So a thing about Houdini is that like golf courses, there were traditionally few enough pinball course designers that they were all “in conversation” with each other, picking up and adapting/improving each others’ layout innovations

And into the ‘90s as dot matrix screens and digital sample audio got common they got to name-checking each other’s *thematic concepts* (as pinball got kinda hyperconcentrated)

And an interesting thing about Houdini I get it trying to place itself in The Tradition by riffing on some thematic concepts, while being pretty pattern-breaking mechanically

It’s kinda like Wizard of Oz, clearly someone stuffed too many decades’ worth of Pinball Ideas into a single table, but they’re good ideas and I hope they dribble out