I have been thinking a lot about the individual design tropes of pinball designers and thought it would be fun to rank and compare them. Everyone has a few mediocre games but some have stellar resumes.
EDIT: List revised after further consideration
1) Pat Lawlor
2) Steve Ritchie
3) Dennis Nordman
4) Barry Ousler
5) Python Angehlo/John Trudeau
6) Mark Ritchie
7) John Popadiuk
8) George Gomez
9) Brian Eddy (although he is credited with three of the best tables ever made, it's tough)
The last three were really hard. Everyone on this list is responsible for at least one pin in my top ten, so kudos. It's hard to rank the guys who's Game Designer credits are so few, especially when the machines they are credited for are so good. It's also hard to know who was responsible for what when some of these tables had a lot of fingers in the pie. Still, I feel confident about my top 4
Lawlor and Ritchie have distintly different approaches. Ritchie has a bit more flow and focuses on speed and the tables have a more focused design based around one main feature. You could argue that they feel more "pure." Lawlor likes his moving playfield toys and opening up new paths and more accumulative objectives. I think the slower, more methodical pace of his games end up making them more appealing to me at my current skill level. I think you can see the influence of both Lawlor and Ritchie in games like Attack from Mars. Popaduik seemed heavily influenced by Lawlor in general, which may be why I like his games as much as I do.
EDIT: List revised after further consideration
1) Pat Lawlor
2) Steve Ritchie
3) Dennis Nordman
4) Barry Ousler
5) Python Angehlo/John Trudeau
6) Mark Ritchie
7) John Popadiuk
8) George Gomez
9) Brian Eddy (although he is credited with three of the best tables ever made, it's tough)
The last three were really hard. Everyone on this list is responsible for at least one pin in my top ten, so kudos. It's hard to rank the guys who's Game Designer credits are so few, especially when the machines they are credited for are so good. It's also hard to know who was responsible for what when some of these tables had a lot of fingers in the pie. Still, I feel confident about my top 4
Lawlor and Ritchie have distintly different approaches. Ritchie has a bit more flow and focuses on speed and the tables have a more focused design based around one main feature. You could argue that they feel more "pure." Lawlor likes his moving playfield toys and opening up new paths and more accumulative objectives. I think the slower, more methodical pace of his games end up making them more appealing to me at my current skill level. I think you can see the influence of both Lawlor and Ritchie in games like Attack from Mars. Popaduik seemed heavily influenced by Lawlor in general, which may be why I like his games as much as I do.
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