The recent Pintastic New England pinball show had a number of seminars that the great team there has been releasing as weekly episodes, every Tuesday on YouTube. I couldn’t sleep this morning, so I tuned in at 6 AM for the Live airing of this week’s presentation, featuring folks from Jersey Jack Pinball. The company was represented by its founder, Jack Guarnieri and it’s two newest designers, Steve Ritchie and Mark Seiden.
A lot of what Jack talked about was already mentioned in my recent post about his great interview with the Super Awesome Pinball Show, so I want to focus most of this post on what Steve Ritchie had to say about his upcoming first game for Jersey Jack.
Steve already has a flipping whitewood for the game. He is working with the legendary pinball artist John Youssi, who most recently did art on JJP’s Toy Story 4 pin, on art for it. Steve said that he utilized his higher budget at JJP to put three toys that are “new things to pinball” in the game. And that he’s particularly excited about one of them. Steve’s game is a standard body machine (he expressed his hatred for widebodies during the Q & A section).
Jack officially confirmed that Eric Meunier is the designer for the company’s next game, but that it probably will not debut in 2022. While nothing was specifically said about what game will come after Eric’s, I personally suspect the it will be Steve’s.
Mark Seiden is well into designing his first game for the company as well. If I had to guess, his machine is in the queue after Ritchie’s. Mark stated that while he did borrow some aspects from the Metroid homebrew pinball machine that he essentially used as his resume to get hired by JJP, the theme for the game that he is working on at the Company is so dramatically different that he had to change a lot of things around.
Other tidbits of note from the session include Jack definitively stating that JJP does not have the Sonic the Hedgehog license and that the Company’s the “Standard Edition games did away with themselves. The rarest games that we’ve ever built are the Standard Edition.”
I have embedded the very interesting presentation from Pintastic below:
It is very interesting. I think that the gaming industry is waiting for great prospects. This company is fast growing. It develops interesting 3d games. There are real professionals who have great experience in game development.
I really enjoyed the broadcast and having heard many JJP sessions, was pleased to hear new things. I really liked how Jack and JJP represented. It must be lost in vid but Jack is not braggadocios, he has many stories and experiences to share. I liked hearing some playful jabs at other pinball companies. It keeps things real.
Jack seems like a Jack*ss to me. I hope he gets somewhat humbled some day. By the looks of it (and actually sadly to observe), he’s got the onset of parkinsons in his left arm. Believe me, I don’t wish ill at all..just stay humble folks..like the other two guys mentioned, it doesn’t help the pinball community to bash another company...because at the end of the day, ALL of these companies are Our hero’s..
Maybe it's just me, but the attitude coming from these guys during this Q and A session was pretty off putting. They spent a lot of time pumping their own tires and quite a bit of time bashing the competition. I don't think that attitude will get them very far.