# 041 - We WILL Catch 'Em All

**Source:** Punk Rock Pinball Podcast  
**Type:** podcast_episode  
**Published:** 2026-03-30  
**Duration:** 46m 6s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://share.transistor.fm/s/f42f9c69

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## Analysis

Stephanie and Mike from Punk Rock Pinball Podcast discuss their experience acquiring and playing Pokémon pinball (LE #445), celebrating it as their first Limited Edition machine. They praise the innovative Pokémon-catching mechanic as unique in pinball history, discuss early code development, share setup experiences comparing it to their Jaws acquisition, and express enthusiasm for the game's collection-driven gameplay while noting Jaws remains their favorite due to superior layout and ramp design.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] Pokémon pinball has 143 plays within 4 days of ownership (since Wednesday, analyzed on Sunday) — _Stephanie and Mike explicitly state they received the machine Wednesday night and it's now Sunday with 143 registered plays_
- [HIGH] The Pokémon-catching mechanic is completely unique and innovative in pinball history with nothing comparable — _Mike states: 'There is nothing like it in pinball period. There never has been. There's nothing even close to that in pinball.'_
- [HIGH] Flippin' Out Pinball created custom badges for Pokémon LE buyers based on their unit numbers featuring specific Pokémon characters — _Mike describes seeing badges at Flippin' Out Pinball with examples like 'Charizard is number five' out of 750 LEs_
- [HIGH] Pokémon pinball code is still in early development with planned features like Training mode progression and additional mini-wizard modes not yet implemented — _Stephanie explains: 'There's nothing really to train in there' and notes three more mini-wizard modes are coming (four planned total)_
- [MEDIUM] Stern is developing a Pokedex collection tracker feature in the Insider Connected app that is currently being tested — _Mike states: 'when we were at Stern for the media day, one of the guys was showing how they're testing it' and 'The code is there. They just probably need approvals'_
- [HIGH] Tournament player Tom Graff scored 1.2 billion and obtained multiple extra balls during media day play — _Mike describes: 'He blew it up. 1.2 billion and plunged off a bunch of extra balls. He got like four extra balls'_
- [HIGH] Pokémon LE setup took approximately 14 minutes compared to several hours for their initial Jaws Pro setup — _Stephanie: 'we had that out of the truck, unboxed and set up in about 14 minutes' vs Jaws which 'took us two hours'_
- [HIGH] Jaws remains the hosts' favorite machine, ranked above Pokémon due to superior layout and ramp design — _Mike: 'today, I like Jaws' head and shoulders better than Pokemon' and 'The layout is more interesting and better. The ramps are so smooth.'_

### Notable Quotes

> "There is nothing like it in pinball period. There never has been. There's nothing even close to that in pinball."
> — **Mike**, mid-episode
> _Core assessment of Pokémon's innovation in the catching mechanic_

> "I want to catch them all."
> — **Stephanie**, mid-episode
> _Describes the collection-driven motivation that keeps them engaged_

> "It's the only pinball machine that we have, or maybe that I've played, I think maybe D&D could be this way, but Pokemon's the only one we have where there's a reason to want to play beyond the score."
> — **Stephanie**, mid-episode
> _Identifies Pokémon's unique appeal as a departure from traditional score-driven pinball_

> "That's a really, really great pinball moment. I also feel like, to me, that is the main moment in the game."
> — **Stephanie**, late-episode
> _Emphasizes the pokéball capture mechanic as the emotional core of the game_

> "I think that would be awesome. First one's free."
> — **Mike**, mid-episode
> _Pitches mode design ideas to Stern engineers listening to the podcast_

