# Episode 55: The Return of Eric Priepke! **Source:** Poor Man's Pinball Podcast **Type:** podcast_episode **Published:** 2020-05-19 **Beat:** Pinball **URL:** https://poormanspinballpodcast.libsyn.com/episode-55-the-return-of-eric-priepke --- ## Analysis Eric Priepke returns to Poor Man's Pinball Podcast to discuss his role as lead coder on Spooky Pinball's Rick and Morty machine. He explains how he got involved with the project through Matt Scott, details the code framework (Mission Pinball Framework), discusses the game's current state (fully operational as of March 2020 release with ongoing content additions), and addresses design philosophy around difficulty and upper flipper shots. The conversation covers his process for creating modes, collaboration with the design team, and his experience seeing the game played publicly. ### Key Claims - [HIGH] Rick and Morty sold out in approximately 4 hours (700 games) — _Eric states this during discussion of the game's release and sellout speed_ - [HIGH] The March 2020 public release contains six different adventures in the main multiball — _Eric explicitly states: 'In the March release, there were six different adventures in the main multiball'_ - [HIGH] The next update will include at least eight adventures total and another multiball, with a ninth adventure potentially included pending approvals — _Eric: 'By the next update, there should be at least eight adventures total in another multiball. We have a ninth adventure done. It's just a matter of getting all of the things through all the necessary channels'_ - [HIGH] Kyle DeAngelo is the highest-scoring player to have completed all modes shown publicly — _Eric: 'Kyle has done that. Kyle DeAngelo. He's put up the highest score I've seen so far and he streamed it'_ - [HIGH] Rick and Morty is programmed using Mission Pinball Framework, which Eric also used for a custom Iron Man Harley-Davidson game — _Eric explains the code framework: 'I'm working in Mission Pinball Framework and had for Iron Man' and mentions using P-Ramp Mode Name framework_ - [HIGH] Eric previously coded Cactus Canyon and worked on Ben Heck board development for The Jetsons before shifting to Rick and Morty — _Eric: 'I had done the Cactus Canyon thing' and 'I was working at trying to get used to working with the Ben Heck board' for The Jetsons_ - [HIGH] Version numbering for Rick and Morty uses build dates rather than traditional version numbers (e.g., '2020-3-17' instead of 1.0, 1.1, etc.) — _Eric: 'The way I'm doing, version numbers on Rick and Morty is it's just the date it was built... the last public release was March 17th, so it's 3-17, or 2020-3-17'_ - [HIGH] The design team (Matt Scott, Charlie, Bowen, Dave, and others) conducted a retreat where they watched the entire Rick and Morty series and brainstormed the game concept before production began — _Eric: 'everybody that was included... got together and had a little retreat... watched the entire series and just brainstormed the whole time'_ - [MEDIUM] Jack Danger streamed Rick and Morty at least twice but found the game challenging and was heavily drinking during the streams — _Eric: 'he was drinking Papa Duke heavily on both of them and spending a lot of time talking to the chat... he didn't really blow it up on either of the two streams'_ - [HIGH] Bowen Kerins was the only player to complete all available modes in the public release before Kyle DeAngelo — _Eric: 'Other than Bowen Kerins, no one has gotten through all those' when asked about mode completion_ ### Notable Quotes > "It's either going to come out great and I'm not involved and I'll never forgive myself. Or I get to put everything I can into it to try and make it as good as it can be." > — **Eric Priepke**, ~mid-episode > _Explains his motivation for taking on the Rick and Morty coding project despite initial hesitation from Charlie_ > "If you have the accuracy, there's so much flow to it... You can go from the right ramp down to the right flipper up to the left ramp, which feeds to the upper flipper, to the inner loop, to the garage, back down to the left flipper." > — **Eric Priepke**, ~mid-episode > _Describes the playfield layout philosophy and shot combinations available in Rick and Morty_ > "We don't really have a hard line ending on where we expect the content to go. We just keep brainstorming ideas and building new things." > — **Eric Priepke**, ~early-mid episode > _Explains the ongoing content development philosophy and why they don't assign arbitrary completion percentages_ > "I've watched most of the times it's been streamed... I'm mostly just watching for is everything working the way it's supposed to. Is there something else i can do here?" > — **Eric Priepke**, ~later episode > _Reveals his critical approach to watching public streams, focused on functionality rather than enjoyment_ > "That game's going to kill you because things happen so fast" > — **Eric Priepke (discussing Rick and Morty difficulty)**, ~later episode > _Characterizes the game's fast pace and difficulty when players aren't attentive_ ### Entities | Name | Type | Context | |------|------|---------| | Eric Priepke | person | Lead coder for Spooky Pinball's Rick and Morty machine; previously coded Cactus Canyon; created custom Iron Man Harley-Davidson game | | Matt Scott | person | Owner/designer at Spooky Pinball; designed Rick and Morty layout; has known Eric Priepke since Chicago pinball expo events | | Charlie | person | Lead designer/programmer at Spooky Pinball; initially hesitant about Eric working on Rick and Morty due to failed Jetsons collaboration; manages multiple game projects | | Bowen Kerins | person | Designer at Spooky Pinball; involved in Rick and Morty brainstorming retreat; first player to complete all modes in public release; has streamed the game | | Dave | person | Artist/animator at Spooky Pinball; creates animations and edits show clips for Rick and Morty; conducts of the show assets according to Eric | | Kyle DeAngelo | person | Rick and Morty player; currently highest-scoring player to complete all modes publicly; has streamed the game multiple times | | Jack Danger | person | Streamed Rick and Morty at least twice; drinks heavily while streaming; found the game challenging; known for finding efficient scoring routes | | Orby | person | Previous guest on Poor Man's Pinball Podcast (Episode 54); described as positive and from Canada | | Drew | person | Co-host of Poor Man's Pinball Podcast; purchased PIN Stadium Hyper Beams for his Jurassic Park machine | | Scott Ian | person | Co-host of Poor Man's Pinball Podcast with Drew | | Rick and Morty | game | Licensed Spooky Pinball game coded by Eric Priepke; sold out in ~4 hours; features 6+ modes and multiball in March 2020 release; uses Mission Pinball Framework | | Spooky Pinball | company | Pinball manufacturer; developed Rick and Morty; employs Matt Scott, Charlie, Bowen, and Dave | | Cactus Canyon | game | Game previously coded by Eric Priepke; used same P-Ramp/Mode Name framework as later projects | | The Jetsons | game | Spooky Pinball game; Eric Priepke attempted to enhance using Ben Heck board but abandoned effort when board was discontinued | | Iron Man Harley-Davidson | game | Custom game coded by Eric Priepke as summer project using Mission Pinball Framework; taken to Pinball Expo; used same framework as Rick and Morty | | Mission Pinball Framework | product | Software framework written by Michael Ocean; used as secondary layer in Rick and Morty and Iron Man; also used for Buffy the Vampire Slayer | | Michael Ocean | person | Developer of Mission Pinball Framework; created secondary layer used in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and other games | | Ben Heck board | product | Hardware board that Spooky Pinball abandoned; Eric attempted to learn it for Jetsons enhancement but discontinued effort | | Jurassic Park | game | Stern pinball machine owned by Drew; equipped with PIN Stadium Hyper Beams lighting | | PIN Stadium | product | Backbox lighting product by Matt Scott's company Tee'd Off Pinball; limited edition Hyper Beams version offers 2x power with RGB LED and nuclear glow | | Pinshades | product | Stylized shade product for pinball play; available on Pinside Marketplace; helps ball tracking in various lighting conditions | | Poor Man's Pinball Podcast | organization | Podcast hosted by Drew and Scott Ian; Episode 55 features Eric Priepke; Episode 54 featured Orby; self-described as 'sloppiest show on the internet' | ### Topics - **Primary:** Rick and Morty game development and coding, Mission Pinball Framework and technical architecture, Game design philosophy and difficulty balancing, Playfield layout and shot combinations, Collaborative game design process at Spooky Pinball - **Secondary:** Streaming and public gameplay observations, Upper flipper shot difficulty and accessibility - **Mentioned:** PIN Stadium backbox lighting products ### Sentiment **Positive** (0.85) — Eric expresses genuine passion for Rick and Morty project and appreciation for the design collaboration. Hosts are enthusiastic about the game and Eric's contributions. Some mild criticism of initial difficulty/upper flipper shots is balanced with explanations and design philosophy. Overall tone is celebratory and technically engaged. ### Signals - **[design_philosophy]** Eric explains intentional design choices around playfield flow, shot difficulty, and accessibility. Rick and Morty deliberately uses non-standard shot angles to reward skill while maintaining content accessibility for casual players through rule variation and alternative shot paths. (confidence: high) — Eric: 'we've tried of course with the software to make it so that those shots are rewarding but not necessarily vital to make progress in most things so that if you can't make them there's still other things you can do' and detailed explanation of how modes were adjusted (e.g., Whirly Durly adding third shot for accessibility while keeping ramp as high-value kill shot) - **[code_update]** Rick and Morty has received updates beyond the March 2020 public release. Eric mentions upcoming releases with 8 adventures total, potential ninth adventure pending approvals, and balance adjustments made based on player feedback from streams. (confidence: high) — Eric: 'By the next update, there should be at least eight adventures total' and 'there are certain things that have been made easier and point values have been shifted around based on how people are playing' - **[gameplay_signal]** Rick and Morty presents significant difficulty spikes, particularly with upper flipper shots, requiring shot precision and accuracy. However, the game remains accessible through rule variation and alternative progress paths. Players like Jack Danger found the game challenging even when drinking/distracted. (confidence: high) — Eric discusses upper flipper difficulty, explains how garage shot is 'hardest one' but achievable with practice, and notes 'if you're not paying attention that game's going to kill you because things happen so fast' - **[design_innovation]** Rick and Morty uses a novel 'Adventures' mode concept instead of traditional modes, organized around show plot points. This was a deliberate design decision made