The Stern Years
After designing and selling a few redemption games, he formed Steve Ritchie Productions (SRP) in 2002, and returned to pinball design contracting 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 re-assembled 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 the 50th anniversary of Elvis Presley's first song recording. Ritchie's third game for Stern was World Poker Tour. World Poker Tour was the first game to use Stern's new hardware, S.A.M., which is the successor to their older Whitestar platform. He has recently revealed in an interview that he was forced by Gary Stern to design the game.
After completing 24, a pinball machine based on the TV series of the same name, Ritchie was laid off from Stern along with most of the company's other pinball designers. A March 3, 2011 press pelease from Stern reported that Steve had returned to Stern to design the next generation of pinball machines. His first game released after returning to Stern was AC/DC. In March 2012, Ritchie conducted a comprehensive audio interview with Music Life Radio about his life and career, with focus on the AC/DC pinball game.
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