> "We've got a system. We have got a system at this point."
> — **Mike**, early-mid-episode
> _Reflects on their evolution as machine owners from nervous first-time buyers to experienced operators_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Stephanie | person | Co-host of Punk Rock Pinball Podcast, Pokémon LE #445 owner, pinball enthusiast |
| Mike | person | Co-host of Punk Rock Pinball Podcast, Pokémon LE #445 owner, pinball content creator |
| Retro Ralph | person | Pinball content creator and podcast host who received Pokémon pinball and mentioned the hosts in his Texas Pinball Festival episode |
| Zach Meny | person | Operator/owner of Flippin' Out Pinball, created custom LE badges for Pokémon buyers |
| Tom Graff | person | Tournament player who scored 1.2 billion on Pokémon at Stern media day with multiple extra balls |
| Troy | person | Staff at Tilt Amusements who notified hosts that their Pokémon LE was ready for pickup |
| Mike (Great American Pinball) | person | Distributor who sold hosts their first pinball machine (Jaws Pro) from Great American Pinball in St. Charles |
| CJ | person | Friend bringing an additional machine to the hosts' Pokémon launch party at their HQ |
| Michael Grant | person | Person who engages with the hosts' posts on social media regarding the Pokémon launch party |
| Pokémon (game) | game | Stern Pinball game released February 2026, featuring 180+ Pokémon characters, innovative catch mechanic, Spike 3 platform. Hosts own LE #445 |
| Jaws (game) | game | Stern Pinball machine, hosts' first-owned pinball machine (Pro model), current favorite ranked above Pokémon |
| Stranger Things (game) | game | Stern Pinball machine mentioned as potential example of collection-driven gameplay |
| Godzilla (game) | game | Stern Pinball machine mentioned in context of hosts' early considerations before purchasing Jaws |
| Foo Fighters (game) | game | Pinball machine hosts previously owned, moved to HQ |
| Harry Potter (game) | game | Jersey Jack Pinball game mentioned as reference for advanced features (inverted flippers in specific modes) |
| Houdini (game) | game | Pinball game with inverted flipper mode mechanics mentioned as design reference |
| Beetlejuice (game) | game | Spooky Pinball game with self-flipping mechanics mentioned in comparison |
| Fallout (game) | game | Upcoming Stern Pinball game in development, discussed as potential application of Pokémon's collection system mechanics |
| Flippin' Out Pinball | company | Pinball distributor and retailer where hosts pick up machines, created custom LE badges for Pokémon buyers |
| Stern Pinball | company | Manufacturer of Pokémon, Jaws, Stranger Things, and other games discussed |
| Tilt Amusements | company | Retailer/location where hosts picked up their Pokémon LE #445 |
| Punk Rock Pinball Podcast | organization | Podcast hosted by Stephanie and Mike, M&S Productions TV, episode 41 analyzed here |
| Golden Ticket Bloomington Alehouse tournament | event | Local tournament where Pokémon was recently played with experienced players |
| Texas Pinball Festival | event | Industry event mentioned by Retro Ralph where he wished the hosts could have attended |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Pokémon pinball acquisition and first-hand experience, Innovative catching mechanic as industry-first gameplay feature, Early code development and planned features, Pokémon vs Jaws comparison and ranking
- **Secondary:** Machine setup and delivery experience evolution, Tournament play performance and ball time management, Design ideas for future Stern games (Fallout mode concepts), Collection-driven vs score-driven gameplay philosophy

### Sentiment

**Neutral** (0)

### Signals

- **[product_launch]** Hosts purchased their first Limited Edition pinball machine: Pokémon LE #445 (confidence: high) — Explicit statement: 'It's our first LE. Yeah, it's our first LE.'
- **[design_innovation]** Pokémon's catching mechanic identified as completely unique and innovative in pinball history (confidence: high) — Mike: 'There is nothing like it in pinball period. There never has been. There's nothing even close to that in pinball.'
- **[collector_signal]** Flippin' Out Pinball created custom LE badges with Pokémon characters matched to unit numbers (confidence: high) — Mike: 'they made badges they look so bad for all the le's based on the number... it'd be like number five, like, it's a one of one Charizard'
- **[gameplay_signal]** Pokémon creates sustained replay motivation through collection mechanics rather than pure score chasing (confidence: high) — Stephanie: 'it's the only pinball machine that we have...where there's a reason to want to play beyond the score'
- **[code_update]** Pokémon code still in active development with multiple planned features: Training mode, additional mini-wizard modes, Pokedex tracker app integration (confidence: high) — Stephanie on Training targets: 'There's nothing really to train in there' and notes 'three more of those we know coming'
- **[competitive_signal]** Pokémon did not cause excessive ball time at Golden Ticket Bloomington tournament despite early code, only waited on machine once (confidence: high) — Mike: 'it was only like the last, we were only waiting on Pokemon like once' and game played reasonably in tournament with experienced players
- **[sentiment_shift]** Hosts express strong satisfaction with Pokémon despite early code, indicating positive reception trajectory (confidence: high) — Mike: 'I'm really glad we got it' and Stephanie: 'It's in my favorites'
- **[market_signal]** Pokémon LE secondary market activity evidenced by high demand, custom badge creation, and rapid distribution through major retailers (confidence: medium) — Flippin' Out Pinball photos showed 'endless supply' with 'as far as your eye could see' inventory
- **[design_philosophy]** Hosts propose additional game modes that simplify core experience (Poke Hunter mode that disables other features) (confidence: medium) — Mike pitch: 'Poke Hunter mode...all you're doing is hunting the Pokemon and it kills all of the other mode code'
- **[community_signal]** Hosts acknowledge Stern engineers listen to their podcast and pitch design ideas directly (confidence: medium) — Mike: 'We do have friends from Stern that listen to the show' followed by Fallout mode design pitch
- **[content_signal]** Hosts attended Stern media day event and had direct observation of Tom Graff gameplay performance (confidence: high) — Reference to 'when we were at Stern for the media day' and detailed observations of Tom Graff's 1.2B score
- **[operational_signal]** Hosts planning Pokémon launch party at community HQ rather than private residence due to venue policy restrictions (confidence: high) — Stephanie: 'They won't allow launch parties at like a house' so 'We're going to do it at the HQ'

