# EP17 Brian Cosner

**Source:** The Pinball Studio Podcast  
**Type:** podcast_episode  
**Published:** 2026-02-16  
**Duration:** 102m 50s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://thepinballstudio.podbean.com/e/ep17-brian-cosner/

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## Analysis

Brian Cosner, owner of River City Arcade in Virginia, discusses his journey from collecting arcade games to pinball, his current arcade business focused on families and kids, and his perspectives on pinball themes, licensing challenges, and operator concerns. The conversation covers pinball pricing, the Pokemon machine launch, routing machines, and his experiences meeting industry figures at expos and events.

### Key Claims

- [MEDIUM] Pokemon Pro and Premium versions look nearly identical, with Pokemon requiring sculpted toys to avoid looking stripped down — _Brian discussing licensing requirements for Pokemon game design tiers_
- [HIGH] Stern Pro games are reliable workhorses for operators, with only coil stops and flipper rubber replacements needed over years — _Brian's direct operational experience with Stern Pros on location_
- [MEDIUM] Halo is rumored as a pinball game in development by Play Mechanics and Chicago Gaming — _Brian referencing rumors about Halo arcade adaptation, comparing to Pokemon theme appeal_
- [MEDIUM] American Pinball's peak was during Houdini/Oktoberfest era; COVID and timing of Hot Wheels release hurt the company — _Brian's recollection of American Pinball's trajectory and 2020 Texas Pinball Festival cancellation impact_
- [HIGH] John Wick pinball depicts gun violence in video clips despite having no guns on playfield — _Brian observed John Wick gameplay in his arcade; noted contradiction in censorship rules_

### Notable Quotes

> "You take thousands of dollars in an envelope, and you go meet a complete random stranger in the middle of nowhere with $10,000 in your wallet."
> — **Brian Cosner**, ~20:00
> _Illustrates the unusual and risky nature of pinball transactions in the collector community_

> "Stern Pro games out on location are rock solid. The only thing I ever had to replace on any of them were a couple coil stops and some flipper rubbers."
> — **Brian Cosner**, ~45:00
> _Strong operator endorsement of Stern Pro reliability and low maintenance costs_

> "I don't know if they're going to have clips. Are they going to have the music? Are they going to have the actors? Or is it going to be like Pirates of the Caribbean by J.J.P. where you just see their feet running around?"
> — **Brian Cosner**, ~18:00
> _Skepticism about Back to the Future licensing scope and visual implementation_

> "Pros are for bros."
> — **Sterling Martin**, ~48:00
> _Industry slang affirming Stern Pro value proposition for operators and budget-conscious players_

> "It's just – it's so hard to make everybody happy. It's just impossible."
> — **Brian Cosner**, ~32:00
> _Summarizes the fundamental tension in pinball licensing and theme interpretation_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Brian Cosner | person | Owner of River City Arcade in Virginia; pinball operator and arcade collector; former correspondent for Special When Lit podcast |
| River City Arcade | organization | Family and kid-focused arcade in Virginia operated by Brian; hosts 6-8 pinball machines; emphasis on birthday parties and school groups |
| Sterling Martin | person | Host of Pinball Studio Podcast; interviewer for this episode |
| Ken Cromwell | person | Hosted Special When Lit podcast; helped recruit Brian as correspondent; later joined Jersey Jack Pinball in PR/marketing role |
| American Pinball | company | Boutique manufacturer; released Houdini, Oktoberfest, Hot Wheels; struggled after 2020 COVID timing and Texas Pinball Festival cancellation |
| Pokemon Pinball | game | Upcoming Stern game; Pro version ships first before LE; licensing-driven design requires sculpted toys to avoid stripped-down appearance |
| John Wick Pinball | game | Stern game; lacks guns on playfield but features gun violence in video clips; designed by Elliott Eisman; fast-playing and brutal gameplay |
| Halo Pinball | game | Rumored pinball adaptation in development by Play Mechanics and Chicago Gaming; based on popular Halo arcade game |
| Wizard of Oz Pinball | game | Jersey Jack game that inspired Brian to enter pinball hobby; priced around $7,000 when he first encountered it |
| Star Wars Episode I Pinball 2000 | game | Brian's first 'real' pinball machine; featured screen and lightsaber elements |
| Chicago Gaming | company | Partnering with Play Mechanics and Raw Thrills on upcoming games including rumored Halo pinball |
| Play Mechanics | company | Pinball manufacturer partnering with Chicago Gaming on Pulp Fiction and Halo pinball projects |
| Stern Pinball | company | Major manufacturer; praised by Brian for Pro model reliability and affordability; Pokemon licensing deal mentioned |
| Jersey Jack Pinball | company | Boutique manufacturer; Ken Cromwell later worked in PR/marketing role; referenced for Pirates of the Caribbean implementation |
| Special When Lit Podcast | organization | Pinball podcast hosted by Ken Cromwell; recruited Brian as correspondent covering industry events |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Operator perspective on pinball reliability and value, Licensing challenges and theme implementation in modern pinball, Pokemon Pinball Pro/Premium/LE pricing and design tier differentiation, Stern Pro vs. Premium pricing and value proposition
- **Secondary:** Halo Pinball as rumored upcoming title, American Pinball company history and COVID impact, Community culture and collector behavior
- **Mentioned:** Back to the Future Pinball licensing expectations

### Sentiment

**Positive** (0.72) — Brian is generally upbeat and enthusiastic about pinball, speaks positively about operators and designers, and defends industry practices (licensing complexity). Some frustration with Star Wars oversaturation and pinball pricing, but balanced with understanding of business constraints. Respectful disagreements with design choices rather than harsh criticism.

### Signals

- **[business_signal]** American Pinball suffered major setback when Hot Wheels released during COVID instead of 2020 Texas Pinball Festival reveal (confidence: high) — Brian's direct recollection of American Pinball's planned 2020 festival release timing and COVID impact; noted company struggled with game momentum after cancellation
- **[design_philosophy]** John Wick features gun violence in video clips but no guns on playfield; contradiction highlights licensor control over pinball design (confidence: high) — Brian witnessed John Wick gameplay showing video clips with gun violence while acknowledging no guns on playfield; attributed to unclear licensing rules
- **[licensing_signal]** Complex multi-layered licensing (actors, music, DeLorean company, scores) creating uncertainty about Back to the Future pinball scope (confidence: medium) — Brian discussing Back to the Future licensing complexity; questioning whether game will include clips, music, and actors
- **[operational_signal]** Stern Pro machines demonstrate exceptional reliability as location/route machines with minimal maintenance needs (confidence: high) — Brian's direct operational experience over multiple years; only repairs were coil stops and flipper rubbers on Pro models deployed on route
- **[market_signal]** Brian observes Pokemon Pro and Premium look nearly identical due to licensing requirements, questioning the value justification for Premium tier (confidence: medium) — Pokemon Pro/Premium design similarity; noted Pokemon licensing drove sculpted toy requirement across tiers
- **[product_strategy]** Pokemon Pros shipping before LEs; possible back glass production delays for Limited Editions (confidence: medium) — Brian mentioning Stern shipping Pros first; speculation about back glass readiness for LE versions
- **[rumor_hype]** Halo pinball in development by Play Mechanics and Chicago Gaming based on popular Halo arcade game success (confidence: medium) — Brian citing Halo arcade as popular location game; rumors of pinball adaptation; referenced as comparison to Pokemon theme appeal
- **[sentiment_shift]** Star Wars franchise fatigue among core pinball community members; oversaturation with Disney+ shows and games (confidence: high) — Both Brian and Sterling expressing burnout on Star Wars content; Brian specifically stating 'I'm just burned out on Star Wars. I don't want any more Star Wars games'

