# PNP 649- Glenn W. On Monster League Hockey+ Homebrew's Bright Future+ Squashing Beefs! **Source:** Poor Man's Pinball Podcast **Type:** podcast_episode **Published:** 2025-10-25 **Duration:** 65m 38s **Beat:** Pinball **URL:** https://poormanspinballpodcast.libsyn.com/pnp-649-glenn-w-on-monster-league-hockey-homebrews-bright-future-squashing-beefs --- ## Analysis Glenn Wechter (Glenn the Skateboarder) discusses the creation of Monster League Hockey, a standout homebrew pinball machine featured at Pinball Expo 2025. He details how the project came together with Jake Danzig, including rules design, playfield modifications based on Alvin G's Soccer Ball, artwork by Brad Albright, and custom sound/music implementation. Glenn argues the homebrew section as a whole—not individual games—was the real winner of Expo, and believes homebrew will dominate future expos due to community engagement and innovation. ### Key Claims - [MEDIUM] The homebrew section overall was the biggest draw at Expo 2025, not Winchester Mystery House specifically — _Orbital Albert's opening theory; Glenn largely agrees, noting the homebrew section has 40-50 games with strong community engagement_ - [HIGH] Monster League Hockey uses FAST Pinball boards instead of original Alvin G boards, with 602 RGB LEDs total — _Glenn directly states this during technical build discussion; credits Aaron Davis and FAST board system_ - [HIGH] The Harry Potter homebrew designer received a C&D from Warner Brothers, not JJP — _Glenn discusses the Harry Potter homebrew project being served with NDA/C&D; attributes it to Warner Brothers' litigious nature_ - [HIGH] The rules for Monster League Hockey were reverse-engineered from gameplay videos of the original Alvin G Soccer Ball without access to original documentation — _Glenn describes watching gameplay footage and tracing ball paths to create rules from scratch_ - [HIGH] Monster League Hockey features six flippers (two standard per side, two offensive flippers on opposite playfield side) — _Glenn explicitly describes the flipper configuration during rules discussion_ - [HIGH] Brad Albright created custom hand-drawn artwork for Monster League Hockey, not licensed character art — _Glenn and Albert both praise Albright's original art; Glenn notes cabinet art was done early, playfield art followed_ - [HIGH] The game includes 61+ licensed songs from punk/alternative rock era (Offspring, Nirvana, The Misfits, The Clash, Billy Idol) — _Glenn discusses Jake's playlist of 61 songs; had to normalize audio levels across different source eras_ - [HIGH] Monster League Hockey implements hockey-themed rules including power plays, fights, goalie drop targets, and one-timer shots — _Glenn provides detailed rules explanation including bash/smash spinners, drop target-based saves, and field positioning_ ### Notable Quotes > "I think the homebrew section because it's like 40 to 50 games and it's its own community and everybody's walking around sharing what they've done with each other... with every year you're seeing these licenses become... stronger licenses that I think a lot of manufacturers would like to license." > — **Glenn the Skateboarder**, early discussion > _Core thesis on homebrew's appeal to manufacturers and community; signals industry interest in homebrew innovation_ > "I think that the homebrew section, not any one pinball machine, not even Monster League Hockey, as rad as it was, but overall, I think... the biggest wow factor... was 100% from the homebrew section... I'm going to guess that homebrew sections are going to win every TPF every Expo... till the end of time" > — **Orbital Albert**, opening theory > _Defines the narrative conflict: Winchester vs. homebrew as Expo 2025's biggest achievement_ > "We watched video gameplay... we were trying to figure out what the crap was going on with this game that had balls seemingly kicking out of nowhere... we were going to redesign the rules... based around what would be fun to play." > — **Glenn the Skateboarder**, rules development section > _Explains the reverse-engineering process without original documentation; prioritization of gameplay over historical accuracy_ > "The original Gottlieb flippers weren't very strong... if they ever broke, nobody remanufactured them because they weren't a good design... we had to figure out, okay, well, these flippers aren't strong enough... so then they decided to use classic Stern electronic flippers." > — **Glenn the Skateboarder**, flipper discussion > _Technical problem-solving demonstrating practical engineering approach to vintage game modernization_ > "Jake had like 75 or 100 call-outs that he had written... I could see that there wasn't really enough call-outs." > — **Glenn the Skateboarder**, sound/callouts section > _Indicates scope of voice work and custom audio implementation in homebrew project_ > "These monsters want to fight and they're using hockey as an excuse... acts of violence happening, but there's not really graphic stuff... it's like PG-13, maybe PG at this point... we're not talking Texas Chainsaw Massacre level of goriness." > — **Glenn the Skateboarder**, artwork/theme discussion > _Explains the creative direction and tone of Brad Albright's monster league hockey art_ > "I loved it... what if there's like an action button you can hit to bring up the goalie to make saves? and we just realized real quick that that was going to be hard to implement." > — **Glenn the Skateboarder**, rules refinement section > _Shows iterative design process and technical constraints shaping final game mechanics_ > "We tried to implement some hockey rules and some other strategies... there's other ways to score goals in the game other than just up the middle over and over and over." > — **Glenn the Skateboarder**, rules strategy discussion > _Demonstrates depth of competitive rule design and effort to prevent dominant strategies_ ### Entities | Name | Type | Context | |------|------|---------| | Glenn the Skateboarder | person | Pinball content creator, sound engineer, and rules consultant who led audio/music work and contributed to rules design for Monster League Hockey homebrew | | Monster League Hockey | game | Homebrew pinball machine featuring head-to-head hockey gameplay, shown at Pinball Expo 2025; based on Alvin G's Soccer Ball; designed by Jake Danzig with art by Brad Albright | | Jake Danzig | person | Homebrew pinball designer and project lead for Monster League Hockey; approached Glenn at Expo 2024 to collaborate; defined music vision and rules direction | | Brad Albright | person | Pinball artist who created custom hand-drawn artwork for Monster League Hockey including cabinet and playfield art; praised for vibrant color palette and character design | | Orbital Albert | person | Host of Poor Man's Pinball Podcast (episode 649); presents theory that homebrew section won Expo 2025 over Winchester Mystery House | | Aaron Davis | person | Founder of FAST Pinball; credited for providing control board system used in Monster League Hockey instead of original Alvin G boards | | Pinball Expo 2025 | event | Major pinball industry event featuring 40-50 homebrew games in dedicated section; Winchester Mystery House and Monster League Hockey were highlighted releases | | Winchester Mystery House | game | Licensed pinball game by Barrels of Fun released at Expo 2025; widely praised by podcasters but considered second to homebrew section by Albert and Glenn | | Alvin G Soccer Ball | game | Vintage electromechanical game used as donor playfield for Monster League Hockey; designed by Alvin Gottlieb; playfield mechanics adapted for hockey theme | | FAST Pinball | company | Control board manufacturer providing replacement boards for Monster League Hockey, replacing original Alvin G electronics | | Pinball Expo | event | Annual Chicago-based pinball industry conference and community gathering where new games are unveiled and homebrew section showcases community projects | | Dirty Pool | person/brand | Jeff Dodson's audio/music production work; credited for voice callouts on Winchester Mystery House | | Emoto | person | Pinball community organizer and Marco Specialties coordinator who helps showcase homebrew games at expos; played Alvin G Soccer Ball gameplay for Monster League reference | | Mystery Pinball Theater 3000 | person | Content creator (MBT3K/I Rod) whose gameplay videos were used to reverse-engineer Monster League Hockey rules | | Kerry Hardy | person | Pinball content creator present at Monster League Hockey testing; provided gameplay feedback | | Joe Chervino | person | Competitive pinball player featured in Monster League Hockey gameplay content; guest on Poor Man's Pinball Podcast | | Lani with Graphic Dimensions | person | Pinball playfield printing company; handled playfield artwork and cabinet manufacturing; had donor Alvin G Soccer Ball in Florida | | Harry Potter (homebrew) | game | Homebrew pinball project that received C&D from Warner Brothers; received NDA requiring disclaimer; shown at expos over multiple years with progressive updates | | Monsters Incorporated (homebrew) | game | Homebrew pinball project by Ernie Silverberg featuring custom mechanics; crowdsourcing audio, code, and rules contributions | | Battle Stations | game | Head-to-head homebrew pinball game at Expo 2025; one of few homebrews available for purchase; inspired design thinking for Monster League Hockey | ### Topics - **Primary:** Homebrew pinball community growth and innovation, Monster League Hockey design and creation process, Pinball Expo 2025 highlights and community sentiment, Rules design and playtesting for head-to-head games - **Secondary:** Custom audio/music implementation in homebrew games, Playfield art and theme design for pinball, Modernizing vintage electromechanical games with FAST Pinball boards, Licensed vs. unlicensed themes in homebrew design ### Sentiment **Positive** (0.82) — Enthusiastic discussion of Monster League Hockey and homebrew section; genuine appreciation for collaborative work and community achievement. Constructive criticism focused on design decisions (flippers, rules). Positive sentiment toward manufacturing industry engagement with homebrew innovation. Only tension: brief baseball salary cap discussion (off-topic digression). ### Signals - **[sentiment_shift]** Homebrew games are gaining