North Attleboro, MA
Ok so I was making a Batman 66 re-themed pinball machine see my original thread here:
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/batman-66-retheme-project-from-diner-to-caped-crusader
When I choose that theme I thought what are the chances that Stern, JJP, Heighway, or Spooky would choose this 50 year old TV show for a new game. When I initially told people about my re-theme some people thought it was a a great idea others seemed perplexed that I would pick such an old, campy, goofy, theme. So I was surprised that a major pinball manufacturer would pick it for a theme. I heard rumors of Stern doing a vault edition of the Batman the Dark Knight but I assumed it would be similar to the Spiderman vault game and switch form the movie version of Batman to a more timeless comic book version. I saw the new Batman 66 game at at Expo and though Stern did a great job with the theme integration and I love the artist they choose. I like it enough I decided to buy one so now I need another theme for my re-theme project.
The original reason I started the re-theme project wasn't just because I wanted a Batman 66 game. It was to try another aspect of the pinball hobby by re-theming a game, making a new art package, putting together a new sound package, and adding cool interactive game play mods to a game. I'm still dong this but I'll just use another theme instead of Batman 66.
My new theme needs to meet the following requirements, be a theme I enjoy, is funny enough to have lots of good call outs and insulting phrases when you screw up, and it also has to have great music for the soundtrack. Batman met all those requirements easily but what else could replace it?
Ash vs The Evil Dead easily met all those requirements for me. The show is even more over the top with it's humor and gore campiness in season 2 than it was in season 1. It's definitely more comedy than horror but when it wants to scary its does a good job at that to. The one part I wasn't sure of initially was the music. However, as I watched more of it I saw it used a lot of great 70's and 80's era rock music. Great stuff from, amboy dukes, deep purple, alice cooper, ac/dc, Styx, motorhead, whitesnake, etc.
The most important part of choosing a game to use as a donor game is that it has to have a great layout and rule set. I thought about creating my own layout and rules instead of using an existing game but I didn't feel confident enough to tackle that challenge. Maybe as a future project.
As I was going over the Diner Layout to see how I would adapt from Batman to Ash vs The Evil Dead, I realized that Diner is a great game for a re-theme. Diner doesn't have a very deep rule set but it's easy for beginners to figure out but still challenging enough for experienced players. The main objective of hitting the 6 drop targets to serve a customer is easily adaptable to almost any theme. In this case the 5 customers become members of Ash's team of deadite fighters. One of the jokes from the show is when they try and find a good name for their team and Pablo suggests "The Ghost Beaters". So the five customer will represent the five Ghost Beaters. To light/complete each one of the Ghost Beaters you need to kill the 6 deadites (the drop targets). Once the whole team is lit is when you can score the big jackpot.
The other main objective in Diner is to get into the coffee cup to "stir the cup". The last 3 episodes of the TV show all take place in one of the iconic set from the previous Evil Dead movies, the cabin. So the coffee cup is the perfect toy to represent the cabin. Instead of spelling D-I-N-E-R to enter the cup you spell C-A-B-I-N to enter the cabin and fight evil for more big points.
Here's my ideas for the other shots in the game. Its still a work in progress so there will probably be changes along the way. As with my other project I welcome all feedback, good or bad.
Newmarket, ON
