Mad Scientists: Is This the Year Spooky Makes the Jump?

Benton, Wisconsin is hard to get to. It feels like no matter what direction you’re driving from, you’re taking a bunch of twisty little two-lane highways named after astronauts you’ve never heard of. Butch Terlevson, Astronaut? Sure! There are cows and cute lil’ downtowns and then all of a sudden, you take a left and there’s a giant compound outside of Benton – the Spooky compound. 

Spooky Pinball started as a quirky lil’ business in the Benton Business Incubator, but now owns a good half dozen or so buildings in the surrounding business park. After the drive, It’s wild to drive up and see a ton of out-of-state plates parked alongside the main building. How’d they find this place? It turns out they didn’t, Spooky found THEM. 

I’m not going to go into the whole history of Spooky Pinball, for that, you need to watch the (surprisingly compelling) Spooky documentary THAT IS AVAILABLE FOR FREE ON VIMEO. It’s worth it just for the mini-feature on Ben Heck’s Bill Paxton machine at 13:00. Seriously, just go watch that for an hour. We’ll wait. 

Watch the Spooky Doc

Cut to: 10 Years Later

A LOT has changed in a decade. Bug, that cute lil’ 8th grader from the documentary? Yeah, he’s old enough to grow facial hair and run the company now. From design to overseeing production to heading the marketing department, Bug and Spooky Luke are THE faces of Spooky. That hasn’t come without some flack.

Their first release as “the next-gen” team, 2021’s Halloween Pinball, was released to mixed reviews. Famously, you’ll remember that I was always the Spooky apologist on Pinball Party when Cale from Electric Bat would voice his frustration over Halloween, and he’s not alone.  When I mentioned that I was writing this article, I had several operators ask me if I could interrogate Spooky about servos or board problems or whatever – real concerns with games that they’d had trouble with on location and wanted reassurance that it wouldn’t continue in the new games.

First off, if you’re expecting a stoner guy like me to talk about servos and whosits and sound authoritative, well, that’s just opening me up for all kinds of criticism. I don’t know jack SQUAT (Chris Farley Voice). If I DON’T address those issues, then I’m seen as soft on Spooky and *GASP* I could be seen as a shill. Truly, a damned if we do, damned if we don’t scenario. So instead of all that, let’s just talk about what I saw. 

What I saw was a young-ass team that was hungry for success and dedicated to making their next pinball machine better than their last. I saw good vibes at a workplace where the workers are paid a good wage and are proud of what they do. I saw real frickin’ metal being cut with like lasers and crap! Most importantly I saw NEW GAMES ON THE LINE. That’s right, they’re already pumping out Looney Tunes and Texas Chainsaw Massacres for public consumption. That alone puts them ahead of 90% of pinball companies.  So how did Spooky get here? How have they become a mainstay in pinball? Well, they don’t cheap out when it comes to licensing for one. 

Spooky’s emphasis on licensing  

What was buried in the hubbub around Halloween’s release was, love it or hate it, the artwork on that game is phenomenal. From the backglass to the cab art, it’s a stunningly beautiful machine, which feels weird to say about a theme with a masked serial killer. Partly that’s because of Spooky’s history. Founder, Charlie, was a printer by nature, which helped him develop the famous “butter cab” technique that makes Spooky art stand apart. 

So what about the rest of it? The screen? Yeah, it plays clips from the movie. Loomis? Yeah, he’s in there, both in the art and callouts, and acting weird. That’s because SPOOKY PAYS FOR LICENSING. Every single one of their games has come loaded with assets. 

That’s not an accident, in fact, it’s one of the big points of emphasis when I sit down in the Spooky breakroom with Bug and Spooky Luke to do an interview. Their work with Adult Swim on the Rick and Morty pin led to a great relationship that opened up opportunities for them to work with Warner Brothers.

As I walk into the Spooky Breakroom, I notice something special. On the counter, someone has a personal-size deep dish pizza. Just casually sitting there for the taking like one of those pies that hobos grab from window sills in old cartoons. Color me interested, Spooky. 

