# Episode 80_Oh the Horror

**Source:** The Spinner Is Lit Pinball Podcast  
**Type:** podcast_episode  
**Published:** 2025-10-28  
**Duration:** 101m 25s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://soundcloud.com/thespinnerislit/episode-80_oh-the-horror

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## Analysis

Spencer, Dan, and Mark discuss their experiences at Pinballpalooza, a three-day pinball show at Dixon Fairgrounds featuring 150-200 games. They cover gameplay impressions of Star Wars: Fall of the Empire (Stern's new release) and Harry Potter, tournament results including women's and men's competitions using System 11 classics, and a kids' flip frenzy event. The episode blends casual game reviews with tournament logistics and community building.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] Pinballpalooza had approximately 150-200 games on show, with reasonable crowds even on Saturday afternoon — _Dan and Mark discussing the show floor logistics_
- [HIGH] Star Wars: Fall of the Empire has a difficult Death Star shot that rattles even when open for lock, requiring multiple attempts to achieve multiball — _Mark describing his gameplay experience with the Death Star mechanism_
- [MEDIUM] The Pro version of Star Wars is adequate for most players and doesn't require Premium/LE investment; most customization happens post-purchase — _Speakers discussing Pro vs Premium tier decision_
- [HIGH] Harry Potter is mechanically dense and fun to shoot but visually cluttered ('cotton candy nightmare'), contrasting sharply with Jersey Jack's aesthetic quality — _Spencer and Dan comparing Harry Potter and Jersey Jack games_
- [HIGH] 60 players competed in the men's tournament; tournament format used 10-round target match play followed by Swiss-tiered Amazing Race format — _Mark describing tournament structure and participation_
- [HIGH] System 11 machines used in tournament were 40+ years old, with some issues (Pinbot smoky, Codebreaker failed, Swords of Fury needed service) but held up well overall — _Spencer and Mark discussing vintage machine condition and support_
- [HIGH] Women's tournament winner was Brandi Thompson; Zhao took second, Amanda took third — _Spencer announcing women's tournament results_
- [HIGH] Mark qualified 4th out of 60 players in the men's tournament and made top 16 before the Amazing Race format — _Mark recounting his tournament performance_

### Notable Quotes

> "I think it's relentlessly average, does everything. It felt like some games that Stern was doing back when they were about to go out of business."
> — **Dan**, ~15:00
> _Captures mixed sentiment toward Star Wars: Fall of the Empire—competent but uninspired compared to Stern's best work_

> "There's just something about Star Wars pinball where they never quite seem to capture the magic."
> — **Spencer**, ~16:00
> _Articulates broader frustration with Star Wars IP in pinball across multiple manufacturers and eras_

> "It's like you look in front of a Jersey Jack and it's like, holy crap, this is gorgeous. And then you look at the other one... cotton candy nightmare."
> — **Spencer (on Harry Potter vs Jersey Jack)**, ~35:00
> _Vivid aesthetic comparison highlighting visual design philosophy differences between manufacturers_

> "It had that vibe of when they used to have tournaments before Golden State, when they had the pin golf. It had that vibe. It was like everybody was social. Everybody was having a good time."
> — **Mark**, ~50:00
> _Reflects on tournament atmosphere and community tone, contrasting laid-back vs competitive tournament cultures_

> "So you're basically walking down memory lane basically... I thought that was really cool."
> — **Mark**, ~52:00
> _Notes the emotional impact of System 11 nostalgia on veteran players and tournament design choice_

> "The thing that's so scary about Amazing Race is if you have a bad game, everybody that played to set a score were all ridiculously low."
> — **Mark**, ~63:00
> _Identifies strategic vulnerability in Amazing Race format where low scores create psychological pressure_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Pinballpalooza | event | Annual three-day pinball show held at Dixon Fairgrounds; hosts 150-200 games, vendors, and multiple tournament formats |
| Star Wars: Fall of the Empire | game | Stern Pinball's new Star Wars-themed machine showcased at Pinballpalooza; features Death Star lock shot and Sarlacc vortex; available in Pro, Premium, and LE models |
| Harry Potter | game | Jersey Jack Pinball machine with Quidditch playfield; praised for mechanical density and shot variety, criticized for visual clutter; directly compared to Star Wars |
| Spencer | person | Host of The Spinner Is Lit podcast; attended Pinballpalooza, observed tournament, helped run kids' flip frenzy event; based in Sacramento area |
| Dan | person | Co-host of The Spinner Is Lit podcast; attended Pinballpalooza, streamed tournament with Rick on Elk Grove Pinball; had technical issues during streaming |
| Mark | person | Co-host of The Spinner Is Lit podcast; competed in men's tournament, qualified 4th/60, made top 16; played System 11 machines; experienced with vintage game mechanics |
| Brandi Thompson | person | Winner of Pinballpalooza women's tournament |
| Zhao | person | Second place finisher in Pinballpalooza women's tournament; referred to as 'good friend' |
| Amanda | person | Third place finisher in Pinballpalooza women's tournament; plays in Lodi League |
| Alex Lambert | person | Top qualifier in men's tournament; dominated Amazing Race format; described as 'reaper of souls' |
| Tilted Sisters | organization | Organization that ran women's tournament at Pinballpalooza |
| Greater Sacramento Pinball League | organization | Organization that ran main men's tournament at Pinballpalooza; hosted target match play and Amazing Race formats |
| Elk Grove Pinball | venue | Venue/streaming location where Dan and Rick streamed the Pinballpalooza tournament |
| Maurice | person | Community member who created Spanish Eyes duel setup using tiltalica concept based on Spencer's offhanded comment |
| Rick | person | Co-streamed Pinballpalooza tournament with Dan on Elk Grove Pinball channel; experienced technical issues |
| Kendra | person | Helped plan and run kids' flip frenzy tournament; worked with Spencer to manage event |
| Stern Pinball | company | Major pinball manufacturer; released Star Wars: Fall of the Empire; discussed in context of game design philosophy |
| Jersey Jack Pinball | company | Pinball manufacturer known for visual aesthetic quality; produces Harry Potter machine; praised for 'world under glass' presentation |
| Pinball Pirate | person | Technician who helped service games during Pinballpalooza tournament setup |
| Shannon | person | One of the main organizers of System 11 tournament machines; owns Black Knight 2000 |
| Jack | person | One of the main organizers of System 11 tournament machines at Pinballpalooza |
| Steve Ritchie | person | Designer of previous (2017) Stern Star Wars pinball machine; compared to new John Borg version |
| John Borg | person | Designer of new Stern Star Wars: Fall of the Empire machine |
| Winnie | person | Tournament player who performed well on Space Station; credited fan experience with Stargazer for handling open flipper lanes |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Star Wars: Fall of the Empire gameplay and design, Pinballpalooza event coverage and logistics, Tournament formats and competition meta
- **Secondary:** Harry Potter machine design and aesthetics, System 11 vintage machines restoration and gameplay, Kids' pinball development and youth engagement, Star Wars IP across multiple pinball manufacturers (Data East, Sega, Stern)
- **Mentioned:** Pinball manufacturing pricing and market positioning

### Sentiment

**Mixed** (0.6) — Positive about community, event logistics, and tournament execution. Mixed-to-negative about Star Wars: Fall of the Empire (competent but uninspired). Positive about Harry Potter's mechanics despite visual criticism. Strong nostalgia and appreciation for System 11 classics and vintage preservation efforts.

### Signals

- **[event_signal]** Pinballpalooza hosted ~150-200 games with three separate tournaments (women's, men's target match play/Amazing Race, kids' flip frenzy). Dan streamed via Elk Grove Pinball with technical issues. Good vendor representation and distributor support for boutique manufacturers. (confidence: high) — Direct reporting from attendees on show floor, tournament structure, and streaming logistics
- **[gameplay_signal]** Star Wars: Fall of the Empire's Death Star lock shot has inconsistent catch behavior—rattles on balls that appear open, creating frustration. Shot design is tight and unforgiving despite apparent simplicity. Contrast to Groot multiball which has similar rattle issues. (confidence: high) — Mark's direct gameplay experience with multiple attempts to hit Death Star, observation of rattle-reject pattern, comparison to Groot mechanics
- **[product_strategy]** Star Wars Pro version viewed as adequate alternative to Premium/LE; visual differences don't justify cost premium. Collectors will customize with aftermarket toys/figures regardless. Game designed for public location more than home play. (confidence: medium) — Speaker consensus on Pro sufficiency, discussion of post-purchase customization inevitability, venue-oriented design observation
- **[design_philosophy]** Star Wars uses toy packaging-inspired art style (Kenner aesthetic) vs Ritchie's photoshopped approach. Artwork praised as deliberate artistic choice. Harry Potter uses 'cotton candy nightmare' visual density without Ritchie sophistication, though mechanically complex. Jersey Jack's clean aesthetic contrasts sharply. (confidence: high) — Detailed art direction discussion, comparison between designers' visual philosophies, specific aesthetic descriptors
- **[competitive_signal]** Amazing Race format creates psychological vulnerability—lowest qualifying scores create hardest targets. Space Station played unexpectedly friendly (not punishing), correlating with Stargazer experience. Swiss-tiering in target match play allowed movement, 3-2-1-0 scoring leveled field. 60-player field, top 16 advancement. (confidence: high) — Mark's detailed tournament progression, scoring mechanics discussion, observation of score-setting strategy
- **[community_signal]** Pinballpalooza tournament had laid-back, social vibe compared to Golden State's intensity. Compared favorably to older 'pin golf' era tournaments. System 11 setup evoked nostalgia for veteran players' college/high school experiences. Strong volunteer tech support and collaborative problem-solving culture. (confidence: high) — Mark's cultural assessment, comparison to prior tournament experiences, observation of collaborative tech support
- **[restoration_signal]** System 11 machines (40+ years old) held up reasonably well under tournament play stress despite some issues: Pinbot had smoke issue, Codebreaker failed, Swords of Fury needed service. Overall performance described as 'fantastic' given route machine history and weekend pounding. Owners/techs demonstrated strong maintenance culture. (confidence: high) — Spencer and Mark's assessment of vintage machine condition, acknowledgment of specific failures, praise for owner maintenance
- **[design_innovation]** Spanish Eyes duel concept created from offhand podcast comment by Maurice; successful hybrid using tiltalica rules framework. Shows community responding creatively to design ideas and cross-pollinating mechanics between machines. (confidence: medium) — Spencer's account of Spanish Eyes duel origin and positive reception
- **[sentiment_shift]** Speakers attribute lukewarm Star Wars: Fall of the Empire reception to broader Star Wars IP fatigue, not game-specific failures. Home edition at Costco and general saturation of Star Wars content cited as context. Game described as 'pretty old' despite being new release. (confidence: medium) — Spencer and Dan discussing fatigue factors beyond game design, citing Costco home edition as evidence of oversaturation
- **[gameplay_signal]** Star Wars: Fall of the Empire currently feels 'pretty solid' but relatively simple (compared to Munsters simplicity). Speakers expect significant depth from future code updates (mini-wizard modes, super-wizard modes). Contrast to Star Wars concerns where franchise saturation affects perception regardless of mechanics. (confidence: medium) — Discussion of current simplicity vs expected future updates, speculation on code expansion roadmap
- **[venue_signal]** Sacramento/Dixon Fairgrounds region has active pinball community: Greater Sacramento Pinball League organizing major tournaments, Elk Grove Pinball streaming hub, Lodi League participation, regional distributor stocking American Pinball and Pinball Brothers. Multi-venue tournament series (Golden State referenced as prior major tournament). (confidence: high) — Geographic references, organization names, venue citations across tournament discussions
- **[community_signal]** Kids' flip frenzy event drew ~30 participants (ages 4-14), first organized competition for many. Despite initial overexcitement, participants stayed engaged throughout. Exposure to classic System 11 machines (tournament-level setup) created positive first competitive experience. Event successfully introduced youth to competitive pinball culture. (confidence: high) — Spencer's detailed youth event logistics and behavioral observations