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## Transcript

Hello. Cue the dog leaving. Mm-hmm. He doesn't like a finger snap. Welcome to the Punk Arc Pinball Podcast, episode 41. Four one. Yep. Oh my gosh. 41 times. This is a great show. It's a long time. Yeah. It's a lot of numbers. A lot of numbers. We haven't... This has not been a year yet. We haven't been doing it a year yet. That'd be 52. I guess it would be. Well, it will be more because there have been a few weeks where we've done more than one in a week, once in a while. Once in a while. If you get a special thing like a new game or something... We didn't introduce ourselves. I'm Stephanie. I'm Mike. This is the show. We're the hosts of the show. Mm-hmm. Thank you for tuning in. It's M&S TV Productions. M&S Productions TV. That's it. Yeah. Just like KBD Productions TV. Does anybody watch KBD Productions TV on YouTube? It's Ken. Ken from Canada? Ken from Canada. He does stealth camping, which isn't really stealth camping. He just sleeps in his minivan and eats fast food for 24 hours. Totally wrong, I come from Pittsburgh, man! We've watched seven years of Steve Wallace in five months. No, we've watched Steve Wallace over the course of a couple years. All right, well... two years. Okay. He's that good. He is so good. Oh, him and Beautiful Wife and Crazy Neighbor, it's just like... Yeah, he's been struck with lots of tragedy. Yeah, Steve Wallace. We're he's worth checking out. They're both Canadian. We like Canadian watching Canadian YouTubers late at night. They're both Canadians and they do different weird camping things. We don't camp. No, I mean, neither are pinball programs. But KBD can. He does a deal where like he goes to these restaurants and like eats a crap load of food. I mean, if anything's on special at like an Arby's, I mean, things that you shouldn't order, he will. And he'll eat them in his car. He has a little tray that he hooks onto his steering wheel and he he lays out all of the food and then he proceeds to eat it all and give himself a clean plate award. Yeah, and like five days of food worth of food in like one day. Spoiler alert, he pretty much loves everything. Ken did like 24 hours straight of eating at Waffle House. We can get into pinball, but that's the kind of stuff we watch late at night. We also watch some other pinballers too. We do watch other pinballers, one of which... Retro Ralph. Retro Ralph, who mentioned us on his episode about the Texas Pinball Festival. He missed us. We missed him. Yeah, he said he wished we were there. We wish we could have been there. It looked like a lot of fun. So thanks, Ralph, if you're listening. Thank you so much for the shout out. That was super cool. Yeah. And in Retro Ralph news this week, and in Punk Rock Pinball news this week, Ralph got a Pokemon pinball machine. Did we? It's right there behind me. Number 445. We got number 445. That's a guard chomp. I saw on the uh the flipping out pinball all of their le people they made badges they look so bad for all the le's based on the number so it was like you know which one is Tim Kitzrow, Director, The Charizard is number five, I think. So it'd be like number five, like, it's a one of one Charizard, and it's number five out of 750 limited edition. It was cool. Really, and it had like a little thing, a Charizard on their little badge. I thought that was a really cool thing to do for the LE folks. I wouldn't mind if they would make me one. I don't know if Zach Meny listens to the show, I probably, I don't, don't hold your breath. If you do, I'd take a Garchomp one. I mean, that'd be badass. Yeah. But that was like, what a cool thing and what a smart thing to kind of build a deep relationship with your customers and offer something that nobody else is doing for a really special machine. Like, hats off. Great idea. Yeah, really cool idea. So like, what do you... It looks like they sold like a crap load of Pokemon LEs. Yeah, the pictures he was showing was like, it just felt like an endless, endless supply. It almost looked like when we were at Stern and they had all those home editions of the Star Wars getting ready for Costco. It was like as far as your eye could see. Yeah, did they sell like half of the allotment of Pokemon LEs or sold through flipping out? I don't know. Might have been. But kudos to you guys for doing those badges. Those were cool. But we've been, we got ours on Wednesday. We did. I went and picked it up from Tilt Amusements. Troy texted me and said, I've got your LE. And you called me. I was at work. I was like up at my office because I work from home normally. And you called and I thought like someone died. Yeah. And I was just here by myself with the dogs. We had Cooper and Marshall here. And I'm like, oh, well, I need to get this. You were in Milwaukee. That's why I called to see when you'd be home. I was in home too late. So I texted Troy back. I'm like, I'm coming. I got it. And then I had to leave it in the back of the truck for a few hours after I got back. Wait for you to get home. Yeah, then we like loaded it up like no business, which is wild because every time we do that, I think about the first time that we brought home Jaws And how we got it from Great American Pinball in St. Charles because we had no idea that there were any other distributors that might have been closer to us. Yeah. Couldn't find anything on the internet. Found Great American Pinball, super nice guy, Mike up there, real nice guy. Yeah. We drove up on like a Tuesday. It was a random weekday. Yeah. drove up played some games, took home a Jaws Pro mostly because i didn't understand what happened underneath the playfield well and we didn't really have we weren't planning on spending premium money no like seven thousand dollars is a lot of money that we were buying a pro i think it was a sixty five hundred at the time maybe I think there were 6, 500 and we thought this is an obscene amount of money to spend on a machine. We'd never had a machine. So I don't think we could have been talked into a premium. You really wanted to get Stranger