Pinball Expo '25

[scottacus]

I took Cuphead to the Midwest Gaming Classic again this past year and met up with @bord and @jsm174 like I do most years.   The pin is a homebrew based on @Onevox Cuphead Pro vpx table.

Rob Berk who holds the world record for the largest Pinball Collection is the organizer of Pinball Expo in Chicago.  He  saw the machine and asked me to speak at this year's event about the making of Cuphead so I've put together a talk called "From Pixels to Pinball: The Cuphead Homebrew."   I'll be bringing Cuphead to Expo and speaking on Thursday at 0930, here's the schedule should anyone be interested.

 

 

[Cliffy]

Thats fantastic Scott, you deserve the spotlight! Rob's been asking me to come for 20 some years. Just too hard to get away but man I'd love to be in on your seminar. Make it a blast my friend!

[Onevox]

Fun stuff. With American Pinball’s announcement that they will not release Cuphead, this should get some serious interest.

[scottacus]

@Onevox that's interesting to hear!  I talked quite a bit with Ryan McQuaid at the MGC as his Sonic homebrew was next to mine.  His homebrew got him a job as a designer for American Pinball and I believe he  designed their Cuphead machine.

I know Ben Heck (Americas Most haunted, Rob Zombie, Texas Chainsaw, Evil Dead)  and Scott Danesi (TNA, Rick and Morty, Final Resistance, Portal) and I've talked them about game design.  The both of them think that just making a white wood is good enough and using vpx as a design tool is not needed.  When I was chatting with Ryan we also got talking about visual pinball and it was interesting to hear his take on the use of it in real pinball design.   He designs all of his pins in vpx first as a pre-whitewood and then makes the whitewood.  When the staff at American Pinball saw and played his whitewood for Barry O's BBQ they were blown away.  They told him that it played better than production pins that had gone through multiple whitewoods and he said that was because he designed it in vpx first!

When I made your Cuphead machine I KNEW it was going to play great because it had been fine tuned by you in vpx.  Thanks again for letting me build it in the real world!

[Dazz]

On 9/1/2025 at 9:25 AM, scottacus said:

@Onevox that's interesting to hear!  I talked quite a bit with Ryan McQuaid at the MGC as his Sonic homebrew was next to mine.  His homebrew got him a job as a designer for American Pinball and I believe he  designed their Cuphead machine.

I know Ben Heck (Americas Most haunted, Rob Zombie, Texas Chainsaw, Evil Dead)  and Scott Danesi (TNA, Rick and Morty, Final Resistance, Portal) and I've talked them about game design.  The both of them think that just making a white wood is good enough and using vpx as a design tool is not needed.  When I was chatting with Ryan we also got talking about visual pinball and it was interesting to hear his take on the use of it in real pinball design.   He designs all of his pins in vpx first as a pre-whitewood and then makes the whitewood.  When the staff at American Pinball saw and played his whitewood for Barry O's BBQ they were blown away.  They told him that it played better than production pins that had gone through multiple whitewoods and he said that was because he designed it in vpx first!

When I made your Cuphead machine I KNEW it was going to play great because it had been fine tuned by you in vpx.  Thanks again for letting me build it in the real world!

I know Jack Danger, from Stern, also has used VPX for development. He showed off some development and shot making on Uncanny X-Men in VPX.

[scottacus]

Here's the video of my presentation if anyone is interested.
 

 

[scottacus]

Another interview, I'm at 2 hr 57 min
 

 

[DGrimmReaper]

@scottacus great presentation!  Very informative and great to see how this turned into a real life table.

[JFR1]

Hey Scott! I am SO glad this is available to watch. I had held out hope until the last minute to be there in person and was so disappointed when I couldn't pull it off. 

Thanks so much for posting. And also for everything you've done to help this 'hobby' get to this unbelievable place. 

[makmak]

Congrats, nice presentation! Hopefully will 'help' some producers of real machines thinking about vpx in a different way and let 'us' use their designs for our universe, too...

[Carl_2000]

Wow such a great presentation! I love it a lot congrats