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## Transcript

 Hello and welcome to episode 17 of the Pinball Studio Podcast. I'm your host Sterling Martin and today we've got Brian Coz in the house. He's the owner of River City Arcade in Virginia. And today we're just going to learn his story and how he found, well, this crazy hobby of pinball. But first off, let's mention the sponsors. Old Town Pinball. Do you need a new or used pinball machine? Just check out his website, oldtownpinball.com. Also, The Electric Playground. Level up your game room with a new topper. just type in tep pinball.com and there's that other sponsor damn it they're always so forgettable who was it again oh yes spooky pinball order your texas chainsaw massacre looney tunes actually no no no order a scooby-doo today just go to spookypinball.com add that game to your cart and click buy it now because what's better than a brand new spooky game anyway welcome to the show brian it's great to have you sir sterling what's going on dude this is gonna be a lot of fun i'm i'm glad to have you on the show man i'm so excited i just honestly have no idea why you even asked me to be on i'm like a pinball nobody no man you're like the biggest you're the biggest star in pinball chat in history i see you in every single chat i'm just the biggest space hunt fan that too yeah always always see space on you always repping it dude sterling you know before we got on here i just was on facebook just for a minute all i see is pinball enthusiasts this guy is anyone else sick and tired of hearing about effing Pokemon? Sorry. That's the only thing I've been seeing either. Yeah. I mean, it's a big thing. Getting your Pokemon then? Getting your Pro, your Premium, your LE? Right. It's not a theme that speaks to me, but I am not going to argue and say it's not. You don't play with your Pokeballs every night? No. I don't play with my Pokeballs. But I do think it's a big theme for pinball, and I think it will be good. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. So have you ordered one for your arcade? Yes, from fliptheletterinoutpinball.com Nice, nice Even though he's not one of your sponsors No problem at all, he could be, absolutely I could have two sponsors Yeah, that might work That'd be nice Zach didn't send me a free pro I got free shipping I did order a pro So basically, we can talk about whatever you want to talk about. Yeah, for sure. My mind is about as ADD as Ralph. When are you going to get this pro? I don't know. I already paid my invoice, so probably pretty soon. Yeah, I think I heard they're shipping pros first this time around instead of the LEs, and I'm not quite sure. Maybe it's due to the back glasses not being ready for the LEs. I'm not sure. Stern used to send out their pros first just to kind of get a few on location, kind of find a few of the maybe problem areas or work the kinks out slightly, and then give the nicer LEs out maybe like a month later. I think that's how it should be, honestly. Like would you really want to be the test dummy for the LE? well if honestly if you want to get a game you probably want to get one of the later run games one of the last ones off the line because you know there's so many different you know service bulletin updates and things along the way that sometimes they find these problems but you know me being the arcade i just kind of want it now i'm impatient i want it immediately i think the theme is gonna really fit well with your arcade too uh maybe not necessarily all the pinball enthusiast, but kids for sure. Well, we are mainly like a kid focused arcade here at River City Arcade. We do a lot of birthday parties and especially kids groups and school groups, ball teams and all that kind of stuff. So I would say that, you know, the kids and their families are the primary customer we have. You know, we don't cater to the pinball specific crowd. I would like to have more pinball people come, but I'm also just in a small city and there's some really nice pinball places around, maybe down in the North Carolina Triad area. They've got quite a few places down there that have come up just recently that are really, really nice. But like I said, we just mainly cater to the kids and families. And I love pinball personally more than anything else. So if I had space, I'd have 50 pinball machines in here, but I really only have room for about six to eight currently. Right. But I notice you do kind of rotate them out. I see you sell games and bring in new games. Like you had Harry Potter. That's already gone, right? I did get a Harry Potter. I got one of the very, very first ones with the little derpy dragon and all that AI art on there, which it didn't bother me. But I got an arcade edition right when they first came out. I must have got the first batch. I had one back on like July 3rd. Right. I think it was when I got mine and people loved Harry Potter. The problem is a buddy of mine came and called me one day. He's like, hey, I've got two Mario Kart like GPS, like the brand new ones. And he's like, hey, do you want these? Like, I need to know tonight where I'm going to sell them. So I'm like, oh, I need to sell something really quick that I can that I can sell like immediately. so I sold Harry Potter. Damn, just to get Mario Kart. Yeah, and it didn't even pay for half the Mario Karts. Really? So expensive. You can buy a real car cheaper than you can buy Mario Karts. That's insane. So is this like a newer age arcade game? Look, pinball people think that pinball is expensive. Arcades are even more expensive than modern pinball. Oh, absolutely. Go look online. Go look up a Jurassic Park arcade or something like that those things are like 18 grand oh i know i looked at the godzilla version uh oh it's like 40 grand i know no because a buddy of mine has a free play arcade just like mine it's kind of how i stole his ideas you know i ripped them off um but he bought like the king kong vr about i don't know three or four years ago it was like 45 000 that's and he's gone through all kinds of problems with them. The headsets are what the problem is. It's some cord problem in the headset itself. People damage them. They're just rough with them. But $40,000. I didn't know they had issues. I figured for that much money, they were rock solid. Now, I tell you, most of the stuff that I've bought, I've had to buy it used because it's so expensive. Unless you're some gigantic arcade that has 150 games and you're making $500,000 a year, you can't buy these things. They're absolutely ridiculous prices. It's Raw Thrills, right? Yes. Does that make sense? Yeah, I'm looking on the Flip and Out page at them right now. That's crazy. I guess to kind of bring it back to pinball a little bit. Yeah. But they're kind of partnering up with Chicago Gaming and Play Mechanics. So that's how they made the – Pulp Fiction. What do you call it? Pulp Fiction. Yeah. So the rumors are that Halo is coming out by the Play Mechanics and Chicago Gaming. So that's been a huge game on the Raw Thrill side with the Halo Arcade, and it's super popular. It gets played every single day, all day. So a lot of these guys that think Halo may not be a good theme, it's getting played every day, all day. Well, I think it's kind of like Pokemon. You know, Halo may not speak to every pinball enthusiast, but however, for people that are arcade owners, I could definitely see Halo doing well and the people that are really into the video game. Well, I like all pinball. You're not going to hear me complain about any game. That's how I am. Blues Brothers. Yeah, I have not played Blues Brothers. I'm going to read for every single game out there. I mean, I'm going to be happy at every announcement. I mean, I'm happy that guys can play Predator. Hey, it's not for me, but hey, if you want one, go get one. I'm happy for you. yeah i'm not going to complain about it absolutely do i wish maybe stern it made it probably would it have arnold i don't even know i mean look at jurassic park we didn't really get anyone in that game either but i love that game don't get me wrong i love it's all about the money stern does not want to pay the money and i i assume it's probably extremely difficult to line up all the different voice actors and you know film clips and it's probably you know way too much money for what you're going to get. So I understand why Stern does it. It's just, would we like to see the movie clips? Sure. It's kind of like the Back to the Future, you know, rumors. Are they going to have clips? Are they going to have the music? Are they going to have the actors? Or is it going to be like Pirates of the Caribbean by J.J.P. where you just see their feet running around? I was talking to Don about that the other day, too. Like, Back to the Future has a lot of licensing. You know, you got all the actors in the movie, But then you got the DeLorean Motor Company, you got Huey Lewis and the News with the two main songs, and then you got the scores of the movie. I feel like there's a lot more you got to license for this game. I'm sure that it is a licensing nightmare to make any game. Even, you know, like we're talking about the Pokemons. We can get back to some current news, I guess. But I'm sure that it was so hard to get all these different characters, and do you get show clips? Do you get call-outs? And then people are still mad. Which era do you kind of pick? Newer stuff, stuff from 30 years ago, stuff from a year ago? So it's extremely hard to do it, and you're not going to make everybody happy because somebody is going to be mad that you didn't make their version that they wanted. It's kind of like Transformers, the rumor of having the G1 Transformers. I mean somebody might get mad and say, well, I want the new ones because my kids watch the new cartoon or something. You just can't make everybody happy. For me, I definitely want the cartoon. I'm really hoping they're going to do the old morning cartoon show. Now, I do remember when I was probably like – whenever the old movie came out, maybe six, I remember crying, Sterling. I cried. It's like Optimus Prime died. I'm like, what the crap? And I was like, oh, he's dead. That's all I remember. I haven't seen it since then. It's so traumatizing. That's hilarious. Yeah, that's the one I'm excited for. I just wish Keith Elwin was designing it. I'm not sure if I'm a fan of Elliot Elliot Eismin yet or not after John Wick. I like how John Wick shoots, but it just doesn't quite grab me. I like John Wick. I had a pro for a little while. I was able to pick one up. I think it was on like a guy that was here in Virginia, and he brought it down to me, which was great. So I had John Wick for maybe three or four months or something like that. I enjoyed playing it. It's a very fast game. So if you want a faster playing game and more brutal, I think that's a pretty good call. I like the theme. I like John Wick as a theme. right uh but you know when you're playing the game though i mean you can't really look at the movie clips and stuff no and plus no guns no guns that's a that's another fun discussion that didn't bother me any no guns it didn't bother me but it's odd it is well it's no worse than you know predator with no arnold or whatever i mean it's just it's like having like with no friday the 13th and he can't have a machete but the stupidest thing about it sterling is like i had in my arcade here and people were playing it. Oh, they're not going to notice. And there's clips of John Wick just pulling a gun up to somebody's head and shooting them right in the head and blood splatters everywhere. And you can watch that on the video clip, but you better not have a gun on the playfield. I will never understand that. Or a katana. I'm just so confused. They said they couldn't have it because something to do with a pinball machine being a toy or something, yet there's toys with guns. I don't know. We'll never know the real answer to any of that. Like I said, that's another one of those things. That's exactly what we're talking about, licensor issues. You have to appease the license holders no matter how odd or crazy we may think. The reason is there is some reason behind the scenes that you can and can't do something, and that's what makes it extremely difficult to license newer games that have the audio clips and the video clips. You didn't have to worry about this stuff 40 years ago. There was no TV clips that they had to get approvals for. They might have had 20 call-outs in some early 90s games or something like that that they did. They didn't have a problem getting Arnold for Last Action Hero. His face is slapped right on it. That gigantic face of Arnold. Actually, look, the game is okay. But, dude, I saw Last Action Hero in the theater when I was like 13 years old, and it was the most amazing movie I ever seen. I liked it when I was a kid. I can't watch it now. I'm just like, what is this? It has some of the coolest and some of the dumbest scenes I've ever seen in a movie before. Yeah, I actually had that film on the scene. So do you still have my – so I met you through selling you my Deadpool Pro, I don't know, what, two years ago, three years ago, something like that. We met at some gas station in the middle of nowhere in like Georgia, wherever it was. Sounds about right. I'm always trying to meet people halfway. I'm like, what's the halfway point? Okay, I guess we'll go here. Do you ever tell anybody about the craziness that we do in this hobby? You take thousands of dollars in an envelope, and you go meet a complete random stranger in the middle of nowhere with $10,000 in your wallet. See, I do a lot of trades. I don't do many money deals like that. Most of my money deals are through my distro, but I do do a lot of trade deals. So I'm like, well, I guess they're not going to rob the game from me because it's kind of heavy and, you know, well, I can't like haul ass with it that quick. I've been doing I've been doing pinball for like 10 