during the pre-production brainstorming retreat. (confidence: high) — Eric: 'That's where the Dimensions concept came from, and that's where they decided that the modes would be adventures' and describes how the team watched entire series and brainstormed which episodes could become adventures - **[manufacturing_signal]** Rick and Morty production at Spooky Pinball shows strong demand (700-unit sellout in ~4 hours). Eric is position 750+1 in production queue and expects extended wait for his personal unit. (confidence: high) — Eric: 'Game gets sold out in what was it? Four hours. Yeah, something like that. 700 games in four hours' and later 'He's number 750 and one' regarding Eric's queue position - **[content_signal]** Rick and Morty has been streamed publicly multiple times by notable players (Bowen Kerins, Jack Danger, Kyle DeAngelo, Jax) providing community exposure and allowing developers to gather feedback on game difficulty and balance. (confidence: high) — Eric: 'I've watched every one of those streams' and lists streamers including Bowen, Jack Danger, Kyle, and Jax; notes game performance holds up well in extended public play - **[personnel_signal]** Eric Priepke transition from attempted Jetsons enhancement work (abandoned due to Ben Heck board discontinuation) to Rick and Morty coding represents a significant project shift at Spooky Pinball, requiring re-convince Charlie despite previous collaboration setback. (confidence: high) — Eric describes how he 'folded up shop' on Jetsons when 'they were never going to use the Ben Heck board again' and Charlie was 'a little tentative' about Eric for Rick and Morty, requiring direct persuasion from Eric - **[technology_signal]** Rick and Morty uses Mission Pinball Framework (written by Michael Ocean) as its software foundation, representing evolution from earlier P-Ramp/Mode Name framework used in Cactus Canyon. This framework-based approach allows for collaborative development and modular content addition. (confidence: high) — Eric explains Mission Pinball Framework structure and notes he's 'really really familiar with' this framework having used it for Iron Man project, contrasting with Ben Heck board issues on Jetsons - **[design_philosophy]** Version numbering philosophy for Rick and Morty uses build dates rather than traditional software versioning, reflecting uncertainty about final content scope and emphasis on ongoing development rather than fixed endpoints. (confidence: high) — Eric: 'The way I'm doing, version numbers on Rick and Morty is it's just the date it was built... because we don't have a full fleshed out this is where the end is we can't really put a number on it' - **[competitive_signal]** Kyle DeAngelo currently holds the highest public completion score for Rick and Morty, having streamed multiple sessions and successfully completed all available modes, establishing early competitive benchmark. (confidence: medium) — Eric: 'Kyle has done that. Kyle DeAngelo. Oh, okay. He's put up the highest score I've seen so far. And he streamed it for a couple of nights.' - **[product_strategy]** Spooky Pinball's Rick and Morball strategy involves continuous content development post-launch rather than feature-complete releases, with ongoing mode additions and balance adjustments informed by player feedback and stream data. (confidence: high) — Eric: 'we don't really have a hard line ending on where we expect the content to go' and 'I definitely intend to do more, and I'm working on more every single day' plus adjustments made based on 'how people are playing and how we see people having success' --- ## Transcript This episode of the Poor Man's Pinball Podcast is brought to you by PIN Stadiums. I finally did it, Ian. I bought some new PIN Stadiums for Jurassic Park. And not just any old PIN Stadiums, which are still amazing, by the way. What'd you get? I bought the limited edition Hyper Beams. Shut up. They are as cool as they sound. So tell me about those. Two times the power, over the top. It's like this nuclear neon glow. It's awesome. Like, I saw the picture of it. No, I'm serious. It is bold. it's they're super bright uh they got the rgb it's just like the pin stadiums only on freaking steroids so and here is the best part yeah they're only 20 more 20 more 20 more than your regular pin stadium for this super awesome glow they're limited edition he doesn't know if he's keeping them around but i bought some so uh the pictures alone they're awesome and you've seen scott's products right you've seen them in person oh hell don't they don't they always look better than they do in the pictures the pictures look good pictures look too blown out but but it's hard it's hard it's hard to to capture all that and then you see them in person and you're like oh my god these are freaking awesome yeah spoil alert i sold my white water and the guys were like oh my god what are those light bars you added and i was like yeah those have been stadiums and they're like what are those i was like ah i gotta tell you all about this company so you have to you have to see them in person so this is like a nuclear blast though in your cabinet huh yes nothing says nuclear blast like dinosaurs exactly you went you went that route huh i totally went that route i'm gonna install these things i'm gonna light up the night sky all right there you go can't lose your machine anymore kids go to pin stadiums don't forget to tell scott the poor men sent you enter poor man at checkout for 10 off your order a shipping baby that's shipping and more you know what we've been saying that's shipping guess what that is shipping plus so you get shipping plus dollars oh like a dollar no my shipping you ready for this folks so so i said i'm like ron popeo for all you younger kids who don't know what that is i spent i spent roughly 300 i bought these and some uh some accessories right yeah so i saved 30 bucks the shipping was only like 10 bucks nice so i got like 20 off the product yeah i got $10. I got free shipping. And guess what? He emailed me that day personally and said these things are packed up and ready to go. They are shipped. They're on their way. Pinstadiums. Go to pinstadium.com. Email Scott. Get yourself some pinstadiums today. What a commercial, Drew. What a commercial. We are also brought to you by Pinshades. Pinshades are the coolest, most stylized, and functional shades for playing pinball on the planet. They look great, and they really help you track the ball better in all types of lighting situations, and are our favorite among some of today's top players. You can find your own pair on the Pinside Marketplace, or if you're lazy like me, just Google Pinshades. Use the code POORMANS with an S at checkout for free shipping with your order. That is the only discount they are offering just for our listeners. How cool is that? Oh, yeah. It's time. You've waited a week or more, and now it's finally here. The time has come for the sloppiest show on the Internet. This week's episode of Poor Man's Pinball Podcast. Starring Drew and Ian. That's it, man. Game over, man. Game over. I'm gonna need someone to help me I'm gonna need somebody's help Son of a bitch, give me a drink One of the nights, I just can't fit me Son of a bitch, if I drink it clean I'm gonna drink my life away Welcome to the Poor Man's Pinball Podcast, episode 55. The sloppiest show on the internet and the only pinball podcast that had Orbital Albert as a guest last week. Thanks again, Albert. Super fun episode. That was one of our better episodes, wasn't it, Ian? Orby? Yeah, he was fun. That was just such a cool, fun time. He was fun. I love that man, that furry little fucker. I love him so much. I just wish I could have him with me all the time. My little positive Orby. Furry little Canadian like Wolverine. Yeah, just someone just go, hey, it's okay, man. Smoke this weed. Yeah, he's like, I sit in the bathtub and I might have a little marijuana cigarette and listen to you guys. I was like, the sun doesn't shine where the sun is shining. It's a weird little visual, but I'll take it. Suck it. Loved it. Tanning his butthole. I think I listened to that episode like three or four times. It was funny. It was good. Once when I edited it, and then I just kept listening to it because it cracked me up. There were some good moments. It cracked me up. All you guys out there, listen to episode 54. But today is episode 55. 55. Do we have another guest? We have another extra special guest, Eric Pripke, lead coder on Rick and Morty. He's Pitchy Pinball. This is a poor man's first. It's the second appearance of Eric Pripke. It took him all day to do that math, folks. It did. I know. Ian's watching me. I'm counting on my fingers. I'm like, he was here once, twice. Okay, cool. Second appearance. So, Eric, you've been quiet this whole time because I've been jabbing her away as usual. So how have you been? I've been all right. Although I'm now feeling like I have a lot to live up to because last week sounds like it was winter. I feel like I'm just up against a wall here. For you listeners out there, I don't want to disappoint. we're probably not going to be talking about marijuana, cigarettes and buttholes, but we are going to be talking about Rick and Morty. So how cool is that? It's just as good. Yes, definitely. Just as good. And if you guys definitely as good as buttholes. And if you guys are, you know, bored during the quarantine, which a lot of you guys are, go back to episode number 10 and you will hear our first interview with Mr. Eric when he was in studio here with us. And we got a little too drunk. yeah but you know what was fun about that eric rolled with it very very smoothly he did he did and not only that he kept dropping nuggets little hints little nuggets and then finally we just asked him if he was coding for spooky he was like oh yeah i'm totally doing that yeah yeah it was the best it was the best it was the first piece of actual news we had uncovered yes he he knew it was rick and morty and the rest of the world did not yeah he didn't tell us nope that's fine we forgive him yeah that's why he's back because now that now that it's been revealed to the world and uh we just want to hear more about it so yeah he did tell us that it was a licensed theme so i felt really really special when you said that eric i just want to let you know that the 50 chance is it a licensed theme or not anyway eric so tell us your tale as i say that often on this show first off before we do that eric uh drew what are you drinking bud uh more of my screwball that everyone seems to hate no not everybody you got some fans out there man we do we found some fans perfect i am uh speaking of stuff that i hate is the crystal skull vodka it's not gone yet god no it's not evaporating fast i got it's even worse now because i'm mixing with this blueberry red bull oh it just looks terrible You know what? It tastes terrible. It tastes so bad. All right, anyway. Eric, what you drinking, buddy? Straight up water for me. Awesome. Son of a bitch. You're going to be the one feeling great tomorrow. I know it. All right, so back to Eric. Eric, tell me your tale. Just explain the process to the folks out there who don't know. How did you get involved with Spooky? How