now inside of my next game that are... that have never been done in pinball and when people play it they are going to go holy smokes.”
“Robin is such a cool dude. I mean, from the second I met him, all he wanted to do was help. All he wanted to do was make sure that like, I achieved my dream.”
Entities
- Electric Playground· company
- Chicago Expo· event
- Texas Pinball Festival (TPF)· event
- Tony Hawk's Pro Skater (pinball)· game
- Atomic Pinball Now· organization
- teppinball.com· organization
- This Week in Pinball· organization
- Alison· person
- Colin Alshimer· person
- Jamie Burchill· person
- Nick Neitzel· person
- Robin and Alec· person
- Wes· person
- Mission Pinball Framework (MPF)· product
- Pinball FX Three· product
- Pulp Fiction (pinball topper)· product
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