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## Transcript

 🎵 hey welcome to the spinners lit pinball podcast episode 80 oh the horror i'm spencer your host and with me are my co-host, Dan. Hey, what's going on, folks? Happy Halloween season! And Mark. Hey, everyone. So, as usual, I've been doing nothing, sitting in my basement playing pinball and drinking beer, and no, I've just been doing other stuff. But you guys went to, and I saw a video and I saw pictures, I was so really envious. Green. I was green. Halloween green with envy. Isn't Halloween orange? Halloween is orange, orange and green Is it green more like Easter? No, Easter green Like Grinch green, it could be Christmas Who knows? Christmas is green, green and red Halloween is more like orange and black and Easter is like pink and baby blue You were pink and baby blue with envy Pink and baby blue with envy You're making me sound like one of the misfit toys, we're not even there yet You are definitely a misfit toy. So we, you guys, okay, you, Dan, and Mark got to go to Pinnagogo this year. It looked awesome, and they had a cool tournament, and I'm going to let you guys talk about it. Dan, you want to start? Sure. So Pinnagogo was the usual time, but the usual place, Dixon Fairgrounds. It's a three-day show. There were probably, what do you figure, Mark, 200 show games? Yes, I'd say about a little, maybe over, yeah, between 150 and 200 games. Yeah. You know, especially if you count the tournament room. Yeah, if you count the tournament room, then there's more. Yeah. You know, the crowd is very reasonable. Even Saturday afternoon, you can get in there and, you know, you can wait for a few minutes and play just about anything. You know, you can move around. It's a little claustrophobic, but it's not too bad. And there was a good assortment of vendors. we had a couple of the newer titles out there not all the newest hottest but we did get to check out Star Wars Rise of the Empire no not Rise of the Empire Star Wars Fall of the Empire and they had a couple Harry Potters there as well so you know the game selection at Pinnagogo is eclectic like people bring some of the newest stuff People bring some of the oldest stuff. We have some vendors who bring some new stuff. You usually get to see quite a few of the kind of smaller manufacturer games because we have a distributor in the area who sells like American Pinball. And who's the other company? Well, they made Alien, not Highway anymore. Pinball Brothers. Pinball Brothers. Yeah, they typically have the Pinball Brothers games. They typically have the American games, you know, for as long as those last. $7,500 new in-box Galactic Tank for Signature Edition, though, huh? That's incredibly cheap. Man, what a great price for just a super underrated game. And I think that game's awesome. I'm sorry, but I'm going to tell you right now, I think it's great. No, I haven't. I have fun playing it. I think it's way better than people give it credit for. Absolutely. But yeah, so Star Wars was good, relentlessly average, does everything. I think that the average kind of maybe not hardcore pinball fan, but maybe they weren't 100% happy with what happened in the original Star Wars game. Not the original, but the original Stern Star Wars game that Steve Ritchie did a few years back. It, you know, has a more straightforward layout. It has more straightforward rules. It has brand new art. It's got generally better voices. It's got the same music because you're not going to go wrong with John Williams. It's got toys and, you know, was decent to shoot. I don't think that I'd pay a lot of money for it, but at the same time, you know, I wouldn't kick it out of bed for eating crackers. Yeah. I thought it was fun to shoot And I had a chance to go see it but I don't want to Cut into your thing unless you want me to Start with my experience when I got there But I thought It was I thought it was fun to shoot I thought it was a good game Yeah it wasn't wow I mean there was anything that was like Whoa look what the ball does but I had fun And the way that they incorporated the clips And the music yeah the music gets a little grating Hopefully they get more licensed with the Empire Strikes Back music. And maybe they do have that, and I just didn't get deep enough in the game. But I thought the assets were great. I mean, they used a lot more variety of clips than the 2017 version. Yeah, I don't think that they ever have a hard time making the game into Star Wars. Like, even the Steve Ritchie game felt like Star Wars. It had the characters and the voices and whatnot. It just, there's just something about Star Wars pinball where they never quite seem to capture the magic. Yeah. You know, and I don't know what it is. Like, the original Data East was still probably my favorite Star Wars pinball experience. You know, I personally kind of like the Steve Ritchie version better than the new John Borg Star Wars. and a distant last if you're talking about original trilogy games is Sega Trilogy because that game sucks as we said on another episode it's your favorite game do you guys feel like because a lot of people are saying kind of what you're saying about the new game do you feel like maybe partly because it's like just an overload of Star Wars fatigue I think so. I mean, we just had a home edition that was announced at Costco. And then, I don't know. I think when I look at it, I think it's getting a little old, to be honest with you. I don't know. It'll be interesting to see how well this new version of Star Wars from Stern does in the arcades. It's almost like this is designed for a public location. more than a home environment. That's how I feel when I played it. It was like, and it wasn't long playing either. I mean, it drained pretty fast, especially with those bumpers on the side, which I thought was a cool design to make that danger experience down on the lower part of the play field. I mean, once it hit those pop bumpers, you're like, oh crap, better get control of this ball or it's going to be going right in the out lane. So I did like that. The other thing that I noticed playing, I played about five or six games on it, and I played right away when I got there. And there was hardly anybody there in the beginning in Friday. That was the best time to go. So I was there about 4.30 or so. And the first thing I went to, of course, I wanted to play Star Wars because that was mainly the reason why I went out there and wanted to see everybody. and I thought it was really I really liked the shot with the I don't know you call it the cup the vortex whatever you want to call it the job of the hat the sarlacc thing yeah I thought that was fun and it was more fun to see it spinning around on the pro version instead of being covered up by Jabba but I I really liked that. It was satisfying. And I like how it started a separate mode or maybe it was a reward. I don't know exactly. Like I said, I'm not too familiar with the rules. I just kind of got a feel for it. But the one thing that was frustrating, and I think everybody is saying it, and it's so funny because it's the same thing I was frustrated on, on the premium and the LE, is that Death Star, the ball did not go in when it was open to lock the ball. It rattled around and it came back. Now, if that's meant for design, great. Then that makes it more satisfying to try to hit that shot. But I just found that it was a little frustrating because I wanted to see the dust star multiball. I finally did do it after a third game. But it was definitely a challenge because it's so skinny. It's such a tight shot, and it doesn't always go in when it's open. Bashing it was fine. but trying to get it into the actual Death Star and then starting a multiball was a challenge for sure. I don't know if you felt that, Dan, if you had a chance to play it. It's definitely tougher than Groot, but it's also kind of similar to Groot. Because, you know, Groot, like you can whack the ball off his chin all day long, but it just seems like when he opens his mouth, if you're the slightest bit off, you get rattle, rattle, rattle, reject. and you think with the Death Star it would have been easier because now there's a little lane leading up to it. Right. But no, it's a tough one to hit. It's a tough one to hit. But no, I thought, again, it was good. I think it's a game where if you were going out to get one and you're agonizing about pro versus premium, you're probably pretty good with the pro. Yes. I don't think that you're losing too much. And I think that it's a game that, like, honestly, people are just going to stick crap all over anyway. They're going to stick little model ships and they're going to stick action figures. And, you know, even if people feel like it doesn't have enough toys, it will have enough toys soon enough. So, Oh, of course. Yeah. If you like star Wars and you like pinball, it's, it's a perfectly adequate game, but compared to some of the other stuff that Stern and other pinball manufacturers have done lately, it just, it's a little, eh. Yeah. It's kind of like a souped up version of the home edition is how I feel in a way. I mean, yes, it has more shots, but I don't know. See, I heard other people say it felt like a home game. And I didn't necessarily walk away thinking it felt like a home game. I just thought it felt like an average game. It felt like, I don't know. I don't know how to say it nicely. It felt like some games that Stern was doing back when they were about to go out of business. Yeah. Where they were just trying to get something out into the world, you know, so that they can make a couple of sales and stay open. You know, kind of like Iron Man, but without that weird, brutal Iron Man magic. Right. So, I mean, you know, it's a Borg, so the outlanes aren't friendly. I mean, it will kill you. Oh, yeah. But it's also probably a little bit easier to get the ball on the field and make a couple shots than the Ritchies. So if you like Star Wars and the Steve Ritchie Star Wars frustrated you, try this. It's got great flow. I think the flow is awesome. And like I said, the way they utilize the assets, you do know what you're doing. It's a little more simpler. It's kind of like, you know, Munsters was real simple and easy to figure out. This one kind of feels the same way as far as understanding the rules. But there still is a lot more deep stuff that can come about when they continue to update the code. But right now, it's pretty solid. That was the problem with Monsters was Monsters was short. Yeah, it was short. It was like Monsters was like Monster Bash where you kind of expect to see the final mode three or four times in a good game. Yeah, it was rinse and repeat. Right. Everybody hated that. Where Star Wars, I'm sure that there's going to be a wizard mode and a mini wizard mode and a super wizard mode and, you know, that they're that they're not going to disappoint you with content. So, yeah, give it a look. and then they had some Harry Potters and again if you haven't gotten your hands on Harry Potter yet it's a cool game it's packed just packed it's so damn fun to shoot it is such a great game it's got so much stuff and it's so funny because when you see them side by side ironically they were really close to each other there's just no comparison as far as the world under glass and just how beautiful it looks It's like you look in front of a Jersey Jack and it's like, holy crap, this is gorgeous. And then you look at the other one. I think that is an ugly game. It's gaudy, but I think it's cool. I mean, I don't really care for the franchise. So the art doesn't do much for me, nor is the art especially good. It certainly isn't like something that Franchi did. Yeah. And just like it's so full of crap that, you know, your eye doesn't really know where to look. The main mechanism is not particularly beautiful, but it does a lot of cool shit with the ball. Yeah. And, you know, that upper Quidditch play field thing, that little whoopie whoopsie-doo shot that, you know, and then it comes back around surprisingly quick back down to the flipper. Super fun. There's a million shots, and they all go somewhere, and you don't expect it. Yeah, it's a super neat game, but I wouldn't say it's beautiful. Even the Yelly, which I know if you're a Harry Potter fan, you probably know what each of these little pieces of art means and why it's special. To me, it's just sort of like a bit of a cotton candy nightmare. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of the puke. What do they call it? The rainbow puke? I mean, I wouldn't say that. Like, cotton candy nightmare, I think, is friendlier than rainbow puke. Okay, okay. Cotton candy nightmare. I know that a lot of people love Harry Potter. And again, to them, this is an absolute dream theme. So what I would say about it is if you love Harry Potter, you're probably going to look at this and be like, OK, this looks freaking great for me. If I was looking at a game, I look at Star Wars and at least I understand why it looks like it does. You know, I know what these scenes are. I know who these characters are. Besides, you know, the major ones in Harry Potter and, you know, maybe like Malfoy and, you know, Dumbledore and whatnot. I'm not like up on the Harry Potter lore as much as I'm sure a lot of people are. But, you know, if you haven't got your hands on Harry Potter yet, they're out there. Oh, yeah, they're going out on all occasions. Yeah. And just going back to Star Wars real quick, I did like the artwork. Since we're talking about the artwork of Harry Potter, I did like the artwork on Star Wars. I thought it looked really cool. Like you said, it would look like a giant Kenner toy. But I like that. because it looks a lot like toy packaging. And I think that's the play. Like, I think that they're really trying to say, this is the Star Wars that you remember. The Steve Ritchie Star Wars, I think, has very much last generation kind of Photoshop-y, like these are the pictures that you can use art. And, you know, maybe I'm off base on that, but that's just what it always felt like to me, where this actually feels like they let somebody draw something then said, yeah, we like that. Go ahead and put it on your machine. I don't know who the artist was, but they did a fine job. Yeah, it's definitely not bad at all. Luke looks like Luke. Han looks like Han. Leia looks like Leia. Right. And Chewie was represented. Chewie's there, right? Chewie's there. Yay, Chewie. Chewie's represented. You know, R2-D2 and C-3PO. I like the C-3PO announcer voice. He's good. Yeah. The guy does well, and he's a good voice to do that, rather than the weird super cut-rate Admiral Ackbar. Yeah, he was always bossy anyway. I kind of like the more conversation tone of C-3PO. Yeah, but you know there needed to be like a gobble hole that kills you, and then he goes like, it's a trap! Yeah, that's true. That's right. But yeah, the show floor was great. It had everything that I think you'd expect to see, and a couple surprises, new games, old games, EMs. Our friend Maurice brought his Spanish duel set up. Oh, that was cool. Yeah. Which is sort of tiltalica made out of Spanish eyes. Yeah, that was fun. So I guess that this came from an offhanded comment that I made about cross eyes or what we'd call Spanish eyes duel and Maurice decided to make it happen. So that's just amazing. but I thought it was the world's stupidest idea like you know we did it with the tiltalica and it worked out but I was like how fun could this be surprisingly fun like it's actually really really good and he has some rules to it where it's more than just trying to tilt your opponent like you want to get a lead and score and then try to take out your opponent yeah it was fun we always just degrade it to if I take you out it doesn't matter how many points you have you lose Right. And and that brings us to the tournament room, which I'm sure was one of the biggest reasons that we were both there. Yes, because I streamed the tournament with Rick on Elk Grove Pinball, although we had a lot of technical issues this year. And Mark played in the tournament and there were three tournaments. The first night there was a women's tournament put on by the Tilted Sisters. uh the second uh day the entire day right up until closing the absolute bitter end uh was the main tournament which was like target match play followed by an amazing race yes and that was put on by the greater sacramento pinball uh league and then the third day there was the little flippers and I actually helped run that. And that was an hour long flip frenzy with kids anywhere from, I think about four to 14. Wow. How many kids participated? It felt like a million. Really? Like I'm sure it was less, but like probably 30 kids. That's incredible. 30 kids. That's a huge amount. And so you're familiar with how flip frenzy works, right? Yes. So for the folks who aren't, what happens is the computer basically just match makes you. And the idea is you have a set amount of time, which is in this case was an hour to get as many matches in and as many wins and as you can. So you don't necessarily want to stand there and run the score up on somebody. but you just want to finish the game ahead of them. And then when you finish, you run back, you say, I won, and then you usually get a couple seconds of standby, and then, you know, it matches you with someone else who's not playing and, you know, off to the races. So with adults, you could imagine that, you know, that's probably pretty frantic. Well, imagine this with kids, tons of which are playing in their first ever organized pinball competition. And, like, they are just, like, running and yelling and screaming, and some of them know exactly what to do and some of them really don't. But everybody was very well behaved. Everybody seemed to have a lot of fun. There were one or two kids that you could tell that, you know, especially at the beginning, they were very, very overexcited. And about halfway through, you could definitely tell that some of them were like, oh, my gosh, no more pinball. You know, they were still playing. They were still competing. I don't think anybody quit. They were all in it to win it. But, yeah, you could kind of tell the shine was on their forehead and a little bit less out of their eyes. But, yeah, it was super fun. I mean, I couldn't tell you the name of the winner, but everybody got a prize. The winners got better prizes and little trophies. And, yeah, it was awesome, you know, and it was a big thanks to Mark and to Kendra, who were the actual planned people who were going to run it. I just happened to be in there hanging out with Kendra and got press ganged into service. But, you know, I'm really excited I did it. And actually next year I might volunteer to do it. I had a good enough time. And it's always great to watch kids discover competition pinball and just how fun it is. Did they play classics or did they play modern? Oh, they played the same System 11s that you guys did. Oh, that's so cool. Yeah. So it's a bunch of little kids playing a bunch of System 11s. that were set up in tournament mode for a bunch of grown-ups. Oh, man. So you know some of those games were extra brutal. Yeah. So, and Mark will tell us a little bit more about that. But, yeah, in the tournament room, yeah, that's just what we had to play. So, yeah, they all played the exact same System 11s that you guys played the night before. So, yeah, it was awesome, man. Well, that's cool that the kids were exposed to classic machines and had a little love for that. That was cool. Yeah, I thought that was the best part of the tournament was the idea of having all System 11s. It totally brought back memories of when I skipped classes in college. All those games that were out there, I played almost every one of those. that were at the definitely was the idea of of madman right who in this case would be shannon and jack and uh eric and hector like i think that they were the main ones i know that there were other people involved please please forgive me for not mentioning you but when they told me hey do you have any system 11s that we can borrow i'm like i just have a black knight 2000 and shannon already has a black knight 2000 you know i was just like man are you guys sure about this and uh you know there was definitely some weirdness right like system 11s or system 11s so you know not one of them's less than you know 40 years old right but by and by large other than you know pin pin bot pin bot got a little smoky and uh yeah you know chode kings decided it didn't want to make it through the tournament and uh swords of fury needed some service and you know just about everything needed a little bit of love. But, you know, we have a ton of guys there who are techs. Pinball Pirate came in and helped out with a couple games. And, you know, I was actually really surprised at just how little game drama that there was, especially after the first day. I know when we were setting up, there were like seven games down, and I was just like, oh, I was trying to help tech a game. That tells you how bad it was. I think what I was very surprised with is that I didn't realize that you could practice on them before the tournament. They were all on on that day of the tournament. I thought that was really wild. So, you know, what I think happened with that was. I don't think that they were necessarily supposed to be available, but we were kind of just being real cool about people playing before the women's. because I think that we just wanted to see what was working, right? Or they wanted to see what was working. I was sitting at the Elk Grove pinball table by then. And so, you know, we were trying to help them, you know, figure out what the problems were. And so I was jumping around playing games and reporting issues and teching what I could, which was, again, very, very limited in this case. I wasn't, you know, looking to get in there and start like soldering around on other people's games. But ultimately, I think that they made it through really, really well. Again, especially considering that these are all route machines that, you know, probably spent 20 years in arcades doing their thing. And now they're back out there doing it again. Not on location but I mean you know to get put into this environment where they going to get played hundreds of times over the course of a weekend and to stand up to the pounding is fantastic Yeah they turned out really well Yeah it tells you something about the guys who own these games and how they take care of them And you know trouble Trouble is trouble but you know you don just okay we turn it off We won't play it. It's just like, hey, we need this team to be up and running. Let's dive in and let's figure it out. So, yeah, the ladies' tournament was super fun. Brandi Thompson, she was the winner. Our good friend Zhao took second. and Amanda, who plays in the Lodi League, took third. Cool. Which was great for her. And so the men's tournament, you want to talk a little bit about that one? Sure, I will. First of all, it was a great tournament. I had a lot of fun. It felt a lot more of a social tournament rather than an intense tournament. Like playing even at Golden State was a little more intense, even though it still was fun. It felt it was a little more laid back. It had that vibe of when they used to have tournaments before Golden State, when they had the pin golf. It had that vibe. It was like everybody was social. Everybody was having a good time. It was competitive, but it wasn't to the point where everybody was just so into winning. It was more like, oh, here, we're having fun. We're getting to play our games that we used to play in college or in high school, depending on how old you are. and I really enjoyed the variety of games and how they were organized, how they were all in sequence of the year they were produced. So you had it all the way from the left all the way to the right were all in chronological order. I thought that was really cool. So it was like being on a walk, you know, walk down memory lane basically. And I like the format. I thought that was really neat that we played target match play up to 23 or 10 rounds. And it was long. It was longer than I expected. I thought it was going to go a lot shorter for the rounds, but there were some damn good players there, and they kept that ball alive. I was one of them that one time held up everybody because I had such a good ball. But I had a lot of fun competing with everybody and how it was randomized every time for the rounds, and then it got a little more cutthroat because it was more Swiss-tiered so that you had to play people that were kind of on the same record as you, and then you had a shot. If you lost, you could get back down and get a better chance to win and then get back up. So there was a lot of movement in that top 16 going up and down. At first, I was like, oh, my gosh, I'm out of this. I'm not going to be able to catch up. But with the 3-2-1-0 scoring, it really evens the playing field. So I really enjoyed that. At first, I had a really killer game. I can't remember all the games I played because there were so many rounds. But I did kind of up and down. And then I was on a killer streak for a little while playing great games. And then I couldn't believe it, but I made it in the top 16. And there were 60 players that played in the tournament, which is a lot. That's a good amount of people. and I was surprised that I made it in the top 16. I think I came in, was it like fourth