Things, though. Stranger Things caught my eye. And Godzilla. You were like, maybe we should get a Godzilla. Yeah. And then you were like, maybe we should get a James Bond. Yeah. And then no, Jaws. But we said... But we did say like, we came for Jaws. We came for Jaws. We got Jaws. We asked Mike from Great American Pinball, like, will you deliver it to Bloomington? And he looked at us like, you've got a pickup truck. And he told us like, you can do this. You can do this. And I remember being so nervous driving that home for like two and a half hours. We had to stop at like an Ace Hardware along the way and buy like a dolly. Yeah. We didn't have one. We didn't have a dolly. Yeah. We were like, how are we going to get this off the truck? I don't know. Somehow we did it. And I think we got home after 10 o'clock that night. Because we did stop, I think at Walmart, and we thought Walmart was going to close like, Oh, yeah, because what Ace didn't have the dollies. And then we went to Walmart in Pontiac, Illinois, because Ace didn't have them like shit was We'll stop by the Walmart in Pontiac. Yeah. Got the dolly there. Yeah. And then we had to read all the instructions to set it up because we had no clue what we were doing. The pinball machine? Yeah. We watched the, it probably took us two hours to set that up because we were so nervous. I think we might end up watching like the Flip N Out Pinball video. I think we did. He's got a good video about that. He's got some really good videos. Zach's got some great like tutorials because you use his videos for the Art Blades all the time. All the time. But yeah, the comparison between setting up JAWS... So stressful. And then setting up Pokemon... A breeze. I think we had Pokemon, like once Steph got home, we had that out of the truck, unboxed and set up in about 14 minutes. We've got a system. We have got a system at this point. Like we get it out of the truck, we unbox it in the driveway. Yeah. Take it out of the box. Cut it down. Get it out. Put it on the dolly. Now we've started strapping it to the dolly. We weren't really doing that before. That's a good idea to strap it to the dolly. We didn't used to do that. No, it's probably a great idea. Nothing bad has happened. Not doing it, but strap it to the dolly just in case. Yes. Yeah. And yeah, we do this, put, lock the dog up, open the front door. We've got three steps in. We've got three steps, I think. One, two, three. Yeah, there's three steps. And then, bing, bang, boom. We got our cart lift thing. I don't even know where it is. Somewhere around here. It's somewhere. Oh, I took it back to the club. The cart's back to the club. Yeah, we've got this cart lift thing that's like a modified that thing. And yeah, we can set... Well, we could each set it up by ourselves with that cart. I've done it. Yeah, like I took, because during the day I got home with Pokemon in the back of the truck and we took Foo Fighters over to the HQ. Foo Fighters used to be right here, slid Jaws over. But I broke Foo Fighters down by myself. If you're a pinball person, it's like not a big deal. But like almost two years ago when we got Jaws, like that would have been like, I got to do what? I gonna have to like thrown up if somebody was like you got to do that by yourself Because like I took food out and strapped it up That took like five minutes 10 minutes It not hard It not hard to do by yourself if you have the right equipment Like when we started moving games into the basement I CJ brought his stair crawler thing and took what do you take Ripley No He took pirates and X men down there And then he left and I was in you were out of town Jason We're at the HQ almost 10 hours. Yeah, but let's get back to Pokemon. I know, but I'm just setting it up for how many times we've played Pokemon. Got it. We've had it since Wednesday night. Today is Sunday. Yeah. It now has 143 plays. Do you think that's low? I think that's a lot given that Saturday was, we played it like 10 times. And it would, it would probably would have had 60 plays on Saturday, probably over 200. Probably. Mm hmm. In just a few days. Is that including your brother's restarts? It's including my brother's restarts. He likes to restart games. On the modern Sterns, you can hold the start button on the left flipper, you know, restart you. So my brother plays it a lot. And if he like tanks ball one, he just boop, restarts it. I never do that. I don't either. Like almost never. I've done it like twice. I used to do it, but now I know that like your third ball could be a banger. Mm-hmm. You don't know. It might be ball two, it might be ball three. Don't know. You might get an extra ball, it might be that one. But initially, I'm very much enjoying the Pokemon. How about you? Yeah, it's really fun. Today, it was probably the most I've played it, I feel like. I played quite a few games, really not even focusing on my score, but just trying to catch the Pokemon. Mm-hmm. So, it's frustrating. In a good way. Here's the thing about it. It's frustrating, but I want to hit start again. So, it's good. It's the only pinball machine that we have, or maybe that I've played, I think maybe D&D could be this way, but Pokemon's the only one we have where there's a reason to want to play beyond the score. relationship ormesan relationship or etype blog feature typo hindsight down the middle pacific on youtube refreshing youtube aftermath af such out Sally all forte louis Like today when I was playing, I was purposefully trying not to start a mode. I was trying not to start a multiball. All I want to do is like, I think hit a bunch of switches so that the Pokedex lights up and I can hit the, the, what do you call it? Ball. Yeah. The captive ball. It was very hard for me. The thing about Pokemon, and because everyone's saying like, I've seen things akin to like, it's so basic, and it's a baby game, and it's way too easy. But I will say even if you're shooting for a score, which I've done, I usually go into a game thinking I'm either going to be catching them or I'm going to shoot for a score. But even if you're shooting