did you get involved with, what was your reaction when you first learned your game was going to be Rick and Morty? Well, yeah, I guess that kind of comes out of the back way. But I've known Scott for quite a long time now. I originally met him through some people in the Chicago area that I ended up meeting through Expo down there. and back then I had done the Cactus Canyon thing and several people from that group of friends in Chicago were interested in the Cactus Canyon code that I had written and started inviting me to their local league and other events and parties and stuff and so as I hung out with them, I got to know them better and met Scott through them and ever since he did TNA, Scott would always kind of half-jokingly say, well, when I do my next game, I don't want to program it. You're going to program it. And I was like, sure, Scott, whatever. You know, ha-ha, wink-wink. Like, that's not really going to be a thing. And then I don't remember when it was, but at some point he specifically said, I really want you to do this, and it's Rick and Morty. And as soon as that happened, there was nothing going to keep me away from it because I'm a huge fan of the source material. And once the opportunity was presented to have a hand in making it as good as it could be, there wasn't any way I was going to let that go. Because there's only two options from there. Like, it's either going to come out great and I'm not involved and I'll never forgive myself. Or I get to put everything I can in it to try and make it as good as it can be. And we'll see how it turns out. But I really didn't want to have the regret. So I wasn't going to let that go at all. And I had to do a little convincing with Charlie because at some point earlier than that, Charlie had talked about having me come in to kind of help out Fosma with some of the older games because they've always had way more work than Fosma can do by himself as far as they keep piling more games on him and he has to keep working on the current thing or the next thing. He never really has time to go back and punch up or polish off the older stuff. So Charlie really wanted Jetsons to be a little fancier than it was and like to throw in a little more pizzazz, if possible. And he had given me the shop Jetsons to try and work on it. And I was working at trying to get used to working with the Ben Heck board because it was something I'd never done and learning the way the system worked and stuff. And I never really got anywhere with progress on that. and then it news came out that they were never going to use the benhek board again at that point so then i really didn't want to put a lot of effort into learning how to work with the system because it there wasn't any future in it so i kind of just you know folded up shop and gave jetsons back to charlie and said hey sorry but this this didn't work out so then when scott says hey i want eric to work on rick and morty charlie was a little tentative because you know he had tried that once and it didn't really work but um the uh rick and morty is written in the same framework that i had used for cactus canyon and the iron man iron man hd project that i did just for the fun of it over one summer to take to expo i don't know how many people really knew about that but basically i started rewriting iron we're gonna put a pin in that one you're gonna have to talk about that one later i'm interested in that one go ahead um so i had already essentially done two games in the framework and i was really familiar with and this is the p-rock right yeah the the python based p-rock game and then on top of that skeleton game which is the thing Michael Ocean wrote uh like a secondary layer of a bunch of of pre-built things that he then used for the buffy the vampire slayer game that he did with uh dave um so i'm working in skeleton game and had for iron man and uh so stuff i'm really really familiar with and i was way more than uh motivated to try and and get this done because i'm a huge fan of the source so i was able to convince charlie that we should give this a shot so did you convince them or did scott denisi convince them no i talked i talked to charlie i mean scott i'm sure in the end if Scott would have just kept pestering him. He would have let me do it anyway, but I talked to Charlie about the circumstances of why it didn't work the first time and how much I really wanted it to work this time. It all worked out. Yeah, you can say that again. Jesus. Yeah. Game gets sold out in what was it? Four hours. Yeah, something like that. 700 games in four hours. So where would you say the code is at presently on Rick and Morty? well i mean it's as it is like the the last public release we did in uh mid-march is essentially a fully operational game everything in it is pretty stable i've had a few little reports from people here and there but like it's been streamed several times for multiple hours at a time and um it holds up really well and it's a essentially a full feature game it has adventures that go on, it has a multiball, it has all the things you would expect a pinball machine to have. Is there a wizard mode that I'm never going to get to? No, not yet. But essentially, the only thing we still have left to do is add more content. But we don't really have a hard line ending on where we expect the content to go. We just keep brainstorming ideas and building new things and scripting out more stuff to add into the game. So as far as like you can't say it's 80% in there or it's 60% in there, whatever, because we don't know because we don't know where the end is. You're not going to put one of those arbitrary numbers on it that everyone likes so much? No. You heard it here first, folks, 99%. I don't necessarily... I'm not a coder, and I think that stuff's bullshit. Right, I'm not a software guy by trade. I do systems administration stuff. So I'm not used to the commercial world, the software where everything has specific version numbers and whatever. The way we're doing, the way I'm doing, version numbers on Rick and Morty is it's just the date it was built. we're not doing 1.0 1.1, 1.2, 1.5 2.0, we're not doing anything it's just the date that it was built and whatever whenever it gets released that's the quote unquote version number we're giving it just so that we can track the differences in the code but because we don't have a full fleshed out this is where the end is we can't really put a number on it if it's 1.0 or whatever. Everything's arbitrary, it seems like. So I'm just using the dates. So like the last public release was March 17th, so it's 3-17, or 2020-3-17. And when the next one comes out, it'll be, you know, May whatever, or June whatever. Whenever we finally get the go-ahead for putting out the next update to it, it will just be that date. and we'll immediately start cramming more content. And again, that's just what we're going to do. No, that's what I like about it, because like you said, you have a bunch of modes, you have adventures, it's a fun game, it's basically done, but done with an asterisk so that you can just keep adding more cool content to it. Yeah, and we definitely intend to. I don't necessarily want anybody to think, oh, the version that was released in March, that's the whole game, and that's all we intended to do, and everything you get now is a bonus. That's not really true either. We definitely intend to do more, and I'm working on more every single day. But because we don't know what the total is going to end up at, I can't really tell you how close to the end we are. Yeah, no, like I said, I'm personally fine with it. I know there's just a lot of loud people out there in the hobby. Yeah. No, that's awesome. But it sounds like it's pretty darn far, and people will get their money's worth when it comes, obviously. But this, you can't... How many modes are in there right now? In the March release, there were six different adventures in the main multiball. By the next update, there should be at least eight adventures total in another multiball. Depending on how approvals and stuff go, we might have... We have a ninth adventure done. It's just a matter of getting all of the things through all the necessary channels to be able to include it in the release. And other than Bowen Kerins, no one has gotten through all those, right? The six that are out, you mean? Yes. Carl has done that. Carl D'Python Anghelo. Oh, okay. He's put up the highest score I've seen so far. And he streamed it for a couple of nights. Got it. Yeah. So people have seen him get through most of these in a single game. That is awesome. Yeah. and not easy so eric scott denisi i mean he uh when he designed just the layout of this machine um it really does have kind of a fun retro like we've seen it before but not quite all assembled like this when you uh when you first saw you know the layout um you know i'm saying like with the like the cyclops pump pop bumper instead of the sling and just the way kind of how everything kind of, I just feel like there's layers to this game, different levels to shoot. What were your first impressions of this game when you first saw it? The layout. I really liked the layout from the first time I saw it, and I saw it before I ever got to actually flip on it. But the first thing that was really apparent to me is the way everything is laid out. If you're accurate, there are so many long combinations you can put together because one thing leads to another thing leads to another thing. You can go from the right ramp down to the right flipper up to the left ramp, which feeds to the upper flipper, to the inner loop, to the garage, back down to the left flipper. Then you can hit the scoop or the loop back to go back up to the top flipper. If you have the accuracy, there's so much flow to it, especially with how fast it goes from that drop-in hole at the back in the corner right down to the left flipper because of the stage ball. And I think that's really cool, but it is by no means easy. So it gives you something to work towards because there all these great things that are there but they take some time to get used to where on the flipper are these particular shots because they not necessarily where they would be if they were trying to make it bog standard super easy, everything's off the middle of the flipper kind of thing. Yeah. For, for people out there who aren't familiar with the game, you know, I've, I've got to flip it a couple of times and I would just say there's, you know, there's a couple of easy shots and a couple of, you know, intermediate to hard shots. Is that, is that a fair assessment? yeah and depending on how the game's set up the the hard stuff can be harder or easier depending on on exactly how things are dialed in you know if you have a game that's tuned up really nice the hard shots aren't as hard as if it's just if it's not playing that well what what do you think about some of the criticism where people said that some of those upper shots for like newbies are are almost impossible well i don't know that that's necessarily true i mean anybody that has trouble with upper flipper shots like i usually do is probably going to have a little a hard time like if you know if you can never hit the the