manufacturer attention and competitive advantage through innovation; major designers (George Gomez, Jack Danger, Keith Elwin) documented visiting homebrew section (confidence: high) — Glenn: 'You saw last year when George Gomez and Jack Danger and Keith Elwin were walking around and they would stop at a game to play Tony Hawk or Pokemon' - **[community_signal]** Head-to-head competitive pinball games generating strong community interest; multiple homebrew projects (Monster League Hockey, Battle Stations) pursuing this format (confidence: high) — Albert: 'I think the world is now ready for a commercial two-player... I just think that's especially getting people into pinball... when you're looking the guy in the eyes and you're shooting against him... it's just a different feeling' - **[community_signal]** Glenn receiving recognition and compensation for homebrew work; career progression from unpaid podcast/community work to credited design contributor (confidence: medium) — Albert: 'The fact that you're now getting to the point where you're getting even small amounts of compensation, you're getting recognized for getting so good at this... I think it's so cool that you're getting to help with all of this' - **[design_philosophy]** Monster League Hockey intentionally designed to support multiple scoring strategies (power plays, fights, one-timers, saves) to prevent dominant single-strategy gameplay (confidence: high) — Glenn: 'We didn't want everybody just firing the ball at your opponent up the middle because we felt like that would be kind of boring... there's other ways to score goals in the game other than just up the middle over and over and over' - **[market_signal]** Homebrew pinball increasingly positioned as innovation leader and design inspiration for commercial manufacturers; community expecting homebrew to dominate future expos (confidence: medium) — Albert: 'I'm going to guess that that homebrew section is going to be even bigger... I think homebrew sections are actually going to win every TPF every Expo and every other pinball adjacent... till the end of time' - **[event_signal]** Pinball Expo 2025 homebrew section featured 40-50 games with strong community engagement; positioned as drawing larger sustained interest than individual commercial releases (confidence: high) — Glenn: 'it's like 40 to 50 games and it's its own community... with every year you're seeing these licenses become stronger licenses that I think a lot of manufacturers would like to license' - **[licensing_signal]** Harry Potter homebrew received C&D from Warner Brothers for licensing conflict; developer served NDA; pattern may emerge for homebrew projects when commercial manufacturers release same IPs (confidence: high) — Glenn: 'He was served in NDA... he received [C&D from] Warner Brothers. They're very litigious... I don't think JJP had anything to do with the C&D that he received, but it doesn't help when you have a game coming out that somebody is making a homebrew of' - **[personnel_signal]** Glenn (audio/sound engineer) contributed to rules design during project lulls; demonstrates cross-functional collaboration in homebrew environment beyond traditional role boundaries (confidence: high) — Glenn: 'we all kind of had our own roles in the project. And at that point of the project, I had kind of a lull of things. So I just kind of took that on as my responsibility' - **[product_strategy]** Monster League Hockey replaced original Alvin G electromechanical components with modern FAST Pinball boards, LED lighting (602 RGB total), and Stern electronic flippers for improved playability (confidence: high) — Glenn: 'we did not use the original Alvin G boards... Everything was replaced with Aaron Davis' fast board set system... all the lights were switched from incandescent to LEDs. Everything's RGB color changing. I think there's 602 LEDs in the game in total' - **[product_strategy]** Monster League Hockey includes 61+ licensed songs (punk/alternative rock era) with custom normalization for audio consistency across different source eras (confidence: high) — Glenn: 'Jake gave me a list of like 61 songs he wanted in the game... output volumes of all these songs from that era, they're all different... so I had to normalize everything' --- ## Transcript 🎵 Welcome back, pinball nerds, to episode 649 of your fifth favorite pinball podcast. My name is Orbital Albert, and on today's show, I couldn't be more stoked, I couldn't be more excited to talk all things homebrew, including, of course, Glenn's newest masterpiece he's helped work on, Monster League Hockey. Glenn, the skateboarder, welcome to the friggin' show, my friend. How are you doing? Good morning, Albert. Doing well. How are you today? Very good. Very good. Very excited. Both of us had a couple tech issues this morning with our computers, of course, but hopefully everything looks like it's running better now. And people understand this is a blog style kind of, you're supposed to be a fly on the wall, just listening to me and my buddy Glenn chit chat about your newest project and kind of all things Expo. So yeah, you woke up this morning and you found out that unfortunately, though, I do have to start with a softball question. Okay. Sorry, Franchi. But I got to start with a softball. Are you team Blue Jays or are you Shohei Otani? My Brewers lost to the Dodgers in the last round. So, yeah, I am 100% Blue Jays. Let's go Blue Jays. Go ahead. I'm also frustrated that Major League Baseball is allowing those types of salaries to happen and completely change the balance of the league. I am all for parity and a salary cap. I know the high-end players don't want a salary cap, and sorry to the non-sports nerds out there, but it really ruins the competitive balance of baseball to have teams like the Dodgers afford Shohei Itani the way that they're paying him. I know what you're saying. I have heard at the same time that Shohei brought in twice that amount of money, so it's kind of difficult, you know what I mean? Because they are getting their value for it, but wow. It is true when you have one team that has like 33% more salary cap that it's nearly impossible to struggle. But I can hear Jamie Burchill right now falling asleep. So let's get, I think he does like baseball, but I don't want to go too far away. He's a Yankees fan. Well, screw him then. Go, James, go. No, but you had a terrific time at Expo. I want to start with a theory rather than a question. I want you to give me your thoughts on this theory. We've heard a lot of pinball podcasters say that the Winchester Mystery House, and that's how you have to say it, by the way. They're saying the Winchester Mystery House by far won all of Expo. And here's the thing. I think they're wrong. I think it was a very close second. My theory is that the homebrew section itself, not any one pinball machine, not even Monster League Hockey, as rad as it was, but overall, I think the bell of the ball, I honestly believe the biggest wow factor, the biggest W, if you will, was 100% from the homebrew section. Because, yes, people will talk about Winchester and the podcast for like five minutes, but then they go on and on and on about the feelings, the vibe, and how much cool stuff and how revolutionary the homebrew section is and how much it's growing. And no matter what, no matter if Barrels of Fun has a hit next year or not, no matter if Stern finally has their first hit in a while, I think Kong was a hit, but some people don't. But no matter who is at next year's Expo, I'm going to guess that that homebrew section is going to be even bigger and it's going to be an even bigger all-star and I think from here on out till the end of time I think the homebrew sections are actually going to win every TPF every Expo and every other pinball adjacent you know get together that we have in the future because it's just so fun it's so interesting it's so vibrant do you think I'm way off on this theory or are you more of a Winchester man yourself Well, first off, I did play Winchester. I was only there for one day, and I snuck in early. I didn't sneak in. I was given a vendor pass, so I was able to get in early. Winchester is gorgeous, and it sounds as good as people are saying it sounds, coming from an audio guy here myself. Shout out to Jeff. Great job to – what's his name? Jeff. Is it Jeff? Yep, Jeff Dodson. Over at Dirty Pool. yeah he's done a phenomenal job and a really smart decision to hire a friend to do the voice call outs on that just completely different tone a different style really suits the license but I think you're right I think that the homebrew section because it's like 40 to 50 games and it's its own community and everybody's walking around sharing what they've done with each other and you've got such a variety of different themes and games and projects at different levels of completion and you get stuff really polished. You get stuff that's just getting started and everybody's so proud to share their progress to what they got so far. And we all kind of push and drive each other to get a little bit better. And with every year you're seeing these licenses become, you know, also stronger licenses that, you know, they're not licensed, but, you know, these homebrew projects getting better themes that I think a lot of a lot of manufacturers would like to license. I mean, you saw last year when George Gomez and Jack Danger and Keith Elwin were walking around and they would stop at a game to play, Tony Hawk or Pokemon. They're kind of getting a sense of what this game could look like. So even industry is starting to take a lot of notice in what we're doing. I think they are. Before we get into Monster League, and I know that's what we're primarily going to chat about today and I'm the most excited to talk about, what were a couple other machines? I'm not going to ask for your favorites, but what were a couple other machines, homebrews that you saw that you felt were doing maybe some innovative stuff that the industry might even be taking a look at and thinking, could we do something like this ourselves? Well, first of all, I mean, the project that's on a scale of none other is the guy that's doing the Harry Potter homebrew. He brought it last year. It was basically just a shell of a game. And now he's got a lot more polish in there. He's