place, I think, out of the 60 for qualifying. And then the reality hit when we had to play Amazing Race. It was the Amazing Race thing. So I was shocked at, you know, especially last year, it surprised me. but this year too, like just how weird of a format that is. Yeah. Because the idea behind Amazing Race is the lowest qualifier plays first and sets his best score, and then everybody else takes turn playing after, and it's not until someone scores lower that he moves on to the next game because the person with the lowest score is on the hot seat. And then when everybody plays, if you have the lowest score, you're out. Right. And it gets wild and super hard to follow when you're streaming really, really fast, because eventually you probably have like five games going at the same time. Correct. Single player games, right? Which is single player, which is which is kind of crazy. So and then when it comes down to it, the top qualifier, who was in this case, Alex Lambert, kind of becomes the reaper of souls because you're sitting there and you had this rough game and you're hoping someone else has a rougher game and Apple steps up and just sweeps you the hell out of the tournament. Yep, absolutely. And it was funny too because the thing that's so scary about Amazing Race, like you said, is if you have a bad game, and this was a pattern that I saw, every person that played to set a score were all ridiculously low uh did you see one that was really high that was hard to achieve i didn't see any i saw that they were all pretty low scoring right well yeah because i think that with those games like if like you were the first person and you set a high score then okay everybody's just gonna fail chasing you down right so like if i did 10 million and that was a high score and you did two million my 10 million didn't mean anything because as soon as that two million was on the board it's what mattered right so yeah just the funny thing about amazing race is you're looking at like the lowest the lowest score i think the game that was kind of the most competitive weirdly enough was probably like space station space station yep yeah it felt like everybody hung a pretty good score on space station yeah that wasn't a that That wasn't a game that really was mean. It was actually pretty friendly to play. Which is weird because I figured Space Station would be like a real killer. Like, you know, it's so weird and so different with the whole no end lanes thing. But no, people seem to be having a really good time on it. And I was just like, man, I did not expect that. I talked to, I think it was Winnie, and she had a really good game on it in qualifying. And I said, do you have access to one of these games? Because I was surprised how well you handled it. And she was like, no, but I'm a big fan of Stargazer, and Stargazer is kind of similar. Oh, okay. And I was like, yeah, I guess. I mean, I didn't see that in my mind's eye, but now that you say it out loud, it does make sense, because it also has those open flipper lanes. Open flipper lanes, yeah. Yeah, so, you know, it was kind of wild. But so so anyway, I made it through and I think I had Black Knight that I played and I thought I was going to be out of it. And then I had a really good ball. I think it was the third ball, if I'm not mistaken. And it was great. And then the next one was I think it was Swords of Fury. I don't know if it was exactly after Black Knight, but it was around that time. And I was about the eighth person at the time. So I was kind of in the middle and I played it so well in my qualifying. But then what happened is in the qualifying round, the game was set up so floaty that you could barely drain the ball. It was super easy to shoot. You could keep it up on the top play field for I don't know. You could hit those targets down nonstop. and then they raised it up to more a tournament level pitch and it screwed me because i was not used to it i was used to the floaty feel and i drained my first two balls instantaneously one was a house ball the second one i had two flips on the top and then it did i think it bounced off the flipper and it went and it did up and over and i was terrified because those were my two balls and one ball left. And when I was up, I think I had to score at least 300,000 points to be able to be safe. And I was on a roll. I think I started multiball if I'm not mistaken, or it was close to it. And I was pretty much just carefully nudging the machine. And all of a sudden out of nowhere, the game just went dead and tilted on me and I didn't get the bonus. and I was short of making it past the goal, and I was out of the tournament. And I can't figure out if I was not aware how hard I was shaking it, but I swear to God, I was barely touching it. And all of a sudden, it just tilted on me. I was like, well, that sucks. And I couldn't move on. So I was a little more pissed at the machine than anything else. But, hey, that's pinball. So I just had to get over it. You took 11th of 60. So that's not too bad. I took 11th. Yep. Yep. I took 11th. Hector got wiped out by Black Knight 2000. I know. He did too. Yeah. His score was like two. Yeah. Yeah. It was so low. Yep. But so they played. Oh, yeah. That's right. They basically ran this round until there were four people. And then they had a four-player game to decide who the winners were. and for the second year in a row, Alex Lambert, the sweaty meats guy, and now the Reaper of Souls took first. I believe it was Gabriel Josette took second. Dustin Goldbar took third. And Jack Jarrett, our own Jack Jarrett, took fourth. Yeah. Nice. Great job to Alex. That dude is a freak. Like he didn't look – I mean maybe once. he might have looked almost worried. Yeah, he was pretty focused. He just walked up, did all what he had to do, did it. So, yeah, Alex just, you know, he was just unbeatable. And, yeah, Pinnagogo, that's been his playground the last couple years. I mean, he did have some drama in Amazing Race last year, but this year it was almost never any doubt. Like, he rolled pretty much not unopposed, obviously. there was a lot of competition but he rolled and it was funny because the tournament had to be done by 11 o'clock and it was a long tournament it started by 10 o'clock and we finished at 10.01 oh it had to be done at 10? oh ok I thought it was at 11 and they finished yeah 10.01 just right on the dot so the winner of the little flippers was Peter M with the second place Nathan Arnold in the third place Silas Caswell. Cool. So congrats to all those guys. It was a weekend of tournaments in Dixon, and yeah, super exciting. I always go like, man, I should have played. That looked like so much fun. But I had a lot of fun talking crap about you guys on the net, which I don't know if you'll ever get to see too much of it. I think Rick put something up, but apparently we had just massive connection problems, so it was just up and down and up and down and up and down. But if you want to see what there is to see, check out Twitch TV, Elk Grove Pinball. And then aside from the pinball, you know, I don't know if you partook very much of the campsite, but there is a camping component, not quite as major as the one at Golden State, but we had two or three or four of our friends set up a real nice campsite. And, you know, you could always just slip away and go hang out. and there was always someone to talk to or a cold beer to drink or, you know, a hot dog. So, yeah, man, it was just it almost at the expense of making you feel bad, Spencer, Brian said it was like old Pinnagogo. Yeah, that's what it felt like. Yes. You know, it was it was very people forward. There was lots of pinball. you know it wasn't free of of of hassler dramas we had one kind of overzealous security guard but uh ultimately i think that you know everybody just had a really good time and you know if if you're in northern california and you've never gone to a pinball and arcade show and golden state seems like it might be a little overwhelming and california extremes too much in the bay area and you don't want to go to Southern California to go to something like Indisc, Pentegogo is the perfect show. It's in this little town. It gets a good crowd of super friendly people. It's got everything that you need and really nothing that you don't. You know, if you're into seminars and you're into, you know, bigger tournaments and bigger spectacle, absolutely. Go check out California Extreme. You know, please come out to Golden State. If you love Pinnagogo, come out to Golden State because that's just like super Pinnagogo. Yeah, absolutely. Honestly, it's just like Pinnagogo is just, you know, I hate to say my favorite show because Golden State is so good. And also, you know, I'm really friends with all the organizers. So you guys rule. But Pinnagogo is just a really good show. I mean, I'll be honest. I probably like Pinnagogo a lot because I don't end up working for half of it. So true. now i have a question dan at the campsite did you have any games set up or no so yeah uh shannon was bringing his uh was bringing his evil dead in and out no way really yeah because shannon's a madman oh my gosh i think that they had uh i think it was juan's uh foo fighters because he was trying to sell it oh cool and i think jokers might have ended up out there at some time too oh it was working? Oh, man, that was the one I wish didn't get taken out of the tournament. Yeah, so that Joker's is very much a, I mean, I think they sold it. I think Hector bought it, in fact. That's probably why it ended up at the campsite. That Joker's was very much a rescue. And Mike and George, you know, picked that thing up. I think that it was a swap for something not pinball related. phone booth or something that Mike had done. And yeah, they fixed that thing up and gave it another shot at glory. And I've always said, you know, Jokers is one of those games that is just terrible, but I love it. Yeah, me too. I can't even explain why. And I know that it's been one of those games that, you know, people just love to hate. but like I've always just had a really good time playing that game. It's like hurricane. Everyone hates hurricane. And I'm like, I love hurricane. I mean, it's absolutely terrible and I can understand why you don't like it, but man, I always have a good time playing that game. So, you know, I own the jokers. You did. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, Oh God. Uh, probably 15 years ago, 14, I don't know, maybe 12 years, something like that. I sold, I ended up selling the show. I bought it. I went up to, uh, like Eldorado Hills. and the guy had bought it from Bay Area Amusements 15, 20 years before. Had it for the kids. The kids grew up, left the house, and nobody ever played it. I ended up selling it. The guy I sold it to was somebody out of Idaho, and they wanted the play pill. The cabinet and everything was nice, but they had one, and the play pill was almost for everybody commented. So I paid $600 for it. Oh, wow. It was one of those games that, yeah, forever. Like the world's nicest Jokers was $900. Exactly. But you stopped seeing them a lot because like a lot of those kind of bubbling under System 11s, eventually people started stealing the boards out of them to put in the popular ones. Right. Oh, right. So, you know, you would steal the boards out of something like that to keep your Whirlwind running or your Earthshaker. Right. And, you know, it's a shame. But now when you see one of those, it's kind of cool, you know. Although Police Force still sucks, no matter how much I try to like it. Yeah, I like Jokers. I always have. In fact, I was thinking about it just a few days ago, thinking, I'd love to find another Jokers. Yeah. It's a fun game. That double your score is very addictive, trying to get that. And if you have the first few flippers, forget it, and you're never going to get it. And that's the thing that was most frustrating when I was playing on location back in Minnesota, is those flippers were never strong enough, and it was always one of the flippers that couldn't make it up the right side of that ramp to get the double your score. So I missed it off. So just to put it into perspective, though, the campsite game is nothing like it is at Golden State. Oh, no, that's fine. I was just wondering if there were games you'd play. Does campsites like show part two? Sure, sure. I'm going to go over the campsites, you know, if you have a friend with a camper out there, it's a good place to hang out. But, like, you know, we stayed up late and, you know, hung out. And like I said, there was a pinball machine or two out there. So the community feel was real strong. Oh, that's cool. I would have came out there, but I was so tired after the tournament. I was just exhausted. So, but