upper shot on earthshaker or the the uh two upper shots on um like whirlwind or anything or funhouse um yeah you're gonna have a little bit of a struggle because that's those are important and they're kind of tricky because one's kind of early and one's kind of late i have the one bonus of the fact that i tend to always hit upper flipper shots early so that inner loop for me is easy because reflexively when i'm trying to hit what i think should be the right thing i'm too early and then it works but uh but i mean even i can like i've said for years that upper flippers are my nemesis i'm terrible at them but i've played you and me both brother i've played this one enough now i can hit the garage shot with pretty good regularity and that's the hardest one so i don't think it's too bad and we've tried of course with the software to make it so that those shots are rewarding but not necessarily um vital to make progress in most things so that if you can't make them there's still other things you can do yeah and i think for you know if i could put myself in the newbie shoes and say you know there's so much content on the screen that you know even if you're not good at pinball you're gonna you're gonna have a good time flipping that game you know just with the sounds and the call outs and all the cool stuff that's going on so that was gonna be my next point um did you ever have any hand in any of the animations i know you're strictly mostly a coder, but do you have any say as far as what should be on the screen when you enter certain modes? How does that all play down with you guys? Well, everybody kind of brainstorms, especially before they ever started building the game. Before I was even included, everybody that was included, which would be Bo and Charlie and Scott and Dave and S, got together and had a little retreat at, I think, Charlie's house and watched, or maybe Scott's house, whatever. They watched the entire series and just brainstormed the whole time, wrote down notes and lines they thought would be good to use and where they could make adventures out of what and whatever. So that's where the dimensions concept came from, and that's where they decided that the modes would be adventures. And several major points about the game were all decided long before production ever started and before I ever got started on the software. since then once i was brought in i got to take the outline that they had and then figure out how we could make more content out of it or make it into actual content because some of the adventure ideas were just we should have an adventure about this and that was it and then we had to figure out okay what are the shots and what what are we going to use from the clips available from the show to be able to put that together and um i as far as actually creating animations there isn't any of that that i've done um there have been some times where i have i've described things that i was hoping we could build out of the assets that we have from the show that then vaness was able to make into a real thing like when you finish an adventure and the little rubber stamp makes a stamp on the morty card and and uh it plays a little line about you know completing another adventure and how far you are vaness created all of those in the show there's only one time where there's one quick clip of a stamp like that. And he, with a lot of editing, made it into all 10 individual stamps for the card. And he's made several, um, like looping background animations out of bits and pieces from the show. Cool. You know, layering things together and taking things out and stuff that it's still the concept from the show so that we didn't necessarily create brand new animation, but we're, he's putting all those pieces together in ways that are more versatile and more useful for us as far as putting something on the screen it's like a conductor in an orchestra man that is cool yeah but like the the score display is based on a sketch that i made because at that point when i started working on the game and had to be able to build things they hadn't really talked about that yet so i just whipped up a quick sketch of how about this and then dave sends back assets such that i can lay it out that way and a lot of the uh i don't know how many total but several of the early adventures are based on outlines that i wrote i would go through the the episode and and you know like mark down all the times and clips like i think we can use from here to here for this and we can use from here to here for this and that kind of thing so i would write like an outline of all the stuff for him to then pull out of the show and clean up and edit and add sound effects to and stuff um but you know that it definitely wasn't only me several of the modes were already fleshed out by Bowen before I ever got started and a lot of the time even when I come up with an outline I present it to the guys on the spooky slack and we all talk about okay here's what I've got so far what do you guys think we should add to this or change or make sure that this is not too hard for people that kind of thing so there's a lot of back and forth between me and Scott and Bowen and even Venice and Charlie chipping on feedback for rules and stuff. What was it like seeing Rick and Morty being played out in Madison at that bar? Well, I don't know. I mean, it's cool. The weirdest thing for me for seeing it in Madison is that's the most exposure that I had to a complete game at that point because I'd only been out to the Spooky HQ a couple of times when, like, once when Adult Swim people came in and once when we were shooting the promo little clips for the announcement video. So that first day in I.O. when a bunch of people were there to play it was the first time I got to put a decent amount of time on a fully finished game with all the art and everything because I still have the whitewood that doesn't have anything on it. So when are you getting your nice, shiny Rick and Morty? Are you number five or what's going on? I have no idea. I'm pretty sure I'm kind of low priority. He's number 750 and one. I was thinking, yeah, 750 has got your name on it, buddy. Yeah. But that's okay. I'm not in any hurry or anything, and I'm not going to whine about it. Like, it'll get here when it gets here. So do you find yourself, like, you know, you have a lot of pinball machines in your basement. I've seen them. They're awesome. You know, do you find yourself just being extra critical about your own work? Oh, of course. Okay. so like you can't even really enjoy the game so to speak sometimes because you're just like oh I wish I would have done this or done that or well at least at this point it's still I can I can change those things yeah touche yeah how many people can say that I don't like this I'm just going to change it right like I've watched most of the times it's been streamed by anybody like Bowen streamed it a couple times and Jax streamed it at least twice and Carl streamed it i've watched every one of those streams and i'm mostly just watching for is everything working the way it's supposed to is there something else i can do here you know did did this particular cue not happen when it was supposed to happen you know like all that it's okay to have some fun sometimes eric yeah yeah i know when i didn't watch jack's stream but i gotta ask did he uh he's really good with his streams um like finding the shortest route to getting the highest score i remember when he was flipping uh willie walker he's like i don't know what i'm doing yes get multiball just get multiball and you're fine and then you're gonna get a big score did he do that with rick and morty or did he find it to be kind of a fun challenge yeah he yeah he was definitely challenged by it he did he didn't really blow it up on either of the two um streams that he did but he was drinking pretty heavily on both of them and spending a lot of time talking to the chat so that he wasn't paying attention and there's a lot of times where if you're not paying attention that game's going to kill you because things happen so fast jack you need to be a professional drinking while you're streaming come on you know with him yeah i see what you did there drew drinking when you have a microphone in front of your face that's just irresponsible i just think he was scared of the game and he was like uh what's going on in chat so so do you i mean so the game was challenging for him then it sounds like right Which is good, I think. Because a lot of times these guys play these streams and it almost seems too easy. And you're like, yeah, that's not cool. So, yeah, I think it's a good level of challenge for the streams that I've seen so far. Yeah, and since, of course, they're all playing their last public release because we still can't show off what's in the current one until we get everything signed off on. But there are certain things that have been made easier. and point values have been shifted around based on how people are playing and how we see people having success or not having success with things. There's been a lot of tweaking to things. Just like score balancing and stuff? Yeah, some balancing. Like Whirly Durly, we added another shot because that mode with my original design with just the two shots available to make progress towards the kill shot, which is then the right ramp. like too many people are having a hard time getting to those shots because one of them is off the upper flipper so you have to set up the ball to the upper flipper to be even able to have a shot at it so in the next release really has a third shot that's available for the progress and then the ramp is still the kill shot you know stuff like that where we just make little changes to to try and make it a little not necessarily easier but you know give you another avenue for progress. Sure, sure, because you can play it different ways like a lot of games, which is cool. And certain things certain ways to do things score better than other things. If you do it the way it was originally done with the harder shots, it's worth more than if you do it the other way or whatever, depending on the mode. Awesome, awesome stuff. So I know the answer to this, but I've got to ask you because I'm sure listeners are waiting for this question to be asked, but have you heard from Charlie or anybody over at Spooky regarding possible shipping out the units that are made? I know Wisconsin's basically starting to open up a little bit here, and I know that there were some games that were already done, but they were just waiting to get them shipped. I don't know. Have you heard any updates to that for those that are waiting, Kaneda? again not really because i'm not there and i don't specifically ask charlie that stuff because i mean he doesn't need one more person hassling him you know like they're doing they're doing what they can like nobody's asked them that question i'm sure yeah i know charlie and the family have all been working the entire time on various things you know they because they shifted to a new building and they got some new equipment they had to set up and they had to get all the old equipment set up and running in the new shop so that all that stuff was taking care of