# Ep 111: Pinball Mob War with Martín Gonzalez **Source:** LoserKid Pinball Podcast **Type:** podcast_episode **Published:** 2023-06-22 **Duration:** 78m 50s **Beat:** Pinball **URL:** https://zencastr.com/z/udKHPt9Z --- ## Analysis Hosts Josh Roop and Matt Scott Larson interview Martín Gonzalez from 99% Invisible podcast about his production of a Roger Sharpe pinball documentary episode. The conversation ranges across pinball history, game design philosophy (with references to designer Keith), location play versus home collectors, geographic disparities in machine availability across NYC, pricing trends in premium editions, and the production differences between dense narrative podcast formats and casual conversation-based shows. ### Key Claims - [MEDIUM] Foo Fighters machines are hitting locations in July — _Josh Roop opening remarks about upcoming Stern releases_ - [HIGH] Premium Edition pinball machines now cost around $9,500, up from $6,200 previously — _Direct pricing statement by Martín Gonzalez discussing cost inflation_ - [MEDIUM] Spirit of '77 (EM-era pinball) sold in 'crazy' numbers, likely higher than modern 'greatest-selling' claims — _Josh citing Roger Sharpe's perspective that older EMs outsold modern DMD machines_ - [HIGH] Lord of the Rings in NYC locations is in poor condition and barely playable — _Martín Gonzalez describing a specific machine he encountered in NYC_ - [HIGH] Modern pinball games (Avengers Infinity Quest, Bonds, Foo Fighters) are replacing older titles (Avengers) on location due to wear — _Martín Gonzalez observing location rotation patterns in NYC_ - [HIGH] 99% Invisible did a pinball episode 10 years ago featuring Roger Sharpe — _Martín Gonzalez explaining his podcast research discovery_ - [LOW] Jack Danger and Steve Ritchie are the same designer or share significant design credits across multiple machines — _Martín asking for clarification about designer credits; uncertainty evident in conversation_ - [HIGH] Medieval Madness originals are hoarded by collectors in NYC with minimal availability on location — _Martín Gonzalez describing location scarcity of the remake despite originals existing_ - [HIGH] Battery Park and Buttermilk are major pinball venues in NYC with South Slope having cheaper pricing (3-for-2 or 4-for-3) versus dollar-per-game standard — _Martín Gonzalez sharing personal location knowledge_ - [HIGH] Roger Sharpe 2026 documentary is being produced or released — _Martín referencing 'this Roger Sharpe movie coming out'_ ### Notable Quotes > "So there's like a whole history behind it. That's why it's 99% Invisible." > — **Martín Gonzalez** > _Core philosophy of 99% Invisible podcast applied to pinball subject matter_ > "There's two kinds of players, like people who like to just shoot around, have a nice time, check out all the objectives, and people who are like points." > — **Referenced discussion with designer Keith** > _Design insight distinguishing playstyle archetypes and player motivations_ > "It's pretty solidly a dollar a game in like a lot of parts of New York, which is a little annoying." > — **Martín Gonzalez** > _Economic barrier to location play in major urban markets_ > "I have a real soft spot for Batman 66. And there's like not a single one in EOS." > — **Martín Gonzalez** > _Rarity of premium-tier machines on location despite age (5-6 years)_ > "You almost need to have a reason to get up from your bar stool and go over to play it. If you see Godzilla, then you're like, Oh, okay." > — **Josh Roop** > _Theme licensing as driver of casual location play discovery_ > "It's like the greatest modern, like the greatest DMD because some of those EMs were selling like 50,000?" > — **Josh Roop (citing Roger Sharpe)** > _Historical context on EM-era production volumes vs. modern claims_ > "You'd put them on location, and they would just run the wheels off, and then they would sell it off to buy a new one." > — **Josh Roop** > _Historical location operator economics and machine lifecycle_ > "These screens like a lot of times I think there's a few like these Jersey Jacks or you know where you kind of are struggling to figure out how like what you're supposed to be doing." > — **Martín Gonzalez (discussing with designer Keith)** > _Critique of modern LCD/screen design clarity in Jersey Jack machines_ ### Entities | Name | Type | Context | |------|------|---------| | Josh Roop | person | Co-host of Loser Kid Pinball Podcast, collector, casual player | | Matt Scott Larson | person | Co-host of Loser Kid Pinball Podcast | | Martín Gonzalez | person | Producer/host at 99% Invisible podcast, working on Roger Sharpe documentary episode, music touring background, Brooklyn-based pinball enthusiast and location player | | Roger Sharpe | person | Legendary pinball historian, designer, and industry advocate; subject of 99% Invisible episode and upcoming 2026 documentary | | Keith | person | Pinball machine designer interviewed by 99% Invisible; expert on game design philosophy and mechanical/screen balance; referenced as 'GOAT' by community | | Jeremy Packer | person | Mentioned in context as artwork/design contributor (Zombie Yeti reference) | | Zach Sharpe | person | Connected to Flippin' Out Pinball retail operation (mentioned alongside Nicole Minney) | | 99% Invisible | organization | NPR-adjacent podcast network; well-funded, dense narrative format with 13-14 person editorial staff; produced Roger Sharpe pinball episode 10 years ago and new companion content | | Loser Kid Pinball Podcast | organization | YouTube/podcast show with Josh Roop and Matt Scott Larson; part of Sirius XM; casual conversation format | | Stern Pinball | company | Major manufacturer; Foo Fighters, Godzilla, Iron Maiden, Batman 66 titles referenced | | Jersey Jack Pinball | company | Premium boutique manufacturer; criticized for screen clarity issues in design | | Flippin' Out Pinball | organization | Retail pinball vendor with stock and custom order capabilities | | Godzilla | game | Stern title; best-selling pinball machine referenced; highest-scoring game in Roop's collection; Narwhal topper variant discussed | | Foo Fighters | game | Stern title arriving in locations in July; rock band licensed game | | Iron Maiden | game | Stern title; mentioned as current location standard; music-licensed game with vault editions still in circulation | | Lord of the Rings | game | Stern 2003 title; heavily worn, barely playable machine cited in NYC; over 20 years old; rarely maintained | | Batman 66 | game | Stern title; 5-6 years old; Premium Edition priced ~$700 higher than standard; no available units in NYC locations; highly desired by Martín Gonzalez | | Medieval Madness | game | Classic title; original versions hoarded by collectors; remake available on location; scarce in NYC | | Avengers Infinity Quest | game | Modern Stern title; being phased out from NYC locations; challenging gem completion mechanic | | Attack from Mars | game | Referenced as abundant on location; easy-to-learn entry game | | The Godfather | game | Deep, complex modern title referenced as difficult to master on limited location play | | Pinball Map | product | Location-finding tool used by players to scout machines and track venue inventory | | Electromagnetically | venue | Pinball museum in Providence, Rhode Island; maintains classic machines including Whodunit, older Gottlieb titles, Mars God of War, Volcano, Black Hole | | Silver Ball Chronicles | content | Podcast focused on pinball history; listened to by Martín Gonzalez for research | ### Topics - **Primary:** Roger Sharpe documentary and 99% Invisible episode production, Game design philosophy and designer intent (screen vs. lights, playstyle types), NYC location pinball ecosystem and machine availability disparities, Premium Edition pricing inflation and machine cost trends - **Secondary:** Location operator economics and machine lifecycle/replacement cycles, EM-era vs. DMD-era sales volumes and historical context, Home collector vs. location player divide and accessibility barriers - **Mentioned:** Podcast production formats and resource intensity trade-offs ### Sentiment **Positive** (0.72) — Generally enthusiastic and celebratory tone about pinball hobby, machine discovery, and designer craftsmanship. However, frustration emerges regarding NYC location scarcity, machine wear, pricing barriers, and screen design clarity in modern games. Nostalgic undertones when discussing EM-era games and classic titles no longer available on location. ### Signals - **[product_launch]** Foo Fighters Stern machines entering location rotation in July 2024 (confidence: medium) — Josh Roop: 'So it sounds like Foo Fighters are getting lined up to start hitting the line here in July' - **[market_signal]** Premium Edition pinball machines have increased from ~$6,200 to ~$9,500 (53% increase) (confidence: high) — Martín Gonzalez: 'Premium Edition game was like 6200 or something. Yeah, so they're like 7000 for a game now. It's like, okay, you want a Premium Edition game? It's 9500.' - **[venue_signal]** NYC locations replacing worn Avengers Infinity Quest machines with newer titles (Bonds, Foo Fighters); Batman 66 has zero availability despite being only 5-6 years old (confidence: high) — Martín Gonzalez: 'there's already like there's a lot fewer Avengers than there were like a few months ago. They all got replaced with Bonds and Foo Fighters' and 'There's like not a single one in EOS. And it's, you know what, five years, six years old' - **[community_signal]** Medieval Madness original machines are being hoarded by home collectors, creating scarcity on location despite remake availability (confidence: high) — Martín Gonzalez: 'people are hoarding their Medieval Madness and there's like one or two in there or similar interjection New York' - **[content_signal]** 99% Invisible produced Roger Sharpe pinball episode 10 years ago; new episode airing with expanded interview content and fresh audio mixing (confidence: high) — Martín Gonzalez: 'I typed into 99 PI pinball, and it popped right up. I was like, they did it 10 years ago' and discussion of rerun with new segments and fresh mix - **[historical_signal]** EM-era machines (e.g., Spirit of '77) sold in significantly higher volumes (estimated 50,000+ units) than modern DMD machines, contradicting narrative of Addams Family as 'greatest-selling' (confidence: medium) — Josh Roop citing Roger Sharpe: 'It's like the greatest modern, like the greatest DMD because some of those EMs were selling like 50,000?' - **[design_innovation]** 1990s-era games used physical playfield lights and named objectives (elevators, ramps) to create thematic atmosphere and player guidance; modern screen-based designs sometimes create confusion about objectives (confidence: medium) — Discussion comparing Whodunit's named elevator mechanic to modern ramp-focused designs; Martín Gonzalez noting Jersey Jack machines have unclear screen-based guidance - **[product_concern]** Older machines on NYC location (Dark Knight, Lord of the Rings, Batman 66) exist in poor, barely-functional condition due to wear or complete absence from rotation (confidence: high) — Martín Gonzalez: 'There's one Lord of the Rings, and it's just beat to hell. Like it barely plays' and Batman 66 'not a single one in EOS' - **[venue_signal]** NYC location pricing varies: standard $1/play at Battery Park/Buttermilk areas; South Slope offers 3-for-2 or 4-for-3 deals; Queens has premium machines with better condition (confidence: high) — Martín Gonzalez describing location pricing and venue economics across NYC neighborhoods - **[design_philosophy]** Designer Keith Elwin identifies two core player types: (1) explorers who enjoy discovering objectives and aesthetics; (2) scorechasers focused on maximizing points. Modern complex rule sets favor scorechasers; older games favor explorers. (confidence: medium) — Martín Gonzalez discussing Keith's design philosophy on player motivation and noting personal resonance with explorer archetype - **[regulatory_signal]** Roger Sharpe documentary/film is coming in 2026; rights and production status unclear from this discussion (confidence: medium) — Martín Gonzalez: 'when I saw this Roger Sharpe movie coming out, I was like, oh, this is a perfect excuse' - **[sentiment_shift]** Community sentiment shows growing nostalgia for 1990s thematic games and EM-era machines; frustration with modern screen-heavy designs and rapid location replacement cycles (confidence: high) — Extended discussion of missing Whodunit, Dark Knight, Doctor Who availability; appreciation for older Gottlieb System 80 machines at museums; critique of modern LCD clarity --- ## Transcript Thanks for tuning in to episode 111. This is the Loser Kid Pinball Podcast. I am Josh Roop. I need to remember to announce myself and my co-captain with me, as always, Scott Larson. And Scott, it's funny that you got that message that like I need to, it's funny because I've never thought about introducing myself. Right. It didn't tell recently until like, yeah, I don't know, about 20 episodes ago. I'm like, I probably should say who my name is too. Well, I just want all the glory. It's fine. It's fine. That's fine. I just want to see if everyone knows who I am. So it sounds like Foo Fighters are getting lined up to start hitting the line here in July. There's still some Iron Maiden pros. I picked one up, as you can see there in the corner if you're watching us on YouTube. An amazing game. Scott, where do you get all your games from? Flipping Out Pinball. Absolutely. absolutely and guess what is coming um soon i just got the shipping notice it's my godzilla topper i was gonna say venom so yeah yeah no no so i got the narwhal topper coming but i've heard that it looks a lot better in person so even though i've been a little frustrated with uh their topper efforts i am excited to see this one because the i am sucker for light shows and i'm sucker for the immersion experience. So I still have, I got my Rush Topper too. So I got, it's, it's two for toppers. So I got my Rush Topper and I got my Godzilla Topper and got it from Zach and Nicole Minnie at Flip N Out Pinball. Nice. You got, you got an order from Flip N Out Pinball. They've got plenty of stock and they're willing to, to, to work with you on what your needs are and whatnot. They're great to work with. Absolutely. I've never had any issues with them. So let's move on to our guest our guest contacted me i want to say it's been a couple months ago and at first i didn't know if it was real or not because you get fake emails every once in a while and they're like you know the prince of saudi arabia wants to give you money and so wait wait that's a fake we we had someone reach out wanting to discuss pinball because they do the 99 invisible podcast we got talking they left a phone number and i figured if they were brave enough to leave a phone number i better call it so i met martin gonzalez and we started kicking it off and talking a lot and he he was a fan of the l1 episodes we'd done and he was doing a bit of research for the 99 invisible podcast and it sounds like you have a ton of behind the scenes extra info that you weren't able to you know you have only like 30 minutes to do this episode and so we wanted you to come on and come hang out with us and talk about this yeah even half that even because uh it was half and half we re-ran an older episode and then i did some new stuff and uh it was about roger sharp and so when i first started working the show you know i found this story about roger sharp and i was like oh this would be an awesome story this would be so cool and then i did what i always do when i have a story idea which is i type in 99 pi and then the story thing so i typed in 99 pi pinball and it popped right up i was like they did it 10 years ago of course like it's like one of the oldest running like podcasts from when you know people were first trying to get into podcasts and so what i did is the first half i used the roger sharp movie as an excuse to be like okay we'll rerun this old one and i uh i mix the show every week so i gave it a fresh mix put some new music on there just spruced it up a little and then second half uh i did uh you know i interviewed keith i talked about my turn and stuff but yeah i only had i think like 12 minutes for my segment so i really had to pack a lot in there and i knew i wanted to talk to keith but i i just like couldn't find an email address you know like i think by design i'm sure but uh i was like emailing whatever stern generic emails i could find and so then i was like well these guys had them on they'll be able to get me in touch and you guys put me in touch and we had this great interview. But it was like we talked for an hour and I pulled maybe like five or six clips of him. I was like, oh, there's so much good stuff I can't put in. But yeah, I really appreciated the help. And I played a little clip of you guys also saying like, oh, he's the goat. Like I put a montage of people saying he's the goat because I tried to get him to say, yeah, he won't, he won't, he would not. So I was like, all right, I got to pull some other people calling him the goat. We, we actually have a shirt on our, so silver ball swag. If you want to get loser kid stuff, we actually made a funny shirt that has Keith as the, as a goat, a cartoon goat wearing, wearing this hat that I'm wearing right now, the old hat. And it's, it's just, you know, just for fun, but it's hilarious. Yeah. And then Josh and I ended up just getting on this free ranging conversation because, you know, it's like I used to be a music guy before I was doing podcasts. I was like touring around with bands, like doing sound. I talked about this a lot on the episode, but like I'd use like the I think it was called Pin Finder or like is that separate from Pinball Map? I don't know. There was like 10 years ago there was like a pretty bare bones. I think it was called Pin Finder. And there was a pin map. I know for sure. Like Pinball Map, too. Yeah. Yeah. So I use Pinball Map now, and I can't remember if it's the same map or something different. But I was touring with Blitz and Trapper, this Portland band, when I was living there. And one of the guitar players is super into pinball. It's just like a huge thing in Portland. So we'd go Antonio Cruz around every city, try and like find one. And you'd be like, oh, Louisville, Kentucky has like a lot of cool machines because they have like all this bootlegging and gambling and stuff. So like, oh, what a great hotspot. You know, so we just Antonio Cruz around and try and like play. and then yes they're doing podcasts just before the pandemic i was working on rick rubin's show before malcolm gladwell and i've been working in nyanpi for like a year and a half but yeah before that like up until then i was a music guy so josh and i were like vibing about music and like just talking about that like his uh touring days too yeah which was very short but it was still fun do you guys do warp tour i forget what you told me or the warp tour or we we did get to play a couple dates but it wasn't a full tour it was uh but we i actually was the was the dad of the group so you know i was on the booking the shows and doing all that stuff and so it kind of got i don't know you can only be a dad for so long because it's like okay children i'm done oh yeah that was my job too whenever i tour there were a few times where I would be like, I'm like 27, but this band is 23 or 24. And I'm like wrangling people who are partying or I just like got so exhausting. But I do a lot of touring with older bands. Like I tour with Calexico a lot who are all like older guys. And it's like much chiller. Blitz and Trapper, those guys were older, you know, so it's it was a mixture. But yeah, being a tour dad, it's like so exhausting. And, you know, well, that's weird, because like you said, you did 10 years ago. And that's about when I did. It was about 10, 15 years ago. and it's like it almost feels like a different world from back then especially when you move on with life and whatnot oh yeah it just it's it's weird just yeah yeah it's like i used to drive for like six hours a day and now i just like click on pro tools all day which is like fun too and like i get to research cool stuff and do cool stories but yeah and you know and we were talking about podcast stuff and like podcasting i think is a similar place to music where like you're trying to get the like the money there's a lot of money but it's in weird places is and maybe you can chip off a little piece of it but like it's there's like such a divide um so i feel really lucky like we're part of series xm and we're like well funded we've been around forever so there's like you know it's it's like stable and nice but like oh my god my old job just laid off like 20 of their work for there's like layoffs so podcasting is this in this really chaotic space and um you know i the stuff i do is like dense research sound design whatever and but what i listen to a lot is more like what you guys are doing we're just like a couple people chatting having a nice time like and it's like a lot easier i think the whole thing is moving more in that direction because it's like we spend months on a story and it's resource intensive and so there's only so many shows that can do that like you know every story we do goes through like five or six rounds of edits of everyone on staff weighing in and there's like 13 or 14 of us and like you know it's it's very elaborate and this is like oh you guys can just call each other up and call someone like i'm jealous of how easy this is what's funny is like so i went to puerto rico in january and we were doing this like food tour and we got to revolve around through the couples that were there on the tour we met a gentleman that worked for npr and he was actually working for cnn when the towers got hit oh my god members doing that and then he also came to utah and covered the Emily Smart story, which if you're not familiar with that, go ahead and I guess Google it. It was, it was pretty intense for us in Utah at that time. It was kind of like a shocker. We went from like a, you know, everyone left their doors unlocked to like, this could actually happen because it was in our backyard. It was a child kidnapping. Anywho, but he was talking about, he works now for the very first, it's like PBS. It's the channel actually Sesame Street started out on before it went to PBS, but they figured out during the pandemic that this format is a lot cheaper to run. People actually want to watch it. And they were finding out like they're spending all this money on cameras and all this like high definition equipment. And you got us doing this off of our, like my, this is my cell phone and my laptop. And they were realizing, oh, we, we don't need to be spending all this money on equipment and still we can get a good product that people are going to