Dreams of the Big Leagues

The game selection in the breakroom is a little insight into Spooky’s competition: in order, sit Stern’s Venom, JJP’s Godfather, and Pinball Brother’s Alien. Like I said, they’ve expanded from one building to five. It’s clear that they’re not the lil’ upstart anymore. Spooky plays with the big guys now, and with that increased popularity comes increased scrutiny and expectations. Spooky definitely has hardcore fans, but they also have a fair amount of criticism leveled at them. Sure, pinball forums aren’t always the best gauge of sanity, but it hasn’t always been unwarranted. 

But While Spooky might not have made every move perfectly, it’s hard to argue that each game hasn’t been better than the one before. Scooby Doo is a legit hit, and still isn’t done. As we walk the floor it is in the midst of getting a big secret code update. Scooby coder, Dylan, casually tests it out alongside his guard dog, Vega. 

Bug and Spooky Luke X Nudge: An Interview

I sat down with Spooky Luke and Bug to get a sense of how THEY see the company. What is it like growing up in pinball, dealing with the media, and, well, developing a successful company when your average age of folks in the C-Suite is like 25. That’s barely old enough to rent a car! And yet, it does feel like these folks are on the verge of something big. It was exciting to talk to them amidst the launch of two potentially huge games. Plus, there was that pizza from earlier I was thinking about.

Nudge: So wait, how old are you guys?

Spooky Luke: I’m 28.

Bug: I’m 21. 

Nudge: Jesus. I’m 38. (I realize later I’m actually 39. Woof.)

Spooky Luke: Wow, that’s old. We were just making fun of my brother for turning 30. 

Nudge: So how long have y’all been working for Spooky?

Bug: Well, I came up on the manufacturing side since pre-halloween. Luke was the first full-time employee at Spooky Pinball. He was assembling AMH playfields and wiring them and putting cabinets together. You know, very quickly over the course of the next few years he ended up running the production line. 

Nudge: So when did you start caring about pinball?

Bug: Pinball is literally in some of my first memories. We had a firepower 2 in the basement, and there’s a picture of me when I was probably less than 2 being held up and trying to play it. 

Spooky Luke: For me, I actually assembled my first pinball machine before I ever played one. I played it after I got done assembling it, which was kind of a cool moment for me too, because when I got done, it was like a journey. I was coming right out of high school and just thrown into that - figuring it out with Charlie and everything. 

Nudge: You’re not like these other noobs who just PLAY a game first

Bug: (laughing) Yeah, Luke was like, ‘I’m gonna build it first!’

SL: My first game of pinball I ever played in my life was when I dropped my first America’s Most Haunted Playfield into the cabinet and fired it up after I had it assembled and wired. 

Nudge: So how did you know you did it right?

SL: Well, it was a funny moment. I’m a perfectionist, so I’m trying to follow everything to a T. I’m going to assemble this PERFECTLY the first time, and when I put in the machine and plug it in, this thing’s going to work because I did everything right. 

Well, I dropped my first playfield into my wired cabinet, I hit the power switch – and absolutely nothing happened. So I knew it isn’t working. I was so frustrated. I was getting ready to throw stuff. And you know, Chuck was there the whole time telling me, ‘No, no, no, it’s not gonna work the first try, you know, we’ll work it out.’ and I’m just like no, I did it perfect (laughs). And from there I just started learning. First I was a production worker, but I was always looking over everyone’s shoulder. Like, how are we purchasing stuff? How are we doing this? How are we designing this game? How are we drawing this? How –

Bug: – He’s a nosy gentleman. 

Nudge: I mean in general it seems like the spirit of Spooky is pretty nerdy. And for me that means intellectually curious and, you know, what I usually tell people about nerds is that they’re able to care about their hobbies and interests as much as ‘normal’ folks care about people. I used to be like this with the TV show Lost.

Bug: Ben Heck was designing a Lost pinball when I first met him. 

Nudge: Dude, don’t tell me that. I need it. So let’s change gears. You’ve had some criticism leveled on your games. Some of it maybe justified and some of it unjustified – I’ve seen plenty of Stern games that have shipped broken) What do you have to say about that?

