The Pinball Studio Podcast
23 episodes tracked since 2025 about →
EP21 Cale Hernandez My Journey Into Pinball
PodcastAnalysis updated today1 hr 30 min listen
Episode 21 features Cale Hernandez, one of the voices behind the highly respected Electric Bat Arcade and co-host of the popular BatCast. Cale and his wife have built something special in the...
Highlights
- Cale grew up in Metairie, Louisiana (outside New Orleans) in the late 1970s/early 1980s and frequented Showbiz Pizza as a kid, primarily playing video games rather than pinball.
- Mark Mandeltort of Marco Specialties was operating Judge Dredd, Adam's Family, Twilight Zone, and Attack from Mars machines at a substation in Lexington, South Carolina when Cale was in high school.
- Cale played in a touring southern rock/jam band for approximately 10 years after high school (graduated 1993), touring extensively across the US and opening for acts like Widespread Panic, Foo Fighters, Creed, and various Allman Brothers members.
- Cale's brother is a touring musician based in Atlanta who was in Stuck Mojo and now plays in Fozzy with Chris Jericho.
- Marco Specialties had a unique hiring process where candidates would sit down with every employee in the company, regardless of position, and one negative vibe could disqualify a candidate.
- At the time Cale joined Marco (approximately 9-10 years ago from episode date), the company had roughly a dozen employees: about 6 in the office and 6 in the warehouse.
- For the Iron Maiden launch at MGC (Midwestern Gaming Classic), Paul Mandeltort (Mark and Nancy's son) arranged delivery of 50-60 Iron Maiden machines in an 18-wheeler semi, which Mark had to pay for upfront. Rachel Bess sold all of them, with the last one sold to a Chicago-area operator during breakdown.
- Rachel Bess purchased an Iron Maiden pinball machine from Marco at a discounted price of $4,000 (staff pricing/cost), which is still at Electric Bat Arcade.
- Ghostbusters pinball (with art by Zombie Yeti) was Stern's major release when Cale started at Marco Specialties and generated unprecedented lines at shows like TPF.
- Cale met Rachel Bess on a Zoom call when she was working remotely from Phoenix, and they first met in person at a Nashville show, began dating shortly after, and he proposed within weeks.
Notable quotes
“I really think pinball is more about the people and hanging out with people because, you know, it's the one game that has never changed...every machine, you can play at least four players and it's for a reason, you know, because it's all about hanging out.”
“Pinball, all sides of pinball, the fans, the collectors, all of the people that make these machines, everybody in the industry, they are the coolest, most interesting people. The best group of people in any industry I've ever hung out with.”
“I spent 10 years as a touring musician playing in a southern rock jam band...and I told him this was way more fun than that was. We're like, we're packing up pallets of equipment, shipping that at an 18-wheeler and then flying to shows. I mean, we were legit rock stars.”
“When Ghostbusters came out, first of all, I freaked out because I was a huge Ghostbusters fan...That was my movie because when my mother bought a VHS player...we only had two movies, Indiana Jones and Ghostbusters.”
“I felt like some North Koreans you know making bills...I would use a magnifying glass and down to the dot and the dot pitch like make these things perfect...recreating old pinball plastic stuff that was just not available anymore.”
“He said, part of the stipulation is that we're not bringing one back...Rachel was in charge of sales and her and Marco had to hustle...it was down to the wire. Like I remember there was one game left over.”
“I started looking at all of our work and I was like, whoa, this is really next level. This is serious professional stuff...there's something very spiritual about it.”
“Shows back then were nothing like this. Like we would bring maybe two Ghostbusters to a show...Nowadays you go to the Marco booth. They have like 70 machines.”
Entities
- Electric Bat Arcade· company
- Marco Specialties· company
- Stern Pinball· company
- Midwestern Gaming Classic· event
- Addams Family· game
- Attack from Mars· game
- Ghostbusters· game
- Iron Maiden· game
- Judge Dredd· game
- Metallica· game
- Twilight Zone· game
- Lexington· organization
- Metairie· organization
- Cale Hernandez· person
- Creed· person
- Dirty Donnie· person
- Keith Elwin· person
- Marco Ramirez· person
- Mark Mandeltort· person
- Nancy Mandeltort· person
- Paul Mandeltort· person
- Rachel Bess· person
- Shannon· person
- Steve Majette· person
- Zombie Yeti· person
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