years. And, you know, it's it's slowly like, you know, risen in price over the years. I remember like the first game I ever got was like the pinball machine. Yeah. Was was like I got like a Star Trek pro. Nice. Like four grand. And I'm like, this is four thousand. dollars and like you're saying i was getting my money and taking it to this guy and i was going up to like west virginia and i've never been to that city never met this guy here i'm going up the road like three or four hours away four grand in my wallet you know you go to some random house out in the middle of nowhere in the mountains yeah like what is going to happen to me here and do i do i hear banjo music in the background you know i don't know this is weird then you meet him He's like a great guy. Right. I've been friends with him ever since. Yeah. My first machine was Back to the Future, and it was somewhere around like $1,500. But I thought that was a shit ton of money at the time. But when I went there, half the game would not even turn on. And the guy's like, oh, it's probably just a fuse. It was definitely not just a fuse. Just a fuse. It was a lot of things. Yeah. Where did this all begin? It just crazied us. And I tell you, it's probably like most people. I started just by wanting an arcade game. So I moved to a new house. We moved to a bigger house that had a basement, and I was sitting around one day. I like games. I had Xbox or whatever, PlayStation, played arcade games when I'm a teenager or a kid. Yeah. I'm thinking, you know what? I was just like on eBay or something. And I randomly came across an arcade machine. I think it was a I guess it was the PlayChoice 10, the one that I bought. So so kind of to back that story up, I remember playing a PlayChoice 10 a bunch when I was like a kid, like 10 or 11, 12 years old. And it was at the Value City like department store. My mom would give me a couple quarters and say, go play this game for five minutes, you know, get out of her hair, whatever you're calling. Right. But it just it was like ingrained in me that I just loved playing that Nintendo PlayChoice. So I was just stumbling through eBay, you know, maybe like 11, 12 years ago and came across came across the PlayChoice 10. And I didn't know how to you could find them. I didn't know you could buy them. Right. I'm seeing it there. It was like a thousand dollars. I look at it and it's like in New Jersey I'm like crap, New Jersey maybe I can go to New Jersey and get this game I don't know how I'm going to get it so I messaged the guy and he's like hey man I've got like 100 games at my house or something crazy, it was like a ridiculous amount he's like yeah if you want to get a game he said yeah it's a great game, working great I got all this and extra game cartridges and different things he's like yeah if you want it Oh, no. Did I lose you? You're back. Can you hear me? Okay, well, look, I don't know how that's going to affect your recording. I don't care. It'll be fine. People will love it. I've been recording the whole time. Uh-oh. I'll just tell you my crazy story. I guess you want to call it my first game that I got, the PlayChoice 10. Yeah, on eBay. So I go to New Jersey and buy that game and bring it home. I don't know how to work on a game. I don't know how to work on these monitors. That crap's got two monitors on it. But I was like, man, this is the most amazing thing ever. And then people would come over and family and different events. And you got an arcade game in your basement. Where did you get that? And I'd tell them about going to New Jersey and buying it and the long story of all that. But so. About how many years ago was this? Oh, like 11 or 12. Okay. It's been a minute. Yeah. Yeah. And so that kind of started the badness. and I started looking on like Facebook marketplace and started looking for my next game. So this is going to be a really weird one, but my next game was a baby Pac-Man. Okay. You sound like Jason Knapp. Probably problematic. But so the thing about that one is I went to that guy's house and he might've lived like an hour away and I just drove my car up there to go look at it, you know, to just kind of see if I wanted to get it or not. And so I go up there and look at it, and it's working fine, and tell the guy that I have a game already, a PlayChoice 10. And he's like, oh, PlayChoice 10. He's like, I've got a bunch of game cartridges and motherboards and all kinds of stuff. He had like 75 games maybe for it. Nice. And a bunch of motherboards. And he's like, I'm like, well, I'll buy them from you. He's like, what do you want? He's like, I don't know, like $400 or $500. Dude, I sold all that crap for about $10,000 Wow! It was every single game that they had made That's kind of what helped fund me getting a little bit of stuff at first That's awesome Maybe not $10,000, but it was a lot Still, it sounds like you had a gold mine You start buying a few games I'd buy one more, I think I bought a Terminator 2 arcade game and super off-road. Were you just putting them all at the house and the garage and stuff? In the basement. I got you. Yeah, I had a really big basement that had like a half a finished side and a half unfinished side, and it was so much room to put games. But that's what kind of started the craziness. And then I went to like one guy's house. I was getting that Terminator 2, and this is like what sparked the pinball side of it. So I went to this guy's house, and he had pinball machines everywhere. And I hadn't seen any yet in anyone's home. And he was like a repair tech also and kind of fixed them for other guys. And he had a whole basement full of games. And it was right around the time that maybe – I'm trying to think that like Wizard of Oz had just come out somewhere around there, maybe a little bit later, like a year later. But like Wizard of Oz was brand new. So he showed me Wizard of Oz, and I was like blown away of what Wizard of Oz looked like. And then I'm like, well, how much is that game? He's like, oh, it's about $7,000. I'm like, what? $7,000? I'm crazy. I used to buy these other games for like $500 or whatever. And then he showed me like a Jurassic Park, the Data East one. And he's like, well, I've got this Jurassic Park I'd sell for like two grand, and I'm still like two grand. Still not a bad idea. That's like four times more than this arcade game you're selling me. I'm like, that's stupid. He's like, well, I might get settled a little less or something. I can't remember what it was. but he showed me all of his games, all the pinball machines. And I'm like, man, I want to get me a pinball machine. And that's kind of what started it. And so I think I found, I'm trying to think what I found. I think my very first, if you want to call it like a real pinball machine, was a Star Wars Episode I, the Pinball 2000. You picked a hell of a game. It was heavy too, yeah. But that was a fun game. And for me, not knowing what I'm doing, I didn't know that it really wasn't the greatest game, but I thought it was amazing. I had the screen on it and, you know, lightsaber on there and it light up and played Star Wars is all I cared about. So and it all worked when I was a kid. Ewok Adventure is one of my favorite movies of all time. History, you know, when it came out, I remember it was like when I was writing college and it was everybody had dial up Internet. And I remember at college, you know, we had like a T1 line that you could watch a video clip. And I remember watching. I remember pirating some of them. For that movie at school. Yeah, I think it was like. When it came out, it was fun. It was a good movie at the time. Like right now, it's okay. I'm just burned out on Star Wars. I don't want any more Star Wars games. I don't want any more Star Wars movies. Let's just move on. Disney has made like 15 different TV shows. I've had enough. I'm like, burn out. I haven't even watched like five or six of them. I liked The Mandalorian when it first came out. And then there was like another Mandalorian, or I mean, a bounty hunter show. And then it was tied to Boba Fett. Yeah. And I'm just like, this is just an extension of Mandalorian. Four episodes were just Mandalorian episodes. So anyway, I lost interest. I do have Mandalorian. You lost me? No, no, no. I said I lost interest. Well, it's just, it's so much. There's so many different TV shows now that it's like it's made them all just watered down. Yeah. And there's just too many. I agree. I love Star Wars, but I don't know. I can't watch all the shows. I don't have enough time. Yeah, same. I really don't watch a whole lot of movies anymore. I used to be like a huge movie buff, and I just don't have time to watch all these anymore. Yeah, I mean it kind of goes back to your love of arcades, retro stuff, pinball machines, movies, and they all collide. They all intersect. And I enjoy movies, and that's kind of I guess what people – makes people so passionate about the pinball machines is because maybe the pinball machine doesn't come out exactly like they want it to be. It's not exactly like the movie. And that's why I guess people are so just passionate when games come out that it's not quite like they wanted it to be. And like I said, it's just – it's so hard to make everybody happy. It's just impossible. Oh, it's impossible. I agree. Are there any themes that you're hoping comes out this year, some of these rumors you're hearing? Well, I'm not really a collector anymore. Right. So I don't have any games at my personal residence. every single game i own is either out on location or it's here at our arcade okay so i'm not like a home collector do you route any games besides uh your arcade um i did up until maybe about a month or two ago okay uh i had a brewery location that had about three or four different games at it oh nice and unfortunately they are changing their uh their entire layout and they're changing it to a restaurant no they said they weren't going to have room for my games anymore they've been there since 2019 oh damn that sucks well hopefully you can find somewhere else in town to put some of it i got a couple places with a couple games but the problem is now that we do the arcade it just takes all of my time to to keep everything here going smoothly that i don't have time to go check on uh you know games on out on locations yeah i could i could see that i've got a buddy that's got games kind of everywhere and it's just going to be such a headache just traveling around and well trying to maintain everything this is advice for anybody else that that wants to have pinball on location is i mainly had Stern Pros on location And Stern Pro games out on location are rock solid The only thing I ever had to replace on any of them were a couple coil stops. Yeah. Some flipper rubbers. I never had any problems with them. So anytime people start talking about wanting to route games, what to get, I just recommend Stern Pros. Oh, I agree. You know, a lot of people give Stern a bunch of flack, but I really do think they're the workhorses if you're going to be an operator. Their pro, the Stern Pro, may not be as loaded with mechs and things like that, but it is a solid game. It is reliable. It is the best entry-level pinball anywhere because nobody else can touch the price of a Stern Pro. I don't think any game even comes near it. It's the cheapest game on the market. Yeah, and it's still fully loaded with code, and it's kind of like Pokemon's out soon that the game almost looks exactly the same. It's missing a few of the mechs. Maybe something doesn't move. And you got all the sculpted toys this time, and I wonder if that was a Pokemon requirement. I heard that it was. I heard that – I don't know if you want to call it Nintendo, Pokemon, whoever you want to call back to the licensing, but they had requested that it didn't really look stripped down compared. So if you look at them all, they almost all look the same basically. Right. And I like that. I hope they do that for – man, if they did that for so many other games, that would really help sell me on the Pro more. A lot of times it's just like how pretty it looks. It's like, man, the premium looks so much better. They are. And unfortunately, I don't have a ton of money. I can't invest the money into a premium. They're just too much money to me, $10,000. Basically, you know, $9,000, $10,000. That's how I was for the longest time, too. Shit, I told myself I would never buy a Stern game because they were so expensive. But then I was buying pros, and I was like, dude, I can't see myself buying a premium. Pros are for bros. Yeah. But now I've got a couple premiums and a couple LEs, but it just happened somehow. Some of the content creators out there are obsessed with LEs and just how much money something's worth. They don't even – I mean, I'm kidding. I fall into LEs. So I got a Foo Fighters LE, but I didn't buy it new. I ended up with a used Elvira, and it was just Elvira Premium. Okay, yeah. But then I ended up trading that for – a guy was like, I'll trade you Foo LE. And I'm like, deal. Well, yeah, that kind of goes back to when I've gone to some of the expos and things like that. So I went to the expo that the Elvira was released and she was there. So you could go meet her and get her to sign items. And I remember it was huge. Like so Stern had a totally separate room at that expo center that was just for Stern. And it was packed in there when she was there. Yeah, that'd be freaking awesome. I couldn't tell you where it was. I only went to that place I think maybe once because that was the first one I went to, and I was helping out with – Ken Cromwell had Special When Lit podcast. So I was a correspondent for them that we kind of were like reporters, so we were almost like journalists. I was the American pinball correspondent for Special When Lit pinball, so that was awesome. So Ken, this is before he even went to JJP and all that, but he was doing the podcast, and he's like, well, hey, man, I can get you free