Steve Ritchie: The King of Pinball Shares His Journey

A Conversation with Steve Ritchie

Beginning a Career at Atari

 

Tim Santens: There’s three lines of questioning that I had wanted to touch on with you, including  early days at Atari, Mortal Kombat and your broader pinball career.

 

Steve Ritchie: Well, I started working at Atari in 1974. I think I was employee number 50.

I worked at making universal test fixtures for all the games they had to date with huge burn-in ovens for cooking boards overnight. PC boards with all the power running. There would be heavy fallout ^[1] the next day. We’d bring the boards to the table and these ladies would remove chips and replace them until they worked.

I did that for about a year. Then an officer of the company came and asked me if I wanted to be part of a pinball division ^[2] . And I said sure. I started working with this guy they hired from Chicago. He taught me how to lay out a game, what a drawing looks like, and how to put them together. After about a couple of months of that, I thought, “Hey, I can do this.” So I grabbed a big piece of wood—they were all wide-body pinball machines in those days. I taped a piece of paper to it and started drawing a game. I worked on it for six months at home, then brought it to my boss.

 

I showed it to him, and he said, “You don’t have a degree in industrial design, so you can’t be a game designer.” I thought, I don’t think I have to have a degree in industrial design. I played pinball. I understand it. So I brought it to Nolan Bushnell and showed him. And he said, “You did this at home?”

 

“Those were his exact words: ‘Poof, you’re a designer.’”

 

I said, “Yeah.” He said, “You want to be a designer?” I said, “Yeah.” Then he said, “Poof, you’re a designer.” Those were his exact words. Two days later, I had a big drafting table, 8 feet long by 4 feet high, and a Muto drafting machine. Everything was hand-drawn in those days. So I started drawing my game.

Designing Pinball Games

Steve Ritchie: I made it happen, and they produced it. It was called Airborne Avenger ^[3] . But it was the handiwork of a clueless guy who didn’t know what he was doing. We sold quite a few—around 500 or so. Then they said we’ll start on the next game. And the next game was going to be a contest between me and Gary Slater ^[4] —the only other game designer they had—for the rights to use the Superman license. I wanted it bad. So I made a game and it took me like four whitewoods—prototype pinball machines with no screen, just white maple. We coat it with varnish and play the game. Anyway, I won the contest and got to make Superman.

Transition to Williams

Steve Ritchie: Shortly after that, I got an offer to go to Williams. I was totally excited. They needed me. They needed us—Eugene Jarvis ^[5] and me. He was a really great programmer. He owns a company called Raw Thrills and Play Mechanics now. He was a super imaginative guy, and we had a great time at Williams. He didn’t come right away. I went to Williams immediately and made a game that sold 19,000 machines—a little more than that. It’s the most I ever sold of any game.

 

I went to the sales guy and said, “Can we sell a few more so we can break 20,000?” And he said, “Nah, we want to leave the market wanting.” So that’s okay. Anyway, it held the production record until The Addams Family came out, which became the largest-selling pinball machine of all time, done by Larry DeMar and Pat Lawlor.

Firepower

 

“Firepower was the first solid-state multi-ball pinball game. Firepower was a smart game.”

 

Steve Ritchie: The next game was Firepower. It was the first solid-state multi-ball pinball game. There were others, but they weren’t smart. Firepower was a smart game. And that’s the first time I did speech in any game. We had like 11 seconds of speech time, so I had to say everything in a monotone—like “fire,” “power,” “you are destroyed”—so we could reassemble the words to make different phrases.

 

It’s kind of crude, but it was the first game with speech. However, it didn’t get to the outside world first because we made Gorgar shortly after that. The president said, “You can be the second game with speech. We’re going to stick Gorgar out there.” It did pretty well.

Anyway, I made a lot of games for Williams—18 or so, I think. Plus, I made slot machines and redemption games.

Williams/Atari Merger

Steve Ritchie: Around 1996, we weren’t selling pinball at all. The boss wanted to build slot machines because there was a lot more money in slot machines. Eventually, they phased it out, but I didn’t wait. I decided I wanted to go back home to California. So, I took two weeks of vacation and went out there to look for work. I ran into Atari—the new Atari—and I was ready to take a job there.

