Part 2.
TED: Here's the big question...when are we gonna’ do the third Elvira machine....EATME?
DENNIS: (laughter) Yeah! Who's idea was that?
TED: That was mine. Elvira And The Monster Entourage (EATME) I actually even bought the web address.
DENNIS: That's the greatest name! I don't know, on the Pinside Poll there were about 175 Very Positive responses to a new Elvira game and one of the reasons I did that poll was to try and help convince a manufacturer that another Elvira license would be a good idea. I even called her agent myself to see what's involved in getting a license to maybe make a boutique version of Elvira, but that won't happen because the agent wants a guarantee of x number of games and upfront money.
TED: Wow...that's a little crazy by today's standards. I heard that Cassandra had a conversation with Jersey Jack about a possible pinball game, but he didn't call her back...
DENNIS: I heard Jack just thought the license was too expensive.
TED: But you would be interested in getting involved with a small production run?
DENNIS: Yes, I would like to do Elvira–Zombie Hunter...
TED: Hey...what happened to Elvira and the Monster Entourage??
DENNIS: (laughter) Ok, that will be my second choice...but Greg and I would love to do the machine. If 175 people on Pinside said they'd buy it, then how many other hundreds would there be that would like to have it as well?
TED: Predator is a boutique game...what do you think of that?
DENNIS: You know, I didn't get a chance to play it very much because even though they were in a booth right next to us at the last Expo, we were just too busy with the Whoa Nellie stuff. People like to talk with the guy who designed the games that they love, so I lost my voice by the end of the show. I never get to look around the show because I'm talkin' all day long.
TED: I thought the game was pretty cool and the price point is right at around $4,750. They're making 250.
DENNIS: I don't know how they're going to do it for that.
TED: We didn't talk much about this Whoa Nellie game. What's the story about that?
DENNIS: Well, that's me and Greg and a few people we have working with us. Greg and I met again after eight or 10 years because he was doing video games for Midway. We reconnected at a Pinball Show in Seattle. We were both invited out there to speak and Greg learned there were some people doing custom games, so he said, we're game designers, we should be able to do that. And so, on the plane trip home we just wrote down hundreds of ideas and themes that we'd have fun doing. When we got back home, I was thinking, one of the ideas we wrote down was old fruit crate labels because we both have an appreciation for the beauty and the colorfulness of those old labels. I wanted to do something like that and combine it with Roy Parker 1950's art... what with I call, Happy People all over the backglass. If you look at any of Roy Parker's work, it's just a bunch of people all over doin' crazy stuff. So I sketch up this cabinet that looks like a stack of old crates and I said, Greg, what if we combine fruit crate art and 50's pin up art and we'll call it Sweet Juicy Melons...and he loved the idea, so that's how that got started. We eventually changed it to Big Juicy Melons.
TED: How many games are you going to make?
DENNIS: Well, I said, Greg, I have a game we can start with. We didn't know any programmers that were available to work with us. It was an old EM game, so we thought it would be easy for us, we'll just take all the parts off, sand down the playfield, get it screened and we're done. Then, when we were workin' on it, we thought, wait a minute, we're game designers, we should change this playfield around. So we started with this old Continental Cafe machine and I re-drew the playfield and changed all the components around, but we were still stuck with the rules of the electromechanical game. We built one electromechanical version and then we met Kerry Imming from Minnesota who designed a solid state system for us. So, we eventually found four Continental Cafe games because we needed those games for all of our parts. We had to stick with the original rules still. We did do some enhanced rules on the solid state games. We built three solid state games and one electromechanical. They all sold, two have been delivered and we're waiting on final payment on the last one. The cool thing that will make this all worthwhile is that, while Greg and I figured we made about a buck an hour for this game... but Stern is thinking seriously about manufacturing it.
TED: Whoa!
DENNIS: Yeah! Whoa Nellie! And they allowed us to say that at the last Expo. They want to keep it as true to the original as possible meaning they'll still want to go with the fruit crate looking cabinet.
TED: I think this is a great, fun idea! To be honest, I'm getting burnt out on all the Super Hero games.
DENNIS: Oh, I know...we approached Whoa Nellie as an art piece, it wasn't a game with super deep rules and the thing is, people love playing this game because it's just simple fun. If you score 2,000, you're doin' great!
TED: If Stern makes it, it would only be the solid state version?
DENNIS: Yes, solid state and we'll try to keep the cabinet looking as much like my original cabinet as possible. It will have a coin door and automatic ball lift as the original Continental Cafe had a manual ball lift and a lot of people would walk up to the game, push start and not know what to do because they're not familiar with manual ball lifts from the 50's.
TED: The game sounds really cool, love the theme, who wouldn't, and I hope Stern picks it up. So, what happened with Jersey Jack? I heard you were working on the Wizard of Oz machine.
DENNIS: I was working as an employee for Jersey Jack and the idea was that I would help out with Wizard of Oz, which I did. I built the first little model house and I built a version of the Witch mechanism of how I thought it might work and contributed some other ideas to the playfield, just some refinements of things that I had learned over the years. We just didn't come to an agreement on a theme for the next game.
TED: So, what are you doing now?
DENNIS: One of our buyers of the Whoa Nellie game wants another custom game, so I'm working on that for him. " I'm working with Gerry Stellenberg from Multimorphic and his P3 platform. It contains a huge , interactive LCD in the center of the p/f. I've created an original theme that I'm very excited about. It's a humorous sci-fi theme that features, of course, a hot space babe and a couple of her crazy companions. And, for the first time in pinball, the art is all original 3-D art. The artist we have is very talented and his work is fantastic. That's all I can say now, everything will be revealed at the TPF in March."
TED: Well, thanks for the chat and making Elvira & the Party Monsters and Scared Stiff, some of MY favorite, fun games.
DENNIS: Just simple, fun games, we knew they weren't serious, deep games when we did em'. That's more like Greg and my personalities...just simple and fun...actually my games are far more interesting than I am!
TED: (laughter) Now THERE'S a quote to go out on!
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