tickets to the expo. When you come up here, you'll be at our booth. I'm like, wow, free tickets? I'm like, all right, on my way. and it was so nice to hang out with all the different people and meet some of the designers and programmers and artists and all the people around pinball. That is what's so cool about pinball. It's just everybody that I've ever met is usually genuinely nice and they're appreciative of you enjoying their products. Yeah, I agree. Most people in this hobby are good people. You do find some keyboard warriors, though. It's a couple dicks out there, especially this dude named Don. Oh, yeah, Don. He's the worst. Just kidding. Don's a good guy. Sometimes. Don, I love you. I really did love hanging out with – helping out with Special and Lit. We would do like a little segment, and I guess back at that time, that's when American Pinball was still like – I would say that was like their peak. Like Hot Wheels or something? No, that was before Hot Wheels. Oh, before Hot Wheels. So that was when they had just released Houdini. Okay. And then they had Oktoberfest, and that was their game on the line. And they hadn't even released Hot Wheels yet. That was supposed to be in 2020. All right. And I think that's what kind of hurt their company is they were supposed to have a huge setup and reveal at the Texas Pinball Festival in 2020. and that was going to be where Hot Wheels was released, and it never got to happen. Okay. And when it got released, it just kind of – right in the middle of COVID, and it just got lost, and nobody cared about it. Yeah. Galactic Tank Force didn't help them either. I was there the year they launched that game. This is like the Joe Balcer era when he did the Houdini and Oktoberfest and Hot Wheels. So I got, as a special American pinball correspondent, I was, you know, kind of make some connections with them and try to get, you know, guys numbers and I try to find out some info. And I really, truly tried to be and it sounds cheesy. I tried to be like a real journalist. Yeah. And, you know, I would message them and ask them questions and, you know, ask about upcoming things happening in the game. And it was when they were still actively, you know, doing a lot of stuff. And I got to go over to the factory. And this is a this was in 2019. So this is like six, seven years ago. Right. Six, seven. But I got to meet the guys over there at the factory. And I think even while I was over there, Todd Tuckey came in to film a video. And it was just like a totally different vibe than what American Pinball kind of turned into. Yeah. And they were actually going to try to do some redemption games. So they had this gigantic like the Flying Dutchman redemption game that just never, never went anywhere. I think they were going to try to have Hot Wheels be a real big hit, and it just never happened for them. And then just after that, it just didn't work. And I think just COVID just really hurt American Pinball. It didn't seem to hurt Stern at all because they seemed to do better during COVID. But I don't know about American Pinball. It was like a hunt for Stern. There were so many Stern games I wanted, and they weren't running games very often. So like that Deadpool that you got off of me, I waited for that game for like a year because distros were like, they haven't made them. They haven't made them. You know, it was like during COVID and they finally did a run that I had been on like a list forever. And then I sold it to you like a month after buying it. Well, I remember a lot of guys where, you know, where it was a huge line to get Godzilla. And I guess that came out in 2021, kind of like, you know, a year after kind of like COVID. And I should remember that one of my buddies that had his arcade, he had a Godzilla premium. And this was right at the height of like the crazy value. He called me and he's like, hey, I just need some extra money and you want to buy this Godzilla from me? And he's like, I'll just sell it to you for like what I paid for it, which was like eight grand. And I'm like, I'll take it. And I wound up selling it for like $11,000 for the Godzilla premium because guys have like a year long back order. yeah and that was just to go in price for it i wasn't like trying to be a you know scalp it if you want to call it that but that's like to go in price and i had a guy message me he's like well i'll give you 11,000 for it and i'm like okay come get it well that's kind of how i met my distro like you're saying it was impossible to get a godzilla and um i just randomly called my distro that i use now old town in uh st augustine i was like oh can i get on a list for Godzilla or whatever. He's like, I've got them right here. And I'm like, oh, okay. Like, can I come tomorrow? I've seen some, I guess he might, maybe then I shouldn't say they're smaller dealers, but I've seen some smaller dealers just every now and then have a Harry Potter available. And they'll just say on Pennside, hey, I've got a Harry Potter arcade and one Harry Potter wizard. Who wants it? And the other guy's been waiting for him for, you know, six, seven months, eight months. I mean, my distro, I don't know how he compares, and sized all these other dealers. He's certainly not the largest out there, but he's not even a dealer. I'm like, guys, compare their sizes all the time. It doesn't make any sense. But he's not a dealer for JJP, and he's already just randomly got, I don't know, four or five Harry Potter games by now. I think, yeah, they're kind of like a sub-dealer or whatever you want to call it. They just deal with each other, make deals, make trades. So, yeah, so kind of going back, I guess what got me even more into pinballs when I started doing this, you know, correspondence stuff. Yeah. So we did all the correspondence stuff with Special Unlit. It was kind of going okay. Like I said, American Pinball was going good. And then one day, you know, Ken had messaged us, and we had like a private group chat through the other guys, you know, Craig Bobby and all those guys that were there as well. He's like, well, guess what, guys? You know, we're not going to have Special Unlit Pinball anymore. So I'm like, what? What's happening? And he's like, we're starting this new thing called the Pinball Network. And we're going to be on the Pinball Network now. And we're still going to keep you guys as correspondents. And, you know, we may use you guys, you know, to get on some other podcast or be on some other show. I think they had some really grand plans for the Pinball Network that just never really materialized. I liked it for a little bit. But there was a peak to it at one point where they had like a streamer every night on Twitch. And then also, yeah, I felt like a podcast was coming out every day. There was a little bit of drama right at the beginning. Yeah. We don't need to get into any of that kind of stuff. But there was a little bit of drama somewhere around the beginning of the formation of that that made a few guys kind of upset. And they dropped out. And it just immediately threw a kink in all their plans. Right. And so we wound up just staying on as the correspondents, and then we were going to be on the pinball show. So I was like, oh, this is like big time, and we're on the pinball show. So we still did – I still did the segments and was trying to be a good journalist. And then that's right when COVID happened, which just crashed everything. Right. And so I was covering American Pinball, and I said, you know how that kind of – that story went. So me being on there as that correspondent, I didn't have much to report on most of the time. No. Look, I really enjoyed doing that, though. It was really, really fun to just be a little tiny – if you could say I was just a little tiny part of that whole thing. It was just fun to do. But like I said, I'm a pinball nobody, but I just enjoyed doing that. I'm excited for America Now though Hopefully they can put that company back together And start building some decent games There's been some rumors of games And they're talking this big talk That they're going to have games available this year So I don't know what they've got planned Those are big words though I was like, never built a game Now we're going to have a game to market in less than a year He said third quarter I don't know if they're getting some people that have already been in the hobby and other companies. I'm not sure. I'm sure they'll all come out soon. Like classic Bally games maybe? That doesn't interest me. Well, I'm not willing to – those are the games I like to spend like $1,200 and get a game. I don't know. I don't want to spend eight. Is it a classic early 80s Valley and Williams stuff? or is it you know if they were doing things like taxis like taxi and diner and stuff i would be like oh hell yeah sign me up of course they're not going to make either one of those games but um no i mean you never know what they're going to do you know i've heard some i've heard some rumors and and this has been going on for a while um that they either had possibly the sequel to whitewater so it's like a whitewater 2 i think it was called like yukon Yeti or something like that. I don't know if that was like a partial Deep Roop game that they had got. It was just kind of iffy. And then this rumor to have He-Man. Yeah, I definitely heard the He-Man one. License that I guess everybody saw, but then there's been other licensing nightmares to bring that game out. Is it completely dead? Did they just waste all that time and money and effort on it for it to never come out? That doesn't make any sense. It sounds like the theme is definitely dead, but maybe not the design. At least that's what I gathered. What do you do? Do you take somebody's layout that they made two years ago and just throw another art package on top of it and call it another game? I don't know. I just heard the licensor was not happy, so it was never going to happen. Well, honestly too, Sterling, I bet there's a lot of other stories just like this out there that we just never hear about. Oh, absolutely. Because they just keep it under wraps and there was NDAs and only a few people knew about something. He-Man. What happened to that? That's the one I would have been pushing and the one I think would have really sold. Indiana Jones that was supposed to be from Stern. Yeah, I think that would have done well, actually. I think an Indiana Jones game would do really, really well. If it's one of the original three movies, I think. What? You didn't like the – gosh, what was the new one even called? The old one? No, the new one. Oh, I never saw that one. It was so lame and mediocre that I don't even remember what it was called. He's like 80 years old. I'm like, he's not kicking ass anymore. He looked fine. Oh, yeah, I'm sure. He looked fine. I liked it. It's kind of like the Star Wars episode, what was it, like seven? He was fine. I still liked it because I just remember the originals, but it was fine. Oh, man. Yeah. I guess I need to watch the new Indiana Jones movie. I saw it in the theater, but I cannot even tell you the name of it. I saw the Skull one, and I hated the Skull one, so I was like, no, I'm good on this one. Did you ever play the Stern? One time. I played it one time in a show, so I can't really say much about it, but I don't think I hated it. it's got a great multiball you know it's kind of like for like a location game it would do okay just because people know the theme it has the music and it's got a couple little easy it kind of it's kind of like pokemon in a way it has easy shots there's not much to it and it has one main mech that that people like to see and that's it it's like fun for you know 10 minutes yeah i would buy one for the right price i'll buy any game for the right price i love my spy hunter i'm like the only person that has the pinball spy hunter game and freaking loves it maybe other than harry hardy yeah okay i got a spy hunter um arcade game made by uh well that's what most people like yeah i like the pinball game though that's fun you can get you know you got i've got a few george gomez games here and i mean i say that people think pinball but nope i got george gomez arcade games well you got my deadpool so oh yeah so so you got one pokemon pretty soon hopefully the next week or two yeah that that's gonna do good on location i think so yeah so i tell you sternly i know like i bounced all over the place oh you're good if anybody's actually listening to this which you know it's probably like three people i forgot to hit the record button but we could go back and kind of talk a little bit more about how i got into things yeah so how did this like you you were buying games and kind of collecting them and how did that i was buying arcade games that leads you to the drug of you know pinball it's like a gateway drug to it so once i went pinball i was like all in on pinball and i sold every single other arcade game i had basically except my play choice 10 so to me that was just really nostalgic and i couldn't get rid of it and i still have that play choice 10 here at the arcade so i love showing people that game oh nice you've got Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! and Contra and Duck Hunt and Mario and Tecmo Bowl and all the cool 90s. I mean, 80s and early 90s Nintendo. Does that do well these days with kids, or do you really have to have more of the new-age arcade games? Honestly, a lot of kids can't figure out how to get the PlayChoice 10 started. It's a little convoluted. It's called channel select instead of game select and just different weird little quirks like that. Right. I was just curious. Do kids like – will kids gravitate to things like Pac-Man and stuff anymore? Well, I'll tell you. Yeah, we can skip all the way here to the arcade. I'm sorry. I'm skipping all over the place now. I can explain that basically I've noticed kids will play anything just for a minute. They'll walk up to any game and just play