the website and all the other things they do. All that stuff's still been going on. The only thing they didn't have was the whole crew in to be able to build things the way they normally do. Charlie put on his work gloves and he was screwing together cabinets. I just noticed. Bug is doing it. Not being physically there and being focused just on working on the game, I don't know how if they've if production is coming soon or whatever i like i just i don't know and i like you said everybody else is asking him so i'm just not gonna could you wildly speculate so we can blow it out of proportion no let's not do that true let's not do that i just know people are listening and they're like why aren't they asking him when i'm getting my game yeah yeah bro he doesn't know chris settle down he doesn't know everybody settle down Everybody settle down and everyone just relax. You'll get the game eventually. Don't worry. It'll be worth the wait. Definitely worth the wait. I know Charlie is anxious to be able to put people back to work so that he can put money back in their pockets so that they can afford their rent and their food and whatever. He feels terrible about the fact that they had to shut down. Oh, absolutely. I can see. I'm sure he's looking forward to starting production again. I just don't know when that's all going to happen. That's right. And it's tough, too, because he gets a lot of parts from Illinois, and that's kind of shut down. And then, obviously, China. There's supply issues that go along with this. This isn't just, oh, Wisconsin's open, so they should be able to screw together another 600 cabinets. No problem. That's not really how that works. Well, yeah, and people didn't realize those companies that sell pinball parts, they were still shipping. But like you said, everything comes from China. So once that runs dry, they're like, sorry, we're just out of parts. Oops. Yeah, like, I went on Marco's website just the other day, and the amount of stuff they're out of stock on was, like, staggering. You know, just because those, you know, that's just what it is. Hey, tis the season, man. Yeah, it's the COVID season. Everyone's at home. I want to fix my pin. Talk to China. Yeah, talk to China. China screwed this all up. Yeah. You can't get your Rick and Morty because of China. Yep, the Wuhan. Thanks, fish market. that's what happens you eat fish that live on top of bats that are fucking pigs wet market just splash some water on that yeah the sound of that's terrible wet market where you gonna go get your food i'm gonna go get some dinner over at the wet market yeah it's no no you know what sounds better than that what's that everything sounds better than that all anything everything everything all of the food in the world sounds better than getting something at the wet market for sure Right next to the chemical plant. Anyway, I got lost. What are we talking about? Rick and Morty. Yep. Production's not quite started yet, but that's okay. Well, I don't know. Well, yeah, I mean. It could be. I just haven't asked. Well, Wisconsin just kind of technically opened up some of its stuff like this week. So, you know, who knows? Like I said, it's up in the air. I would assume Charlie will, you know, say something at some point. Yeah. Yeah, there'll be a statement once they actually start getting rolling again. They'll probably put some pictures up of people working, which would be cool. Like you said, we're here talking about first world pinball problems, and you said it right, Eric. These people need to feed their families and stuff, and a lot bigger issues than not getting your Rick and Morty right now. Just a little bit. Yeah. Just a little bit. But we don't get political on this show. No, we just... We don't know enough. We just exercise how dumb we are on this whole thing. True story. So what else can you tell us about Rick and Morty? Are there any little Easter eggs you can maybe share with us? Well, I mean, if I share them, then they're not really Easter eggs anymore, right? Well, maybe just a little bit. He's good. Yeah. He's good. He's got me. He's got you. I mean, the next release, whenever we finally get around to, not get around to, but whenever we finally get approval on everything to be able to release it, I think people are going to be really happy because there's a lot of new content in there. There's a whole lot more of the custom audio that we had recorded that's been worked in. There's at least two, if not more, adventures. There's that new multiball. There's three new dimensions. There's all kinds of stuff. I just rewrote the switch test today. That's super exciting. Woo! All the programming nerds out there right now are like, oh, my God, that's awesome. you just activated everyone's switch schematic of the playfield on the screen and whenever you poke a switch it lights up on the playfield where it actually is so you can I don't know it's much more useful than the generic switch is it sort of like Jersey Jacks yeah I mean we don't have as high a resolution of a screen as they're using but yeah it's kind of like that it was very functional so for you guys who don't know yeah it's just like a diagram and you can touch a switch and it shows which one lights up and yeah when you load it up it shows you exactly where all the balls are because they're sitting on switches you know like if there's if there's four in the main trough and one in the portals right you can see that right on the screen right away yeah super cool so cool super cool that's uh that's what we need more of some more little little innovation you know that we don't think we need until we need it so that's awesome eric um any talk on doing another game with spooky or is everything still kind of rick and morty yeah no I'm 100% focused on this at this point I don't know if there will be more with Spooky after this or not I know of course Spooky is going to go on to do other games and whatever's coming next will be after Mirka and Morty as always has been planned it'll just be a little later now than originally because of the stoppage of everything but I haven't really talked to Charlie about whether or not I'll work on anything else after this or not all right we'll help you out we'll talk to charlie for you yeah i mean we know people we've talked to him once there's like scott always says i need a vacation you know like i don't yes we'll see when i get to the end of this road whether or not i want to get back on or not that is also a part of the problem right yeah that's that's the other equation yeah i mean it's it's still not a full time job for me this is i still have a 40 hour a week a regular job and this is just something i do whenever i can around that like i it's it's not as if i'm a spooky employee and all i do is work on games and yeah of course i'm going to work on more that's that's not where we're at like i'm still just doing this on the side so that uh spooky has the ability to have phosma still working on Alice Cooper and me working on this and making progress on both of them. Well, either way, this is your game, brother, and that's pretty cool. You can say, I am the lead coder on this game. Super cool. Yeah, and it's freaking Rick and Morty. It's so huge. That's what I find. I got to work on it. That is cool. So this was one of your dream themes, actually, right? Oh absolutely That is super cool Because you would have done any game I sure with them to help them out Maybe not Maybe not But that so cool That like a game you like yeah this is it Yeah, it definitely would have been something I was interested in. But this is far beyond something I was interested in. If they had said blank slate, what kind of a game do you want to make, this would have been near the top of the list, if not the top of the list. How cool is that? Because not even like top five, but like probably one or two. Yeah. Wow, super cool. It's like Charlie and I talking, and then all of a sudden he's like, Ian, I think you could help us on our next game. And I was like, what's your next game? He's like, Big Trouble in Little China. I would have irritable bowel syndrome from the day I started to the day that game got shipped. So now that Rick and Morty is a reality. Way to change the subject, Drew. I'm changing it. It's not happening. Sorry. We've told you that every week. Change the subject on Jack Burton. Yeah, every week for a year I've been telling you that's not happening. Welcome to the Pork Chop Express. Yes, well. What's on top of your dream theme list now? Future Island. That's right, we talked about that because that's number one on my list too. Did you hear that? There was an interview recently with Keith P. Johnson, and he was talking about the Simpsons pinball party when he was doing it. and that was they kicked around the idea of doing futurama before that oh and the reason they didn't was because you know that the show was kind of getting ready to go off the air and stuff and they just didn't think it was a big enough license so they went with the simpsons instead yeah i just i think there's as well i almost more possibilities i run i agree because of the interplanetary aliens and you know like there's so much more scope of things that you can use Yes, I agree. And, you know, I'm a huge Simpsons fan. I own the Simpsons Pinball Party. But yeah, I would, you know, if I had to get rid of that to get a Futurama on there, I would do that. So it's just the way it is. But yeah, totally agree. It'd be an awesome, awesome theme for pinball and it needs to happen. so tell me about this Iron Man HD because I know that Drew got all kind of he started drilling a little bit could you tell us a little bit about that little project of yours because now we're interested it was a nice little move it was a thing I did one summer leading up to Expo I built the whole thing in like 3 months or less because the it wasn't done Just things he does. Shits and giggles, Rick and Morty, Iron Man, the HD. It took me three days to take my glass off. Go ahead. That was still when Jerry from Multimorphic was still bringing P3s to Expo and would set up a big booth of custom projects based on P-Rock boards. He always liked to have content in the booth. I took Cactus Canyon one year and Scott originally had TNA in that booth when it was still a white would before it was you know turned into anything so i basically started i put a p-rock in iron man and started rebuilding the game not necessarily changing it much although if i ever had finished that i would have done some of the things that lyman ended up doing where you know like adding a a better skill shot and an earnable extra ball that kind of stuff little tiny things but mostly i just wanted to recreate the exact game the exact same way so that i could put an lcd in it and use movie clips instead of the dmd so it played movie content of the same things they used you know scaled down to the dmd they used like full screen versions of that and then i added in some extras because when they made the game the only access they had to assets from iron man 2 which is a lot of the game the uh all the stuff with whiplash and uh the warmonger is that what Yeah. All they had was the trailer. You know, like the everything that