 

“We bought Atari yesterday. That was nice. I didn’t have to negotiate anything.”

 

We hadn’t discussed everything, and it wasn’t finalized. Anyway, when I got back from vacation, the president of Williams called me up and said, “Come up to my office.” So I did. He said, “You’ve been looking for work.” I replied, “Yeah, well you guys kind of forgot about my contract.” Then he said, “Well, I gotta tell you we bought Atari yesterday.” ^[6] 

 

That was nice. I didn’t have to negotiate anything. They gave me the same money I was making, plus a raise, and said, “Go do it. You’re going to produce video games.” So, I produced a couple of games. One was California Speed—a father-son-daughter driving game. It was kind of easy, like Cruisin’ USA. ^[7] 

Steve Ritchie: You could tell by the blue seats. That sold about $60 million worth. Then I started on a second game called Mean Streak. In 2000, with about 18 months into the game—it takes about two years to develop a game like that—we found out that Williams was going to close Atari, close Midway, and close everything.

 

So they paid off my contract, and I went home. I designed a slot machine called The Vault, and it was stolen from me by IGT (International Game Technology). ^[8]  They have a hundred lawyers. You’re never going to win any kind of legal battle in Nevada. The state of Nevada receives so much revenue from slot machines. So I just gave up.

Stern Pinball Inc.

Steve Ritchie: After that, Gary Stern ^[9]  called me and asked, “Do you want to come to work?” I said, “Sure.” He said, “You can work in California if you want.” I replied, “How about part-time in California and part-time out there?” He said, “Sure.” So for six years, I was commuting, and I loved it.

 

I could go back to California, work, and also ride my dirt bike. It took me 15 minutes to get to the mountains. Riding is a mad passion of mine. I still want to do it, but I’m 74 now.

 

Anyway, Stern Pinball almost went out of business. Then, [Dave Peterson] ^[10]  came in, and he was way better with finances, and a really good guy. They called me back. My partner Lyman Sheats and I made AC/DC and Spider-Man. ^[11]   

 

“I made Led Zeppelin pinball, but they didn’t buy ‘Stairway to Heaven.’”

 

I think I did eight or nine or ten games there. I’m not sure. Anyway, they got cheap with parts. The bill of materials for their pro model game was so strict that it was hard. I made Led Zeppelin pinball, but they didn’t buy “Stairway to Heaven.”

 

 

I couldn’t believe they didn’t do that. I mean, it would have cost four times more than the other songs, but I said, “Get rid of four, and I’ll take that one.” They never got it. I ended up with two songs I absolutely hate that somebody else picked. Whenever I do a music game, I look at Billboard, Rolling Stone, and all the sales data to pick the best songs. 

Jersey Jack Pinball

Steve Ritchie: After that, I decided to go to work for Jersey Jack Pinball. They gave me a great offer, and that’s where I am today. 

Steve Jobs and Woz at Atari

Tim Santens: 1974, the year you were hired at Atari, was the same year that Apple’s Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were hired there as well. Did you have any interaction with them?

Steve Ritchie: Oh yeah, they worked like 25 feet from my cube.

 

“Steve Wozniak was a great guy. Steve Jobs was an asshole. He stunk. He never took showers.”

 

Steve Wozniak was a great guy. Steve Jobs was an asshole. From the first moment. I mean, I would say good morning to him, he would say nothing. And if you got close to him, he stunk. He smelled awful. He never took showers. The classic picture of him leaning back in the chair with his feet up on the desk while Steve Wozniak does everything.

That’s how it was. He was just a bum with some ideas, but then I found out the game that they were working on was already designed by a vice president there. It was Breakout. It was a good game, a great game actually, and he took all the credit for it, but he wasn’t really the designer.

Anyway, they fired him once for smelling bad, then they kept him for a while, and then finally he left.

And, you know, I just have no use for the guy. I have never purchased any Apple products. I never will. I just don’t want to. I don’t care. I mean, he was bad to his wife, to his daughter, everyone around him. I mean, have you read any books about him?