it. So I've got, you know, Turtles and Simpsons and the older, like, 90s Spider-Man and Captain America. They'll play all those games for a few minutes. Do they stay on them very long? Not really. They stay on it until they die. But that's everything. I just think people's attention spans are so short nowadays. It's just the Snapchat and TikTok culture that is, like, everything. So kids are watching these little tiny short reels and quick videos. It's just making everybody have short attention spans. That's why I kind of enjoy tournaments. I'll catch myself not really playing much pinball, but every time my tournament rolls around, it's like, all right, I've got to play pinball all day long, and I've actually got to focus and play all day long. I do not play near enough pinball owning the arcade. I tell you, I have a full-time job, so the pinball arcade and everything here is just secondary. And at the end of the day, I'm just ready to go. So it's either, you know, fix the game or something like that, work on them. There is very, very little playing games anymore. I don't hardly have any time for it. Yeah, if I'm not playing in a tournament, like all day, I've actually been just tweaking games, moving games around. And then I went and serviced a game for somebody today. So I've just been pinball all day long, but not actually playing any pinball. yeah i i don't do much if you want to say service you know i've got a few people i knew that needed little things here and there there was one guy uh that lives here in my town uh i don't even hardly want to say his name it's almost embarrassing there's a guy here named johnny fairplay he was on survivor you may have seen him on there he has to be my friend but i didn't know who he was oh he's cool yeah okay but he's been on a bunch of shows lately he's been on these e shows okay He's going to be on some other e-shows soon. But he loves pinball. Yeah. So he likes having a couple games at the house. And, you know, he'll call me up. And he'll like, hey, can you – this is – I've tried to help him along the way from, you know, when he first got a game, he didn't know how to take, you know, the lock bar off and take the glass out. Just do anything. So you're trying to – All right. He's back. He's back. He's back. Yeah. This will be fun. Stay here. I'll be back. So you were showing him how to work on his game. oh yeah that's where we left off i love to show people pinball help them with pinball you know lead them to pinball i just don't have time for pinball myself i know that sounds horrible to admit right just everybody else is having fun playing games and pinball but but i'm not i'm just over here that's why i'm trying to like i'm kind of trying to back up from everything it's like i don't want to do deliveries anymore i don't want to service games anymore i just want to like collect again and play games again buying and selling games can be extremely like you know time consuming because you usually have to go drive somewhere you know sometimes it could be a few hours away or more and then you know just it takes like a whole day or the whole afternoon to go do a pinball deal it's just it just makes it so hard so it was so much fun back in the day that was like this like hunt i was going on i'd be like waking up early in the morning like all and I'm going to buy this taxi or whatever I'm buying. No, it's fun. You have to get your, you know, what do you call it? You know, like those. Like my Ghostbusters. That was like an 18-hour day or something. Just like, yeah, I'm going to get Ghostbusters. Yeah, I had some friends of mine that were kind of like, if you want to call them flippers, so they would just find a deal somewhere. They're like, dude, I'm driving. I'm driving 12 hours to get this Ghostbusters because it's $3,000. Right. And so they would, you know, they'd go drive there straight, like you know 12 hours there and 12 hours back you'll get a ghostbusters but i just like i couldn't do that and it's like where'd you go oh i wouldn't i won't do it now i would a few years ago at 2 a.m yeah now atlanta's a stretch for me it's like uh four hours for a pinball machine maybe like two and a half yeah so i just like said just pinball if they're heavy you know you almost need to have help you know you want to have like backup if you go somewhere crazy that you've never been before. But you know, honestly, I've never had any issues. None. Yeah. And usually I'll tell people this, you know, if you deal with people, especially if you use like Pennside, you know, you can see that someone's been on there for years. You can see their feedback. Pennside, I feel pretty safe. Yeah. If you see that, oh, that he's done, you know, this guy's done 10 deals and everybody says how nice he is, then you can trust that. It's Facebook where I meet the more random people sometimes. Well, that's why I would say normally, like for me, whenever I buy and sell, I usually do it like within the hobby, if that makes sense. Right. So I'm buying it from another collector. I'm buying it from another guy on Pennside or I'm buying it from somebody in one of our Facebook groups. I'm not usually ever dealing with somebody I've never met before. yeah that's what I do like too so I know like so many people in the hobby now and I'm friends with so many of them on Facebook it's like you have 35 mutual friends I'm like all right well that makes me feel a little bit better well that's like with me I've got a bunch of friends because people will just randomly send you friend requests yeah I have to really look at them now I'm like have I ever met this person yeah and that that was kind of that was like my my first you know thing that in order to be on my friends list like i'd have to physically meet you that was like a requirement and if i went to some big show and i met 10 people and it never failed that a bunch of people like i guess they're just friends of friends and then they send you a bunch of requests so i get all these weird like pinball people that live over in the middle of like like italy or something and they ask me to be their friends i don't know who they are yeah i'm like i don't know you now if i'm like probably gonna cross paths with you or like hey we're going to this this weekend we should meet up like sure i'll add you as a friend but like yeah but yeah that's just networking you know it goes back to how we you know we mentioned you know we mentioned don a few minutes ago so back when we helped zach with the pinball show um you know i had that relationship with him that uh he was going to a few shows and and i helped him out at the shows um you know he would give me a few little things as as help uh you know shoot a rod and stuff like that nice um But I enjoyed doing it. It was just like networking. It's just you go to a show. You get to meet everyone. Like you go to TPF every year or so. So those connections and meeting people and hanging out, that's like what the most valuable part of this hobby is. So I remember like when I was meeting Don, I think he had just started his podcast. Yeah. And I don't think he really knew anybody. He was just like – Oh, he popped up and I was like, who is this guy? And like I turned him on. I was like – I listened to him. He had a lot of passion. Yeah, I was like, he's got the radio voice. So I'm like, yeah, Don, come here. Come meet Zach. And here's Greg. And here's the guys from Spooky. And here's so-and-so and all these other different people. And it was just like it was fun to just show people around and meet new people And now I met so many different people from going to the shows or like said buying games uh it it been so much fun uh that probably the best part of this hobby is is meeting meeting everyone and um i got like connected with all the poor man's pinball tribe back when ian and drew used to have a podcast where they really just got drunk and talk about pinball is really all they did um and they don't really have a podcast anymore i don't even know if they've had one for about a year or two but we still have an active like pinball tribe chat oh really sterling this thing where's this chat it's our private tribe chat you have to be a tribe member dude it blows up like 24 7 that's hilarious it's it's crazy how they started this crazy silly little pinball tribe and and we were on there like every single day i'm talking to people all over like the country all over the world and i remember people like who are you what are you doing i'm like i was talking about pinball friends and you know wherever they were in australia or something crazy oh that's how like all that i'll be in all these discord rooms and patreon chats and stuff and i swear it'll be at like three o'clock in the morning and they are having like the biggest conversation and my phone's just going off i'm like i gotta put this shit on silent i remember now i was not able to go to this last expo but i usually try to go to the pinball expo you know every year this this last i guess five or six years that's the one i never go to i've gotta go to pinball expo i know yeah so we had a like tribe meetup so we go up there to the you know the restaurant the hotel and i dude i bet you like 90 of them were so drunk they were so They were so loud. Everybody was over there looking over at us. They were having a blast, though. That's awesome. I've got to go one year. Maybe this year is the year to go. The Pinball Expo show, like I mentioned, when I helped with Ken that time a number of years ago, there are so many people that go to Pinball Expo in Chicago. Then you have all of the manufacturers are all there. So like every single employee that works for those companies swing by just because it's their home show. That used to be a really big thing to me. Like, I want to meet everyone in the industry. And I've met most of them now. And now that's like nothing against any of them, but usually the ones I don't gravitate towards anymore. I just want to see all my friends. I like to say hi to them. I'm not like an autograph seeker. I'm not in line getting them to sign everything right but you know i'll say if i ever do see some people like you know i might just say hi to them i enjoy seeing the people you know behind the scenes yeah i usually just tell them thanks for frank thanks for what they do and i've enjoyed their game or sometimes like i remember um i think it was i was up there last time when um when x-men had just come out okay and jack danger was like walking around he's like well you know what do you think about it you know he's fun to talk to he's like be honest you know i want your input on it you know because i want to i want your feedback because this helps us and i was like that's fun i love it it's great i couldn't find anything wrong with it at the time you know i i love the game it's great i hated selling them in my mind the other day but right i'm gonna sell that and get pokemon i can't only have so many games here how many games do you have they're all replaceable um uh around 20 okay well like you're saying you know what do you do when like a new game comes out and sometimes there's five or six games that come out in the year dude i gotta buy them what i build a bigger building well i need i need a bigger wallet that's true um yeah so these games like i certainly am not rich by any means but um i've accumulated a big collection over so many years of collecting and you know trading and whatnot but um yeah i just have to buy them one at a time so right now i'm buying beetlejuice and once i get that paid off i'll i'll move on to something else probably transformers So we'll probably line up now. Will you have to get rid of one game to fit Beetlejuice in? Like one game goes and one game comes in. How does your rotation work out? I still got room for another. I moved around games yesterday, so I got room for five more games in there. OK. And there's like, I think, two or three games that aren't mine in there right now. So now do you have an estimated time when you're going to get your Beetlejuice or I have not even asked my dumb ass. So I usually get the first one from my dealer just because I tell them I want the first one. And I kind of hooked them up with becoming a spooky dealer. But anyway, this time I was like, you know what? I got a bunch going on. You can push my game some. So I would be getting it pretty soon. Yeah, you went to Don's house though, right? To get you that play time. Yeah, yeah. I went to the midnight release. Midnight madness. Yeah, that was a blast. I can't wait to do that. I wanted to go to that so bad, but I just couldn't get off of work and I couldn't get out of the arcade duties here. Yeah. Possible. And that whole ordeal was, you know, you buy a game and you can come and you got to win that lottery thing and buy a game. But but yeah, I heard you could play ABBA at Don's house. Dude, I kind of like that game. So I played it. I think it was Kerry Hardy one time and I hated it. And then I went and played the longest game of Pulp Fiction ever with Luke. But anyway, then I went back upstairs and I played ABBA again and I found out it didn't have a tilt bob in it. So then I was having like a blast with it because I was just like sliding it all over his living room, saving the ball. Yeah, ABBA didn't do too much for me. I think I played it at – they had a couple at Pinball Expo. and I think they had a lot of the aliens and they had some ABBA and I played some Queens and Queen and ABBA didn't really do much for me I've never really cared for any of their games and I just don't like I don't like the feel of their games and the flippers I don't know I haven't played Predator I love like aliens like as a theme I really enjoy that movie so a buddy of mine that has an arcade maybe about 40 minutes away um he was selling his alien like ripley edition for like i don't know if it's like 5200 or something like that yeah and i was thinking i was like man i should get that game i really love