Wedgehead Pinball Podcast

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Local pinball player Travis Chesney joins us on the podcast to share with us the story of the Mob, the Teamsters, and the dueling rival pinball pushers in the 1950s in our great city.  Travis went deep down the rabbit hole and wrote up a nice cliffnotes version of this history to share with us on this podcast, but if you want to know even more, check out these other references that we listed in the episode below.

Portland Expose The fictional film based upon the real events discussed in this episode, that the teamsters picketed upon it's release at the Hollywood Theatre (our historic neighbors up the street from Wedgehead).

Dark Rose: Organized Crime & Corruption in Portland by Robert C. Donnelly

Portland Confidential: Sex, Crime & Corruption in the Rose City by Phil Stanford

Standard warning: our language is as sordid as any of the tales told on this episode. Sensitive ears be warned.

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No ramps, no ball saves, no bullshit on this one. In this episode our buddy Ty Palmer comes back on the show to tell us why Eight Ball Deluxe is the best game ever.

Standard swearbear warning here, there is adult language throughout so invite the kids to listen and learn some fun new words to bring with them to school!

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Alright, in this episode we are joined once again by our good buddy Ty Palmer and jump right into the fire to try and determine the definitive answer to the age old question: Bally vs. Stern Electronics, which are actually better?

Buckle up, because this one gets everyone riled up, and adult language was used.

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In this second episode with legendary pinball sound designer Dan Forden, we actually go through his career and listen to the music that he composed and created for many well known and iconic pinball machines. This is a good one!

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In this episode I speak with Dan Forden, another legend of both the videogame and pinball industry. Whilst undoubtably known best for the Motral Kombat video game series, he also worked on a ton of pinball machines at Williams/Bally during the late 80s-90s golden era including: Bad Cats, Black Knight 2000, Mousin Around, Roller Games, Bride of Pinbot, Getaway: High Speed 2, Star Trek: Next Generation, The Shadow, No Fear, Safecracker…and a couple real obscure Brian Eddy games called Attack From Mars, and Medieval Madness!

TOPcast Interview from 2010

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On this episode of the show we are joined by an old school pinball collector and international man of mystery, Tom Rader, who came onto the show to discuss his favorite pinball era of all time: Williams single player EM machines with their unusual looking upside down pear shaped heads.  Most collectors now just refer to them as the "Reverse Wedgeheads" and we discuss all of them in this episode, along with designers Steve Kordek and Norm Clark, and even get into some long standing mystery over exactly who the artists were on some of these games.

Since these games are pretty rare to see in the modern day, our guest made a handy pdf with links to all the IPDB pages so you can follow along visually: Reverse Wedgeheads

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Help support the show and receive a link to our private discord server: ko-fi.com/wedgeheadpodcast

Alex is doing a second best game episode for best game ever since apparently, he's confused about the definition of "best game ever" actually means...

In this episode we discuss the 1993 Williams Classic Barry Oursler game: Bram Stoker's Dracula and what makes it so great.

But be warned, the swearwolves were in full effect on this episode...this is your adult content warning.

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In this episode we explore the role that physical layout and shot geometry has on the overall feel of a pinball machine. We discuss the classic spectrum of two genius designers who operated largely on opposite sides of the spectrum, Steve Ritchie and Pat Lawlor, and Alan discusses why if he doesn't like the way a game physically shoots, then he will NEVER enjoy that machine at all.

But as per usual, adult language is used. This is your warning. 

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Local legend Cory Butcher joins us on the show to defend his love for the 1992 Gottlieb game, Cue Ball Wizard. On paper this game sold well, and earned well back in the day, but for some reason it hasn't aged so well in the 30 years since its release.  Thankfully Butcher is here to educate all of us.

As is tradition, profanity is used throughout the episode.

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Support the show and receive a link to our private discord server: ko-fi.com/wedgeheadpodcast

Seattle pinball player and creator of the kickass pinball ratings website, pinballranker.com brings us all his episode that he wrote and recorded all about what he believes to be "The Best Game Ever"

Warning: like all of our normal episodes, Conor has also chosen to use adult language, this is your warning.

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