they used from Iron Man 2 in the game is from the movie trailers. There were two of them. That's it. That sounds terrible when you say that out loud. Wait, wait, wait. Is that that just sounds awful. I like the game, but that just sounds awful. All right. But if you think about it, trailers are usually cut to show the coolest part of the movie. True enough. To get you to go watch it. There was a pretty good sampling in there. But yeah. So for like War Machine, that's what it's not War Mario War Machine. So when in the War Machine multiball, it's the same one clip over and over and over because that's all they had. So when I redid it later, I was able to cycle through a bunch of different clips from that fight. But, you know, the rules were still the same. It just showed different stuff on the screen. So I got it up to a fully playable point by the time Expo rolled around. So you could play it and you could do Ironmonger, you could do Whiplash, you could do War Machine. Like all the main multi-balls, the double scoring, the Ironman scoring, all that basic stuff was in there. And you could play it, but it wasn't finished. Like there was a lot of audio missing. There was hardly any light shows. Like all the little finished details, I didn't get those done. And then after Expo, I kind of worked on it for a little bit more. And then I just really decided I wanted to be able to play my Ironman again. So I took the P-Rock back out and I just haven't ever gone back to it. And every couple of months, somebody either stumbles across the videos on YouTube or the thread on Pinside that mentions it. And they're like, hey, did you ever finish that? And I'm like, no, sorry. Well, now I know what I'm going to ask you every week. I mean, it did come out pretty cool. I bet it did. I bet it did. It could be the coolest thing, but not really because you get Rick and Morty. Eric, name one thing you're not good at. um whittling there you go oh that's bullshit he's a good whittler i saw that guy's facebook profile he's a good whittler all right all right so can't weld how's that can't weld i can't weld either that seems like a fun thing to do though i want to join metal on metal anyway that's a whole other thing that's that's our tuesday podcast this is monday yeah let's just let's skip that all right so should we do some poor man's personal pinball news let's do it all right and now the moment you've all been waiting for of course i'm talking about the poor man's pinball podcast personal pinball news uh eric do you have any personal pinball news well man it's hard to kind of hard to have any personal pinball news we just had about 40 minutes of it i guess yeah you just you just talk about you know making a new iron man i mean like the most exciting thing that's happened to me pinball related is last friday i ordered a mini shop vac for cleaning games oh that's a poor Man's first. That is a good one. I actually need one of those because my big one, you're right, just sucks to haul it around or whatever. Yeah, I got one of those two-gallon ones that's much smaller. Yes. It's been on my wish list for a while. It's good for the car, too. It's portable. Eric, out of your games that are in your basement, is there a favorite right now that you're playing? Anytime I'm playing anything, it's Rick and Morty. I figured as much, but I had to ask. Yeah, especially with the league being shut down. Like, we were right in the middle of a season of league when everything had to get called off. So I haven't really played anything else. Gotcha. Yeah, Eric texted me and said, don't come over. And I said, why? Because I got too drunk last time? And he said, no. He said, it's just quarantine. I think you behave yourself just fine. I do really great over at his house. I don't even drink at his house. Yeah, because you're a good man. There's so much cool pinball there. Yeah, no time. No time. Just got to play some awesome pinball. All right, Drew. Why don't we hear from you a bit? Tell me about your tale. What do you got going on? I got Penn Stadium hyper beams. We heard the commercial. Everyone heard the commercial. It happened. You on Facebook this week has been hilarious. People suck. I love all you guys, but you guys all suck. I'm calling you out, Christopher Franchi, Chris Calaris. Oh, man. Whatever. Oh, what's wrong with that picture? It's just to prove a point, guys. Relax. Settle down. So if you don't know, on Facebook, Drew posted hyperbeams before and after on his Jurassic Park, and the before picture was like, it almost looks like the game was turned off, and then the after, obviously, everything was illuminated because of the hyperbeams, and everyone gave him so much shit. And Christopher Franchi goes in his bathroom, takes a picture of the lights off, and then he takes a picture with the lights on. He's like, Penn Stadium's in my bathroom. It was beautiful. It was a beautiful thing. I could tell Drew was like, fuck you guys, because I think he changed the picture like four times. I did. Well, because it was struggling, because I edited it, actually, and I did change it. But then when you looked at it, it was the same picture, but you clicked on it, and it was the right picture. It was just one of those weird things. But yeah, Kaneda's like, you might want to work on that before picture. And I'm like, whatever. It's just a picture of no lights. No lights? lots of lights like come on so oh my god dude anyways they roasted drew this oh it was fun it was fun fine um so i got the hyper beams and then i had a pin stadium first the power supply came dead on arrival wow and i'm talking to scott i i email this is how good his customer service is i email scott it's like 10 30 at night and five minutes later he emails me back and i'm like dude you really this this isn't like life or death go to bed yeah no shit like i'm getting ready to go to bed and he's like he's like oh no here hang on let's let's troubleshoot this he goes you got my number just just text me i'm like well i wasn't going to text you at 10 30 at night about my power supply that i don't need right now because my wife's sleeping and i can't play pinball anyways so anyways you know we troubleshoot it you know pull up the multimeter we we determine it's a dead on arrival power supply which he goes wow it's literally never happen, which, you know, power supplies are usually solid, right? For the most part. Yeah, it's just one of those things. So anyways, he packed it up, you know, shipped one out the next day. But yeah, just the level of customer service to do that. And I'm like, yeah, dude, it's not that serious. I can still play my game, you know? Bro. So anyways, big shout out to Scott at PinStadiums because, yeah, no, he's just a genuine dude and anyone who's dealt with him would tell you the same. His customer service is awesome. Not just the sponsor. We just love the man. Yeah, he's just cool. He's sending me videos at 11 o'clock at night. Like, here, this is what I want you to try. I'm like, okay. Thanks, Scott. Yeah, super awesome. Very cool. So anyways, yep, that's up and going and looks great. So the beams are everything that is advertised, huh? They are super bright. I've been fluctuating between the green and the yellow with that green play field. And yeah, it is. It's like a nuclear neon. That's the only way I can describe it. You haven't talked about Jurassic Park lately. How are you liking it still? Challenging. Yeah? But, yeah, just fun. Eric, have you played Jurassic Park at all? A little bit, yeah. I really like that one. Yeah. Would love to have one of those someday, but, you know, money. Yeah, there's that pesky thing. It's either money or space, and we seem to be running out of all of it here in America. I never had either. american dreams hey hey i'm looking at a a fresh laser war over here man it is it's a very fresh so anyways uh i'm still waiting on the firepower decals so i can finally finish that guy up you know like i said it's up on legs i want to get the decals on i gotta you know get it all set up and get the plunger back in there after the decals are on and that thing's gonna be ready to roll So which one did you do the hard top on? Was that firepower? That was firepower. Okay. So the firepower has a hard top on it. Yep. It's all brand new, just about brand new everything on it. What decals are we talking? I got the alternate ones from Retro Refurbs. Okay. And where do they go? Are you talking about the plastics? No, the cabinet decals. Oh, the side art? Yeah. And the front, you know, and the backbox. So I can't put the plunger hardware on because, you know, I need it off so I can put the decals on. Got it. So like I said, it's all working. It's ready to go. I'm waiting on these decals so I can get the whole thing put together. Yeah, so that thing is, it looks like a machine that's, you know, it's brand new. Cool. And then, you know, the only time you could tell it wasn't is if you open it up, you know, the bottom of the cabinet's a little scuffed, but nothing crazy. Ugh, unforgivable. Yeah, I know. I know. Fucking gross. whoever buys that's gonna be pissed off when they open it up well it's funny because you see this stuff on pin side right when people post these restores and i'm like yeah i could do that you know i could i could take this whole thing apart and like sand down all that stuff inside but i'm like no one's ever gonna see it but me that's where bill webb would disagree bro i'm sure he would but you know you there's only so much time and money see i thought you were going somewhere else because i've seen like partially restored and they just changed out the leds on pin side you know you go oh come on bro that's just the led yeah that's a full restore right that's a full what are you talking about partial that's done baby i put one new flipper rubber on the other one was fine those things are expensive you know what they say though oh i also cone so you'll not get any more rubber dust in your game like okay what else you know yeah oh you're charging eight grand what else you do it's it's terrible i know no i uh the price police are around oh they they definitely are so then uh the last piece was while i'm waiting for these decals because i can't play that game i have this meteor sitting over there that's working but it's it's dirty i mean she is filthy i took i stripped down the entire top of the playfield that's how drew likes them i love them love those dirty filthy women it's true um whoa whoa we're talking playfields but um i stripped this thing down there was like tape there was this thing this thing was just like taped together with stuff i don't know i'll put up some pictures with tape yeah with tape tape together with tape i'll uh i'll take that over nails i got a lot of nails and laser yeah laser war did have quite a few but uh so anyways i i took her apart you know clean clean the play field now i'm deciding how i'm gonna touch it up i'm working with a friend of ours jeff lagrange to potentially get some stencils made so i can do some airbrushing cool because there's some uh you can use my airbrush yep but i need i need stencils because there's no way i'm doing that by hand yep it's like uh it's like the exhaust on the the spaceships