got a lot more filled in. And also this crazy disclaimer, like it's like a scroll. It's like a like a 10 foot tall banner that is like a disclaimer from the Ministry of Magic itself saying saying that. This is a project that's that's not for profit. It's a it's a hobby. And but he was served in NDA. And I think you're going to see a lot more of that, especially if other projects wind up getting licensed or themes that manufacturers want to license. It kind of conflicts with what the manufacturers want to do. I'm not saying JJP had anything to do with the C&D that he received, but it doesn't help when you have a game coming out that somebody is making a homebrew of. I'm not sure. I know Warner Brothers is who served him the C&D. They're very litigious. Yeah, but there's also tons of content on YouTube of fan projects covering Harry Potter. So it's just like not all of those are getting C&Ds. Why is this one getting it? Right. But yeah, your question about my favorite, Ernie Silverberg did a great job on Monsters Incorporated. It had some really crazy mechs, and he's crowdsourcing. people helping with audio and code and rules and uh and then there's another guy uh forget his name shoot yeah he made it uh an elect he made his own em game but then it had solid state uh processing behind it that was really cool i think it was called luau or something okay and then uh i think i saw of course you know tony hawk was still there the guy brought the the um the guy brought the uh The Mickey Mouse game that looked like the early, like the black and white Mickey Mouse. Yeah, Tollbooth Willie? No, what is it? Adonis 25 Bishop. Yeah, that's Adam Sandler. What does he call that Mickey Mouse? Fairy Booth? Tollbooth Willie. Yeah, it's... Oh, introduce everybody to your dog. Steamboat Willie. Steamboat Willie, there you go. Introduce everyone to your dog. They probably think it's either Elowen or Franchi, but it's not. No, my dog's barking at me because she has a ball just out of my reach, and she could very easily go grab it. No, she didn't. They just want to play. They haven't gotten their walk yet. Yeah. What's your dog's name? If they can't behave better, I might close the door on them. But, no, there's almost too many to mention. The Battle Stations game was back this year after it had taken a year off. It was the other two-player head-to-head game that I think Jake Danzig kind of got the inspiration to to to buy the donor game for for monster league hockey and have it rethemed um yeah and that you said uh i think it was you that told me or maybe i saw it in another video i think that battleship is one of the few homebrews there that you could buy yeah battle stations battle um yeah it's a really cool it's a really cool process and and the way he's got the two playfields kind of linked together with hinge like a like a large piano hinge um i have a feeling like he was talking to lani and a couple other people about about mimicking what we did with monster league hockey but we just mimicked what elvin g did with the soccer game right that was the donor game for monster league so which basically you take the play field you print it and then once it's printed uh you flip it upside down and you cut um part of the wood underneath um so that you can kind of fold it over that you know you don't cut all the way through, but you just kind of weaken the wood. It's just enough to be able to bend it. We were a little scared that the artwork or the clear coat was going to have issues after that, but everything looked great. Okay, I want to pull a little Wayne's World. Diddle-a-doot, diddle-a-doot, diddle-a-doot. Okay, we're going to go into this dream sequence. I want you to go all the way back, not all the way back to Saw. By the way, congratulations to you and the whole team on Saw. Awesome homebrew, by the way. Everybody knows about Saw, but let's go back to really, and you know I don't want to tell many industry secrets or anything but give me the whole story about how Monster League Hockey happened and how you got involved with it and is it all of the same team that came from Saw give me the whole you know let's go back in time here the dream sequence if you will I'll be Garth you be Wayne party on Garth party on Wayne uh but anyways uh yeah so we brought we bought saw last year to expo and while i was setting up that with austin jake danzig was right next to us in the graphic dimensions booth which was next to the homebrew section last year um it basically was all part of one big section but because uh because lani with graphic dimensions had printed both saw and greatest showman uh jake was setting up right across from that with his dukes of hazard and he kind of approached me and said hey i've got a project that needs audio I want to have it done for Expo next year. Would you be interested? And I said, yeah, give me about a month. We'll see if anything pans out from Saw. Maybe I get an offer from a manufacturer, and I'll be able to do some work on a higher level than just with homebrews. Nothing against homebrews. But my career arc is hopefully trending in the right direction. And so about a month later, I hadn't gotten any offers. And so I said, hey, Leo, let's do this project. Who's building the game for you? And he said, I don't have anybody to build it. the people that built and and did all the programming and rules for dukes of hazard aren't available so um but the game the game itself the donor game the elvin g soccer game is in in florida with lonnie and uh it needs to get scanned and then uh the artist is brad Brad Albright and he told me that the theme was going to be monster league hockey he's already got the cabinet art done but the playfield art isn't done yet and so that would have been in november or december of last year. And so I said, well, why don't we just bring on the whole SAW team? And so we pitched back and forth what we felt was fair compensation for his budget and what our responsibilities would be for the game. And we came to an agreement. And so then it was the waiting game. It was wait for Lonnie to get the scans to us so that Brad could start doing the artwork. But in the meantime, we were starting to watch video gameplay of I think Emoto and who does Mystery Pinball Theater 3000? I know who you're, I'm drawing a blank. Come back to it. I'm sure you remember their name. Yeah, so the two of them were playing at a convention somewhere where he had gameplay on YouTube and we were trying to figure out what the crap was going on with this game that had balls seemingly kicking out of nowhere in a constant two-ball, multiball. Diverters that would sometimes fire the ball from the out lane back into the play field. Four spinners, banks of drop targets. And we're like, we don't have a clue what's going on with this game, but we are going to redesign the rules. But we have to try to figure out how to design the rules based around what would be fun to play. Because the soccer game was still shooting goals and keeping track of that in the same way. but we had no idea what any of the other switches were doing. And so we blew up the flyers, the flyers for the LNG soccer game, printed them up and started kind of like tracing ball paths and creating rules. And we had a couple of in-person sessions watching the game play, creating rules. And then I basically came up with a pretty vague rule setting for the game. You did. Yeah, so I'm going to bring that to the table, because while I was doing that, Eric was building the game, because at that point Lonnie had delivered the playfield, the cabinet, and as many of the parts as he could find, which wasn't all of them. We had to wait another month for the rest of those. It was like putting a puzzle together upside down, I guess is the best way I could describe it. But so what we had to do is we had to build the original playfield with all the original mechs, and then we had to test it. just to see what it felt like flipping. But then in the meantime, Austin was having to code all of the switches and all of the things so that MPF could communicate with the new fast boards because we did not use the original Alvin G boards. So everything was replaced with Aaron Davis' fast board set system. Shout out to Aaron. You know, all the lights were switched from incandescent to LEDs. Everything's RGB color changing. I think there's 602 LEDs in the game in total. Wow. And so so while we were playing and discovering that the original Gottlieb flippers weren't very strong, the game was not fun. You know, there was no rules. Just flipping the game was not fun. Right. It was too slow. And those original flippers had these little wires on the top that when the ball made contact with it would auto flip if you were in a one player game. And so that's I mean, that is kind of interesting. I'll tell you that. But the problem with those flippers is that if they ever broke, nobody remanufactured them because they weren't a good design and nobody really wants them. Right. And so we had to figure out, okay, well, these flippers aren't strong enough anyways. So then they decided to use classic Stern electronic flippers. And then they said, okay, that's got a lot more power. It's actually kind of more fun to shoot with the extra strength. The game's a lot faster. It makes it a little bit more exciting when you get a shot right up the middle at your goalie and the drop target saves it. It does give you that burst of adrenaline when that happens. That's the answer for the flippers. And then it was, the next process was getting all of the rules in theory to where we could talk to Brad Brad Albright the artist and get him to incorporate as much artwork on the game as we could in the rules And so we eliminated a lot of inserts and redesigned a lot of placements of inserts. There were some of the kickers that weren't kicking the ball where we wanted it to. So we changed some of the angles, like five to 10 degrees, just to kind of like, we want this kicker to kick it to the flipper, not to the space, like in between, because we kind of wanted an opportunity for a one-timer. There's six flippers in the game. You get your two standard on each side, but then you have an offensive flipper on the other side of the play field that you control. We wanted one of those kickers to direct into the flipper