He Built This Pinball Machine in His Garage. Spooky Made 800 of Them
In 2015, a synthwave musician and engineer named Scott Danesi started a personal project in his garage — not for a company, not to sell, just for himself. He wanted to build the kind of pinball he grew up on: brutal, simple, fast, with a killer electronic soundtrack. Two years later, a tiny Wisconsin outfit called Spooky Pinball saw what he'd built and put it into production. The result became one of the most beloved cult machines of the last decade. If you're into the synthwave scene, love the outsider-art energy of Spooky's early catalog, or follow the deep-dive breakdowns on Dead Flip, Kaneda's Pinball Podcast, or This Week in Pinball, this one's for you. We trace how a self-taught designer with no industry pedigree built a machine with zero license, zero committee, and a soundtrack he composed himself — and why blowing up all nine reactors doesn't end in a celebration, it ends in the apocalypse. Then we walk the playfield: three flippers, one pop bumper, and the "Danesi lock," one of the slickest inline-drop-target ball locks ever built. We break down the code (nine reactors, escalating difficulty), the two production runs (550 original units in 2017, 250 Collector's Edition units on the P3 platform in 2022), and why a game with only 800 units built still cracks the top 100 on Pinside. Finally, we run TNA through the FlipScore to see if the deliberate, punishing simplicity holds up in 2026. 🎯 Manufacturer: Spooky Pinball 🎨 Designer: Scott Danesi 📅 Year: 2017 (Original) / 2022 (Collector's Edition) 🔧 System: Custom Spooky hardware (Original) / P3 Platform (CE) 🎰 Production: 550 Original units + 250 CE units — 800 total 💰 Current market: ~$6,500 (Original) / ~$8,300 (Collector's Edition) 🏆 FlipScore: 75/100 💬 Purity and punishment, or give me modes and toys? Where do you land on TNA? Let's talk in the comments!
