He has been called "The Master of Flow" due to the emphasis in his designs on ball speed, loops, and long smooth shots.

Ritchie graduated high school early and joined the Coast Guard shortly before his eighteenth birthday.

[4] Ritchie joined Atari Inc. in 1974 and was employee number fifty[5] and first worked on the assembly line as an electro-mechanical technician.

Ritchie pioneered automated conversion of video-taped color images into objects in the video game system.

After that, he returned to pinball with 1986's High Speed, which was based on a true story about him being chased by the police in his Porsche 928.

Ritchie designed Terminator 2: Judgment Day, which featured the voice and likeness of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

For the game, Ritchie enlisted the entire cast of TNG, including Patrick Stewart, Michael Dorn, and Jonathan Frakes to reprise their roles.

Ritchie is also known to be an avid fan of PC games, motocross racing, and a dedicated dirt and street motorcyclist as well.

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.

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.

[10] Between 2011 and 2021, Ritchie designed Led Zeppelin, Black Knight Sword of Rage, Game of Thrones, and Star Trek.

[13] In 2023, Jersey Jack announced the release of their Elton John pinball machine, Ritchie's first design for the company.