Nightmare Before Christmas Homebrew Pinball: Mark Incitti's Hand-Built Holiday Worlds
Nightmare Before Christmas Homebrew Pinball: Mark Incitti's Hand-Built Holiday Worlds
What do you do when the ramps you need don't exist yet? If you're Mark Incitti in 2013, you build them out of cardstock and duct tape, and you keep going.
Homebrew designer Mark Incitti opened our Homebrew Showcase at PINDEVCON 2026 inside Pinball Expo 2026 with his Nightmare Before Christmas pinball machine. It's a project that started back in 2013, and it still draws a crowd every time he brings it to a show. Isaiah from mpt3k took the flippers while Mark walked us and Manu through the build.
"I tried to incorporate everything from the movie," Mark says.
Why build The Nightmare Before Christmas as a pinball machine?
Mark picked the theme because he loves Tim Burton films, and this one is loaded with great scenes, great quotes, and ready-made ideas for modes.
Pinball itself came from his love of the mechanical and electrical mix. Video games keep you at arm's length. In pinball, as Mark puts it, "you're actually moving things around."
The games that inspired him were the classics of that era, like Twilight Zone. In fact, his cabinet is a widebody modeled after a Twilight Zone cabinet, and the playfield runs three flippers and a lot of similar moving parts to the Williams classic.
How do the modes work?
The game is built around three mode trees: holidays, characters, and Oogie Boogie battles.
Holidays: In the film, Jack wanders into the forest and finds doors to the other holiday worlds. Jack only goes through one, but Mark put all seven holidays into the game. A swirling whirlpool at the back of the playfield leads into the holiday worlds, and every holiday plays differently.
Easter mode: Every shot carries a mystery egg. Your job is to figure out which shot holds the most valuable egg, lock it in, and keep hitting it for around 7 million points.
Oogie Boogie battles: These run in order and follow the movie closely. You feed bugs to Oogie Boogie, capture Santa Claus, send Sally on her rescue, and face the dice game.
Bathtub multiball: You're hunting for Santa Claus so you can bring him back to Jack.
Ball paths that go everywhere
Variety was the thing Mark was happiest with. Either ramp can feed either flipper, or send the ball into the bathtub or the holiday worlds. When a mode calls for a hard shot, a kickback helper sets it up for you and then hands control back to the right flipper.
"I wanted things to go in every direction," Mark says.
How did Mark build ramps before homebrew had suppliers?
He made them by hand, starting with cardstock and duct tape. In 2013 there was no easy way for a homebrew builder to get ramps vacuum formed, and the wave of builder-focused manufacturers hadn't arrived yet.
Those paper ramps did the job at early shows. "It actually held up, and it inspired me more," Mark says.
He credits FAST Pinball as an early supporter of homebrew, and says the vacuum-formed replacement ramps made by the father of Aaron Davis from FAST helped spark his thinking.
Check out some of Mark Davis’ (Aaron’s Dad) awesome reproduction ramps on our site: Encore Pinball Category
The woodwork was new territory too. Mark had never done woodworking before, and he had no access to a CNC machine. He took a blank sheet of plywood and cut every hole by hand with a router. That first playfield is the one in the game today. For the art, he stripped the playfield, scanned it into Photoshop, and the artwork was built on top of the scan.
Start with real ramps: the Marco Homebrew Loot Crate
Mark's own advice for new builders is to grab a starter kit with spare ramps, lay them out, and figure out which shots you like. That's exactly what our Homebrew Loot Crate is for.
Every crate packs a rotating mix of at least 40 parts, including 3-4 plastic ramps and 2 metal ramps. You can put real track on the playfield on day one, instead of starting from cardstock.
The Loot Crate is our recommendation for builders who want a head start:
Shop the Homebrew Loot Crate · See what's inside a Loot Crate
What's his advice for new homebrew builders?
Don't be afraid, and don't do it alone. When Mark started, it was hard to even find other people building games. Now there are Discords and groups full of builders working through the same problems, and starter kits that give you electronics and a blank board to begin with.
His recipe is simple. Start with a sketch and an idea, study other games to find shots you love, and work those shots into your theme.
What's next for Mark?
He's modernizing a 1980s Spider-Man game into Spider-Man 67, with 67 modes. It's the project that pulled him back into programming. We had the pleasure of playing it at Pinball Expo 2026, and we look forward to playing both of his games at future shows!
Homebrew is making things happen.
Mark's Nightmare Before Christmas is a snapshot of homebrew before the boom: hand-routed wood, paper ramps, and a builder figuring it out as he went. It's also proof that you don't need a shop full of CNC machines to build something people line up to play. You need an idea and the stubbornness to keep at it.
Watch the full interview with Mark Incitti to see Nightmare Before Christmas in action, from the holiday worlds to Oogie Boogie's dice game.
"If you have an idea, just start sketching it and go for it," Mark says.
🧰 Pair our parts with Trident & FAST for the Full Homebrew Experience
Take your build to the next level by combining our parts or a Homebrew Loot Crate with:
This combo empowers you to wire, design, and code your machine from start to finish.