so that it would be like a one-timer pass from your wing to your center. So that was kind of like the thought behind that. I love that idea. So then Brad starts making all the play field artwork, incorporating Antoinette Johnson and Nikki Green and Madspin, these people that Jake are friends with that we didn't really have much of a relationship with but uh but he wanted them in the arts and he kind of wanted the the story based around them it's not really a story like the best way I can describe the story I pitched this to Jake was these are monsters that want to fight and they're using hockey as an excuse right and so so like a lot of the artwork on the play field monsters are like you can see like there's acts of violence happening, but there's not really graphic stuff, although there might be a hand chopped off, cartoon hand, or a tentacle from the Kraken laying on the ice. But it's not really gory. It's like PG-13, maybe PG at this point, graphic artwork. We're not talking Texas Chainsaw Massacre level of goriness here, obviously. first of all I want to say huge shout out to Brad Brad Albright because I am looking at this art package and I can tell you right now when I got first got into not even just making pinball content eight years ago but actually playing in tournaments and getting into the pinball scene a decade ago we were still seeing like you know Game of Thrones photoshop art this is all beautifully hand-drawn this is all custom this is and one of the coolest things is is because it's not licensed you know this is brand new we someone can't say oh it doesn't look like you know monster league hockey because you know it didn't exist before but I just think the colors the way the colors pop are beautiful I love all the artwork um I think that's great here's the really cool thing a lot of people they probably had you know no clue and I you know even talking to you you're pretty good at uh you know you didn't make me sign an NDA but even you and I being buddies you were pretty good at not telling me very much about this new mystery homebrew I knew you were working on um but I didn't know how much of the rules that you actually got to implement and I'll tell you why I'm okay with it because for the better part of us being buddies for four or five years now if I'm ever going to be in a tournament or I'm playing a new machine I don't know I've always leaned on you for rules advice so you know rules especially modern solid state EM you know a little bit of everything you're not just a sternament guy you know a little bit of rules from all the different decades from all the different games you memorize them very well you understand how the rules interact with the game very well so it makes sense that you know I don't think you could jump in and become a stern coder for a you know a brand new stern pin but I or a rules developer not a coder but a rules developer because someone else was coding but like I love the fact that you got to jump in there and try to take this game that you didn't even necessarily know all the rules of and basically start from scratch and it sounds to me uh even from watching the videos I know uh Kerry Hardy was there and Joe Chervino who I had on the show last time was the one playing which I thought was kind of neat. So shout out to Joe. Thanks for him coming on the show. And if you're a pinball nerd who hasn't listened to that last podcast, go listen to it. We had an absolute blast. And I know it's a bit long. It's an hour 40. Don't think it's an hour 40. Chop it up into three half an hour bits, right? But anyways, I am so excited for you because now on your long resume, never mind, you know, helping out Slamtail Pinball Podcast with that hilarious song they play at the end of each show, and just countless other pinball podcasts, including mine and so many others, and so much stuff you've done for, you know, between you do the intro song I know right now, which I just love, on the round table with the JBS show, of course, and you do so much for pinball and you ask for so little back in return. The fact that you're now getting to the point where you're getting even small amounts of compensation, you're getting recognized for getting so good at this, I would be shocked. Again, I don't think necessarily that you're going to get hired for rules at a big company, But I think the fact that now you can say, hey, I've helped create and make and record and make custom songs sound good, then mixed it with the music and the sound effects. And then on top of that, I've now actually helped with some rules development. So I just think it's so cool that you're getting to help with all of this. From a guy who normally does sound, what did you think about helping a little bit with the rules? Well, we all kind of had our own roles in the project. And at that point of the project, I had kind of a lull of things. So I just kind of took that on as my responsibility. I loved it. If you haven't seen the play field, just visualize, you know, you're playing against somebody that has a mirrored version of what you have on your side. They have it on their side. And there's a goalie that's a drop target that's right in between the flippers. And so the first thing I thought was, well, what if there's like an action button you can hit to bring up the goalie to make saves? and we just realized real quick that that was going to be hard to implement. The game didn't have action buttons. And so what we designed then as a team, we kind of came up with. And a lot of this is more of a team project. I said I came up with the concept of the rules, but a lot of what we did as a team together. Right. And so then we got rid of the action button thing and came up with like a semicircle of inserts around the drop target in front of the flipper that says how many saves you have left. So every time the drop target gets hit, it pops up right away as long as you have saves still left. And it's like, well, once you run out of saves, how can you get them back? And it's like, well, there's these three stand-ups on the right. If you hit those, you get a save back. Your drop target will pop back up. But what we wanted to do, what I wanted to do, I guess as a team we all did, we wanted to incentivize strategies. We didn't want everybody just firing the ball at your opponent up the middle because we felt like that would be kind of boring. So we had two spinners on the right. One's the bash spinner, one's the smash spinner. The bash spinner increases a meter that when it's full, it will start a fight. It's kind of like a mini game, like a little mini mode inside the game. And that bash spinner monster meter is illustrated on the play field. The monster meter fills up, but also we have these recessed LED lights on the art blades on the side, kind of like what Stern has with its, what do they call that, lighting? Expression lighting, maybe? Yeah, so it's kind of like our expression lighting, but that meter is also used not only in light shows, but also to illustrate how much progress you have on your monster meter on the right and your opponent's is on the left. So you've got two visuals of that. So then once you start a fight, it's like whoever can eliminate your opponent's health fastest will get a goal. And then on the left side, you've got drop targets in the same way that Walking Dead has them. And if you complete those drop targets three times, you can park a ball behind it, lock a ball in there to start a power play. And you get 20 seconds where your opponent has their drop target down in between their goalie or their goalies down. And then while that's happening, there's actually a diverter that opens up on the out lane of your opponent where it'll clear the puck, like on a defense, on a penalty kill. it'll send the ball back to your opponent's side to kind of like keep you from being in danger. So we tried to implement some hockey rules and some, some other strategies. So like if you have both balls strapped up, if you have both balls trapped up, you can park one ball. If your penalties, if your power plays ready and then the, your opponent's goalie drops and then a perfect shot at the middle, we'll score a goal. So there's, there's other ways to score goals in the game other than just up the middle over and over and over. and then the other spinner takes away your opponent's monster meter so um and that spinner also feeds your offensive flipper for like a one-timer so that you can you can shoot it in there and then immediately fire it right up the middle and that to me is the most fun shot in the game and it feels weird because it's past the point where the play field drops back off so i i've never had that sensation of taking a shot and then as the ball's drifting away from you you you hit it and into their goal so that that to me was the most fun shot so the rules as a team we kind of refined them and made them all what they ended up becoming I think that the pinball like every single podcast every single youtuber I've heard talk about it is saying that the public is ready especially I I honestly think every cool pinball barcade in North America especially if it was a very limited run and I'm not even saying it needs to be Monster League hockey but I think the world is now ready for a commercial two-player like everybody wants to see this I don't care if they can't necessarily be played in tournaments none of that's important to me I just think it's especially getting people into pinball someone who's played air hockey before someone who's played that Czechs hockey or someone who's played um uh foosball like that's it's just there's that camaraderie like when I go to many times if I go to a bar with a whole bunch of my buddies even if a couple pinball friends are there we'll gravitate towards going to play pool or going to play like something you can kind of both I guess pool you're not both playing at the same time that would be funny but like definitely with foosball or air hockey or any any of those things you're playing at the same time and it's just a different feeling when you're looking the guy in the eyes and you're you know shooting against him and one of my favorite rules and I don't fully understand it obviously, but one of my favorite rules is the fact that the goalie is that drop target between your