it was, yeah, it was a lot of fun. I thought as far as putting a closing on this, I really thought that the games played amazing in the showroom. There were hardly any down. Thanks to Pinball Pirate. He brought so many games to play all the new sterns and everything like that. And there weren't as many classics, but I know why, because they were all in the tournament room. So it made sense. But there were a lot of EMS, which I thought were great. Got to play a lot of those different EMS and stuff. But overall, 30 bucks, you can't beat for a three day weekend to have fun and have a really cool vibe. And it was great. I really enjoyed it. I'm glad I didn't miss out this year, and I'll definitely go next year. Yeah, if you live in Northern California or adjacent and you like pinball, it's not to be missed. Yeah, man. I got to find a way to get back to a pinnagogo again in the future. Yeah, you would have dug it the most, man. It definitely had the vibe. Yeah, and that's what I miss, that vibe, man, just that group, just old home week, man. So I think we're ready to move on because it's, you know, it's a horror season, Halloween, science fiction, fantasy, horror, scary stuff. Yeah, man. So we're going to start out and I'm going to go ahead and start this myself. What's your favorite scary or horror themed pin that you'd like to see or that you currently see made into a game? I'm sorry. Hey, Spencer. Yeah. What's your favorite scary pinball? You know, I thought a lot about this. And one that used to show up at Pinnagogo was high on my list, and that's Class of 1812. Love that. It's got the horror. It's got the tongue-in-cheek comedy. It's got, you know, the chicken doing the 1812 overture. That's, I mean, just the heart beating, all that, the chattering teeth, all that good stuff. But, you know, it's like when I think about it, I think, okay, well, Monster Bash. Okay, arguably an ultimate classic because they remade it, you know. And again, don't get remade unless it's, you know, it's worth its weight. But, you know, I'm going to go kind of into a left field. My personal favorite, I think, of scary or horror theme pen, Bram Stoker's Dracula. Yeah, yeah. That's a good one. And it's not a great movie. And it's got great people in that movie. Some of my favorite actors, you know, Gary Oldman. I mean, but it's not a great movie. And it doesn't have the best art, but the features in that game and the theme integration and the music, the missed multiball, the different – the stack and the multiballs, the coffin lock, everything on that. It just – when you're playing that alone in the dark, ooh, I love that game. If you like a game that sounds like ladies are getting off and you can't own a Big Bang Bar, Brown Stalkers is the machine for you. Yes, that's true. You read my mind, Dan. Yeah. 2X 3X There's a lot of moaning going on in that game There is The other ones I mentioned I love those as well but yeah Bram Stoker's Dracula man You know the thing about Bram Stoker's and I own Bram Stoker's I don't own it at all because it's a horror theme and I do like horror themes I own it because it's just an absolutely vicious and disgusting ball breaker of a pinball machine. Yeah. Like it's just so fun to try to get the three multiball stack and to keep the balls alive and to get the 30 millions. And, you know, it's a really, really cool game. And the missed mechanism is something that must have been designed by sacrificing a chicken on the play field or something because God knows how it works. But when it works, it's so cool. Yep. yeah and uh yeah that's that that's a good that's a good pick do you laugh every time like when you get when you spell out dracula during dracula multiball i don't know why but it just cracks me up when he goes and he gets stabbed i don't know why but i laugh every time about that i just think it's hilarious it's so funny you get that weird little drop target that little side target thing and the guy's like master yeah i don't even know what he says and then you slam him against it by hitting the two flippers, and you get five million. I didn't even know you could do that. You didn't know that? And then you get the ball save, and it's like, Everlasting Love. You're just like, who the hell was making this game? I think that I heard somewhere that when that game was being made, it was supposed to have a completely different theme, and it ended up as Dracula. that's happened a few times I don't remember what the theme was but it was something that like I was just like oh Dracula's probably a better theme but yeah Dracula's cool I very openly I very openly expressed my want for that game for a long time before I got it and it was so funny because we finally got to go someplace where they had one that we could play and I played it with Will and he's like why do you want this dude it's freaking awesome. It's such a good game. Yeah, it's good. When you can get a good when you can get your flow going on that game, get some traction, and you can have a good game, man, it's real satisfying. Yeah. And having those lightning flippers, man, that's awesome, too. If you get it just timed right, you can get those rats starting or qualifying the castle locks. yeah it's good man that's a good game and it's got little buildings on it and it's got like a little graveyard and I just love that kind of stuff like it's such a cool game and it's got Ron Jeremy in a glass coffin so yeah that's pretty smooth cool alright Mark I'm not going to go with the obvious scary pinball Mark I like Alice Cooper's Nightmare Castle Spooky. I think that's a great game. I like the theme behind it. I like Alice Cooper doing the call-outs. And the music is just awesome on it. That's a fun one. It's tough to shoot. And it's also a ball breaker for sure. But I like the themes of it, how you go into the different rooms and the different monsters. And, you know, it's got that really cool, you know, horror theme to it. The artwork is really cool on the play field, and it also has the comic book art on the display. It's a fun one. It's a really good one as far as basically having that kind of like the force magnet. It's almost the same thing where it grabs the ball and then it shoots it up into the middle of the play field. It's the golden eye magnet. Yeah, yeah. It's the golden eye magnet. It's just a fun game. It's not found a lot of places. Not many people have my, my friend has one down the street and he loves it. Um, but, uh, I think that a cool game That a good one for horror And then if you have that really cool topper uh that lightning flashing on your wall and stuff like that it really has that horror theme but without getting too grotesque Yeah, it's cool. I'm kind of weird on Alice Cooper's Nightmare Castle as a horror theme. Definitely see where it is a horror theme, right? It's a nine-heart tassel. It's got monsters. He's kind of got like a Dr. Frankenstein sort of thing going on in there. But it's also kind of a music theme because it's Alice Cooper. But the game itself is definitely one of the better early spookies. And I think that, you know, when you play it, especially at first, you're completely lost because the rules just don't make any sense at all. But there's cool stuff to shoot at, right? There's a guillotine and a little upper play field, and there's a nice kind of evil-looking cave sculpt, and there's a lot of places that you hit the ball in and it comes back out. But when you finally figure out the rules to that game, it's actually kind of genius. Yes. Because of the fact that as you're going through the Nightmare Castle it's actually a book and you're turning pages and that's taking you to like the different, the different modes where you fight the different creatures. And then each of the different creature battles has a different Alice Cooper song assigned to it. And yeah, I've always thought that game was, was really neat. Yup. Yeah. I remember that one. I can definitely see how, how that would be. That would be a pick. Yeah. I think that's a good choice. Yeah. What's yours, Dan? So I guess it's my turn, right? So, you know, right away, I know that, you know, there's a bunch of really good ones. You know, there's the really, really kind of obvious ones like, you know, you got your Ghostbusters and you got your Scared Stiff. You got Walking Dead. You know, that's all kind of friendly horror. Then you got Walking Dead, which is kind of hard horror. You know, Freddy, Nightmare on Elm Street. you know there's just horror is one of those themes that I think lends itself really really well to pinball you know Gottlieb Haunted House right so I always agonize over this because you know I like all those games and almost every year I'm like oh it's got to be Scared Stiff right Scared Stiff is so good but recently you know a new contender has come in and it's It's from our previously mentioned friends at Spooky, and that's got to be Evil Dead. Yeah, that's what I was going to say, but I just wanted to be different. Like, how good is Evil Dead? Yeah, same here. Phenomenal. Yeah, it is. I am not a big Evil Dead fan, right? Like, I'm familiar with the Evil Dead franchise, and I've seen Army of Darkness quite a few times, and I didn't even really realize that Army of Darkness was connected to Evil Dead until much later in life. If I had an assistant manager who was like a super horror fan and he's just like, you don't like Evil Dead, but you like Army of Darkness. And I'm like, well, I don't know if I really have seen much Evil Dead. And he's like, well, you know, Army of Darkness is like the sequel to Evil Dead 2. And I'm like, well, I got to see this shit. And, you know, so he kind of, you know, smarten me up. But yeah, Evil Dead is just the perfect combination of just spectacular theming, all kinds of just really cool references and things from the movies. And you can tell it was made with just this absolute reverence for the source material. you know a lot of toys a lot of functional toys like the swing on the porch which acts like a ball lock which I thought was cool the shotgun shells being targets and the double barrel shotgun shooter lane and the drop targets protecting the hand that moves and the hand is a target and just it's just so cool and it feels a little weird saying that like oh this is my favorite horror game because really I've only played it, you know, probably, you know, 10 or 20 times. But, man, I just really want to play it more. But if I do have to pick a game that is just like, Dan, pick something that you've played a lot, it's Scared Stiff. Yeah. Like, how great is Scared Stiff, right? I got a download of that from Zen Pinball. They just came out with it for VR. That's a short list for owning someday. It's a great game. I kill myself every chance that I've missed out on owning that game. It's the perfect comedy horror theme. You know, it's a little racy, but, you know, it's Elvira-style racy, so it's not too, too bad. It's like barely PG racy, but it's just enough to where it goes, oh, look what she said. I don't know, man. Some of the comments, good head. Good head, yes. My favorite. You know, in the movie she did that. PG-13. Yeah, that was PG-13. You know, in the movie, do you remember in the movie where she gets bonked on the head and the guy says, how's your head? She's like, well, I've never had any complaints. So, yeah, you know, if you feel like Evil Dead's a cop-out answer just because it's the new hotness, it's like, okay, you know, I'll go back to the tried and true. I'll pick Scared Stiff. I totally agree with you though Evil Dead as far as the best representative horror besides maybe Texas Chainsaw Massacre ironically it's all spooky titles I haven't played Texas Chainsaw Massacre I've played Bugs Bunny or I've played Looney Tunes but I've never actually played the Texas Chainsaw Massacre version but again if you're kind of the person who wants like hard horror like you don't have that many choices. And even to me, like, Walking Dead, where Walking Dead is definitely, like, kind of a hardcore horror zombie game, unless you've modded it, like, it feels like it barely has anything to do with Walking Dead. You know, because they didn't get to use the real music and the real voices and the real sounds and stuff from the show. It just has, like, scenarios and, you know, there's some playfield accoutrements, like the Well Walker and the Aquarium if you have the bigger version. Ultimate, it is a sick-ass topper, though. I don't know. Walking Dead is a little brutal for my taste. I always feel like I should have more fun playing that game than I do. It's very graphic. Go ahead, Mark. I'm sorry. It's graphic, but campy, so it doesn't bother me as much. Well, because it's DMD. Yeah. How graphic is it going to be? You see like crowbars in the head and you see all sorts of like violent stuff. And it's not even color, right? Because it's just original DMD. If you get in color DMD, it's a little more graphic. That's true. It was like the game that shocked me with the level of graphic violence that it had when I put a color DMD in it was Judge Dredd. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Dredd has like dudes getting axes in the head and dudes getting melted and the guy splattering after he moved out of the building. and you know when it was just orange i was like oh well that was kind of violent and then you see it on the color dmv and even though it's just pixels you're still just like god damn yeah or starship troopers that's another one incredible how violent it is like starship troopers when you hit the two buttons at the same time and it goes still that's action though but that's funny i wouldn't call a horror game at all i'd call it action same with starship troopers but yeah a little more graphic than you expect. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because, again, when it was Dots, it was just like, who's going to complain about this? It's all orange. Right. Yeah, throw a little red in there. I think your choices were good, though. I mean, I agree with both of them. I just, I don't have, I've got like four games on Evil Dead, so I didn't have enough to really, but, I mean, the theme integration alone, they just, they get an A-plus and a gold star. Oh, yeah. They absolutely crushed it. And the voice work that Bill Campbell did and the sound design and the play field stuff, absolutely nothing about it feels – maybe the spinning – was it Linda? Yeah. Maybe that's a little cheesy. But it manages to do it all without feeling too cheesy. Yeah, it fits the game, though. I mean, it fits the theme perfectly. And the topper is horrifying. Oh, gosh, yes. Like the topper is straight out the most gruesome thing I think I've seen on a pinball machine. Yeah. You're just like, oh, that's awesome. Yeah. That's something like you'd expect to see in the main room, like when you first walk into a Spirit Halloween store and they have all the big, expensive stuff up. You know, you expect that's something like the topper you would see there. Yep. Yep. Pretty cool stuff. Well, what game would you guys like to see? You know, what horror theme or scary thing would you like to see made into a game? I've got one. Go for it. You ready? Phantasm. Phantasm. It's one of my favorite horror film franchises. Okay, so it's Phantasm. Phantasm's the ball, right? Yeah, with the spider. Hellraiser is the cube. Yeah, Hellraiser is the cube. Yeah, and that's a homebrew game now, Hellraiser. I don't know if anybody's ever done a homebrew. Phantasm. Phantasm, yeah, the first movie was like 78 or 79. It had the tall man. And they'd done like four or five of them. I know four for sure. The first one is epic. The second one, I didn't care for too much. The third one kind of redeemed themselves. The fourth one was kind of like, we're going to keep doing this, huh? And I think there was one. If there was a fifth, I don't think I've seen it. So, yeah. But, you know, you know how it gets with stuff like that. They just like, yeah, we can squeeze one more out of this and get a couple more bucks. But, yeah, man, the original Phantasm, really great film. Good, good, suspenseful horror film. You got the ball, of course. You got a cemetery. You know, you got the tall man. you could do a lot with that thing I do want to speak about it it's like whatever that sphere is called the ball how perfect is that yeah to have in a pinball machine and then like the targets can represent like whoever that thing is flying around and killing yeah yeah the giant tuning fork and you have the weird little like mutant Jawa people whoa I don't know so much about Phantasm that I can even start to speculate on what would be cool and what wouldn't be cool but I know that that ball apparently pops out blades and kills people and so yeah you have like targets pop up that represent victims and you have to hit it with the ball and that'd be pretty cool. It's got cool music you know cool horror themed music I mean it's going to be a limited audience you know especially not because you know They haven't made a Phantasm movie in a while. But I think it would do well. I have another one in mind, a secondary choice. It's another weird one I really like, if you want to hear that. Sure. Cabin in the Woods. Oh, yeah. Okay, because the Phantasm was my favorite horror film for years, and the Cabin in the Woods has beat that. Well, not beat it out, but like, because I love it turns the traditional horror film with the teenagers going up, you know, the college kids going up to the cabin by the lake for the weekend. It turns that on its ear. And, I mean, like if it ended up being like a Stern game, you could have like, you know, where you pick your character. I mean, you could do it with any company. You pick your character, and your character could be the different, like the rogues gallery where you get to pick, you know, like when they're doing the lotto and everybody's betting on what it's going to be, you know, whether it's going to be zombies or hillbilly zombies, and one of the controllers is like, come on, Merman, Merman. Hillbilly zombies. Yeah, yeah. I had zombies like, no, you had zombies. These are hillbilly zombies, you know. Yeah, man, or the unicorn or, you know, they had the dude that looked like a Hellraiser, but it was just different enough to not do, you know, copyright infringement. It's not pinhead, it's nailhead. Nailhead, yeah, exactly. But, no, that's another one I really enjoyed. but yeah so that but my first choice would be phantasm all right mine is totally out left field but I think you might agree with me I think it would be killer to have a Christine pinball machine I could get behind that that would be killer do you would be either the car or you would be avoiding the car I think that would be a cool one you could just see the back be a car bash toy And it would have to come back together. Yeah, like you'd have to like hit the car and like parts of it would break and then it would like regenerate. Yeah. Yeah. I love that idea. It's one of my favorite movies. I love that movie. Me too. And the music. Like high speed. Yeah. Right? So it's like, you know, the play field looks kind of like, you know, roads and whatnot. And then, yeah, just depending on the modes, either it's a mode where you're trying, you're Christine and you're trying to kill Arnie's enemies, or you can go to the end game where you're the other kids and you're trying to kill Christine. Yep. Yep. I like it. That'd be a good homebrew machine. Better get on it. You know, the funny thing is Steven King has like this thing. I mean, I know it's just for movies, but maybe he'd do it for pinball where like, like aspiring filmmakers can pay him a dollar for the rights to any of his stories. Oh, really? Apparently Green Mile was made under one of those agreements. So really? Wow. Yeah. It's kind of interesting to think that it's like, hey, you know, maybe we can see if he, you know, license us a pinball machine. Yeah. If you want the graphics and stuff in the movie, you'd have to go to John Carpenter. Which, you know, don't get me wrong, I'm sure John Carpenter would be pretty cool with that kind of thing. I bet he would be cool with that. One of his few adaptations, not like his own original type of work. I know we picked a John Carpenter, we were talking about this before because of Big Trouble, but we decided that's action and not horror. Right. That's kind of horror action. Mm-hmm. So, any runners-up for you? I like the Christine idea. Well, it's already been done in a homebrew, but you got to have Friday the 13th. I mean, I don't know. I think that would be a good one, too. I mean, they already did Halloween, but that's iconic. Well, I wish I had an ass because Friday the 13th was definitely mine. It was? Oh, my God. It was one of them anyway. Every time. I always pick yours. Hey, just because great minds think like that. Go with it. Go ahead. I was just going to say, you got to think about the fact that when it comes to horror, especially if you're going back into the 80s, there are like, what, three real franchises. Right. And two of them have gotten machines. Yep. So there's Halloween. And it's gotten a machine. And there's Nightmare on Elm Street. Yep. And it's gotten a machine. Although Nightmare on Elm Street deserves a better remake. deserves a remake. We all agree with that. I don't mean a remake. I mean a new machine. Yep. But the other one's Friday the 13th. How have we never had a situation where you have a summer camp play field, little buildings, little paths through the woods, like a lake, do the creature screen thing and have a lake in the middle of the play field with like graphics and stuff that are popping up and yeah you know have little like gotchas you know like things that will come out and like knock your ball off the course and your goal is basically to either escape from or you know again like a final mode to turn the tables on and destroy or incapacitate Jason Voorhees so that you can escape Yeah. Like just and you think about it, like how how how awesome would it be? Right. You know, you've got the you got the mask, the hockey mask imagery, obviously, you know, the bloody machete, you know, he's he's a big dude. So like you probably do like an Iron Monger style bash toy that would come up out of the lake. yeah and you can like knock him down um you know like there's just a lot of stuff that you can do and then just just a great opportunity to have like a play field with you know kind of like a lot of little hidey holes places that the ball will go down and then pop back up and then you know have like the lights and stuff move around and you don't want to hit the light that jason is is at you want to hit the light where jason is not at yeah and if you have the license if you have the light that jason is that you know you have to fight jason to survive and i think that honestly it should be like a timed mode too where if you can't if you can't escape them or kill them in that time mode your ball ends yep i love it i think it's great i think that's a great and like you said it's the only one of the major you know franchises of the 80s that hasn't been done in the game. Yep. Yeah, just, you know, and just super cool imagery. I mean, I know that Friday the 13th has kind of fallen out of the cultural zeitgeist. You know, Freddy has to an extent, too. I know we had, like, that weird Jason versus Freddy moment. And then they did a couple remakes. They tried to do new actors. I've heard that there's another Friday the 13th coming up. you know so maybe we'll have a chance at that but like any of these games like if you know the horror masters at spooky got their hands on them they could probably do some really cool stuff i've got the whole phantasm thing kind of stuck in my head now with that silver ball just flying around yeah yeah that'd be cool it's almost it's almost two on the nose but yeah man i think friday the 13th would be great. And then beyond that, you know, maybe you just go a little bit more, like, general. You know, it's been a long time since we've had, like, a monster bash, right? And, I mean, don't get me wrong. Like, I love the whole idea behind the Universal Monsters being in a band, but maybe just go for the Universal Monsters just being monsters, right? So you have a movie about Frankenstein and Dracula and the mummy and the wolfman and the creature just, you know, killing people. Yeah. There you go. You know, when you said that. Although Frankenstein himself isn't or Frankenstein's monster isn't, you know, necessarily a killer, you know, in a malicious way. But, you know, I think it'd be cool just to have, you know, universal monsters as a theme. Yep. When you said that. And not the crappy new universe remakes, whatever. The old school ones. Yeah, yeah. Black and white. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, see, that'd be perfect for Stern because it's an excuse to do games in black and white. They love to do a game in black and white. There you go. I would really like to see that. Just universal monsters. And you collect the monsters or you collect killing them or whatever, capturing them. I love that. Yeah, maybe that'd be the whole thing. like you're a monster hunter and you're trying to hunt down the universal monsters almost like jurassic before that they can like claim more victims there you go i got the best idea monster squad i love it yeah i love that idea because i love those old movies when you said that when you first said that damn the first thing that came to my mind though was adamant costello meet frankenstein because it had all the monsters in it costello meet frankenstein that's still one of my if you had any confidence that you know anybody would remember who Abbott and Costello are yeah you know who's on first is almost a nine year old bit and it still kills that's one of the best comedy routines ever ever ever still kills us nearly nine years old you know can you hear that on YouTube now because I used to have a tape of it yeah you can hear it on YouTube okay I got it listen to it from time to time 200 versions of it yeah exactly Yeah, I know. Yeah, you got to hear the right one where they actually did it. Yeah, yeah. No, you can go back and find their old stuff. And then there's certain like different channels will show their old movies all the time. They still have quite a following. Nice. But yeah, man. So that's what we've been thinking about for horror and Halloween and scary things. All good. I love those choices, Dan. Great choices. Jason and Freddy meet Frankenstein. You know what? I would buy that. I love it because I thought Jason and Freddy was fun. I thought it was the drive-in. So I saw a lot of those movies at the drive-in. So this one came completely out of left field, completely. Nobody ever saw this coming, ever. But if you know the lore and the history behind it, which has got a really rich history, and I've talked to a few other pinball people not from California or the West Coast that had no idea this existed. They'd never heard of this. And that's the Winchester Mystery House. I was talking to some pinball friends just the other night after it got announced. I saw the first videos, and they'd never heard of it. So I was telling them about the history behind it. And a lot of people talked about it. Dan and I know the history. Mark, you know the history, right? Absolutely. I've never toured it, but I always knew about the story behind it. Right. So for the listeners who don't know the Winchester Mystery House, it's a house in San Jose, California. And it was like the son of the founder of Winchester Repeating Arms and his wife. And they had lost a child just right after it was born. I don't know, days or weeks. And then some years later, the husband had died from tuberculosis. And they were on the East Coast. They were back in like New Hampshire. and so Mrs. Winchester Sarah Winchester she had went to a psychic you know they did a seance and she was really into that and that was a big thing at that time people with a lot of money would do seances and play with Ouija boards and try to talk to dead relatives that was part of her games it was real popular at the time so she believed So this psychic or medium or whatever you want to call it told her to move out west and build a big house. That she and her family were in danger. That everyone who'd ever been killed with a Winchester rifle, their spirit, their ghost was coming to kill her. So she went and bought a bunch of land out in San Jose, California. This is like 1880. and for like nearly 40 years until her death in like 1922, she worked on this house. She did all the designs herself, 24-7, 365, a construction crew of like 25 guys. And there's stairways that go to nowhere. There's doorways that you open it up and it's a three-story drop. It's just crazy. And supposedly it's supposed to be real haunted. They actually made a horror film about her a few years ago, which wasn't bad. If you like a good ghost horror romp, it's worth seeing. But that the basic overview of the Winchester family And this house is like over 100 rooms and it takes up like I don even know it like almost like 25 square feet or some crazy thing But I mean it yeah she worked on it for 38 years. So it's like a labyrinth. Yeah, it's like a Northern California like tourist trap legend kind of thing. The ultimate roadside attraction. Yeah, like a roadside attraction. Like, I don't know if, like, if your if you're from you know new hampshire you've heard of of the winchester mystery house i mean i'm supposing that you could have and apparently there is some commonality like you know between that and the disney haunted mansion so i think a lot of haunted mansion affectionados are familiar with the winchester mystery house because of that but it really is a theme that It came from the idea, I guess, came from a California guy, Carl D'Python Anghelo, who's a big theme park and haunted house fan. So to me, I heard about that. I didn't know Carl D'Python Anghelo was attached until a little bit later. I just all of a sudden heard, hey, Barrels of Fun is making a Winchester Mystery House game. And I'm like, oh, what? No way. Like, what a what a crazy theme. and I did, you know, I think I did the tiniest bit of like, I think I put on, on that. Is this real? And nap arcades like, yeah, this is real. And I'm like, what a weird, like what a wonderful, but weird theme. But you see the, the gameplay video and you see the flyer and you can just see that like the idea of of this haunted house is a really super fertile ground for cool playfield stuff yeah you know when you go back to the 80s right and got leap haunted house and that was a super cool crazy multi-level playfield you know full of tricks and traps And now you're going to have, I think, something like to me, it's kind of something like that, but it's it's more state of the art. You know, you've got illusions and you've got a lot of magnetic tricks and, you know, crazy diverters and really good art. Oh, the art is amazing. and it's all going to be a little bit tied up in the mythology of what the Winchester Mystery House is all about that's just amazing for someone like me my wife was like buy it immediately I'm like hey it's 12 grand she's like oh yeah let's think about that but she loves the Winchester Mystery House So for the people who know, like they know, and, you know, her and our friend Brian, like Brian's just like, man, what an awesome idea for a game. Like who would have come up with that? Yeah, it was a very original theme for sure. Yeah, as soon as I heard about it and saw it, I said, I just, you know, I was like, that's it. That's perfect. And I love it because, again, it came out of left field, but it makes perfect sense. And like you said, Dan, with the whole Golly Pond House, when that game first came out, I mean, to this day, I love the way they did the back glass and the lighting. And for the time, man, you look at that, and it's still like, oh, that's cool. Because you have the lightning coming up from behind the mansion itself. So when the back glass lights up, it looks like the lightning is trickling down. Really cool effect. But, yeah, if you're into like that haunted house kind of theme or like Disney's haunted mansion, this seems right up your alley, man. I mean, they've got the Ouija board, which I love is like it shows you what ball the lights light up on the Ouija board on the on the apron. And it shows you what ball you're on and what players up. That's cool. Yeah. And supposedly it spells out stuff, too, in the game. Yeah. That'd be interesting to see. Yeah. But it definitely it definitely hits. Yeah. No, it's I mean, it's not just another California thing. But I think, you know, like, you know, there's because Dan and I both grew up in the same relative area. There used to be like a show, Cat and Mitch on Channel 40. He had like a kid's cartoon show and he would give away prizes and stuff. And then we're always giving away like family four packs of tickets to the Winchester Mystery House or Marine World and stuff like that. So it's like it's all part of our childhood, too. That's cool. And the mechs are great. Like Dan said, the falling tower, and then it's a diverter at the same time, so it changes the ball path. That's pretty damn cool. And, yeah, the ghost box with the pepper ghost effect. The ghost box with the pepper ghost. Yeah, that's got to be – I bet you can't really get a feel for it until you see it in person, but that's cool. It's got the Gilligan's Island turntable. Yes, yes. But it looks a lot cooler. Collapsing tower. Staircase to nowhere. Magnetic ball catch. a seemingly dead end that plummets the ball further into the depths of the house door to nowhere staircase ramp seance room inline target bank, seance table and crystal ball, spirit board apron not a Ouija board because Ouija board is copyrighted but spirit board oh really, okay so they can use the art but not the name, alright that's why they have double letters on each side I would believe that they've done all their due diligence. Yeah. All right. Who owns that? Because it used to be Parker Brothers that owned the Ouija board. It was Parker Brothers. Yeah. But see, Parker Brothers and Milton Bradley have all been bought out by Hasbro. So I guess Hasbro must own it. I would think, yeah, Hasbro seems like likely. Let's see. The Ouija board. it doesn't just come up oh here we go amazon.com I don't know it doesn't just say on here you think it does say who makes it yeah one more thing about because I'm looking to you I want you it is Hasbro people who bring us Transformers and G.I. Joe and the occult I was looking at the Winchester Mystery House website on my phone. If you look at the back of the game where the tower is, it has the whole facade of the whole front of the house. It's 24,000 square feet, over 100 rooms. Like I said, they never stopped building. Mrs. Winchester never slept in the same room two nights in a row because she was running from the spirits, man. That lady had issues, you know, and, uh, and it's got a theater of magic. That's what I hear. I hear it's got an old beat up theater of magic in the lobby. So, which makes sense. That game, that's a, that, that theme fits really well in that environment. Now the question is, will they have the game there? Do you think? I told they will. And if I had to guess what number it would be number 13, because that is widely known as Mrs. Winchester's favorite number. interesting apparently so yeah that would make sense so you know but uh now i'm told they sold out to the distributors and i've been told that the distributors are sold out but as of this morning a couple of distributors were still advertising they had one in stock at least one if not more so You know, there's, yeah, there's what, 525. Right. And they're 12K. Yeah. And it's definitely a niche theme, right? Like, it's definitely not for everybody. So I was wondering, you know, I'm sure they'll sell all 525. You know, I'm sure that people are going to be on top of these. And there's enough collectors these days to where, yeah, something like this, something that's like a cool design with a marginally cool theme will sell out if it's limited. But, yeah, I'm interested to see what a theme like this does because, to me, this is an awesome theme. Like, it's so much better than just another movie or another rock band or, you know, just, you know, a cartoon that I don't care about. like, you know, get me these cool, weird themes that, you know, and back them up with good art and super, super cool games. And I think that'll make me happier because, you know, 10 years down the road, I think that, you know, Winchester Mystery House will still be a cool theme. Where, you know, Star Wars The Mandalorian will be dead and gone. Right. No, I agree with you 100%. What you said is exactly kind of how I felt. And this is a game that I haven't been this excited when I first saw a theme since Black Knight. And I remember I still bring this up. Dan and I on the phone right after we found out about Black Knight Sword of Rage. And we were like high school kids. We were just so excited. Yep. You know, we saw the video in the night with, you know, spinning the mace and, you know, just. But you know why that is, right? Like it wasn't like when Black Knight came out in 1980, you were like, oh, my God, what a great theme. Or even when Black Knight 2000 came out with Sword of Rage, it was just that it's like, oh, my God, they're actually going to do another Black Knight. This is incredible. Yeah. And it was cool. I mean, we had cool toy and I had cool Scott Ian Anthrax music. I mean, I love it. I'm not, you know, I'm not bagging on Black Knight Sword of Rage. I bought one. Right. But I just I think that with Winchester, it's almost more like if they make this and people buy it, there's really no limit. Right. But you can make anything. Yeah. You know, and I think that for a long time, people have been like, why don't they just make a Disneyland game? Because there's a bajillion adult fans of Disneyland who will spend $10,000 at Disneyland in a weekend on a whim who would probably buy, you know, a $10,000, $12,000 pinball machine. And I think that the pinball manufacturers, for the most part, either don't realize that or they don't quite have the imagination or they don't quite have the faith to say like, OK, we're going to throw development and production at this. So that's where it's interesting, the little company like Barrels of Fun and a first-time designer, even though he's a pinball legend like Carl, you know, like they came up with this and they put it together and they're going to bring it out. and it's not, you know, it's not just like a multi-morphic, right? Where, don't get me wrong, one of the cool things about P3 is hey, they can do a theme because you don't have to throw a whole machine at it. You make a module, you put together some software and away you go. Like, it's really, really cool that they're going to give this thing a chance and I hope that it pays off for them. Although another part of me really hopes that it bombs so I can get one cheap. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Oh, so I can put it alongside my seventy five hundred dollar galactic tank for signature edition, which I don't know because it is twelve grand. Right. Which which in this day and age is not an outstandingly amazing amount of money for a pinball machine. But it's definitely more than like a stern premium. Yeah, it's it's a good amount of money, man. It's not insignificant, not insignificant money for a pinball machine. And most people are going to know this already. And just I just want to add this one more thing. But in case you don't, the reason the number of units is capped at 525 is because that's the address of the Winchester Mystery House. 525 South Winchester Boulevard, San Jose, California. I did not know that. OK, well, see, you didn't. I thought you did. I just assumed you did. But yeah, that's that's why that's 525. That's where that number came from. it wasn't just pulled out of the hat no i guess the reason they announced it on i think it was october 13th at like one o'clock was so it was like the 13th hour of the 13th day yeah so like they're definitely playing yeah right they're definitely playing the game right they're definitely going all out into the mythology and and releasing the game in october you know yeah exactly and having it ready for expo on top of that too yeah or at least announcing it in october Do you think people are taking them home from Expo? I think, well, they had four at Expo. They had brought four, and then one of the distributors had brought one. It was flipping out. Flipping out. So I don't know. They're probably going to have, if they've got four already ready to go, people are probably going to be getting them in their hands sooner than later. I have to applaud Barrels of Fun. They've come out with now three pretty cool titles with some interesting stuff, Good art, good themes, good gameplay, good music, you know, overall good stuff. And, you know, once they get a game out the door, then they just stop. They're not constantly, you know what I mean? They let the game speak for itself. And I really like what they're doing and how they're doing it. I love Barrels of Fun. I think they're the best pinball company that's come around as far as a new one in a long time. I agree. yeah it's interesting that dune and uh winchester are so close to each other though yes yep i was again that was part of the coming out of left field too because dune had only been out since what like end of april and beginning of may i mean we don't think dune was even out at the end of april the beginning of may like i think that when we had it at the show we had a that was a prototype like a prototype so yeah so like yeah people are just like starting to get their dunes and I hear nothing but good things about it. It's freaking awesome to shoot. It's such a fun game to shoot. Even on the prototype, it was fun. It would have been even a lot more fun if it didn't have issues, but it was a prototype, so I accepted that. Yeah. But that's a killer game. It's really fun. God, it's fun. I can't wait to get my hands on one of them eventually when they come out here. So hopefully we'll get one here in Reno eventually. but um very cool very great surprise and uh the lines were just going around the around the bend 50 people deep waiting in line to play these games unbelievable um at expo so i i wish them the best i think barrels of fun is really they have a lot of great surprises they should be called barrels of surprises because they're awesome surprises are fun yeah absolutely Dan and that's something that I know you and I talked about this was a pleasant surprise like oh I never expected this you know and it's like oh and I'm excited about this I want to see it not just like Star Wars you know I'm a Star Wars fan from all the way back to the original trilogy and I was like oh yeah I want to see it in a Star Wars game but I'm just kind of I have Star Wars fatigue where this is like oh something new not a movie not a video game not a band not a TV show, not a comic book something completely out of left field and different but makes perfect sense for pinball yep amen so we got anything else to cover? we just gonna Antonio Cruz on over to shout outs and thank yous and kill this episode off well none of us have been to Expo, we've only watched the videos of people being there so it happened, it was awesome and pretty much Predator and Winchester Mystery House were the hits at the show. And the homebrew section was amazing. And we could have a whole episode on that, but I'm sure everybody's going to be talking about that. Yeah, we'll listen to their shows and enjoy what they're doing. But Mad Max was there. Mad Max was there that we got to play at Golden State. And they did really well, too. Oh, yeah, that was outrageous. It was awesome. It is awesome. Yeah, that game's awesome, and really, they did a beautiful job on it. And I would really like to keep my hands on that Big Trouble in Little China. That game looks really good. Oh, no kidding. So, Mark, you want to start us with shout-outs and thank-yous? Yeah, I just want to shout-out to all the organizers of Pinnagogo, especially the tournament directors and Shannon for getting it organized for everybody to bring the System 11s. Um, yeah, just everybody who volunteered, who put on the show, who really made it a fun experience. Um, I really, really had a great time and I always look forward to it. It's one of those smaller pinball shows. There's a lot of pinball to play and a lot of people to see. And it had that cool vibe. So thank you to all the hard work you do putting that show on. I know it's not easy, but, uh, really appreciate all the things you've done to give us and everybody out there who maybe never seen pinball in their life, given that opportunity to enjoy what we love doing as a hobby and just as a fun thing to do in life. Dan? You know, I'm going to echo that, you know, a big thanks to all the organizers of Pinnagogo, a big thanks to the Greater Sacramento Pinball League and all those guys for putting on the tournament this year, Little Flippers, to the Tilted Sisters. You guys were all great to hang out with. Of course, you know, we're super lucky to have the groups in Northern California who are putting on these shows and they put in an enormous amount of work and they do it just literally for the fun of it. Nobody's making any money. So, you know, make sure that if you if you have an opportunity to be involved in some sort of event like this, please take advantage of it. You know, if you don't want to help, hey, that's completely understandable. Just go pay your money, enjoy the fruits of their labor, and just make sure to give them a little shout out or a little high five or something when you see them. Congrats to Alex for another dominant performance. We've got to get him back on the show here to tell us what it's like to be a pinball dominator. Although, I don't know. Mark's kind of a pinball dominator. He wins a lot of stuff. Tell us what it's like, Mark. And, of course, you know, big love to always as you guys, you know, you know, thanks for thanks for being my pinball buddies and bullshitting at random times of the week and the day and sometimes a very, very early day about pinball. Yeah, man, absolutely. I'm going to I'm going to echo you, too. I didn't go to I haven't been in Pinnagogo since 2019, but I miss it, man. And it's got a vibe like no other show out there. But wherever you are, yeah, go to your show. If nothing else, plunk down your money and support your local show and the people that put on those shows. It's a lot of work, a lot of hours, and people do it literally out of the sheer love to want to share pinball with others. And so thank you. And thank you to my brothers for, you know, this is one of the things in life that I look forward to so much every month is sitting down with you guys and just talking pinball for two hours. It keeps me young. It keeps me motivated. One of the many things it does because you guys are my bros. I love you guys. Hey, Mark, real quick before we wrap this up. Yeah. When are we getting a show out of Reno? Oh, wow. So, you know, that might be one of my projects that I will do when I retire. There you go. We need a Reno show. Yeah, we do. Mark had talked about that with me years ago. Yeah. Before. Yeah. I remember we had a long. It's going to happen eventually. We just got to find the right people and the drive to know what we're doing because it's a lot. People will go. People will go. Oh, I know people will go. Absolutely. You'll get Utah and Idaho people. You know, I mean, you'll get California and Nevada. Yeah, Northern California. I mean, I've come to a show in Reno. Yeah, definitely. I would, too. That was a great – I'm glad you interjected that, Dan, because it's something that's been needed to be said for a while. With the scene that Reno has, it definitely is time to get a show going up there. So I got two more special shout-outs. One is to Mr. Barrett Hanson, known professionally as Dr. Domeno. He just retired after 55 years on the air. I've been a fan since the late 70s One of my greatest moments as a young person Was getting my voice on the air Requesting Wet Dreams by Kip Adada And winning a free t-shirt You can still listen to all his shows His last show debuted the 11th of this month I listened to it on Sunday It came out on last Saturday because he used to always, when he was on Terrestrial Radio all the way up until 2010 before he went just podcasting, his shows were always Sunday nights. But you can still listen to all his old episodes. They're two to three bucks an episode. His last episode was a newer one. I know it's $3 for that. Or you can pay a yearly fee and get all the goodies. DrDemento.com. You can upload his shows. His last show was top 40 most requested songs or skits of all time. So there's a lot of real classics in there, including three different songs by our good friend Weird Al Yankovic, who has his own pinball machine. And we all saw live in concert this last summer. And so go support the doctor in his retirement and stay demented, as the doctor would say. my last shout out and thank you is to another American and worldwide icon that we just lost this week and that's Ace Frehley from KISS also on two pinball machines you can't even begin to count the number of other guitar players and musicians that Ace inspired as young people to pick up a guitar or a microphone or a bass or a set of drums or a keyboard and make music. The list is long and distinguished from every type of music, not just hard rock and metal, but punk rock, country. I mean, the list of people that will say, yeah, man, I was heavily influenced by Kiss and especially Ace Frehley. And so thank you to the Spaceman for making great music and giving us wonderful entertainment over the years. So those are my shout-outs and thank-yous. and you guys got anything else before we take her home? Where can they find us, Spencer? You know what? I'm glad you asked. They can find us on our home flagship at SoundCloud as well as iTunes, Spotify and other places find podcasts are available and sold. You should reach out to us with any questions or thoughts or ideas at our Facebook page or our email at thespinnerislit at gmail.com. thank you for reminding me of that, Dan. So I'm going to take us home. Play pinball. I mean, I thought you were going to say it, but I just thought it would be funny to ask. I'm glad you asked because I wasn't going to say it because I forgot. I was too busy thinking about, like, honestly, I had, I literally had Shock Me, the old Ace Really Kissed tune in my head. So I was thinking about that. And stay demented. So stay demented, rock and roll all night and party every day and play pinball. Keep America strong. Bye.

_(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 0d70c1af-b091-4503-b842-efea1a02f1c2*