Tim Santens: Yeah, I’ve definitely heard about what he did, his interactions with his daughter and how she was estranged.

Steve Ritchie: It’s not just that, the people that worked for him, like he gathered a Macintosh team and another team working on the next product, I don’t know what it was. He’d get up in front on the stage in this big auditorium and he would say, ‘Okay guys, you that did the Macintosh, you’re the B team. This is the new A team. And by the way, all B’s are fired. Thank you.”

Tim Santens: Yeah, he was definitely a slave driver and an asshole for sure.

Steve Ritchie: Yeah. And a thief. I mean, he’s not the guy that invented the mouse. He picked up everything. He stole so many little things from Microsoft, from, you know, all over the place.

He had no class. Like, I have no respect for him. None.

But, Steve Wozniak was a great guy. He was a little older than us, just a little bit older than me, and we used to go over there if Steve Jobs wasn’t there to play Breakout on his prototype system.

So it was pretty fun.

Atari’s Party Culture

 

Tim Santens: Atari was known at the time for its big parties that it would have. Did you partake in that kind of culture that was there?

 

Steve Ritchie: Of course I did. I was like, you know, when I got there I was 24 years old.

 

Okay, this is unbelievable, but in Los Gatos, California, they didn’t care about weed at all. There was no law. Maybe there was, but nobody got arrested. I don’t know. Nothing was enforced. You could walk down the street and smoke a joint. So, every Friday, there would be this big tray of hash brownies. They were powerful.

 

I still picture my boss, John Petlansky ^[12] who’s dressed in a suit, coat, tie, and white shirt every day, eating two of the brownies. I mean, everybody was dangerously—I mean, dangerously—affected.

 

I had to work in burning ovens sometimes, in the early days. I just thought, “You know what, I don’t want to eat those and go in there” because there was all kinds of voltages at real high current and stuff like that.

 

“There was also cocaine snorted on the playfield glass, bottles of Red Mountain Wine, and Big Dog.”

 

So there was that, but you know, there was also cocaine snorted on the playfield glass, bottles of Red Mountain Wine ^[13] and Big Dog.

 

Steve Ritchie: Nolan ^[14] was a character. I liked him very much. It was interesting. That was the way in California. It was loose. That’s it. And also fun. I’m gonna say fun because it was.

 

Tim Santens: I bet! You can’t even imagine that kind of corporate environment anymore.

 

Steve Ritchie: Yeah, there was no corporation. When there was a corporation, they cleaned it up a bit. Like, you know, Warner bought them, ^[15] and that’s how we got the Superman license.

 

Video Game Crash of ’83

 

Tim Santens: When did you leave Atari?

 

Steve Ritchie: 1978. I think in April. I was there for four years.

 

Tim Santens: So you were there at the peak, and you got out before the video game crash of 1983. Did that affect the pinball market as well?

 

Steve Ritchie: The crash of ’83 was much later. I was already at Williams. What can I say about it? I don’t know. It didn’t matter to me. I was making pinballs, and pinballs were still selling, although a little bit less.

 

When you have a video game crash, a lot of businesses like distributorships lose a lot of money. So they don’t really have a lot to spend on pinball or anything else. And that’s exactly what happened. But, you know, it came back slowly.

 

There was a long time between when I left and the crash. It was like five years or so. In 1982, I started my own video game company and moved back to California. I had a contract with Williams to make two video games, and one of them was called “Chicken a la King.”

 

It was kind of a comedy, like a million ways to kill a chicken. The first microcomputer game we ever did was “Devastator,” a 3D flying game. It was very cool back in the day. But by the time we finished it, which was around 1983, the bottom fell out of the market.

 

The president called me up and said, “Steve, I can’t pay you.” I replied, “Well, that’s great news.” He then offered me to come back and make ten more pinball machines. So I did, and I went back to Williams.

 

Tim Santens: That’s good that you were able to transition back into pinball, which was still doing okay for you at that time.

 

Steve Ritchie: Yeah, it was going okay. But when I got back to the factory, it was dark because they had some bad games, and they didn’t sell well. The factory was practically empty.

