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Pinball News and Pinball Magazine Podcast
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Pinball Magazine & Pinball News bonus PINcast: the Steve Ritchie interview

PodcastAnalysis updated 2d ago51 min listenBy Martin Ayub, Jonathan Joosten
From the creator

In this special bonus PINcast, Jonathan Joosten from Pinball Magazine and Martin Ayub from Pinball News are joined by their special guest, pinball design legend Steve Ritchie. Having...

Listen on Pinball News and Pinball Magazine Podcast

Highlights

  • Steve Ritchie left Stern Pinball in August (implied 2024) and joined Jersey Jack Pinball
  • Ritchie was fired by Stern in October 2008 along with most of the company staff, was unemployed for 28 months, and had to sell personal memorabilia and a house to survive
  • Jersey Jack's design process is more like Williams than Stern, with greater creative freedom and larger bill of materials
  • Some of Ritchie's games at Stern were incomplete due to budget constraints, which he disliked
  • Led Zeppelin licensing constraints prevented Ritchie from including 'Stairway to Heaven' and 'Heartbreaker' despite his requests, which disappointed him significantly
  • Ritchie believes AC/DC, Star Trek, and Metallica were the three games that enabled Stern's business expansion
  • Jersey Jack obtains incredibly complete licenses, unlike Stern's later experiences
  • Ritchie has his own dedicated team at Jersey Jack including one lead programmer, two additional programmers, and a mechanical engineer
  • Ritchie's first Jersey Jack whitewood has inserts installed and is ready for varnishing before parts assembly begins
  • Ritchie typically achieves 85% yield on first drawings, requiring 15% fixes/changes during build-up

Notable quotes

“I was looking to get out of Stern and I thought that Jersey Jack was a very good opportunity to make games the way I like to make them.”
Steve Ritchie
“This is the best company I ever worked for. As far as the people go, well, everybody from Leonard on down, they're good people and we just get along.”
Steve Ritchie
“I could not imagine a Let's Open game without Stairway to Heaven. I don't even know how I would have played it, but I had a Stairway to Heaven mechanism in mind, and I wanted to build that, and I was not allowed to.”
Steve Ritchie
“no stairway to heaven, no Stern, no Steve. Bye.”
Steve Ritchie
“I think a pinball machine needs a license these days to connect because you know people have favorite movies favorite bands... it's good to have that to connect with”
Steve Ritchie
“When Jersey Jack gets a license, it is incredibly complete, but we don't do it. That's it.”
Steve Ritchie
“I'm going to do everything I can to make Jersey Jack successful. It comes from the heart. These people are great.”
Steve Ritchie
“People with a lot of pinball experience are going to give me better information than someone who doesn't know what they're playing or looking at.”
Steve Ritchie

Entities

  • Jersey Jack Pinball· company
  • Stern Pinball· company
  • AC/DC· game
  • Black Knight: Sword of Rage· game
  • Led Zeppelin· game
  • Spider-Man· game
  • Star Wars· game
  • World Poker Tour· game
  • Bill Grupp· person
  • Brett Abbas· person
  • Dan Lejcik· person
  • Dave Peterson· person
  • Duncan Brown· person
  • Eric Seiden· person
  • Gary Stern· person
  • John Borg· person
  • Jonathan Houston· person
  • Leonard Abbas· person
  • Lyman Sheets· person
  • Mark Seiden· person
  • Martin Ayub· person
  • Pat Lawlor· person
  • Steve Ritchie· person

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