flippers, and it's really, really hard to score, especially on a decent pinball player, because you're not just flipping and flapping. You've got to really think about your dead bounces, you've got to really think about when you should flip, but of course, as soon as that drop target goes down by the other guy hitting the drop targets on the other side, as soon as your goalie goes away, it's much easier to score, and I thought that was like kind of the main part of the rules, but now you're explaining like the one-timer shot, like the Connor McDavid to Leon Dreisaitl and the Edmonton Oilers win the Stanley Cup. Like it's just, it seems so fun. Tell me a little bit more about the, we've talked about the rules quite a bit. Tell me a little bit about the sound and the sound, the music, the sound effects, the implementation, how many custom songs you added to that and maybe tell people a little bit about the song I'm going to do my best to add at the very end of this. All right, so early on in the project, my thought was to record several songs for the game like I did in Saw but then Jake kind of had his own playlist in mind that he wanted to have from his favorite music that he's ever had so think like a lot of punk rock songs and alternative rock songs from anywhere from the 70s until probably the mid 90s so you've got Offspring and Nirvana in the game and being that it's a homebrew of course the Misfits and The Slash and Billy Idol. So there's a lot of good songs in there, but as a homebrew, you can do whatever you want. And so I did record one song, and there was going to be more, but I learned pretty quickly that Jake's vision for the game was to have music that he loved to hear while he plays. And so he added, I think he gave me a list of like 61 songs he wanted in the game, which you'd be surprised, the output volumes of all these songs from that era, they're all different like even even the digital version so if you if you if you have all the files lined up some of them are like 20 or 30 decibels louder than others so I had to normalize everything I didn't want to lose the dynamic range of each song but I wanted the peaks to be about the same so I created a logic file in my computer that basically normalized all the tracks to try to kind of make them about the same so that when one song to the next happens they're all about the same volume so that was that was the music in the game i got one song i recorded for the game that's used during some of the different modes of the game uh like the power play and the and the fight scene which is when your monster meter's full and then also ghoul frenzy which is another thing that happens in the game from think about like cyborg multiball and and and that was what we kind of copied the number of saucers and switches and all things uh but uh as far as call-outs go, Jake had like 75 or 100 call-outs that he had written. And given that the game was going to have four or five different, maybe six or seven different times certain call-outs would have to be read, I could see that there wasn't really enough call-outs. So I think I wrote a couple hundred more for myself. I played two different characters in the game, and then Antoinette Johnson played herself in two different roles. So she's not only on the ice playing hockey, but she's also in the booth commentating, which we make a joke in one of the call-outs that she can be in two places at once, and it's fine. It's a cartoon. It's not supposed to be logical. It's all in good fun. So Antoinette came from one of the Carolinas. I can't remember where she's from. Came out to Nashville, and we spent a whole day recording call-outs, trying to get as many as we could recorded in one day as we could, and then I mixed all those down, edited them, and then also had to record just as many callouts of the two characters that I was playing. And then when you export all those files, they have to go in certain folders, and then Austin has to code them into the game at the certain parts of the game. So it's a lot of adjusting. It's a ton of kind of figure it out as you go. I would imagine that a manufacturer would have more of a roadmap on how to organize all this on the front end, be a little bit more organized. Of course, they're going to pull from all their experience. A lot of this kind of felt like we were doing it from the seat of our pants and just trying to make it work because we went. At the very end, it meant we had a lot of work and a lot of editing and a lot of game playtesting to make sure it all worked. Oh, and by the way, it didn't really play great until the Sunday before Expo. wow it was it had been playing for like a month but i mean there were moments that the game would get confused do you have a constant two ball multiball you've got like let's see here one two three four there's like seven or eight different there's like eight places the ball can stop like there's that many little kickers and saucers hidden underneath plastics and other areas of the game that the logic of the game has to always be aware of what's happening where the balls are what has to happen next otherwise the game can get really confused and so play testing it was like a lot more challenging than we thought for the game to just always be in a constant two ball multiball unless you're in a power play which it'll hold the ball for 20 seconds but that introduces another element of of complexity that austin had to to make sure was was bulletproof because when we gave this game to Jake at Ekpo, it's his. He's taking it to Arizona. And so the game itself was a lot more work than any one of us on the team had considered it was going to be. Just barely got everything done right at the wire. So what was the question? Oh, yeah, sound and audio. And then acquiring a whole bunch of monster sound effects and finding ways to put those in the game. And I acquired a lot of sound effects from different prescription – prescription, not prescription, subscription websites of sounds of hockey, hockey noises and sticks shooting pucks. What, Albert? Did I lose you, Albert? Sorry, I hope I haven't lost you. Albert, I think I lost you. Oh, no, my internet's being wonky. Glenn, you're still there. Don't say anything. Okay while I waiting for my internet to refresh what I going to do is try to play a couple seconds of Glenn song Yep I loved it. Okay, Glenn, are you back? Glenn, hello, can you hear me? Alright, guys, I have no clue why, but Glenn can't hear me from that side, even though I can see him here. So I am going to give him a quick call back, but I hope you guys... Yeah, I'm here. Oh, Glenn, you can hear me. Yeah, I can hear you. Can you hear me? Yes, I do apologize. My internet is cutting in and out, and I have no clue why, other than I know we have the remnants of a hurricane going by. and my Elon Musk... Yeah, I can hear you. Okay, my Elon Musk internet is not working well, but... Robert? Yes, I'm here. Can you hear me now? Oh, no. Okay, Glenn, I'm going to call you right back. Hopefully we get a better connection. Guys, stay with me here, stay with me here. We're almost done the interview, and ironically, it was not working great there. Okay, internet connection restored. Here we go. Sorry, everybody. the joys of doing a live podcast, if you can call it that. Let's do a redial here. Okay, call ended. That's wonderful. Guys, guys, I might have to call it the end here. I feel like this is my least professional interview. I'm sorry, Glenn. Let's call him back here. Hopefully it works now. The internet says it has been restored. I don't know if you guys know how Starlink works, but basically every four to six minutes it jumps from one to another, and when it's jumping from one to another, it may or may not work. Here we go. Okay. Hopefully it's going. And you're back. Albert. Hello, can you hear me? Hello. Hello, can you hear me? I can hear you. Okay, perfect. Glenn, I'm so sorry. My internet is going in. Albert, can you hear me? Yes, I can hear you. I can hear you. Okay, great. all right so let's get back into it here i'm very curious about your thoughts on um if there's a chance that like not just monster league but what are the chances or opportunities for most home brews i know most home brews are licensed so they have no shot of going commercial but what do you think the chances are maybe monster league or another pen like it could maybe be commercially developed and what are some of the issues with that happening? Wow. My internet is exceptionally slow, guys. I do apologize. I have no clue what's going on here. Let me run a speed test. This is so wonky. I could try to call Glenn on his home phone number and do the rest on just a... Wow. My internet is not working at all. Okay. But, uh, well, all. Glenn, I am so sorry. This internet is, you're killing me, Smalls, with this internet. What is going on? Wow. I can't even, my internet has gone down to being so slow that they're not even allowing me to run a speed test. What? It says we're fast again. I'm at 42 megabytes. We should be able to hear Glenn. Should I call him on my home phone? Connection lost. What is going on? Honey, can you bring me down your cell phone? Okay, guys, I'm going to try calling Glenn one more time. If this does not work, we're calling him on Danielle's cell phone. It could cost me like five bucks a minute, but we'll see. Okay, Glenn, can you hear me better now? I can hear you great. Oh, my God. Okay, so I do apologize. my internet completely went down and uh there's no one home other than my wife and she's upstairs like doing she's not even on the internet so i have no clue what's going on but it sounds like i've got you back now i did a speed test we're at at 40 mega whatever it should be good mps's uh you sound crystal clear let's try that again so i guess my question for you was uh it's so so so hard if a machine if a homebrew is licensed like pokemon or uh you know even sonic it's really, really hard for that homebrew to ever actually get licensed and be made commercially. However, in Monster League's case, because it's not a known property, there is a tiny chance, if there was enough interest, it might get made commercially. What are your thoughts on not only Monster League hockey being made commercially, but what are some of the issues with getting that done, and