for a score, yes, most of the shots can be easily made. All the main shots are easy to make. If you miss one or if you go up the middle, especially on the premium or the LE, up the middle there's a magnet under and there are some wild feeds and there are like more weird bounces off of things in this game than almost anything. Like it can be like, if you're not accurately hitting the shots, it can be like a draining son of a bitch. Kinda nasty. Yeah. David Van Es, Mirco Playfields. I'm going to go ahead and hit that right out lane. See you later. And if it hits near the top of the left sling, left out lane. Goodbye. Yes. If you get a gingerly slow bounce off of the training targets on the left, down the middle. Unless you smack the machine right when it hits over there. So it's not like the easiest game in the world. No, but I mean, definitely satisfying. It's got flow like crazy. We're going to talk about the flow, but you've got to slow down the flow when you want to catch the Pokemon. Yeah, because you've got to catch the ball, you've got to hit the captive ball to register it, then you've got to hit a purple shot, then you've got to hit the left ramp. Sometimes you have to hit multiple purple shots. That's on the first one, yeah. Your second Pokemon, you've got to hit the captive ball, register it, then there's multiple purple shots to hit. And then you can catch them at the left ramp. And it gets progressively harder every time. And you get better Pokemon. And it appears as though, because Steph did like a 10 ball game earlier. I did not GC it. It was purposefully not even trying to beat my best score, which I did not. Yeah, I and I said like, don't grand champ the game. I didn't. No, you didn't. I didn't even come close. But because your first you do bat, once you've caught a Pokemon, you do battle. And the first one is in the forest. But after you win the forest battle, and I think maybe you gotta catch another one in the forest. Then you progress you're at the lake. Different Pokemon show up when you're at the lake. Yeah, water ones. And I was like, Whoa, whoa, I hadn't seen the lake yet. Then I went to the desert. Then you're in desert. Just so exciting. There was a Growlithe. Didn't get them. There's a Growlithe in the desert. Didn't get him. But I hadn't seen a Growlithe. I'm like, whoa, how many Pokemon have you caught? Like maybe 20 or 21, I think. I don't know. I think I have 27. I, um, yeah, I just want to catch them all. But yeah, I do just think the whole, I think they nailed the mechanic of having the Pokemon appear and what you need to do to catch them. I think they absolutely nailed it with that. It's addictive. There is nothing like it in pinball period. There never has been. There's nothing even close to that in pinball. And you can't yet, but we'll keep track of all the guys you catch in Insider Connected so you can see your whole collection in the app. Yeah, it's got to be coming soon because when we were at Stern for the media day, one of the guys was showing how, like, they're testing it. Yeah, so the code is there. It's there. They just probably need approvals and this and that. But there is nothing even close to similar to that in pinball, never has been. It's completely innovative and new and awesome. It's really cool. Mm-hmm. Really, really, really cool. I love it. I'm glad we got it. Our very first LE. Yeah, it's our first LE. Now, if you're if we want to talk about like the core like game code, that's early. There's work to be done. They're working on it. I'm sure they're working on it. Because right now there's on the left side, you got three stand up targets are training. There's nothing really to train program. There's nothing really to train in there. So I like the idea that there's some training involved. There's like a mini wizard mode where if you do all the modes you get Pikachu versus Charizard. You can see on the playfield there's going to be four of those. There's just the one right now. So there's like three more of those we know coming. So I would assume each main shot, if you hit it three times, you start that mode. There's one of those for each right now. Given that there's four mini wizard modes, there's probably going to end up being four. So there'll be four like Charmander ones, there'll be four Bulbasaur ones. So like right now you can like, I've gotten to the Charizard battle like multiple times. But we know there's more coming. But there's nothing like the catching the Pokemon feature, like just nothing like it. I mean, it's exciting. And all I was thinking about this morning, when I was cleaning my car, I was thinking about like the Pokedex. And how, you know, in, in the Pokemon game, that's where you look at your stuff, the items you have the things that you've caught. And so it seems like whatever they learn off of Pokemon, they're definitely going to be applying those same things to fall out. Yeah, because Fallout is going to need a lot of that. A big thing with Fallout, they based off the game, like you're going around and you're getting items to like make things and craft weapons and improve your weapon and repair your weapon. And I wonder what they'll do with that. I don't want to go on a whole tangent about Fallout. But a big thing to me playing, I've played probably 400 to 500 hours of Fallout video games. You can only carry a certain amount of weight and then you're like over encumbered or you're encumbered you can't run so you guy just moves real slow until you drop some shit so I want to work that into a fallout game that'd be interesting we're like you can collect certain amount of items but then somehow I don't know how what you would do to make it like maybe it makes the flippers weak oh this is an idea for you stern oh So if you're like an over encumbered in the Fallout game, it makes the flipper coils like 50% power until you hit some scoop to dump items. There's going to be a dump? You got to have you have to drop the items to not be over encumbered anymore Yeah So it had to be a shot that a 50 powered flipper could hit That kind of awesome