 

High Speed

 

“I had a Porsche 928 and I went like 146 miles an hour… nine cop cars showed up in Lodi, California, and they’re all wondering how it’s ‘146’.”

 

Steve Ritchie: I mean I would say it was empty for two or three months, so I got hooked up with a new programmer named Larry DeMar, and we did High Speed together, which is based on a true story. I ran away from the cops. I didn’t really know the cops were behind me though. I had a Porsche 928 and I went like 146 miles an hour, and I went over a hill and here’s a highway patrolman, and my partner says to me, “Hey, slow down! There’s a highway patrol guy.”

So he went up the hill. This is five lanes in each direction on I-5 in California. It was brand new at the time. So he went over the mountain and I went down and cranked it up again. And a car came from the other direction, a sheriff’s car with a red light on. He turned around the median and I just pulled over.

I didn’t want to run. So he goes, “Just stay in the car.” So I did. I stayed in the car. And when the highway patrol pulls up, screeching into the gravel, he’s just acting all pissed off—I guess because he was. Then he tries to pull me out the window of my car and I go, “Officer, officer, wait, I can just get out.”

So, I open the door, get out, you know, he slams me down on the hood, puts handcuffs on me—the first and only time I ever got handcuffs or anything else—he threw me in his car, and then they started searching the car because I think they thought we robbed somebody or something.

So nine cop cars showed up in Lodi, California and they’re all wondering how it’s “146.” Well, the ticket said 120 mph plus because that’s as fast as his motorcycle could go.

Anyway, he got in the car after that, took the handcuffs off, and he goes, “Want a cigarette?” I go, “OK.” I did smoke, and he goes, “Why’d you do that?” I told the truth. I had the car for about two months, and I wanted to try it out. It’s early in the morning, and there’s nothing but tomato trucks in the right lane. If I came to traffic, I slowed down, but I wanted to see how fast it would go.

And he goes, “OK.” And then he says, “I don’t think you were running from me.” I wasn’t because I didn’t know he was behind me. Anyway, he held me in court. And the court was in session. If I didn’t go to court right then, I would have gone to jail. So I got taken to the court. They fined me $250. I lied and promised I would never go fast again.

Anyway, I built a game called High Speed around that. It had interesting speech and it was the first game with music, but it’s pretty pathetic by today’s standards. I mean I don’t like hearing it anymore. I had an idiot sound guy [Bill Parod] ^[16] who had no taste. He called rock and roll “hero music.”

And I played in a bunch of bands. I’ve been a guitar player since I was 13, and we got pretty far. We opened for Les Dudek ^[17] . Once, we opened up for the Doobie Brothers ^[18] .

But, I got tired of being poor, and that’s why I wandered into Atari. Although, we still had fans even though we were working, and one of them was with a bunch of people from Atari. The music, the music—I wrote the song, but it’s like, this guy, this sound guy goes, “That’s hero music.” You know, it was rock. His favorite kind of music was Javan drums. Like, who gives a shit? Who gives a shit about Javan drums? I mean, get out of here! He was like, an absolute obtuse weirdo. But, I would say he was a good person. Anyway, he wrote the music, and it took him a year, and it was bad—not wrote it, but translated it.

Mortal Kombat

Steve Ritchie: So let’s talk about more combat.

Tim Santens: Can you tell me a story about how you got involved with the game in the first place?

Steve Ritchie: Okay, I have done speech for many, many games way before Mortal Kombat. Lots of things. Just little stuff when people wanted something to be said, they were kind of bashful. I was not. I would go, how do you want me to say it? And I’d do what they asked me to do, you know. Different voices. I’m also the voice of Black Knight (1980).

Anyway, I had to do a couple of video games. The first one was Mortal Kombat. And Ed Boon ^[19] was a good friend. Actually, the first game he ever did was my game, F14 Tomcat (1987). It was the first commercial game he was ever involved in programming.

He was a great guy and very smart. We had a great time. He used to come over to my house and I had an Atari 1040ST computer. ^[20] He’d bring these three-and-a-half-inch floppies of all these games. He had one, I don’t remember, I think it was Executioner. The whole game was you had to cut this guy’s head off, and it would roll down the hill a little ways, and then this troll would come out and kick the head.