watch. And so COVID really shifted the mindset of how production should happen as well. And to be fair, like the equipment that we have now is crazy good compared to what it was even like five, 10 years ago. Yes, you're right. I'm talking on a newer microphone and a newer computer, but this kind of stuff would be crazy expensive 20 years ago. Well, I'm here in Stitcher's studios, which are quite nice. It's a real luxury to be able to record in this nice booth and sound good. I engineer recordings for other podcasts, and then also I mix ours, and it just sounds incredible in here. But yeah, there's room for everything. I listen to a lot of movie. I'm a big movie guy, so I listen to a lot of movie podcasts and stuff. After all day of mixing these dense, intense stories that are very rich and deep, then I'm like, I just want to hear a couple people talk about movies afterwards. so there's room for everything definitely I admire what you guys do it's so labor intensive if you haven't checked out 99% Invisible Podcast it is very well produced, you guys do an awesome job with it and it hooked me listening to when I called you because I was like I don't know, I hadn't even heard of 99% I'm not going to lie I listened to the most recent episode which was on about two people saws those things you like oh yeah you don't see ever anymore yeah it's like a looney tunes thing too but it was interesting because like listening this episode you would have never known that they were getting stolen off the walls of cracker barrels because there's places where they can't use chainsaws but they can still use these saws to chop down trees and so no one was making them anymore the best place you could do was steal them from cracker barrel wow so that's our whole thing is we try and find stuff where it's like hey there's this thing that you haven't thought about but there actually is like a whole history behind it that's why it's 99 visible so you know i've been here for like a year and a half but i've been listening to the show for like years and years like really influential to me and so it's cool because then i bring my own perspective and i really like you know yeah old films have these like really cool distinctive sound effects so i get to like put cool sound effects on it so like if you listen to the spinball episode there's like a lot of cool you know i'll go find i was like let me find the era of pinball machine that he would have been that roger sharp would have been playing let me use that specific one and then our composer swan i sent her these pinball sounds and she like cut them up made some samples and she gave it kind of like a little t-rex jeepster kind of like fun little garagey groove and then like use the pinball sounds as like synth and percussion on it and like it's just so we have like so much fun doing it it's so cool but yeah so when i saw this uh roger sharp movies coming out i was like oh this is a perfect excuse to like get super nerdy and like i've always been super into pinball but then this kind of like uncorked a different level uh you know of like going and playing a lot and like talking to people but i'm still like such a novice and I don't really keep up on stuff that much. It's really just like, you know, I listen to you guys. I listen to Silverball Chronicles, which is like more history stuff, but like, I don't know. I don't like go on Pinside and on these long threads or something. It's like I don't really keep too much up on it. Okay, I hop on the research. Yeah, sure. I'm going to get you guys in trouble. There's going to be a thread about how rude this all is. Bring it on. Yeah, it's like I'll kind of find out that something's coming because it like shows up on location. No, I get you. But yeah, so I got to get deep in stuff and then I, you know, hadn't even like heard of Keith until like, you know, a few months ago because I was just researching like who designers were and everything. And I heard him on your guys podcast and he was talking about that like pop bumper in the right on the right and like being control versus being out of control. I was like, I just like love this. Like I got to get the I got to talk to this guy about this. and when i when we're doing edits everyone just like was like we love this guy he rolls i was like yeah he's awesome and he actually really helped me figure something like you know just like talking to him he talked about how there's two kinds of players like people who like to just shoot around have a nice time check out all the objectives and people who are like points and i was like oh that's why i like i'm not that great in tournaments and stuff because i just want to like vibe and shoot like i'm i don't want to like figure out how to get the highest score possible it's like not really how i'm set up i don't know how how do you guys fit into that like category okay i'm i'm like you where i i like just kind of wandering through the game okay hey i'll i'll start this mode or i'm doing this thing and i couldn't care less about points i mean it's kind of fun when you're in your initials but for the most part i i just like exploring the game yeah but you know it's hard to do that in a tournament setting but i don't know josh i don't even know how you approach games uh depends on the day i love both ways i do love to explore a game and see all the little nooks and crannies like on indiana jones where you're going through the mine cart video mode if you if you go a certain route it will actually pop you out to the wb and he does a little song and dance for you it's cool to find little easter eggs like that i love exploring the games but there's just something about blowing up a game and just be like yeah i dropped five billion on godzilla this weekend well yeah you got i see one in your background you can do that i i think i don't know i have to look at my insider but i think my best score is like 500 million or something like that it's like i'm not i'm not i haven't had a billion or like you have an infinity quest back there too i don't think i've gotten more than one gem in a game ever and i've played it dozens of times it's actually still that's that game is surprisingly challenging it still is fun but to to actually complete the modes and you know there's there's two easies two middle and one hard and so a lot of times i i end up getting about 85 through in that right but that's just that that's just how i roll on that yeah but it's super fun it's so deep like but yeah you know i i can only ever play these games on location like i live in brooklyn i live in an apartment like i can't like i can't get a home game and so you know i have to like go play them and you only get so much time and you only have so many dollars you know it's are sat up so you know unless if you're kate martin you know who has works at buttermilk bar there in brooklyn and can play the pinball machines when there's some downtime yeah exactly i i really love buttermilk there's like a whole area around there the whole like south part of park slope where you can just bar hop around and go try stuff and like you know i i go up to williamsburg a lot too but i don't know how prices are in other places but it's pretty solidly a dollar a game in like a lot of parts of new york which is a little annoying but like you know down in south slope it's more typically you know you get three for two or or four for three or something yeah so i go practice downwards like a little cheaper you're like oh i i can i can get a lot more bang for my buck down practicing over here but uh yeah no new york is like weirdly kind of tough in a lot of ways especially now i've noticed it's like whatever the last three or four stern games are is like what's everywhere and which makes sense but the older games are kind of like falling off you know and you there's one lord of the rings and it's like just beat to hell like it barely plays you know okay well it's 20 it's over 20 years oh no totally yeah it's like if i was an operator i would be like all right let's get some boob writers in here or something you know but uh yeah i i definitely miss like playing some of that older stuff that's like kind of what i came up on and there's this really great place in uh you know i grew up in providence rhode island and my parents still live there uh and there's a great pinball museum there that i absolutely love called electromagnetic and i go there all the time so i was just there a week or two ago and i just have like a soft spot for some of these older ones that they have like you know they have whodunit is like whodunit i love whodunit but you never see i there was a place in you don't see it yeah there was a place in portland across the street from a bar i worked at and i was just gonna play whodunit all the time and like you know i want to see them take some of these old games and do remakes like they did with beatles you know my dream is if they do like a colombo reskin of whodunit that's like my green table yes and you know the ball save could be like just one more thing so like whoever owns the ip you're listening make my dreams come true yeah you know well and there's there's something about those older games too someone pointed out to me especially with the 90s games they were attempting instead of like shoot the ramp and shoot the captive ball it was like especially with whodunit elevator you know yeah go for the elevator and like it was all places the places had names in the game and it it created more atmosphere to that game and more that world under glass that we don see much anymore but it does become a little confusing it easier when you going from game to game to game and it like shoot the ramps Oh I know what the ramps are You know it a little hard sometimes you like what the elevator but at least in that game it like smack dab right in the middle it like well i think i think i can figure that out and like you know they also have a lot of like you know they go all the way back to like you know 40s or 50s they have like cool older stuff but the last time i was there i got really into some like gotley i don't know the difference between the system 80s but like they're and there's like a's and b's and whatever i'm not that deep on it you know i I listen to silver ball Chronicles, but a lot of it went over my head. But like, um, they have this block that has a Mars God of war, volcano and black hole, all three together. And I like spent a long time on those. And I was like, these are so fun. And they're not like, you know, the theme is just like a fun, like it, it doesn't have to be like IP. It's just like, no, no, no space. Like I, I love those, those ones. I, I will say it's, we've talked about this on the show before though, is, That is really cool for the 70s, 80s, and maybe even the 90s. It's almost a killer for a game to not have some sort of recognizable theme now. You can get away with it, but it's a lot harder than the 70s through 90s, which you would get just casual people going through and playing arcades. but you almost need to have a reason to get up from your, from your, your bar stool and go over to play it. If you see Godzilla, then you're like, Oh, okay. I know what Godzilla is. If you're like giant radioactive lizard, you're probably not going to go over to it. Yeah. Well, but it's also like, look at like one of the highest selling pinball machines of all time was spirit of 76. And it was, that's a completely different