do you think other homebrews could start to be made commercially as well? As far as other homebrews, I'm not entirely sure, because I think a lot depends on, like, most of these games are coded through MPF, which is Mission Pinball Framework. Right. And that's a free software program that helps homebrews code that maybe don't have history encoding in C or C++ or whatever those languages are. I don't think it's insurmountable, but I do think it's a challenge in order to try to port code for our game over to another language. I have a feeling it would all have to be rewritten and restructured, and that would have to be on somebody else to do. So there's that, and then there's a lot of coils. There's so many kickouts and flippers in this game, making, you know, I don't know how many you'd have to make to make it profitable, to make all this labor worthwhile. And then also, you'd have to have different music, unless you think that Jake would want to license the Misfits and Green Day and Offspring and Nirvana. These are bands that he wanted to game for himself, but I don't think you'll be able to get that license affordably. So he would either have to create new music, or I'm not sure what budget he would have for such a thing. My one song in the game is not enough. You wouldn't want to hear that one song over and over and over, so you'd want to have more music in the game. Thanks. But yeah, it's not an inexpensive game. This would be an expensive project to make, Even if you just made a, let's say you made a hundred of them. I don't know how much each unit would cost after everything to make sure that everybody got paid what would make sense and make it worth their while. But I think it's possible. I just don't know that it's realistic. But Jake is taking interested people. We'll see what happens with that. Okay. So if you are someone, you're an arcade or even a home person who may be interested in this, we don't want to overpromise. it could be that like the bomb is going to be so expensive that no boutique company would want to take it on but i just think there was so much interest from it like if you think of the other four of the five big uh homebrews people are talking about they're almost all nearly impossible to license like tony hawk i love that homebrew it's very innovative but like it would be so challenging to as just a homebrewer to try to attempt to get that license right without you know dealing with Activision and Tony Hawk loves pinball he has a skateball in his his garage or his sorry he has a skateball at his his office he also has a radical which you probably know so I think that that it's possible but I also think that you're right it could be so expensive that like hey is it worth people's time or errands your money all I know is if Stern can figure out a way to do a run of a hundred primuses or a run of a hundred um you know Pabst can crusher or like uh you know something smaller like spooky's done tons of like dominoes i think the jetsons they only did a hundred dominoes they only did a hundred you know if they can get these smaller light like these licenses and do a hundred of it and figure out a way to do it feasibly again you know there is you know you're talking six flippers you said there's it'd be the perfect game for stall ball because there's like nine scoops or nine places the ball can take a little pause have a beer chill out for a bit so it probably would be very expensive but i think that part of that interest list would be approaching a possible boutique company because again I don't know if Stern would do it but if they came back and the BOM was low enough and Jake was you know could find a way to even maybe just eke out a small profit or maybe Jake doesn't even care he just wants to see his beautiful baby out there in the world that he was kind of the it sounds like he was very involved in orchestrating you know helping the music the call outs the artwork it sounds like he was very involved in this so it sounds like he would just be stoked or excited maybe if he didn't make a huge profit just to see his game out there at all like to walk into electric bat you know and see his game that he helped develop and produce and direct and you know be the conductor if you will of the symphony that is building a homebrew i i just i i think i i would love to see it but i understand it's a lot of work so i don't want to pretend i understand all of that uh what i do think is really cool that aaron is really pushing uh aaron from of course fast pinball um shout out to Aaron as well for donating to my cause back when I went to nationals and pinmasters uh up there in Wisconsin and I had a great time and he was honestly my biggest sponsor of that one so uh even before you know he's such a great guy in pinball even outside of just helping homebrewers and then of course him and Erica did this crazy epic journey like all the way across North America they basically took the longest route past possible to Chicago to pick up all these homebrews and help bring them there and help set them up. And I just think everything Aaron is doing and Fast Pinball, not just Aaron, but everyone over there at Fast Pinball, I think he's helping change the game. I think positive people like that in pinball are the real. And I'm so excited. I don't know if I'll even be able to get them at this point. I'm sure every pinball podcast is knocking on Aaron's door. But I already sent Aaron a message saying, dude, once you're home, and I just saw a Facebook message, he is home, but his voice is still recovering. And my voice is still recovering. I apologize to all the pinball nerds. shortly after my interview with Joe. I completely lost my voice, so I let Glenn know I would try my best this morning. But this is my commitment to Glenn. This is my commitment to the homebrew crowd and all the listeners out there. So thank you for that. And Glenn, I have to just say here, thank you, thank you, thank you for joining my Patreon. I really appreciate that. I know maybe you might not be as wealthy as some of the people in the hobby who have like 20 pinball machines at home right now. we of course now have kids going to college and university so that makes it a little bit more challenging uh and you know i just really really appreciate every dollar and every person who's over there supporting me because i put a lot of time and energy and work into this podcast but i'll tell you something else i appreciate just as much if not maybe more on a recent uh episode with drop target danielle when we did wtf happened in the last month of pinball really fun episode I was going to pay wallet I decided it's on my Patreon just go over there and listen to it for free but at some point nearing the end of the podcast I did share some information with the audience and of the now 113 impressions it's got which I'm assuming that's around the same number of listens maybe a little less if someone listened to half of it and came back and listened to later but if everyone has listened to that you are literally the only person to reach out to me after that and say dude thank you for sharing that I get where you're coming from that sounds like that's a challenge and I I really really appreciate that because I thought that I would get at least a couple comments on that it still has no comments on there I thought that at least a couple of the patreon people would reach out and be like dude thanks for sharing that that must have been challenging for is literally the hardest thing I've ever shared in like seven years of eight years of making content it was probably my hardest episode to record probably the only one I had to have a couple beers for social lubricant but my point is you're the only one many people reached out and said oh we love the chemistry between you and drop target Danielle It was a fun episode and stuff. But you were the only one who kind of commented on the challenges that I've had with that. And you would know as being a good friend of mine for many years that from time to time, basically, I can lose my shats and just, you know, I'm a very passionate person. And I think part of that comes with from time to time, I'm swinging on both sides and can obviously offend people or be offensive or be rude or belligerent. And I've said and done a whole bunch of things I'm ashamed of in this hobby. But at the same time, I know in the past few months, I've made a really good turn. I've been trying to be a positive Pete. You know what I mean? I've been trying to be mostly positive. And I think as well with you, you've seen in pinball from time to time, we're all passionate people. This can happen to the best of us. But I wanted to just thank you, thank you, thank you for joining my Patreon. Thank you for always being so positive. Thank you for always talking to me no matter what I'm going through. And honestly, you've just been, I think you're the only pinball nerd to hit the six-timers club. So congratulations. welcome to the six timers club um yeah what else did you want i guess there wasn't really a question there i i do want to say like as hard as it is to talk about some of the some of the chemistry in our brains or or just the way we are um it's also hard to have that conversation with somebody else so yes um you know even if other people listen to that and and wanted to say something maybe they just didn't know how to how to have that conversation so they just avoided having it So don't feel like that doesn't mean people don't care about trying to figure out some of the challenges you're facing. I know. It's hard to talk about it directly. And so sometimes people just avoid it. It's very tricky. And honestly, it's something easier to talk about in person. And I'm kind of more comfortable when I'm looking eye to eye because I always worry, will someone judge me? And I don't have any type of clinical diagnoses yet, but that is something I'm working on. I found out that the local university down in Halifax actually for – it's not cheap. like it's like well I guess it probably is I think it's like under a thousand dollars or whatever but you go for like a two full days at a clinic and basically assess everything and my whole life I've known I'm a little bit different a little bit strange a little bit weird I just thought I was a weirdo or