Creating the Mortal Kombat Name

 

“They had ‘Combat’ on the whiteboard, and I added the word ‘Mortal’… I added the K. No reason, it just looked cool.”

 

I think that was a pretty heavy influence on Ed because, you know, he wanted to make Mortal Kombat, but he didn’t know it was going to be Mortal Kombat. They had Combat on the whiteboard, and I added the word “Mortal,” and I don’t think they ever understood that that’s an old saying.

You know what I mean? When two people are locked in mortal combat, one’s gonna die, okay? And I added the K. I did nothing else on the game. No other programming or anything else except that and the speech. I was coached.

Tim Santens: What was the logic behind the K though?

No reason. I mean, it just looked cool. More a combat with a K.

Steve Ritchie: Anyway, they said we want you to be a character called Shao Kahn. He’s Asian and kind of whispery, like “Mileena, Wins.” It’s very hard for me to do that now.

There was a great soundman there named Dan Fortin, and he is still with Ed Boon. And they are still making Mortal Kombat games, I’m sure you know. That’s been his whole career. Anyway, Dan Fortin coached me, and there were a few ad-lib things that I did, but mostly I stuck to the script. And my voice was lowered in pitch.

Like, I can still do, you know, pretty low stuff like, “Run home to mother, maggot.” “Finish Him.” You know, it’s like, it was hard to have energy, you have to be whispering. So we were in the studio and, I don’t know, I enjoyed it. I did Mortal Kombat 2 and 3, but not after that. Ed Boon didn’t like me anymore. I’m not sure why.

He didn’t ask me to do anymore.

Tim Santens: I think Mortal Kombat is interesting because at the time, it became the center of a lot of controversy, and due to the violent nature of the games, there were even congressional hearings. The line that you just mentioned, “Finish Him,” was the prelude to some of the most violent scenes that were pointed out by Congress in these hearings. What was that like to be in the middle of all of that controversy?

Steve Ritchie: It had no effect on me. I mean, I was sorry that it was happening to them, but it didn’t stop them. He didn’t stop anybody. I know not everybody liked that, but it certainly was unique.

And I have to say, it was a great seller for sure. Yeah, it was pretty hard. You know, when you have public demand like that, I mean, some people will complain.

 

“I would never make a pinball machine like that now because I don’t want anybody not playing my game for any reason. And that includes kids.”

 

I would never make a pinball machine like that now because, well, they can get away with it because they have history. I wouldn’t try it because I don’t want anybody not playing my game for any reason. And that includes kids.

I’ll say run home to mother, maggot, and a few other insult things, but there’s no heads being cut off in my games.

Tim Santens: For sure. I think the last game you contributed to was, 2005’s Mortal Kombat. Shaolin Monks. Was that the last Mortal Kombat one you participated in?

Steve Ritchie: No. No. I only did two and three. That’s somebody else.

People like my voice, apparently, but Ed Boon never wanted me back, and that was okay with me. I have a career here.

Working with Intellectual Property

Tim Santens: Can you talk about working with big intellectual property, like Star Wars and Spider-Man? What’s it like working with these companies who are very protective of their IP?

Steve Ritchie: We’re talking a wide range of stuff. With Superman, there were no restrictions whatsoever. They didn’t really care. I suppose if we wrote curse words on the inserts or something, we might have gotten in trouble. But there was nothing about that.

I’m trying to remember the next licensed game I got. You know, when I was there, when I first started working at Pinball [for Atari], they didn’t care about licenses. Bally did. And they made good money on them, but then their games were kind of not that cool.

Terminator 2 (T2)

Steve Ritchie: Terminator 2 was a great license. Incredible. Three of us—it was Dwight Sullivan and Greg Freres. Dwight Sullivan ^[21] was a programmer. Greg Ferraris. No, not Greg Ferraris. ^[22] Another guy, the artist Doug. Doug Watson. ^[23] We were invited to Lightstorm Studios, and this is mind-blowing.

We spent three hours with Jim Cameron. He was totally into games.