era though. I know. That's what I'm saying is you could get away with that in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. Even like Roger Sharpe said, it's kind of funny that we say that Adam's family is the greatest selling pinball machine of all time. He's like, no, no. It's like the greatest modern, like the greatest DMD because some of those EMs were selling- Like 50,000? Oh, yeah. They're the coolest numbers. They said that Spirit of 77 probably is the highest growth. I can't remember how many that one has. I bet Pinsight has something on it. It was a crazy amount. But getting back to what you were saying, though, is a lot of locations, they tend toward having the newer games. That's actually how it always used to be because games used to be beat to shreds. And so you'd put them on location and they would just run the wheels off and then they would sell it off to buy a new one because everything was so grooved or just worn down. yeah and so and even modern games have that similar vibe where you know someone can route it and then say okay well time to move on and get that get a newer version so i don't have as much oh man yeah there's already the there's a lot fewer avengers than there were like a few they all got replaced with bonds and foo fighters because they're probably just all beat up and like i have a real soft spot for batman 66 and there's like not a single one in eos and it's you know what five years six years old or something like it's not very old but it's just like they get these things get cycled out so fast oh yeah well and batman 66 is kind of a higher price machine as well i think well it was yeah well it was yeah it was like five years crazy 700 more than what the standard ones are but i mean that was still when games were you know a premium game was like 6200 or something yeah so they're like 7000 for a game now it's like okay you want a premium game it's 95 yeah i have a sub spot because i used to play i again a lot of this is just based around like what was across the street from where i worked or went to college you know so they had a dark night near another place i worked in portland and i just that's like i've logged so many hours on that and when i was just in providence there's a place that has like a completely everything new dark night it was like the best dark night i've played in like 10 years and i was like yes because you know yeah those those things are all like the anytime i've seen one in the wild it's like barely functioning they're shredded so this is totally rebuilt and like i was like oh i'm in heaven right now so you know but yeah there's a lot of games i would love to play but there's not a single one you know like the closest doctor who is in like asbury park you know and i love doctor who and jackpot like you know you can't find them anywhere so it's like that's my that's my hope is some of these you know you you start to see them coming back a little bit there's like uh there's a future spa somewhere there's weirdly like lots of i actually have one of those oh really it's a very interesting game it's a vibe man there's uh there's like weirdly a lot of getaway high speed too i've like really been they made tons of yeah they're everywhere which is rad like i don't know it's for some reason maybe it's just like easy upkeep but uh i play that one a lot okay by the way that's the same designer who did star wars we were talking about that earlier maybe offline oh yeah yeah and you were wondering who designed the stern star wars it's the same guy who did high speed oh nice yeah there's i don't really know the distinctions of designers but everyone's a mile ago like oh yeah jack bot has the same kind of the mechanism as the time expander oh of course is like the same guy like yeah i i i'm like just starting to learn about all that stuff but like you guys are so much i was excited to come on and talk about some of the stuff because i'm like oh you can explain yes to me i don't know are they anything but yeah you know it's but it's it is weird it's like there's what is or isn't there like there's a lot of monster bashes around it's which is kind of right especially the remake is around but like i think we were talking earlier about how like people are hoarding their medieval madness and there's like one or two in new york and they kind of like they're originals and they just need a lot of upkeep so it's really like catch as catch can there's there's a kind of abundant attack from mars but weirdly like medieval madness it's a little stingy so yeah no it's a little weird in new york i kind of like use pinball map and keep an eye out while i'm traveling and i'm like i'm a real annoying and vigilant pinball map person because i'm like going to seek out machines it's like oh i'll go to queens just because they have like a better tales of arabian nights than the one at buttermilk no offense sorry like you know like yeah like they have like a pristine one up in queens but then if i go all the way there and it's like broken i'm so annoyed so i'm like vigilant about on pinball map like commenting i'm so pedantic about it because like i don't know yeah that's happened to me where i've been like i'm gonna travel for a game and it barely works so um you know i'm pretty pretty active on there and i spent a lot of time just cruising around like you know i'm doing some traveling this fall and i was like scoping out i'm like all right i'm gonna be in portland like you know who has a uh you know lord of the rings in good condition or something i can go play because we'll sign for it you know i kind of miss those days i remember those days when i first got into pinball and it was like you find out about what it was new to you right and you'd be like oh this is just this is amazing and so you had to do travel and and you know you finally get there and then it was just yeah it just wasn't yeah it was it's so fun learning those games and and i think that's why we get so excited by new games is because we want that same sensation when we first got the hobby of enjoying the the whodunits and the the congos and and games like Yeah, it's really, it's tough if you can only ever play on location. Like, I just played Godfather for the first time, and, you know, I played for 20 or 30 minutes. I was like, I'm not entirely certain what's going on here yet. Like, when they're that deep, it's that trade-off we were talking about, about, like, what works at home versus what works on location. And so those older games are fun because you can kind of get the hang of it pretty quickly. You play Attack from Mars for a little bit, you know what you're doing. You know what you're trying to go for. well they also had the lights on the play field that pretty much i like if you hit that shot it moved up one light and so you had a visual representation of how far are you in the game i mean modern games are they have a similar thing but it's just not as in your face and actually this is something i talked to keith about because we're like theoretically a design podcast or like that's our focus and so i was asking a lot of questions about design and i was like yeah man these screens like a lot of times i think there's a few like these jersey jacks or you know where you kind of are struggling to figure out how like what you're supposed to be doing in that moment um and so he was like yeah you know we're trying to balance lights and screen because the the lights and the call outs really are like you don't have to take your eyes off the play field but it's it's kind of like you know no offense to like tesla owners but you know i tried out a tesla and it was like everything's on this screen and you have to look it's a different way and i spent years like driving a tour van where it's like oh i can reach over and adjust the air and the music and whatever without looking so it's that kind of like divided attention thing so i think that's why i've been vibing on these older games lately because they just like had to communicate with lights and sound they they couldn't lean as heavily on the screen and then you know now in the modern era you can just put whatever on there and and playing clips and stuff and so sometimes you're playing bond or something you're like do i need to watch this clip or do i need to like focus on the game like um always focus i had that with halloween have you guys played halloween yeah we're like that's what i was just thinking too you're like oh i'm looking this cool michael myers and then it like drops the ball where you're not looking you're like range yeah yeah there's just a little light it doesn't it just like flashes really discreetly you're like that's what i was thinking too because i was playing halloween and it's like you're watching the scene also it's like why is my train cracking up yeah you can't do it yeah halloween messes with my brain because it's spontaneous you know the the ball just apparates yeah you know it just it just appears right above the flipper and if you're not paying attention you're yeah oh it's so fun though but yeah you got you gotta stay on it but i i really like the way that they do the locks is so cool and the upper play but like i really like it but it kind of i think it it pretty much disappeared from new york but there's um the uh is it ultraman the kind of the kaiju reskin i go play that the version yeah that one's super fun too so i i go play that sometimes but um yeah it's just really like catch a sketch can you know whatever i whatever i can find and so it it's so different from like when i was living in portland where you're like oh every bar has been by like i kind of miss that aspect of it but there's a few good spots like i I went to Sunshine Laundry, which just reopened, but it seems like they're having some kind of legal permitting issues. They can only have, I think, four or five machines. It's such a bummer because you're like, well, of course, if you can only pick four or five, you're going to pick these newer sterns that earn. But I know they have a deep collection that's not out. And I'm like, pull out some of these older games, please. Yeah, we were actually talking to Greg Pavarelli about that at Sunshine Laundry, Matt, and just kind of the issues they've been going through with that but it sounds like they're they're open for good now it just seemed like it seemed they were getting shut down almost every other month there for a second man yeah it's crazy yeah but yeah so yeah i also i wanted to make sure that i told you guys uh this uh story speaking of stuff that we had to cut out from the episode we had this whole subplot speaking of living in portland about these mob wars in Portland and it was like so interesting and it just was like too many ideas you know I had this short segment and so it was like something's got to go and so I want to tell you guys you know Mayor LaGuardia in New York was like oh there's all this like mob pinball stuff and it's easy to kind of go like oh yeah I mean it's a little bit of an overreaction a little melodramatic but then you like you hear about some of these stories and you're like oh the mob was really like pin pinball was a mob thing and um portland has this history because it was you know port town of like gambling prostitution like a lot of like vice it's like a big was a big vice city always and so i'm i'm guessing that's why pinball has just kind of always been around but But, you know, this story I want