Lyman F. Sheats Jr.

Lyman F. Sheats Jr. (March 24, 1966 – January 19, 2022) was an American pinball champion, game designer and coin-operated game operating system software engineer who worked for Bally, Williams, and Stern Pinball, among other companies.

Biography Lyman Sheats first began playing pinball in 1986 while studying computer science at Northeastern University. He bought his first pinball machine, The Addams Family, in 1992. While studying, he worked for the Mitre Corporation in Massachusetts, later moving to Virginia to work for them full time. the tournament presented by the Professional and Amateur Pinball Association (after finishing fourth the year prior).

Sheats began his career in 1993 at Data East where he worked on the game and dot matrix display programming for The Last Action Hero (1993), The Who's Tommy Pinball Wizard (1994), Royal Rumble (WWF) (1994), Guns N' Roses (1994), and Maverick (1994). In 1995, following Sega pinball's acquisition of Data East Pinball, he was recruited by Williams/Bally (now WMS Industries) to program their pinball machines.

Sheats's first game for Bally/Midway was Attack From Mars which he programmed with designer Brian Eddy. He joined the team mid-development and re-wrote the code to understand it better. Sheats and Eddy again teamed up on Medieval Madness produced by Williams in 1997.

He was involved in Williams's Pinball 2000 project through October 1999 when Williams closed its pinball division to concentrate on other gaming machines such as slot machines and video games. After a few years of programming video games at Midway Games, Sheats rejoined the pinball arena when Gary Stern hired him in 2003 at the newly renamed Stern Pinball. Shortly after being hired by Stern, Sheats teamed up with fellow ex-Williams employee Steve Ritchie to work on a series of blockbuster games such as Spider-Man (2007) and AC/DC (2012, 2018). and Batman '66 (2016) games that were produced by Stern Pinball.

In 2021, Sheats, along with Josh Sharpe, partnered with Chicago Gaming Company to develop new software for the remake of Cactus Canyon. Some of Sheats' code was completed posthumously and a release was announced in 2025.

Personal life Sheats was a coffee enthusiast and roasted his own blend of beans at home.