I don’t know if you know this, but he lived in his car when he wrote the first Terminator movie. He had nothing until that movie hit. And T2, great story. We got it and it was just an outstanding license where they sent us the terminator arm in a glass tube.

We got that for a couple of weeks. Then we had the chip part and Chrome skulls. Anyway, we got dailies of everything they filmed. That’s never going to happen again with dailies. We watched Arnold Schwarzenegger riding on the top of this upper part of the L.A. drainage system, and there are cables and everything, and this standing guy is riding the bike, but the bike’s being carried by cables down the bottom. It’s an incredible scene. It was a great license.

They gave us as much as they could. Terminator 2 Judgment Day Pinball was in theaters on the 4th of July, the day they opened. All across the United States. I had one year to make the game. I had a great team though. Lots of good people. We got music, likeness, and whatever we wanted. We couldn’t do footage though because it was Dot Matrix display only.

T2 was supposed to be the first game with this dot matrix, you know. We had no display before. We were spelling out things alphanumerically in these little eight-segment displays. And that was a whole world. I wanted that bad, but again, somebody said, well, “Gilligan’s Island isn’t looking that good, so we’d like to use the dot matrix display in that game first.” It’s no big deal. Anyway, it was a great license.

Star Trek

Steve Ritchie: I’m trying to think of the next licenses. Okay. Star Trek.

For Star Trek we went down to Los Angeles to Paramount Studios. You walk in and they give you a lecture on how you’re not allowed to talk to any stars unless they talk to you. So, we’re walking through, and we see Kelsey Grammer. And he goes, hi guys! So we got to talk to him, he was cool. And then after that, we watched one of the last episodes of Cheers being filmed.

And then finally, we start to meet guys like Michael Okuda ^[25] , the guy that’s sort of in charge. Anyway, we sat down with these three ladies who were from licensing.

We’re talking, and we’re thinking, we’re getting excited because we got to see sets from Deep Space Nine, which was scheduled to be made. And just, you know, we went to the bridge and the only thing we couldn’t do was sit in the chairs. You walk behind the bridge and you realize, wow, this is made of plywood and they got lights with bulbs and spinning wheels back here and they’re motorized.

Kind of fakey, but I mean, you know, you don’t think about that when you’re watching the show. So we go eat lunch, and guess who sits right behind me? Patrick Stewart. And his pipes are so awesome. I mean, even now, but back then, I mean, he just had this magic in his voice, just awesome.

I couldn’t say hi. I couldn’t do anything. I didn’t even turn around and look at him until he walked out. But, Kirstie Alley was across the way and I smiled at her and she smiled back.

So these three women are talking about what our limitations are. The third thing they say is, “You know, we don’t want any phaser firing or photon torpedoes.”

What? And I go, “You have to be kidding. That’s not real, is it?” And she said, “Yes, it’s real. You can’t do that.” And I said, “I don’t see how that could be. Everybody on this team knows the prime directive. And the captain would never fire on anyone unless he was provoked.” I didn’t want to make a namby-pamby game.

“I can’t do this if you’re gonna hang with this.” And they said, “That’s the rule.” So, we walked out. We went back to Chicago and a couple weeks later, Roger Schrupp, who was in charge of licensing, calls up and says, “How can we salvage this?” So, we went back out.

It turns out those three ladies were fighting for the top position. They moved all of them out of licensing and there was one lady named Susie Dominic, and she said, “Make the game the way you want, within the Star Trek realm.” So we did, and it was a great relationship from then on, it was awesome. It’ll never happen again where you get the whole crew participating, all of them.

It was amazing, including Q, okay? All the voices are there—Patrick Stewart, Brent Spiner, Jonathan Frakes. Basically, all the characters. So that was fun as hell, and it was a great game. It was the last five-digit run of any pinball machine.

Nothing’s gotten into the five digits since then.

I really have to run.

Tim Santens: Well, I appreciate you taking the time out of your day to talk to me. Thank you very much.

Steve Ritchie: You’re welcome, man. I try to help everybody I can. Good talking to you, Tim. I wish you the best.

Tim Santens: Thank you.