SL: Pinball definitely breaks. And there’s definitely been things that we’ve done over the years with being a new company where we’ve had some issues that sucked, but, you know, we’ve also tried to take the right route back from that every time. 

Nudge: Totally. What was the learning curve like for that kind of stuff? Let’s say starting with Halloween, because that’s when you guys were growing into that role. 

SL: One of the biggest things with Halloween was it was a huge transitionary period for us in general because of sales numbers. We went from 750 to 1750 in terms of units. And with that, you have to juggle a lot of things at once because now all those customers who put that investment into you… Well, you have to get your production numbers to where you’re getting stuff done in a timely manner. Nobody likes a timeline where you’re waiting three years for a game. 

And then at the same time, we were dealing with COVID stuff, which we were able to mitigate like 99% of – which was crazy. I mean, there were full on tears here at times.

Nudge: Yeah, like that’s your first time in charge and COVID drops. It’s like have fun. 

SL: Yeah, every time. We get the biggest platform and all of a sudden something gets dropped on our heads. And it’s just like, great, be careful what you wish for. And actually I think people don’t see how hard we DO work to do the best job. We actually understand where (our customers) are coming from and what they need from us. 

So transitioning into those numbers was awesome, but also terrifying because we put things in the game that haven’t been done before or are fully custom – like the apron locks on Scooby Doo. We know that those are the things that really draw people to our games. 

Nudge: Sure

SL: But then you have issues that might pop up that wouldn’t pop up in other games. For example, having three upper playfields on Halloween, with the top one being so high, you’re getting air balls you wouldn’t normally get in other machines. 

Bug: There’s a reason so many companies do such similar layouts and mechanics and everything. They know it’s going to work and they’re maybe afraid of breaking it. That’s very understandable from their standpoint.

SL: Our customers want to see that crazy outside the box stuff, but every time we do that there are risks involved because it doesn’t have long-term testing. There are certain styles of ramps and shots that have been used in pinball for 30 years so you know it’s going to be ok, but when you step outside of that anything can happen. No matter how much testing you do, nothing equals putting out a thousand units into the world.  

Nudge: Is it weird being so close? Like you guys probably know everything about each other. 

Bug: Oh yeah, there’s no barriers between us. There’s no separation from work and home between us in the slightest manner. 

Nudge: I could tell just from walking the floor. It felt like friends instead of coworkers. 

SL: Definitely. Our welding department? That’s my best friend in the world. We have my brother here –

Nudge: Are they all from Benton?

SL: Not at all. Actually probably 50 percent of our workforce is driving a good 35 to 40 minutes. They’re coming in from Illinois because the first like hour or so south of here, there’s just no industry. No jobs at all. 

Nudge: One thing people say is that it’s hard for Spooky because they don’t have a way to pull from a trained workforce in Chicago the way the other manufacturers do. What do you say to that? 

Bug: We honestly don’t have trouble with that. 

SL: The difference is that we don’t hire temporary workers and then build games for a bit and then fire everybody. We have full-time employees that work year round. They get benefits. 

Nudge: (laughing) Boy that sucks, you should try the other way!

SL: (laughs) We like it this way, but it is something we have to deal with because with our production numbers we need to make sure that when we launch games we’re spreading that work out over a year for consistency. We can’t just build a whole bunch of games and fire everyone off. We want to keep our people taken care of. 

Nudge: Who creates the production schedule for Spooky? 

SL: I guess we all share in that. I probably took care of that for the first five plus years for Chuck. I was just throwing myself into everything, running around telling everyone what to do all the time (laughs).

Bug: (laughs) Yeah, you really took to that.

SL: But then AJ came on and he started helping me a lot. 

Bug: I graduated high school and came on during Rick and Morty. You were in the midst of having AJ get really comfortable with running the production line. I still never forget the time I got done making my three games that week or whatever and you looked at me and were like, ‘OK good, now go through everybody else’s.’ And I was like, oh shit’s getting real! By the time Halloween and Ultraman came out, you, me, and AJ pretty much had everything decided.  