this is the same thing i was having problems you know i have to sell one to get one yeah i want to get rid of anything didn't have any room for it for the longest time i was like selling one to get one like that's how i was like mainly funding all of my games but at the time you weren't taking such a huge hit on these games this is kind of like during covid and stuff as well so like you could buy a pro and you could almost sell it for what you paid for oh yeah like i said during during like my earlier days of collecting pinball you know when i started getting games uh i wouldn't keep them like a really long time but i would buy a game have it for a while sell it you know and then you buy another one and i think i might have had about five or six games at my house at any given point yeah um but i remember like one time i had like lord of the rings and i had attack from mars and indiana jones by williams you know i had um i had like five or six like really really nice games oh there's so many games i regret selling i regret selling them so bad i tell you sterling i don't know if you've ever heard this this story but um this is probably my biggest regret in pinball is when Jersey Jack Pirates came out. I got an LE. I think it was like nine grand. Yeah. So I got it, and it took a long time for it to get there. Like it took like, I don't know, I'm trying to think. It kind of took like four or five months or six months or something like that, and I finally got it. At the time, my wife was pregnant, and I guess we're kind of thinking about needing some extra money and different things. I'm like, all right, well, what do I do? Do I unbox this game and keep it for a while or do I just go ahead and sell it and just get some money and we'll use it to buy all the stuff we need to buy? We had to do some renovations and stuff like that. Right. So I was like, I guess I'll just sell the game. And I think they were going for like – they were going for like $10,500 or whatever it was at the time. So I'm like, I'll just put it for sale and sell it. So I sold my Pirates LE for like $10,500 and new in box. New in box. and I even drove it to the dude. Oh my God. I kick myself for that every single time I even think about it. I had Pirates of the Caribbean LE, I think it was number 2000, which of course they didn't make 2000. Right. Yeah, it wasn't really popular until later. Then everybody kind of lost it. I loved the game and it was so much fun. There was an arcade that was near me down there in North Carolina about an hour from my house that had one and they had a CE on location. Yeah. I think about it now every day. Every time I see one for sale and they're going for like $20,000, $19,000 and they're still going for that. I'm kind of kicking myself for not getting a Pokemon LE. I didn't have any interest in keeping one but i didn't know they were gonna possibly go to some insane price it's like beetle juice i heard don talking about it and everybody talking about it for months and months get on the list get on the list well i'm thinking i don't have any room for anything i'm not gonna have a home game yeah and i don't have room for any here i just won't i just won't worry about getting one had i known that they're just gonna blow up in place like you know a winchester or even evil dead dude get on the list for the next one like now i've heard some good things about it's gonna be even better i've heard i hope so i'm glad for spooky you know they they've come a long way you know they they they used to be uh you know they used to just not have that i don't know if you call it swagger i don't know what you would call it you know they've got like a an aura around them right now that's just like positivity and fun and the quality is like up there now yeah it's definitely getting better um i hear nothing nothing but good things about evil dead about beetlejuice so do you remember when i listed my evil dead i think you were the first person that like replied with like 20 grand no what'd you know i put 16 but people thought i was nuts i I'm pretty sure I was the very first person to list their Evil Dead for sale. I think you did like 15 or something like that. I put 16, I think. But anyway, everybody thought I was nuts, but I think I only just set the bar. And then everybody was like, well, he listed his for 16, so I'm going to list mine for 16. I'm like, did I cause that shit? No. I've never been a flipper necessarily. Like a few times I have sold a game. Like I mentioned, I had Godzilla or something like that. I have sold a couple games for a little more than I paid for them. Right. But usually you're coming out on the losing end whenever you sell things. Well, these Evil Deads. Oh, they're crazy. They're like $18, $19. Yeah, yeah. Now they're real crazy. But I was selling it for $16. And these – they say a certain price. But by the time you get it to your house and pay shipping and everything, you got to pay shipping on Spooky Hams. No way around it. you're getting closer to 13. He just goes and gets all of his own games. Yeah, but totally all the way in with the topper and everything, you're spending about 13K nearly. So, I mean, you know, it's as much as a Sternelli. Yeah, and, you know, I would, like I said, you joked about needing a bigger, you know, building, needing a bigger wallet. That's this is all it means for me. It's like here at Arcade, I am completely full. I have no room for any additional games So anytime something needs to come in now I've got to sell something And that's a problem Because I want to buy stuff I just don't have anywhere to put it And I don't want to start getting crazy And having a storage locker A storage unit full of games I don't want to be that guy Well that's kind of why I just rearranged my whole setup I'm like wow now I can fit some more games But like a lot of that seating area I had Gone That's our problem here at the arcade is that we have a party room that fits about 30 people. Okay. And that's about the only room we have that's not filled with games. Could be a pinball room. We have like games wall to wall everywhere. I have them every single place you can possibly have a game just to maximize every inch of this place. Would you ever expand to a larger space? Absolutely. It just costs more money. You're going to pay per square foot, whatever area you're in. It varies greatly, but I would say that here we're about, I don't know, 75 cents to a dollar a square foot, which is less than a lot of places. Yeah, absolutely. But I have, let's see, I have 3,600 square feet here, and it is like maxed out. And I would love to have like 20,000 square feet. It's just not going to happen because I can't. Do you think a larger space and more games actually brings in more business in the long run? Or do you think it probably just stays about the same? We are a smaller city here, so I'm going to be – I'm probably not going to make more money unnecessarily being much bigger. Right. My biggest thing would be adding additional ways for people to have fun, if that makes sense. Okay. Like some places have bounce houses or trampoline parks. If I could add some other attraction along with arcades and pinball machines and all that kind of stuff, I think that could bring in some more people. That requires more room, more rent, more insurance, more power, more everything, more money, bigger wallet. Yeah, it's got to be hard to really make money on these arcades. I've always wanted to open up a massive arcade one day. It is like the most amazing thing that I've ever done, but it's also just the most – it's the most time-consuming, and it just – it's every day. Every day I'm dealing with people booking the room for parties. You know, we're worried about just the daily, you know, the daily comings and goings of owning an arcade, just the legality, all the legal things. I would love to have a whole lot bigger space. It's in my, you know, it's a goal. I think it's going to happen, but it's just a slow process. You don't want to grow too big too fast. So I don't want to just instantly go get some 20-square-foot facility. And then for some crazy reason, we have some other thing like COVID happened or something crazy. I just I kind of dread something like that happening again because it shut down everything. Yeah. Yeah. Arcades were hard to stay open during COVID. Yeah. It hurt a lot of smaller arcades. And I'll honestly say, you know, people ask us about our arcade. And so I have a full time job that funds my, you know, my daily expenses, my family. So the arcade is just secondary. So basically as long as we can make enough money to pay all of our bills, which we do, and then I kind of keep all of the profits to roll back into the arcade. So when the Pokemons come out or whatever, I have money that I can buy a new game with. So I am continually making money, but we're not really – I'm not really putting that money into my pocket necessarily. It just goes back to the arcade. Helps build your arcade up. Yeah, yeah. And that's a goal. I definitely want to make it bigger because we have – I think we have about 65 games here. And I only have about, at any given time, like I said, about six to eight pinball machines. Right. And I would love to have more. I love pinball more than any arcade stuff. There's something about just a long line of pinball machines in an arcade. Oh, it looks great. Yeah. I would – honestly, I would probably like to have about – I'd say like you're saying you have about 20. I would probably like to have – if I had a really, really big space, I would like to have probably 15 to 20 and have a little bit more variety because having a smaller amount, I try to keep everything kind of similar. So I know I have mainly newer Sterns just because they are more reliable, and I don't have the maintenance issues of having five different brands of old games that all require something different. Is your arcade coin drop? No, we do free play. Okay, free play. So everything is on free play here. We charge – usually we charge $10 a person. Play whatever you want all day. that's an awesome deal and even then usually we give people better deals just because we're too nice that's a they come in they're like you know we always talk to them and you know they say oh we've never been before well they were like all right how about you know like seven or eight bucks or whatever it is per person so we're just too nice that's awesome man but we did just win the award for like being the best like oh yeah tell me about that and i saw you were on our i mean on front of a magazine this month or something we're getting all kinds of exposure here locally uh we had a one of the local magazines reach out and they just want to do an article so i just thought it was going to be a random article stuck in the magazine somewhere when i saw it on the newsstands the other day and there it is me on the front cover i didn't think it was going to be the front page what's the name of the magazine it's called showcase magazine okay is it like a local magazine It's just a local magazine here. And like I said, that goes back to another thing. Like I said, we are a smaller arcade. If I put this arcade in Chicago or New York or L.A. or whatever, it would bring in a whole lot more money and people. But we're just a small city. So I just enjoy keeping it kind of simple and smaller. And we really try to make sure that everybody goes home happy. We try to treat everybody like family. we want kids to have fun. We have claw machines and stuffed animals and all that kind of stuff. We always try to help them out. They're over there struggling losing money. We go help set them up so they can get stuffed animals. That's awesome. I see you doing giveaways and stuff all the time on social media. Facebook shut me down on that. What? Facebook said that I violated their something. For giving away stuff? for doing a giveaway. But you don't even charge money. It says you're not able to solicit people's likes by offering them prizes. It violates the standards of Facebook. That's nuts. Yeah, we have pinball raffles on freaking Facebook. Let's not talk about pinball raffles. That's kind of a hot topic with some people recently. Is it really? Oh, yeah. You haven't seen that? No. I mean, I've joined in on some of them in the past. Well, I'll tell you, when Pinball – I'm not against them. I don't care about them. Oh, yeah. Project Pinball has been doing these raffles for a while. Well, yeah, I know they have, but I was talking about the other ones. Oh, you mean the waffles. Yeah, the waffles. That's what I was talking about. I don't want to lose any money, dude. I tried a few of those too. Well, my buddy has won three times, so I'm like, all right, I've got to try this shit. I never win because this one dude, gosh, what was his name? I bought a game from him because he won it. Yeah. But it was probably my buddy. He used to do like number like, you know, 55 through 65 every single time or whatever. So my buddy did three numbers every time. He's like, you got to play three. I'm like, what? It only takes one. He did like 10 every single time. It was like a thousand dollars every raffle or whatever it was. And he won like 10 times. Well, I kind of liked those raffles because there's only like, I forget what it is, like 69 spots. So I'm like, all right, I got a chance. You know, nothing against Project Pinball. You know, that's probably a way better deal and going to better things. I don't know how many the Project Pinball does. I think they do a hundred. Don't quote me. I'd have to go look. Oh, I thought it was like hundreds. I think it is. We're probably making some people mad. Oh, I love – they do help out the putting games in the children's hospitals and the Ronald McDonald houses. And I will honestly tell you, Sterling, my son, when he was born, he had a stroke. Oh, man, that's terrible. And they don't know exactly why or what happened. and he was in the hospital for, I think he was