to tell you guys is from the 50s. And, you know, it was it was theoretically illegal in Portland, too, back then, just like a lot of cities had bans. Chicago, like the epicenter of pinball today, like it was illegal there, too. So it kind of like went underground and became like fully criminal. and there are a couple competing mob bosses uh stan terry and this guy big jim elkins which i'm a sucker for like you know that's like a great mob name um but so they uh they got into this turf war and they would like do raids and like steal each other's machines or steal the money out of them or sabotage them you know it's like a like real like mob style so then in 1955 big jim roped in the Teamsters, who like, you know, I'm extremely pro-union, but there was this era where the Teamsters were basically like a mob. Enforcers. Exactly. And so they came up with this scheme and they made a phony union called Coin Machine Men of Oregon. And so they had a few different tactics, but one of them was, you know, they would do a picket around the bars that Stam Terry had. And, you know, people would be like, oh, I'm not going to cross the picket line. So it was just like a lot of kind of shenanigans. And so finally, Terry called in some connections via Las Vegas, and they put some pressure on the Seattle Teamsters, who were coordinating with the Portland ones. and so then the teamsters kind of like pulled their support from the coin machine men and were turning these pickets and boycotts back around on big jim and like squeezed him out you know it's just like kind of like this uh little tug of war and so big jim came up with this plan he was like i gotta get try and get my machines back or get back in the game so he hired this guy named herman Bugsy Burns, which when's the last time you met a Bugsy? Another great mob name. Bugsy and his gang posed as pinball repairmen, or this was the plan. They were going to pretend to be pinball repairmen and they would go to the bars with Stan Terry's machines and go yeah, we're going to swap these out for some new ones. We're going to load these up to make some room and the truck's coming in an hour with the new machines. which in the 50s like you could you could probably get away with that you know probably get away yeah exactly there's no yeah sure sounds good yeah all right let me know so they had this whole plan in place and you know big jim was kind of like waiting for the right time to strike and you know bugsy was like oh you know i gotta do some crimes i'm a crime guy and so while they were waiting for the plan to take effect they went robbed a safeway which is like grocery store i know if you guys have a murphys regional but yeah so they were they went robbed a safeway and got busted as they would right just hanging out well what are you done it's gonna ride rob us yeah yeah sorry yeah we gotta do some crimes we were crime guys and uh so big you know that was kind of the end of big jim's scheme and so uh you know this this all took place over like a year or two and And so he actually wiretapped the Teamsters and he turned the recordings over to the FBI and the local newspaper. And it had, you know, this whole like racketeering union thing. So he was able to like get off. And it was a big deal. There was like a couple of years of like Senate hearings about Portland mob. And then, you know, there was a there was a big election where they were like, we're going to clean up the mob. And it just kind of like these pinball wars like had all these repercussions. So you're like, oh, this actually was like really central to the story of the mob in the Northwest. And so then it makes like Mayor LaGuardia seem a little less of like like insane. You're like, oh, that was like a reasonable political position. Like that was a way to like take a stand against the mob. But yeah, so anyway, we just there's this whole story. I'm so glad I got to tell it somewhere because it was super interesting. and um if you want to read more about it you can google like you know big jim elkins but i got a lot of this finn jd john uh wrote this article that i pulled a lot of this stuff from so you guys can yeah go google if you want to learn more about the portland mob wars but uh so they weren't actually using the pinball machines for gambling they're they were using it as like money laundry essentially they were using it for yeah you got it not i guess not necessarily money laundry but it was you know you're robbing a bank essentially that place you've got so many quarters going in No, absolutely. For money laundering and also just straight up like, you know, we've got bars, we've got pinball machines, you know, it's a way to just make money. It's the Willie Sutton model. Like, why do you break into pinball machines? Exactly. And, you know, like, yeah, at that point they had flippers and everything. You know, like we're saying, it wasn't just pure gambling, but I'm sure at first it was like, oh, yeah, here's like the that earlier, more gambling style. but you know yes okay by the way that whole story sounds like a an episode from grand theft auto yes it totally does i've never played the game and i'm like yeah you're the mob guy and you need to go play with the go raid the machines you know go raid the machines see okay here's your here's your quest go steal the machine the next one's showing the side quest for bonus points is you rob the safe way but if you get caught you lose yeah that's insane yeah it was fun and then so yeah that's the other reason i like going to like pinball museums and stuff because they have these older games and you can go play them and you can go man all that fuss about this you know it's so fun and this one that i like going to in in patucket rhode island electromagnetic they have a lot of like doubles and triples and like have you guys ever seen i think you should leave do you know i'm talking about uh oh it's a great netflix show and and bob odenkirk in one sketch plays his character where he's talking about having doubles and triples of all his classic cars that he doesn't know but he's like yeah you know doubles is good because then you can put one in your garage and drive the other but like triples is best and this is total like triples is best like there's some of these 70s 60s and 70s machines they have like two or three They have like a Star Trek that's like signed by the whole cast, you know, and then one that's more players or, you know, like they have such cool stuff and they're expanding, too. So you can go play the entire history of pinball all the way up to, you know, they have Avengers and stuff like that. That's newer sterns. They have some like custom ones. Someone took one of those the pinball 2000. I think it was like the revenge from Mars. Is that the pinball 2001? and yeah yeah yeah they have like a custom they made a white wood and custom programming and stuff um i think it was like a frozen theme maybe or something it's just super cool i've i actually played us well i played a homebrew version yeah this might be the same person actually yeah Or was it like on a Pinball 2000 machine Yeah, it was very similar. Oh, this has got to be the same. I think he made it for his daughter or something. Because I did talk to the designer. I can't remember. It was at Chicago. I guarantee you this is the same one because how many people made their own. Yeah, and it's a total one-off. Yeah, I kind of love that. it like yeah i was watching videos of keith's like archer machine when i was researching i was like this is just like so it's way beyond my mechanical competence to like do something like this so i just like love it and admire it you know it's so cool yeah definitely do you have any other wild stories you ran into while you were doing the the podcast or pretty much you know i i gotta admit I liked at the end of the podcast, you guys redoing the attack. Oh, yeah, that was so that was like seriously for nerds. So if you go on Internet Archive, you can download someone posted like the ROM dump of all the sounds. And what we do is like at the end of the episodes, not every single one, but by and large, we you know, we give a little shout out that we're a stitcher in Sirius XM production. and uh roman would just the host would just like riff something into the mic or whatever and then when i joined up like i love crazy sound design and stuff and i started getting really into like making the craziest tags at the end possible and it would be like this 15 second joke that would do with like sound design and even my very first episode was about an airport in ireland and i like you know brought the episode in for a landing it's like my first week i mean i just did a little sound design thing of like oh there's your captain speaking and i'd like airplane sounds and like i put myself over like a fake speaker and everyone's like oh this guy's nuts like he'll do anything so uh i went on internet archive and downloaded the rom of all the attack from mars sounds and there's you know like 500 or something and i was like clicking through trying to find all the juiciest ones and like you know and so then we did you know flying instead of flying saucers from mars flying saucers from stitcher or whatever and so it's just like all these i i sent roman a clip of attack from mars was like try and do this delivery and i i put in like the music actually i got to hear the raw music i was like oh this sounds like amazing actually like it's super lo-fi coming through the speakers but i was like this stuff sounds great like everything sounded awesome so yeah we just did that fun little clip and yeah i don't know i there was a lot of cool keith stuff I'm sorry, Keith, you gave me an hour of your time and I only could pull a couple of things. But it was so deep. And one thing I talked to him a lot that I enjoyed was about collaboration. And that really resonated with me because we make our show in a very, very collaborative way. It's like one of the most collaborative things I've ever been a part of. You know, one person will write a script and they've got an editor and the editor will help them shape it up. And then we do a thing where Roman and the producer will read each of their parts, like a, you know, a live read. And they'll play back clips and stuff. And everyone will give comments and weigh in. And then they'll go away and record their two parts separately. And the producer will cut it in Pro Tools and edit it, put music on there and everything. And then we'll do another round where we all listen to notes. And then they'll incorporate those notes. And we'll do another round of notes. And then they pass the episode to me and I mix it and add sound design and stuff. we'll do another round of notes so it's like every episode we do gets touched by you know if there's like 13 or 14 of us at least two-thirds of the staff touch every single episode at some point super collaborative so i was asking keith about that i was like you know what how do you collaborate and he just gave like such deep shout outs to his whole team and kind of talked about the relationship of like i'm designing these shots and i go to my engineer and he's like yeah i can't do that like oh yeah this thing isn't gonna work and so then you know he does that and then when he's working with the programmers you know i talked a little about this an episode that they can go back and tweak the code and be like oh let me change the objectives once i see how