Nudge: Is that similar to programming? 

SL: I always tell our coders they’re lucky because they only have to make something work one time. If it’s Dylan and he gets the Scooby Code written just right and it works – well, it’s good and he’s done. He doesn’t have to revisit it. Once I make something work, I then have to make it repeatable 1500 times by anyone.

Bug: There’s an ongoing joke where if I go in and Luke’s like ‘What? I made this and it works!’ and I’m like, Yeah, you can make it but that doesn’t mean I can train 40 other people how to make that. So Luke gets us up and goes on the production line. He and I will literally sit down in every single department and go through with them on how to build a game. That’s sort of what we’re going through right now with Looney Tunes and TCM. The parts are coming in, we’re getting everything together, You saw the cabinets are being put together. 

So you’ll see probably 30 cabs sitting there. TCM, Looney Tunes, Scooby Doo – we’re still working on those. And then basically we’ll start populating the playfields one step at a time, then playtest to make sure it works. We kind of take it slow now and make sure everything’s coming together the way we want it. There’s no point in just rushing something out there that’s going to have problems for people. 

Nudge: So what was it like forming a relationship with Warner Bros? They knew you guys were legit? How does that conversation start with people who aren’t in the pinball industry? 

Bug: Well, with Warner Brothers it was kind of a cheat code because we were working with Adult Swim on Rick and Morty when Warner Brothers bought Adult Swim specifically for Rick and Morty. It was the biggest cartoon on the planet. So we already had a working relationship with Adult Swim. Plus, Warner Brothers was already familiar with pinball. I mean, they’d done the Wizard of Oz (for JJP) and The Hobbit (also for JJP). So it wasn’t a foreign concept to them when we showed up. So we slapped Scooby Doo and Looney Tunes on the same contract.

Nudge: So that’s what you’re looking for, to bundle IPs together? Like we don’t have to get specific, but if you’re dealing with Warner Brothers, you’re looking at all the assets they have to see what would make the most sense. 

Bug: Yeah, absolutely. I mean we talk to more licensors than just Warner Brothers at this point. Texas Chainsaw was its own thing. Halloween was its own thing. Ultraman was its own thing. And I still have meetings with other studios and try to see what’s out there. 

Nudge: Your sister (Morgan) also works for the company. What’s her role?

Bug: She handles everything. She does the website, she helps with every customer that calls in, where they need to go, who they need to talk to and everything. She handles the sales, distributors, etc. She does part supply chain management, handles the shipping of games… she’s like an accountant and a shipping agent in one.

Nudge: Is she your older sister or younger? I will say that I was always suspicious of families who got along because I’m one of four kids and we used to fight nonstop. You guys seem like you really get along. 

Bug: Older, and it seems that way? Good! We also have to remind ourselves not to be mean to each other. But I think partly we’re able to get along BECAUSE we are really mean to each other. I make the joke that if her and I both showed up 30 minutes late to work, she would get out of the car and be like, ‘WHY THE HELL ARE YOU LATE?’

Nudge: Can you talk a bit about your relationship with Jack Danger? You’ve joked in the past that he’s your step-dad or dad before. 

Bug: So even though Jack and us are technically on opposite teams now (Jack works for Stern as a designer), I don’t have more support from anyone in the industry. He’s always been incredibly good to us and gives us a tremendous amount of support. I probably got more hype texts from Jack Danger about TCM and Looney Tunes than almost anyone else. 

Sometimes people might think there’s bad blood between us, I’ve been at shows and people will ask, ‘Do you guys get along’? Of course we do! I wish that just, in general, the industry got along better! 

Nudge: It’s funny you say that, after our article about the pinball media and the TWIPYs…

Bug: I read that!

SL: You guys are getting wild. The manufacturers are getting along and getting together at shows and we’re like, ‘what the hell are these people doing?’ (laughs)

Nudge: I think that’s as good of a place to end it as any. Thanks y’all!

Bug: Thank YOU!