But make them so weak that it can make any of the ramps unless you hit this scoop to choose which items you gonna get rid of That's pretty cool. There's an idea for you. Okay. I think that would be awesome. First one's free. Because are there any games that they could do that with the modern code? Why not? Are there any where it's like this mode? The Kills makes your flippers half strength because because you're fucking stuck They I'm sure you can I mean like I know spooky and the Beetlejuice on their own. Yeah, Harry Potter flips on its own That would be really cool Houdini has that deal where they're inverted. Oh They've got to that on Houdini where you hold the buttons You hold the button in to keep them down you let go to make it go flip. Oh Oh. It's some mode you get to and you can choose the flippers are inverted or you can choose they are inverted and reversed. Why would you do that? I did that when I got there. You were like, give me both. Let's do it all. Oh my God. Did you switch hands? I cross. I always cross. Yeah. But the inverted thing breaks your brain. Yeah. But we need to see a game like Fallout with a mode that puts the flippers down to This is the best way to get up to 50% or 30% power. That's great. Because you're over encumbered, you can't run. And there's probably like an enemy nearby that if you don't hit that shot soon enough, it will kill you. Oh, gosh. And then it will kill the flippers maybe and you drain. What's those, what are those bad guys? Maybe that's like an oxygen destroyer for Godzilla where you have a certain amount of time. And maybe that's your out lane save when you get the out lane save. You're over encumbered. Tim Kitzrow, Mirco Playfields. Love there to be a mode. We talked about this in the car. A mode, you know, on the modern Cerns, you can hold both flippers on a lot of games like Jaws has like a ton of different modes. Bond has a ton of different modes. Hold both flippers, pick what mode you want to start in. It would be cool if Pokemon had one that's just like, Poke Hunter mode. I know, I know. That like all you're doing is hunting the Pokemon and it kills all of the other mode code. I would be playing it constantly. Because you're just going to hit switches to make a Pokemon appear and catch them. And you can do the battle because you have to do the battle to progress. I want to do that. Like that's all I want to do. Catch Pokemon, battle, continue. And kill all of the other shots that would ever start a mode. Would those still go into your Pokedex then you think? Like it counts? I think they could still go into the Pokedex if you need the switch hits. I think so too because it's kind of like in the like Nintendo switch or Gameboy or whatever. You can go out into the world and just find things. Like you don't have to be battling all the time. No, you don't have to be battling. So I think that would be really cool. I hope they do that. That would be a good... We do have friends from Stern that listen to the show. Yeah, we do. So put a mode in Pokemon that is just for Poke hunting and have it kill all other modes. All side quests, all multiballs. There's no multiballs, there's no modes other than the Pokemon appears, you catch them, you can hit the scoop to do the battle. Oh my god, this is... And continue that and just have it just be that. A dream. And that would, yeah, that would be super fun. I had a really rare one pop up yesterday, I don't know which, and then I accidentally started the Meowth multiball and I was like, dang it, he's gone now. You'll never see him again. I'll never see him again. It might be 50 more games until I see that one again. It's cool. It's a great game. I'm really glad we have it. It's one of those Jaws where I just want to hit start again, although sometimes after Peter W dropped out after a long session with Jaws. I don't want to hit start again because I feel fully satisfied. yeah I mean Jaws if you if you have like an epic run on jaws where for us that would be like if you just shoot like 700 million on Jaws you're not super anxious to hit start again right away no you might do that again We're going to be playing tomorrow. You feel satisfied. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's satisfying. That's the thing with the Pokémon is as long as there are Pokémon out there that you have not caught in the game, you're not satisfied. No. That's why I'm playing the GD Pokémon Go. I want to catch them all. Yeah. And so, hopefully Stern ends up eventually putting them all in there, like over a thousand of them. And then you're just gonna have to play Pokemon every day. Pokemon is like for the obsessive compulsive I feel like. So where would you, it's early on in owning the game, where would you rank it now, right now, if you had to rank it today among your favorites? It's a favorite. It's in my favorites. I mean I wouldn't, I don't want to get rid of it. No. It's like in my favorites. All these are my favorites. It's not taking the spot of this baby. Well, no. I don't think it's so different than Jaws. Jaws is just the best. It's so different than Jaws. Especially if you took the Pokemon capture away from Pokemon and just took it, gave it that code versus Jaws, which I know the Pokemon is very far from over. But today, I like Jaws' head and shoulders better than Pokemon. Mm-hmm. Like the layout is more interesting and better. Yes. Tim Kitzrow, The ramps are so smooth. And the combo system, I didn't talk about the combo system, which is super cool. Okay. Like if you hit a ramp, there's this little red circle underneath every, all the main shots. If you hit one, it'll be red under all the others. And if you hit another, you stack up a combo and you can collect it at the captive ball. And that gives you pokeballs, which give you points at the bonus, add to your bonus. Then there's other combos. I haven't figured them all out. Some of them like kind of it's like an Eevee. It like evolves an Eevee thing. That's cool. Which is really cool. You did one today. You didn't even notice. Well, I was concentrating on the game. You're just trying to catch Pokemon. I was probably like, Oh, I'm in a mode. How do I get out of this? I think it's also very cool. I know on the limited LE and the premium, the way that it looks like it, the ball, the pokeball sucks it up. It doesn't, but it really, it's like magic. I think if you listen, if you go back and listen to our episode from the media day about this, I thought the pokeball sucked up the ball. This is a production of WGBH. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. I'm sorry, I didn't know you were going to say that, Mike. Don't know. Magic. I thought it was magic. You thought it was Pokemon magic. I thought it was Pokemon magic. Turns out it isn't. It's a little subway thing. Yeah, the ramp lifts up, sucks the ball down the subway, kicks it over. I would say it's a pinball moment. It's absolutely a pinball moment. When you hit that shot, because it's timed, when you qualify the Pokemon to be caught, you have 15 seconds. You can hit things that will extend it, but when she's counting down, five, four, three, Not just my structure Uh eh You serious, like I will try this Ya You serious, you tell'n no Yeah of her counting down and you know that like oh my god i haven't seen this pokemon pop up before and i really want to capture it and i have to do all these things before i can do it it's it is stressful it's a different type of pinball stress for me that i don't have on any other game yeah it's totally that whole experience is completely unique to this game only it's cool uh-huh and it and i would say we've played in our league we played on our league with it and we've played in one tournament Stig Brodersen, and Franz doit, Because we, I think we've talked about lighting before and how we're really particular about the lighting. And I don't even think we have a really good lighting setup in the house, but we prefer to like basically be in the dark. If candles were safe, I feel like we would have candles everywhere. But, um, we're low light people. And Mike has these like LED lights that we use for when we record the music stuff or this stuff. So, yeah, that's, that's a little after dark action. But I anyways, back to Pokemon. The ball, the Pokeball sucking up and capturing your pinball. It is a great pinball moment. It's a really, really great pinball moment. I also feel like, to me, that is the main moment in the game. Like you've got the Meowth in the center that comes down after you've like triggered some stuff and then you hit them and or bit them, I don't know the gender. Right. And that really cool And certainly a pinball moment too but the pinball moment of this game is capturing a Pokemon Yeah I agree I agree It awesome Yeah, and before the lights out, I was going to say, for tournament play, my fear was like, this game's going to play forever. It may with, depending on where they go with the code, it might get to that point, but It was out of many, many rounds of like tournament and league play, it was only like the last, we were only waiting on Pokemon like once. So I think if it was like that easy, it would be the longest playing game every time. You know what I mean? Yeah, I mean, because the people that we play with at that tournament are all pretty seasoned players that can kind of like pick up on, okay, this is where I got to go. Clearly not as good as Tom Graff, who at the media day absolutely ripped the game apart. Like he blew it up. 1.2 billion and plunged off a bunch of extra balls. He got like four extra balls. I don't even know how to make it. I've only gotten extra ball once. Maybe the code was different. The code is definitely different. I think in this version of the current code, they might have messed up and not had the extra balls qualifying where they're supposed to. It's fine. I did get one. Sure, I got one. But then I did the same thing in another game and didn't get one. Well, they're still working on it. I'm not worried about that. I'm not sure if they changed that, like, right now. Even if they did, and I'm sure they have changed it since the media date, Tom Graf was up there for a really long time playing. He, and that's when I was thinking like, whoa. You might never want to put this game in a tournament with real good players in it. I mean, cause he was just hitting the shots. But we had it in the Golden Ticket Bloomington Alehouse tournament where the lineup of pinball players in that is probably the best around here usually because we have a few of the top players from Champaign go to that one. Yeah, that's true. And then all of the best players from here go to that one. So I think that's the toughest tournament around here. Maybe. And Pokemon didn't play that long. Tim Kitzrow, Mirco Playfields. And CJ's gonna bring over a machine for the day. Oh. He is so nice. That's cool. So nice. Super cool. Very cool. So we're gonna do that. Is he gonna bring a Pokemon over? Yeah. Oh, okay. It's gonna be a Pokemon launch party. Oh, like a la dies Pokemon launch party? That's cool. It's very cool. Neat. Yeah. Shelly couldn't do it. They won't allow launch parties at like a house. At a house. Yeah. That's fine. That's fair. It is fair. That's fair. We're going to do it at the HQ. Cool. I submitted it. So Michael Grant, if you, I don't know if you listen to this, but I put in this. He likes our posts a lot, but that doesn't mean he listens to it. True. He's real nice. But yeah, overall, like very satisfied with the game. Not many issues with it. I know there was like this year at the pro where the ball guide was in the wrong kind of spot. This is fine. The plunge is a little bit weird. Well, we have to put on the thing. The, the, and I saw somebody complain about their plunge and they're saying like, well, the manual plunge does this every time and it's like, the manual plunge wouldn't do it every time if you plunge different. Yeah, no. Strengths. No, because sometimes I don't want to go all the way around. Right, you want a short plunge. Yeah, I want a short plunge. So if I feel like if I plunge three quarters on the main oh that goes around real nice. If you