there about two months. And some of those kids are there for six months or eight months or even longer. So we actually stayed at one of the Ronald McDonald houses. And it is not a fun place to be when your child is in the hospital. And I tell you, especially for these older kids and for the families, they do have these Ronald McDonald house rooms that allows them to kind of get away from their room or get away from the doctors. Kind of like a playroom or something. So, man, I am definitely going to support that. I think that is an amazing thing for kids to be able to get away from all of that and just go escape in that room. And I think they have about 85 games around at different children's hospitals and the Ronald McDonald House rooms. So a lot of these big, like a big city would have a special children's hospital wing and that's where they would put it. So, right. But I was in a lot of, I was in a few of those rooms. I've been there. I've stayed at the Ronald McDonald houses and, you know, it's not fun. You know, it's nice that they have them, but you know, when you're there, you know, you're worried about, you know, you're worried about your kids, but it gets a little bit of an escape so i'm i'm all for that we had a buddy that like does tax type stuff and he kind of looked into it and he's like i don't see anything fishy about this company well like he was able to look into it you know some people are just mad that like right now they were they were taking a you know a beetle juice that's ten thousand dollars yeah and they are raffling it off and you know they're making you know they're making ten thousand dollars off of it so people are just mad yeah because they didn't get one really i did i could see the reasoning that some people are like why can't i buy one but yet you know this other place is just getting one to give away or something you know what i mean so i i see just people are so upset because spooky just spooky doesn't want to make twice as many games i mean look they just put the last evil dead in the box that took over a year i completely understand it's like they can't be making them for two years guys they can make about a thousand games a year tops yeah and if you want them to keep coming out with better games and newer games then they can make one game a year and i'm sure all these build 3 000 beetlejuices it's gonna take them three years to build it well i'm sure some of these licenses they already have lined up too like i'm sure they have you know you've got to put this game into production this year. They can't just push it another year. Well, that goes back to we mentioned Cuphead earlier. I think that's why they can't make it anymore is because they missed some form of deadline that broke the contract and they didn't want to reestablish the contract. And they may have lost money. I don't know. But if you make your license holder mad, they may take your license from you yeah you're at their you know you're at their mercy you're making their products with their name on it they are allowing you to produce your product with you know their names and it has to be exactly how they want it to be because we've heard some crazy stuff like you're talking about the john wick thing or just i used to dream about working for a pinball factory or something like being a designer or whatever and now i have zero interest zero interest well you can you be like don he made his own game yeah i just don want any of any more headache in the hobby i just want to enjoy the hobby and like kind of take a step back and you definitely don want to open an arcade because then you really gonna be that what i keep everyone i talked to so many arcade owners like i see kelly my buddy at the pinball palace and like he services all those games by himself and there's like 200 i love i love doing it it's i'm i'm just joking i honestly i never really dreamed that i would own my own arcade i remember we were talking about it we were you know drawing up plans i was you know brainstorming i was getting ideas a few you know years ago yeah and then i look back on these facebook posts that i had like five or six years ago like where i was asking questions about things and here i am now we we own our own arcade yeah and it's it's won awards and different things that's awesome you can go on Google and like every single review is five stars. And it's like, I don't, people are actually enjoying it. I'm like, this is like, it's like, it's not even mine. It just feels weird. Like people are enjoying it so much. And that's, that's honestly why I was doing the, uh, the routing. And honestly, if anybody ever, you know, is interested in, in getting into things like this, I always kind of push them into just putting the game out on location. I say, just do one game you know don't do 10 at first you know just do one yeah go put one game out make sure you enjoy that first yeah and see how it goes if you have a bad experience then then don't go any further and if you love it add a second game or add a second location that's what happened with me um so years ago when i had all those games at my house you know you it's kind of like with you now you know the natural progression is where do i take these games do i do i take them out to the public because they can't all fit in my basement yeah so i had found this like kids bounce house type place which isn't open anymore but i put some games there so i put a super mario pinball machine in there so i had a slug fest it did great yeah i agree start off with just routing a few games and like even if i ever did open an arcade just for me doing my tournament thing every Sunday, which I mean, they beat the hell out of my games all day. And I always have a few games I got to work on afterwards. I just, there's always something. And if I had any more than like 30 games and being open all week, I swear, I don't think I can take care of any more than that. It's, it's, you know, it's fun. If you enjoy the repair side of it, that's why there's so many different people, you know, in this hobby that, you know, some guys buy every single games new in box and every game they have only has like, you know, a hundred plays on it. that's fine and there's some guys that only buy you know old games that have you know 200 000 plays on them and they fix them up that's fine that's great well i used to love working on games like i would get a new well it'd be a new game to me it'd be an old game but i used to love like going through them and chopping them out and all that and now i just hate doing anything on a game i just never had time for it um i remember that i had bought a really kind of i bought a shadow and it was the second shadow that I had bought, but I bought it really cheap, and it needed a lot of stuff. So I remember taking that game apart, like the entire top side, tear down, or whatever you want to call it, putting the color DMD in it, replacing all the LEDs, replacing every single rubber, replacing every single piece of plastic, getting that arc trans light and all that kind of stuff and I just did all that work on it had it and dude I think I sold it for like three grand been there done that now it's going for like maybe five or six or something like that I just remember I put so much time in it and hours and it looked great and played great but at the time it just wasn't as valuable of a game but I enjoyed doing it it was fun oh i took a taxi and probably spent as much money as a stern premium on it and then i went to go sell a taxi that no one wants to spend more than like 3k on yeah and i gotta hand it to me yeah you you've got to do it because you love doing it goes back here to you know to the arcade itself you know you you have to just love providing that service to people and I just I love to see the kids running around. They're happy. They're laughing. You know, the smiles on their faces. They're playing games. You know, it's like I have this little tiny part of our industry where we're sharing these games with people that that probably wouldn't be playing them if we weren't here. So I'm kind of like letting them, you know, I'm kind of letting them have access to all this stuff that that maybe they wouldn't have access to if we weren't here. yeah and i just enjoy doing that because people like a guy came into our arcade today and he's like man he's like you are making me feel like i'm you know 10 years old again he said this is amazing he said i you got like five or six games that i played all the time with my brother and something about like he um had passed away and he said it just was so amazing that that he could like play this game again because he just had such such great memories with his family playing it and And now he's playing it with his kids. So I just love doing it. It's just sharing the love of arcades and pinball. And sometimes it's hard to get the younger kids and different people to play pinball. But I'll look back at my games almost any given day, and it's – they're almost – every single one of them will be somebody on it. So they're playing. so I don't know how deep they're getting into the new games but they're playing so I hope they're having fun yeah kind of the reason why I started my whole group thing so I do tournaments every Sunday for the most part they're open to the public, anybody can play but there wasn't anything in our town like arcade wise so I almost just had to build something build it and they will come Europe and Biden wasn't there and that's the same with us And I've got so many people into it. I think I've introduced over 200 people into playing into pinball tournaments in the area. Now, Sterling, for your place, do you need to be a member or can you just show up? No, you just show up. Okay. I thought one time you did a membership type thing. That was just like we were trying to raise money. So I was like, I'll sell you what we were calling a lifetime membership, and it just covers all tournaments forever. Okay, because it seems like some of the newest – They donated a large amount, and then they got that in return. But no, it's just anybody that wants to come play, you just come play on that whenever we have it. I saw a lot of the newer – the newer pinball places are almost all going to where they're like a collective. Yeah, I see that. I'm sure you've seen that one. Yeah, people have asked me if I'm a collective. I'm like, not really. I'm like, anyone can come. But we did – I think they got confused because we did do what we called a membership. But, yeah. I mean, honestly, if I had someone else to team up with and be more pinball specific, I would love to do that. I just – like I said, it goes back to just us being a smaller city. There's only like 100,000 people here around this 10-mile radius. It's not going to get but so big. In the town I live in, it's not very large either. But however, 30 minutes away, I have Savannah, Georgia, which is a large place. And there's some pinball in that area, but it's all one operator and everything is broken and every play field is black. Yeah, that's like one day I went – I was at – gosh, I can't remember exactly where it was. But I found a pinball machine. Like, oh my gosh, there's a pinball machine here. And this is a couple years ago. And I walked over to it. Dude, like I guarantee you to have like one light working. Yeah, it was like completely black. The play field was so dark. I couldn't even see like the inserts and stuff like this. And I put like a couple quarters in it just to see if it would even work. And then it like it shot the ball out. But then like one of the flippers wasn't working. And I'm like, man, this is horrible. You know, I don't know who left their game in this state. It is it is not a good presentation of pinball. yeah there's a Godzilla on location in Savannah the play field looks like the black and white edition because you can't see any of the color it's just got that layer on top protective layer there yeah yeah yeah he's protecting the play field but yeah you know you were talking about earlier so I had games at a brewery for a number of years and honestly they never got beat up because a lot of people are like I would never have games on location beer man at bars it was fine it was fine you gotta go wipe the glass off every now and then you know just do a little quick little clean on there and it would be good to go but i keep avoiding the local bar that i know he will let me put pinball machines in his bar but i'm just afraid bar atmosphere i'm like the first day someone's gonna put a beer on top of that glass and it's gonna fall over well when i had my games at the brewery i did have cup holders on them okay that is smart that keeps them off the the glass usually or anything like that so put a note on the apron or something but yeah you know that's the thing like you know it's like the different steps and progression of of the craziness that i've gone through here in the pinball hobby is you know you start with one then it's two games on location then it's you know five then you've got two locations then you have three locations i had like five different locations at one time nice you know most of them just had like one game or something two games or something right but i've got a buddy like that it's a whole lot easier to have everything here at the arcade than to have all those little mini locations if you want to call it that yeah i wouldn't want to my i take care of some of my buddies games in savannah every once in a while and they're a little bit scattered but But, yeah, I'd rather have everything under one roof, especially when I'm going to service. Yeah, there's one place that we have here in town that I left a couple games, and they're not pinball. Right. So I have like a newer Golden Tee and a newer Buck Hunter. Do you have to do anything to those games? Do they just work? They just work. I mean, people can drop the guns on the Buck Hunter. The guns can be a little problematic if