and stuff oh yeah no doubt no doubt i don't expect you to do that by hand no but you have an airbrush yes you can use i do have an airbrush so anyway so that's what i've been doing cool man that's my that's my pinball news personal poor man's pinball news awesome um i did all right my my personal news i bought some what i buy i bought some hyper beans i had to check the notes here this skull crystal skull vacas is kicking my butt a little bit here ian had half a skull so the the pin stadium hyper beans i bought those for the latest war you might ask me why why would you spend three hundred dollars more on this laser war because i'm out of control kids i don't know what i'm doing i just thought well what the hell and drew's sitting here texting me he's like do we need to get some mirror blaze on there first i'm like do kids i can't justify any more money in blazer war when we started this project this game was worth at least 400 now after we spend another 400 it's worth at least 400 that's my joke but only substitute 400 with it was worth 1200 we put three grand into it and now it's worth 1200 that's about right that's about it yeah whatever it's it's it's fun it is fun and it's and it's nice i mean everyone's gonna say this is the nicest laser war they've ever it is a piece of art but i do have some hyper beams it does get dark there is a ton of bulbs in there though so what i'm gonna do is before you guys freak out you know the brightness levels get adjusted on that thing so i'm going to just make sure that the artwork is visible i'd like to keep it pretty much in the medium range on on my on my pin stadiums but i do enjoy them because it does light everything up and those pin shades that drew finally dropped off to me uh fantastic they do work really well they do and i was surprised because you get a lot of glare off the glass that kind of eliminates I don't play with the glass on. I know you don't. You sit on your pile of tilt bobs and play all your games. Hey, I got another GC, Ian. Check it out. This is heaven. Bragging all the time. Let's see, what else did I do this week? Almost bought an Oktoberfest. Almost had it. I had it. I said, I will take it. It was in the cart, so to speak. And he said, no problem. And I was on my way. I told my wife, hey, I need the car. I'm picking it up on Friday. This was Wednesday night. And Wednesday night, he told me, yep, no problem. And then like two minutes later, he's like, oh, sorry, dude. I just sold it to another guy. Sold it from under me. That is terrible. Hurts. That bad pinball etiquette. You know what else hurts? It's still listed on Pinside. So now I think it's just personal. Did you do something to piss him off or what? I don't think so. I didn't message him. I'm like, hey, man, it's still listed, but for real, I will take it this Friday. I will take it. Or it was, yeah, I posted that Wednesday or Sunday. No response? No, no response today. So I was like, all right, well, whatever. Maybe he did sell it. Maybe it's just his way to sell some new machines. I don't know. Yeah. But whatever. I was just like, all right, fuck it. That's fine. I will wait for another Oktoberfest to come along. I just, there's one about three hours away. It was on location for three months. I'm thinking about it. Let's just say that. I'm in no rush. That's the thing. No rush. Thinking about it. I figure when Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles gets released, there might be more on the market. You know, no one's talked about this much. What if it's just not Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? It will be. Says who? Besides everybody. Says Eric Pripke. Yeah. When has the Stern rumor list ever been wrong? Good point, Eric. Do you think that's just because they have more leaks, because they have more people? Yeah, I mean, there's definitely a lot more people trying to pry information out of them, and there's a lot more people in the company that could either say something to people they think they can trust or accidentally say something when they've had a little too much to drink or whatever. They have a lot more possible places for information to get out, and there's a lot more people interested. so yeah it doesn't surprise me that their secrets constantly get out sure i always i always think about the line workers there and are those people like just totally not into pinball and then they find out that people like want that information and they like really i just i just you know screw these things together all day i pretty sure gary stern just pulled up in the parking lot with a Technodrome or whatever and just said Hey guys nothing to see here One of those drill things that were in the cartoon. Remember? Oh, yeah. The drill. What do they call that thing? Oh, crap. Stupid. Stupid. That's what they call it. Okay, so Eric, solve this dilemma. I think there should be a Technodrome in there, and so do several other people. Would you want to see a Technodrome in there? Like a physical one? Maybe. Pop it out of the play field? Yeah. I don't know. No? Thank you. Not enough room? I don't know. Who knows what they're going to do? It wouldn't work. The main baddie's got to be Shredder. It just has to be. Yeah, but if it was Shredder, wouldn't it just be another bust like Wolverine? or... I don't give a shit. It's Shredder, man. Like Wolverine's so terrible. Well, no, but it's just that standard bust bash toy. Well, it doesn't necessarily have to be a bash toy, but this is Stern, so I don't know. I'm not going to say it. But anyway, so there we go. Boom. Octoberfest came in my grasp and then left just as quickly. Like a lady in the night. The opportunity to get another one and you're just not sure. Yeah. Three hours is three hours. six hours front and back I think Zach Manning can ship you one Zach Manning will ship me one new in box and I love Zach Manning he's like my inventory is low but I have 10 Oktoberfest sitting here in the back alright well anyway speaking of Zach Manning flipping out pinball you want a new stern boom we have you covered you want a new Chicago Gaming Company remake boom we have you covered you want a brand new shiny from JJP guess what boom we have you covered again P3 Multimorphic, we can do that too. We got mods, shaker motors, even some used pinball inventory. Flip N Out Pinball also sells the Stair Climbing Escalera Hand Truck. Email Zach at Flip N Out Pinball or call or text 812-457-9711. Zach at Flip N Out Pinball. Flip, letter N, Out Pinball. So we have news. We got some breaking news. Breaking news. It just happened today. It happened today. This is May 18, 2020. We'll give a round of applause. But first, Drew's not going to announce it. I'm not going to announce it. We're going to let our guest announce it. Eric, what happened today? Stern Pinball hired the number one player in the world, Raymond Davidson, to do software. What a great hire. That's awesome. That makes so much sense. Yeah, and it now makes the Illinois State Finals the hardest state finals in the world. So you got, yeah, who do you got there? You got Raymond Davidson now. You got Keith Elwin. You got Tim Sexton's pretty good, right? Yeah, both the Sharps. Werdrick. Man, what a list. So Illinois, is that like... There's a ton of heavy hitters down there now. And there's a bunch of other players, too, that aren't necessarily, you know, big names industry-wise. Sure. Play down in the Chicago Pinball League and Logan and stuff. There's a bunch of other really good players. So now I don't want to start all the other states on fire, but is Illinois the state to beat then? Well, as far as number of top-ranked players in the state, I think Illinois is in the lead. Okay. Now. Until they move. I don't know what that means. You know what, Drew? We should probably just start your training, right? You know, we start working out your fingers, right? Start the Wisconsin initiative. No, just – Just got to focus. We need you to be the number one player in the world, and I think we can do it. First, you work on reflexes, right? We got you in a strong regiment of Funyuns and Bean Dip. Yep. Got to have Funyuns and Bean Dip. Tons of Mountain Dew. They recommend, like, what, eight glasses of water? Well, we're going to have to double that. Sixteen glasses of Mountain Dew. um definitely gets you some lots of cocaine i would think oh there you go we'll feel performance enhancing cocaine you heard it from eric this is eric's tips by the way yeah mine yeah disclaimer uh this show does not condone cocaine use but eric pripke does sorry guest last time he shows up um but no and then we'll just start working right just like Let's do it. I'll be flipping pinball machines physically. Blindfold. I want you to, yeah, one hand on one pinball machine and the other on the other, and I want you to flip one hand. And get a grand champion on both of them. Eric will show up. He'll teach you everything you need to know about laser war. It'll be like a Mr. Miyagi type moment. Yes, he'll teach you all the laser war. Except on cocaine. Cocaine. Yep. Laser war is deep, man. So he'll be here for quite a bit. Is it, though? Well, red, green, yellow. No, blue. Blue, red, yellow. That one is the epitome of shoot the flash in color. Repeat. Just shoot the color. It doesn't even flash. Yeah, that's true. It's beautiful. Go to red base. Red base. Blue base. Yellow base. You're done. Shoot the ion cannon. Cocaine mountain. Got it. Cocaine mountain. Explosions. All right. That whole thing was just an excuse for me to play You're the Best Around from Freddy Kidd. Love it. You just needed to get that in there. I just needed to stretch that out long enough so we got a little bit of training montage music. Oh, that's perfect. All right. I dig that. Cool. All right. So what else do you want to do, Drew? You want to do mailbag? We got mailbag. We just got, well. Do you want to talk about our giveaway? That's part of our mailbag, so yes. Let's do mailbag. Mailbag. So we just have one, I'll call it regular mailbag before I get into the other stuff. Okay. So we got a message from Doc Finlay again from pinballprices.com. Great show again. Thank you for the extended shout-out about my website. Hope you don't mind, but pinballprices.com is now as featured on the Poor Man's Pinball Podcast. So he used our name without our knowledge. That's okay, Doc, because, you know, it's fine. Send $1.50 to 315 Marshall Avenue. That's our show bill. $1.50. All these other guys pay us. We're not joking. We got high-priced lawyers. It costs $2.50. And right now, y'all are featured on my homepage with a link to your podcast, and thank you. I'm sure it helps me more than you. Yeah, whatever. And then he asked us to give him a review on Twip, which we already did. So, Doc Finlay. Yeah, pinballprices.com. We talked a little bit about it last week. Check it out. It's a cool site. And Doc is now a friend of Poor Man's Pinball Podcast. Oh, wow. Yeah, he did. He put our logo up there and everything. thanks yeah no it's pretty cool so yeah doc thanks again man eric have you uh ever checked out pinballprices.com have you have you are you aware of the site i was aware of it i haven't looked at it in a long time because i haven't been trying to buy or