go all the way full plunge it kind of bounces it kind of hits that gate where it shouldn't and bounces back so like a full plunge is like too strong, but if you go like a three-quarter and then the auto plunge is like 50-50 whether or not it hits the gate or makes it all the way around if you're holding the flipper. Mm-hmm. But overall like that can be dialed in and tweaked. Yeah. And like that's other than that it's been 143 plays pretty flawless. Pretty awesome. Mm-hmm. Very excited. I know we have to have some people over to play it. Yeah we need to do like a single game high score gimmick on Pokemon or we should do a contest on like who can catch the most in one game. Yeah let's do it. I think there'll be a lot of people that catch two. But someone will catch three and win. Once you get to four, it's really hard to catch four. Any key. I don't even know if I could catch. Sometimes I can't even catch one. Well, sometimes you can't catch one. Sometimes the games mean like the outlanes are hungry. In the center drain you get weird cylinder center drains off of like slow bounces. Oh my god I know where it's you just see it going like slow motion down the center and like a nudge ins not saving it this there she goes. Do you want to get any mods for it? No. Really? Except for the flip, the thing that Zach Meny did? Except for the badge. That's the only mod you want. And then the topper. Okay. I had a Magikarp appear today and I didn't get it. I need some of those for my Pokemon Go. I know. I, the rumor is that I have no, I don't even remember where I heard this. The rumor was that the topper might be a Magikarp. It's not. It can't be, can it? No. It would be hilarious. I mean, it would be really funny, but no. I get it. I would get a Magikarp topper. I mean, the Magikarp is so lame. He is lame. No, they're not going to put that up there. But it can evolve into a Gyarados. Well, people are probably saying it because of fish tails. But no, there's not going to be. Well, because Jack Danger said that the topper is like a throwback to some classic pinball. He said that. A Magikarp. You think they're going to put a Magikarp on top of this? Magikarp's popular. He's got a following. Are you joking? I don't think so. I think people like the Magikarp. Let us know in the comments below. I don't. Do you like the Magikarp? But do you like him, like, ironically? Not at all. No, okay. No. No, he's just like a waste of my time. What if he talks? What if he's like a talking bass? They're not gonna, well that would be great. But Pokemon don't talk. They don't, they wouldn't let him. And there's no way that would meet licensure approval. I mean maybe a Magikarp would be really funny. They only can say their own name. I just don't... Just sayin'. Oh my god, I'm gonna have to be disappointed probably. Well, we'll see. Maybe they'll do multiple toppers. Maybe there's a Magikarp or Charizard. I'd like the Charizard. Or a Garchomp topper. We can make our own. Uh-huh. We can make our own. Okay. Well, we had a long day yesterday. Left our dog for a while at home. He had a very. We had a very late dinner. Yeah. Because we had eight hours of pinball. Yeah, we were there more than eight hours. Nine, 10 hours? Yeah. I mean, your brother came and let Marshall out. He was by himself the whole time. But it was a very long day of our league finals in a really fun tournament style. It was like the same tournament style that the state championship was. Yeah, it was like the top eight seeds. You play the head to head best of seven series. Yep. I was in the I don't know what you call it. You were like, you were in ninth seed. We took the top nine. And then we had eight and nine play to be like the official eighth seed. Was Kat a higher seed than me? Yes. So I, it was a good thing we did it that way. She was eight, you were nine. Well, she was out late on Friday night and she was down at by St. Louis playing in a Pokemon launch party down at Atomic. Got home at 3:30 in the morning. Wow. And then sent a text message like, I'm going to get there at one o'clock. She got there right at go time. And man, she was driving lickety split. I mean, I almost peed my pants watching her like burn rubber down the road and like basically like Starsky and Hutch style like pulling into her parking spot. It was pretty great. But I beat her. You did. And then you proceeded to lose to Joe Sharp. But I did take him down. The eventual winner of the whole deal. Yeah, but I beat him on Deadpool. She did. I lost. Twice. I did it twice yesterday. The fifth seed, I played the fourth seed, Chris O'Brien, I lost three to two. I won the first two, lost four in a row. Chris ended up getting... Third. He did, right. Joe Sharp, number one, Greg Hopper, number two, Chris O'Brien, third. Mm hmm. Is he fourth? I believe so. Yeah, it was a good day. Tiring day. I'm tired. So we should wrap this up. I think we've given all of our thoughts and feelings about Pokemon pinball. We may do an updated one as the code as they do more code. Yeah, we didn't even wear any Pokemon stuff. I ripped a booster box of the Pokémon card set. So Thursday. Yeah, Friday, Friday, hold some good cards. Oh, yeah. Next time you can show share those with your friends. I just don't know how they'll show up. Like you have to do like the influencers do where they like put their hands. That's not autofocus, though. Oh, with a manual focus lens. So we're kind of screwed on that. We would have to film it with the phone and then or I can just put it up on the screen. You could take a picture and put it up. Picture. Mm hmm. Uh huh. Get your picture made. Get a picture of the card. Put it up there. All right. We should wrap it up. I'm tired. Yeah, me too. And I'm going to go get our new sign tomorrow. Yeah, we'll show that on a video. Yeah, we will. Mm-hmm. Badass. Badass punk art pinball sign. Coming in. Okay. All right, have a great week, everybody. Yeah, thanks for listening.

_(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v4)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 2a94feb6-ed6e-441a-ac14-28c0a6ad78a7*