people play it and um i just like love talking to him about all this collaborations that's so there's no way one person can be the master of like play dynamics and design and mechanical engineering and software engineering and sound and video it's like it takes it takes a village to make the machine so you know even though he gets credit as like the auteur he was like no i wouldn't be anywhere without my team and i really love that vibe like um i really love barry and like bill hater and he's like oh yeah i got this cool shot because of my like assistant director suggested it or like oh this camera operator did a really great zoom set like he like refuses to take credit for the whole thing he's like no it's like the sum of all the parts so yeah yeah i i felt bad i was like i really want to include this was just like too many things he he sent me a cool clip also there's like a crazy machine testing room where they stress test all the parts you know like you know just solenoids firing and stuff it's like can you give me like a little 10 second recording that and it just sounded crazy it sounded like the craziest factor factory ever and like i didn't have time for that either but i was just like oh this is so so cool well when we got to tour jjp it was cool because uh godfather hadn't been revealed yet but they were testing it back in the corner and we were all like so can we go back and they're like no yeah just that monster what happened if a wind just breathed through and knocked off that blanket and we got no yeah oh yeah and it's full circle it's the real mom game i don't know i'm looking forward to trying it some more but you know when you're doing all these like quests and stuff i was like oh and but that was another funny part in episode two is like i was like all right i'm talking to keith i gotta enter my first tournament and i've just been chicken because like i was saying i'm not like a points player and i see some people playing they're intense like they're on the machine around or whatever it's like so i got kind of dragged to one and i i had a lot of fun voice memoing my way through like getting my butt kicked and i just was like that's something i just love is if i can like mildly embarrass myself on air i'm always willing to you know i i did a story where i took an adult this is like years ago but i did took an adult swim lesson and i had a producer or point a mic at me in the pool being like, oh, like I'm scared. So it's like I just like love mildly embarrassing myself on the mic. And that was like pretty fun. It's like, yeah, I just I just got shredded. OK, I will say just so you know, for people who are more like you and me, Martin, where we actually do the the play for fun, you can go to pen tips. So it's actually a website that you can actually pull up. And it does have like, hey, here are the top two things or top three things that you need to do in this game. And so that does help for people who are on the fly and just like, I just want to have a good time. But it'd be nice to have a good score too. Well, and the other part too is like when I first got into tournaments, Bo and Karen's came to Utah. So we had our big, it was Salt Lake Gaming Con and it was a huge tournament. And he just happened to be in Utah at the time because of his main job. Yeah, his main job. And so it was intimidating having someone that was a top five, top ten player in the world, and you're playing against them. But the cool part was he could tell I was intimidated, and he's like, well, which games haven't you played? And I was like, I've never played Starship Troopers at that point. And he's like, okay, we'll just do these two things, and just don't stress about anything else. just keep the ball alive and do these two things and so i've noticed though at tournaments a lot of people are very willing to help yeah sure you just have to ask because i know that some people get offended like if you're talking to someone like hey you do this this one i'll tell you yeah yeah most people it's it is a social thing for them and really a lot of these local tournaments I mean, come on. If you win, you win $20. It's really so minimal. Do not diminish my third place win that I just got. Yeah. I'm not diminishing it. I'm just not saying don't open your 401k with it. I was very proud of you. But what I'm saying is that for them, the whole point of these is that, hey, we want to hang out with people. Yeah. And we've said it before. The beautiful thing about pinball is how it's something that regardless of your political affiliation, your religious affiliation, your social affiliation, your gender affiliation, just insert whatever thing here. It doesn't matter. You can still play a game together. Yeah. And coming together because that's the I think that's one thing that's really helped pinball thrive in the last five years is because we've lost that ability to connect with people. Yeah, that's that's really the main reason. Even if I get my butt kicked, I'm going to like hang out. But then, you know, I can still kind of play dumb a little bit. You know, I don't know how much longer I can rock that. But I'm just being like, oh, I'm like new to tournaments or whatever. and uh you know i made friends with in the um episode i played two boys and mums and me getting my butt kicked by this guy hunter who then i ended up just like making friends with him because i sent him a link it was like hey i talked about you kicking my butt in the show and then we were playing each other in foo fighters and i was like man i'll level with you i've played this like three times i don't understand it and he showed me something with like the drop targets where you like get the power up things i i i still haven't totally gotten the hang of it but i just like hit a really nice wave and then i just i like i think i knocked him out actually i can't remember if i knocked him out or if i just beat him but i i kind of like he showed me a couple things just like to be a nice guy and then i just like accidentally racked up a huge score and he's like god damn it yeah he should have waited until after to show me but people are pretty generous with the knowledge okay but it's fun though like i actually i think that he probably laughed about oh yeah we we had a good i guess he's like i can't believe that i told you how to do it and then you just uh went farther and i was a little embarrassed yeah i was like oh that was unusually that was like very lucky yeah but like you know i i'm pretty good at creature actually i really love creature it's just like it vibes with me that's a great and so yeah i beat someone I was like, hey, actually, I'm like pretty good at creature. Like, let me show you my tactic. And which is like, just try and try and hit that move your car as soon as you can and collect the the film along the way. But like you can they were trying to get F.I.L.M. And I'm like, you can get a decent bonus from that. but if you just go for move your car and if you can really practice nailing that every time then you like that more than makes up for the point difference and so it's like oh okay cool i have a great strategy for creature i can hang with that now i need to learn the strategy for like 80 more games you know i'm like and there's a new i'm like okay now i gotta learn the food now i gotta learn the bond one so that's the one thing where i'm like oh this is a lot of work if you want to like stay sharp and so like yes well and it's harder too because like when i first got into it 10 years ago the biggest strategies were for the 90s bellies williams games it was like making sure you just shoot left orbit on theater of magic over and over and over until tell it tells you to shoot i think it's still the left orbit yeah it's like and you'll blow up your score that way or giant mnemonic it was light spinner and i love john you know they have one of those here and i just like i love giant mnemonic it's super underrated now it's like now godzilla it's like well i could go for damage there are five different ways you can well okay but that speaks to that speaks to how well balanced modern games i modern games have really taken especially stern have taken that tournament friendly vibe where they don't want the one path to a big score they want to say look you can go this way you can go that way you can create your own and you can still build a score have it be fun but not always have to take the same path yeah and when i another really interesting thing that keith talked about is he was like you know we'll put some multi balls close to the start so they're pretty easy to get like you know you start off the gimme yeah gimme's yep avengers you gotta thought it's pretty you can start that thor by accident if you're not careful you know like so i usually do someone's you know you want to try and save that and and you know for when you're in a gem quest but also if like someone doesn't know anything about that or is just there to like flip and have a good time they have a pretty high likelihood of accidentally starting thor if there's flipping around they're like oh my god multiball and like that stuff is like really fun you want to make it accessible and I feel like when I go to bars, I'll see people hop on Godzilla and just having a blast, you know? Like, people really have fun with that game. And that's really what it's about. It's, like, what's fun and enjoyable. And then other stuff, you know, you can be ahead and you can be, like, well, yeah, I really like this, like, one specific thing. But, like, you know, then you can't bring your friends. Like, yeah, I try and bring my friends who, like, are much more. I mean, I'm a medium, but I try and bring my super casual friends. And then I'm just now starting to make friends in New York who are hardcore. And I'm like, oh, you guys are on a different plate. I don't know. They're totally on a different level. I can't get that. I just respect and admire and hang out and try and learn a little. But I got other hobbies, too. It's not just football. Some people, that's their life. If you ever want to melt your brain on tournament talk, just talk to Travis Murie. Yeah. Holy crap. he's a top 10 player of the world well no he's 24 i just pulled it off sorry and yeah the other 23 that i just short changed yeah okay well i'll put it this way so 21 22 23 24 let's see if you've heard these names Josh Sharpe yep okay yeah keith elwin okay Eric Stone Travis Fury So that's really good company And then just two above him is Colin MacAlpine And these guys are Crazy crazy good Here's my Rank I'm Number 16,813 Yeah I'm 260th in New York out of Let me see here we got 513 So I'm like right in the middle in New York, you know, not too bad. But, you know, it's like it's fun. Well, OK, so let me point that out, though. That shows that there is a very tight demographic that is bundled in the middle of of saying, hey, we're really OK. Maybe at the beginning, I guess, however you want to say it. But like once you get beyond like the top 500, top thousand, then it really goes into very casual. So it shows how much how much reach even casual players can have in pinball. And you're the perfect example where you don't have machines like you have to travel to them and you are. i guess the beauty and the curse of what you're doing is that you don't have to worry about investing in a game but you're also beholden to whatever yeah it's right you're that's why i'm on these