Steven S. Ritchie (born 1950) is an acclaimed pinball and video game designer. He has been called "The Master of Flow" by pinball aficionados due to the emphasis in his designs on ball speed, loops, and the like.
After serving a stint in Vietnam and Alaska in the United States Coast Guard from 1968-1972, Ritchie joined Atari and first worked on the assembly line as an electro-mechanical technician. Two years later, he was promoted to work at the...
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Steven S. Ritchie (born 1950) is an acclaimed pinball and video game designer. He has been called "The Master of Flow" by pinball aficionados due to the emphasis in his designs on ball speed, loops, and the like.
After serving a stint in Vietnam and Alaska in the United States Coast Guard from 1968-1972, Ritchie joined Atari and first worked on the assembly line as an electro-mechanical technician. 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 Superman-pinball based on the Superman comic book, but in the final stages of production of the table, he received an offer from Williams Electronics, a major pinball company, that Ritchie couldn't refuse.
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 the first pinball game to feature bright...
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