an odd dude or like oh I'm unique or I'm creative but it actually turns out that some of those things that make me creative also make me highly inefficient with the rest of my time and highly ineffective at staying focused and on task and so I don't know if I could ever do what you do with doing a homebrew. In fact, I can tell you, I couldn't. So shout out to you, shout out to Jake Danzig. Let's just, to put a nice bow on this, because I know you've got to go walk those dogs very shortly, and I'm watching the time. My son Owen is playing in his regional finals in about an hour and a half. I've got to go walk the dogs as well, feed the chickens, hang out a little bit, and get some stuff done in the house before I go. But I'm just really curious, tell me a little bit more about, we know lots about Jake and what he did, tell me a little bit more about what the other team members did and what their kind of their responsibilities and where they overlapped on the team with Monster League Hockey before I ask you a final question or two and let you go for the day. All right. So I'm really glad you asked this because I would have been really upset with myself if I didn't mention number one. You're welcome. Eric Klotz. Eric Klotz. He's been a friend of mine now for about four years. he's an architect and he works on projects with large teams and he naturally took this project by the horns and said, he didn't say it but I think it just defaulted to him he became the project manager, everything that needed to be done within a certain deadline, he had spreadsheets and checklists and when things got to the end, when we were about to shat ourselves with how much work we still had left to do, he was printing up checklists of things that had to be done and going through that and making sure, hey, guys, we have to get together at least every night we can between now and the next two weeks or this. He could see the workload that was still left ahead of us. So, Eric, thank you for that. Austin, at the very end, was coding everything. Everything was landing on his shoulders. Yes, like we all had to play test together, but we also had to understand and verbalize what had to be changed to the code in order for it to work. And Austin had coded everything up to that point, but all the fine details fell on his shoulders. So Austin did all the coding. Joe, like here's a good example for Joe Farnsworth. He not only redid the cabinet and did all the woodwork but he also a programmer and a musician and a mechanical engineer so like the flippers one of the problems we have with the flippers i said they were too weak so then we got the stern electronics flippers but those didn't have any hold power so with the way that everything was working you'd hold the flipper up a ball would hit it would go down so like that was not okay so joe figured out listen to this so he used the original gottlieb flipper base mounts which i had to hacksaw some of the parts off of it just so that there was room for the LEDs underneath that we added to the game because Jake wanted as many LEDs as possible because he wanted a great light show. So the Gottlieb flipper base mount and then pinball flipper bat and then the old stern electronic flipper linkage with a Williams coil. So Joe figured out how to make all those components work together so that they'd be strong and they'd have the hold and that the base plates would fit around the existing LED lights that we had with the inserts. So Joe's mechanical brain and physical space to be able to figure out how that would all work together. Joe was like the master of every trade, not just the jack of all trades. He could literally build this machine by himself. But he also understands that we all have our own strengths. And so he just kind of helps each one of us as we go. Yeah, and then, of course, Brad Brad Albright with the art. Jake Jake's main role in this game was to come up with the concept and put the team together and then he kind of said to us you guys are the creative people I want to approve everything so run everything by me um and there were of course some things that he did and did not want to do with the game and we made adjustments accordingly but he kind of left it up to us to basically make the game that we wanted to make wow it sounds like it takes a village like there's no way like every single person that you mentioned, had they not jumped in at the right time and been really masters of what they know already, you wouldn't have been able to pull this off. So I guess my next question for you is, and don't, yeah, I don't want you to spill the beans. I know there's only a couple hundred people will listen to this, okay, but can you mention if you and your team may be working on a future project? Are you almost done with Monster League Hockey? Is there much more to do with that? Is it done for now? And are you excited to work on a future project if it comes up? Or is there anything like that you can tell us for now? Next project, definitely underwear, underway underwear. Next project is, you know, is that a spoiler? Yes, we're doing Captain Underpants. No, the next game is underway. We have art concepts, artists and 3D prints already in process of trying to get some... We haven't done a play field yet, or there's no audio. There's really no rules. There's nothing yet, except for he's acquired an artist, and that artist is already making art for the back glass and the cabinet. So there's some stuff that's already happening. Did I lose you? No, no, I'm still here. I'm just wondering, is this going to be two years from now? Probably not a year from now. That's too much. Yeah, yeah. Probably two years from now. This was too hard to get one project done in a year and we all need a little bit of a break. And so we're going to kind of work on this next project at our own leisure. And then also, as far as Monster League Hockey goes, I think it's done. I think Jake is still maybe communicating with Austin on some things yet. But, you know, I can't foresee myself doing any more audio for the game unless that list gets to the point where they need to manufacture it and then changes have to be made. And then we will all figure out what we got to do from there. But yeah, you're talking about how this hobby has got a lot of personalities that are a little eccentric. And I just I wanted to mention something about somebody that that I just had a little bit of a an issue with Walt Wood. He'd made a couple of videos about me. And and and I just wanted to say, like, I appreciate Walt. Ran into him at Expo, brought him a coffee, had a nice talk with Walt. and uh yeah walt's walt's a good guy and and you know the soft pinball machine didn't really have a whole lot of very good didn't have a lot of good representation on youtube i mean people did their best to to video it at expos and stuff but it didn't have good sound didn't have good video and we didn't really self-promote like a lot of other projects have like the big trouble little china homebrew that thing had an incredible trailer and played phenomenal and uh i forgot to mention that one earlier, but with Saw, Walt did a video on his channel reviewing it, and those were his opinions, and so I just wanted to talk to him in person and give him some support and apologize to him for any comments that I made regarding drug usage, which I didn't think was a real issue, but anyways, I just wanted to clear the air with Walt because I didn't mean it the way he took it and but yeah Walt's a good dude we got a selfie together we talked a little bit while he was playing in the tournaments I know he did really well in the tournaments and uh just wanted to give him a shout out and say buddy we're we're all good and uh good luck in the big tournaments you're playing coming up this year you know what this is it Glenn you just hit the nail on the freaking what you hit it somewhere I'll tell I'm not even going to say where you hit it but you hit it because here's the thing a lot of times super passionate people like yourself like Walt Wood who I love, shout out, and myself. And a lot of, think about it, a lot of pinball content creators or creatives are the same people that are going to say stuff that it's a little bit edgy, or maybe it's, you know, you're trolling just a little bit, or you're having a little bit of fun. And honestly, when you're typing something on the computer, the joke of it is lost, right? Like, you know, it can happen a lot of times. And the thing is, Walt's a good dude. He's very passionate. He has a good heart. Walt even was kind enough to send me a really nice video message with Rachel and Kale from the electric bat I believe I believe did you send it to me or was it Drew C or one of my good pinball nerd friends sent me this video and Walt was just like it was a quick 30 second video was like hey Albert it's I love your podcast hope you're doing well blah blah blah blah blah so I you know this was like I don't know going back maybe a year ago or so but he certainly is an incredible player I will never be able to play as good as Walt would even you yourself knowing the rules front and back will probably never be like a top 50 top 100 player like where it's just not going to happen for us but he's at a different level and the thing is he was obviously very rough on saw but like you said he didn't get to actually hear good sound clips of all the work you did on the audio and let's be honest just like myself many times if I come in here hot and I had a maybe maybe drop target Danielle and I had a disagreement or one of my sons and I you know aren't getting along or I'm disappointed or maybe I'm even just disappointed in myself and I come on to do a show, I'm way harder on whatever pinball machine I'm talking about. So the main thing is, I'm glad that you and Walt buried some hatchets. I'm glad you guys talked because, you know, you're a really rad dude. He's a super rad dude. We're all here to promote pinball. And when it comes down to it, really, I think you are the Walt Wood of homebrewing, dude. You can do it all. I think you're not only top 50 in homebrewing, I think you're top 25. Who knows? Maybe top 10. So keep doing what you're doing. Thank you for reaching out to apologize. Even you and I sometimes, like I think twice or three times in the