sell anything in a long time okay yeah no it was just something that i wasn't aware of so when we when he emailed us it was really cool because drew and i talk out of our asses 99 of the time but 100 of that 99 is about pinball pricing. It's nice to have some actual facts. Thanks, Doc. Appreciate it, man. That's what Doc brings to the Poor Man's Pinball Podcast. Awesome. Facts. You're muddling up all of our crazy, drunken opinions with your facts. Thank you for your facts. We could use more. We always joke about having fact-checkers in the background. Doc Finley, you're the official Poor Man's Pinball Podcast fact-checker. We have the fact-checker. So next time we talk about a $4,000 scared stiff and the whole world goes on fire, you can you can set us straight yes maybe just yeah do you remember that they were like super angry they're like oh my god you could never get one for that much you're like good luck bro yeah and i'm like dude first of all i don't want one it's a cool game but whatever you know you make one comment you know and it wasn't even about the game it was just you know we're talking about something else and it's like come on yeah it was a throwaway line yeah sorry i didn't get my my price exactly right angry guy it's okay it's okay drew all right that was eight months ago so no no i'm i'm now officially a grudge holder yeah that's okay buddy okay uh so the other our inbox was flooded this week okay i said there was only this one email but i'm not kidding like it took me three hours to sort through these okay here's what happened so last week we uh announced our first giveaway on the show okay it's the shaker motor giveaway sponsored by flipping out pinball okay the stern spike system shaker motor ian always has to correct me on that because i just keep saying shaker motor yeah we got to make sure it's for the spike system yes the the newer spike to Stern System. The rules, they're very simple. So you guys have until May 29th for this, okay? Another week. Yep. Write a paragraph or two, no longer in that, on why you should be considered to be a tribe member. And if you're already in the tribe, which we have 26 of you guys right now, why you should remain there because we are kicking people out daily. I'm sick of that. You know why? Because the tribe members just keep sending us dick pics, and I hate it. Like, this is not why you should stay a tribe member, guys. Brad Hopkins, I'm talking to you, buddy. So I'm not going to spoil it this week because we have this big getaway. Keep it in your pants, gentlemen. Keep it in your pants. I will, yes. We got a ton of entries already. That's good fun. Yeah. We got a bunch from our tribe members, of course, because they email us every day and we usually ignore most of their correspondence. They are going straight to the junk mail. Oh, totally. Spam all day. Yep. And then, but then some of our listeners who are not tribe members, they sent us some good ones on why they think you should be tribe members and a lot of them have been really good some of my heartfelt some have been funny some have been downright dirty and nasty yep which i was coming starting to think that you guys have a very poor opinion of this one of them i'll just give you a taste one of them the subject line said my hand job yes that's true and we we will uh we will uh enlighten you guys on that one next week when we do the giveaway yes yes so we will read them all because there's some good ones in there. And you know what? If you just want to send us, let's just open it up. We'll take a paragraph just in general why you should have the shaker motor. I don't even care. I just want it to be funny and interesting. There you go. I'm okay with that. Send us some more shit. I would love to hear it. Poor man's style. We changed the rules halfway through the game. That's okay. It doesn't fucking matter. So send whatever you want as long as it's a paragraph and it's somewhat funny. And it doesn't even have to make sense. we'll just read it yep it could be an ad Bob Libbe i don't care i think most of them are that's not nice his name's josh mudd and he can he doesn't need to do ad libs all right so stern shaker motor yep freaking new in box kids good value may 29th give us a freaking paragraph it's like a 129 value it's huge i know spike system i know there's a few games out there Yeah. How many Jurassic Parks were purchased in the last 12 months? Perfect. So there you go. You want to feel that roar in your pants? Mm-hmm. Write a paragraph. Love it. All right. So with that in mind, we are not doing a tribe member this week. I'm sorry, guys. We're stopping at number 26 because we want to do our Stern Shaker Motor giveaway next week. And we're lazy. Oh, there's that, too. We didn't talk about it this week. but uh yeah fuck you guys kidding we love you all so so maybe if someone isn't a tribe member and they wrote us a nice note on why they should be and they win and maybe they'll be the next tribe member who knows all right perfect um love it buy our shit over at silver ball swag drew i see you're wearing something very nice as are you it's the poor man's pinball um hoodie i love this hoodie it's the skull and flipper hoodie i can't believe we don't sell more of those because those are that's my favorite hoodie uh i am wearing the purple Christopher Franchi logo poor man's pinball podcast so Christopher Franchi thank you very much for drawing that beautiful logo for us so look for us on silver ball swag promoter tab is poor man's Pinball podcast. There's cool stuff there. Buy our shit there. I had my mug. I had my T-shirt. My wife can't keep her hands off me. I'm just telling you. You had us all at the end. Until the end. That's terrible. All right, Eric, thank you so much for being on the show today. We'll wrap it up there. Thank you so much for cracking an egg of knowledge on us about Rick and Morty. I know a lot of people are so excited to get their games and every little detail I'm sure they're just hanging on so it was really cool that you were able to stop by wet the pallet a little bit more I know all the games are sold but damn it I want these people to be pretty excited when they get that game at their doorstep hopefully we can keep cranking out more and more things to keep the interest level up as they wait absolutely absolutely and the one thing i would say to all the people that are constantly asking you know when is pressure to start when is this gonna happen uh spooky has always delivered every game they said they would for all the years they've been in business and all the titles that they've produced so far so while it may not necessarily be on the timeline you're hoping for because of all the stupid crud that's going on it will be there like they're not going to leave anybody hanging that's that's actually solid i i like that and you're right because strong words from a strong man he said crud kids that's about as great as ours you're gonna get from eric uh but no he's 100 right 100 right so keep your panties on it's fine you're gonna get your game i'm just excited that eric's so excited what i learned drew today is eric is a passionate it rick and morty fan which has me super excited about this game um because we need more of that passion more of that fanfare when we talk about these licenses you know good talk true he just nodded i just nodded nobody nobody you guys you guys you guys totally heard that i wasn't i was in total agreement with my my uh loud nod ready that's that's my head hitting the microphone all All right, well, this has gotten ridiculous. All right, Eric, again, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate it. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, we appreciate it, man. We need to talk more often. Now, I can't ask you this because you might have the answer. When do you think you're opening your league back up? Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I know. No rush. There's an email going around right now that Tom Grass started. I don't know if you guys are on it or not, but the IFPA asked all the local state reps to talk to the player bases about opinions and feelings as to when tournaments should be able to start back up again and be sanctioned and that kind of thing, because they're looking for feedback on whether or not they should do that sort of thing. So there's an email chain going around between Tom and the guys in Madison and several of the other location owners and event organizers and stuff, and it's still very obviously very divided between people who can't wait to get back to trying to live a normal life again and people who want everything to stay canceled just for safety's sake. So you'd say it's probably 50-50 right now? Yeah, so it's really hard to say. I would love to have people over for the league again, but I don't expect anyone necessarily to show up because everybody's got their own opinion. No, I don't feel quite comfortable being in large groups yet. so yeah i mean the the one thing really holding our house back from participating with people is liz works for a nursing home so we're trying to limit exposure as much as we can because she doesn't want to be the one to end up taking it to work sure that's a huge that's a huge deal yeah ian can relate his wife works for a dialysis clinic and it's just kind of the same thing you know yeah and immune compromised people gotta be safe so yeah well good on you for doing the right thing and yeah some people i know some people are just like yeah just eff it and do it and that's just i don't know america yeah that's just i don't wear no mask because i wasn't born with no mask i ain't gonna wear no mask america you sound like a bad facebook feed i am the facebook feed bro yeah all right okay well cool man yeah thanks again for for everything eric and uh yeah we'll be in touch and talking soon i'm sure all right and everybody check out pin shades over at the Pinside Marketplace, please. Yep. And we also have Flip N Out Pinball. Please call Zach over at FlippinOutPinball.com. He has all the newest toys. Of course, the nice, big, bright, shiny stuff. So please, please, please give some love to Zach Manning over at Flip N Out Pinball. And also, Pin Stadium Lights. I know Drew and I are absolutely in love with our pin stadiums. It just is what it is. We always have been. and Scott has some of the best customer service around. So if you can buy from the small guys, buy from the small guys. PinStadium Lights, Scott, we love you. Drew, anything else, buddy? No, you said it all, man. That's awesome. Buy our shit at Silver Ball Swag. Don't forget to buy our shit. Buy our shit. All right, thank you guys very much. All right, thanks. Thanks, Eric. Later. We'll talk to you later. Hey, guys, remember this. The opinions expressed on the show do not necessarily reflect that of the show's sponsor. But oh, I wonder what's inside your buckle Maybe there's a dream out there maybe there's a feeling in but oh, I wonder what's inside your buckle What's inside the book? I always want to know. I wonder what's inside the book? you _(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_ --- *Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 22e788bc-3d5b-415b-803b-d9502fae7f37*