hunts it's like if i could if i had space i would totally get you know like a doctor who or something like and every once in a while i'll hop on the marketplace and just be like on on pin side like that's the only reason i go to that is just go how much would that run me you know even if i had an extra five grand i where would i put this thing come on you could you could put it you could put an apartment oh my neighbor would not be stoked he already has to hear me like playing music all the time like and looping the same part of a podcast over and over i don't want to put him through anything else you can put headphones on them actually that that's your key get a modern game get a headphone jack oh yeah well even just like the mechanics it's like you know i can hear my uh my next door neighbor like walking i can hear their floorboards creaking like that's the new york life like it's real thin walls so you just have to kind of pretend like in like sometimes you'll hear someone i'll hear my downstairs neighbor have a loud conversation where he's all hyped up and i just have to like you're like but he can't hear me right like it sounds like right yeah no no no suspension of disbelief i'm in the bubble yeah so i like coming to this studio it's like you know i i come in here once or twice a week and you're just like all right i can crank the speakers up and i can mix and i know i'm not bothering anyone or if i'm talking like it's just going to be totally isolated so i would love to to get my own studio and i would love to get my own uh pinball room and so who knows you know maybe if i'm if i like get married and have kids or something i'll go back to rhode island and go like that's what one of my co-workers did he just moved back to here he moved to rhode island where his wife's from and just was like oh we can buy a house here like we can't it would be crazy to buy anything in new york like there's just no reason to oh so i go visit him and i'm like oh this is nice and i go play i go to the pinball museum i'm like oh we kind of fund this right now but i mean it's new york baby it's like the best city you know and uh yeah there's a new place on long island i want to check out that i think has like 100 machines or something it's like just opened up a couple months ago oh good and uh there's some places in new jersey where you can like go play a lot of stuff so that's that's my next thing is like round up a little posse borrow someone's car go like spend two hours on the train and go be like all right this place has like a ton of like 80s got leave i'm gonna check this out you know it's my next move so well i i will say there is a guy in new york that you should probably uh find out his name is charles what's up and he's yeah yeah definitely he can he can take you on the tour he's actually really good friends with sunshine and he knows about all that stuff he even has a big lebowski so if you've ever wanted to play one of those there's actually a couple of those there's one in sunshine and there's one at rulos across the street and buttermilk so i play that a lot i actually like i love lebowski i think it's great well okay charles it's m-a-r-t-i-n at 99pi.org hit me up there you go drop me a line I probably shouldn't be giving my email on the internet but only email me if you have or if you have a really good idea for a story that's not pinball or if you're a Nigerian prince who wants to smuggle money out of your country yeah listen I live in New York which is not expensive at all and so I have tons of disposable income to just like spend around you know yeah not a problem all you needed all they needed your social security number just to verify it you so they can send you god it must be so cheap living in utah i jealous of you guys it's so expensive actually it used to be in the last in the last 10 years it's gone crazy i gotta say man a little bit just okay it's not new york no oh my god no it's outrageous here especially like yeah in the last year or two but salt lake city rocks uh you know i'm i think it's a really underrated city i think it's so cool and uh keep it that way keep it that way we're good the traffic's not bad it's not it's not east coast bad because i used to live in dc but it's uh oh yeah and you guys have the giant streets i've i've heard this story might be a pot you know like this i work on a show about history i love kind of collecting these old stories i heard a possibly apocryphal story that the streets were designed to be that wide so you could ue a horse-driven cart like that's why those streets are like six seven lanes wide so that you could like do a u-turn on a horse-driven cart without having to go around the block even if it's apocryphal that sounds fun right it's like it sounds cool because it i'm this was uh well utah at least from the uh the anglo-saxon settlers of utah and they were all mormon pioneers yeah yeah so they came and they it was set up by a grid system. Yeah. And so, which is actually like pretty easy to get around. I, you know, Oh, it's super easy. Yeah. I'm okay. When I moved to DC 15 years ago, Oh, more than 15. Wow. That was the first time I actually bought a Garmin because I don't know if anybody knows this, but all roads spontaneously end up at the, at the Washington. I have no idea why I always ended up there, but I was always so lost because it was so difficult to get around. Now you have GPS and it's not a big deal. Oh my God. That was like a revolutionary system back then because everything was so confusing. Oh, my first couple of tours, 2009, 2010, no one had like iPhones had just come out, but like no one had them yet. And I was like printing out MapQuest directions. Like I still, maybe it was Google maps at that point, but like, yeah, I definitely would print out driving directions from like, all right, we're going from like Atlanta to Raleigh. Like, all right, print out my directions, whatever. Like that was how I started out touring. So that gives you an idea of like, you know, it was a different time. And, you know, now it's talking to your kids. They must think that like we came from the Stone Age or like, how did you ever get lost? And I'm like, Kate, let me just tell you how difficult it was on a car trip. You had to keep visual contact of the car in front of you because if you got lost and you had to say, well, they could either be 10 miles behind us or 10 miles in front. But we have no idea how to hook up. I mean, seriously, you got to pull over and wait. Exactly. Yeah, that's not that long ago. Well, I always love, you know, I've been in New York for about five years now. I was, you know, at first really like, oh, I got a map everywhere. but now it's like um i love when you get to the point with the subway i'm like uh google maps and i have a better idea here you know yeah i i think i i'm i got this don't worry about it i got you but uh yeah and so you know i don't know uh new york rules i'm trying to make some pinball friends here you guys have my email now so if you uh want to be friends and go play some pinball get in touch and also it's just like people are so friendly like i've made a lot of friends just like you know yeah new york is known for being friendly no it's true people don't believe me but well also i'm just a friendly person i like going around chatting people up but like yes man i can't tell you how many times you know you're just flipping you just like talk to someone and chit chat and make friends and it's like it's pretty cool and so i've i've gotten some tips that way and like made some connections and it's just like a it's a nice hangout i just yeah I wish there were more older machines. That's my one critique. So if you own a bar in New York and you want to, like, get some pinheads together, like, people can play Stern anywhere. You need a co-op. You need a co-op. Oh, does that exist? Pinball co-ops? Yeah. Rochester. Okay, so you were talking earlier about Delaware. So Rochester, our friend Bruce Nightingale from the Slam Tilt podcast, he's up there down in Delaware. So the Delaware collective is Fox. Yeah, Joe Fox. Joe Fox, yeah. And they have him in Portland too. So there are people who don't have the space, but they're like, hey, we do a co-op. And so when people buy games, they put them up. It's a cool like communitarian view of like-minded pinheads who just want to play. So that's – hey, maybe that's something. I know it's completely different than New York or even warehouse space. Oh, I mean, you know, there's always places in like Ridgewood or Bushwick or ever like if a, okay. M a R T I N at nine nine bi.org. If you want to get a warehouse together, if you've got a whodunit and want to convert it into a Columbo with me, the other one actually that I really, okay. Maybe you guys have hot costs. I want them to do a dune. I love dune and I'm hoping it would be interesting. actually dune would be an interesting one because it can be one of those ones where like some of them are very some of the themed ones are very literal and some of them you know are just like kind of drawing vibes and so like you could just do like ride the sandworm or whatever you don't have to like be super literal at dune it's just like there could be all kinds of cool ideas with it and you know you could take one of these you know like what they did with the beetles where they're just like i don't know we're just gonna take a table and kind of refresh it you do one these like water worlds or stargates or congos or something you just like give a fresh coat of paint and put some sandworms on there and you know i'd be content with that starship troopers like you know there's some space ones already existing you just have a good time so dune is like this weird like point of oh it's it's it's a super deep dive yeah i haven't yeah i haven't gotten into it i've watched the david lynch one and the new one i got the book and haven't read it but it's this hilarious point of contention on our staff where like a couple people feel really strongly pro and a couple feel really strongly uh con and it's like it's become a bit to debate it it's the pro dune yeah and when when we have guests at the meetings or if we have a new hire or something the the first question is like what do you think about dune and then there's like groans everyone's like no don't start this and then it's like all right be careful and then you know the last person we asked was like oh i haven't seen it and it was like good the only safe answer don't get a dj but i love doom the 19 the 1980s show though was so confusing that they actually printed out the movie yeah the movie was sting it was so confusing because if you didn't read the book you have no idea what's going on they finally printed out like these handouts to hand to people when they bought their tickets to explain the story i mean i it's not as good but I do kind of, I, I'm a big, like, I'm just like a big film guy. I love David Lynch. And, you know, I actually have just been, I'm almost done watching all of his, I've been on like this quest recently. So I was like, all right, I got to watch Dune. I was like, oh, this kind of rocks. And the CG is like pretty cool. Like I love like janky 80s CG. It's like a little low budge. And so it's like, you know, like these older games we're talking about, or like, you know, I was telling Scott earlier that, you know, in like April or May 2020, I like ordered some kits and I built with a Raspberry Pi, built a