they get abused. but I haven't had any issues with mine. The Golden Tee is pretty simple. It only has a couple buttons and a trackball. There's not much to go bad on those. I have a Ms. Pac-Man out on location at a couple places. What's that? A joystick and one button or two buttons on it. I've always thought Big Buck Hunter might be something good to route. It does pretty well. Like I said, you have to do it just because you love doing it. You're doing it because you love spreading arcade games. You love spreading the joy of pinball, the joy of arcades, as cheesy as that sounds. That's why you do it. But where I've got my games, I don't know exactly how much money it makes because when you have those games out on location, which I'm afraid this is what Stern is going to do eventually, which it might be. But like Buck Hunter is from the play mechanics in Raw Thrills, so they take a cut of every dollar that goes in that game. Yep, and there's multiple games and packages and all that. Yeah, so I have – like the newer one lets you play Terminator and Walking Dead and all these different other side games. So when a customer puts a dollar in to play one credit, I think they get like 15 cents or something like that for every game. And I think Golden Tee is kind of similar too. But I just do it because I love doing it. It's nice. It doesn't really require any maintenance. I go down there and check on them every two or three weeks and get some money out of them and just go on. That's why I'd rather route something like that, that I don't have to clean the play field and worry about someone spilling beer on top of the glass as much. Gosh, I don't know if he still does it, but I know they talked about it on the electric bat. Oh, I've heard them talk. That's what kind of sparked my interest. Ralph has his – he has a Buckhunter. Yeah, and they say it does really well. Yeah, it's in their top ten every month. I don't know what their numbers are. I mean, they don't really disclose plays or, you know. And now it's the basketball machine. Do you have a basketball machine at your arcade? I have four basketball machines. Holy smokes. I have two, if you want to call it two, adult-size basketball games, and then two of the, like, little kid ones, which are probably similar in size to that Papa Shot type thing, but they're just older models from Ice. Okay, yeah, the Ice ones. Yeah, Ice, like. I've always looked at their stuff. I don't know if I've ever played any of their actual games in real life, though. You know, most of the stuff that Ice makes is pretty well. They've been – another game that is really good, if you're thinking about ever just getting into operating, is that they have the Super Checks, the hockey. Super Checks. What is that? You ever play the bubble hockey? Oh, like the old ballet game, I think it was? No, it's a dome. Yeah, yeah. It's kind of like foosball. and where you got the little controls. It is a super, super popular game here. So they still make that? Oh, yeah. Oh, really? That's Ice. So Ice makes a lot of skee-ball games as well. So I have two of the Ice balls instead of the brand skee-ball. So it sounds like they make halfway decent commercial arcade stuff. That's where, what's his name? David Dix was before he went to American Pinball. I've seen the famous picture of him wearing the shirt. But no, I've had multiple games from Ice. Most of mine are a little older. My Super Checks, the hockey game, I do have the hockey version and I have the bubble soccer, which is called Kicks. So I have the Kicks and the Super Checks. They are both super popular, especially with the, I'd say, the 10 to you know the 10 to like 18 year old range they really really enjoy that awesome something different i have a little bit of everything in our it sounds like it we have almost anything you could think of i have two air hockey tables those are super popular because people are always asking i see online like we're starting an arcade what kind of game should i get it's like well look at an arcade and go watch what people play right um i've always wanted one they're just so damn big which ones and i've always wanted air hockey game but they're always it's like putting a pool table in they're big i drove all the way to long island new york to buy mine wow that was kind of dumb i see them locally all the time that's why i keep thinking about buying one actually i'll tell you i mean we have a company that does auctions and they do them down in north Carolina. Yeah, you're up there. Sometimes they also go down to Tennessee. They go to Pigeon Forge area. I've always wanted to go. Yeah, that auction company is really nice. You can go to these auctions and you can buy almost anything amusement related, pinball, and it could be really, really great prices. It all depends on who's there and if you're going to be like competing against somebody. You can get air hockey tables for like 20 bucks sometimes. Yeah. Crazy prices. Yeah, I've always wanted to go, but it's so damn far away from where I'm at. I'm like, can y'all do one in South Georgia as well? Yeah, and then our problem now is that now that we have the arcade and we don't really have any employees, it's really just me and my dad. So I can't take off an entire Saturday to go to an auction when that's our busiest day. Makes sense. And I guess we could always, as we grow a little bit, we could potentially hire some employees, but that's probably like you with your pinball studio. Do you really want someone else running your place? Well, even the pinball palace is the same way, too. Look how big they are. It's just the family. I have not had a Saturday off since we opened. I've been here every single Saturday since we opened. That's got to be rough. That's another reason why I don't want to own an arcade that's open all week because I still want to do fun stuff. This won't sound as bad, Sterling. We are only open 22 hours a week. But it's on the fun days. But it's on Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday and Sunday. Oh, yeah. See, that ruined my weekends. We close at 8. You still got your nights. Yeah, that's very true. but uh you don't really get to go to like many pinball shows though do you that's why i didn't go to to expo or even this pinball at the beach man i really wanted to go i saw pinball at the beach i will never go to unless they move the weekend because every year i have a like reoccurring job that i have to do that week and i cannot like i can't move it i'm like can y'all just push pinball at the beach like two weeks or one week i even saw somewhere it was it was like a couple days before it might have been carrie hardy or somebody had said hey you know two free passes to pinball yes all that and like hotel rooms just let me know i'm like i could have went for one day but i'm like i'm not driving all the way down there and then you know just spending the night and then having to come back and yeah no it looked like a really really nice time i know like i said the people is what makes the hobby and just just hanging out with everybody meeting everyone playing games you know i tell you the last time i went to pinball expo i think i played about five games of pinball oh i don't play much i just talk my head off to everybody my voice is gone yeah agreed yeah usually after you've been there for a couple days everybody's voice is gone it's just like the constant noise it's it's almost like a mental overload it's great but you're so horrible the first day if you're losing your voice on day one you're like i am screwed because i was running a booth one year and like people were like coming up to ask questions and like my voice was totally gone and i'm just like yeah so you've got a booth directly besides spooky this year yeah it's totally changed now so well no no we're still right beside beetle juice in your booth this year yeah it sounds like spooky's trying to bring a lot more beetle juices than what's actually on the layout games yeah so um they may need some beetle juice overflow and then me and don have just been like chatting it up and like whoa let's turn it into like a cool beetle juice experience so uh are you going to dress up as beetle juice i've got a blazer i'll bring that a Beetlejuice placer. One of you guys has got to dress up as Beetlejuice. That'll be Don. Don likes to dress up. I'll let him do that shit. What was he dressed up in his Harry Potter reveal? Like as the Hermione or whatever? Or what's her name? Ginny or something? I'm kind of thrilled though, because I really didn't want to run a booth. I mean, it's nice to like go and try to sell merch and stuff and come back, you know, making some money. You can just have a booth. So you actually just have a seat right there where everyone's just going to walk by. Yeah. That's what we do with our tribe. You're talking about the tribe. So we – they have like a flea market or something like that up at Expo where they're just selling junk. It's just people selling – some of the stuff is good. It's maybe some action figures or some kind of video games or just other items. They put you in the corner at Texas though. Like if you tell them you're doing that, they're like, all right, we got a spot for you. It was great because they had like a booth space and then to have like – I don't know if it was like six or eight chairs. Yeah. So it was amazing. You had somewhere you could actually sit down because the bad thing about Chicago Expo is that it's concrete floors. Yeah. And if you don't wear some nice shoes, your feet are going to hurt. Well, that's why we've always liked a booth where like, hey, it's kind of like a home base. You sell some shit, but you got a home base. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Now it sounds like it's just going to be full of spooky games, but I'll find somewhere to sit down, damn it. See, then they're going to think you work for Spooky, and they're going to try to buy it from you. Everybody's going to be mad that they can't get the Beetlejuice you have there. You're going to hear that a hundred times. You know it. Just put on your shirt, make a tag. Dude, do you know how hard it was convincing Texas Pinball Festival that I had to be next to the Spooky booth? Like, it's been like six months of like, but I've got to be next to Spooky. and then like he'll email me i'm like it's because last time i have a beetle juice for sale last time they put my ass in the corner and uh yeah they will really get like if you tell them you're doing like garage sale shit they're like we're gonna put you in the corner where no but nobody's gonna walk yeah i think um the the poor men's tribe up there they uh they're probably not you know they don't they've kind of run out of chances like you guys better not do anything else We're just not going to invite you guys back. Everybody's sitting over there. They're all drinking. But it was funny, though. He was kind of giving me the hint that I was maybe going to get moved to Texas Pinball. He's like, yeah, well, Spooky's bringing more games, and they're really trying to figure out where they're going to put their games. Are you having like a 10x10 or something like that? Yeah, just a 10x10. And that's when I messaged Morgan, and I was like, hey, what about we just set up like a dark tent and put uh beetle juices in it and you know how many can you fit over there do you think like three or four or three not many just we're gonna put like a you know a 10 by 10 canopy and i don't know don's talking about putting all kinds of crazy lights and shit in there i wanted to get headphones i was like luke is there a way to like tap into it to put headphones that way you could like actually hear the game at the do they have headphone adapters for spooky not that i know of but they got that just generic amplifier in the bottom of the cabinet and i'm sure there's a you know an audio out jack for headphones you know i've only i've only owned one spooky and if you want to call it you know it was a tna so yeah it wasn't necessarily a completely spooky design game um but i didn't i didn't really dive too deep into the sound, but yes, the TNA sounded great. I just didn't have any kind of headphone lookups on there I knew of. I hate to do this, but we're going to have to wrap it up within the next two minutes. I don't know. Sterling, I could talk nonsense for hours. Ramblings of my mind. It's all good. So we use this recording rogue thing that I use and you only get so many hours a month and I have two minutes left before it's going to cut us off. You're going to pay $9.99 more. Dude, yeah, it's really expensive. It works great for recording, but I usually just have enough to do all my stuff for every month, so I don't really push it. It's because it's expensive if you pay up. Well, Sterling, I appreciate you inviting me on here. Yeah, tell them how to find the River City Arcade and how to get a hold of you. How to find the pinball nobody, me. I am just around on Facebook, and sometimes you might see me there on Pinside. You might see me in the Space Hunt fan club. I'm trying to become the head of that as the American Space Hunt head cheerleader. But actually, in all seriousness, I do River City Arcade. We are here in Danville, Virginia. So if you are ever coming by, we actually have a brand new Caesars Casino here in town. You can come to the Caesars Casino and then swing by the arcade. Awesome. Well, definitely go check out River City Arcade and if you ever need to get a hold of me, sterling at thepinballstudio.com Just shoot me an email. It was really nice talking to you, Brian Sterling, man, I appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me on I know my mind rambled and went off in about 30 directions but I appreciate you having me on. It was a lot of fun Yes, sir. Alright, take it easy, bud. Yes, sir. See you, man. Later We'll see you next time.

_(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 42e731f5-3881-4c60-a278-42bb50023f67*