Steven S. Ritchie is an acclaimed pinball and video game designer. He has been called "The Master of Flow" by pinball aficionados due to how his designs emphasized ball speed, loops, and the like. Pinball is a type of coin-operated arcade game where a player attempts to score points by manipulating one or more metal balls on a playfield inside a glass case. ...

Career

The Atari Years

After serving a stint in the United States Coast Guard in 1972, Ritchie joined Atari and first worked on an assembly line. Two years later, he was promoted to work at their fledgling pinball division, where he worked on his first game, Airborne Avenger. Ritchie earned the license to make a pinball based on the Superman comic book, but in the final stages of production of the table, he received a phone call from Williams Electronics, saying that they wanted to hire him. For the concept Atari (当たり) in the board game of Go, see Atari (go term). ... Superman, aka the Man of Steel, is a fictional character and superhero who first appeared in Action Comics #1 in 1938, and is one of the most popular and well-known comic book icons of all-time. ... Williams is a long-standing electronic gaming and amusement company based in Chicago, Illinois. ...

The Williams Years

Ritchie moved to Chicago, Illinois, the home of Williams' headquarters. His first game for the company, Flash (released in 1979), was noted for its revolutionary figure-8 design and one of the first pinball games to feature flashing lights. It would go on to be his best-selling pinball game, having sold 19,505 units. 1980 would be the year for Ritchie, when he designed Firepower (the first electronic pinball to feature multi-ball), and eight months later, he designed Black Knight, which was noted for having the first two-level playfield and the "Magna-Save" feature (in which magnets help prevent outlane drains).

After 1981's Hyperball, Ritchie took a break from designing pinball games to work on a short-lived video games venture. After that, he returned to pinball with 1986's High Speed, which was based on a true story about him being chased by the police in his Porsche. The production price was so high at the time, that Williams officials had nicknamed it "High Cost". Despite this, the game sold 17,080 units, and was one the titles (along with Pin*Bot) that helped revitalized the pinball market. After that, he released F-14 Tomcat in 1987, and in 1989, he released the sequel to 1980's Black Knight, Black Knight 2000, which was acclaimed for having perhaps one of the best musical soundtracks ever for a pinball game (composed by himself, Brian Schmidt, and Dan Forden) It was also one of the first games to feature a "Wizard Mode", called "The King's Ransom". Dan Forden is a lead programmer on the Mortal Kombat series of games. ...

After his mild setback with 1990's Rollergames (based on the TV show of the same name; he later admitted in an interview that it was not his best game), Ritchie designed Terminator 2: Judgment Day, based on a design from his Firepower pinball game, and features the voice and likeness of Arnold Schwarzenegger. T2 was the first game by Williams to use a dot-matrix display (although Bally's Gilligan's Island beat it to the market, because T2 had a longer production schedule). After T2, he designed The Getaway: High Speed II in 1992, a sequel to 1986's High Speed. In 1993, Ritchie released a widebody game, Star Trek: The Next Generation, which many pinball fans consider to be Ritchie's best game. For the game, Ritchie enlisted the entire cast of TNG, including Patrick Stewart, Michael Dorn, and Jonathan Frakes to reprise their roles. The game would sell 11,728 units. After he was finished with 1995's No Fear: Dangerous Sports, Ritchie left Williams, feeling that the pinball industry has declined. (help· info) (born July 30, 1947) is an Austrian-American bodybuilder, Golden Globe award winning actor, and Republican politician, currently serving as the 38th Governor of California. ... Bally (with its distinctive Rolling Ball logo) Bally (originally the Bally Manufacturing Corporation) is an American corporation. ... Patrick Stewart Patrick Stewart, OBE, (born July 13, 1940 in Mirfield, Yorkshire, England) is an English film, television, and stage actor. ... Michael Dorn as Worf on Star Trek: The Next Generation Michael Dorn (born December 9, 1952) is an American actor best known for his role as the Klingon Worf in multiple Star Trek shows and movies. ... Jonathan Frakes as William Riker on Star Trek: The Next Generation Jonathan Frakes (born August 19, 1952 in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania) is an American actor and director best known for his portrayal of Commander William Riker in the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation. ...

Outside of pinball

Ritchie returned to Atari Games in 1996. There, he would design the racing game, California Speed, to moderate success. Atari Games was an American producer of arcade games, and originally part of Atari Inc. ...

He is also known to be an avid fan of motocross racing.

He is also a voice actor for Williams and Midway's video games. He is best known for playing the voice of Shao Kahn in the Mortal Kombat series. Midway Games (NYSE: MWY) is a video game publisher known for such game series as Mortal Kombat, NBA Jam, and Spy Hunter. ... Shao Kahn Shao Kahn is a boss from the Mortal Kombat fighting game series. ... Mortal Kombat has multiple meanings. ...

Ritchie Returns: The Stern Years

Ritchie came out of retirement when he formed Steve Ritchie Productions in 2002, and he made a deal with Stern Pinball to distribute his games. For his first game for Stern, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, he once again enlisted Arnold Schwarzenegger to lend his voice and likeness to the game, and also brought back the same team who worked with him on the T2 pinball, including software programmer Dwight Sullivan and music composer Chris Granner. After T3, Ritchie released Elvis, which was released in time for Elvis Presley's 50th anniversary of his first song that he recorded in his career. Stern is the name of two different but related arcade gaming companies. ... Christopher P. Granner is a freelance music composer, and is best known for composing music for video games and pinball games. ... Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977), also known as The King of Rock n Roll was an American singer, song producer and actor. ...

Currently, Ritchie is developing his third game, World Poker Tour, which will be the first game to use Stern's new hardware, which is the successor to their current Whitestar platform.

Steve Ritchie's games

Atari

• Airborne Avenger (1977)
• Superman (1979)

Williams

• Flash (1979)
• Stellar Wars (1979)
• Firepower (1980)
• Black Knight (1980)
• Hyperball (1981)
• High Speed (1986)
• F-14 Tomcat (1987)
• Black Knight 2000 (1989)
• Rollergames (1990)
• Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
• The Getaway: High Speed II (1992)
• Star Trek: The Next Generation (1993)
• No Fear: Dangerous Sports (1995)

Stern

• Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003)
• Elvis (2004)
• World Poker Tour (2006?)

Trivia

• Mark Ritchie (who designed Indiana Jones: The Pinball Adventure, Taxi, and Fish Tales) is Steve's younger brother. He is currently working at Incredible Technologies.