past five years, you and I have disagreed on stuff from time to time, and we've made up within either the same day or a day or two later. These things happen, and you're always going to have disagreements with your good friends. Now, if you have a disagreement with someone who's your enemy, maybe you're not going to be in a rush to apologize and make up with them, because maybe they're just toxic and you don't want them in their life anymore. But I don't think that's the type of person you are. I know that's not the type of person Walt, what are myself are. So I'm glad that we're back on the same page, because I'll be honest, I wrote a pretty mean comment on Walt Wood's YouTube after you went after you, and I hit delete right away, and I hope to God Walt never read it, but the point is I shouldn't have done that. I didn't need to jump into there. That's your battle to fight with him, and it's all worked out for the better, and if anything, you guys are going to be closer now. So shout out to you for doing that. Yeah, and I said to him on Facebook because he was playing in a tournament and it was a clip, and the way Walt plays is just all over the place. I just want to air this all out the best I can. And so when he's like moving around and taking hands off the game and really getting into it and I made a comment. I said, when I watch Walt play, I think, comma, drugs, question mark. And I think that that's hurtful in a couple of ways that I didn't at the time think about. And what I apologized to him most of all was I want him to be able to play the way that he naturally plays. And if he's concerned with what people perceive him to be on drugs when he's, in fact, three years clean, which was the other thing I didn't realize. You didn't know that. You had no clue about that. And so it was really ignorant for me to say that because not only does it kind of hurt him and his sobriety, but it also maybe gets in his head when he's comfortable and playing pinball the way he naturally plays. Is this going to be perceived that he's a drug addict? and even though it was a joke in my head a one-off it landed pretty hard to him and so i said i hope that you can still play pinball naturally without worrying about what idiots like me have for an opinion of you because you know on my end it seemed like a very you're trying to be funny you were trying to make a joke and it landed hard on him and so like when you said you hit the head on the nail and i didn't hit the nail on the head when i when i explained it before i i was trying to beat around it i was trying to not implement myself as being a bad guy um but honestly in that moment i was and i i truly apologize walt for for that and i hope and i know i know that we've we've hashed it out we figured it out but i just don't want him to worry about what people like me think of him i want him to keep playing pinball in the way he does he's such a a unique person like the way the way that his brain you've ever seen the movie like where like the ants or the flies they like see the world in slower motion i feel like that's how walt plays pinball i feel like he sees the game happening like half the speed that we see it and i think that's the only way he could be so good and i it's it's incredible that he can do what he does and uh and i have so much respect for him as a player as somebody that analyzes rules talks about it and and somebody that even as a musician good guitar player good singer um i i've I've been on his channel a lot, supporting a lot of the things he does, and then one comment can be the thing that overshadows all of that. And I think that's a good warning for all of us, that one comment can be destructive. Well, I'm going to have to agree with you, because a lot of times in my life I've built up good relationships with pinball people or even non-pinball friends, and then I've said or done one stupid thing, and it's really made it hard to be friends moving forward. So I'll just jump on the bandwagon and say to anyone I've offended in the past, I apologize. Let's move forward. Let's keep creating awesome pinball content. Let's try not to judge each other for something written, you know, obscurely on the internet, if possible. And also, I will say this. I play pinball, like, pretty strange as well, too, but I try not to. It's really weird. Like, if there's people in the arcade with me, especially, like, if I'm at a record store, like, not at a tournament, just if I'm there, I try to just stand up normal and stuff. but when I really let myself go if I'm home by myself and there's no one in Orbeez Arcade and I'm playing some Guardians of the Galaxy or something my head gets really down like if there's an upper flipper I get my head really close to the glass when I'm watching it come out and like you know I would be a nightmare for Tom of Fox City streaming because I'm like leaning over the machine and blocking the camera and I'm jumping in the air and I'm like you think Walt Wood lets his hands off a lot if you go back and watch me at Pinmasters my son Hayden came up and said between balls Dude, stop. You lost that ball because you keep taking your hands off. I don't know why. I just, when I really, really get into focusing and zoning in, I just, I make obscure weird, like my feet are moving around and I'm anchoring and like using my one foot as like a way. Anyways, I like to just get out there and play a little bit wild and crazy and different, especially when I'm really concentrating. The first game or two, I play just standing up normal and I'm like not moving around a lot. I'm very rigid. but if I'm in a tournament and I'm lost in the sauce and I'm deep in the focus, I look like probably someone would guess that I might be on drugs as well. Which, I mean, to be fair, it's possible. Nothing illegal, though. Nothing illegal. Don't worry. In Minecraft, they're all legal. No. I like to play as close to sober as possible, other than I do like to have a craft beer and a little bit of caffeine. I'm not going to lie. I may or may not have an angry alpaca coffee 45 minutes before the first game and halfway through. But that's neither here nor there. I'm glad we can move on with stuff like that. Before I let you go, I think I wanted to, A, give you a chance to do a shout-out to anyone or anything that you wanted to, but B, maybe more importantly, I've got to call you out on something, Glenn. I'm sorry. I hope this doesn't start a fight between us, okay? I'm serious. No, you're laughing. You think I'm fucking joking, Glenn. I'm not. I only swear once per show, and I saved it for right there because I want you to sit down and realize this is serious. All right. You did not wear that T-shirt at Expo. I beat you in this weight loss competition. I lost at least one pound more than you. You were supposed to say, or be sexier than me. But no, you were working. You were there being professional. No, I think I may have beat you in the weight loss competition. Mind you, you were probably super stressed with the homebrew for a month or two leading up to it, so you weren't really acting yourself. No, I started eating like garbage. Here in front of everybody, just admit that I might have beat you in this challenge. Yeah, you beat me in the challenge. I'm back to eating snack cakes and brownies and Oreos again it's awful well I have not had a happy meal for the entire what are we 25 days in I'm trying to do no fast food in Nova Scotia for this month it's been really tough you're driving by the golden arches you can see they got the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles crossed with Hello Kitty come on one of my wife's favorite brands one of my favorite brands that's what all the boxes are the toys I can see the toys on eBay selling for more than the cost of the happy meal. Give me some McDonald's fries. I know they're bad for me, but they taste great. I want a dip of McNugget and a Hummingbird Homestead honey. Anyways, thanks for admitting that I beat you on that. I wasn't sure. I thought you were going to say, hey, Albert, let's do a live. But you were pretty gracious there. Thank you for apologizing. I didn't want to have to lose my shats and drive all the way to Tennessee just to upper deck for you. I had to wear the custom jersey that Jake Danzig made for Monster League Hockey. Those were so cool. And also, shout out to Loser Kids, Josh Roop, Scott Larson, the Bash Pinball Podcast guys, Matt and Don. Don Pinball, I just was hanging out with Ryan and Kimba Berry from Phantom Tilt. They're in the United States from Australia. I saw that. You guys were sitting around the campfire. You were playing, like, some guitar, all hanging out with them. How much did you get to hang out with them? Tell us very quickly what you got to do with them. Quick story. Well, we made them dinner. Stacey did. But then we did some s'mores. They never had s'mores like the big marshmallows. on skewers. Kimba literally started a marshmallow on fire and flung it at my leg. On fire. Into my leg. So there's that, trying to put it out. But hey, Albert, I do have to run. I love you, bro. The bathroom's calling me more than anything right now. No worries. Well, that's all I had for you anyways. I just wanted to thank you so much. I had to bring up jokingly, I hope everyone knows that I was joking about the weight loss thing. We both kind of encouraged each other but uh i'll i'll be sure to make sure 2026 i'm already counting down the days i've already said in my patreon i know even kale hernandez said in there we really missed you you better come next year i said kale it's not 99.9 it's 100 with this patreon money unless everyone unsubscribes tomorrow i'm putting half of every single months away that's right now that's 90 bucks canadian a month in a year from now i would have at least a thousand dollars that would get me most you know i can travel on the cheap so i will see you at next month's or next year's Expo. I hope to see you there. I love you, bro. Go to the bathroom. Don't burst your bladder. Thanks for coming on the show and have a rad day. Yeah. And for everybody at home, go ahead, eat, sleep and breathe Monster League hockey. _(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v1)_ --- *Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 32983bf3-ee7a-4e48-9603-410c95344250*