Super Nintendo and a Game Boy. And it's just like, I don't know, man, something about Super Nintendo level. Like that's exactly where I am. And, you know, there's limitations. But then within that, you can do cool stuff. So I love when I'm watching old like an old Sam Raimi movie and you're just like, yeah, there's like janky blood spurting everywhere. but like it's like fun and silly and i kind of prefer that to like more modern stuff so i don't know yeah i love it but yeah okay so anyway dune dune and colombo those are my pitches or if anyone wants to make a 99 pi pinball game we got a lot of ideas you know it's like uh we have this slogan uh always read the plaque you know a lot of times we'll tell a story and the button will be like and if you go there there's a plaque that tells you the story and so that's like one of our slogans and it's like that would be the uh you know that could be one of the modes or whatever we do a lot of train stories you could do a little cactus canyon train thing you know like we so if anyone wants to do an imk pinball machine it would be really cool you know i don't know how many should hit up uh matt and reby hardy from wwe wrestling they they know a gentleman that has made their own their own ferris bueller cool and and then they also made a uh house of hardy pinball machine because he won like i think they named it a quest for gold because he's won titles like a wrestler yeah oh yeah my my taste is too esoteric i'm like pushing pushing my colombo agenda that that's okay i'd take a babylon 5 there's like tons of star trek ones let's let's do a babylon you know what i i just watched stargate i was like oh stargate would be good to like a real good stargate not the issue yeah that game's like fun but i watched the movie i was like this movie rocks like this movie's really i like the movie i think it's fun it's the first it's the only time that james spader actually didn't play the evil guy it's like the one the one show i was like and it's i think the guy who did like independence day right i'm like oh this is a cool blockbuster even if you don't know all the lore or whatever so yeah or i watched starship troopers which you know i i like the starship troopers pinball but i was like oh this movie's like pretty fun i went on a paul verhoeven deep dive too so i don't know yeah it's so funny to look at some of the ip that like they were just taking swings and you're like sure lethal weapon three why not i'm like okay okay well the the johnny pneumonic game the funny thing is okay did you hear the story on that so so it was george gomez yeah so george gomez well okay so it actually It wasn't actually a movie. It bombed. Yeah, it didn't do well, but I love it. The designer, he went and they gave him a preview, and he watched the movie, and he got back, and he called Williams and was like, can we get out of this license? Oh, my God, of course. No, I'm a sucker for mid-'90s internet, like hackers and the net and stuff, so I watched Dynamonic. Oh, the net was so – wasn't that the one where the internet was taking over and exploding power lines when they were trying – or the Sandra Bullock one. Yeah, yeah, that's the one. And like right at the beginning, she goes to like pizza.com and orders a pizza. And I was like, it's real. Like, I love that. Or like, yeah, I just watched, rewatched Hackers recently. Like, I love those like early 90s internet movies. And I think that's why I like Johnny Mnemonic also, because it's not so literal. They're like, here, get some megabytes or whatever. I love that stuff. So I'd love to see some more esoteric things. But also, you know, they got big licenses. It's a bigger market now. They can't do like World Cup and just have that little cute little dog back there. you know yeah yeah but doggy soccer i'm from argentina so it's like this was a huge world cup year for me so if they want to do a world cup update with messi i i would i would buy that for a dollar are you excited that messi's coming to the u.s yeah now you can go see him in yeah i really want to have like never seen him play in person and also the world cup uh next next one the all the semi-finals and finals are going to be here and you know i have like my uncles and cousin went to Qatar and they saw the finals and were there and cheering I was like oh man he keeps saying he's going to retire but he may come back that's the only sport I care about is every four years I'm like I want Argentina to win well you got one yeah that's right broke the old Maradona curse that was like three months before I was born I just missed it so I was hyped up in my lifetime so anyway if you guys want to do a new world cup you know i would i would that would get my seal of approval feature messy prominently but yeah i don't know well we're gonna we're gonna go ahead and wrap this up one one thing though because you said dune stern was trolling last week that they were at the licensing licensing convention in vegas and gary stern did take pictures in front of the dune yes oh my god We'll see if they do. Wait, what's the license? The one I was more excited about that no one's pointed out. I was like, Scott, did you see he was in front of... Obviously, Green Day stuck out. I was like, yes, there was Green Day and Lizzo. But Muse in the bottom left of that picture. Did you just say Muse? Like Muesley? Muse. Muse. Muse? The band Muse? I don't really know them at all, but someone did them at karaoke. You need to get into them. What's the song? Black Holes something? Yep, Black Holes. Someone did that at karaoke and just blew me away. Yeah, the guy was hitting all the parts. I was like, this band is crazy. I don't know. I don't really know them. But yeah, you know, like if they did like the music, no one's ever going to do a table of what I'd be like the Ahmad Jamal, like or Chico Hamilton, like old jazz guys tables. Like no one's going to buy that. Yeah. Josh wants the Aquabats. Did they take a picture in front of Aquabats? Wait, okay. Real quick before I go, what's this licensing convention? This is crazy. So whoever owns the IP to all these things shows up and is wheeling and dealing? Yeah, so what it is is every year they have a big licensing convention down in Vegas. They go down there and essentially all the IPs down there set up booths and they go around and they discuss if their product mixing in meaningly with pinball or whoever's down there makes sense. And they kind of talk some numbers. they may even lock in a license at that point it's kind of a showcase he took pictures in front of Barbie and Tupac Barbie machine would rock, where's the Barbie machine? I'm so excited I'm like Barbie and Oppenheimer together I want to see both of them I'm so excited that would be an interesting mashup we can do two skins of the same machine that would rule I'm so hyped, so yeah, I hope they make a Barbie machine that would absolutely rip I would almost guarantee that there's going to be a muse. What would a muse? A muse? What a muse. Okay, I hope that didn't sound mean because we've talked about muse before. I was like, who's a muse? But I think it's really up the aisle of what they're doing right now with Foo Fighters and stuff. And I almost guarantee there's a Green Day. It would not shock me in the next two or five years. Green Day would be great if it were American Indian. Oh, my other – I think American Indian or anything before that. But if they did a Dookie and a Nimrod and stuff like that as well. Okay, here's my pitch, if any certain people are listening. ABBA. ABBA would sell so much. Oh, my God. I would die for ABBA. Yeah, there's an Elton John. Oh, I love Elton John. They haven't announced it, but it's open secret that Jersey Jacks is going to be open. Oh, I'm going to shred some out. I love Elton John. That should be this December. I can't hit those notes or that would be my karaoke song. but yeah i know so many people who go crazy for like the mama mia movies and like those songs are so catchy because you know like the food fetters are cool but i'm i don't you know i listen to a lot when i was a teenager i don't need to like hear every food fighter song again every time i play so a lot of the ones on location actually now have the volume turned down a bit because it's like otherwise they would the bartenders would like flip the machine over if they heard ever long we'd go crazy yeah like there's one place where it's like almost completely off and i'm like i don't know that's fine i've heard it's like in uh in wayne's world hey no stairway to yeah but yeah okay so we've we've got some ideas stern if you're listening you know you can go back through uh if you want my consultation on like an abba machine or or columbia machine like you know maybe a little john cassavetes mode you know like we we corner the market on like film dorks you know i can i can help you with the criterion themed uh machines if you want so you know hit me up you guys have my email several times at this point i was gonna say if you if you want people to get a hold of you what is that email again martin it's m-a-r-t-i-n at 99pi.org but only if you want to be friends and play some cool pinball or if you have a really good story idea don't send me a boring story idea send me a good one but um and also plug your I want to go to this licensing convention. I'm going to see if they'll send me. That sounds fun. Yeah, 99% visible. I mix it every week. It's a bunch of geniuses that I work with. I'm like this donor musician guy surrounded by the most insane, incredible journalists. So I'm always proud to support them. And I'm happy they let me come on two or three times a year and just do a dumb music story or something. So I have some cool ones in the pipeline. But I mix the show every week. that's my main thing and then I go when I have something I'm super interested about I'll tell a story about it I'm on Twitter a lot that's my only social media it's Varisfeeder like an old tape Varisfeeder V-A-R-I-S-P-E-E-D-E-R Varisfeeder and you got my email that's the only stuff I have I don't know how much it was so yeah hit me up if you're in New York we'll play some pinball and you're a nice person definitely if you want to get a hold of us we are loser kid pinball podcast at gmail.com also all of our socials that includes youtube facebook instagram tiktok uh which honestly we don't post anything on tiktok but twitter all at loser kid pinball hit us up there i actually even did like a link tree so if you go to our facebook or to our instagram you can just click that it'll take you to the merch website silverball swag.com slash loser kid i'll take you our sweet sweet shoes you know you're going to want to pair for October when we come out and everyone's wearing their shoes and you're going to wish you like, Oh, well, I didn't get the memo. You're getting the memo right now. But yeah, what you got for Scott, send us out. You know, I'm really looking forward to our 3.0 hats that are in development. So definitely look for those too. So anyway, leave us a review, subscribe, all that fun stuff. Be nice to get a few. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, we'll send you one. We have to, we want to get some more updated reviews. So sounds good. Thank you. Talk to you in two weeks. Okay. Bye. Shut up and sit down. . _(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_ --- *Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 02ea5919-dc1d-4587-a674-bc2b495282cf*